Okay, folks. My hiatus (aka vacation) is over and I’m back with a vengeance.

First order of business? Two-plus months’ worth of delicious GIF. Since this is the first post in a while, what do you say we pack 50% more GIF goodness into this post?

As always, the ROTI GIF series is heavily indebted to the contributions of C. Dave. We also received helpful assistance this time around from Bill Waters and El Guapo.

Let the animated festival begin!

Making Flippy Floppy

Walken Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!

Throw Them Bows!

A Pathology is Born

The Three Best Closer Celebrations in MLB

Buffy’s Gotta Heej

The Coolest Thing Ever to Happen

Great Ass!

Everyone Loves a Cool Mom!

The Dude Says No

Cosby’s Enchanted Wiener

Who Hasn’t Felt This Way About Braff?

Dunst Aghast

Buffalo Beewok

Who knew the big payback involved a bowl of miso soup?

Tennis, Anyone?

Greasin’ on American Express Cards…

Keep Working on It

Michelle’s Message

Pauly D’s Secret Weapon

Mike Pelfrey Poops a Balk

Ringwald’s Righteous Anger

RIP Ryan Dunn

Anytime you come in here and hear me TYPING…

And we’re out!

In the world of sports, it’s obviously critical to have the best possible players on your team in order to win.

It’s essential to have the right coaches and trainers on board, to help those players do their best, and to put them in a position to triumph.

It’s vital to have the right management team in charge: scouting, hiring, and acquiring the players and coaches that a team needs to be successful.

All those things are important, clearly. But without principled, moneyed ownership to pay all the bills, choose the right lieutenants to call the shots, and provide all the ingredients to make the championship pie — without sticking their fingers into it as it’s cooling — a sports team will be hard-pressed to win championships.

That’s why Frank and Jamie McCourt’s ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers has been a complete and utter disgrace.

This pair of Beantown parking lot magnates flew cross-country to purchase one of baseball’s greatest franchises in 2003. They’ve since given themselves full West Coast makeovers, and their egos have ballooned up to Hollywood standards.

For reference, this is what they used to look like:

The McCourts have used the Dodgers as their own personal cash cow and id vehicle, acquiring washed-up Red Sox players and dealing away top prospects for cash as they go on ridiculous spending sprees and jet around the country in Gulfstream IVs.

Now the McCourts are getting divorced, and feuding like children for all to see.

The resulting fallout could cripple the franchise, because neither is rich enough to own the team in the aftermath of a costly split, let alone invest the money the Dodgers need to get stronger.

Of course, they don’t care a whit about that, because Frank and Jamie McCourt are narcissistic boobs.

ROTI issued our first takedown of the McCourts last offseason, when we accused them of pinching pennies and not doing what it took to bring back stars Manny Ramirez and Rafael Furcal.

Those jerks shut us up by getting both players under contract. The Dodgers got out to a great start, won the NL West (not without a fight, though), and made it to the playoffs.

However, before the team was even eliminated, Frank McCourt fired Jamie from her position as CEO of the Dodgers, accusing her of insubordination and an inappropriate relationship with an employee!

Jamie retorted, “You can’t fire me – I OWN this team!”

This immediately kick started a divorce court battle that centered around the question “Who owns the Dodgers?”

Major League Baseball insists that one controlling owner be determined for each franchise, and in this regard, Frank McCourt is the owner of the Dodgers. He’s also got Jamie’s signature on a document to that effect.

However, it seems possible that the team is part of the couple’s community property, and thus subject to 50/50 division in California divorce court.

Further complicating matters is that the team was purchased in a highly leveraged deal. The McCourts were never that wealthy to begin with (by sports team ownership standards).

A new blog called Dodger Divorce, written by Joshua Fisher, has done a brilliant job of breaking down the couple’s purchase of the team. It concludes a wrapup of the evidence with these damning statements:

So, if you’re counting at home, the above adds up to $421 million in financing…for a $371 million purchase. That, friends, is a little scary….

We know that the McCourts aren’t worth anything close to the $1.2 billion Jamie suggests. At most, the couple seems to have something approaching $750 million in total net worth ($400 million in “other assets plus ~$350 million in equity in the Dodgers). However, it is my guess, based on the loan balances due on the residences and their history of operating heavily-leveraged businesses, that the couple’s net worth is under $600 million.

If the team is determined to be an asset of the marriage, either partner would have to become heavily leveraged to take the other out. If no agreement can be reached and the court orders the Dodgers to be sold to a third party, expect a bit of a discount on the purchase price, leaving both McCourts with even less…

What I really want to emphasize is that the McCourts aren’t worth as much as you think, and breaking up this marriage is going to cost them both dearly.

Not only that, but it’s going to cost the Dodgers dearly.

If you want evidence, just take a day trip south, where the San Diego Padres have suffered immensely after their owner, John Moores, divorced his wife. Moores was utterly strapped for cash and had to sell the team; in the meantime, the franchise floundered.

What makes this so much worse than the Moores/Padres situation is that the McCourts’ divorce is not merely harming the team’s bottom line — it’s playing out in the papers on a daily basis, overshadowing the club and humiliating Dodger fans.

Where to begin…let’s start with Jamie’s divorce filing…

ShysterBall did an absolutely glorious job of summarizing Jamie’s opening salvo.

There’s no way I could recap it all here, so check it out when you get a chance. For true legal junkies, there’s also this link to the filing itself.

She wants $320,967 in monthly spousal support if she gets her job back with the Dodgers. If she does not get her job back with the Dodgers, she wants $487,634 a month.

