The Players:

Derek Jeter, New York Yankee, Sportsman of the Year.

Minka Kelly, actress who played Lyla Garrity in Friday Night Lights and was in for five seconds the movie with Joseph Gordon-Leavitt about hipsters in love with Zooey Deschanel, 500 Days of Summer. Also: Girlfriend of Derek Jeter, Sportsman of the Year.

Scene:

A Starbucks in Tampa, Florida, one of several locations in the city where the Yankees off-season operations are.

Background:

Jeter and Kelly maybe hate Kate Hudson. Jeter is maybe not sexually satisfied by Kelly, who used to date John Mayer. But he did have her at each World Series game, and he did take her on a tour of St. Jetersburgh.

The Tip:

I work at a Starbucks in the Tampa Bay area. Because of our location, we get a lot of baseball players coming in...as well as other athletes in general. I've seen and heard probably everything imaginable. I just wanted to share some observations I've made.

Derek used to be one of the nicest people to step foot in the door. He was always smiling, happy, friendly. If you messed up his order, he wouldn't bitch you out like other people would and he was a very generous tipper.

It had been awhile since I had seen him but when he was in town last week, he came in. No smile, he wasn't friendly, he didn't tip and he seemed like a different person. At first I chalked it up to a bad day. Then he came in again a few days later. Same thing. The day after that, the same thing.

The last time he came in wasn't alone. He walked in the door, plopped down at the first open table and started texting like a madman on his phone.

Minka came up to order.She looks harmless enough but when she opens her mouth? Yeah, not so much. She's rude, demanding, and has one of the most annoying voices I've ever heard.

The guy in front of her orders a pumpkin spice latte. He had asked for whip. She orders one too but without. I make his. I'm putting the lid on the cup that says PSL and she yells out: "Oh my God. I said NO WHIP! Do you listen?!"

So with a sickeningly sweet smile on my face I pointed to the space above where PSL was written and said, "Is your name Frank?" She stares at me with this stupid look on her face before mumbling something unintelligible. At that point her face is all red and I can tell she's both embarrassed and pissed. Derek hasn't looked up from his phone.

When her [order] was done (no whip, people) she yanked it out of my hand and stomped to where Derek was sitting. She just stood there tapping her foot. She had one hand on a hip and was wearing some ugly, ugly boots. He got up without looking at her and walked out without holding the door for her.

Is it bad for me to admit that when the door nearly slammed her drink into her and she almost tripped - that I laughed a little?

I didn't notice her being ugly, aside from the hideous scowl she showed when she got mad. I think the problem is her outfits. I swear it looked she got dressed in the dark. Some people say she's big or thick but she seems average to me.

Tipster: awesome. We salute you. The next latte's on us. Meanwhile: Is Minka Kelly making Derek Jeter less likable?

His post-season play certainly didn't seem to be affected in a negative way. But let's forgot that he's always been known publicly as a friendly guy, and also, the tragic tale of Jessica Simpson's slam of Dallas Coyboys quarterback Tony Romo's season with her bad juju. Eva Longoria has Tony Parker on LOCKDOWN, but then again, his play's been fine. Maybe all these guys need is a good woman behind them. Or maybe they just need Catch-22 motivation to stay out of trouble and out of the house (read: postseason play) as much as humanly possible.

Here is where things stand for Tiger, this morning: His love life is pretty fucked. Although his sex life sounds great! Of the five or so extramarital women everybody thinks he boned, the big news today is about the original Tiger Fling Girl, Rachel Uchitel. Just two days ago she gave a big front-page exclusive interview to the New York Post about how this is all bullshit and she never did anything at all with Tiger and god, this is all bullshit, because of lying whores who hate her.

Well! She's changed her mind. Rachel's having a press conference this afternoon to announce that she did, in fact, do all that sexy stuff, with Tiger Woods. (Update: The press conference was just canceled, but the admission to boning the golf star is now out there.) We assume this is because she read our advice and wants to clear the air as she moves forward with her nightlife career, but, Rachel—not so abrupt next time. The turnaround from total, vehement lie to revelation of truth that everyone already suspected must be a little smoother, so as not to make you appear to be either a psycho or blackmail victim. Although we will consider everything forgiven if you make a point to mock the New York Post's dead-wrong exclusive at your press conference.

