It’s getting to the point where it’s almost no fun to be outraged about the expenditure of taxpayer dollars on Yankee Stadium: More than a quarter of the $370 million in taxpayer financing in the Yankees’ latest demand would go to shiny new toys like giant video screens and upgraded luxury suites, documents show. Nearly […]

Kevin McClatchy has liquidated his position in the Pittsburgh Pirates: Former Pirates managing general partner Kevin McClatchy has sold his remaining shares in the team, ending a 13-year relationship that began with the newspaper heir ensuring that the club remained in Pittsburgh. McClatchy’s spot on the five-man Pirates board of directors will not immediately be […]

Get your hankies, folks: Andy Pettitte is extremely unhappy with how his negotiations have gone with the Yankees, and the lefthander might be softening on his opposition to rejoining the Astros . . . Pettitte believes that the Yankees should display more appreciation for all that he has done for them . . . Though […]

Hey Boston! You take our old pitcher, we’ll take your old pitcher! With the news that John Smoltz may be headed to the Red Sox, it should come as a no surprise that the Braves appear to be intensifying their pursuit of another free-agent pitcher: Derek Lowe. According to a baseball source, Lowe is scheduled […]

There’s a point in every offseason when people stop looking back at last year and start looking forward to the next. When fans of any given team start to employ some mental spackle to make all of those holes in the roster disappear. That point where hope starts to spring eternal. We have officially reached […]

The other day I was struggling to think how the Braves’ offseason could get any worse. I’ll admit that this development hadn’t occurred to me: John Smoltz is leaving Atlanta for the most stunning of destinations. The Boston Red Sox. Smoltz, 41, is on the verge of signing a one-year, $5.5 million contract with the […]

Most keen observers realize that you can’t put much stock in the numbers painted on the outfield walls, as “330” in one park can be radically different in another park. The problem is that there really isn’t much uniformity in terms of how the measurements are made, and I’m willing to be that there’s zero […]

When a political scandal hits, you can always expect things to happen in this order: 1. Denials that anything happened; 2. Denials that that which happened was inappropriate; 3. Admissions, either tacit or explicit, that that which happened was inappropriate in an effort to minimize the damage; and 4. Heads rolling. We’re now at step […]

I’m not a Reds fan, but because they’re close to me and because I have friends that are Reds fans I tend to obsess on their minor personnel moves more than I would that of other teams. This is one worth obsessing on a bit: The Reds, securing protection at shortstop, have reached a preliminary […]

Apparently Mark Teixeira’s wife made the call on signing with the Yankees: Thirteen days before Christmas, Mark Teixeira, the Yankees’ $180 million man, was having dinner with his wife, Leigh, when he pleaded with her for insight about the future. If everything was equal among Teixeira’s suitors, he said, where would she rather see him […]