Trend to watch this summer: Does PFP 2006 out-sell Terrell Owens.

Currently Owens is ranked 11th in Sports, PFP is 20th as a pre-order.

Fun column, although I can't shake the idea that the theme was cribbed from the "we're all undefeated again" NFL Network commercial. Also:

Teams with legitimate playoff hopes don't let a Super Bowl-winning quarterback play for the lowest veteran starting salary.
Can there be some kind of automatic script that e-mails the words "Trent Dilfer" to anybody who makes this argument about anyone? Did Todd Lyght, Super Bowl-winning cornerback, deserve a monster contract in 2002? Oy.

It's probably not ever going to be this bad, but I'm starting to wonder if A-Rod has some Chuck Knoblauch in him. The bright lights and big city seem to be getting to him. I'll repeat what I said a couple of months ago: I believe the best baseball player I'll ever see is Derek Jeter. Playing in his shadow has to be daunting for Rodriguez, because Jeter, even when he's in mild funks, is so darn perfect.
Ugh. The man-love for Jeter is sickening. Does King remember that A-Rod just won the MVP last year amidst all the "bright lights"? Yet A-Rod can do nothing right, and Jeter can do nothing wrong. Puh-leeze. Stick to football.
I imagine something similar would happen if Peyton Manning somehow got traded to the Pats and platooned at QB with Brady.

PFP is #776 today - TO is #933. And I wasn't even misquoted!

Are there really any starving children in Coney Island? That seems a little far fetched. I doubt that there are many deaths by starvation in the US.

Mr. King must have a pretty big pedastool.

#6: The effects would likely be the same as cancelling NASCAR would have on the energy crisis.

6: Watching hot-dog eating contests always makes me lose my appetite.

Coney Island is one of the poorest areas in New York City. Most of the neighborhood consists of housing projects. There is a great book, "The Last Shot" by Darcy Frey, that details the lives of young basketball players (including Stephon Marbury) from Coney Island.

Given the poverty of the area, it is a bit disgusting to have a celebration of gluttony. Of course, staging the contest somewhere else wouldn't really do a whole lot for the community either.

It's columns like such as Mr. King's that are quickly turning me into Terrell Owens' biggest fan.

I will give him credit for exbiting why I'm a big Red Sox fan that rarely goes to Fenway Park. Speaking of which, I'm six feet and 180 lbs. Any time I go to Fenway, the seats are so small that I'm always cramped and uncomfortable. I wonder how King deals with them.

So then, shouldn't he have said hungry children? It is a small detail, but to imply that people are dying, or suffering severely in NYC, when there are clearly places where people face actual starvation seems a little disrespectful to those who are truly suffering.

Oh poor starving people in America who have to survive off of half-eaten burgers and day old donuts!

> I will give him credit for exbiting why I’m a big Red Sox fan that rarely goes to Fenway Park.

I was at the 1pm afternoon game the next day at Fenway, arrived an hour before gametime, and parked for free at a broken parking meter (otherwise it would have been $1/hour). The situation is really not that bad in the summertime. Granted, you shouldn't show up at gametime, and it helps to know the neighborbood a bit (try parking on the other side of the Mass Pike-- still very close to Fenway-- where the parking situation is decent, as opposed to trying to roll the family SUV right onto Lansdowne St). It's a city, the same city that millions of people deal with on a daily basis as part of their everyday lives.

The complaining about Fenway has long been a pet-peeve of mine. There are difficulties to be sure, but the advantages of a city ballpark with great neighborhood day/nightlife far outweigh the "conveniences" of the suburban Disney-Stade imo. Some great things in life you just have to work for a bit. It doesn't surprise me however that true to his usual MO, Peter King wants hand-to-mouth service and he wants it now. No mention of what was a tremendous ballgame, either.

Seems to me that the Al Gore promo should have been among the "Ten Things I Think I Think"

Is "see this movie and judge the facts" one thing or two? Peter thinks it's one, while many others are sure it is two.

And what please is "commisioner timbre?" Does he mean "timber?"

Regarding that comment on Brad Johnson's salary: why exactly would the Vikings increase Johnson's pay? Would that automatically make him a better quarterback? They've got him signed for $1.2 million. That was enough for him to sign, and enough for him to play. It's not like paying him $5 million would make him 10 years younger or less injury-prone.

