Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

In January 2009, UnitedHealth based in Minnetonka, Minnesota agreed to shut down their Ingenix database and settled a lawsuit with the New York Attorney General by paying $50 million, it was reported in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal. According to an item in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, the investigation by the New York Attorney’s General office uncovered a fraudulent and conflict-of-interest-ridden reimbursement system, which the state of New York then proceeded to replace with a not-for-profit company, FAIR Health Inc., to be headquartered at Syracuse University.

That $50 million was used to form a new, independent database at Syracuse University. After settlements with other similar companies, the New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday
a new independent database for consumer reimbursement as part of this Upstate research network in what sounds to be a reformed plan for Ingenix’s health care reimbursement database. Only this time allegedly with “transparency, accountability and fairness.” Funded by the litigation of Mr. Cuomo. Offering no defense of the operations at UnitedHealth here, public policy in New York apparently involves using the courts to transfer jobs to their state under the umbrella of the health care debate?

This new research network, reportedly funded with nearly $100 million in settlement money recovered during an investigation by Cuomo’s office into how the health-insurance industry reimburses consumers for out-of-network health care charges, “will develop a new Web site where for the first time consumers can compare prices before they choose their doctors.”

This is an innovative way for state government to create new jobs in their own state.

On Human Growth & Those Hormones

Commissioner Bud Selig told a New York Times columnist. “I’m concerned about the pace of the game.

Hypocrisy is a charge leveled when someone fails to live up to the virtuous standards being expounded.

On spectating. On the theatrics of spectating. I attended sports events to watch. More and more there are these spectating participants. Who stood up and blocked my view. And they looked for others in the crowd to do as they did. As if they were participating in what was gonna happen on the next pitch. Orchestrated. Over-managed ritualized standing, watching the Joe Girardis and the Ron Gardenhires over manage. Baseball 2009. Embracing the language of the age, and ritualistic noisemaking. On Fox Television.

Fox Sports. The prior owner of the Dodgers. Bigger than life Fox Sports that gave me week in and week out on their local affiliated cable station broadcasters that stole enjoyment from the game. It was like that Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life who owned everything in town. When the Mr. Potters controlled the broadcast rights. With an FTC that just allowed the media to drain credibility with sponsors who equally sponsored politicians through lobby groups. When baseball was just a small part of the problem, only reflecting all off society’s ills. Drugs. Steroid use. Sexual harassment, with the Mets, at ESPN. Those Stanford grads managing the Diamondback to a last place finish. Bud Selig’s New Age Baseball.

Bud Selig and dermatology. His thin Wisconsin skin that was bothered if he spent any time in October in New York. About criticism of umpires versus instant replays. Bud Selig making TV more important each October. What now happened each year with all post season baseball. Making the audience at home more important than the ticket buyer. With a disregard of playing conditions once a game began. Like the scheduling of baseball in November. Bud Selig New Age Baseball.

Fox Sports. During the regular season. Making television so important until no one was watching televised baseball during the regular season. Without regard to the clocks. And those 4 hours games. As if this was the NFL. Fox Sports and their good drones who cover the games, and don’t ask any uncomfortable questions.

TBS. And Chip Caray, never mentioning the incident of Miguel Caberra in the playoff game, of the circumstances of his drinking until 6 a.m. Too inconvenient for everyone. Those MLB partners. The Tigers. And Caberra’s wife. Not explaining how there might not have been a playoff in Minnesota.

TBS. And Chip Caray, making more errors than the umpires. Let’s share the performance enhancement drugs with the broadcaster. And Joe Buck. Whatever happened to likable broadcasters? Honest broadcasters who were not some shills of MLB, TBS, or Fox Sports. People who knew something and were worth listening to discuss baseball. Likable guys. Like Skip Caray. Or Jack Buck? Men not born with silver microphones in their mouths. People who reached the national stage not on their pedigree. But based on talent.

Joe Buck. Where there was melodrama everywhere. And “good at-bats.” Melodrama everywhere, created by your broadcasters. And Joe Buck encouraging those spectating participants in the crowd. To stand and block my view. While he sat in his pressbox. Elevated above it all.

I was a spectator. I knew my role. I had paid to watch. As ticket prices escalated. Thanks to collusion. When the commissioner was now colluding with the Major League Players Association. Every 4 or 5 year. In the basic agreement. When Bud Selig gets his $15 million cut each year. He was good at colluding, as an arbiter had once ruled. And so was Donald Fehr who was just given an $11 million severance package with his retirement. Collusion to increase revenue from the working stiffs who bought baseball tickets. While those artificial drones in the broadcast booths, and journalist still cheerleading the expenditures of dollars on free agents. In publicly financed stadiums. Thirty three years later after free agency began. New stadiums were needed to pay for this system.