Tiger Woods: Your job is simple. Just be Tiger Woods. That means, continue being the most robotic, uninteresting sports megastar of our time. You, sir, are a cipher. Fans and sponsors love you for it, because they can project whatever image they want upon you, and your inscrutable, uninteresting being simply swallows it up.

Golf is the most uninteresting spectator sport in the world. Golf fans are not moralists. They are people who believe that golf shirts in various shades of coral are acceptable outerwear. They are the bland upper crust of Middle America. That, and rich assholes who love to cheat on their wives. Neither of these groups of golf fans cares one bit about your marital infidelity, Tiger. Nor do your sponsors. What they do care about is being forced to think about something other than golf.

People play (and watch) golf to escape the real world. The world of golf is a world of creepy perfectly manicured lawns and rolling greens as far as the eye can see and lots middle-aged white guys. People want to embrace you as the staid, unblinking image of perfection on a golf course, Tiger. They don't want to be forced to consider who you're fucking. The masochistic desire of sports fans for a feeling of inadequacy next to their heroes does not extend into the bedroom.

So just shut the fuck up and play golf, Tiger. You'll be boring the hell out of America again before you know it.

At 2:25 a.m. on Friday morning—in other words, late on Thanksgiving night—one of Woods' neighbors in Windermere, Fla., called 911 to report that Woods had crashed into a tree in front of his house and was lying on the ground outside his Cadillac Escalade. He was taken to a local hospital in "serious condition" with facial lacerations and released later that day. The Florida Highway Patrol didn't release details about the accident until Friday afternoon, twelve hours after it happened, and the initial report from Windermere police officers was that Woods was drifting in and out of consciousness when they arrived on the scene. Windermere's police chief told the Orlando Sentinel that Woods' wife Elin had heroically used a golf club to break out the rear windows of Woods' SUV and rescued him from the vehicle; when they arrived, the Sentinel reported, she was "hovering" over her husband, "frantic and upset."

Within hours of the story breaking on Friday, the truth began to emerge: According to TMZ and RadarOnline, Tiger and Elin had been arguing before the crash, and she scratched his face up before he attempted to flee in his car, telling her, "You've ruined our Thanksgiving! Are you happy now?" Elin chased after him swinging a golf club, and managed to bash out the SUV's back windows as he drove away. Woods "got distracted" by the attack and ran into a fire hydrant and then a tree, hitting them at less than 33 mph, to judge by the fact that the car's airbags didn't activate. There was no blood on the steering wheel, TMZ reported, making it unlikely that Woods' injuries were sustained during the crash. According to TMZ, Woods told a friend that he wasn't drunk at the time, but had been taking painkillers.

So why would Elgin attack her husband on Thanksgiving night? Probably because last week, the National Enquirer reported that Woods had been having an affair with Rachel Uchitel, a New York City nightclub promoter and self-described celebrity-dater. The Enquirer story claimed that Uchitel had told a friend, "I don't care about his wife! We're in love," and that the pair were "constantly sexting." TMZ says Tiger had told a friend on Friday, before the accident, that Elin had "gone ghetto" over the allegations, and that he had to "run to Zales to get a 'Kobe Special'"—a diamond ring—to mollify her. It apparently didn't work.

For her part, Uchitel has denied the Enquirer's allegations, telling the New York Post, "this is nothing to do with me. We have never had an affair, and the claims we did are completely false." She's reportedly retained celebrity lawyer and horrible person Gloria Allred and is considering a defamation claim against the Enquirer.

What does Tiger say about all this? Not much. In a statement released yesterday, he said,

This is a private matter and I want to keep it that way. Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible.

The only person responsible for the accident is me. My wife, Elin, acted courageously when she saw I was hurt and in trouble. She was the first person to help me. Any other assertion is absolutely false.

The Florida Highway Patrol has attempted to interview Tiger and his wife about the accident three times, and been turned away each time. And Tiger's lawyer is now saying that, under Florida law, they don't have to talk to the cops, and won't:

We have been informed by the Florida Highway Patrol that further discussion with them is both voluntary and optional. Although Tiger realizes that there is a great deal of public curiosity, it has been conveyed to FHP that he simply has nothing more to add and wishes to protect the privacy of his family.

