BAT MAN: Former Red Sox infielder Jose Offerman (right) got cuffed for assault after taking the lumber to two Bridgeport Bluefish players. |
Going batty
Remember that time, not so long ago, when the Yankees were signing every monster free agent in the business, and the Red Sox were hoping that Brian Daubach could give them 16 home runs and Juan Pena would turn out to be one of the top 180 prospects in the nation? Of course you do, and it still hurts. There were no Ellsburys and Buchholzes in those days, and the guys we brought in to surround our two or three big stars tended to have drawn, forlorn expressions on their faces as they jogged out to the field, as if they were trying to tough it out while their wives slept with Yankee players.
Jose Offerman was one of those guys. He never said much, he drew a lot of walks (an early ancestor to the Theo Epstein/Moneyball/high-OBP Sox lineup prototype), and he hit about three more home runs than you’d have expected every year. The term “professional hitter” got bandied about a lot with Jose, much as it did with many free-agent Sox infielders, including his far-future successor, Mark Loretta. He played three steadily declining years for the Red Sox around the millennium, came back for a hideous mid-season cameo in ’02, and then fell off the face of the Earth, last seen drawing six walks in 53 games for the Mets in ’05.
Now he is back in the news after suffering a criminal freak-out in the middle of an Independent League game. Playing for the Long Island Ducks (with ex-Sox/dinosaur-denier Carl Everett as a teammate), the 38-year-old Offerman overreacted to being thrown at in his second at-bat — this after hitting a homer in the first against Bridgeport Bluefish pitcher Matt Beech. Jose charged the mound with a bat in his hand and proceeded to whale on both Beech and Bluefish catcher John Nathans, hitting Beech on the hands and concussing Nathans with a shot to the head. A mighty brawl ensued, and order was restored only after 20 minutes, at which time Offerman was arrested on two counts of second-degree assault.
Arrests for in-game assaults are exceedingly rare and tend to be the exclusive province of pro and, especially, amateur hockey. In the NHL, we’ve had two such incidents in the past decade or so. There was the notorious Todd Bertuzzi case of 2004, in which the former Canucks forward was arrested and found guilty of assault for a sucker punch that broke the neck of then–Avalanche center Steve Moore. And don’t forget the Bruins’ own Marty McSorley, who was handed a conviction for assault with a weapon after slashing Donald Brashear of the Canucks in the head with his stick. The latter, incidentally, marked the last time the Bruins made the news outside of Boston.
No one knows what got into Offerman — he’d never been arrested before. But this sure looks like the end of his career. Give him 31 points and keep those bats out of his hands. . . .
Personally foul
Former NBA referee Tim Donaghy walked the federal plank this past week, pleading to two big gambling counts (conspiracy to engage in wire fraud and transmitting wagering information through interstate commerce) that could earn him up to 25 years in a federal pen. (Which he’d better hope is a Supermax facility on the moon, considering how many angry Suns fans are lurking around these days. And don’t think he’ll be blowing whistles in the joint, either.)
Donaghy faces sentencing on November 9. He’s reportedly ready to name up to 20 other refs who have violated league rules by participating in gambling activity — NBA employees are prohibited from all forms of wagering, other than off-season visits to the race track — but as of right now it seems like Donaghy’s the only one who bet on basketball. Even legal casino gambling could get an NBA ref fired, though, and losing 20 officials — a third of the league’s total staff — just a few months before games are scheduled to start could cripple pro hoops.
Give Donaghy 58 points (and he probably bet that we’d give him 85 or more, so now we’re just fucking with him), mainly for being a degenerate gambling-addict tool. Why can’t he just smoke crack like everyone else? What a loser.
Scoring note
We’ve made an adjustment to our leader board for the year. Wife-strangler Julio Mateo had been sitting in 10th place with 80 points while the Mariners buried him in triple-A following his arrest. But now that he has been traded to the Phillies and is being fast-tracked to the big leagues, he gets five points added to his score. Why? Because the Phillies this off-season started a partnership with the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, initiating an education program for all its players, in an attempt to overcome the bad PR the team suffered after allowing pitcher Brett Myers to start a game one day after beating his wife up on the streets of Boston. Great, but now they bring in Mateo — whom the Mariners refused to allow to pitch in the big leagues after his crime — to sit in a bullpen with Myers? Two wife-chokers in the same bullpen? Yeah, they must be really committed to their fight against domestic violence. Bad move for the Phils — and bump Mateo up to 85 points.
