Someone in the Rockies organization felt that the Red Sox, the stingiest team in baseball™, weren’t willing to give up enough for the Rockies to pull the trigger. Now hold your breath. That person in the Rockies organization was the infamous Charlie Monfort, who almost uncanilly mirrored the thoughts of most Rockies fans with a quote in a recent Tracy Ringolsby article.
“They wouldn’t give us a player compatible with what we felt we needed,” Monfort said. “When you are talking a player of Todd Helton’s ability, you need to get someone back who is going to make an impact.” -Charlie Monfort
And it’s true - the Red Sox weren’t about to give up much. The deal the Red Sox put on the table was for the Rockies to pay about half of Helton’s remaining contract and send him to Boston in exchange for two overpaid but not nearly as productive (even given Helton’s recent slowdown) veterans in Mike Lowell and Julian Tavarez. To take on those contracts, the Rockies were only willing to pay $28 million, around a third of Helton’s contract - and they still wanted at least one of the Red Sox’s top prospects, which is where the deal really fell through.
Once again, the stingiest team in baseball™ wanted to flip mediocre veterans in exchange for a proven one, and not give up any potential talent - which is how deals like this are made in today’s MLB. For what it’s worth, the Rockies wanted one or more of the following: pitchers Jon Lester, Manny Delcarmen, Craig Hansen, Clay Buchholz, Dan Bard and center fielder Jacoby Ellsburg. As has been previously noted, the Red Sox didn’t want to see any of these go - even to acquire a player that might put their lineup back on par with the start-studded Yankees top nine, and plays defense at first.
So what’s the moral of this story? The Rockies do value their one star veteran afterall, and weren’t just trying to dump his contract. And apparently, someone in the front office could see that the Red Sox were trying to pull a fast one on us. So I guess Sam has a bit of explaining to do, because for once, I’m fairly happy with the Monforts.
By Sam Handler | Sunday January 28th 2007, 12:20 pm
The new buzz around the Denver sports world (besides you know, all of the more interesting stuff that’s going on) is that Todd Helton might get traded to the Red Sox. Because the Rockies are involved in the trade, you can be sure the terms being discussed are horrible for the Rockies (the kind that make you think that the Monforts are opium addicts that are trying to get money for their addicts). (Opium is a terrible drug, but is there any more historically cool drug? The modern war on drugs has nothing on when the British went to war to keep the opium trade going. Not kidding.)
I need to talk about Ryan Shealy before my Monfort-induced rage makes me forget about him. Last year, the Rockies let one of my favorite players–Ryan Shealy–go. I was pretty angry but understood the justification: clearly if the Rockies were trading Shealy, a first baseman whose huge size precluded a position switch, Todd Helton would be sticking around. It made sense, even. Sure Helton’s numbers had been declining (steroid withdrawal?), but he was a Denver treasure, the remnants of the respectabledecent close-to-.500 era. Now the Rockies, just a few months after they dealt Shealy to the Royals for some crappy bullpen help, are talking to the BoSox about trading Helton. God damnit. I really hate Rockies management. Shouldn’t they have kept their most major-league-ready prospect (Shealy) if they were planning to deal Helton? Oh right, they weren’t planning to do anything, they just look for excuses to cut costs at every turn and lack any sort of baseball strategy.
Now I don’t really follow minor leaguers because I’m lazy, but there’s talk of the Rockies getting Mike Lowell plus some A-AAA guys in exchange for Helton. If the Rockies are actually trying to build for the future, they definitely do not want Mike Lowell on the team. Honestly, swapping treasured overpaid vets for random overpaid vets isn’t a great idea. How many dudes are going to buy Mike Lowell jerseys?
Oh, plus, if the Rockies are developing players, wouldn’t Mike Lowell just slow down progression by taking a lineup spot? Eh? Eh?
Again, I don’t know the minors, but just for information purposes, the Rockies will probably get either Manny Delcarmen or Craig Hansen. I’m hoping Delcarmen’s 9.90 ERA he posted last year during a month in the majors was a fluke.