Jamie led a push to have the environs of Dodger Stadium given its own zip code and the name “Dodgertown, California.” That’s so lame I’d expect to see that as an accusation in Frank’s filings, not a supporting point in Jamie’s. Jamie made $2 million a year when she worked for the Dodgers. You can look at this one of two ways: as an awful damn lot of money to pay a person for coming up with stupid stuff like “Dodgertown, California” or as a total steal considering she made 1/6 the money Jason Schmidt did and actually, you know, did stuff.

Description of lifestyle: more on the private air travel (private jets at $12K an hour) fine hotels (always over $1000 a night) and nice dinners out ($400+ a pop). Good for them. What kills me though is that the next time there’s a labor impasse, Joe Fan is going to side with the owners and complain that the players are the greedy ones who make too much money to play a kid’s game.

Jamie wants her job back as Dodger CEO, but even if she can’t get that, she wants all the “perquisites, emoluments and benefits” that come with the job and with co-ownership of the Dodgers. That’s perks and fringe benefits to peasants like you and me. The list of perks is long and includes all of the sorts of things you might expect the owners of a billion dollar company to have: Private jet travel, five star hotels wherever she goes, use of the “Dodger credit card” and the like.

The only one that has me scratching my head is “private security when traveling in dangerous locations.” By that I can only assume she means road trips to Queens when the team plays the Mets.

Actually, what it means is that she wants Frank to foot the bill for the companionship of her personal “bodyguard,” Jeff Fuller. Also known as her road beef.

Here’s an AP report on Frank’s divorce filing:

Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt on Wednesday filed papers opposing his wife’s demand to be reinstated as the team’s chief executive, citing insubordination and an affair she allegedly had with her bodyguard.

The documents were submitted one day after Jamie McCourt filed divorce papers seeking to regain her $2 million-a-year job.

In a filing submitted by the Dodgers that opposes her return to the team, Dodgers attorneys allege that Jamie McCourt took a trip with her bodyguard, Jeff Fuller, in early July to Israel on team business, but then headed to France for 2 1/2 weeks and billed the Dodgers for the trip. Jamie McCourt is also accused of not giving her husband any information about her assignments as chief executive and not providing the team with her schedule of public appearances.

In a declaration filed by Frank McCourt, he references Fuller as well, saying before his wife went on the trip she asked him for three things — one of which was to have Fuller be her driver.

Many harsh words have been exchanged in a public back-and-forth waged daily in the Los Angeles papers between the McCourts’ divorce lawyers.

The guys they brought on board to do battle are extremely experienced LA attorneys with storerooms full of high-profile celeb divorce paperwork. Suffice it to say, their billing rates are ample, and every cent comes out of the Dodgers’ bottom line.

Some of the harshest rhetoric surrounds Jamie McCourt’s role as President/CEO of the Dodgers, and whether her efforts helped or hindered the team in the first place.  (BREAKING: As this item went to press, the court denied Jamie’s attempts to be reinstated as CEO.)

Bill Shaikin of the LA Times has been a clutch journalist on the case, and here’s his wrapup of Jamie’s side of the story:

Jamie McCourt claims she was actively involved in the ownership and management of the team from day one, detailing her involvement in executive meetings, hiring and planning decisions, and marketing and community relations initiatives.

“I was the face of the Dodgers,” she claims.

Frank’s attorneys beg to differ:

The two sides also revived their debate on how integral Jamie McCourt has been to the success of the Dodgers’ operations, with attorneys for Frank McCourt belittling her assertion that she was “the face of the Dodgers.”

“There is no ‘face of the Dodgers,’ ” his attorneys wrote, “and, even if there were, dozens of Dodgers figures would rank ahead of Jamie McCourt. The conflict between Jamie McCourt’s focus on her self-image and the values of the Dodgers’ organization is irreconcilable.”

Dodgers President Dennis Mannion has opposed her reinstatement, alleging that Jamie McCourt seldom showed up for work on time, missed meetings and put her interests ahead of those of the team.

And furthermore…

Mannion denied Jamie McCourt’s claims that he had instructed team employees not to work with her and excluded her from management discussions and decisions. He said he would have welcomed her involvement had she shown up for work more often.

Mannion further alleged that Jamie McCourt focused on initiatives “designed to cultivate and promote her image as the highest ranking woman in Major League Baseball,” even when those activities “were not financially successful ventures and did not fit the strategic needs of the organization.”

The filing in particular cited DodgersWIN, described in her biography as a program that “brings women closer to the game, brings the game closer to women’s lifestyles, and helps inspire women to use their voices.”

That sounds like one of the stupidest ideas in the history of the game, second only to race-based discrimination. The game is the game, we don’t need to spend money making it “closer to women’s lifestyles.” Seems to me that plenty of women enjoy the game of baseball already without Jamie’s useless efforts. Are you kidding me with this??

Maybe if Jamie hadn’t wasted so much money on first-class accommodations and ludicrous programs like DodgersWIN, the team wouldn’t have had to essentially sell blue chip prospect Carlos Santana to the Indians — the SMALL MARKET CLEVELAND INDIANS — in order to save money in the acquisition of role player Casey Blake.

The sad fact is, while the Dodgers have won a fair amount of games in the McCourts’ tenure, those victories have been owed largely to ex-GM Dan Evans, who ran the team back when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp was the owner.

Virtually every star Dodger was drafted during the Evans regime, or acquired with prospects drafted by Evans. That includes Matt Kemp, Jon Broxton, James Loney, Andre Ethier, Russell Martin, and Chad Billingsley. Manny Ramirez was acquired by trading Evans’ pick Andy LaRoche.

There’s one notable exception — star lefty Clayton Kershaw was chosen by the McCourts’ GM, Ned Colletti — but with the 7th pick in the draft you’d damn well better get yourself a guy with huge upside.

