MILLAR: HELL NO, I WON'T GO

The Boston Globe reports that chances of Kevin Millar playing in Japan this season are becoming less and less likely. Tony Massarotti (Boston Herald) adds:

Major League Baseball vice president of baseball operations Sandy Alderson categorized the Millar matter as ``still unresolved'' early yesterday, though he might not have known about the reports from Japan. In any case, Alderson hoped for a resolution that would appease all parties.

``We'd like to see a situation that results in the best interests of the player, the best interests of the Chunichi Dragons and the best interests of the rules,'' he said.

The former general manager of the Oakland A's, Alderson acknowledged that he rarely has seen a case as peculiar as the one involving Millar, who was claimed off waivers by the Red Sox last month.

Alderson said ``the uniqueness of the situation really stems from the claim made by the Red Sox,'' but was careful not to direct blame at Sox officials by stressing that it was within the club's rights to claim Millar.

Major league teams typically have refrained from claiming players bound for Japan as a matter of etiquette, but there is nothing in league rules that prohibits teams from complicating the process.

``Had (the Red Sox) not made the claim, the circumstances would be different,'' Alderson said. ``(But) it's their right to do under the rules. I'm not being critical.''

LONELY AVENUE

The Times ran a terrific profile on Jose Contreras yesterday. Like Godzilla Matsui, Contreras has a sense of humility that should make him right at home with the likes of Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams.

"This guy can pitch," said the Cleveland Indians' international scouting director, Rene Gayo, who signed the last prominent Cuban free agent, pitcher Danys Baez, in 1999. "In my opinion, he's a lot like John Smoltz or Curt Schilling. He's got a forkball that's just nasty."

Pat Gillick, the Seattle general manager, thought enough of Contreras to override the Mariners' philosophy against giving contracts of longer than three years. In Nicaragua, Gillick offered $24 million for four years. "This guy's special," Gillick said.

..."I think he's a really good person, excellent, in fact," Gillick said. "It's just the way he handles himself. He's a very humble guy, very sincere, and there's a level of genuineness there. What you see is what you get. I don't think there's any hidden agenda."

..."He had already put a lot of time into learning specific big league hitters, how he would attack them," [Boston GM, Theo] Epstein said. "He had a game plan for how to pitch Barry Bonds, how to pitch Ichiro Suzuki. He knew more about some big league hitters than some major league pitchers I've come across. He was clearly a thoughtful guy."

Like El Duque before him, one of the most interesting aspects of Contreras' initial season in the United States will be how he handles the loneliness of being a stranger in a strange land (his family is still in Cuba). Of course, he'll be paid handsomely. In fact, his staggering salary may only complicate his sense of isolation. After all, this is a man who previously made $50 a month in Cuba.

I ran across a passage from John Updike's famous tribute to Ted Williams ("Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu") that addressed the concept of baseball's inherent lonliness:

...For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill. Baseball is a game of the long season, of relentless and gradual averaging-out. Irrelevance---since the reference point of most individual games is remote and statistical---always threatens its interest, which can be maintained not by the occasional heroics that sportswriters feed upond but by players who always care; who care, that is to say, about themselves and their art. Insofar as the clutch hitter is not a sportswriter's myth, he is a vulgarity, like a writer who writes only for money. [Consider that Updike wrote this before the days of the designated hitter.] It may be that, compared to managers' dreams, such as Joe DiMaggio and the always helpful Stan Musial, Williams is an icy star. But of all team sports, baseball, with its graceful intermittences of action, its immense and tranquil field sparsely settled with poised men in white, its dispassionate mathematics, seems to me best suited to accommodate, and be ornamented by, a loner. It is essentially a lonely game. No other player visible to my generation has concentrated within himself so much of the sport's poignance, has so assiduously refined his natural skills, has so constantly brought to the plate that intensity of competence that crowds the throat with joy.

PETE'S PICKS

Check out Peter Gammons' American League preview over at ESPN.

What does he make of the Yankees' chances?

The fact is that only age, injuries and owner hysteria can keep the Yankees from being really good.

All three of those factors could easily rear their ugly heads this year, but if they don't, it's hard not to agree with Gammons' take.

SHOOT ME NOW

Regardless of how the Yankees do, it looks as if us dopes who are stuck with Cablevision will be screwed once again. I haven't spent much time writing about the depressing state of affairs, because what else is there to say? I try not to think about it, or the fury that is building in the pit of my stomach. And while I'm not holding my breath for a deal to get done before opening day, I must hold out hope, foolish as it may seem.

Another season of Sterling and Steiner is too much to bear.

According to Newsday:

Cablevision subscribers who were shut out of watching 130 Yankees games last year should brace for another dark season. Six days before the Yankees' spring-training camp opens, the 16-month dispute between the YES Network and Cablevision shows no sign of being resolved. In recent weeks, prospects for a settlement have dimmed, and yesterday, the rhetoric between the principals increased.

EATIN' RAUL

Yankee right-fielder Raul Mondesi commented on the possibility of being traded by the Yankees yesterday.

"If they trade me to another big league team, there's no problem," Mondesi said Wednesday. "It would be difficult if they traded me to a football or basketball team because I don't know how to play that."

What about Roller Derby, Fat Guy?