By Pete Williams

With the Tampa Bay Buccaneers traveling to face the Redskins this weekend in a battle of hapless teams, I couldn’t help but stop to compare to fates of the only two major sports markets where I’ve ever lived.

People here in Tampa are bemoaning the fact that for the first time since the Devil Rays debuted in 1998, the Rays, Buccaneers, and Lightning stink at the same time.

This, of course, isn’t quite true. The Rays have been disappointing this year, but only compared to last season’s World Series team. They almost certainly will finish with a winning record and look promising for next season. The Bucs and Bolts do stink, but at least have championships to show for this decade.

Plus, it’s not like we’re the Washington/Baltimore area.

I moved from Northern Virginia to the Tampa Bay area at the end of 1997. In that time, Tampa Bay teams have won a Stanley Cup, a Super Bowl, and played in a World Series. The neighboring Orlando Magic played in the NBA Finals. The University of Florida has won two national titles in football and basketball. USF had just completed its first football season ever when I arrived. Now they’re poised to break into the top 25 for the third straight year.

In that same period, the Washington Redskins have had only three winning seasons and won just two playoff games while spending more money than anyone in the NFL. The Washington Bullets/Wizards have continued a three-decade run of mediocrity, never winning more than 45 games. The Washington Capitals reached the Stanley Cup Finals five months after I left but generally have underachieved. The University of Maryland football team has had its moments and the basketball team won a national title in 2002. But my alma mater (the University of Virginia) has seen its once-proud football and basketball programs driven into the ground.

When I left NoVa, baseball was years from returning to D.C., where now the Washington Nationals are the biggest train wreck in the game, with a slight edge over the Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles.

When I left in December of 1997, the Orioles were coming off of a 98-win season. Camden Yards had sold out every game since its opening in 1992.

Now the Orioles struggle to draw more fans than the Rays. They’re about to finish their 12th straight losing season. They have not put together a winning season since the Devil Rays came into the league.

It was sad to watch the Orioles face the Rays last night at Tropicana Field. Jim Palmer, the Orioles Hall of Fame pitcher turned broadcaster, held court behind the batting cage before the game. On the mound for Baltimore was Mark Hendrickson, an ex-Devil Ray who would not make the current Rays roster or most others around the game.

Since Baltimore’s Camden Yards opened in 1992, just about every team in baseball has opened a new ballpark or extensively remodeled one. None have been better than Camden Yards. And yet Orioles owner Peter Angelos has taken all of those economic advantages and squandered them. The Orioles could afford to have one of the largest payrolls in baseball for much of the 1990s; they still can. But because of colossal mismanagement, they can’t field a competitive club.

The Tampa ownership groups of the last decade haven’t exactly been warm-and-fuzzy people. Between the Glazers, Vince Naimoli, and whoever is running the Lightning this week, it’s been an interesting cast of tone-deaf characters.

But none compare to Dan Snyder, Abe Pollin, the Lerners, and Peter Angelos when it comes to mismanagement. As long as those guys continue to own D.C.-area teams, Tampa Bay will continue to hold an edge in sports.

By Pete Williams

You want to measure how much technology has changed? Consider the Tandy 102 portable computer (above), which until about 1992 was considered cutting-edge technology in the world of journalism.

During the late 1980s and early ’90s, sportswriters used these glorified calculators to file stories from press boxes or wherever else they could attach a phone line. You could only see about five lines of text at a time without scrolling and the memory of the entire machine wasn’t more than a couple thousand words. A few sports scribes were still using the machines in the late ’90s.

The Tandy 102, manufactured by Radio Shack, was a slight upgrade from the TRS 80, a.ka. the “Trash 80.”

I’m by no means a packrat, but over the weekend I came across a Radio Shack receipt from May 20, 1990. I spent $399 for the Tandy 102. With adaptors, cables, taxes, and a “deluxe cleaning kit,” I paid $449.24.

That was a princely sum for a guy who had just been hired to be a sports stringer for The Washington Post before his senior year of college. The machine more than paid for itself in the fall of 1990 when the University of Virginia football team began the year 7-0 and rose to No.1 in the polls for three weeks. (Given the state of Virginia football, that really does seem like another lifetime ago.)

I can remember impressing friends with this advanced technology. I could file a story with the Tandy 102 via the phone line from my apartment or the press box and – voila! – I’d see it in The Washington Post the following morning, assuming I filed early enough to make the early national edition that we received in Charlottesville.

