Blogging for the enemy?

Say it ain't so, Pete.

Congratulations to Pete Abraham and to the Boston Globe.

Red Sox last minute heroics

Recently, I called the Red Sox players mensches for taking a stand and refusing to go to Japan unless coaches and trainers got the same deal they did.

Turns out, they didn't think it was such a bad deal when they agreed to it in the first place. It seems that only after they started getting questions about it did they realize how bad they were going to look and decided to take their stand. In so doing, they violated the terms of their labor agreement with management.

Red Sox players appeared to be heroes last week when they staged a 66-minute strike in support of equal pay for managers, coaches and trainers for their season-opening trip to Japan. They were, as it turns out, less than heroes.

By threatening not to play that day’s exhibition game against Toronto and not to board the plane to Japan after the game, they did two things: They railed against the deal the union made with the commissioner’s office because that was the deal the players wanted, and they violated federal labor law and their own collective bargaining agreement.

The players wanted $40,000 each for going to Japan, and the only way the union could get that much was to drop managers, coaches and trainers from the agreement. That decision didn’t bother the commissioner’s office, because it didn’t think those extra people should be included. Under labor law, unions aren’t permitted to bargain for supervisory personnel.

But when the Red Sox’ players learned of the exclusions, they refused to play the exhibition game and said they wouldn’t board the Japan-bound plane.

In taking that stand, however, they were staging an illegal strike because they were violating the no-strike provision that is implied in their labor contract. They were also violating federal labor law.

I understand my beloved Yankees, when they were offered a similar deal a few years ago, divided the total sum up evenly for all members of the team, including the trainers and coaches. That's why God loves them so much.

Rudy and Bernie and The Red Sox

Nothing is more illuminating of the character of Rudolph Giuliani than his creepy relationship with Bernard Kerik. The Times story today gives a great background on the history of that relationship and Giuliani's odd loyalty to his noxious friend.

In December 2004, President Bush nominated Mr. Kerik, a former New York police commissioner, to head the federal Department of Homeland Security. Seven days later, Mr. Kerik withdrew as a nominee.

A cascade of questions followed about his judgment as a public official, not least that he had inappropriately lobbied city officials on behalf of Interstate Industrial, a construction firm suspected of links to organized crime. Mr. Giuliani defended Mr. Kerik, a friend and business partner, whom he had recommended to the Bush administration. But he also tried to shield himself from accusations that he had ignored Mr. Kerik’s failings.

“I was not informed of it,” Mr. Giuliani said then, when asked if he had been warned about Mr. Kerik’s relationship with Interstate before appointing him to the police post in 2000.

Mr. Giuliani amended that statement last year in testimony to a state grand jury. He acknowledged that the city investigations commissioner, Edward J. Kuriansky, had told him that he had been briefed at least once. The former mayor said, though, that neither he nor any of his aides could recall being briefed about Mr. Kerik’s involvement with the company.

But a review of Mr. Kuriansky’s diaries, and investigators’ notes from a 2004 interview with him, now indicate that such a session indeed took place. What is more, Mr. Kuriansky also recalled briefing one of Mr. Giuliani’s closest aides, Dennison Young Jr., about Mr. Kerik’s entanglements with the company just days before the police appointment, according to the diaries he compiled at the time and his later recollection to the investigators.

The additional evidence raises questions not only about the precision of Mr. Giuliani’s recollection, but also about how a man who proclaims his ability to pick leaders came to overlook a jumble of disturbing information about Mr. Kerik, even as he pushed him for two crucial government positions.

“Rudy can fall for people big time, and sometimes qualifications are secondary to loyalty,” said Fran Reiter, a former Giuliani deputy mayor who now supports Hillary Clinton. “If he gets it in his head he trusts you, he is extremely loyal.”

Mr. Giuliani has routinely met loyalty with loyalty, standing by political allies and friends in their darkest hours. Giuliani Partners, for example, his consulting firm, employs a high school friend, Msgr. Alan Placa, despite allegations that he sexually molested young men years ago.

Mr. Giuliani has said he believes in his friend, who has denied the allegations and was not criminally charged.

In Mr. Kerik’s case, by the time Mr. Giuliani recommended him for the federal job, his administration knew that Mr. Kerik had acted on behalf of Interstate Industrial. It also knew that he had drawn criticism for a range of other incidents, from sending detectives to search for his lover’s cellphone to using officers to research his autobiography.

And creepy that relationship was.

The men who would become patron and protégé first met at a fund-raiser in 1990 in New Jersey honoring a slain New York City police officer.

Mr. Kerik was a comic book hero come to life, a decorated undercover detective with a ponytail and earrings, thick biceps and a taste for four-letter words as nouns, verbs and adjectives. He cultivated relationships with powerful people, including an influential sheriff who five years earlier had made him the youngest jail warden in the history of Passaic County, N.J.