Under the McCourts’ penurious regime, the Dodgers have gutted their once-robust commitment to international scouting.

The result of dealing prospects for cash and skimping on bonuses is that the Dodgers’ once-stellar minor league organization (this is a team that once churned out five straight NL Rookies of the Year) is now one of the worst in baseball.

[T]he Dodgers have done relatively little to replenish the organization. Baseball America last spring ranked the Dodgers’ farm system 23rd among the 30 teams.

Gordon and pitcher Chris Withrow emerged as elite prospects this season, but the minor league depth is limited by the Dodgers’ limited investment in it.

The Dodgers have paid $8.5 million in signing bonuses for draft picks over the last two years — the lowest figure among all major league teams, according to Baseball America.

The Dodgers, so proud of their heritage in Asia and Latin America, today are a non-factor in bidding for top amateur players abroad. In 2008, according to Baseball America, major league clubs combined to sign 115 such players for bonuses of more than $100,000. The Dodgers did not sign one.

“They’re definitely not the pioneering team they were,” Baseball America editor John Manuel said. “They’ve squandered that advantage.”

Dodger Divorce points out that improvements to Dodger Stadium will surely be sidelined by the accelerating court proceedings.

Other observers, including Shaikin and LA columnist Bill Plaschke, accuse the McCourts of blowing a chance to acquire ace Cliff Lee — last seen mowing down Yankees in the World Series:

It has been written here countless times since the end of July that the Dodgers would have been a serious World Series contender if they had been able to trade for an available ace starter like Cliff Lee.

The Phillies acquired Lee instead, and it is the Phillies who are in the World Series this week, using Lee to steal a Game 1 victory from the New York Yankees.

The Dodgers finished second in the Lee sweepstakes this summer because the Cleveland Indians judged the Phillies’ prospects to be better. It turns out that the Dodgers didn’t improve their offer because the McCourts would rather invest in the cheaper lower-level minor leaguers than pay the remainder of Lee’s $6-million contract this year, plus his $9-million option next year.

Go away, McCourts. Now.

Sell the team and go live in one of your many mansions, or even better, pitch a tent in a parking lot.

(Oh, I forgot. News Corp foreclosed on those.)

Dodgers fans are being robbed blind by these two carpetbagging hedonists, and it’s only going to get worse from here unless they find a way to unload the team and do it soon.

Los Angeles deserves far better ownership than these two chumps.

The Associated Press reports:

PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia Phillies starter Cole Hamels left the ballpark with his wife, a former “Survivor” contestant, who was in labor with the couple’s first child.

Hamels gave up four runs and seven hits in five innings against the Colorado Rockies in Game 2 on Thursday. He left after throwing 82 pitches and rushed out of the dugout when he was pinch-hit for in the fifth inning.

Hamels said this week his wife was due “any day.”

Hamels’ wife, Heidi, also posed for Playboy.

That is some cold shit, Associated Press! Not only does this item make Hamels look like he wasn’t focusing on his team’s playoff game…it calls his wife out for naked modeling at the end for no reason.

“Yo Hamels, AP called, they said your wife’s a tramp and you sir, are guilty of extreme uxoriousness!”

That’s not cool, AP. While we can’t entirely endorse Hamels’ preoccupied play and shameful flight from the ballgame, the crack on his wife for her Playboy gig was not well worded.

At all.

Hopefully this will turn into an internet meme and a cataclysm of overreactional outrage will manifest itself to my great amusement!

Even the crazed denizens of the “Conversation” were unanimous in their outrage:

So, while you’re sitting around this Christmas handing out hundreds of dollars in presents to the ones you care for, think about all the families and business you have managed to destroy. Think about the hand you played in putting these things through. Think about all of the hard working people you are going to put out of business. When your all done with that, remember me, Romeo Filip, proud owner of Diablo Bats. Remember that I personally told you to go fuck yourself and stick this approval letter up your ass.

P.S. Merry Christmas

Well, here’s a little background.

Major League Baseball has been in a tizzy over the past year regarding the dangers of broken bats.

An incident in which Pittsburgh hitting coach Don Long took a maple bat shard to the face led Yahoo’s Jeff Passan to write with more than a touch of drama, “Someone’s going to die at a baseball stadium soon.”

Conventional wisdom has centered on the use of maple wood, which some claim has a greater tendency to shatter into dangerous splinters. Players, on the other hand, love maple wood bats because they believe they are superior dinger-smackers.

Toronto slugger Joe Carter was the first to use maple bats back in the 90s. When Barry Bonds obliterated home run records while wielding maple bats, they became all the rage. Today, over 50% of major leaguers use maple bats.

Many baseball writers spent last season getting all worked up about the peril that shattering maple bats are posing to the safety of players, coaches and fans. For example, Tom Verducci called them a “daily danger”:

The danger of maple bats is, however, so clearly established that every major league baseball game is an accident and lawsuit waiting to happen. Baseball will not be able to claim in court that it was unaware of the hazards caused by maple bats, which routinely break apart in large jagged pieces that put players and, most especially, fans in harm’s way. Major league baseball has been collecting breakage information for years from club equipment managers and, most obviously, seen the scary highlights nightly.

The danger is so prevalent that Selig should consider the equivalent of a temporary restraining order, banning them immediately until and unless safety assurances can be put in place.

Easier said than done, because despite Verducci’s claims, the danger was only established anecdotally, not scientifically – thus the players’ union was staunchly opposed to taking maple bats out of the hands of players who have grown to love them.

For example: Chase Utley, shattering a maple bat above, has used maple sticks his entire career:

“I like them,” Utley says without hesitation. “They last a lot longer than ash. They don’t fray or chip away. I enjoy them. Some people don’t because they feel they explode. I’ve used maple for my whole big-league career. Yes, I’ve had a few that have exploded, but I’ve also had some ash bats that have done the same thing.”

