ON THE DL

Halladay and Lee Rumors Through Social Media. Zach Harper on Tim Donaghy’s Book. Tiger & HGH. Sadness.

We try to tackle the news of Roy Halladay coming to Philly in a deal that will send Cliff Lee to Seattle and prospects to both Philly and Toronto, but there’s just so darn much information to tackle.

First, we talk about the fact that the Phillies, in all their sold out games and merchandising, may not be able to afford their own roster. They payroll is $140 million and with Lee would push $150. It’s just not plausible for a team that just two years ago had a payroll of $106 million. There’s not that much more money to be made.

We then discuss the deal through the eyes of the internet. Did Ken Rosenthal really just have a hunch, or did he have information about a deal for Halladay that would include Lee? Did his hypothesis read like it came out of his own head because he, honestly, just thought of it, or was it something a source told him that he thought would be better served as unsubstantiated rumor to keep the other reporters away from it?

And we discuss the way the trade broke yesterday -- via Twitter in most cases, with information flying around so fast and furiously that there was almost too much to follow. The national guys had one story that the local guys refuted. Then the national guys started reporting the local guy’s stories but even THAT changed a bit. The principle parties are correct, in that Halladay and Lee will be traded. Who else goes with them -- Drabek, Happ, Taylor, etc -- seems STILL up in the air.

Print’s Not Dead:

Zach Harper from Talkhoops.net joins the show to talk about Tim Donaghy’s book and the potential fall-out, or lack thereof, coming from

the league. Harper is also a Sacramento guy, so we spend a lot of time talking about Game Six of the Western Conference Finals in 2002 that seems to be the central focus of all the Donaghy allegations, conjecture and rumors.

We talk about Chris Webber’s response to the conversation about Donaghy’s book last week on TNT and wonder how he could have answered the questions differently. Webber basically kept saying, “not (Dick) Bavetta, I love Bavetta,” in what sounded like he was convincing himself more than the audience. According to Harper, the rest of Sac Town -- players and fans -- doesn’t feel the same way about Bavetta.

But what can we believe from Donaghy’s book? According to most sources, nothing. Add to the fact that, according to Harper, it’s very poorly written and you wonder if this is going to blow the lid off the sport like Jose Canseco’s book did, or fall into the discount bin with a mere blip about one guy and one guy alone like the book on A-Rod did.

Last, should we, as general sports fans, care? Basketball fans have moved on from it (and will move on more when guys like Bavetta retire). But should we care that the game is potentially fixed? Or do we not believe it?

Speculation Station:

We tried to be Tiger Woods free today, but we can’t. The tabloids can have the affairs. The New York Times has the smoking gun. A doctor associated with Woods was caught with HGH. Shane Bacon sent over the link about a minute before we were getting ready to tape (H/T to you, sir) which has this damning quote from Tiger’s agent:

Tiger's agent, Mark Steinberg of IMG, told the New York Times, after they approached him about the story, "I would really ask that you guys don’t write this? If Tiger is NOT implicated, and won’t be, let’s please give the kid a break.”

Yeah, let’s give the kid a break. We speculated about potential drugs before. This ain’t good.

Housekeeping:

The reason our show was up late yesterday was because the power was out. The reason for the outage was a terrible accident that knocked out power to an entire development and string of businesses. In the crash, the driver of the car, Stephen Moffa lost control of his car and hit a man who was trimming his tree near the street. That man was Air Force Lt. Col. Mark Jennings. Both men died.

Sorry to end on a sad note, but sometimes life deals you a hand that’s just not fair. Thanks for listening.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009