Marlins Logan Morrison, Freedom of Speech, Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah

His teammates call him LoMo. Florida Marlins president David Samson may have another name for him. If he does, he's not saying. But he is saying to knock off the Tweets. Not the Rings Dings, Twinkies or those other sugary pleasures, but those snappy one-liners the 23-year-old left fielder belts out on Twitter.

Morrison's tweets include a wide assortment of topics from sex and the human body to stinky cab drivers.

The Marlins front office is watching and they're getting nervous. Samson says he told LoMo to go slow. "People are waiting for you to make a mistake. They're going to bait you on Twitter to say something inappropriate that you can never take back. It takes an entire career to build a reputation, and one tweet to lose it. As long as he understands that, it's fine." OK, let me get this right. Morrison's gonna get himself blackballed like 1950's actor John Ireland because he tweeted that the cabby who drove him to Checkers had b.o?

Last November, Charlie Villanueva of the Detroit Pistons chirped on Twitter that Boston's Kevin Garnett called him a cancer patient during a game the night before (Villanueva with bald head and all due to an autoimmune skin disease) and challenged him to a fight. And Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco (who has nearly 2 million followers on Twitter) was nailed  $25,000 by the NFL for tweeting during a preseason game last August. Just two of many instances where pro athletes spoke their mind and the world keeps turning. By the time Charlie and Kevin face each other again the only thing different will be that they're both a year older. Ocho will still be trying get get his gray matter unscrambled from his 1.5 second ride on a bull in May.

So here's Morrison, two months into his major league career getting his bosses nervous over his tweets. Unfortunately for the rookie, he's too unimportant in the big picture to have them look the other way. No weak grins and "It's just Manny being Manny" here. LoMo better be damn good because if he keeps it up and he's not, he'll earn himself a one way ticket to Single A Hooterville where Arnold the Pig is the team mascot.

What I don't get is that the Marlins, an organization known for being super cheap with a fan base that couldn't even fill their stadium for the World Series in 2003 would see Morrison's tweets as a bad thing. No guys, it's a good thing. Young player with potential saying funny things to his followers. That's good. It develops a relationship between player and potential paying customers. After the Marlins deal with Miami to build a new stadium turned out to be a major fraud, they should take Oscar Wilde's quote that "any free publicity is good publicity," and run with it.

And of course there's always the First Amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." I think Morrison should tweet that to Samson. Stand up for your right to speak or tweet!

I just hope he makes sure to bring some comfortable pillows for those long bus rides back to Hooterville.

The Heat vs. The Mavericks. Can They Both Lose Please?

Man, what a choice. Miami against Dallas for the NBA title. Red state versus purple. The city where my beloved JFK was murdered and the ensuing investigation whitewashed, bleached, botched, bungled, fabricated and processed into the biggest pile of nonsense in the history of American crime.


Dallas - a place where we're forced to watch George W. Bush, an economy and foreign affairs wrecker who did more to destroy the American middle class than Hitler, Tojo and Khruschev could ever have imagined, sit next to Nolan Ryan who in my book was the most unhittable pitcher who ever threw a baseball in the majors. Heads up on that pop up Dubya! Better luck next time. And of course we all know how the Miami Heat got to this point. Pat Riley shipping everyone and everything not Crazy Glued to the floor at the American Airlines Arena out of South Beach to clear cap space for LeBron, Dwayne and Bosh.

It's funny to look back ten months after LBJ's "Decision" and recall how so many hoop experts were saying that the Heat were top heavy and didn't have the bench guys to win it all. How center Joel Anthony was a zero in the paint and how the Heat would melt fast because they didn't have a point guard. Well Anthony's lefty layup during Miami's 18-3 run in the closing minutes of game five went through the hole and counted for two just like any of Luc Longley's when he took up space between Pippen and Rodman.