MLB decided to investigate and hired a researcher to check things out:

In 2005, alarmed by the increasing number of broken bats, baseball gave $109,000 to a man named Jim Sherwood and asked him to compare maple bats with the ash ones that used to be the norm. Sherwood runs the Baseball Research Center at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, and the conclusion of the study did not jibe with the hundreds of players who swear maple leads to better performance.

“We found that the batted-ball speeds were essentially the same for the two woods,” Sherwood said. “Maple has no advantage in getting a longer hit over an ash bat.”

The study also found something evident to anyone watching baseball: Ash bats crack while maple bats snap.

Case closed, right?

Sportsfilter veteran Hal Incandenza begs to differ:

Ah, but there’s the rub! It’s not about bats hitting the balls further overall, it’s about having a wider sweet spot- which is one of the other advantages of aluminum bats besides hitting it further, and which is why maple became popular: it’s a wood bat with a larger, and thus more forgiving, sweet spot. You lose less speed on the batted ball when hitting just off the sweet spot with maple than with ash. Outside of Ted Williams and Ichiro Suzuki, hitting the ball with the sweet spot is the exception, not the rule.

Mis-hit balls go furthest with aluminum bats, then a little less far with maple, then less far with ash. This link- go to point #3 in particular, and check out the site it is on- has more on the physics of the batted ball. If you look at the ball speeds, outside the sweet spot the ball speeds drop off faster for wood bats than aluminum bats. Well, maple bats are in the middle: the ball speed drops off faster than aluminum, but not as fast as ash.

Now, if that extra 5-10mph on the mis-hit balls nets one swing a week that is transformed from an easily played hopping grounder into a squibber that gets through the infield for a short single, that’s 1 hit a week you didn’t get with ash. If you’re an every day player, 1 hit a week is about 25 hits, which for a 600 at-bat season would turn a guy with 175 hits (.291) into a guy with 200 hits (.333, and a pretty big contract come signing time). Even if the benefit is only once every two weeks that a ground out becomes a clean short single, or a warning track pop fly gets over the fence, that’s still 20 points in batting average.

So it’s by no means clear that maple bats aren’t giving the players some kind of benefit.

Regardless, baseball is less concerned about the advantages of maple bats, and most concerned about breaking bats – most particularly, with the public image problem caused by breaking bats.

If MLB can “scientifically” establish that maple bats aren’t better than ash bats, they can ban or regulate them more easily…which has probably been their intent all along.

Not only that, but it’s hard to look at MLB’s approach to this concern without concluding that part of its agenda was to squeeze out small bat manufacturers to the benefit of several large, well-connected corporations.

Here’s Jeff Passan again, reporting on the research MLB conducted before releasing its new bat rules in December:

Label stamps have been on the face grain pretty much since bats were invented, and players are encouraged to hold the bat with the label facing toward them in order to strike the ball 90 degrees from the label.

Extensive testing from MLB during its nearly six-month-long study of maple bats showed hitting on the wood’s face grain would produce fewer catastrophic breaks than the edge grain. Baseball hired the Forest Products Laboratory, a government entity, along with Harvard statistician Carl Morris, Massachusetts-Lowell mechanical engineering professor James Sherwood and wood-certification company TECO to analyze more than 2,200 bats broken between July 2 and Sept. 7.

Their task: Figure out why the bats are breaking and make suggestions to limit future breaks. Their conclusion: Conventional wisdom that discouraged face-grain contact was actually wrong.

“We didn’t tell them what they should look at,” said Dan Halem, MLB’s general counsel who helped draft the new guidelines. “The one thing we all knew from the beginning of this issue is that it was complicated. We wanted science and statistics to validate what we do.

“We hired experts. We let them run with it. And wherever their conclusions led them, they went.”

The research found that the majority of catastrophic breaks – ones in which barrels with splintered ends go airborne like medieval weaponry – are due to a poor “slope of grain.” Essentially, the best quality wood has an even grain, and some manufacturers were using low-quality wood with large barrels and thin handles, leading to increased breakage. The other suggestion, about hitting on the face grain, came from Roland Hernandez, a TECO employee.

Hernandez owned his own maple-bat company, RockBats, and worked with the Forest Products Laboratory before going to TECO. RockBats was the lone bat company that suggested hitting on the face grain. No major league players are known to use RockBats.

“Nobody other than MLB and TECO agrees with this theory,” said one bat manufacturer, who asked for anonymity because of concerns over MLB pulling his certification.

[...]

MLB’s team went to five manufacturers’ plants to see the bat-making process. Included were Hillerich & Bradsby, the parent company of the best-selling Louisville Slugger; and the Original Maple Bat Corporation, home of Sam Bats, which started the maple craze in 2001 by providing bats to Barry Bonds during his 73-home run season.

Still, as MLB prepared to release its study, some bat manufacturers weren’t content with its scientific merit. One sent MLB two dozen questions that went unanswered. In a conference call with MLB’s Health and Safety Advisory Committee, the question was posed whether the experts had tested bats that weren’t breaking to see why they performed so well. The answer was no. MLB also did not submit the study to a peer review, figuring that the checks and balances among the scientists from different disciplines were enough.

MLB chose not to release the 50-page report, citing the breadth of proprietary information gathered on its trips to the manufacturing plants.

To recap: MLB commissioned research that determined maple bats weren’t better than ash bats – even though its definition of “better” is rather suspect.

Then MLB conducted research at a small number of manufacturing plants, all of which happened to be owned by the biggest corporate entities in bat manufacturing. Louisville Slugger is obviously a huge company, but even once-small Sam Bats is now owned by sporting goods giant Wilson.