But that's not going to cut it: According to TMZ, the Florida Highway Patrol is seeking a warrant to gain access to medical records from Tiger's hospitalization to find out if his injuries are consistent with a car accident or assault. If it's the latter, the next step could be charging Elin with domestic violence. TMZ also says the Woods home is equipped with security cameras, and Florida authorities want to see what's on the tapes.

Long story short, the Woodses spent their Thanksgiving like most families do: Trapped in a sickeningly familiar cycle of recrimination, betrayal, lies, and poor decision-making. We can't wait for Christmas.

Murray Chass, who despite retiring from the New York Times several years ago is still apparently in the press box at the Yankees-Phillies series, has noticed that there aren't as many familiar faces around this year. He tallied up the number of newspapers that had sent reporters to cover the baseball championship for his not-a-blog blog: of the 60 papers that fund traveling baseball beat writers during the regular season, there are 31 covering the Series.

Given that there are 30 teams who are playing during the spring and summer, and just two in the World Series (meaning that the paper-to-team ratio has gone from 2-1 to 15-1, see chart above), doesn't seem like all that big of a tragedy. Especially since many of those non-traveling beat writers are presumably still employed — writing about the games from the comfort of their sofas — while many thousands of other newspaper employees are not.

Where Chass sees a "startling barometer of how critical the health of the newspaper industry," someone else could see a rather modest way for struggling papers to cut down expenses without sacrificing either jobs or coverage.

The same could be said for the other regular gatherings of journos — say the tens of thousands of media credentials handed out for the national party conventions, the Oscars, or the White House briefing room — all of the events where it seems that journos are more intent to just show up rather than cover any actual news.

Of course, that might mean losing some republic-defending inquiries that opened Robert Gibbs' press briefing this afternoon.

10/30, WSJ: "Equidistant From New York and Philadelphia, Easton (PA) Faces a Choice: 'They're Both My Team'"
10/28, NYT: "If any spot could be torn apart by the World Series, it would be the town of Cranbury, N.J."
10/28, USAT: "'We live halfway between the two cities, and we are a typical 'we-don't-know-who-to-root-for' family,' [John] Marchese [of Egypt, NJ] says."
10/28, AP: "HAMILTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. - When the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees meet in the World Series on Wednesday, New Jersey will be a state of divided loyalties."

If your news outlet hasn't written up your "Halfway between Philly and NYC, Divided Loyalties" story yet, don't worry. Using GPS, draw one line Northeast-to-Southwest between the two cities; now draw another perpendicular line Northwest-to-Southeast; any crappy city along that line is equidistant from the two opposing World Series cities. Who are the residents of Owen Sound, Canada pulling for? We'll find out soon!

We found Fred Carter via Craigslist, where he was selling 12 tickets to tonight's Yankees/Phillies World Series game for $450 a pop. He quickly corrected our correspondent when asked about his work as a "ticket scalper". "Ticket broker," he said. Whatever. Carter says he has been a professional broker of tickets since the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, NY. He was on a business trip when reached today by phone, and the call was constantly interrupted on his end by "moochers"—which we're pretty sure is what he calls his clients. Following are excerpts from our conversation. It should be proof enough, if more proof is needed, that ticket scalping is the purest form of free-market capitalism.

On Susan Finkelstein, the woman arrested for allegedly offering sex for world series tickets:

Every one of those cops should be fired on the spot. If they're such pussies that they can't go into a neighborhood where people are shooting and killing each other and have to waste their time on some woman who's trying to fuck her way into the World Series, they should be fired. They should be fired and maybe prosecuted. They just spent a lot of money on nothing.

On New Yorkers:

I never realized that New Yorkers were such weather pussies before. They really pussed out for the Saturday night game against the Angels, and they pussed out again last night. Ticket prices got better as the rain started to let up, though.

On Californians:

"Californians are such weather pussies. If it's raining people stay home and you can sell a 49ers ticket for like 45 bucks.

On yesterday's World Series game:

Yesterday was the cheapest world series game I've ever seen. There may have been cheaper ones—but certainly since the strike I haven't seen one like this for years.

On ticket scalping strategy:

You gotta take a chance; you gotta take a risk. There's no sure things. You try to work out—using your vast and extensive brain-lodged database of knowledge and intuition—your risk-reward ratio. To that end, for example, we have Yankees tickets but we don't have Mets tickets.

