A Classless Act

One does not need to share my self-evident bias to understand that winning has made the yankees a far classier organization than losing has made the red sox, the chowderheads' pretentions to moral superiority notwithstanding. you'll remember when the sox finally broke the curse, Steinbrenner sent them champagne. Now that the sox have fallen out of contention this year, Petty Papi has decided to return the favor. The sports outlets reported yesterday that Ortiz is going around making a case that he should still be considered for MVP, even though the sox have totally disgraced themselves, not by losing but by quitting. Ortiz's own phantom heart symptoms should be considered part and parcel of this tanking strategy, but even so, I have no objection to the claim that he might still win baseball's highest individual award. If you look at what Ortiz actually said, however, ncluding his support for Dye and Morneau, it is clear he was not so much lobbying for himself, as lobbying against Derek Jeter, ostensibly on the grounds that he didn't have enough homers and RBI's to be MVP. I have already pointed out on this blog that the award is to the most valuable player, not the biggest bopper, and that as far as I'm concerned Ortiz is not really a baseball player at all in any meaningful sense. Moreover, if MVP's typically have better slugging numbers than Jeter, they also have typically hit for a better average than Ortiz's 285.

But the main point is that you would never, and I mean never, hear Jeter come out to the press witrh the idea that Ortiz is an undeserving MVP candidate because there is no value in losing (though I'm sure Jeter, of all people, believes exactly that), nor would he slam Papi's chances because Ortiz entirely neglects half the game. Hell, if Papi suddenly started striking out in clutch situations, you still wouldn't here Jeter downgrading his candidacy, for the simple reason that it's a classless thing to do. Indeed in his rather contemptible exercise in jealous venom, Ortiz even disparaged Jeter's candidacy on the grounds that he bats in a deeper line-up than Boston. "He should try and come over here and hit in this line-up," Petty Papi said, explicitly slamming his own teammates in the effort to take Jeter down a peg. When your gracelessness toward an adversary is so marked that it turns into didain for your own comrades, it should be the subject at least of some scathing criticism on the part of a sports media obsessed with team chemistry (see T.O and donovan or even Jeter and AROD). There was nary a peep from the boys in Bristol. Just one classless organization facilitating another.


Post=Post:

Twenty-four hours later, ESPN has weighed in. The Duke called Ortiz's rant "sad" and reported Jeter's "effective" response: "My teammates and I are not focused on individual awards." (I think Derek just called Ortiz a loser in the nicest possible way. Dan Patrick meanwhile has reported Johnny Damon's doubts that Ortiz would ever dis his own team in that fashion. You know it's classless when people are refusing to believe you said something you haven't denied.