When Mr. Giuliani ran for mayor in 1993, Mr. Kerik organized his security detail of off-duty officers, reserving the weekend shift for himself.

When Mr. Giuliani became mayor, he gave Mr. Kerik a job in the Correction Department. A year later, the mayor asked him to drop by Gracie Mansion.

The two men sat upstairs and shared a bottle of red wine, a gift to the mayor from Nelson Mandela. Mr. Giuliani said he planned to appoint Mr. Kerik as first deputy correction commissioner.

Mr. Kerik, who wrote of this in his autobiography, “The Lost Son,” was taken aback; he was a year removed from being a police detective.

“Mayor, I appreciate your confidence in me, I really do,” he said. “But I ran a jail. One jail. Rikers is like 10 jails.”

Just do it, the mayor replied.

Mr. Kerik followed Mr. Giuliani downstairs to a dimly lighted room. There waited Mr. Giuliani’s boyhood chum Peter J. Powers, who was first deputy mayor, and other aides. One by one, they pulled Mr. Kerik close and kissed his cheek.

“I wonder if he noticed how much becoming part of his team resembled becoming part of a mafia family,” Mr. Kerik wrote. “I was being made.”

Giuliani's attraction to the comic book hero is similar to Bush's who also decided that vetting the nominee for the Dept. of Homeland Uber Alles just wouldn't be cool. Both men prefer fantasy to reality, comic book moments over policy.

Oh, but we were discussing "loyalty."

"I'm rooting for the Red Sox," the Republican presidential contender Tuesday told a Boston audience, just a few T stops from Fenway Park.

"I'm an American League fan, and I go with the American League team, maybe with the exception of the Mets. Maybe that would be the one time I wouldn't because I'm loyal to New York."

Later in New Hampshire - a loyal dominion within New England's Red Sox Nation and, more importantly to Giuliani, home of the first primary in 2008 - the former mayor expanded on his heresy.

"Somehow it makes me feel better if the team that was ahead of the Yankees wins the World Series," he told a group of mostly local reporters in explaining his sudden backing of the Red Sox, "because then I feel like, well, we're not that bad."

The parade

Oh. Joy.

The caravan of duck boats has stopped on Tremont Street and the Dropkick Murphys are belting out more songs from their flatbed truck as Papelbon jumps around with his broom guitar and screams to the excited crowd.

Blue Monday, "Don't Keep Me Wonderin'" edition

Well, the Sox sure didn't...

"You mow for show, you rake for dough"

I have no idea what that means, but via David Pinto, the BoHerald exposes the secret of Fenway's grounds crew.

Mellor has learned to deal with the challenges of the New England weather, and he isn’t content to show off a verdant lawn.

It has to tell a story, too.

Mapping an outline with stakes and ropes, Mellor draws his plant pictures using 6-foot and 21-inch mowers to create a contrast between the dark and light sides of the blades of grass.

A No. 9 for Ted Williams’ memorial. A Red Sox “B.” Checkerboards and spirals and stars.

Meltdowns

If you want to enjoy the acute sufferings of others and the rage and pain they express when given a public forum, check out The Fan today between 1:30 and 2:30 PM. Mike and the Mad Dog are giving a solid hour to calls from Mets fans about their beloved team and the chicken bone the Mets seem to be choking on.

Meanwhile, LG&M has a visual survey of great collapses in history.

Speaking of which, throughout the course of the season I've been extolling the virtues of The Wild Card. Back in June it looked like the best the Yankees could hope for (though neither the manager or the players would admit to that), so of course I embraced it. And after the weekend in which the Yankees failed to sweep the three game set with the Sox, all Yankee fans' eyes turned to the Tigers. Now though, rather than add excitement, the Wild Card actually takes a lot of the edge off of the next 11 days. I'm sure there will be the tearing of garments and the gnashing of teeth among the faithful up in The Nation (again) should the Yankees pull from a one-time 14-1/2 game deficit to winning the division, but it looks pretty certain that the Wild Card team will come from the American League East (again).

Now, winning does matter, and it's incumbent on the Yankees to maintain the intensity they've been showing and, more importantly, the pitching they've sent out the past few days. After all, home field advantage does matter. But, as we learned last year, it's best not to "prefer" to play one team rather than another, and the Yankees can't control how the Angels and the Indians finish. Here's the overall standings in the AL:

Boston (leads AL East by 2-1/2): 90-62
Cleveland (leads AL Central by 6-1/2): 89-62
Angels (leads AL West by 8-1/2): 88-62
Yankees: 87-64
Tigers: 83-69

Winning the division is always the goal of the New York Evil Emperors and a rare occasion for Boston. But both teams, and their fans, should feel pretty good about the chances to be playing in October, so there's not quite the stomach-turning excitement each night we'd feel if the WC didn't exist. And recent history has shown it doesn't matter if you limp or charge in.