I’LL GIVE $50 TO THE FIRST GUY THAT PLUNKS HIM 

News has come to hand that Sammy Sosa, one-time Vancouver Canadian, steroid user and baseball history abuser, wants someone to give him a shot at the 2007 season. 

"I feel like I did when I was a rookie," Sosa told The Associated
Press. "I have a lot of spirit and a desire to return. I think I can
play three or four more years in the form I am now."

Which, of course, means Sammy just learned there’s no viable testing procedure to detect HGH.

Hey, here’s some advice for you, Mr Sosa - we saw you up here in Vancouver when you were a rookie, and that Sammy Sosa and the behemoth Sammy Sosa of today are two very different people. You USED to steal bases. You USED to know how to field. You USED to hit for contact. Now you just soak up chemicals, load your bat up with cork, and strike out.

Begone you foul, pockmarked little man. Go count back-acne breakouts with McGwire and leave the baseball peopple to recover from the disappointments you’ve put them through.

Sosa says he’s had calls from plenty of teams looking to sign him, but only the Washington Nationals are gullible enough to admit that they’re in the hunt. They offered the Sosaroid a non-guaranteed half a million dollar contract to come back next year - and the big mook turned them down!

Now, of course, despite all those teams who supposedly want him, Sammy has decided he’ll take on a deal like that offered by Nationals GM Jim "Worst Exec Ever" Bowden after all.

"I want the chance and I believe one is going to appear. This time I will accept an offer like the one with the Nationals because I want to get back to the Majors," he said. 

If anyone offers this guy more than a non-guaranteed league minimum, they ought to be sacked. Especially after you hear guff like the following:

A year away from the game wouldn’t shake him, he said. "Ted Williams went to war and lost a couple years. More recently, Barry Bonds stayed away for more than a year and came back, and the same happened with Frank Thomas because of injuries," he said.

 Oh yeah, you read that right - Sammy Sosa is comparing himself favorably with Ted Williams, Frank Thomas and Barry Bonds.

Newsflash, Corky - Ted Williams knew how to hit a ball without having to stick a needle in his ass beforehand. Frank Thomas is one of the most genetically freakish ballhitters of all time. And Barry Bonds is the biggest asshole and greatest steroid abuser the world has ever kn… Well heck, I guess one out of three ain’t bad.

RUBY RETURNS TO THE A’S

Erubiel Durazo was the guy that Oakland GM Billy Beane once infamously described as his own personal ‘holy grail’, when he managed to get the home run-hitting 1st baseman onto the A’s staff. Ruby had one great season, then did his elbow in, and when he came back, he just wasn’t cutting it as a hitter. The A’s duly let the holy grail go.

Since then, Durazo has tried to catch on with the Rangers, Yankees and Twins, spending much time in their minor league systems working things out… or at least trying to. That is, until recently, when he started smashing all before him in the Mexican League.

Through Wednesday, Durazo, 31, was batting .345 with 17 homers, 51 RBIs, a .454 on-base percentage and a .641 slugging percentage through 57 games with Hermasillo.

On Tuesday, after a three-home run game, he told a Mexican radio station that he was coming back to the A’s for a minor league tryout - which led to a comical bit of fact-checking for the MLB.com folks:

Asked to confirm Durazo’s announcement, Oakland assistant GM David Forst, responding to a voicemail from MLB.com while traveling late Wednesday, promptly did so with a brief text message. "On a plane," Forst wrote. "Minor League deal for Ruby. Invite to camp."

I’ve no idea whether this will come to anything, but the guy can flat out hit when healthy, and he’s flat out hitting right now - this could well be one of Mr Beane’s famous ‘where the hell did that come from’ moments in the making.
 

EVEN AT SPRING TRAINING, THE TAXPAYER TAKES IT IN THE ASS

Since 1948, the Dodgers have done all their spring training at a place called Dodgertown, in Vero Beach Florida. First as Brooklyn, then as LA, the place is synonymous with Dodger blue. Every great Dodger player has graced the fields at Dodgertown for as long as most people can remember…

But not for much longer. The folks of Glendale Arizona have gone to the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority with cap in hand and extracted $50m with which to help build a permanent spring training facility for the Dodgers and Chicago White Sox.

So who will move to Vero Beach? Maybe the Baltimore Orioles, who wanted the city of Fort Lauderdale to fund an expansion to their current spring training facility, so that their minor leaguers can be at the same place as their major leaguers. According to MLB.com:

Three months ago, Fort Lauderdale city commissioners voted to help fund a refurbishment of Fort Lauderdale Stadium. That decision was checked Tuesday, when the commission voted against spending $150,000 a year to help pay off bonds for the project. According to the AP, the issue will be discussed again in a special meeting Friday afternoon.

So Baltimore isn’t happy with that, and will likely flee as a result. Of course, they’re still talking all diplomatic, but if the city won’t pony up, the O’s are outta there.

Bill Stetka, a team spokesman, said the Orioles would like to stay at their current facility in Fort Lauderdale. "Our intention and our focus is to continue to pursue the Fort Lauderdale option," Stetka told the AP. "We’ve been working with the people in Fort Lauderdale for a number of years and are still hopeful of getting an agreement in place that will provide state funding that we hope will be allocated."

For shame. But that’s not all - the Cleveland Indians got an offer they couldn’t refuse from the folks in Goodyear Arizona, who have managed to get half the funding needed, again from the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority, to build the Injuns a big shiny new spring home.

The Indians have spent the better part of the past 14 years looking for an improvement on their current spring setup at Chain of Lakes Park in Winter Haven. The outdated facility became the Indians’ spring home in 1993, after Hurricane Andrew wiped out a new facility built for the team in Homestead, Fla.

The city of Winter Haven isn’t too pissed about this - they want to redevelop the land into condos and retail blocks, because lord knows there isn’t enough of that stuff in Florida right now.

Man - when teams hold small cities and their populations to ransom over training facilities used only a few months of every year, you know the game is messed up. And what’s more, when Arizona is prepared to spend nine figures in public money to get said facilities, you know there’s gotta be a lot of profit involved in what is supposed to be nothing more than ‘a fun tune-up.’