On Eliot Spitzer:

The greatest player in the ticket game in New York was Governor Spitzer. He and some assemblymen from upstate New York, they got a bill passed and now there's a free market on tickets. Very, very worthwhile and useful piece of legislation.

On Journalists:

You can set your price at $800 on Craigslist and there's always some idiot journalist who will say, "Tickets are going for $800!"

On Industriousness:

Three of these guys that I know—two of them in New York, one in San Francisco—they go around with their six or seven year-old son: "Oh, can you help us out—we're just trying to go in!" He picks up tickets really, really cheap. People take pity on him. Next thing you know, there's the kid playing over there in a coffee shop while Dad's selling the tickets he got for three times what he paid. Now, that's just industriousness. But of course if the child labor people found out about this...

On concerts:

Sometimes when you work at concerts you sometimes get girls who shake their tits at you. They nestle up to you and say "You can do me a little favor, can't you?" They want some $100 ticket for 30 bucks. I say to them: "I don't think you would get that for 30 bucks if you were naked with knee pads on." And that usually insults them. But I'm like, you were the one trying to be a whore in the first place.

Look for Frank Carter at a Pearl Jam concert, NFL Game or motivational speaking engagement near you.

Like many athletes these days, Joselito's in the business of endorsing crappy products people probably don't need. In this case it's an energy drink called Gay Up.

Of course people who can't understand why Ortega, who plays in the manly, testosterone-laden realm of bullfighting, would want to shill for such a homosexual product. But he sees no disconnect. He's been pierced by horns, too:

I am a bullfighter. That is not going to change. I am going to go out into the ring as I have done until now, to risk my life, and the seven goring wounds on my body prove that... If the gay community welcomes me as an image or a symbol, that is fine.

Um, quite. But we're still trying to figure out what's so special about this energy drink, anyway. Gay Up. Is it like "power up?" Does that boosts one's gay index level? If so, how does it work? Can it turn straight people gay? If so, how long does it last? This whole thing is very confusing.

First, it's important to keep in mind that Weaver — who's got the sickest press credentials in all the land - is only just starting out, and he already has a Wikipedia Page. His inflated Mediaite ranking is sure to follow. And after this: so is a call from ESPN. Watch as he deftly handles a question regarding who he's going to interview next, and the follow-up, in which he doesn't consider speaking with Michael Vick — who, if he were to speak with Weaver, would be granting him a courtesy interview - about dog fighting.

He might as well have said, Lady, I'm just a fuckin' kid. Back off. And he would've been right. Why, of all the questions, of all the people he just gave you, would you ask the most blatantly insensitive one? The kid's twelve, the world has Bob Costas for that kind of thing, and his ambition to be Wolf Blitzer over some MSNBC moving face surely looks like a far more nuanced ambition now than it did before. Blitzer would never toss him a few softballs and then try to hit him with the pitch.

Even better, though, was Weaver's shutdown of his questioner: subtle, as polite as possible, and intelligent. Hell, it shows the makings of a good Press Secretary, too. Gibbs: protect your neck, son. Damon Weaver's comin' up on you.

The segment began with Vick telling the world how he realizes what he did was wrong and how so very sorry he is for having done it:

The first day I walked into prison, and he slammed that door, I knew the magnitude of the decision that I made, and the poor judgment, and what I allowed to happen to the animals. And, you know, it's no way of explaining the hurt and the guilt that I felt. And that was the reason I cried so many nights. And that put it all into perspective...I let myself down, not being out on the football field, being in a prison bed, in a prison bunk, writing letters home, you know. That wasn't my life. That wasn't the way that things was supposed to be. And all because the so-called culture that I thought was right, that I thought it was cool. and I thought it was fun, and it was exciting at the time. It all led to me laying in a prison bunk by myself with no one to talk to but myself.

Asked who he blames for it all, Vick responded, "I blame me."

Brown, who reportedly scooped NBC's Bob Costas and America's thuggish overlord/fast food terrorist Oprah in scoring the interview, didn't seem to go easy on Vick and asked all of the questions one would reasonably hope he would ask. The big post-interview question in the public's mind now seems to be, "Are Michael Vick's expressions of remorse sincere?" Judging by the comments in the thread attached to the story on CBS' website and on Twitter, it seems as though most people think he's full of shit and thus should be punished further and in barbaric fashion, which is just plain ridiculous.

