Baseball Union Boss

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He stood tall as an athlete in San Diego, stood tall in the batters box as a Detroit Tiger, and stands even taller as the head of the Baseball Players Association.
 
Tony Clark, the San Diego native, who went to SDSU as a basketball recruit, but turned into a 6’7″ 1st baseman, and put together a nice career with Detroit-Arizona and a cameo appearance with the Padres, has ‘gone to the next level’.  He has elevated himself to the leadership role with the Baseball Union.
 
Smart-slick-sensitive and open to conversation, Clark met with the veteran players on the Padres roster yesterday as he made his tour of the Cactus League, and then he met with us.
 
Clark answered questions openly and honestly for nearly a half hour, saying heart felt things about the big issues in the game, talking at great length about baseball and the business model the Union and owners have forged thru Labor piece, and jokingly talked about wishing he could hit against Padres manager Bud Black, when the lefthander was a 38-year old veteran at the end of the career, and Clark, an upstart Tigers prospect.
 
He referenced rule changes, the pace of the game, the new commissioner Rob Manfred, and wildcards in baseball, even a 154-game schedule.
 
Unlike initial Union Chief Marvin Miller, who was militant about everything, or the guarded Donald Fehr, who trusted no one and answered few questions, Clark was more like the late Union chief Michael Weiner, who passed from cancer at an early age a year ago, strong in opinions, open to discussion, and willing to serve his clients and the game.
 
Clark talked about the great economic growth of the game; talked about the sadness he felt with the Biogenesis scandal that came on the heels of the new laws about HGH and drug testing in the game.
 
Insightful, he however spoke out about one issue that raised eyebrows.
 
In a city that just lost icon Tony Gwynn to cancer of the mouth from years of chewing tobacco, it was hard to hear Clark tell us in the San Diego media, that any move to ‘ban’ chewing tobacco in the game, has to be bargained with the union.  I ask why?
 
We remember the final days of Mr. Padre, and the damage inflicted to his mouth, face and neck from the spreading cancer and resulting surgery.  We see Curt Shilling on TV-who has fought back from cancer of the mouth, from years of chewing.  
 
You walk thru a Padres clubhouse and you still see players loading up before practice; you find canisters of smokeless on tables in the clubhouse still.  Despite Clark’s insistence, chewing is down across rosters, it does not seem that way.  It may be banned in the minors, but players tell me it still goes on.
 
Unions are great to represent players for salaries, benefits and working conditions.  I don’t understand why players health, fighting off potential cancer, has to be a bargaining chip as Clark wants it to be.
 
Addictive, damaging, dangerous, and life threatening, I don’t know how the Union thinks they have a right to protect the players right to chew.  They should be trying to stomp this out and protect their health.

Padres Ownership

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They are excited with what they have put together on paper, now all they have to do is win on the field. 

The Padres ownership, who sat and watched a horrible offense last year, spent alot, to bring in bats.  The payroll has exceeded $107M heading towards opening day.

 

Yes there are questions what they will be like in the field, and yes you wonder if you score more runs but give up more runs, have you really helped yourself?

 

But all Ron Fowler and Peter Seidler could talk about yesterday in the Cactus League was the wide variety of plans new GM AJ Preller put together heading to the Winter Meetings.

Plan A was to find a way to pry Matt Kemp of the Dodgers.  When that happened, the message was sent to franchises around the league, this would be a different San Diego going forward.

Then came the complex 3-way deal to get Tampa Bay’s young outfielder Wil Myers.  Then slugging catcher Derek Norris of the A’s.  And then the Justin Upton Atlanta deal, and finally the signing of pitcher James Shields of the Royals.

You would have thought there had been an eartquake at Petco Park, the land shook so much that first week of December.

In the past you had to ‘hope’ the Padres could play well.  That has been replaced by ‘expectations’ of who has arrived and what they have accomplished other places..

Ticket sales have rocketed 600% since New Years weekend thru the end of February.  A team that could very play in October, could draw 3M fans in a baseball starved town.

It was a bitter ending last season, the woeful injuries, the near all time record anemic hitting, and the overall malaise in the clubhouse.  Fowler gave everyone a chance last year, and was aghast at the money spent, and the end of season results.

 

The roster changed, and the culture has too.

