Randy Levine and Donald Trump, what a combo. Very rarely do
we mix politics and sports here on the blog, they usually don’t mix well, but
today we will because someone in the Yankees front office is talking about it.
Randy Levine, the President of the New York Yankees, is accusing GOP party
insiders of “foul” play as they attempt to keep Trump from winning the
presidential nomination. Dirty play in politics, say it ain’t so. Randy Levine
complaining, say it ain’t so.
I’m not a big fan of Levine’s, you guys reading this
probably already know that, but I am a fan of Trump. I don’t necessarily agree
with or even like a lot of the things that Trump says for a plethora of reasons
but there is one thing I like about Trump, he tells it like it is. He is not a
politician and I truly believe that he will not be bought out if he wins the
election. I think this country needs some radical change and I think the
country needs someone who isn’t a politician, whether that be Bernie Sanders or
Trump (or my original favorite Dr. Ben Carson). No president is going to get
everything they promise to get done accomplished and a president with these
radical ideas likely won’t get far but it will set the precedence and the tone
for years to come. I’m thinking long term picture here but anyway I’m getting
away from the point, here is the quote from Levine on the GOP and Trump:
"If a candidate garners the greatest number of votes,
he or she should get the majority of delegates. That's the way elections are
supposed to work," Levine wrote. "You win or lose on the field or at
the ballot box. It is OK to play as a spoiler, as many teams do to affect the
final standings, but if that is your goal you should acknowledge it."
This is going to go down to the wire, Game 162 if you will,
and it’s going to get dirty. Watch it as it all unfolds because this is going
to be one of the biggest elections of our lifetime’s folks. Oh and Randy
Levine, shhhhhhhh. And everyone reading, please be nice in the comments section
and on Twitter (@GreedyStripes) as my intention was not to incite a riot here.
This post will likely decide whether more posts like it come on the blog.
The Tampa Bay Rays along with a few ambassadors from Major
League Baseball and the United States are prepping for a historical trip to
Havana, Cuba to take on the Cuban national team. This will mark the first time
a MLB team has set foot on Cuban soil since the Baltimore Orioles did it in
1999. The Rays are heading down along with former Yankees Joe Torre and Derek
Jeter but the man who may throw out the first pitch is none other than Barack
Obama, the President of the United States. Obama, a southpaw, didn’t play much
baseball growing up as a kid in Hawaii and Chicago but thankfully for him he
got some advice from key MLB players including our very own CC Sabathia.
The Associated Press asked a collections of MVP’s and former
Cy Young Award winning All-Stars to critique Obama’s last ceremonial first
pitch and Sabathia had some advice for the President. “He looked good, I mean
up until his windup and everything” said Sabathia. The Yankees lefty also went
on to say “get the ball down in the zone.”
David Price also suggested a “free and easy” relaxed
delivery to Obama and warned him “don’t bounce it.” Madison Bumgarner, the San
Francisco Giants ace, suggested something easier said than done for some. “Just
throw a strike.” My own suggestion to the President? Don’t pull a 50 Cent.
Major League Baseball is preparing a historical and
significant trip to the island country of Cuba this month and they are
bringing some big shots with them. When it was announced that the Tampa Bay
Rays would face off with the Cuban National Team in Havana on March 22 of this
season the President of the United States Barack Obama almost immediately threw
his name in the hat and booked a seat along for the ride with the league and
the Rays and now a notable baseball legend is coming as well. His name is Derek
Jeter.
Derek Jeter will join a group headlined by Cuban greats Luis
Tiant and Jose Cardenal as a part of the first exhibition in Cuba since 1999.This will mark Jeter's first major public appearance since he retirement in 2014 and speculation has already begun as to why Jeter wants to go. The main speculation is that Jeter wants to one day own a MLB team, but again that is simply speculation. Jeter will be joined by MLB personnel including former manager Joe Torre.
This was already going to be epic but that just got taken up by about ten notches, at least.