Keeping in mind that the crimes Mike Vick pled guilty to are horrific in ways unimaginable to most of us, the guy served his time behind bars as dictated by this country's legal system and did so without incident, losing a multi-million dollar personal fortune and his dignity along the way. Now he's out trying to put the pieces of his broken life back together again, working closely with the humane society to educate inner city kids about the immoralities of animal abuse, and his detractors are still not happy, nor will they ever be frankly. Even if there was some way to tap into Michael Vick's soul to prove without a doubt that he really does feels guilty about what he did, there still would be a large segment of the population that wouldn't be satisfied unless Vick himself were mauled by blood-thirsty dogs inside of cage in an arena filled with thousands of screaming animal rights activists and broadcast around the world on television.

Sadly, many of the unforgiving seem to be of the liberal persuasion, the left side of the ideological spectrum where virtues such as empathy, forgiveness and tolerance are supposed to be most revered, proving once again that hypocrisy knows no political boundaries.

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As details of the accident have emerged, it's been reported that all parties involved are okay physically and that there were no drugs or alcohol involved (Phelps is on probation for a previous DUI), thankfully. Now a tipster with knowledge of the local geography wrote in to shine some UV light on the intersection where Phelps crashed his car:

The site of the accident is two blocks north of where I used to live, in the heart of the tranny hooker district in lovely downtown baltimore where the girls with something extra work the corner in cheap lingerie like extras from a vanity six video, and calvert only runs north - therefore, if phelps was traveling on calvert at the time of the accident, he may have been leaving the tranny hooker district !!!

The other possible explanation is that the 83 was so backed up with traffic (The Ravens and Redskins played a preseason football game in Baltimore tonight) that Phelps was traveling the "back roads" to avoid traffic.

calvert is just one of the few good ways out of the harbor area going back towards the burbs if the 83 is backed up, so he could have been coming from anywhere downtown really - but, hell, if he was going north on calvert then heck yeah, he went right thru the trannie hooker district - about two blocks long, centered at calvert and eager.

So was Michael Phelps trolling for a tranny tonight? It's highly doubtful, but it sure as hell makes for some fun reckless speculation, doesn't it? Also, this information should give Anderson Cooper something to be hopeful about, and everyone needs a little hope in their life.

Pic via

Many a young suburban revolutionary who's had the misfortune of growing up in a golf course-infested community has dreamt of banishing the rich from golf courses and building homes for the homeless on the fairways, or, alternately, just covering the whole course in pee, for fun. Hugo Chavez is making up for lots of monomaniacal, dictatorial tendencies by saying: Fuck Golf.

"Let's leave this clear," Mr. Chávez said during a live broadcast of his Sunday television program. "Golf is a bourgeois sport," he said, repeating the word "bourgeois" as if he were swallowing castor oil. Then he went on, mocking the use of golf carts as a practice illustrating the sport's laziness.

Haha, but then they are actually closing down golf courses in Venezuela because Hugo doesn't like them. In one town they are literally "considering building low-income homes on the golf course." It's your freshman year blunts-n-bullshit session (New Che Wall Poster Edition) come to life!

Fuck golf.

Speaking at the Martha's Vineyard Book Festival, his first public statements since meeting with Crowley, Gates also said that his and the Cambridge police officer's families may dine together and joked that he'd even help Crowley's children get into Harvard.

Heck, it looks as though that annoyingly over-hyped "beer summit" may have actually done some good after all!

Cops say he was not the most discreet pimp; the hotel knew what was going on.

(Click images to enlarge)

Cops set up a sting operation and rented the hotel room next door, heard sexy sounds, and then stopped the johns when they left. In this way they learned everything: a prostitution operation based online at sites like Craigslist and Cityvibe.com. They got two of the prostitutes to provide statements about how they got their jobs—the old-fashioned way.

