Baseballhead:
I Cover the Pope

Michael Cox

While nothing really huge dominated the news this past week, there were plenty of minor issues keeping the wire jumping, not the least of which were the decidedly non-baseball exploits of our favorite immortal sluggers, Mark "Mayor McCheese" McGwire and Sammy "Salsa/Seltzer" Sosa.

Earlier, Sosa appeared in the House gallery at the side of the First Lady during the President's State of the Union address, likely reciprocating Hillary's visit of his Dominican homeland in the late fall. Unfortunately, Sosa's appearance was taken by some politically-minded (how often that phrase resembles "learning-impaired") folks as something more, some sort of taking of sides, when five'll get you ten that The Party of Lincoln likes the guy just as much as The Party of JFK. Get over it, OK?

Damn. Thought I was on McLaughlin again.

Anyway, so last night Mark McGwire goes from being the World's Most Famous Baseball Player to The World's Most Famous Catholic Baseball Player. You see, when he saw that Pope John Paul II was to arrive in St. Louis the same day Mac was departing, our hero (Mac in this case) expressed the idle wish that he might get to meet the Holy Father.

What Mac still doesn't realize is that when you're The Man Who Saved Baseball (Again), your wish is the Guys in Suits' command. The Cards' people talk to the Church people, and before you know it, McGwire is shaking the pontiff's hand. There may have been some other proprietary genuflecting, but I would leave such description to those who are more familiar with the rulebook.

No word on whether Sosa plans to one-up McGwire, but we hear Sammy's making plans for a summit with Brandy...

Item: Meanwhile, Sosa was a no-show to a Congress of Racial Equality fund-raiser, and the group's boss was more than outspoken about why the slugger never attended. I'm not going to pass judgment on Roy Innis' charges that Sosa asked for a private jet to and from Las Vegas for the Tyson fight and a $50K payout, but I will say that Innis' need to press his sour grapes in public, lambasting Sosa in his speech that night, made him less believable...

Item: After being burned about 17,638 times by "unnamed sources" in the past, the New York Daily News decides this one is telling the gospel truth and decides to go with the story that Joe DiMaggio is all but dead. then, based on that report, NBC decides to get a leg up on the possibility that Joltin' Joe has in fact left and gone away.

But like a gun loaded in case of burglars, you shouldn't oughta type words into a screen crawl unless you intend to use 'em. Sure enough, the network swears they were only cleaning it when it went off.

Now, you may have a distrust of the reclusive DiMaggio's official mouthpieces, but you know what? You've gotta give 'em the benefit of the doubt. The obsession with daily news, and even bigger obsession with really, really bad news, is what causes papers to print articles and networks to typeset screen crawls based on the thinnest of evidence.

It's not because the Yankee Clipper is a celebrity (spare me the "right to know" argument, the Constitution doesn't contain one)...it's because people want to know when bad things happen, and our wonderful news services want to be the first to tell you when they do, quickly followed by an ad.

Item: John Henry completed his cash(!!) purchase of the Marlins on Wednesday, and immediately made his mark by overpaying for his first player. "You can't take it with you," Henry said, seemingly explaining his team's $19M payout to Cliff Floyd.

Item: Roger Clemens says a deal between the Blue Jays and Astros for his services is still "a possibility." Read: Clemens is whipping Gord Ash like a second-place racehorse and has given the phone number he actually answers to Astros owner

Item: Players' union boss Don Fehr says he may not exactly favor a salary cap. Oh, that's news...

about the author

Michael Cox longs for the good old days when Tim Raines demanded to be called "Rock." Tell him that Albert Belle frowns on people who use his former name at mc@strikethree.com.