via f3.yahoofs.com

Blame the wife! Turncoat! Turncoat!

I know I'm beating a dead horse into the ground here, but this is the last of it from me on the Tex issue, just some good insight into the bargaining process before the holidays.

According to the Boston Globe, Tex's wife, Leigh, convinced him the Yanks were the way to go:

"Two weeks before Christmas, I talked to [my wife] Leigh about it again, and we kind of decided that, hey, the Yankees are where we want to be. Cash [Brian Cashman] might want to give Leigh a hug, because when I asked her during the process, 'Where should I go, where should I go?,' she'd always say, 'I just want you to be happy.' Finally she said, 'I want you to be a Yankee,' and it was a done deal."

But we can't let him scapegoat her that much, because the 'life-long Orioles fan' also laid down this gem for the NYY glitterati:

"My dad would take me to O's games and I'd wear a Yankees hat, which wasn't too safe in Baltimore back in the '80s. But it was worth it. There's something about being a Yankee, no where you are there are Yankees fans, and I'm glad to be a Yankee today."

Oh, it continues: "In my mind, the Yankees were always the top."

The best quote from Boras: "Obviously, in my business, you're either called a shopper or a puffer; one of the two, you're going to be labeled with. "

I think it's safe to call him both.

UPDATE: Revised so you can witness Leigh Teixeira's input on the matter.

Breaking News: The Yankees have reached an agreement in principle to sign Mark Teixeira, SI.com has learned, beating out the rival Red Sox for the free-agent slugger's services.

Teixeira, who hit .308 with 33 home runs and 121 RBIs in 2008, will receive an eight-year, $180 million deal from the Yankees with a full no-trade provision.

The final four teams in the race to sign Teixeira were the Red Sox, Angels, Nationals and Yankees.

Sports Illustrated link.

UPDATE (zk): Confirmed by the NY Times:

The Yankees agreed to terms with the free agent first baseman Mark Teixeira on a long-term contract, according to a person in baseball familiar with the matter. 

UPDATE #2: According to The Associated Press, the deal is for 8 years, $180M.

UPDATE #3: MacPhail weighs in (Sun):

"We would have loved to have had the player, who appealed to us because of the special circumstances of where he's from and where we are. We diverted from our plan to try to get him," Orioles president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail said. "But at the end of the day, it was just too much to pay for one player. It would handicap our ability to go forward."

If I'm sharing something terribly corny here, sue me. I just got this in an email and thought some of you would enjoy it, though it's been done in various renditions over the years. 

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Yahoo! Sports' Big League Stew blog is one of my daily required reads. Here's an excerpt of an interview with Moose.

Q: Does Baltimore seem like a million years ago?

MM: Yes and no. When you play a long time, the seasons kind of mesh together, but the eight years in New York — now that I sit here — have flown by. For that reason,Baltimore seems like it was just yesterday. But then you think about all the things we've done in the past eight years here — trips to the playoffs — yeah, it seems like a long time ago. There's hardly anyone over there on the other side (Baltimore) — a couple of trainers and a coach or two — that I remember. Other than that, everybody's different. It was a long time ago and it was yesterday.

Q: Why don't people go to Orioles games anymore?

MM: I don't think fourth place every year really brings in the fans.

Q: But that was a place to be.

MM: It was a place to be, but when they built the new stadium, for the next five or six years, there was excitement because it was a new place to watch games and also the team was competitive. It was at or near the top. But that changed in the late '90s and it hasn't gone back since.

MM: Oh, I don't know. I didn't have anything to Compare it to back then, and now I'm older. It probably added a couple, but there's a lot smaller ballparks out there these days than Camden Yards.

Q: Do you dislike that some Orioles fans look upon you as traitorous?

MM: Traitorous, yeah [nodding head]. No. The people who grew up loving the Orioles in Baltimore, it seems like, once you go and play for that team, "Why would you ever want to leave?" When you're a player, you have to take other things into account. I had to take other things into account. It was time to try something new, so I did.

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At the end of last night's game, I declared everyone in sight (that is to say, everyone on my TV screen) Birdland. Except Freddy Bynum (which generally goes without saying). And my DVR, which, when I tried to skip through the pitching change as Valverde was coming in, decided to jump back to the fourth inning, forcing me to fast forward through 6 innings, just to do the same thing again.

Finally, I get to Melvin Mora's at-bat, begging him to repeat Tuesday's act of beauty, and it happens. And Millar pulls out of his slump with his terrible crisis hair. What a game, what a team.