So Provencher was getting $400 per day from just one of his (at least four) hookers. A second woman describes much the same "audition" process:

Kevin Provencher is innocent until proven guilty, but it's not looking so great for him right this minute.
[Full complaint, via Eagle-Tribune]

Now, O'Reilly, and Fox News in general, have a long history with this sort of thing. He'll bloviate righteously about softcore porn on YouTube or underage strippers or how the Make-A-Wish foundation turned down money from a bikini car wash fundraiser or whatever, and all the while he'll have salacious clips running over the audio of he and his guests mouthing off about the gross injustice of whatever it is they're talking about. So you just knew that O'Reilly would take this whole thing straight into the gutter, and he did not disappoint.

While O'Reilly is setting the segment up by giving background on the story to his viewers, footage of the "criminal" video is played. He then turns to his guests, the standard set of painfully Aryan Fox News babes, to begin their discussion, but before he does he says speaks righteously about the video clip he just played on his show:

We're not gonna show you anymore of that ladies and gentlemen...I gotta show you what they think is criminal intent here, but, you know, I'm not gonna show anymore video of it because this is ultra-disturbing and I think it's a very serious crime.

Classic. Just classic Bill O'Reilly slimeballage, wrapped up neatly under the guise of "investigative reporting."

Now, ESPN is taking a hard line against any news organization that shows footage of the video or even publishes still images taken from it. Today they lashed out at the New York Post, effectively issuing a "you're dead to me" order to the paper and banning the Post and it's reporters from all aspects of the ESPN empire after they ran still photos from the video in Tuesday's edition of the paper. It'll be interesting to see if they do the same thing with Fox and/or other Rupert Murdoch media properties after this.

Obama, dressed in jeans and Chicago White Sox jacket, certainly looked smooth with his delivery, but the camera angle broadcast by Fox was simply horrendous and didn't really give viewers any indication of whether or not it was a good or a bad pitch, so we're basically incapable of rendering a verdict on our own. However, some members of the media who were in attendance saw the pitch and have already weighed in.

From the New York Times:

Once Obama made it to the mound, he eased into his motion and softly floated a pitch to Albert Pujols. Pujols, the current Cardinals icon, reached in front of home plate to catch Obama's wobbly pitch. The fans cheered for Obama, who then hugged Pujols halfway between the mound and the plate.

From the AP:

Obama's ceremonial first pitch at the All-Star game barely reached the plate Tuesday night. St. Louis Cardinals star Albert Pujols helped the president, moving up on the plate and reaching out to scoop the toss.

From the Chicago Tribune:

As you would expect, President Barack Obama leaned to the left while making the ceremonial first pitch at Tuesday's All-Star game in St. Louis.

While he was lacking in style points on his short southpaw lob to home plate, he certainly made a striking fashion statement — not to mention showing his South Side sentiment — to the worldwide television audience.

From the Weekly Standard:

He may have thrown out the first pitch wearing a Chicago White Sox jacket ("My wife thinks I look cute in it"), but there was nothing in his cool aspect or his broadcast-booth blarney to suggest a true love for the game, like that of, say, our 43rd president. This guy should stick to golfing, or, better yet, to kicking a soccer ball around the White House lawn. It suits him: more Europeanish, less Americanish.

Finally, we text-messaged Deadspin Emeritus Will Leitch, who is actually at the game in St. Louis, for his assessment. Here's what he said:

He isn't as good at throwing a first pitch as Bush. THANK GOD!

So the verdict seems to be that Barack Obama throws like a girl, which probably shouldn't be all that surprising considering that he's a latte-sipping communist. But here's a clip of the first pitch from Fox, not that you'll be able to really glean anything from it, so you can at least try to render your own verdict.

pic via AP

First, let's briefly recap what we and others have reported so far: The film was set to begin shooting last week. Five days before the start of shooting, director Steven Soderbergh turned in a rewrite of the original script, which was written by Steven Zaillian, that Sony executives, led by co-Chairman Amy Pascal, did not like. The studio felt that Soderbergh, who was insistent that every event in the film had to have taken place in real life, was taking the film in an "artsy" direction that they weren't willing to gamble $58-million dollars on, so they killed it. That's the short version of events according to Amy Pascal anyway.

Since then a few more details about the project emerged. Movieline and Deadspin provided some new information in reports of their own, and today the New York Times has an article that sheds some light on Soderbergh's zeal for authenticity.

One reason was to win the approval of Major League Baseball, which was not happy with some factual liberties in Mr. Zaillian's version. Such approval is crucial in a baseball film that intends to use protected trademarks.