Moving on to villagenationally-hated idiot Woody Paige, he wrote a column in the paper about how the Rockies ought to trade Helton for Manny Ramirez. Okay. I’d love to see Manny in Colorado, I think it would work out great. Colorado doesn’t care about baseball and likes home runs, Manny doesn’t care about baseball and likes home runs. A match made in heaven. Unfortunately, Woody, the BoSox don’t really want to give up someone that’s very good at baseball in exchange for someone that’s not that good at baseball anymore. Ramirez’ OPS last year:1.058, Helton’s OPS last year:.880. Ramirez’ home runs last year:35 , Helton’s home runs last year: 15. And so on. God I hate Woody Paige. And Rockies management. And working.
By Sam Handler | Sunday January 28th 2007, 1:19 am
In my never-ending quest to waste my life on YouTube, I found a video of Chris Chelios reminiscing about when Jules Winfield was his coach. “Do I look like a BI***?! Do I LOOK like a BI***?!”
p.s. Who Says Jules Samuel L. Jackson has been typecast?
By Sam Handler | Thursday January 25th 2007, 4:05 pm
This one gets a big WTF from me…I was browsing nflplayers.com to avoid doing actual work, and came upon Michael Vick’s page. The Rockies definitely drafted Michael Vick in the 30th round of the MLB draft. Here’s the kicker: Michael Vick hasn’t played baseball since the 8th grade. Uhmmm. Yeah. Now I know the Rockies management is incompetent, but seriously, they should have at least drafted someone that played baseball at the time, right? Right?
Other interesting tidbits discovered on the site:
-Kelly Gregg has a pottery hobby and volunteers at the Baltimore ClayWorks
-Eddie Kennison’s wife has lupus
-Michael Vick does everything right-handedly except throw
-The NFL’s best multithreat punter Brian Moorman is a substitute teacher during the offseason
By Sam Handler | Wednesday January 24th 2007, 6:58 pm
Earlier in the school year, some friends and I went to Wendy’s and doubled the meat on a classic triple. Naturally, we thought we were hot shit. Not anymore we don’t. I was browsing YouTube for people doing stupid crap (a daily activity), and stumbled upon this….
By Sam Handler | Tuesday January 23rd 2007, 8:49 pm
If you’ve been watching the NFL playoffs at all, you’ve seen the Coors Light commercial featuring Jim Mora’s famous “Playoffs? Playoffs?! I just hope we can win a game!” press conference. Well now some dude, an awesome dude in all likelihood, has posted a video of a kid doing a hilarious impersonation of Coach Mora. Enjoy.
Note: I usually don’t tolerate children. They’re annoying and I’m jealous that they can poop anywhere they damn well please and have someone pick it up.
By Gabe Stein | Monday January 15th 2007, 12:28 pm
On New Years Eve 2007, Darrent Williams, a second-year pro and starting corner for the Denver Broncos, was shot and killed outside of a night club in Denver. It would have been tragic had anyone been killed that night. But because it was Darrent Williams, because Denver is really Bronco Town, it turned into a painful loss and a horrific reality check for the Broncos, the city, the NFL, and the fans.
That day, Michael David Smith was the first to cover the story on the Fanhouse, and he reported it as news, only adding the word ’sad’ to describe the incident. It was a commenter on the blog who first brought race into the picture, and it wasn’t isolated. In fact, four of the first five comments on the blog were negative. Instead of being incensed by the violence and pure stupidity of the incident, these people were trying to find a way to blame Darrent Williams for the gun wounds that killed him. They all found a way to do it through race.
Let’s pause it right there. I am white. I am a member of middle-class, white America, and because race has become such a sensitive issue on this topic, I have to preface the rest of my post with this disclaimer: I’m white, and I’m going to talk about race.
I feel it needs to be done because no one has gotten to the bottom of the issue, and that’s become a real problem for me. Four days after the shooting, Dave Krieger wrote a column in the Rocky Mountain News about race. He cited hip-hop culture as negative, and blamed society for not giving African-Americans enough of a chance to break out of, as he called it, “drug-infested urban neighborhoods” like Williams had done as kid growing up in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Two days later and four days after that, he called on both fans and players to support anti-gang charities and reported the Broncos’ offer of $100,000 for information leading to arrest and conviction. All noble causes, to be sure, but throughout Kreiger’s coverage, he hasn’t been able to draw any meaningful conclusions. In my opinion, he’s skirting around the issue and encouraging behavior that, though well-intended, masks the real issue.