The Tampa Bay Rays, along with a little help from President
Barack Obama, will visit the native land of Cuba later this month to play the
first exhibition MLB game on the countries soil in quite some time. Major
League Baseball has announced that the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national
team will play an exhibition game between the two teams on March 22, 2016
inside the historic Estadio Latinamericano in Havana, Cuba.
The last time an MLB team was in Cuba was 1999 when the
Baltimore Orioles took on the Cuban national team in Havana. This meeting will
mark the first between the two countries since the U.S and Cuba announced plans
to normalize relations between each other.
This is a historic event and an exciting event for all fans
of the game. Frankly, I can’t wait!
It is nearly 10 at night, and I am riding in the passenger seat of my dad's car along the long, dark stretch of I-95 between Washington, D.C., and New Jersey. We're listening to country music, and we're both too emotionally spent to really have a conversation. Because, wedged between our duffel bags in the back seat, in a glossy mahogany box with a bronze nameplate on its front, is my Grampa's Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Depending on how you look at it, the Presidential Medal of Freedom that my late grandfather, Yogi Berra, was presented on Tuesday, was either six months or 90 years in the making. It was last May that we started the online petition on whitehouse.gov to nominate Grampa for the medal, in celebration of his 90th birthday. Getting those 100,000 signatures in 30 days is something my family is incredibly proud of, and we then spent the summer writing letters to the president to keep it at the top of his mind. I remember one July afternoon, reading Grampa a portion of a letter I would send to Obama to try to expedite the process. "You'd better be careful," Grampa said, "insulting the king."
Grampa passed away on September 22nd, a month before we were notified by the White House that he would receive the medal. The news then was bittersweet; I was so sad that Grampa would not be able to get the medal in person, but so, so proud that he would receive the honor.al of Freedom
President Obama honors Yogi Berra with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, accepted in his honor by Larry Berra
On Tuesday at the White House, my emotions were much the same. I watched the president shake my father's hand and give him that box that now rests in our back seat. I imagined my grandfather getting the Medal himself, having to remove his ever-present Yankee cap to have it draped around his neck, and I cried, still feeling a bit like I'd come up short for a man who never came up short for anyone in his life. But I was also immensely proud to see my father, beaming, representing my grandfather, on a golden stage filled with luminaries and dignitaries, between those two famous, gilt-framed pictures of George and Martha Washington in the East Wing.
The charismatic President Obama is a pro at these things and did not disappoint. He went off-teleprompter frequently, ad-libbing comments and jokes, and did a wonderful job of keeping the ceremony funny and entertaining while also making it touching and poignant.
My dad thinks Grampa would have been overwhelmed by the honor, and would wonder why he belonged in company with NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson or world-renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman. And Dad is probably right; despite the number of lives he touched for the better, Grampa didn't think of himself as an above-average American citizen. He just did his best on the battlefield and the ballfield and did his best to be a good man.
Still, he would have enjoyed the company. Grampa had met director Steven Spielberg on numerous occasions, and they could have caught up. He would have chatted with Spielberg's wife, the actress Kate Capshaw, about their shared hometown of St. Louis; up until Capshaw's mother passed away two years ago, she frequented Tony's restaurant on The Hill, one of my grandparents' favorite haunts.
Johnson could have expressed her admiration for my plucky Grampa to him rather than to my dad and me, and Perlman could have told him his stories about watching him and the Yankees play in the early 60s. 2015
Grampa would no doubt have loved to see his long-time pal Willie Mays, who accepted his medal in his Giants' cap; like Grampa's Yankee cap, that hat is as much a part of who Willie is as his DNA. Those two Hall of Famers would have talked the day away; I've never seen a picture of them in which they weren't both smiling ear-to-ear.
And I have no doubt Grampa was smiling down on us.He would have laughed at my history-buff father, who took pictures of every White House painting of every president and first lady, of the chandelier in the library that once belonged to James Fenimore Cooper, of George Washington's sword on the wall. He would have given me a thumbs-up for wearing a leopard-print top in homage to my very stylish Grammy Carmen. And he would have loved the orchestra playing scores from Stephen Sondheim's musicals and Spielberg's movies in the Grand Foyer.