"Typically, on a film like this, we look at it for historical accuracy," said Matthew Bourne, a vice president of Major League Baseball for public relations. "We've been in touch with Soderbergh and Sony, and they've been receptive to our requests."

What baseball saw as accurate, Sony executives saw as being too much a documentary.

All of this brings us to the information provided to us by a tipster who'd been working on the project and has a decidedly different point of view than that of Amy Pascal and Sony.

First and foremost, Soderbergh had been upfront with the direction in which he intended to take the film from the very beginning of his employment. In fact, it was clear to all of us - whether in the Art Department or the Costumes Department, etc. – that Soderbergh intended to use real people to play themselves in the creation of the true story of Moneyball. Additionally, for months Soderbergh had been shooting interviews with real ball players and people from Billy Beane's past, and the studio approved these shoots. How could the studio then at the eleventh hour claim that his approach was a surprise to them? He intended to tell the true story rather than a fictitious version of the story. How innovative.

What exactly is wrong with making a movie accurate? And since when does an authentic film translate as an "art" film? I know numerous people that thought that Soderbergh's approach sounded insightful and interesting and true to the game and what really happened. If baseball lovers and non-baseball lovers alike in my large social network felt this way (not to mention the hundreds of bloggers that were fans of the concept), why couldn't this approach have universal appeal?

Regarding the notion that Sony executives were shocked to discover the direction Soderbergh planned on taking the film:

Soderbergh's script dated June 17, 2009 was not the first script that he handed in to Sony. On June 7th, Soderbergh submitted a draft to the studio with the following note on the first page:

"NOTE: Scenes involving Billy Beane's minor and major league career have been removed from this draft. They will be determined by filmed interviews with scouts, coaches, managers, players and family members who were with him at the time."

Sony executives read this draft. And Sony executives gave Soderbergh their notes. Clearly Amy Pascal did not read this draft – if she had, maybe the drama that began with the June 17th draft could have been avoided.

Another fact: Soderbergh handed in yet another draft dated June 10, 2009 with this note on the first page:

"NOTE: Billy Beane's minor and major league career will be shown via filmed interviews with scouts, coaches, managers, players and family members who were with him at the time. These interviews will comprise approximately ten percent of the film.

"Another ten percent of the film will consist of re-enactments of real events as remembered by the people playing themselves. The purpose of these scenes will be to provide set-up and perspective for subjects, situations, or relationships which currently appear in the screenplay without the requisite/normal amount of context."

Now why in the world was Amy Pascal so shocked (or, rather, "apoplectic" as it was relayed to the production team) when she read the June 17th draft? Could Soderbergh have made his intentions any more clear? Even if these executives did not read beyond PAGE 1, they would have known the direction in which he wanted to take the film – and they should have perhaps reported that to their boss. And maybe, just maybe, if there had been communication with their boss, maybe, just maybe, another avenue could have been taken rather than pulling the plug three days before the film was supposed to start shooting. For instance, maybe they could have delayed principal photography while script/concept issues were resolved.

Our tipster closed with this note:

On the day that Amy Pascal pulled the plug, there were 230 people that were working on Moneyball. Now those 230 people are all out of jobs.

When Soderbergh had to address a stage filled with crew members who were about to lose their jobs, he told us that just as Moneyball was the unorthodox version of building baseball teams, Moneyball the movie was the unorthodox way of making a film. Unfortunately, Amy Pascal does not believe in Moneyball as a concept; otherwise the film would be in its second week of shooting right now.

So there you have it—Another side of the story. All of this is obviously meaningless in the grand scheme of life, not to mention very "inside baseball" (pun intended), but it's so damn fun to talk about. We anxiously await the next bit of backbiting to emerge between the Sony and Soderbergh camps.

Why Did Sony Kill the Pitt/Soderbergh Film Adaptation of Michael Lewis' Moneyball [Previously]
MLB Approval Still Murky as Moneyball Circles the Drain [Movieline]
Money Worries Kill A-List Film at Last Minute [New York Times]
Soderbergh's Moneyball Script Too Real to Get Made [Deadspin]
pic via Vulture

Rumors have been swirling since Variety first reported last week that Soderbergh's vision for the film differed dramatically from the vision studio executives had for the film, but up to this point no one associated with the project has been willing to speak on the record about it.

