There is power in union

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Great read. This is why NFL players get crushed in every negotiating session. Because of this twisted mindset that leads players with no facts to question another player’s toughness. Because they think this guy who can’t walk to risk his career/livelihood to live up to some macho standard.

Goodell must have loved reading those tweets. This is the group that’s going to stay together when it comes to missing paychecks?

– Non-banned-Ryan, comments section.

This is an excellent observation, and one I didn’t consider when linking the Cutler piece to which Ryan responded. Antonio Cromartie’s Tweets from last week only amplify the point.

What is it about the NFL that fosters such a self-destructive culture? The NFL players should have some obvious negotiating leverage in the upcoming collective-bargaining talks: They’re the ones with the size, the strength, the absurd athleticism, and the elite talent upon which the league has become a multi-billion-dollar industry.

And yet you just know that as soon as the owners and players start discussing the terms of an 18-game season, one group of players will (rightfully) point out how much more danger the extra games present to the players and argue that they should be handsomely remunerated for it, and another group will Tweet things like: “u cant handle 2 more games ur a pansy bro.” Even all the current whispers from players about not wanting to miss games can’t help.

The owners are going to lock out the players because they want to profit more. The players need to show some solidarity, put aside the bravado and demand that if they are going to be asked to play more games they get more money, more guaranteed money and better long-term health benefits in return.

Turning Groundhog Day over to the experts

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I was going to write about the movie Groundhog Day today because it is Groundhog Day, but then Jonah Keri passed along this link. It’s Stephen Tobolowsky himself — Needlenose Ned, Ned the head, Werner Brandis — with his reflections on the movie. Turns out Mr. Tobolowsky, a TedQuarters favorite, has a pretty strong internet presence, with columns like this one at Moviefone.com and on his podcast and Twitter.

Mystery of the bodega Casanova

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A Brooklyn nun from a fringe Christian sect has confessed to an unholy lie: telling cops she was sexually attacked and left unconscious in a snowbank, sources said Monday.

After a police search for a hulking black man was launched, the 26-year-old white woman from the Apostles of Infinite Love convent in East Flatbush recanted, the sources said.

She told cops she made up the story in an attempt to cover up a consensual sex romp with a bodega worker inside the Glenwood Ave. residence.

– Allison Gendar and James Fanelli, N.Y. Daily News.

Talk about burying the lead. This whole story is about the nun and how she lied to cops and how she might be part of a religious cult. But there’s absolutely nothing about the bodega employee with whom she enjoyed the “consexual sex romp.”

First of all, I worked in a deli for three years and this never happened. I even did catering set ups and deliveries while I was there, and not once did it lead to anything even remotely resembling a romp with a nun (or anyone else for that matter). Who is this bodega stud? He bedded a nun and possibly infiltrated a cult. I would like to buy a sandwich from this man, so I’d appreciate it if the Daily News could provide a little more detail.

And furthermore, by Joe Strummer’s logic, this man will later join the church in question.

Hear me say stuff

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I joined Dave Gershman on the Beyond the BoxScore podcast last night. We talked about the Mets and sandwiches. Incidentally, I have enjoyed doing a couple of podcasts lately and I’m available for all your podcasting needs. Just email me at tberg@sny.tv. Also, I can talk about more than the Mets and sandwiches. As in: Taco Bell.

Even more Madoff stuff

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Good read from the Times, though I suspect some of the reaction to it is overblown. Maybe I’m reading this through SNY-colored glasses, but I’m not entirely sure where the smoking gun is here. We knew already the Wilpons had lots of money invested with Madoff and this provides a ton of details about those investments. But if they recommended their employees also invest money with Madoff, why does that imply they were in on the scheme?

We’ve read that the Wilpons, through withdrawn interest over a long time, netted something like $40 million on an investment in the half-billion dollar range. Is that a big enough haul for billionaires (or at least people who thought at the time they were billionaires) to essentially rob their own employees? What’s the motivation there?

Seems way more likely that the Wilpons were just epically duped by Madoff. And while I’d like to think I’d be a little more skeptical of a guy claiming to return 18 percent on my giant investment, Madoff managed to steal $65 billion dollars, so he was probably a pretty convincing huckster.

Maybe it’s time to stop talking about the Johan Santana trade like it was a total steal

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Look: Johan Santana is an awesome pitcher. I love watching Johan Santana pitch. I have thoroughly enjoyed all 600 innings — even the bad ones — he has thrown in a Mets uniform.

But every time someone pens a lamentation for the Omar Minaya Era, it is qualified with an aside about Minaya’s obtaining Santana for “pennies on the dollar,” or something to that effect. (Jonah Keri’s otherwise strong writeup of the Mets’ ownership situation at Fangraphs is only the most recent example.) And I can’t see how that’s really the case.

The four young players the Mets traded for Johan Santana have not amounted to much, and may never.

But the Mets didn’t exactly trade four young players for Santana; the Mets traded four young players for the exclusive right to sign Santana to a market-rate contract. Santana was the best pitcher in the game when he was acquired, so that contract cost the Mets a lot of money.

To date, they’ve paid him $60 million. Fangraphs estimates he has been worth a little over $47 million in that time, but whatever. You pay a premium for top talent. Let’s say he has been worth it for these first three years.

On Opening Day of 2011, Santana will be 32 years old and on the disabled list recovering from shoulder surgery. And the Mets will owe him $77.5 million over the next three seasons. $77.5 million, with no guarantee he’ll ever be anything like the pitcher that dominated the National League in 2008. Will the exclusive right to give him that contract back in 2008 still seem so valuable by 2012? 2013?

And you can say: Oh but how could anyone have predicted an arm injury? Pretty easily, actually: He’s a pitcher. Pitchers get hurt, like, constantly. That’s why massive deals for free-agent pitchers tend to be bad ideas.

So while Santana has given the Mets more than the combined value of the four players they traded to the Twins, he is at this point unlikely to provide them anything like a full return on the resources they’ve invested in him. The deal seemed necessary at the time, with the Mets desperate for starting pitching and coming off the 2007 collapse, so this is not to say Minaya shouldn’t have executed it in the first place. But it’s probably time to stop talking about it like it was a total steal, since Santana’s contract seems likely to prove an albatross moving forward.

James Franco can teach you about James Franco

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Sidd passes along the news that James Franco will be teaching a class called “Editing James Franco… with James Franco.” The idea is that students have to edit together a 30-minute documentary about James Franco using footage of James Franco provided by James Franco. But then the classes are also being taped to be used in the documentary so the final product is not just a documentary about James Franco but a documentary about James Franco teaching people to make a documentary about James Franco. Crazy meta.