The return to health of Yonder Alonso and Cam Maybin might normally be big storylines, but not now.  There are just so many bats around them in the lineup, that this could be a very good hitting team, in a pitchers park.  Think about that.They are deep for sure in the rotation; have a huge number of relievers; and right now are not even worrying about the 3-arms coming off surgeries.

Sure the lst day of workouts in the Orioles-Pirates-or Nationals camp feels like the Padres camp.  Everyone is excited to get started.  But this is really different and very realistic in San Diego..

You bring in a World Series starter, a former MVP, 6-All Stars, and a rookie of the Year winner, and you have proven commodities on a roster so much better than a year ago.

Ron Fowler should be excited.  The fans should be too.  On paper this looks like a very good team.  It should be, for San Diego spent alot of currency in contracts and young prospects traded, to make these deals.

 

Surely better than this time the last couple of years ago.  We shall see what the summer brings us, and if baseball in the fall should be on your calendar.

Beginning of End or New Beginning

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It might be a new story, or it might be a bad ending.  It all begins this morning, at the Padres camp in the Cactus League.
While all the focus, the spotlight, has been on the job new GM AJ Preller did in ripping apart the foundation of the sad sack franchise, and rebuilding with new players, the status of the crumbling outfielder with the big contract remains unresolved.
Carlos Quentin has broken down.  It has been three years of injuries, tons of missed games, trips to the DL, and patient waiting to see if he can ever be what he used to be, a feared power hitter, than what he is now, a broken down wreck.
Since coming from the Chicago White Sox three years back, Quentin has endured 3-knee scopes in one knee and has had to fight his way through a deep knee bruise in the other leg.
This is the final year of his mega contract, one that paid him 9M last season, 8M the year before, and another $9M this season including a likely buyout.
The cost of the contract, and the lack of production, is probably what got GM Josh Byrnes fired last summer. 
In three seasons, the once power hitting Diamondback and Chisox flychaser has hit in the .250s, and has just 33-home runs in that span. 
The Padres have played 486-games in that span, and Quentin has played just 218, missing 268.  
His passion runs high; he runs into walls, pounds on the bases, falls down in the outfield trying to make the tough catch, and he  always gets hurt.  
You don’t see him much in the clubhouse, recluse that he is.  If you were allowed entrance, you’d find him in the trainers rooms, more than in the lineup.  

The overhaul of the Padres outfielder, the huge acquisition of three starters, is an upgrade, but also likely a true message, they don’t believe he can play in the garden any longer.

A year ago this week Quentin said it was the healthiest his knees ever felt, and then promptly was limited in games, and then went down again, with a deep knee bruise.  The season became a total washout.

He has returned to Peoria, echoing the same sentiments, feeling good, hoping to stay healthy, but there is a new development, he will attempt to become a part time first baseman.

Quentin won’t have to cover lots of ground but will have to learn a new role.  It might allow the team to keep his bat, but it might allow them to showcase him to an American League team, where his role as a DH might better allow him to compete.

The veteran knows the writing is on the wall; no place to play in San Diego, no DH in the National League, and the only hope is to waive a no trade clause to head to the other league.  

The Padres might have to eat a large chunk of the contract, might not get much in return, but will then have a roster spot. Or maybe he can handle the role, stay healthy, hit some home runs with a better lineup, and be a part-time force off the bench.

It’s easy to criticize him for all the failings since coming home in the Sox deal, but maybe it is unfair.  He got hurt wearing your colors.  

Heart is willing, body hasn’t.  Maybe Quentin deserves this one final chance.  Maybe the Padres owe him that; maybe he owes them production

 

Chargers vs. City

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I call it a ‘Cease-fire’.  I don’t know what they call it.  But if they stop calling each other names, then it should be a positive.  Anything is better than what we came thru last week.
 
The Chargers and the City are indeed on the clock, to try and find a way to finance a new Stadium, likely in the East Village, adjacent to Petco Park.
 
It started well a week ago, but it ended badly in one single day.  All the enthusiasm about the Stadium Task Force, loaded with business people with a wide variety of accomplishments on their resumes, was knocked off track by a Panza division all out assault by the Chargers hired gun, Mark Fabiani, the spokesman for owner Dean Spanos.
 