I know Grampa would have enjoyed President Obama's sense of humor as he chided the medal recipients. When he talked about Grampa, the president said, "He lived his life with pride and humility and an original, open mind." That was Grampa, to a T. President Obama also said, "What can be said about Lawrence 'Yogi' Berra that he couldn't say better himself?" I am certain, though, that Grampa would have come up with a gem. And I am doubly certain that as Grampa strolled into the Green Room to take his picture with the president, who arrived a few minutes behind schedule after a day of meetings with French President Francois Hollande, he would have tapped his watch and said, "You're late."
Instead, it was my dad and me, along with my uncles Tim and Dale and aunts Jane and Betsy, who shook hands with President Obama and received big, hearty, I've-known-you-for-years kind of hugs from First Lady Michelle Obama. The president expressed his condolences on the loss of my grandfather and said he had just assumed Grampa had already received a medal of Freedom.
I'm OK with that, the fact that the President of the United States thought enough of my Grampa to think he must have been awarded our nation's greatest civilian honor sometime in the past. And I've come to terms with the fact that Grampa finally received his medal posthumously, because Grampa wasn't the man he was because he thought it would earn him a Medal. He simply was who he was.
Still, I'm thrilled about that piece of hardware sitting in the back seat. Soon, we'll deliver it to the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center, where the 20,000 school kids who visit each year can see it for exactly what it is: an exclamation point at the end of my Grampa Yogi's amazing, exemplary life.
Lindsay Berra is a columnist for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
We got a response to our signatures on the petition to get Yogi Berra a Presidential Medal of Freedom Award, sort of anyway. Here's the email we all presumably got yesterday afternoon.
A Response to Your Petition on Yogi Berra and the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Thanks for signing this petition about considering Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra for the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- America's highest civilian honor.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom was established more than 50 years ago by President John F. Kennedy through Executive Order 11085. The Presidential Medal of Freedom has been presented to more than 500 individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, or cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."
Each year, a new round of honorees are presented with the award. Recipients have ranged from world leaders like President Bill Clinton, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Mother Teresa, to pop culture and sports icons like Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey, and Ernie Banks. President Obama has described Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients as having "lived extraordinary lives that have inspired us, enriched our culture, and made our country and our world a better place."
When President Barack Obama announced that the United States
government and the Cuban government would begin talks and actions to eliminate
the embargo and improve diplomatic relations between the two countries the
baseball community went into a frenzy. Major League Baseball, more than the
NFL, the NBA, or any other sport combined sees more Cuban defectors come to the
United States to play their game so many around the league, fans and owners
alike, wondered what this could mean to the game. One interesting change and
addition that could come of it could be having spring training games,
exhibition games or even regular season games inside the country of Cuba. These
changes were thought to be many years down the road but after Rob Manfred
talked to the United State government about playing exhibition games in Cuba we
may be closer than we originally thought.
Of course Manfred would be a fool to speculate on a
time frame for this to happen, and apparently he isn’t a fool because he refused
to specify a time frame when asked about the subject, the MLB Commissioner seems
to be really pushing for this to happen. Why wouldn’t he? There was 25 Cuban
born players in the major leagues last season including Yasiel Puig, Yoenis
Cespedes and the American League Rookie of the Year Jose Abreu.
This wouldn’t be the first time MLB visited Cuba as the
Baltimore Orioles played the Cuban national team in Havana in March of 1999 and
major league teams visited Cuba a lot before Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959.
Major League Baseball has hosted exhibition games in Panama and Mexico City
while playing regular season games in Puerto Rico, Tokyo, Monterrey, Mexico,
San Juan and Sydney just in the past 15 years ad with Cuba a mere 90 miles from
the tip of Florida we may be adding Cuba to that already pretty impressive list
very, very soon.