While working for USA Today Baseball Weekly, I used the Tandy 102 as recently as the 1992 National League Championship Series, when Barry Bonds couldn’t throw out Sid Bream on Francisco Cabrera’s pinch-hit single. The Pirates haven’t had a winning season since, but nothing else has remained the same in sports and technology.

This morning, I put some fresh batteries in the machine. It still works, though I must have deleted all content. I was hoping my Cabrera story was still in there but the only reading was “21,446 bytes free.” That makes sense. The thing has so little memory I made it a habit to erase stories immediately so I’d have memory to write.

I suppose I could write a story on the Tandy 102. But where would I file it to? Who still uses such technology? At least there are still print versions of newspapers at the moment, but that likely won’t be the case five years from now.

I’ve gone through three or four laptops in the last decade. Whenever I get a new one, I recycle the old one. But I’ve hung on to the Tandy 102. It belongs in some sort of museum of journalism. (Heck, pretty soon the whole newspaper industry will be found only in museums.)

If this is how technology has advanced in 17 years, imagine what things might be like in 2026.

I’m scheduled to speak to a couple of journalism classes in the coming weeks. I’m not sure what to tell them given the dying state of our business. But I’m going to bring along the Tandy 102 and tell them to be ready for an industry that soon won’t resemble even what we have in 2009.

By Pete Williams

Last week, The St. Petersburg Times announced that its employees would have to take a 5 percent pay cut effective Nov. 2.

These are desperate times for newspapers. Some, like The Times, have to produce god-awful Sunday magazines full of fluff in order to attract high-end, upscale advertisers. Not surprisingly, the “articles” often are shameless features on local rich people.

Today’s Sunday “Bay” magazine made me want to vomit. It featured a nine-page spread on the 21,000 square foot home owned by Lisa DeBartolo, daughter of former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr.

Eddie DeBartolo Sr., who died in 1994, made a fortune as one of this country’s first developers of shopping malls. In 1977, he bought the 49ers and handed them off to his son, Eddie Jr., who, like his current Tampa sports neighbors Hank and Hal Steinbrenner, Bryan and Joel Glazer, has lived solely off his old man’s money.

In 1998, Eddie Jr. pleaded guilty in federal court to a felony charge of failing to report that a former governor of Louisiana allegedly extorted $400,000 from him to win a casino license. The episode was largely responsible for Eddie losing control of the 49ers to his sister. A few years later, Eddie moved to Tampa and has since reinvented himself as head of a sports business that represents athletes.

Lisa DeBartolo, like her old man, has led a life of leisure. She spends her days, according to the story, overseeing the family’s charitable foundation, which is to say she directs their tax-deductible giving. She’s married to some guy named Don Miggs, front man for an obscure indie rock band named Miggs, though given the money invested in a home studio, you’d think he was Bono himself.

Describing his studio, Miggs said, “It’s acoustically perfect, better than the Beatles recorded in.” The magazine notes that the studio’s non-parallel walls eliminate echoes and isolate sound. “U2 could record here,” he adds.

Between a new baby and her “work” with the foundation, Lisa DeBartolo is a busy woman. That’s why “personal chef Jay Minzer cooks dinner there five nights a week. Additional staff includes a property manager who lives above the four-car garage and a live-in nanny.”

They have a 12-foot long glass and steel dinner table that “took nine men to lift the 785-poound glass top.”

Miggs notes that the master bedroom is bigger than the house he grew up in and young Milo’s playroom is so large “we do play football in here.”

Lisa has three closets. “One just for shoes and one just for purses,” the magazine notes. “Manolo Blahniks, Jimmy Choos and Pradas fill floor-to-ceiling shelves. (A book lists current inventory.) Clothes hang on pull-down rods categorized by color, style, and season.”

The cedar-lined, walk-in purse closet, which is pictured in the piece, looks like it could hold a queen-sized bed.

“I don’t do drugs and I rarely drink alcohol,” says DeBartolo, noting she gives lots of shoes away, “but I do shoes and purses.”

At least Miggs seems to realize he married well. He notes the photos of Eddie DeBartolo Sr. and Jr., “to remind us of why we have what we have.”

