Baseball Notes: December 18th Edition

A few notes from Baseball’s offeason from ESPN.

Pete Rose‘s legacy may get further tarnished. A gambling website bought a bat that is believed to be corked. The company’s going to saw open the bat on live television and if its corked, they’re going to sell it for charity.

According to ESPN:

(Rose friend Tommy) Gioiosa told ESPN.com last month that he was positive that Rose used a corked bat when he was closing in on the all-time hit record.

“It wasn’t about home runs,” Gioiosa said last month. “It helped him get that snap to hit line drives out of the infield.”

This is yet another one of Rose’ s dumb and self-destructive actions. Rose didn’t need to cork his bat to break the record. He ended up with 4,256 hits, 76 more than he needed to pass Cobb. No way that bought him 76 hits. There was no way he needed to gamble on baseball. Rose is one of those men who shows that talent without integrity doesn’t count for much.

Also the Red Sox are having to go to arbitration with Former First Baseman Doug Mankiewicz over the 2004 World Series winning ball. The Red Sox way Mankiewicz has no ownership interest in the ball and I have to agree.

Mankiewicz caught the ball as an employee of the Red Sox in the course of his duties. The ball was owned by Major League Baseball, used in a Major League Baseball game. How can it not be the property of Major League Baseball? It would be the same as any employee taking their tools home with them and claiming them as their own.

More to the point, Mankiewicz has a souvenir of the World Series already, its called a ring. He should have let go of this long ago. Instead, he’s tarnishing what was a great moment for the city and fans of Boston.

Alex Rodriguez is skipping the World Baseball Classic, which is looking like its going to be a really good event. His reason is that while he was born in the US, he has Dominican heritage:

“When faced with the decision to choose between my country, the United States of America, and my Dominican heritage, I decided I will not dishonor either,” Rodriguez was quoted as saying in Friday’s editions of the New York Post.

Its a respectable stand and he has to be being pulled a lot of different ways on this and I think he made the right call. This will be a big loss for the Dominican team which had to have hoped he’d play and that’d give them both Pedro Martinez and Alex Rodriguez. I also think that it shows players are taking this seriously, which is vitally important for the World Baseball Classic. They want to be viewed as the World Cup of Baseball.

If A-rod could just go “eenie, meanie, miney, mo” and choose a team it shows its just really spring training. Rather the question of which team to join was a serious one involving patriotism, heritage, and family ties. Baseball officials aren’t happy with the decision, but they’ll get over it if this works. Barry Bonds is in the tournament and he’s got to be incredibly focused. This is his last season probably and with the state of the Giants, he has no chance of winning a World Series. What he does have is a shot at leading Team USA to victory and if he can do that, it’d be huge for Barry’s legacy.