( 2:06 PM )
MARIAH CAREY LINGERIE
I’m not writing this in response to Mike Walls’s column on David Wells; I want to address the Wells hubbub in general.
I find it a little troubling that the Yankees would fine Wells $100K for claiming he was half-drunk when he pitched a perfect game in 1999. Fining a guy for telling a story about something that really happened troubles me. I know the Yankees aren’t a government agency, so this isn’t a First Amendment issue. It’s more subtle than that. Please bear with me as I try to explain.
I don’t have a problem when a player gets fined for calling his manager a dumbass or ragging on his teammates. I didn’t have a problem with MLB’s spanking of John Rocker. But there’s a difference between what Rocker said and what Wells wrote. Rocker expressed views that baseball officials found repugnant. It’s their organization and their right to take action when some moron insults a portion of the population (particularly one to whom MLB hopes to sell lots of merchandise).
Wells, on the other hand, simply stated the facts. The fact that he was half in the bag during his perfect game might subject him to discipline in and of itself, but telling the world about it should not. He didn’t attack his teammates, didn’t insult any ethnic groups, didn’t slander anybody, as far as I know.
Does that make sense? I know it’s a blurry distinction but to me it’s an important one. I don’t like it when people are punished for telling the truth.
And by the way, who are the Yankees to get indignant about Wells’s revelations? So he pitched pissed. That should cut-and-paste seamlessly into Yankee history. Everybody knows Babe Ruth was a drunkard, a glutton and a womanizer. Mickey Mantle probably never played a game less than half drunk. The great 70s teams of Jackson, Munson and Nettles were full of coke-sniffing egomaniacs. Goose Gossage was a raging stoner who couldn’t get George Brett out (okay, he probably didn't get high, but Brett did own his ass).
Lighten up, Yankees. You win the World Series every other fucking year, so quit your bitching. And maybe someday we’ll get to read about how Derek Jeter played the ‘98 Series in Mariah Carey’s underwear .
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