When will ARod speak? When Lance Armstrong says he should ?

I don't think "mad" at them is the right word exactly, but the situation does kind of tick me off. I don't know if their owners care about winning a billion times more than ours, but I do know that their local radio and TV deals are worth a billion times more than ours though. It's not like the $ the Yank owners are spending on payroll is coming out of their personal funds.

Did I hear correctly when they said that they had gummy bears with ped's?

Meh, that's just an excuse. JC, our owner is reported as not even spending all that he gets from the league through the luxury tax. If he does, that's all he's spending.

Either way, I guess I'm not going to blame Gotham because they have a lot of people and many of them follow their local team. If the Royals would prime the pump and spend a LOT more for a few years, perhaps we'd be super awesome and the smaller town would show up in more force, and the local, regional and national following would grow. That being said, I'd love a salary cap, but I don't think we'll ever see it, too many large-market teams like it the way it is because more often than not, it makes them competitive.

The bottom line is Wal-Mart won't do that. He's not that much of a man, he's Wal-Mart and being a cheap-ass in ingrained in his non-resident owner DNA. And again, not living here makes it all the simpler to **** over the fans. Just like another team we all know and love.

WTF are you talking about? My point is in football there is a cap and you can not exceed it. In baseball it is a CHOICE if NY stays under 189 M. Nothing stops them from going over. Would they get penalized with luxury tax yes. But again NOTHING in the rules of baseball stops them from going over 189.
THERE IS NO SALARY CAP IN BASEBALL.

I don't mean to defend David Glass at all, but he does have a far smaller revenue stream to work from. The Royals could sell out every single game and it would be a drop in the bucket. Simply because of the population in their area, the Yanks have a monster local radio and TV contract that the Royals could never, ever compete with.

It truly is inherently unfair, so if the Yanks end up getting screwed by one of these huge contracts that the Royals and most other teams could not even consider doing, I would kind of like that.

The number of people in the listening/view area are merely potential. Look at teams in L.A. that don't do well, nobody tunes in. So yes, they have a lot of people, but those "lot of people" have a quality product to follow and be interested in.

Without Glass opening the books it's pretty clear that we're all left to guess, but I think from the things we do know (what he's getting from the luxury tax), and what he's paying in salary, he's prolly putting less money into it than before.

Glass is cheap, and a ****ing bastard, so yeah he's running away with the profit. Add to that the common knowledge that he was the force in Wal-Mart that was all for keeping labor costs down, and I'm sure he's sickened by the notion that these under-educated snobs are making more than $15 an hour. It's just in his DNA to cheat labor of rthe glory of the company and it's owners/investors.

OK, market size makes no difference, it doesn't impact local TV and radio revenues and has no correlation to payroll. Not sure what I was thinking.

There is no precedent for any of this. It's a completely arbitrary breakdown outside of the drug agreement the players made as part of the CBA (if you ignore the fact that it conveniently saves the NYY a full year of ARod's salary and keeps him away from baseball for a full year).

The arbitrator's judgement was apparently attached to A-Rod's federal lawsuit, so everyone can now read it.

Apparently all parties, MLB, the union, and A-Rod's lawyers all agreed that the section of the rules that spelled out the 50 game, 100 game, and lifetime ban punishments did not apply. They all agreed that a different section applied where the commissioner can suspend a player for just cause due to violating the drug agreement absent a positive test, but that section does not have a specifically required penalty spelled out.

The union and A-Rod's lawyers argued that if there is any penalty at all, it should be treated the same as one positive test and it should only be 50 games.

MLB argued that there was no mandated penalty, and given the severity of the violation and the cover-up, the 211 games they wanted was fair.

The arbitrator said its true that the 50 games do not apply here, but its still useful as a benchmark. He also flatly rejected the argument that it should be treated as one single violation because it was 3 seperate banned substances taken over 3 seperate years, and there was already a precedent for punishing a first-time use for both of 2 different substances. (so instead of saying its all one violation, the precedent says you can say 50 games for this, 50 games for that)

So, its 50 games for each of 3 banned substances, plus a few more for the cover-up (which they also have a precedent for punishing), all backed by plenty of precedent. The only thing thats new is the total number of games, but we've also never had a player come up for using 3 different PED's over many years and then trying to block an investigation.

There's nothing backed by precedent about a 162 game suspension for PED use in the sport of baseball. It's entirely new territory no matter how anybody attempts to explain the reasoning behind the punishment.

This statement is simply flat-out wrong.

There is precedent for punishing a player for 50 games even without a positive test. Check.

There is precedent for punishing a player for a first-time use for two different kinds of substances and having the punishments run consecutively instead of concurrently. Check.

There is precedent for punishing for a cover-up. Check.

Your only objection seems to be that 162 games is too convenient of a number (which was the arbitrator's call by the way, Selig wanted no hard limits, and 211 games), but what if it was 175, and they said 25 games for the cover-up instead of 12? Then its suddenly ok? Why couldn't they just round it to one season and call it good?

It isn't. There has never been a 162 game suspension for PED use in MLB, nor is there anything in the CBA that designates a 162 game suspension for PED use in MLB. Not sure how that could even be argued.

When had that been done before?

They didn't tack on any extra games for Melky Cabrera's PED suspension in 2012 when he had a fake website made to cover up his use. What's the difference here?

My objection is they broke entirely new ground here with this suspension (but yes, that giving a player an entire season for PED use, which had never been done before, is rather convenient for the league/NYY).

A former lawyer's analysis of the decision: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/20...unting-to-150/

Usually you don't cry like this!

It matters in some respects, but it's not the only part of the equation. But if you're honest, you admit that it helps, but even a shitty team in a big city is doomed in many cases.

Are you sure you not just totally devoted to Glass...