> Regarding that comment on Brad Johnson’s salary: why exactly would the Vikings increase Johnson’s pay? Would that automatically make him a better quarterback? They’ve got him signed for $1.2 million.

What's Johnson's contract situation beyond this season? That's the real issue and why you might be able to leverage his current low salary into a relative bargain extension. Assuming the Vikings don't already have Tavaris Jackson penciled in as their starting QB for 2007, that is (Johnson is 38 this year though, so you wouldn't want to look beyond two years).

Of course, the true curse of Fenway is not how much Red Sox fans are inconvenienced, but how much those of us who are apathetic at best about baseball are inconvenienced by Red Sox games. I currently commute by T, but I used to HATE Red Sox home games because they changed a 25 minute commute into an hour and thirty five minute commute (Yankee games were even worse, because of all the New York SUV's that clog the roads and the parking).

"You can hang me out to dry on those picks around Thanksgiving, when the Lions and the Dolphins play in Detroit and both are 3-7 and we're all marveling at the Jets, led by cinch offensive rookie of the year Kellen Clemens, cruising along at 9-1."

Did he just reverse jinx my
Jets?

Re. 17:

I assume that you're commuting from outside Boston back into (or near to) the city in the evenings? Yes, that's the worst-case scenario, where your normally easy commute against traffic is impacted. Most people are commuting the other way. 35,000 fans and maybe 15,000 cars are a drop in the bucket in Boston's overall messy traffic/train situation.

17.
Just another reason for sports fans to hate baseball.

Re: #14 "timbre"

Maybe he's just saying Rich McKay doesn't sound like a commissioner. Just as most people don't sound or look presidential.

not as horrible and painful to read as usual - i think the length had something to do with it. good read. and coney island is a pretty bleak place when you consider the massive wealth in close proximity to it (LI and the City).

p.s. WILL EVERYONE PLS STOP PICKING THE DOLPHINS, THE POPULAR OPINION "SLEEPER" PICK WHICH ISN'T ACTUALLY A SLEEPER SINCE EVRYONE PICKS THEM NEVER DOES WELL!!!

Re: the Red Sox. I live in Southern NH, and to say that there's no good or easy way to get to Fenway Park is an understatement.

It's also expensive as hell: the last time I took my girlfriend there, I counted how much money we spent. It was over $330 total for an afternoon spent in mediocre seats between first base and the right field foul pole.

I'm not complaining about it, and I'm aware other sporting events can be just as costly. I just choose to spend my time and money elsewhere.

2005 - A-Rod VORP 90+, Jeter a very respectable mid 50's.

I dislike A-Rod intensely and I hope that the Yankees fail to win a world series for so long as he's on the team (I hate ring chasers) but to say that Jeter has somehow outclassed A-Rod his whole career in NY is ridiculous. Jeter is not even the best shortstop on his team. I think Jeter gets the love because of the clutch player myth. Also Johnny Damon is a terrible fielder...that is all.

That was an excellent satire of an actual sports column. I'm glad CNN/SI is loosening their collective ties a bit and joining the Onions, Brushbacks and Deadspins of the world and allowing a little fun in there.

With this "Peter King" humorist, you'd almost believe it was a real piece, at least until it broke down towards the end. Brilliant! DJ Gallo, you've got some serious competition!

> Re: the Red Sox. I live in Southern NH, and to say that there’s no good or easy way to get to Fenway Park is an understatement.

I also live in southern NH, and am just relating my own personal experience (and experience certainly helps). Admittedly I have (weekend) season tickets which can mitigate the cost. $80/pair for good grandstand seats is a far cry from $330, so I assume you're talking about paying a scalper or buying lots of other stuff. Still expensive (like the Patriots, the most expensive tickets in the league) but that's the market, where the teams sell out every game year after year.

The traffic part is just a fact of life with *any* peak leisure-time activity in and around Boston (especially now with the latest Big Dig fiasco). Even further north in NH (never mind the Cape/islands), on summer weekends based on the traffic levels I can (and have) curse the mountains, the beach, and for two weekends a year, NASCAR. That's not the fault of the activity (except for NASCAR ;-). We live in a fairly congested area where if you want to do something that thousands of others also want to, you're going to sit in traffic. And you're right, that certainly is a factor in the personal decision, no debating that.

25: Agreed. The A-Rod vs. Jeter section of this column gave the Gallo rant on Brady in the NFL Answers column a run for its money.