The bulk of the Sunday Times chronicles the shattered economy of the Tampa Bay area, reeling from the real estate collapse, mini-Madoffs, and unemployment that’s estimated at 16 percent. Even in the best of times, it’s a challenging place to live financially given the low per capita income, lack of corporations, and outrageous cost of homeowners insurance.

Then there are the Lisa DeBartolos of Tampa Bay, blissfully ignorant and tone deaf to the rest of the world. She even tweeted to “check out the article on us.”

The St. Pete Times does not put its Bay magazine online. No doubt its editors are ashamed of the crap they have to produce to attract advertising in these brutal times.

By Pete Williams

Lee Jenkins wrote a terrific piece in the new Sports Illustrated about the Detroit Tigers. It’s about the citizens of a depressed city rallying around an upstart baseball team. It’s about a rare group of highly-paid athletes who are not tone deaf to the economic suffering going on around them.

It’s also about a billionaire native son team owner, Mike Ilitch, who has spared no expense when it comes to fielding a winning ballclub.

I’ve never understood why there aren’t more guys like Ilitich in sports, guys who will spend whatever it takes to win. There are a few. Jerry Jones, Mark Cuban, George Steinbrenner, and Dan Snyder come to mind. More often than not, team owners treat their teams like any other businesses.

And what’s wrong with that, you might ask? My dad and I had this very argument this morning. Dad thinks you should not begrudge an owner for trying to make money, even if he has to trade/cut some of his best players. After all, he’s in it to make money.

The problem with that argument is that guys don’t get into sports to make money. Sports is a terrible way to make money and most of the people rich enough to buy a sports team got that way because of their skill in evaluating investments.

After covering pro sports for nearly two decades, I’ve come to the conclusion that most guys get into sports for one of two reasons:

A: They’re huge, huge fans of a particular team or sport and want to own/run a team.
B: They’re rich, successful guys who often made their money behind the scenes. It annoys them that nobody knows who they are. So they buy a sports team. This instantly gives them celebrity status.

So if you fall into one of those camps, which most owners do, it follows that you’d do whatever it takes to win championships. This doesn’t mean spending indiscriminately, which Jones, Cuban, Steinbrenner, Snyder, and Ilitch have done on many occasions.

It does mean that winning is your No.1 priority. For many years, Ewing Kauffman owned the Kansas City Royals. He poured tons of money into the team, even though it played in a small market. For Kauffman, it didn’t matter and the Royals were a consistent winner throughout his ownership run, which ended with his death in 1993.

Baseball’s economics changed at that point and perhaps Kauffman would not have been able to keep up with the larger franchises much longer. But that’s beside the point. Kauffman, who was not a huge baseball fan but viewed the Royals as a public trust and an engine of economic growth in Kansas City, realized that the bottom line was greater than the bottom line.

Here’s an interesting anonymous quote from a big-league executive in Jenkins’ piece on Ilitch and the Tigers: “Their owner doesn’t operate from a profit-and-loss standpoint. He treats the team more like a public trust.”

Teams lose the trust of the public when they place profit above winning. Nobody expects a team to lose money. But when you’re the Pittsburgh Pirates and you’re keeping revenue sharing money that exceeds your yearly payroll, that’s violating that trust. When you’re the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and you keep payroll $30 million below the salary cap, even when Forbes magazine says you net $30 million in profit already, that’s violating the public trust.

So if you’re a Detroit Tigers fan, or just a Detroit resident, and you see Mike Ilitch turning down prime stadium advertising to give it away for free to struggling auto makers and do everything he can to bring a title and distraction to a gloomy city, you have to admire that.

Mike Ilitch is a billionaire, which makes him no different than many sports owners. The only difference is that he actually wants to spend whatever it takes on the team he bought to win.

What a concept.

By Pete Williams

Robert Henson took a huge shot at Washington Redskins fans for booing during Sunday’s win over the Rams. In a Twitter post, the rookie linebacker called them disloyal “dim-wits” who “work 9 to 5 at McDonald’s.”

Forget that the Redskins have average ticket prices just south of $80, too expensive for employees of McDonald’s or most other working Americans. Forget that Henson, like many pro athletes, is tone deaf to the real world, let alone in the current economy.

Instead, Henson should consider his own job prospects as a sixth-round pick. The average NFL career lasts roughly three years. That figure is lower for sixth-round picks, who initially must outplay teammates with bigger signing bonuses. After all, teams are more reluctant to part with players they’ve invested big money.