Their findings formed the basis for drastic new requirements – but they won’t release those findings, because the huge bat companies need to be protected from their competition.

Nothing fishy about that…

You know what else would protect those large and well-connected companies: jack up the fees for everyone else, and weed out the small manufacturers who can’t afford to pony up!

Hey, what do you know — MLB doubled its bat-manufacturer licensing fees and now mandates a $10 million insurance policy!

Most small manufacturers are privately grousing about this, but won’t go public with their complaints for fear of being totally blackballed by MLB.

But Romeo Filip is an exception.

Romeo Filip: Mad as hell and not gonna take it any more.

Filip’s Diablo Bats company makes maple, ash and birch bats used by major leaguers including MVP/home run king Ryan Howard. Eric Chavez popularized Filip’s bats and is a loyal customer. Jermaine Dye calls them “the hardest bats I’ve ever used.”

Diablo first ran afoul of MLB when Manny Ramirez took his Diablo bats to play Oakland in Japan. Manny had used Diablo bats all throughout spring training, but ran into problems when he tried to use them in the season opener.

The red bats were outlawed by baseball officials, who said they would distract the pitchers.

As opposed to, say, Louisville Slugger’s pink bats, distributed by MLB itself to raise breast cancer awareness?? Granted, that’s a good cause, but if colored bats distract pitchers, why is MLB endorsing their use in non-exhibition games? Or could it be that the ruling on Diablo’s bats was totally arbitrary and not scientific whatsoever?

According to Manny, this decision robbed him of a home run:

Ramirez hit a drive to deep center and was sure it would be a home run. It wasn’t.

Just Manny being Manny.

He learned when he got to the ballpark that he couldn’t use the red-barreled bat he planned on using because it would distract pitchers. So he got some new bats in Tokyo.

“Maybe if I used my American bat that ball maybe would have gone,” he said. “I thought I hit it good. I couldn’t use my bat because it wasn’t legal. Thank God I got some Japanese wood that I could use.”

Manny ended up using an orange Japanese bat after being forced to switch from Diablo’s red bat. So FYI – pink and orange are not distracting, but red is. The scientific data to back this up must be in another of MLB’s secret research packets that you’re only allowed to see if you ask really nicely…and work for Louisville Slugger or Wilson.

Red bats: distracting. Pink bats: totally acceptable.

MLB’s decision to address the maple bat controversy by overturning a century of accepted bat-wisdom based on a single, secret study that was not peer-reviewed, while jacking up prices for all bat manufacturers to essentially ensure that only large corporations could stay in the game…well, that seriously pissed off Romeo Filip.

So he decided to let MLB’s pointman for the maple bat controversy, Roy Krasik, know how he felt about it.

And he didn’t mince words.

Jeff Passan’s story referred to Filip’s email only euphemistically. Although it was CCed to every other major bat manufacturer, the actual email doesn’t seem to be publicly available anywhere on the interwebs…probably because it’s pretty strongly worded.

So ROTI contacted Mr. Filip and he obligingly sent it along to us. Now we’re making it public for the first time:

This bullshit packet that you have sent out is just another clear violation of everything our country stands against. MLB, MLBPA, YOU, and your staff have been robbing good hard working people for long enough. Your regulations are as big a crock of shit as your players integrity. You have the [nerve] to send this packet to us after we bust our asses sitting in the rain waiting to sell our products. We bend over backwards and kiss ass to every idiot clubhouse manager in the league. We get no special treatment, no respect, and no direct contact to players. We set up at 5:00am in the parking lots for your teams just to watch Louisville Slugger reps walk right past us directly into the clubhouse. We get shit on by you, the teams, the agents, and even players from time to time. We take this abuse from you for what??? We do this so you can send us this bullshit approval process that no owner in his right mind should stand for. Who do you guys think you are? Who the hell made you idiots the know it alls when it comes to bat making.

How many bats have you made in your lifetime Krasik? How many maple, ash, or yellow birch billets have you sorted for quality? How many custom orders have you processed and hand delivered to the players? The answer is zero. Zero, like the amount of information you have on bat making. You and your idiot detectives (aka, Louisville Slugger) have been in bed together since this approval process started. We tailor our hand created products to your specifications just to watch Louisville Slugger build whatever they like. The morons you hired to do this amazing research have put together a list of the stupidest regulations ever assembled on one piece of paper. Who the hell came up with hitting against the grain. You idiots have to be the stupidest people I have ever come across. A 15 year old high school player can tell you that hitting against the grain is outrageous.

Along with all this you dare raise the administration fee and the insurance requirements to over $50,000.00 per year! We are in a recession you fucking idiots. Hundreds of people are losing their business, jobs, and well being in these harsh times. What do you fucking greedy idiots come up with. Make it harder for us. Kick us further while we are down. Hurt our business more and make it harder for us to put food on our families tables. You Mr. Krasik are a FUCKING thief. MLB is a fucking thief. You steal from the poor and give money to the rich.

I wonder how much you’re sorry ass gets paid to kill businesses and destroy lives. I’m sure your overpaid sorry ass gets a 6 figure paycheck. I’m sure your just fine in these tough times. I’m sure you will not lose a minute of sleep when you notice only a handful of bat companies were able to pay your ransom. I’m just wondering how your Christmas is going to be this year. I’m sure you have finished your shopping and wrapped your presents. I’m sure your planning on driving your Mercedes to your family’s house for a big turkey dinner. Guess what we are doing this year Mr. Krasik. We are holding on for dear life just so we don’t go bankrupt. We are saving every penny we can for the rainy days ahead. We aren’t buying gifts because we all understand how hard times are, and how [bad] the economy really is.