A-Rod? A ring chaser? Oh yeah... THAT's why he left the M's while they were good to play in cellar dwelling Texas.

He doesn't chase rings, he chases money.

Timbre (pronounced "tamber") is used among us audio engineers, as an attribute of a sound, to describe its texture.

Never saw it used anywhere else, but it does make for a good generic description, like kosher became 8 years ago in place of OK. I tip my hat to PK on that count!

Yeah, he's saying around the league McKay's not looked at as likely to be a good commissioner. Which is news to me.

A-Rod? A ring chaser? Oh yeah… THAT’s why he left the M’s while they were good to play in cellar dwelling Texas.

He doesn’t chase rings, he chases money.

Can't say I blame him- the Rangers offered him a far better deal than anyone else.

A lot of people around here get angry when I say this, but I STILL wish the Red Sox had pulled the trigger on the Rodriguez for Ramirez deal. There was no need to restructure his contract. They would have only had to have paid an extra $5 M a year.

Glenn, all I can say is wow- we very well may be neighbors. I did wind up getting the Red Sox tickets on Ebay, as I couldn't get them any other way.

If Peter King really cares about the malnourished kids in Coney Island, he should be campaigning for the NFL to save the lavish free buffets for the press that have him at a solid 200+ and he can walk around the town giving out box lunches. Otherwise he should shut the **** up.

Reading Peter King babble about the environment made my eyes bleed.

Is that normal?

The two defensive leaders of the Dolphins are Zach Thomas and Jason Taylor. Taylor and Thomas' sister, Katina, are getting a divorce after six years of marriage. How will the players react to the situation, working side by side for the next five months? Great story, but we'll never hear it.
Well, with that lazy-ass reporter attitude, we can be sure King won't break that story, either.

Can't wait for Peter's annual stumbling and bumbling in fantasy football. As I recall, Peter was gung-ho on some guy named Favre at QB last year.

#32 - King has gotten a lot more political in the last year. One of the reasons I quit reading his column, although I'll give it a try again once the preseason gets under way.

So what if he has man-love for Jeter? It's the 2000s, more power to him.

Re #30

I think the major hangup was that the MLB Players Union didn't want A-Rod to restructure his contract to take less money -- they figured, rightly, that that would set a bad precendent.

I think King is too caught up in the football "mystique" to accurately judge baseball players. If football, you can argue that stats are meaningless because of intagibles or better teammates or whatever, however in baseball the stats are really the measuring stick. So to keep saying that Jeter is the best player you've ever seen is to close your eyes to reality and willfully ignore facts -- sort of like saying Tom Brady or Joe Montana are the best QBs ever because they have the most rings.

I think the major hangup was that the MLB Players Union didn’t want A-Rod to restructure his contract to take less money — they figured, rightly, that that would set a bad precendent.

You are correct.

The Rangers would have swapped Manny's contract for A-Rod's, and IMO the Red Sox should have accepted

I hate when people blast A-Rod for leaving Seattle. Look at the 2000 Mariners - a good 91 win team, but their best hitters were A-Rod, Edgar Martinez (37 yo), and Jay Buhner (35 yo with tremendous back problems who would only play 19 more games in his career).

Sele-Halama-Abbot-Moyer all looked to be average-ish or worse for the next couple of seasons, and weren't young enough to say they'd improve. Gil Meche and Freddy Garcia were up-and-comers, but TINSTAPP applies.

The Rangers had Pudge (28), Palmeiro (35 but still going strong, with no injury problems) as big time stars, and their pitching rotation wasn't measurably worse than Seattle's front 4. Michael Young and Carlos Pena would play a lot next year, Mench, Blalock and Hafner were on their way. I think absolutely a reasonable person would have thought the Rangers to have a better immediate future than the Mariners.

Anything else is hindsight.

Help!!!! It's bad enough I have baseball shoved in my face 12 months a year in Boston. Now it shows up on Football Outsiders.

Mr. King, did you know that Nathan's donated 10,000 hot dogs to City Harvest (http://www.ifoce.com/news.php?action=detail&sn=430), the country's largest charitable hunger-relief organization in honor of the July 4th competition? Say what you want about competitive eating but to say that we are promoting gluttony is a ridiculous argument if you do any research about it.

40.
Awesome. He makes a terrible argument about why something is unnecessary, and it turns out his terrible reason is actually untrue.