And yes, Mike Bibby went scoreless with just two assists, and Mario Chalmers had just four points off the bench. But LeBron's 28 including a pair of throat-stomping three's in the final four minutes along with Wade's 21 were enough to make up for it. Bosh's 20 and 10 meant the "Heatles" scored 69 of Miami's 83 points. Bench? Like Cheech or Chong (I still don't remember who was who) would say, "I don't need no stinkin' bench!"

 Here I was at a local sports restaurant having the greatest hot wings I ever had, watching and almost rooting for the Heat. I say almost because even though I moved to South Florida six years ago, I can't root for a non-New York team. I'm sure the United States Supreme Court of Sports would rule in my favor if I claimed a new allegiance because of my address, but I just can't do it. James Dolan or no. I do admit though that as the game went on, I fantasized that I was rooting for LeBron. Just to see what it would feel like if he took the challenge of bright lights, bumper-to bumper traffic and an Inspector Clouseau-like owner and signed with the Knicks. It felt pretty cool. Instead of squirming in my chair hoping he'd miss on a drive through the lane, I imagined him doing it for my guys. And it worked. He came up huge in the final minutes just like he did all his career with the exception of last year's Cavs loss in Boston.

So it's come down to this. Miami, a place with hands-down the worst drivers in North America and a state with a newly-elected governor who's approval rating is already down to 29%, against Dallas a city in a state who's former governor was a major player in wrecking my net worth. My "decision" is Miami. After all, Pat Riley did do one pretty good job for us back in the mid 90's.

Good 'Ol Fashioned American Greed Might Kill This Goose Too

Is the NFL untouchable? I mean will the owner's lockout piss off enough fans to really make a dent in their mega profits? Commissioner Roger Goodell says it's starting to look that way.

Owners and players are bickering over how to divvy up $9 billion dollars in revenue. Do you know what a billion dollars looks like? If you placed one billion single dollar bills one on top of the other, they would reach as high as the Empire State Building. So imagine nine of those Empire State Buildings stacked one on top of the other. No way Godzilla's going to reach Faye Wray that way.

So now that they're ten weeks into this mess, the commish, who's a highly paid mouthpiece for the owners, has blinked following his bosses spring meetings. He says that tv ratings for the draft were down by roughly 4 million. Traffic at the league's NFL.com website is down and so are ticket sales.

I remember the 1987 players strike. It was the year after the Giants won their first Super Bowl. The season was shortened from 16 games to 15 and weeks 4-6 were played with replacement players. 85% of veteran players refused to cross the picket lines. So instead of watching a cocaine-crazed Lawrence Taylor behead Cowboys quarterback Danny White like the good Lord intended, I was forced to watch stiffs like running back Robert DiRico spin his wheels and drive Big Blue into the cellar of the NFC East. Sure, DiRico must have got laid plenty after his four week stint in the show, but he and other replacement scabs like him certainly helped weaken the real players leverage in their fight to get a better deal. It also made my fall miserable. A new season of “Matlock” just didn't cut it.

Flop sweat is beginning to dot Goodell's forehead. “We've made it clear that (revenue loss) is current and will continue to accelerate and impact on the ability of ownership to make an offer (the players) find attractive.” So in other words, the owners shut the joint down and cry that because the joint's shut there won't be enough money to pay the guys who make them all that money. Sure commish, blame the hostages for being bound and gagged and having a gun put to their heads.

But what effect will this insatiable greed have on fans? The NFL's a money machine and most people have a very short term memory when it comes to sports (Michael Vick) and politics (Bush/Cheney). Baseball's 1994 strike was a killer. Attendance dropped 20% the following season and tv ratings declined sharply as well. It took the McGwire/Sosa steroid induced home run derby to bring fans back but despite that many never did.

Will fans be ok with a shortened NFL season? Twelve games? Ten maybe? How will they feel when their favorite players go on the IR because they didn't have an adequate training camp? Will they pay thousands of dollars per ticket to see Joe Shmoe throw six yard passes to Fred Shmertz?

Goodell says “We're approaching 2011 as we would any other season.” It looks like fans may be starting to approach it differently.