I wrote a book on the NFL draft in 2005, following the process of talent evaluation from the beginning of the 2004 college season through the ’05 draft. This morning, I took a look back at the Class of 2005 sixth round. Of that group of 39 players:

Only 13 players have had significant NFL careers, including TE Bo Scaife (Titans), DE Jovan Haye (Titans), OG Chris Kemoeatu (Steelers), and QB Derek Anderson (Browns). Even Haye had to bounce around before finally earning a big payday this past offseason.

Ten players are out of football, including one (Jonathan Goddard) who died in a motorcycle accident last year. Several players in this group were cut out of their first training camp. Others had career-ending injuries. Others just fell between the cracks in the brutal next-man-up world of the NFL.

The other 16 have bounced around as NFL practice squad players or played in the Canadian Football League or now-defunct Arena Football League. Several are holding on to hope in the new United Football League (UFL). The one thing they have in common is that they’ve never drawn a consistent NFL salary; even practice squad players earn only about $5,000 a week – during the season only.

That’s not bad money – $80,000-plus for a few months of seasonal work. It’s not McDonald’s, but it’s not pro athlete dough either.

One guy who won’t be flipping burgers is Joe Berger. Drafted by the Panthers in the sixth round in 2005, he’s enjoyed a solid career mostly with the Cowboys and Dolphins. He also graduated magna cum laude from Michigan Tech with a degree in mechanical engineering.

As for Henson, he has yet to see action for the Redskins this year. In a world in which distractions are frowned upon, the sixth-rounder’s odds of having a significant career just got a lot steeper.

By Pete Williams

Whenever prominent professional athletes do something stupid, you always can count on a flurry of sports business stories asking whether it will hurt their endorsements.

Inevitably, the sponsors will stand behind their jock, knowing full well they have to pay the money regardless.

These days, sponsors are lining up to capitalize on the poor behavior of athletes. Brett Favre is starring in commercials playing off his indecisiveness. And now Tampax has announced they’ve signed Serena Williams to endorse their products.

Yep, just a week after Williams uncharacteristically unleashed a profanity-laced tirade at an official, a tampon manufacturer has signed her to an endorsement deal.

According to Brandweek, the deal “is a continuation of the brand’s “Outsmart Mother Nature” campaign, which shows a pesky character, Mother Nature, attempting to deliver women their monthly periods (in the form of a red ribbon-topped gift box).”

Courtney Schuster, an associate brand manager for Tampax, told Brandweek Williams is “unstoppable and prepared, like our Tampax girl. She doesn’t let Mother Nature get the best of her.”

Hmmmm.

By Pete Williams

Newsweek has jumped the shark. For those still hanging on to what journalism represents, this is a very sad thing.

A few months ago, the news magazine changed its format. No longer would it have lengthy news analysis pieces and investigative journalism, though in truth it had long strayed from that core mission, focusing on pop culture.

At first, this seemed like a good thing. Newsweek appeared to be thumbing its nose at the “new media,” providing lengthy essays. Who cared if surveys suggested nobody reads anything longer than 500 words? Newsweek was not going to cater to the blogosphere but instead provide meaty, thought-provoking material, circulation be damned.

Instead, Newsweek has given us the most annoying, self-indulgent blogs imaginable, which in the modern media climate is saying something. Sure, the columns are not packaged as blogs but that’s how they read. Not only that, they’re tired. (“Why Twitter is Stupid,” Daniel Lyons writes in this week’s issue.)

The cover stories are fluffy at best, shameless at worst. Two weeks ago, the cover screamed “Is Your Baby Racist?” Last week it was “The Case for Killing Granny.” This week, it’s “The Greenest Big Companies in America: An Exclusive Ranking.”

Yawn.

Last fall, Newsweek went through a stretch where it put Barack Obama on the cover something like 11 times in a 15-week stretch. Even the most ardent Obama supporters lost interest. Even Sports Illustrated editors, who used to run Michael Jordan on the cover with similar frequency, must have cringed.

The worst part is that the Obama covers seemed less about news coverage and endorsements from a left-leaning publication than celebrity obsession. We’re trying to sell magazines here!

Newsweek used to be about providing much-needed hard news and commentary, filling a void left by newspapers and their skeleton staffs. Now it’s about tired blogs, underreported trend pieces, and stories about which company is most green.

That’s why I’m going green and letting my subscription lapse after many years. I can read Newsweek for free online and get plenty of similar content elsewhere.

