Joe Torre yesterday said that he is "enjoying the new role" of MLB Exec VP/Baseball Operations. Torre is "visiting teams from coast to coast, determining the course of his new office." In his "final year managing the Dodgers in 2010, Torre found that he could no longer handle the losing." Torre: "It wasn't balanced out by the winning anymore. I hated it. I was more ready not to do what I've been doing for years. When the Commissioner made this job offer to me, I asked him a few times if he thought I could do it. It was the insecurity of not knowing what the job entailed, even though it's baseball-related. But it has been fun and very energizing for me" (MLB.com, 5/11).
HERE WE GO AGAIN...: In Toronto, Damien Cox writes the NHL CBA signed in '05 "was supposed to stabilize all the league’s franchises," but it did not. The CBA "was supposed to bring player costs under control, and it didn’t." Six years after the NHL lockout, "how can we be here again?" Cox: "Multiple failing franchises, more than a third of the league’s teams up for sale, the Bettman administration in its second year of full ownership of one club, $300 million franchises valued at half that and spectacular losses being declared despite the fact that since the lockout the league has gone from a $2 billion industry to a $3 billion industry." Hockey fans "better get ready for what's coming." Cox: "Another lockout. ... The league didn’t get its 'idiot-proof' CBA; therefore, it must try again" (TORONTO STAR, 5/12).
FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT: In Ft. Worth, Anthony Andro notes while NASCAR fined drivers Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick for a confrontation last weekend, the governing body instead "should be thanking them for their on- and off-track clashes." NASCAR should "celebrate what makes it different from other sports.” Regan Smith, who won last weekend’s Sprint Cup race, “would have gotten more of the spotlight” if not for the feud. But Andro writes, “I don’t fault Fox or NASCAR for focusing on the feud. Smith is a nice story, but in the big picture, he doesn't hold a candle to two of the sport's big stars getting into it.” Former driver Kyle Petty said, “NASCAR didn't step in, they didn't stop it from escalating, they let it escalate and they let it escalate on national TV" (FT. WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM, 5/12).