The Mets and The End of Days

This will end badly, I just know it. When a Mets owner starts to publicly rag his own team, it's a sign the end is near. Here it is just one day after the world was supposed to end and it's clear mankind is in for another hell ride.

Owner Fred Wilpon has been in the shadows since he initially got involved with the Mets when he bought a one-percent stake in the team back in 1980. It didn't take much for him to blend into the background. After all, the Mets, born in 1962 were destined to be number two in the Big Apple no matter what they did. Sure, 1969 was fabulous when they shocked everyone by winning 100 games and upset the Braves in the NLCS and the Orioles in five games in the World Series. Their archrivals were grinding gears under the scrooge-like ownership of CBS and people like Jerry (Lobo) Kenny, Horace Clarke, Gene Michael and Jake Gibbs were keeping attendance at Yankee Stadium so low, you could hear a fat guy in the bleachers snore by the third inning.

By 1986 Wilpon became a full partner when he and Nelson Doubleday, Jr. each bought a 50 percent stake. The Mets won their second and last World Series that year and got lots of headlines, but George Steinbrenner still managed to keep his grip on the back pages with his bipolar-like managerial firings and off-the-wall trades. In fact George Costanza finally did what all true Yankee fans wanted to do but couldn't as we see in this video.

Finally in 2002, Wilpon took control of the Mets by buying out Doubleday's

share for $135 million.

But while Wilpon had Mr. Met,  his crosstown enemy had Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle. He tried to make it look like he was a player in the free agent market, but brainless signings like Kaz Matsui, Moises Alou, Kelvim Escobar and Jason Bay showed that he was really  interested in window dressing -  to make it look like he was at least trying. 

Now we come to the good part. Bernie Madoff. Wilpon somehow got himself involved with the infamous thief and is now being sued for more than $1 billion by the trustee trying to get money back for Madoff's victims. This seems to have loosened up things up better than a K-Rod slap in the face.

Not only will Wilpon have to figure a way to come up with more than a billion dollars should he lose his case is the fact that some of his family jewels will need a severe restoration. Jose Reyes, who has tons of ability but seems to be injured most of the time and when he's not runs the bases like a glue-sniffing eighth grader, will become a free agent at the end of the season. How would Wilpon scrape up the boat loads of cash to keep him? He won't. In an interview which will go down in history with the likes of Reggie's "I'm the straw that stirs the drink" that got him into Thurman Munson's doghouse right off the bat, Wilpon tells The New Yorker that Reyes isn't worth the seven-year $142 million Carl Crawford got from the Red Sox. He's right. But that's not going to make Jose want to get his uni dirty. He also said David Wright's a nice guy (the kiss of death, like when your girlfriend says you're a nice guy but...) and a good (not great) player, but not a superstar (ouch, my back is killing me and I'm falling and now I can't get up). But the gem was Wilpon saying he was a schmuck for signing Carlos Beltran to a seven-year $119 million deal after he had a great post season with the Astros in 2004. Yes, you were a schmuck Fred, but there was no way you knew Beltran's knees would turn out almost as bad as Joe Namath's, so don't beat yourself up too much on that one. 

But it's becoming real clear that his huge money crisis is causing him to start blowing up bridges. And now that he's pissed off his three best players and we're only in mid-May, you can be assured the next four months will be kinda like when M. Donald Grant sent Tom Seaver to the Reds. "We're gonna go with the kids," was the Mets mantra. But the "kids" were Doug Flynn, Joel Youngblood and Pat Zachary while Seaver had another five or six years left in his Hall of Fame career.

Get out the dynamite Arnold!

Shut Up Annie, The Sun Won't, I REPEAT, Won't Come Up Tomorrow

Ah, such a shame to see Marlins All Star Josh Johnson headed to the disabled list with a sore shoulder. I won't bother you with lots of numbers, but I'll bother you with a few. Johnson's 3-1 with a 1.64 ERA, tied for the lowest in the majors. NL batters are hitting just .185 against him, lowest in the league. That's damn good even considering how lousy NL hitters have been over the past decade or so. Hell, the Marlins cleanup hitter's named "Gabby." Like Gabby Hayes, the scruffy looking actor big in the 1940's.

