- Quite an exit from baseball for one of its supposed legendary managers. In the midst of one of his worst seasons as a manager, Chicago Cubs skipper Lou Piniella retired following Sunday's game against the Atlanta Braves to spend more time with his family. Uh huh, sure you didn’t, Lou. Pinella had already announced his retirement, effective at season’s end, earlier in the season. Since then, the team has tanked in spectacular fashion and after a 16-5 beatdown in today’s contest with Atlanta, stand at an underwhelming 51-74, a whopping 21 games out of first place and perilously close to last place in the six-team National League Central division. After reaching the playoffs (and flaming out in the first round) each of his first two seasons with the Cubs but failing to make the postseason last year, Pinella has all but slapped a 44-cent stamp on this season and mailed it in. His high-priced roster has drastically underachieved and Pinella has done little to shake them from their doldrums. He finishes his managerial career with a record of 1,835-1,713, ranking fourth among active managers in wins. The Cubs have named third base coach Mike Quade manager for the remaining 38 games of the season, starting Monday at Washington. The obvious upside is that Quade can’t possibly do any worse than Pinella, who seemed disinterested for much of the year as his team floundered in all aspects of the game. By the way, the “spend more time with the family” excuse is the same one that current Orlando Magic and former Miami Heat head coach Stan “Ron Jeremy” Van Gundy used when Pat Riley knifed him in the back and came down from the front office to hijack the team’s coaching job because he saw the potential of a roster than ultimately won the 2006 NBA title. So you’ll have to forgive me if I have a tough time swallowing that excuse from Lou or anyone else. What, there’s something you have to do with your family right now that you couldn’t do in about five weeks once the season ends? "When I previously announced my intentions to retire at the end of the season, a primary reason for my decision was that it would allow me to spend more valuable time with my family," said Piniella, a veteran of 22 years as a Major League manager, said in a statement Sunday. "That time has unfortunately gotten here sooner than I could have ever expected." He leaves the Cubs with a record of 316-292, but his tenure there has to be regarded as a failure based on the past two seasons and the results of the two teams he did manage to lead to the playoffs. "As many know, the several weeks since that announcement was made have been very difficult on a family level, requiring two leaves of absence from the club," Piniella said. "While I fully intended to manage this club the rest of the season, a family situation at home now requires my full attention." Now, there may well be an illness or personal crisis that necessitates him being there right away and if that’s the case, Pinella made the right call. I just know that this season doesn’t exactly put a great capper on what may well be a hall of fame career. For a guy who made five trips to the World Series in his career, has three championship rings, was the AL Rookie of the Year in 1969, played 18 years in the majors and managed for 22 years with a World Series win in 1990, going out as the subpar manager for an underperforming team of overpaid slackers and slugs just doesn’t seem right………
- This should be interesting….and by interesting, I mean contentious, bitter and hostile to the ugly end. The instigator in question is a regular airline route from Caracas, Venezuela to Tehran, Iran. That sounds like a Terror Express flight if I’ve ever heard it, or perhaps a Dictator’s Delight direct flight from the capital city governed by egomaniacal Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez to the capital city ruled by homicidal, bloodthirsty Iranian despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Conviasa flight has come under fire from the U.S. because both nations are classified as state sponsors of terrorism. Members of Congress have voiced concern over the flights, especially U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, D-New York, who raised questions about the flights in an interview last week. Those comments and the general U.S. opposition to the regular flights between the two cities prompted a staunch response from Venezuela's ambassador to the United States in defense of the controversial airline service to the capitals of Syria and Iran. Oh that’s right, I forgot to mention that Conviasa also flies to Damascus, which seems to portend problems as well. In its latest country report on terrorism, which covers 2009, the State Department declared, "President [Hugo] Chavez continued to strengthen Venezuela's relationship with state sponsor of terrorism Iran. Iran and Venezuela continued weekly Conviasa flights connecting Tehran and Damascus with Caracas." That’s actually toned down from a 2007 report, which raised concerns about just who could be traveling on those flights between Tehran and Caracas. "Passengers on these flights were not subject to immigration and customs controls at Simon Bolivar International Airport" in Caracas, the report noted. Also cited in the report was Abdul Kadir, who was convicted this month of plotting a 2007 attack on fuel pipelines for New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and bought a ticket on the disputed route in 2007. His arrest came on a plane bound for Caracas, and never made his connection for the flight to Iran (making tight connections are already a bitch, let alone when on a terror mission). Engel made the most pointed American comments on the situation last week, saying, "I am very troubled about the flights into Damascus and Caracas. I believe that Iran is