Free agency. Because players would talked to the Peter Gammons s and the Murray Chase s who fed Marvin Miller’s New Age Music. All this artificial participation. By stand up guys everywhere. In the stands and in the dugouts. Guys like Scott Boras and all the other stand up cheerleaders in L.A. With the Yankees playing the Angels in the American League Championship Series in Anaheim, did Scott Boras, visible in virtually every center-field camera shot conspicuously standing in the home plate suite, ever sit down? And in Chavez Ravine. But not just in L.A. Give Scott Boras a visible location and maybe more of his clients will sign with the Dodgers, the Angels, or the Yankees. All this endorsed artificiality by Boras and all those stand up cheerleaders in Dodger Stadium.

According to Joe Buck, there should not have been a focus in the attention given in an 10-1 game on umpires and the bad calls. Not in the newspapers. Joe Buck who thought about it, and five minutes later, in an intro of “not to beat a dead horse” umpire discussion, talking about the threat of baseball’s credibility, about replays. Instant replay.

About the threat of the loss of credibility. Joe. Get a mirror. Or listen to yourself tells us what wonderful baseball we were watching in New York, in spite of the rain and cold temperatures. And all these good at-bats that contributed to the perversions of length of game. The game was supposed to be about hits, not walks. When the purpose of the bat was to swing. And not have to listen to Joe Buck drone on and on. Get out of your heated booth and feel the conspicuous rain for 210 minutes. Then tell us of the wonders of a good at-bat. Umpires used to postpone such games because of rain and cold. Maybe you can tell the writers what to write about in those wonderful games 10-1 games when the games take 210 minutes, however hard it was to be consistent in the spotlight so much on one microphone.

As ticket prices escalated. The threat of baseball’s credibility. When Commissioner Bud Selig told a New York Times columnist. “I’m concerned about the pace of the game.” With instant replays which would add to the length of game. Other than making TV and Fox Sports even more important. Those fans at home more important than anyone in the park. People in the park who paid to conspicuously watch everything except the instant replays. Or what those spectating participants did not obstruct.

Bud Selig’s New Age Baseball. And Selig’s concern about “the pace of the game.” Hey Bud, what about the length of the season?

That Umpire Who Once Was a Bartender: I’ll Have a Double

Phil Cuzzi became well known Friday night in Minnesota. Major League Baseball only has umpires along the outfield foul lines in the All-Star Game and for post season baseball. He was the umpire whose only duties down the left field line was to judge fair or foul balls.

Cuzzi is a 54-year old umpire with decades of experience. Sunday night he is the third base umpire. If there is a fourth game, he will be at second base. “Unless you umpire, you can’t possibly understand,” in a phone interview Saturday night Cuzzi told The Newark Star-Ledger . “It happens. It happens at the worst possible time. And it happened to me.” Steve Politi wrote, he was standing barely 10 feet away, with an unobstructed view when he saw the ball curve down the left-field line and bounce. When reached Saturday night by Steve Politi, Cuzzi admitted he felt badly about blowing the call Friday night in which he ruled that Joe Mauer’s drive fell in foul territory.

How the heck did he miss that call?. “We’re not used to playing that far down the line,” Cuzzi told Steve Politi. “I think I may have been looking too closely at it. I never had a feel for where the left fielder was on the play.”

In 1993, Cuzzi was “released” from his duties as a AAA umpire, having been in 140 major-league games. Then in 1996 Len Coleman was the president of the National League staying as a guest at the Short Hills Hilton when he was approached by Cuzzi who was working there as a concierge. Cuzzi had stood in the hallway early one morning, waiting for Coleman’s door to open.

“I initially jumped back, and then he identified himself,” Coleman told the Newark reporter. “He was working at the hotel and figured I’d be going out in the morning. He already had 140 major-league games under his belt. But I told him there was no way he was getting back to the big leagues unless he started at A ball. And that’s exactly what he did. He got back into his car and rode all over the country, umpiring A-ball games from one league to the next, all because he wanted to get back to the majors so badly.”

After being fired as a minor league umpire in 1993, he becoming one of 25 umpires hired after a number of umpires resigned as part of a Ritchie Phillips’ labor scheme gone bad, writes Mark Gonzales in the Chicago Tribune. Gonzales described Cuzzi’s job in 1996 as that of a bartender.

The labor scheme gone bad involved mostly National League umpires in a Phillips’s scheme of having the umpires resign en masse to induce MLB to negotiate for a labor agreement to replace the agreement that expired three weeks before. In the board-conducted election, umpires voted by 57-35 for the Major League Umpires Independent Organizing Committee to represent them, which was the end of Ritchie Phillips. And it saw the likes of Phil Cuzzi to come back to the big leagues.

He still serves up a strong Manhattan.