What gets me is how reluctant Johnson was to tell anyone he was hurting. There's a Catch-22 in sports. If your injured you don't want to look like a softy. You'll look like a weakling to your teammates and a bad investment to the owner. But you also have to look out for #1. An injury could become serious if you keep playing. After all, pain is the body's way of telling you to stop doing what you did to cause the pain in the first place. Nature isn't stupid. But some athletes are, especially the ones who let themselves get worked to death and have their careers end prematurely. Then it's a case of Humpty Dumpty never being put back together again.

Remember David Cone? Great stuff, money guy, staff ace, a workhorse you can count on. Unfortunately for Coney, Yankees manager Buck Showalter decided to beat this horse into the ground in game five of the 1995 ALDS against the Mariners. Cone threw over 160 pitches and developed an aneurysm the following season that caused him to miss most of the season (not to mention it could've killed him). His career nosedived shortly after.

So here's Johnson, a guy who already had his elbow reconstructed three years ago, who missed the final three weeks of last season with a shoulder problem afraid to tell management his monyemaker hurts so bad that he can't even comb his hair. Bad for Marlins players, bad for the owner, bad for the few fans they have, and especially bad for him. Sure hope he has his nestegg invested with anyone not named Madoff or Wilpon.

Yes, the sun will rise. Somewhere. Just not at Sun Life Stadium.

Trust Me, It Always Turns Out For The Worst

Interleague's back, and sure enough here are plenty of whiners - players, managers, fans who say it stinks. Who wants to see the Tigers play the Pirates? What's better, that or the watching the Pirates play the Nationals? Or the Pirates play anyone for that matter? I think it's cool. Yankees/Mets.  Red Sox vs. Cubs for the first time since 1918, the year of the Great Influenza that wiped out 50 million worldwide.

We even have the Rangers facing the Phillies where Cliff Lee gets to pitch against the team he never wanted to be with to begin with. And a classic Florida match up between the Rays and Marlins, guaranteed to draw absolutely no one.

But with so many Stone Agers still roaming our streets, the baseball gods will eventually kill off inter league play just like they'll kill off the dh and revert back to having pitchers bat. Just what the game needs - pitchers who don't know which end of the bat to use taking three quick strikes (sorry CC Sabathia, you're the exception not the rule). Sure, we'd rather see that than Vlad have a 3-2 bases loaded showdown against Beckett.

Things seem to have calmed down a bit in Yankee-land. Jorge Posada started at first and walked twice and doubled. But you know that's a fluke. You don't regain bat speed when you're 39 and he's not going to be teaching Mark Teixeria any fancy footwork moves at first.

So where do you put Jorge? In the YES Network broadcasting booth of course. But he's apparently delusional to the point of no return. Which means that unless Ponce de Leon comes back to life and throws Jorge head first into the fountain of youth, Posada's exit from The House That Jeter Built will be as ugly as the day the Yankees ended Phil Rizzuto's playing career midway through the 1957 season.

I'll admit the most I know about the sports of cycling is the 1,300 miles I rode around my block in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn one summer when I was a kid (three tenths of a mile for each trip). 

That being said, I never believed any man could win seven Tour de France titles like Lance Armstrong without taking something he shouldn't have. And I'm not a doctor either. But when Armstrong developed testicular cancer, a bell went off in my head. Let's see, bike rider, lots of pressure on the you-know-whats on the bicycle seat, testicular cancer, accusations from several people who say they saw him do what they did themselves - inject himself with performance enhancing drugs. Duh!

But leave it to human brain to see and believe what it wants. So of course, Armstrong will never get nailed while others, like Tyler Hamilton have to give back their gold medal.

So much bad stuff for one day. Time for a coffee. They say it prevents diabetes. The again, they also say it elevates bad cholesterol. And raises blood pressure and quickens calcium loss.

Make it a double!