The closest Kreiger came to a definitive statement on race was saying that white people cared about this incident only because the black person who was shot was a member of the Broncos. Sadly, that’s true. Krieger went on to write about how our culture glorifies sports figures, but he didn’t address the real issue.
The real issue is entwined in the fact that had Darrent Williams been just another black 24 year-old shot outside a night club, the coverage of his death would have lasted twenty seconds on the nine o’clock news and two short articles in the newspaper - one when the murder was reported, and one when the police announced they couldn’t find any suspects. If a white person had been killed at 2am on New Year’s Eve in the first homicide of 2007, it would have made the front page. The real issue is manifested in the power and anonymity of the blog, something that I’m in a unique position to look at. The issue is in the commenter who posted on the blog saying that all blacks are good for is violence, and the subsequent commenters who agreed with the first.
This goes far beyond the fact that whites only care about this murder because Darrent Williams was a popular football star. The incident brought to the surface a startling dichotomy of the true nature of race relations in American society. On the one hand, the terrible truth is in fact that whites would not have cared about any average black man killed outside a night club at 11th and Grant on New Year’s Eve. There would be no public mourning and no profound community outreach. But on the other hand, this ordeal has brought the racism that was previously allowed to permeate only at the darkest depths of American society bubbling to the top with a new rage. Because if any average black man had died a week and a half ago, there would be no national news segments, no thousands of articles, and no blog post. In short, absolutely no one would know or care about the murder. The comments would have never been made, and the thoughts would have stayed deep inside their owners.
The statements on the Fanhouse expose it, but those same ideas are swimming through the heads of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions or tens of millions of white Americans. The thoughts remain because these people have never been told that it isn’t okay to view America as a two-tiered society, with “honest, hard-working” whites at the top, and “unscrupulous, gang-banging” blacks on the bottom. And Denver is hardly a vestige of the old south. In a fairly integrated, mid-western city, Darrent Williams’ murder has proved once again that multiple forms of racism are still doing fine, right here in America.
In 1994, Ali Kahn, a professor at Washburn University, wrote about institutionalized racism in the United States. He talked about the Civil Rights Movement and how all it had done was force racism under the floorboards. He talked about how when oppressors control the rights of the oppressed, the oppressed really have no rights at all. Some have called him a conspiracy theorist, but this tragic situation with Darrent Williams makes his writing look a lot more truthful. At this awful circumstance where tragedy and fame have met minority, the racism is literally seeping from the floorboards of society. Racism isn’t gone from this supposedly modern, liberal society. In fact, it’s worse - it’s been hidden from the masses, and it’s taken a high-profile tragedy like this to expose it.
And that’s why you won’t find a solution in, as Krieger suggests, giving “other young African-Americans a chance to do the same” as Williams. Not only does Krieger not explain what he means by this, but trying to somehow step in and “help” blacks succeed in the world is exactly what allows the racism to exist. It allows whites to feel they’ve done their share eliminating racism, and to ignore the real problems.
No. The first thing we need to do is acknowledge that the problems exist. The best way to “honor [Williams'] memory” is to recognize the racism it exposed and use that exposure to confront it head on, instead of trying to write ’subtly’ about race and leave people to continue throwing money at problems because it’s a convenient way of life. The truth is, donating to anti-gang programs is going to take some kids of the street and help them out. But the racist sentiment that still exists in this country won’t be eliminated, and the frustration and institutionalized poverty that causes much of the gang activity won’t be gone.
That said, we also can’t forget that a person brought us here. So now I’ll join in with the hundreds of other unrecognized people on the blog who aren’t mentioned here because they responded with the best of the human spirit. This was a horrible murder that ended the life of a very wonderful, popular, and talented human being far too soon. May he rest in peace.
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