Monday, August 08, 2005

Spoiling the broth

The New York Magazine article on Gary Sheffield has just been published. A good article, but a bit of a letdown, I guess -- we've already heard the juicy parts, and I'm a little bummed that I don't despise him any more than I did before. In fact, in some parts he actually doesn't seem quite as odious as I like to imagine he is. (Since then, his assertion that he was miquoted puts the whole thing in a somewhat funnier light. The magazine insists it's all on tape -- I wish they'd put the audio on the web, just to embarrass him.) Choice quotes from the article:
Sheffield seems genuinely naïve about how his more incendiary comments will be interpreted. “Tell me something,” he says. “How come I talk to reporters, tell them the truth, but they treat me worse than the guys who say nothing?” And there is Gary Sheffield’s dilemma: Not only does he play on a team with A-Rod and Jeter, baseball’s Glimmer Twins, but what he thinks of as Gary’s just being honest, others interpret as, well, Gary’s being an asshole.

Sheffield tithes a sizable portion of his annual $13 million in earnings to his church. In the winters, he takes his kids to Aspen and ignores a no-ski clause in his contract. “How can you say ‘I can’t go skiing’ to your children?” he asks.

“People say about me, ‘He’s moody,’ but I don’t see them in the same mood every day. Some days I feel like talking, some days I don’t. Some days I don’t feel like looking at you. I’m tired of looking at you.”
There's some discussion of race in there, which is clearly something he spends a lot of time thinking about, but it doesn't seem he has a huge chip on his shoulder about it. (For more good reading check out the two-part Bonds excerpt from Howard Bryant's Juicing the Game, over at Bronx Banter.)

What most annoyed me about the article is that Sheff teases us with some insider knowledge:
“I know who the leader is on the team. I ain’t going to say who it is, but I know who it is. I know who the team feeds off. I know who the opposing team comes in knowing they have to defend to stop the Yankees.”
But he never tells us who it is! C'mon Sheff, don't leave us in suspense! Who is it? Tony Womack? Wayne Franklin? Rey Sanchez? This is killing me!

6 comments:

  1. I have a question. It states that "Sheffield tithes a sizable portion of his annual $13 million in earnings to his church."

    Isn't the definition of a tithe 10% of your earnings. So wouldn't someone, by definition, either tithe or not tithe. How do you tithe a portion of you earnings?

    If that is the case, then I could accurately claim that I tithe a portion of my salary to the american red cross since I did give $100 to the tsunami relief fund. Technically I tithed the first $1,000 of my earnings.

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  2. Wow, it is, but I didn't know that. I thought it was just some arbitrary fraction. So it's a weird sentence...But it does say he tithes a "sizable portion" of his $13M -- I'd think that's at least a few hundred G's, which translates as a lot to a church.

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  3. that is sarcasm at the end of that, right? Obviously Gary is trying to say that he is the one everyone feeds off of. And he may be right. While I know he has competition, he is clearly the biggest asshole on the team. The leader is usually the one vibing off the most energy... unfortunately it doesn't matter what kind. Everyone can see that gary is teeming with negativity out of every pore. And since he is such a jerk, it's not surprise that he would be the one that opposing teams would be the most motivated to beat.

    The tithe thing is funny. Possibly the writer and/or gary have no idea that this is specifically meaning ten percent. Plenty of people give more than that, in an income situation like gary's. Often not because they actually want to help, but because it gives them a tax break. Leave it to shef to brag on it. He probably actually thinks this makes him a good person.

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  4. Yes, don't worry, it was sarcasm. Everyone knows the only thing holding the Yankees together right now is Aaron Small.

    (The sad thing is, that's almost not sarcasm.)

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  5. Earl, don't be messing with me. My $100 is a very significant contribution. You know for that same $100 I could buy a months labor of Nike employee in SE Asia. Or approximately 101 taco bell bean burritos. Or 5 lap dances from Domino at DejaVu.

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  6. ...or seven gallons of gas, if current trends hold.

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