Baseball 2009

If there was one league, it would have been quite a pennant race with two games left in the season. Especially if only one team went to the World Series as in before 1969.

Los Angeles 93 67 .581 - - - -
Philadelphia 92 68 .575 1.0 - - -
Colorado 92 68 .575 1.0 - -
St. Louis 91 70 .565 2.0 – - -

48 Hours

Hush money.

The Telegraph had the news of David Letterman’s revelation that he had sexual relationships with female employees of his show. Letterman said after his monologue last night on the air that he had received a demand by an alleged extortionist, according to CBS an employee of “48 Hours,” to either pay $2 million or risk his relationships being made public.

Letterman’s own production company according to the Los Angeles Times, does have a sexual harassment policy in place which does not prohibit sexual relationships between managers and employees, said a spokesman for Worldwide Pants.

After making a living off as a comic over Monica Lewinsky and Eliot Spitzer jokes, Letterman put the spin that the real story was about extortion, and the “threat” to him over his “creepy behavior.” According to Nick Allen of the The Telegraph.co.uk, during the CBS “Late Show with David Letterman,” Letterman revealed earlier that day he appeared before a grand jury about an alleged extortion attempt connected to his sexual liasons with women who worked for him which would clearly involve issues of sexual harassment in his admitted “creepy stuff…relationships.”

The Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, with a perceived timing orchestrated by Worldwide Pants, held a press conference within 14 hours to announce the specifics, revealing charges brought against CBS News producer Robert “Joe” Halderman.

Worldwide Pants. Caught without their pants on. “We have a written policy in our employee manual that covers harassment. It is circulated to every employee every year. Dave is not in violation of our policy and no one has ever raised a complaint against him.” So said the statement. Letterman’s own production company. Letterman did not believe in sexual harassment? He was an agnostic when it came to sexual harassment? What about the people who did not get the promotions that his staffers got in the Worldwide Pants world?

Thursday CBS said the “48 Hours” employee charged with attempted grand larceny was suspended from his job. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau in a press conference revealed the charges against CBS News producer Robert “Joe”Halderman. Mr. Halderman has not gotten the same public forum to address the world that Letterman was given about his alleged wrong doing. There also was no word on how CBS was dealing with the issues of sexual harassment, if corporate policy was violated. What a time for those human resource staffers. Apparently CBS feels extortion from an entertainment star was a worse offense than sexual harassment of female staffers, or the collateral damage of sexual harassment.

Fox News New York has reported that according to a search warrant, Robert “Joe” Halderman’s girlfriend Stephanie Birkitt was one of the women that Letterman slept with. According to Fox News New York, Ms. Birkitt is Letterman’s former assistant. Fox News New York has reported that the search warrant states the package Halderman sent Letterman contained copies of parts of Stephanie Birkitt’s diary and correspondence.

Entertainment Tonight showed later featured appearances of Stephanie Birkitt over the years on “Late Show with David Letterman” from venues like the Winter Olympics.

Letterman was quoted on his show as saying: “I was worried for myself. I was worried for my family. I felt menaced by this. And I had to tell them all of the creepy things that I had done.

According to Nick Allen of the The Telegraph.co.uk, “The creepy stuff was that I have had sex with women who work for me on this show.”

Letterman described how three weeks ago he had got in his car early in the morning, found a letter within a package saying: “I know that you do some terrible, terrible things and that I can prove you do some terrible things.” The package contained the proof, Letterman said. He called his lawyer to set up a meeting with the alleged extortionist, with two subsequent meetings, the last one resulting in the delivery of the fake check. Robert “Joe” Halderman allegedly had threatened to write a screenplay and a book about him unless Halderman was given money.

According to Nick Allen, Letterman admitted on Late Night Show Thursday night to having “had sex with women who work with me on this show. My response to that is yes, I have. Would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Yes, it would. Especially for the women.”

According to Nick Allen of the The Telegraph.co.uk, after telling all to his audience Letterman lightened the mood. “I know what you’re saying. I’ll be darned – Dave had sex.”

So it was about hush money? The bizarre experience? The audience had scattered laughter throughout the confession.

Yeah. On with the show.

“It’s been a very bizarre experience. I felt like I needed to protect these people. I need to protect my family. I need to protect myself. Hope to protect my job.”

The bizarre experience! For the audience. An inappropriate place to make the revelation, by a host with an inappropriate sensibility about himself. A repeat offender. Someone who had to be making overtures. But on with the show. Before we gave it all too much thought. One-liners.

It might be a while before the president is going to be booking an appearance again.

Maybe Bill Clinton will show up next week to offer some support. Or guest Host Elliot Spitzer? What a time for those staffers trying to line up guests for next week.

The age of television. Performance enhancement egos and salaries. When the era of Rocky the Squirrel of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota was replaced by the era of Vigara sponsorship.