Ironically your career consists of reporting on Multi-Millionaires who squander their fortunes willy-nilly and complain into your microphone for sympathy. Perhaps THEY should do more than a sham United Way commercial to give back to the community. Amazing how you are blind to that as you suckle your living from their table scraps.

Those eaters at Coney Island weren't paid a single dime, yet they drew a 10,000 person crowd to the impoverished town. They dont complain about contracts or do sit-ups in the driveway for attention.

I find it funny that you think that Coney needs a single donation of food to pull it out of the dumps (give it a fish), When what it really needs is MORE national exposure (like ESPN) and more events to draw a crowd with cash to spend (like Nathans). Commerce is the American way buddy.

"Kids are starving in the same town that contest is held, and here we are, watching replays of life-wasting dolts eating 50 hot dogs. Talk about the decline of civilization." Good point Peter, you're completely right, it is terrible that some people devote their lives to eating loads when others are starving

Lets play around with this sentence, change it to "Kids are starving in the same town that contest is held, and here we are, watching replays of life-wasting millionaire dolts playing a ball game. Talk about the decline of civilization.". Yeah.

And the final stage: "Kids are starving in the same town that contest is held, and here we are, reading about life-wasting millionaire dolts playing a ball game. Talk about the decline of civilization.". Face it Peter, your money comes from a source that is equally unproductive as competitive eating. If you did something about helping the starving, fine.

Also, the environment thing. Does anyone else have a picture in their head of King watching that film, then feeling smug while driving his SUV, because he's part of the solution? God help us.

Re: A-Rod to the Red Sox. If I remember correctly, wasn't manny going to be traded to the ChiSox for Ordonez if that deal went through and Nomar was going to the Rangers?

Re: A-Rod to the Red Sox. If I remember correctly, wasn’t manny going to be traded to the ChiSox for Ordonez if that deal went through and Nomar was going to the Rangers?

The bones of the deal was A-Rod for Manny, then Nomar for Ordonez.

Nomar would have stayed with the White Sox for a year, as it was the last in his contract. Ditto Ordonez.

Please no baseball. Please no baseball. Please no baseball. Please no baseball. Please no baseball. Please no baseball.

Blame King for opening the floodgates. Still, I guess this means you'd rather hear another Brady/Manning argument than a Jeter/A-Rod argument?

> The bones of the deal was A-Rod for Manny, then Nomar for Ordonez.

Correct. The piece to the puzzle you're forgetting about though was Jon Lester, who also would have gone to the Rangers. That should give you pause, and in addition to the extra $5m/year and A-Rod's additional two-year guarantee at $25m/year in 2009-2010,
is enough for me to say (after the fact of course) that the Sox did the right thing. And I'm also not a big anti-ARod guy as most Sox fans are.

Sorry about the baseball, but this is an off-season Peter King MMQB string, which by Peter's definition means it's about almost everything but football. There's been at least as much discussion on the environment and hot dog eating.

Mr. King is paid very well, I presume.
As are professional athletes, CEOs, etc.

Pot - Kettle - Black

I'm sure he donates to charity, but he likely lives in a lavish house and drives a nice car.
All of which could save starving children in Coney Island or elsewhere.

I’m glad CNN/SI is loosening their collective ties a bit and joining the Onions, Brushbacks and Deadspins of the world and allowing a little fun in there.

I know that this was meant in jest, but I've noticed the quality of SI.com going down for a while now. Recently, Anna Kournakova had an "article" on there, and some random co-ed/tease/airhead has a weekly column during football season. There are some other questionable writing decisions in there as well, which combined with the 365 day coverage of their swimsuit issue online makes me wonder whether SI has just become a glorified "Maxim" or worse.

Am I recalling a Golden Era that never existed, or does anyone else think that SI used to be a much better sports magazine and website?

The piece to the puzzle you’re forgetting about though was Jon Lester, who also would have gone to the Rangers.

I could be wrong, but I heard the deal that was in place was a straight-up swap. There were discussions of the Red Sox including Scott Williamson for a B-level prospect, but that fell through.

That's what I heard. :)

JRM, with all due respect, given the Rangers' goals of cost reduction and of getting younger and cheaper, it would have made little sense for them to trade A-Rod for Manny straight up (or with a minor throw-in included). That's just trading one marginally overpriced contract for an even worse one (relatively), with no serious inducement towards closing the gap (which is also ostensibly the reason you liked the trade-- and I would agree with you on those terms).