(The email concludes with the paragraph printed at the top of the post.)

When we spoke with Filip, he was pretty cool and rational about the matter, despite the evident fury in his email.

“I was very upset at the time that I wrote it,” he told us via email, “so it does contain several words and quotes I don’t think really tell who I am as a person. Anger can make people say and do many things they wish they had not done at the time. With that said, I am not ashamed for my words or my beliefs in how MLB is strong arming small companies such as mine. I don’t feel any of the bat companies are treated fairly and it was about time people heard about it.“

In essence, Filip said, this was the act of a small businessman pushed over the edge by a huge and merciless corporation.

Of course, in the aftermath of this email, MLB refuses to show its super-secret report to Filip, and ostensibly this will be true for any other manufacturer who dares to object.

To which we say, bullshit.

There’s little doubt that a lot of maple bats shattered this year, posing a danger to players, spectators and coaches. But ash bats broke too, sending barrels flying in the direction of potential victims.

Not only that, but the hazards of broken bats are hardly the only threats on a baseball field, as Red Sox pitcher Bryce Florie can tell you, after he took a line drive to the face a decade ago…

Oh the humanity!! Ban baseballs!!

Ray Chapman could also tell you a thing or two about the dangers posed by the baseball, if he hadn’t died after a beaning. Ditto Mike Coolbaugh, the Colorado minor-league coach who was struck and killed by a line drive.

It very well may be true that MLB is right to tighten specifications and rules about maple bats. However, the way they are going about it leaves a lot of questions to be answered.

It’s not clear if MLB is actually trying to solve the problem in an equitable manner, taking into account the desire of players to maximize their hitting abilities and the ability of small bat manufacturers to continue to drive innovation in the sport, or if they just want this problem to go away, and help out their buddies at Louisville Slugger while they’re at it.

But if you ask Romeo Filip, the answer is obvious.

C. Dave sent us a link to a wonderful piece in SLATE: the top 25 Bushisms of all time.

Jacob Weisberg, the chief collector of these nuggets, prefaces them with some thoughts:

People often assume that because I’ve spent the past nine years collecting Bushisms, I must despise George W. Bush. To the contrary, Bushisms fill me with affection for the man—and not just because of the income stream they’ve generated. I find the Bush who flails with words, unlike the Bush who flails with policy, to be an endearing character. Instead of a villain, he makes himself into an irresistible buffoon, like Mrs. Malaprop, Archie Bunker, or Homer Simpson. Bush treats words the way he treated recalcitrant European leaders: When they won’t do what he wants them to, he tries to bully them into submission. Through his willful, improvisational, and incompetent use of language, he tempers (very slightly) his willful, improvisational, and incompetent use of government. You can’t, in the end, despise someone who regrets that, because of the rising cost of malpractice insurance, “[t]oo many OB/GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across the country.”

[...]

Being able to laugh at yourself is a rare quality in a leader. It’s one thing George W. Bush can do that Bill Clinton couldn’t. Unfortunately, as we bid farewell to Bushisms, we must conclude that the joke was mainly on us.

Some of the quotations are familiar, but here are five we hadn’t heard that are pure gold:

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
—Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

“It’s important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It’s not only life of babies, but it’s life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet.”
—Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000

“People say, ‘How can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil?’ You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in’s house and say I love you.”
—Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2002

“I think it’s really important for this great state of baseball to reach out to people of all walks of life to make sure that the sport is inclusive. The best way to do it is to convince little kids how to—the beauty of playing baseball.”
—Washington, D.C., Feb. 13, 2006

“Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.”
—LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

It’s almost over, kids!!

Enjoy these classic Bushisms while they remain relevant and tragically hilarious.

The LA Dodgers are one of the most storied franchises in baseball history, and they play their games in the second-largest city in America.

Unfortunately, their owner would be better suited for a market like Florida, because he has little in the way of baseball knowhow and lacks the requisite money to represent LA with any consistency.

While Frank McCourt made his fortune, such as it is, by developing parking lots, he still managed to royally screw up the parking situation at Dodger Stadium – just when you didn’t believe it could get any worse in gridlocked Chavez Ravine.

Most big-city owners rely on experienced baseball minds to run their franchise, but McCourt has installed his wife Jamie as Dodger President, despite her utter lack of credentials. Just to fully affirm that he believes in the power of nepotism, he’s also hired his son as marketing director.

McCourt first tried and failed to buy the Red Sox, before zillionaire John Henry and his merry band swooped in and outclassed his bid. Now the ex-Bostonian desperately grabs every former Red Sox he can get his hands on: witness the conga line of Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Lowe, Bill Mueller, and for the love of God, he actually thought it was a good idea to hire Grady Little!!

McCourt’s evident Northeast bias hasn’t been ALL bad for the Dodgers in the McCourt era: McCourt made a decent move by hiring Joe Torre after the should-be Hall of Famer was let go by the Yankees, and the Manny Ramirez trade carried the Dodgers into the postseason.

All that’s well and good, until you realize that the Dodgers basically got Manny for free, and now that it’s come time to pay up for a playoff-caliber MVP, they’re pinching pennies again.

The perma-grumpy TJ Simers gripes today,

I think I understand why CC Sabathia wanted to play for the Dodgers, then talked to Frank McCourt on the telephone and signed with the Yankees.

It will be five years next month since the Boston Parking Lot Attendant bought the Dodgers after a failed attempt to buy the Red Sox and told everyone at a news conference the Dodgers have the best fans in sports.

I immediately followed that up with a question: Had you been successful in buying the Red Sox, what would you have told Boston fans?

Never have trusted much of what the guy has to say after that, and he hasn’t given much of a reason the last five years to change my mind.

