High and Tight.: I'm Larry Lucchino, Wah Wah Wah

I'm Larry Lucchino, Wah Wah Wah

Here we go again. Larry Lucchino and his cohorts in Beantown are crying again over the ball from the last out in the '04 World Series. Doug Mientkiewicz lent it to the Sox for a year, and now they're suing to prevent the return, which they agreed to do last year.

Here's the history:

Mientkiewicz catches baseball, Sox win, celebrate
Mientkiewicz takes ball home
Dan Shaughnessy writes a smear piece in the Boston Globe at the behest of his lover, Larry Lucchino. He takes quotes out of context, changes the nature of the statements, and runs down any contribution at all that Mientkiewicz made to the Red Sox (which is pretty much what Shaughnessy does with every former Red Sox player).
Jodi Mientkiewicz, Doug's wife, posts on the Red Sox MLB forum:
yes doug does have the ball and yes we did authenticate it after the series. thank god we did or any person off the street could claim they had the ball. we have told numerous sources since the series ended that we have the ball and not until this article have we been approached by anyone with the red sox to return it to them for a museum. furthermore, the first we heard of that was through the media and not through a personal conversation with anyone with the red sox. doug and i have no intention of selling the ball for profit. doug did say he could be bought, joking and laughing the whole time. he also said how much he knows the value of this ball and what it means to red sox nation. so before everyone goes crazy, know this, we have always had the ball, we have told other media sources we have it and they have never pitted us against the ownership. there must be some agenda here that i am unaware of but i am sure doug and the team can resolve everything and all will be happy in the end.
the irony is he (Shaughnessy) called doug to talk about the kevin/doug situation going on and doug did not want to comment about anything until theo made a decision so they started talking casually about the ball and the world series. trust me - we are no strangers to slanted journalism but i think he is going to wait til after he speaks with ownership privately before he comments publically.
this is definitely learning the hard way not to say anything in jest. When a writer calls wanting to get info on the kevin/doug debate - gets nothing from doug - then goes on to ask him what he did with the ball -when we have already told everyone. And then prints doug's lighthearted comments about being able to be bought as some statement of "ill take the highest bidder". bottom line if doug wanted to sell the ball - it would have been sold. if the red sox wanted the ball from doug - they should have asked him for it. i just had some reporter show up at my door 15 minutes ago to talk to doug. this is so exaggerated, it's ridiculous. yes ulimately doug did answer the writer's questions in a playfull manner. but if the red sox wanted this ball so badly to put in a museum, why did they wait 3 months til the week when a deicision is going to be made about trading doug or kevin to discuss it - and not with doug- but with the media?
Mientkiewicz goes on WEEI in Boston to explain that the Shaughnessy article was a complete sham.
MLB spokesman Carmine Tiso says: “Doug Mientkiewicz owns the baseball and we authenticated it. Anything beyond that would be between the Red Sox and Doug Mientkiewicz.”
Mientkiewicz agrees to lend the ball to the Sox for display for the fans for a period of one year after which the Sox will return the ball.
Sox refuse to return ball.

MLB says Mientkiewicz owns the ball. Period, end of story. It's not the property of the Boston Red Sox.. if anything MLB has a better claim to it.

Where's Charlie Hayes and the '96 ball? Did anyone care about that? I'm pretty sure Gary Carter kept the ball from the '86 World Series, when Orosco ended it with a strikeout and threw his glove in the air. Nobody's ever cared about the last out balls, except in no-hitters or perfect games or first wins of a career, but never to end a series. The Hall of Fame only has two of them on display. Cal Ripken had the ball from his Series win. He lent it permanently to an Orioles museum, but he still retains ownership.

What happened here is Lucchino apparantly decided to sick his boyfriend on Doug, or the boyfriend decided to make up a juicy story after which Lucchino decided to capitalize upon it.

In any event, shut up Red Sox. Shut up Larry Lucchino. And please shut up Shaughnessy. MLB certified it's the property of Mientkiewicz. If you had just called and asked him for it in the first place instead of throwing him under a bus, there wouldn't have been a problem.

If I'm Mientkiewicz, after all of this, I tell Lucchino to go fuck himself.

The biggest surprise of all is that I made it through this entire post and didn't once screw up the word Mientkiewicz.

posted by Mr. Faded Glory @ 11:26 AM 0 comments

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