It's been widely reported that the sweetener was Lester, but it could just as easily have been Papelbon if the Rangers had offered an alternative(those were the big two pitching prospects, with Lester actually being more highly regarded at the time). Now, say, a negotiation downward to Manny Delcarmen and I'm on board with you, but that probably wasn't going to happen. What's interesting is that the Sox would have made this trade involving Lester if MLB had approved A-Rod's contract downgrade, and it's still TBD if even that would have turned out well.

Here's just one recent reference to the trade from Gordon Edes of the Globe:

"Epstein has explored trading Ramirez on several occasions in the past. He placed him on irrevocable waivers after the 2003 season and also attempted to package Ramirez in a deal with lefthander Jon Lester for Alex Rodriguez that same winter."

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2006/06/...

"We have poor people in the United States, but we don't have 'fly on the face' poor people." - Chris Rock

Re #52: Even if it were Manny and a top pitching prospect for A-Rod, I would have done it. Prospects are like lottery tickets- sometimes they pan out, sometimes they don't.

Also, part of the reason Rodriguez was being dangled was that Rangers manager Buck Showalter didn't like him, and was able to convince owner Tom Hicks that the team would be better off without the best player in the game.

Hard to believe the A-Rod non-trade was 2 1/2 years ago. I spent 48 hours on the edge of my seat, barely able to think aboout anything else.

Sophandros,
I never thought the SI website was particularly brilliant but, in my opinion, both SI.com and the magazine have been negatively affected by their efforts to appeal to the audience that loves ESPN the magazine. Still, at least SI has no equivalent for Skip Bayless (yet).

Yeah, King's crush on Jeter has always been very disturbing to me. Jeter is not one of the greatest players of all time. He's a good hitter for a shortstop, and a below-average fielder. Yay. He's also a player who has a reputation for being super-clutch, and yet doesn't perform any better in the playoffs than in the regular season.

I'll certainly buy that he's one of the most overrated players of all-time, but not that he's one of the greatest.

Peter King needs to watch a couple of Cardinals games (baseball, not football) and see if that changes his perspective on the best baseball player...

> Re #52: Even if it were Manny and a top pitching prospect for A-Rod, I would have done it. Prospects are like lottery tickets- sometimes they pan out, sometimes they don’t.

I wanted the deal to go through at the time too. Just saying that sometimes those prospects blossom, and only after some time can you truly judge the trade. And, as good as he's been so far, we're certainly not yet at that point with Jon Lester.

BTW, I'm not buying that Texas insisted on Lester. Everything reported at the time was that Boston and Texas had agreed to deal Manny for A-Rod straight up, but it was quashed by the players association (which ever since Marvin Miller, has been a huge danger to the sport).

it was quashed by the players association (which ever since Marvin Miller, has been a huge danger to the sport).

Oh, what a horrible, horrible threat the MLBPA has been for baseball. Revenues, attendance, and franchise values have soared to heights that no one could even deam of since Miller created a crebible union.

But life sure was a lot more fun when players got 20% of baseball's revenue, had no rights whatsoever, played in unsafe conditions, etc.

I agreed with the MLBPA at the time-- the CBA rules are the rules, and they make sense for the players. If A-Rod renegotiated an existing contract downwards to a lesser total value (which was precisely the case), such a practice could be used by teams (as in the NFL) as coercion for better terms, with the threat of a trade to Siberia as the alternative. That may be fine with us as fans, but it's obvious why the MLBPA wouldn't want it.

Sid, beating a dead horse here, but I don't know why you don't believe Lester was part of the deal. It was widely reported at the time, and I distinctly remember it. The reason many people don't is that most didn't know who Lester was at the time. Here's a link to another Boston Globe article by Gordon Edes, which covers Gene Orza's rejection of the A-Rod contract restructuring right at the trade deadline (12/18/2003), and it also specifically mentions Lester as part of the deal. And here's the quote straight from Texas' owner Tom Hicks confirming that this trade was not entirely some cash-saving giveaway on the Rangers' part:

"We've been very consistent on what basis we would construct a trade," Hicks told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "It's not Alex for Manny Ramirez. It's Alex for Manny and cash and a young pitcher. It's to make us a better team faster."

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2003/12/18/union_m...