We’re not talking mistakes here, the hiring of Lon Rosen and his plans for loud music and a Dodgers mascot, or the Tipper Gore Lady, $2 Tuesdays, the wife’s sudden affection for Little League fields or flip-flopping on Paul DePodesta and Grady Little.

It really doesn’t have anything to do with the ridiculous chants of “Hee-Seop Choi,” or J.D. Drew’s escape clause. This isn’t about Jason Schmidt, Andruw Jones or Jason Phillips.

And it’s more than keeping the poor folks from using the new concession stands and restrooms on the field level once the game has started, or the decision not to upgrade the concession stands and restrooms everywhere else this off-season.

It’s a matter of trust, McCourt promising five years ago at a packed news conference to be “transparent” in everything he does, while saying, “I know what it takes to inspire and to lead,” and “I’m not afraid to spend whatever it takes to bring a world championship back to Los Angeles.”

Now that you know him, do you believe him?

Do you believe he’s not afraid to spend whatever it takes to bring a world championship to Los Angeles?

Do you think he knows what it takes to inspire and lead?

Do you feel McCourt is transparent, as the dictionary defines it, “open, frank and candid?”

OK, so I’ll give you “Frank.”

Hey theah buddy, how does an incentive-based one yeah deal sound to ya?

Despite getting a playoff run for the price of disappointing prospect Andy LaRoche, the Dodgers refuse to pony up for Manny, sticking to their guns on a 2-year, $45-50 million dollar deal. This is almost assuredly not enough to get the job done, yet McCourt and GM Ned Colletti seem to naively believe that their efforts are sufficient.

“I just find it curious,” Colletti said. “We made a [contract] offer and never heard back. We made a [salary] arbitration offer and never heard back. Maybe we have to look into the communications we’re using.”

So what are the chances that Ramirez will be a Dodger next season?

“If he shows up in spring training, we’ll find him a hat, we’ll find him a shirt and we’ll play him in the field and figure it out then,” Colletti said. “But I can’t wait until the day he shows up to go after a third baseman or a shortstop or another reliever.”

Huh?? Is this some kind of a joke?

The only reason the Dodgers got a free trial of Manny being Manny is that the two $20 million per year options held by the Red Sox were not sufficient compensation in the eyes of Ramirez and his agent, the nefarious Boras.

And now they don’t understand why a contract offer of the same length and only slightly more per year isn’t inducing the wacky outfielder to sign on the dotted line?

Without Manny, the Dodger offense in 2008 was limp; with him, it was potent. Sure, it’s never good to overpay for an aging slugger, but it’s ALSO never good to give away one of your top prospects for a half-season rental. A reasonable, market-price contract offer to Manny is the difference between the Dodgers competing for the playoffs in 2009 and disappointing their fans for another year.

Apparently in this time of economic apocalypse, 3 or 4 years at $25m per is out of McCourt’s reach.

The lowlight of the Dodgers’ flaccid pursuit of Ramirez was when team prez Jamie McCourt suggested that the megabucks it would take to sign Manny might be much better spent on a bunch of charity baseball fields:

Would Dodgers fans react negatively if the team were to pay big money to free agents when the nation’s economy is in sharp decline and many Americans are losing their jobs?

That was the question posed by Dodgers President Jamie McCourt as she made an appearance with her husband, team owner Frank McCourt, Tuesday at an event where it was announced the club’s charitable foundation would help build 42 youth fields around Southern California.

“If you bring somebody in to play and pay them, pick a number, $30 million, does that seem a little weird to you?” Jamie McCourt asked in an interview at the Evergreen Recreation Center in East Los Angeles. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. We’re really trying to see it through the eyes of our fans. We’re really trying to understand, would they rather have the 50 fields?”

The Dodgers recently made a two-year, $45-million offer to slugger Manny Ramirez that they later withdrew, and the McCourts seemed to be hedging against lavish spending during a time of such great economic uncertainty.

Jamie McCourt said the fact that the majority of contracts were guaranteed was a significant issue.

I think, oddly enough, maybe if things weren’t guaranteed, then we could pay for it,” she said. “If people can’t play anymore, it’s like, ‘Oh well, see ya.’ Different story. Whatever money they are guaranteed could be money that we could otherwise have given to community.”

HUH? What is this, Moot Point Debate Society?

If you hate guaranteed contracts so much, you shouldn’t have purchased an MLB franchise, lady.

There’s certainly a strong argument to be made that signing Manny to a 4 year deal will result in overpaying him for one or two seasons.

But Dodgers fans have been overpaying to see a mediocre team for the last 20 years.

Yet, as Simers goes on to point out, the Dodgers have had no hesitation about laying out dollars and/or years to some pretty crappy players:

We’ve all been trained here in the Entertainment Capital to know better, never thinking of the Dodgers as big-time bidders, and doesn’t that say something about the McCourts’ ownership reign?

Maybe if Teixeira is free, McCourt pounces — the acquisition of Ramirez and Boston’s agreement to pay the remainder of his salary the highlight so far of the owner’s time on the job.

As for offering money, the Dodgers gave a five-year guaranteed deal to Juan Pierre a few years back and recently a three-year guaranteed pact to [Casey] Blake.

But they have offered only two guaranteed years to Ramirez, the only player in the last 20 years to put the Dodgers within a sniff of the World Series. The Dodgers pick the oddest places to play hardball.

Now maybe McCourt and Ned Colletti have already put their heads together and come up with a winning plan, and for the record, I did not laugh out loud while typing that sentence.

But as transparent as McCourt and Colletti have been to date, one wonders if they have anything in mind other than waiting and picking through the leftovers.

One player who they won’t be retaining is shortstop Rafael Furcal, who’s apparently agreed to a three-year pact with the team he originally came up with, the Braves.

