Mute Man has found his long-lost tongue, and it has flooded periodicals at your local newsstand, if newsstands still exist.
The words and wisdom of the Mets’ owner Fred Wilpon fill this week’s editions of The New Yorker and Sports Illustrated, as if the editors of those magazines woke up one day recently and exclaimed, “We have to have an in-depth piece on the owner of the Mets because he is the face of the fallout from Bernie Madoff’s multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.”
Commissioner Bud Selig has developed a knack for putting someone else’s foot in his mouth. Carlos Santana is the latest to insert foot-in- commissioner’s-mouth, and I’m not talking about the Cleveland Indians’ young catcher.
This Carlos Santana is an award-winning rock musician, a Mexican-American singer and guitarist, whose band Santana became popular in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. He was one of three celebrities who received awards at Major League Baseball’s fifth annual Civil Rights game in Atlanta May 15.
The other award recipients, the baseball Hall of Famer Ernie Banks and the actor Morgan Freeman, acknowledged the reception of the Turner Field crowd and let it go at that. Santana opted to react less passively, using the occasion to raise and comment on an issue that has been controversial for Selig.
In an e-mail earlier this week, a reader wrote, “Like many of your readers, I eagerly await your comments on the Posada story.”
I am happy to offer my comments on the entire matter, in which the veteran Jorge Posada pulled himself out of the lineup for last Saturday’s game against Boston. Chances are they will be different from most of the comments that have been published or posted. They certainly come from a unique perspective.
