Torre's take on Sheff incident way off base

NY Daily News ^ | April 16, 2005 | Filip Bondy

[jolie560]

By yesterday afternoon, Joe Torre was safely ensconced in Camden Yards, about 400 miles south of the crime scene. The gravest transgression at Fenway on Thursday had not been the inadvertent collision between a Boston fan's arm and Gary Sheffield's face in right field. The real misdemeanor was gross exaggeration, arguably downright fabrication, by Torre himself. The Yankee manager was guiltier than anyone in this matter of distorting the facts, creating a furor and possibly inciting worse incidents in the future.

By now, we have become sadly accustomed to the notion that a baseball manager will say practically anything to defend his player, even if it impugns his own integrity with the public. Torre will say that Roger Clemens throws at heads when he is a Blue Jay, or that Clemens simply protects the inside of the plate when he is a Yankee.

[jolie560]

The MLB schedule-makers have been out to lunch for years. Scheduling early and late season games at night is coldly insane. Over-lapping home-and-away series so that teams play each other 6-7 times within 30 days, and then not again for another 80 days is another insane.

ESPN stirs up the whole pot by promoting the fraternity house in-yer-face "story line" insane. Let's have a rumble for the Sports Center Highlights.

All in all, an avoidable mess...And, yes, also insane.

[Jeremiah Jr]

Soccer hooligans/Red Sox fans, same sub-species.

[MikefromOhio]

Well Torre has to do this for his player. That is only reasonable.

The entire situation is unreasonable in the first place.

[MikefromOhio]

take a gander at this:


http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/cowbell/blog