But yesterday Sony's Amy Pascal, the studio executive in charge of the film, spoke to the LA Times' Patrick Goldstein. According to Pascal, what it all boiled down to was essentially simple—The studio loved screenwriter Steven Zaillian's original adaptation of Lewis' book, while Soderbergh felt the script lacked authenticity and rewrote it himself, making radical changes that Pascal and the studio weren't willing to gamble on, fearful that Soderbergh would turn it into an "artsy" film like Solaris or Schizopolis, especially when baseball movies traditionally don't do well at the box office outside of the United States. Soderbergh was insistent that everything in the movie had to have happened in real life.

Reports Goldstein:

Some changes to Zaillian's script were subtle, others were dramatic. At one point, Beane signs Scott Hatteberg, a journeyman catcher with a bad arm whom Bean can get for peanuts and turn into a first baseman. Beane loves Hatteberg's ability to get on base, but his staff is appalled — he just can't turn anyone into a slick-fielding first baseman overnight. In Zaillian's script, one of the coaches watches Hatteberg taking ground balls at a Little League field, his wife armed with a plastic laundry basket full of baseballs. She hits the balls to her husband off a tee, with their 4-year-old daughter backing him up down the line. One ball takes a bad hop and goes between Hatteberg's legs. When his daughter scoops it up, the coach quips: "Maybe we should sign her."

Soderbergh cut out the joke because it was the screenwriter's invention — the coach had never actually said it. He also cut out a scene where Beane gives a tongue-lashing to Jason Giambi, one of his departing free agents, again because it didn't actually happen. Zaillian's script was anchored by on-screen monologues by Bill James, the oddball guru of modern-day baseball statistics (who today works in the Boston Red Sox front office). James functioned as a Greek chorus for the film, offering wry, Yoda-like explanations about the complexity of the game.

Zaillian's deft renditions of James' maxims were funny and always to the point, allowing the audience the opportunity to see inside the game. In one monologue, James says: "If you score three runs and the other team scores four, you can be inspired as all hell but you still lost. The numbers represent the ineluctable sum of victories and defeats, and that cannot be made one iota larger or smaller than it is by PR campaigns, personal animosities or any of the greater and lesser forms of B.S." But in Soderbergh's draft, the James material had all vanished, presumably to be replaced by interviews with Beane's real-life associates.

At a "summit" held after Soderbergh turned in his draft of the script, he reportedly pleaded "trust me" to the Sony executives, who were obviously unwilling to do so. Besides Pitt, the film was also set to star comedian Demetri Martin as well as former ballplayers Darryl Strawberry, Mookie Wilson, David Justice and Lenny Dykstra, but Soderbergh's unrelenting zeal for authenticity proved to be the project's demise.

Bob Costas would be proud.

As for Michael Lewis, he seems unfazed by the developments with the film version of his book, telling MSNBC recently, "I don't understand why they bought it for a movie in the first place."

Sony's Amy Pascal Speaks Out About Moneyball [LA Times]
Image via Vulture

To celebrate the occasion, the team wore special red, white and blue jerseys, invited Amber Lee Ettinger, the Obama Girl, to the throw out the first pitch, distributed Obama bobbleheads to fans, offered "universal health care" to fans in the form of free Band-Aids, gave free admission to anyone named "Barack," admitted any plumbers named Joe in for free—I think you get the picture here—The whole thing was a bit over the top, but most of the fans seemed to enjoy it.

But of course, as with all things, some did not enjoy the evening, and a tipster whose husband has knowledge of the team said in an email that there's been a bit of a backlash from some of their Obama-hating fans.

my husband tells me that, in response to the "gift" at tonight's brooklyn cyclones game, which was some sort of obama bobblehead doll with the moniker "baracklyn cyclones," over 200 angry, anti-obama season ticket holders canceled their subscriptions.

Now, to be fair, it's doubtful that season subscribers at, say, the Metropolitan Opera, would take too kindly to Bush bobbleheads being handed out at a performance of Carmen, so cut 'em some slack.

No word yet on whether or not Jets Kicker Jay Feely was one of the season ticket holders who canceled their seats.

Baracklyn Cyclones [baracklyncyclones.com]