WEINER WADES THROUGH, WON’T WALLOW IN SPRING SCHEDULE
By Murray Chass
March 3, 2013
Michael Weiner, chief of the baseball players’ union, sounded a bit incredulous when I told him why I was calling.
“You want to write about me doing my job?” he asked.
Well, yes, because this is not about a guy doing his job in ordinary circumstances. This is the story of a man exerting an extraordinary effort in the most trying time of his life in the most grueling part of his work year.
Weiner typically dismissed such seeming melodramatics, but consider the circumstances. He is immersed in the executive director’s annual tour of 30 spring training camps, which this spring will be extended by two round trips between Arizona and Florida for the World Baseball Classic.
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EVIL EMPIRE STRIKES AGAIN – 10 YEARS LATER
By Murray Chass
February 28, 2013
The message I left with Larry Lucchino’s secretary was I was calling to speak to him about the Evil Empire. He called back unusually quickly. The Boston Red Sox chief executive officer and I go back 10 years on the subject.
“I hope you get to write something about ‘Evil Empire,’” he said, “because it took you to get me talking about my deeply held feelings.”
Having just lost a bidding battle to the New York Yankees for a Cuban defector, pitcher Jose Contreras, Lucchino expressed his frustration when I called him on Dec. 24, 2002.
”The evil empire extends its tentacles even into Latin America,” Lucchino said.
The comment instantly grabbed a hallowed spot in the lexicography of baseball lore, spreading rapidly throughout the sport and the news media.
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THERE’S A HOLE IN MLB’S MEDIA WALL
By Murray Chass
February 24, 2013
Major League Baseball has benefited so royally from what it calls MLB Advanced Media that it’s difficult to question anything that M.L.B. subsidiary does. What it does is make money, plenty of it, for all segments of baseball. Even the players benefit because its revenue has sent M.L.B. revenue soaring beyond $8 billion a year and has enabled clubs to pay players higher and higher salaries without going to war with the union over a salary cap.
As true as all of that may be, however, in my view it doesn’t justify the MLB.com practice that journalistic veterans find troubling. As a card-carrying member of that group, I find it troubling.
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