Who's your Padre?

Sports blotter: "Something is rotten in the state of Alabama" edition

January 10, 2007 4:55:42 PM

JAKE PEAVY: Arrested for unloading his baggage — at an airport!

Peavy peeved
The more jock arrests that pour in, the more obnoxious America’s cops seem. If rich and litigious sports heroes can be Tasered and harassed with impunity by police all across the country, what’ll happen to ordinary people?

Last week, this space detailed the suspiciously arbitrary arrest of Minnesota Viking wideout Travis Taylor, who was nailed for “interference with pedestrian traffic.” This week, we have San Diego Padres ace pitcher Jake Peavy, whom Red Sox fans, in a staggering bout of collective insanity, thought was coming their way last summer for Mike Lowell. Peavy, it seems, was on his way to a goodwill tour in the Dominican Republic with other major leaguers when he pulled up to the curb at Mobile Regional Airport, in Alabama, at 5:20 am to drop off his bags. Police told him to move his car, and Peavy, according to news reports, gave an answer to the effect of, “Write me up a ticket and I’ll pay for it.” Police responded by arresting Peavy for disorderly conduct.

Now, we’re talking about Mobile Regional Airport at five in the morning — not exactly JFK at rush hour. Without knowing the full story, the whole thing stinks. Police spokesmen claim that “a situation presented itself and the officers involved felt like they had a situation to deal with,” which sounds like another way of saying that some newbie cops on the airport graveyard shift wouldn’t give this guy three minutes to unload his bags. They brought Peavy to jail and released him on $350 bond.

Plenty of athletes — usually black athletes — have had tough times at airports. Former Cincinnati Red and current mildly annoying telecaster Joe Morgan won a $796,000 lawsuit against Los Angeles County after he was accosted and thrown to the floor at LAX in 1988 by a detective who accused him of being a drug courier. New Jersey Nets center Mikki Moore was detained for several hours last month at Newark airport on an erroneous child-support warrant. Our own former Boston Celtic Vitaly Potapenko was once arrested on a disorderly conduct charge at Logan, although he was apparently somewhat more unruly than Peavy. And, of course, former NFL running back Larry Ned scored one of the all-time-greatest sports busts a few years back when he tried, in front of a phalanx of security guards, to steal a laptop off an X-ray-machine belt in a Phoenix airport.

I’m giving Peavy zero points and the Mobile police department five; at least they didn’t Taser him.

At least it wasn’t D-Mat
Now that we in Boston officially care about Japanese baseball leagues, it only seems fair that Japanese baseball players be fair game for “Sports Blotter.” And it’s just in time, too: Orix Buffaloes starter Katsuhiko Maekawa was busted last week for a hit-and-run under the influence, an incident which prompted officials from the Osaka-based team to bow in public apology. The remarkable photo of Orix brass semi-prostrate ought, I think, to be circulated heavily here in the United States — it would be a great tradition for American sports administrators to pick up. How funny would it be to see Ernie Accorsi and Tom Coughlin bowing and saying “Deep shame is ours” to the New York media after Jeremy Shockey drives into a telephone pole? Josh Byrnes committing hara-kiri after Randy Johnson slugs a cameraman? Theo chopping off a finger if Doug Mirabelli gets beered up in a Ft. Myers Hooters? That would make up for an awful lot, in my book.

Not much has been released about the Maekawa incident. Apparently he hit a 28-year-old female dental hygienist on a bicycle at an intersection in downtown Osaka at 2 am. He had an argument with the woman and then fled the scene when a police officer asked him to produce his driver’s license.

Maekawa gets 47 points for this incident; the mandatory 25 for the DUI, 15 additional points for accidentally hitting a person with a car, five for generally being a dumbass, and two for giving up a home run to Yankee catcher John Flaherty in spring training in 2004. Maekawa, who usually wears a scraggly and stupid-looking goatee, has been in trouble for automotive violations in the past.

When he’s not googling “bogus arrests” and “hara-kiri,” Matt Taibbi writes for Rolling Stone. He can be reached at M_Taibbi@yahoo.com .