By Pete Williams

Jeff Foxworthy wrote an interesting column in today’s Parade magazine about kids. After all, Foxworthy is the host of the popular show “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?”

I’ve never seen the show, but apparently it’s terrific.

The column reminded me of a call I got from a publicist early in 1992 when I was working for USA Today Baseball Weekly. Just a week earlier, I had started a column on baseball memorabilia and the PR guy said he had an up-and-coming comedian client who collected baseballs signed by celebrities. He’d be in town the following week. Would I like to meet him for a possible column?

“Great!” I said. “But, um, who’s Jeff Foxworthy?”

I met Foxworthy, then 33, for a late breakfast near a dive hotel he was staying at in Washington, D.C. He talked about how seven years earlier (1985) he had given up a $30,000-a-year job with IBM – back when that was still big money – to pursue the comedy circuit.

Now he lived on the road, staying in crummy hotels and doing countless early morning zoo radio interviews to lure people to the shows. His act focused on the differences between the sexes but he was starting to get some response from a new routine called “You Might be a Redneck if…”

We talked about collecting baseball cards and the Atlanta Braves, who were coming off the improbable worst-to-first 1991 season. Foxworthy grew up in Atlanta and one of his funniest lines from the interview was clipped by my editors.

“The Braves were so bad for so long, guys went just to watch women eat hot dogs.”

Foxworthy asked if I wanted him to leave some tickets for the show that night.

“How many friends can I bring?” I asked.

“As many as you want,” he said, “Believe me.”

So I showed up to a tiny bar with three or four friends. A couple others blew it off.

There could not have been more than 30 people in the room. Foxworthy was one of three or four comedians on the card and he might not have even been the headliner.

His routine was mostly material from his new “Redneck” act. He was freakin’ hilarious. After the show, my friends and I sat around and had a few drinks with Foxworthy and the other comics.

The following year, Foxworthy released his first “You Might be a Redneck” album. It sold 3 million copies and his career took off.

I wish I had kept in touch with the guy. A few years later I tried to reach him for a Braves-related story. By then he had more high-profile representation and his new flak didn’t deem a USA Today baseball magazine worthy of Foxworthy’s time.

The Foxworthy interview taught me some valuable lessons. Never give up on career dreams. Always listen to story pitches from PR flaks.

And never, ever, turn down free tickets to a comedy show.

By Pete Williams

Is there a rule that says that every recently-retired star athlete must be given a broadcasting gig on ESPN, NFL Network, or the MLB Network?

Obviously this is a natural second career for many athletes and networks seem to have an insatiable appetite for ex-jock talking heads. If a two-man booth works, why not three? If a four-man pre-game show works well, why not six or eight?

MLB Network, which is only eight months old, has so many ex-players in its rotation, its nightly studio show seems like it’s run by two managers trying to get everyone into an All-Star Game.

If networks continue to hire every ex-jock available, shouldn’t they at least do some due diligence? Just because a guy was a Hall of Fame caliber player does not mean he will be a Hall of Fame analyst. Just look at how uncomfortable Dave Winfield seems on air. Or Joe Morgan, who for some reason keeps his longstanding gig on ESPN even if though he often makes no sense on air. Or Dan Marino, who seems to get work based solely on great hair.

Speaking of great hair, Joe Theismann has a new TV gig, with the NFL Network. Even ESPN gave up on this blowhard after many years of listening to Theismann shout, “If you’re (insert team), you know that this is what you have to do to be successful in the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE!”

Which brings us to Derrick Brooks, who just got a job as a correspondent with ESPN’s “First Take” even though he’s still trolling for a linebacker job. Brooks is a Hall of Fame player and a Hall of Fame person whose vast work with underprivileged kids is staggering.

But as an interviewee, Brooks is a work in progress. He spent his lengthy career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as one of the toughest, most guarded interviews I’ve ever come across. He was always pleasant, but rarely provided much insight. He had a weekly radio show on Tampa sports radio for about a decade, one of those easy collect-a-check gigs where you yuck it up with a friendly co-host. And yet he rarely had anything to say on The Derrick Brooks Show either.

Sometimes players who ignore or combat the media throughout their careers become terrific analysts. Bill Walton and Sterling Sharpe come to mind. More often than not, it’s the mid-level guy who did thousands of insightful interviews as a player who becomes a terrific analyst.