Melvin Mora is Birdland. So is Millar (for now ... maybe no longer if he loses the hair). Guthrie is more Birdland than anyone I know. He is my favorite baseball player and pitched an amazing game.  Thanks, Valverde, for giving us two in a row, what with your just-got-discharged-from-the-insane-asylum hair and eyes. I hope we never make a mistake and sign you, no matter how desperate for pitching we might be.

Thorne and Palmer are TOTALLY Birdland. Talking about Palmer's bobblehead and potential litigation was hysterical. And, yes, even Amber Theoharis is Birdland, because I'm developing a crush on her.

Along with Bynum and my DVR failing to meet Birdland specifications was Sarfate. Congrats on the baby, pal, but never, NEVER, pick up a microphone again. That was the worst interview I've heard since Ma$e was Puffy's sidekick.

Looking forward to attending tonight's game and not being too late to collect my Kakes bobblehead. More than that, let's get the broom out for the sweep!!!

Maybe Yahoo! isn't so bad after all. The Big League Stew blog was kind enough to point out that you, too, can have your own taste of Oriole Magic for free on your cell. Now the site you download it from sounds shady, but if anyone has the stones to try it and it works, let us know!

I'm slightly afraid to branch into the world of ringtones and things of that nature, but I'd love to have some of that Magic on my celly.

I might be breaking the rules of Camden Chat by going outside of Baltimore for the topic, but we are talking AL East here, so I'm taking my chances.

If you didn't hear about (or didn't see) the brawl last night in the second inning, here's the awesome video . This beats ESPN highlights, as it is 3:42 of absolute chaos. Two nights ago, Coco Crisp slid into second in what was considered by TB to be an attempt to cut Rays 2B Akinori Iwamura in two. This after Boston was already well into their lead.

On Crisp's first at-bat last night, Rays P James Shields went inside and caught Crisp on the hip with a pitch. Coco being cuckoo dropped his bat, tossed his helmet, and charged the mound. Crisp, in a move worthy of a featherweight title fight (he's a little guy), dodged Shields' first punch. The retaliatory punch looks to have caught Shields on the back.

The benches cleared, Iwamura got a couple punches in, Carl Crawford and Julio Lugo got in late and looking stupid, and Francona got to pat his squirrelly little thug on the back all the way to the dugout. I must say that Tampa Bay is brawling their way into the annals of MLB history, following up on a Yankees brawl (again starting with Iwamura) early in spring training.

And, on top of it all, apparently Manny and Youkilis went at it, with each other, in the dugout in the fourth! No fisticuffs, just words, but reports state that Manny "pointed at Youkilis before being escorted down the runway toward the clubhouse[.]"  My analysis is that Manny was calling his shot.

Now all we have to do, Baltimore, is wait until these teams kill each other, then we win our division by default, right?

A story over at Yahoo! talks about the lack of O's fans at this weekend's Sox series. Me being me, I had to throw in my two cents, which takes up the space of several comments. I'll recite my opinion (as contained in the comments to the original story) about the article's thesis here:

"O's fan here. I go to 10 or so games per year, and the decline in attendance by orioles fans has been consistent over the last few losing seasons. Let's be clear that it is utterly demoralizing to sit in your home stadium and be outnumbered by the swarm of locusts that might otherwise be described as Yankees fans or the red sea of Sox fans. More importantly, however, it's defeating to watch your team struggle to keep its neck above .500.

As a rule, fair weather or steadfast, fans don't stick behind a losing team. No one will describe themselves as a fair weather fan, but ask the capacity crowd of 1993 or 1994 why they aren't in attendance now, and the answer will be "The owner doesn't care about his team" or "How can we stay behind a team that hasn't won in ten years?" So, up to this point, i agree with the comment from 'mariner in exile' above [see the Yahoo post's comments].

No one seems to be considering the addition of the Nationals to Washington as an attendance crusher. The O's enjoyed 30 years of being the only team in the mid-atlantic, but now must compete with the Nats.

All of this attendance business behind me, as a true fan of the game (and not just winning teams), I see the O's as a tenacious bunch who struggle in the hardest (or, at least the wealthiest) division in baseball and consistently challenge the high payroll of the Evil Empire. O's/Yanks games tend to be great opportunities for situational baseball.

Winning seasons or not, I cannot get enough of players like Jeremy Guthrie, who, with run support, could put up numbers better than many of the pitchers in his division. I even like Ramon Hernandez, who just needs to learn how to pick off would-be base stealers. And Dave Trembley has proven himself as a skipper with the heart this team needs. I'll stand behind this team whether they win or not as long as they play their hearts out."

. . . I anticipate some lambasting from people here on Camden Chat, but wanted to share the story and my take on it.