the largest supporter of terrorism of any country on the face of the earth." That elicited a written response from Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez Herrera in defense of the state-owned airline, Conviasa. "There is absolutely nothing untoward about these flights -- which take place between two countries that have shared diplomatic relations for over 50 years," Herrera wrote in the letter. "One can also fly to Tehran from Frankfurt, Germany, amongst other cities, so I still remain confused as to why this should be of any concern. Should you or your staff want to see for yourself, I greatly encourage you to take one of the flights." Simply put, Mr. Ambassador, Frankfurt isn’t in the United States and until it is, we Americans aren’t concerned with who can fly there. Some of the more alarmist thinkers and worrywarts out there fret that passengers on the flight from Iran and Syria could include "people who probably ... are intelligence agents, probably Islamic Revolutionary Guards forces, Quds force, even Hezbollah terrorists." To which I ask a simple question: Do these dangerous men and women hog the armrest, snore, have crying babies that squawk for the duration of the flight and spend an ungodly amount of time in the airplane restroom when you’re in line for it? If not, then I don’t know if I have any beef with these flights………
- Could it be? Could disgraced former Illinois governor/reality show competitor/federal indictee Rod Blagojevich actually be plotting a return to politics? According to my man R. Blagojevich and his magnificent head of hair, the answer is yes. Even though he’s just a few days removed from temporarily skating on 23 of the 24 federal corruption charges against him, Blagojevich is on the record as saying that once the government makes good on its vow to retry him on the charges that his federal jury deadlocked on in the first trial, he will consider a return to politics. "My adult life was serving the people as a congressman, as a governor. It's what I know," Blagojevich said on "Fox News Sunday." "I'm not ruling myself out as coming back, because I will be vindicated in this case. I'm significantly closer to vindication than I ever was." Wowsers, that is a quick turnaround. Seriously, most people would be thrilled and relieved to have beaten 23 of 24 federal counts against them and only be convicted on one of the most minor charges, but Rod Blagojevich is clearly no ordinary individual. Rather than appreciate the fact that one pigheaded, head-in-the-sand idiot of a juror refused to admit what the evidence presented in the case clearly spelled out and would not vote from a conviction, he is taking the decision as evidence that he never did anything wrong in attempting to sell President Barack Obama's former senate seat. Sure, the government presented evidence that obviously proved its case, including phone calls in which Blagojevich said there was no way he was going to allow a valuable piece of property like a vacant Senate seat “to go for nothing.” The jubilant words of his attorneys, who boasted about how little they had done to put on a defense of their client (an odd boast from a lawyer) seem to have infected Blagojevich’s dome and he is confident that he will be acquitted the second time around. He also hinted at what sort of defense his legal team would put on at such a trial (assuming they bother with mounting a defense at all), saying that defense would include calling big names such as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Sens. Harry Reid and Robert Menendez to the stand. "I'm ready for Round 2," Blagojevich said. And we’re all ready for one of the most corrupt politicians of our time to get right back into the mud, filth and sliminess of politics where he belongs……….
- Cameron Diaz? Seriously? When I think of hot chicks likely to be the single most-dangerous search query on the Internet, no offense to Diaz, but her name wouldn’t crack my top 50. The woman has had a string of terrible movies rivaling nearly everyone outside of the immortal Pauly Shore and she’s still the celebrity that got the most Internet users in trouble when searching for her name? Not Scarlett Johansson or Jessica Biel? Not Jessica Alba or Yvonne Strahovski of Chuck fame? Apparently not, at least not if you believe anti-virus firm McAfee, which did its annual study on the most dangerous names to search for online and landed Diaz in the top spot. So how to hackers use Diaz’s name to inflict their damage? Through a technique known as search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning, in which hackers trick search engines to pump up their malicious links - disguised as promises for celebrity gossip, revealing pictures or embarrassing videos. Your odds for landing on a harmful link when searching for Diaz were 10 percent, enough to place her at the top of the list. Next on the list, stunningly, was another past-her-prime, mediocre actress in Julia Roberts. In third place was one of the names I mentioned as one that should have been at the top of the list, Jessica Biel. She actually was last year’s most dangerous search, so perhaps hackers figured people were wising up to their schemes and needed to pin their hopes on someone that would be totally unexpected (David Hasselhoff, anyone?). Filling out the rest of the top ten were expected names like Mrs. Tom Brady, a.k.a. supermodel Gisele Bundchen, Brad Pitt, Adriana Lima, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, Heidi Klum, Penélope Cruz and Anna Paquin. They all easily outpaced political figures like Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, who held down positions 49 and 50, respectively. Some would argue that Sarah Palin is malware all by herself, no Internet necessary………
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