After Furcal had an injury-plagued 2008 season, the Dodgers decided to offer him an insultingly incentive-laden contract. The Braves, meanwhile, noticed that when Furcal’s back wasn’t bothering him he played tremendously well, and they got the deal done.

While the Dodgers delude themselves, making idiotic decisions like inking Andruw Jones while spurning far more useful options, the Artists Formerly Known as the Anaheim Angels have made big signings like Vladimir Guerrero and Torii Hunter, have been perennial playoff contenders, and won a title in the not-too-distant past, which makes it a lot easier for their fans to accept when players like Francisco Rodriguez get poached by Northeastern baseball titans.

The big-market West Coast teams will never have the endless sums of money that the New York and Boston franchises can draw upon, but they have no excuse for not making SOME quality snags in the free-agent market. If 36-year-old Manny is deemed to be too big a risk, then there are – or at this point, WERE – other middle-of-the-lineup or top-of-the-rotation options available.

Casey Blake ain’t one of them, though.

Hey, it could be worse – the team could still be owned by FOX.

UPDATE: Clearly stung by our criticism, the Dodgers have reportedly re-engaged Furcal’s representatives even as a deal with Atlanta was imminent! That’s more like it, McCourt!

In yet another example of “going rogue,” Sarah Palin decided to disregard our advice. And she got booed.

God bless the citizens of Erie, PA for this swift justice!

The LA TIMES reports on “A swing and a miss in Erie.”

It was a throwaway line meant to be a crowd-pleaser. But it fell flat.

On Thursday at a rally in Erie, Pa., Sarah Palin touted the victors in the World Series to thousands of supporters. “I am thrilled to be here in the home state of the world-champion Philadelphia Phillies,” Palin said.

The crowd booed.

Philadelphia is a seven-hour drive from Erie, which is in the state’s far west. Erie’s baseball devotions are split between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cleveland Indians. (Pittsburgh and Cleveland are about two hours away.)

Palin has been booed by Pennsylvania sports fans before. Earlier this month, the Republican vice presidential candidate was loudly heckled at a Philadelphia Flyers game.

What were you thinking, Palin? Would you give props to the Anchorage Bucs while stumping in Fairbanks, home of the Alaska Goldpanners?? Of course not!

Then why go out of your way to piss off (already wicked ornery) western Pennsylvanians by rubbing in their face that the liberal side of the state just took home a title, while the sorry Pirates traded their best players this season and got poop sandwiches in return?

Politicians, stay away from baseball. It’s in everyone’s best interest.

However, we now have to place Obama on the list of double-dealing politicians who use baseball for their own personal ends. Politico reports, “Can’t lose: Obama backs Rays, Phillies.”

Barack Obama, campaigning in the key swing state of Florida, is seeking to capitalize on the excitement over the World Series-bound Tampa Bay Rays, telling a Tampa crowd he was “showing some love for the Rays,” several members of which joined him onstage.

Only problem?

Obama, a self-avowed Chicago White Sox fan, declared his allegiance earlier this month for the Rays’ National League opponent in baseball’s championship, the Philadelphia Phillies.

On Oct. 11, Obama told a crowd in the City of Brotherly Love — the biggest city on the key swing state of Pennsylvania: “My White Sox are gone, so I’ll go ahead and root for the Phillies now.”

Yet in Tampa on Monday afternoon, where he was introduced by Rays players Fernando Perez and David Price, Obama also seemed to express support for the Rays, telling the crowd that he had just met with several members of the team backstage.

“I have said from the beginning that I’m a unity candidate, bringing people together. So when you see a White Sox fan showing some love for the Rays and the Rays showing some love back, you know we’re onto something here,” Obama said.

He added that he considered cutting his hair in a Mohawk to show solidarity with the team’s players, but “My political advisers said they weren’t sure how that would play with swing voters.”

FOR SHAME Obama! Granted, you may have profited politically from a Rays/Phils series, with many citizens of swing states FL and PA now fixated on the October Classic and not on Bill Ayers, Joe the Plumber or what have you – but don’t front like a sports bigamist for votes. Politicians, we say again: leave baseball alone.

Time for McCain to order up some “Barack Hussein Obama only pretends to like our beloved ballclub until he’s in enemy territory!” robocalls, stat.

Sarah Palin’s lied about a lot of stuff: saying “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere, claiming that she loves to read the Economist a few days after completely drawing a blank when Couric asked her what she reads, saying Obama “pals around with terrorists” – Bill Ayers is only one person…

But her latest stunt really crosses the line. Now she’s talking out of both sides of her mouth when it comes to BASEBALL!!

Sarah Palin in New Hampshire last night:

Ms. Palin visited Salem, N.H. Wednesday night and said she looked forward to watching Senator John McCain debate Senator Barack Obama “right here, in the heart of Red Sox Nation.” Ms. Palin said that “Red Sox fans know how to turn an underdog into a victor,” a timely applause line given that the Sox trail the Tampa Bay Rays three-games-to-one in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series.

Sarah Palin in Florida last week:

“How about those Tampa Bay Rays?” Ms. Palin said after the Rays defeated the Chicago White Sox.

“You know what that tells me? It tells me that the people in this area know a little something about turning an underdog into a victor.”

FOR SHAME Palin!! We haven’t seen such a blatant display of self-serving baseball talk since Hillary Clinton magically became a Yankees fan right before she ran for Senate. Or possibly John Kerry’s shoutout to “Manny Ortez.”

Politicians, stay away from baseball! Unless you’re Barack Obama and you feel like putting Cubs fans on blast again, that was hilarious. Silly Cubs fans.

[NYTIMES CAUCUS blog]