It was four days of sniper fire and it created real divisions in the city, and led to despair if anything could get done.  All this followed then by the broadside announcement that the Chargers, weren’t just monitoring things in Los Angeles, they were negotiating things in Los Angeles, this land option purchase, the linkage with the business group carson2gether.com, and the affiliation with the troubled Raiders.
 
That was some week of violent actions taken by the franchise in Murphy Canyon, living and working out of the city gift of office space given them years ago in the last Stadium renovation.
 
Then the mayor returned fire, ripped into Fabiani, and demanded a ‘sit-down’ meeting with Spanos, though it did not have “Godfather movie” implications about a sitdown.
 
Everyone emerged using new words, “working jointly, expedient, good faith”, etc.etc.  We shall see where all this goes next, though the owner impressed upon the mayor, he needed a Stadium idea sheet sooner than later.  Kevin Faulconer hopes to have it done within 90-days, right around June lst.
 
So Spanos may have won a concession on timing, but he sure didn’t win anything else.  Read the Letters to the Editors columns in the Union-Tribune.  Listen to to the brutal boos when the name ‘Chargers’ was mentioned at music concert and a hockey fan fest over the weekend.
 
Words like deceit, extortion, hatchet men, ring out in lots of conversation.
 
Today could be a big day.  The Task Force meets with the County Supervisors, and they want to explore a City-County way to use a hotel tax that might help pay for a Stadium.  
 
There’s no guarantee of a deal in San Diego yet..  There’s no final solution yet in Oakland either, just alot of negative vibes there in exchanges involving the mayor, the county and the franchise.  And in Carson, all the cheesy pep rally press conferences don’t mean much unless there are written documents about where all this funding is coming from to build on that land dump.
 
But at least at this hour, there is quiet in San Diego.  No one seems ready to trespass back into No Man’s Land.  Will be interesting to see where the week takes us, if Fabiani can keep his antagonistic mouth shut, and if Faulconer, Ron Roberts and others have the juice to connect the dots, and what the wildcard guy, Stan Kroenke in St. Louis does next.
 
Cease Fire-maybe.  Surely not a peace treaty yet.

Hockey Fest

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It was a sight to behold, something we hadn’t seen in a long, long time.

 
The old San Diego Sports Arena was rocking, like back in the day, during the hockey hotbed days.
 
The San Diego Gulls are back, and the fans are fired up.  a tradition that began in the building in 1966, with the original Gulls franchise of the old Western Hockey League.
 
There was the run of the San Diego Mariners of the WHA.
 
And then the reincarnation of really good hockey, first with the Gulls of the IHL, and the 5-time trophy run of the Gulls in the lower echelon West Coast Hockey League.
 
It’s been awhile since hockey played in the building right off Rosecrans, and the fans let the owners of the Gulls, the Anaheim Ducks, and the Hahn family, owners of the Sports Arena, know what they felt.
 
8,500 showed up to watch the unveiling of the new jerseys, the new colorful logo, and to hear Gulls and Ducks execs talked about the rebirth of the sport in the sunshine of San Diego.
 
The original Gull, the legendary Willie O’Ree, the league ambassador, returned to the Arena where he starred, before breaking the color barrier in the NHL with the Boston Bruins..
 
In a website, that has been up just two weeks, over 1,500 have applied for season tickets.  The Ducks will embark on a $2M-investment to upgrade the locker rooms, then build a sports medicine center and weight room at a new practice rink.  This after the Ducks spent $4M to buy the franchise from Norfolk.
 
The future stars of tomorrow, will be coming to San Diego in October to don the new colors.
 
Back in the day, the Gulls had great players in the old WHL-Olympic goalie Jack McCartan and O’Ree and Sandy Fitzpatrick.
 
The WHA Mariners brought us Andre Lacroix and Joe Noris.
 
The IHL Gulls triggered the career of 23-year veteran player Ray Whitney. The champion Gulls of the WCHL allowed us to see Marty St. Amour, Sergie Naumov, Chad Wagner, BJ McPherson, and so many more.
 
The AHL will be different.  88-percent of the NHL players on rosters this morning played in the “A”.  All 100% of those enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, served time in the league as they began their careers.
 
Hockey is back; and style wise, it will be better than anyone has ever seen before in this town.  “Go-Gulls-Go” was the chant as the 8,500 left the Sports Arena.  They will definitely be back.