Brooks is no Walton or Sharpe; he was accessible to the media but rarely let his guard down. He opened up to Peter King several years for a Sports Illustrated piece on his game-week preparation that was amazing. There’s a terrific football mind there; let’s hope he shares this insight that perhaps he didn’t find appropriate to convey as a player.

If he does, he’ll be the next ex-Buc player or coach to star on TV in a suit. Jon Gruden looks like the next John Madden. Trent Dilfer might be the best football studio analyst anywhere. Shaun King is surprisingly good. Tony Dungy, John Lynch, Warren Sapp, and Keyshawn Johnson all have personalities that have translated well to television. Ronde Barber no doubt will be next.

To think, those coaches and players were covered in Tampa by then-local television reporters such as ESPN’s Erin Andrews, Sage Steele, and Jay Crawford, who is one of the hosts of ESPN’s First Take. Now everyone has gone national – media and players.

Perhaps it will work out for Brooks. He’s the best player in Bucs history and, along with Warrick Dunn, has given the most to the community. Brooks reminds me of Fred McGriff, another guarded interviewee as a player. Fred, whom I’ve worked with in television here in the Tampa Bay area, has worked hard on his on-air presence and has become much more comfortable in front of the camera.

Let’s hope ESPN will be patient with Brooks, who is just as capable as Sapp, Gruden, or Dilfer of providing candid, insightful analysis.

Heck, Brooks already is much better than Theismann.

By Pete Williams

Carl Crawford lashed out at Pat Burrell last night, screaming across the Tampa Bay Rays clubhouse before a game in Baltimore.

Burrell ignored him, Crawford was ushered out of the room by a teammate, and manager Joe Maddon pronounced it no big deal. Crawford refused to comment on the situation and Burrell, as usual, blew off the media.

These things happen in any workplace, let alone those in which employees spend virtually every day for eight months working and traveling together. So most likely it was no big deal. Crawford and Burrell, after all, trained together during the offseason for many years at Athletes’ Performance in Phoenix.

Then again, everything you need to know about the state of the Tampa Bay Rays, perhaps the most disappointing team in baseball this season south of Queens, can be seen in Crawford and Burrell.

Crawford is the fastest man in baseball, a bundle of energy who always seems to have a spring in his step. Burrell is perhaps the slowest man in the game, a guy with a perpetual scowl on his face who seems to suck the energy out of a room like a Harry Potter dementor.

Crawford is a conditioning freak whose work ethic matches his God-given gifts. He’s a spokesman for the Tobacco Free Florida campaign and baseball’s RBI program. Burrell usually has a big wad of tobacco in his jaw, smokes the occasional cigarette, and has the body of a much older man.

Crawford is a stand-up guy, always accountable to teammates and the media. Burrell is a loner who usually blows off the press unless he homered during the game.

Crawford has a $10 million option for next season. Because of his five-tool talent, consistent play, and youth, teams will call with trade offers this winter. Because of the way the Rays keep payroll low to remain profitable, quite profitable according to Forbes magazine, the team likely will pick up his option and trade him at some point in 2010.

Burrell has $9 million guaranteed for next season. Because of his one-dimensional skill set and underachieving play, nobody will call with trade offers this winter. Because of the way the Rays keep payroll low to remain profitable, they have to allocate a sizable chunk of next year’s payroll to Burrell, who is immovable in every sense of the word.

Crawford is a three-time All-Star who turned 28 last month who has earned $21 million in his career. Burrell is a zero-time All-Star who will be 33 next month who has collected $60 million in his career.

The Rays’ signing of Crawford to a long-term contract before the 2005 season, buying out the first and possibly second years of free agent eligibility, looks like the shrewdest financial move in team history, though the long-term deal handed to Evan Longoria might one day eclipse it.

The Rays’ signing of Burrell might not be as bad as the contracts handed to Greg Vaughn, Wilson Alvarez, and Juan Guzman, but it’s the worst move by Andrew Friedman, who usually places a premium on defense, speed, and clubhouse chemistry.

Next season Crawford likely will be playing elsewhere, if not on Opening Day then by midseason. Next season Burrell will be playing in Tampa Bay unless the Rays agree to pay at least $7 million of his contract in trade.

Last night, Crawford called out Burrell, not that it will do much good for the Rays now. It’s Burrell, after all, whose contract and play might seal Crawford’s early departure.