Results tagged ‘ greed ’
Jose & Ozzie Canseco: The Brother's Dim
Wait. You want me to do what?
Sometimes life just gives you little gifts. Jose Canseco is one of those presents life presented us with a long, long time ago and over the last 20 years or so the man has proven to be a gift that keeps on giving.
Adding to his list of less-than-normal activities, Jose Canseco reportedly didn’t feel like participating in a Celebrity Boxing match this past weekend.
However, rather than completely bailing on the event, he stole an idea from the annals of bad television. He opted for the ol’ “twin switcharoo”, went all “Parent Trap” on our asses and sent his twin brother in his place.
I’m pretty sure this is one of those stories that couldn’t be made up. Won’t guarantee it. But am pretty damn sure.
The mouth-breather failed to show up for the fight against Billy Padden in front of almost 500 paying customers Saturday at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Florida and instead sent his twin brother Ozzie Canseco, according to “Celebrity Boxing” promoter Damon Feldman.
Feldman says he already paid the bad boy of baseball and “Celebrity Apprentice” cast-mate $5,000 for the fight and that Ozzie Canseco pretended to be Jose and demanded the remainder of his purse, $5,000 in cash, refusing the contractually agreed to payment via check. “Jose” aka Ozzie refused to fight without the money.
Feldman says Ozzie, who enjoyed a brief MLB career himself, was only outed after a photographer noticed that he was missing a tattoo on his arm that Jose has.
So the Brother’s Dim didn’t think anyone would notice the missing body ink on the guy stepping into the ring for this event? I can A. see a whole lot of thought went into this one and B. immediately wondered if Jose had tried to send poor Ozzie in to get his ass beat on his behalf in his MMA debut versus the 7’2″ Hong Man Choi last year.
I know that Ozzie, who has long been overshadowed by his brothers baseball career and zany antics, probably hasn’t been doin’ much more than crashing on Jose’s couch whilst pulling his best Kato Kaelin ever since he washed out of baseball in the 80′s but c’mon…this has to be a new low, even for a Canseco.
I should have made Ozzie come to this thing =(
Once the attempted Scooby Doo-like switch was discovered Canseco refused to return the money and wouldn’t return phone calls seeking comment.
However, he did post a bunch of stuff “related” to the event on Twitter:
Be very careful with Damon feldman who runs celebrity boxing he will not pay you if you fight for him
Damon feldman will not fulfil his part of the bargain
let’s see who is smart enough to figure out what happened at the boxing match
is anyone out there smart enough to figure it out or are you all a bunch of hateful morons
the truth is always hidden from the public to create villains and heroes which 1 are you truly
seek the truth before reacting
just remember the media is write 20 percent of 50 percent of the time
how can you haters being so ignorant it’s amazing
I am still waiting for an intelligent scenario
First of all, to misspell “right” as “write” in a criticism of the media is either a brilliant example of misdirection or the dumbest thing of all time. Based on this douchebag’s career arc I think we all know it’s the latter.
Living the surreal life Jose?
Beyond that, his daring people to “figure out what happened at the boxing match” and later writing “I am still waiting for an intelligent scenario” makes me think Canseco is just hoping someone suggests a scenario so good that he can actually use it as an excuse.
This whole thing reads like a super depressing, down on your luck version of all the kids movies where identical twins switch places with each other at school one day and the teachers never notice a thing as hilarity ensues.
In this version one twin is being paid $10,000 to get beat up in front of 500 people and the other twin is willing to get beat up in his place for what is presumably less than the full $10,000. The whole thing falls apart over tattoos, which is maybe the most fitting aspect of the entire story.
Talk about your cracked out after-school special!
The brothers Canseco have done this type of switch before for autograph sessions and things of that nature, but one has to wonder if this is the first time these jackasses have pulled these kind of shenanigans (including Major League Baseball games perhaps?).
“I’ve worked with him before,” Feldman said. “Except now I’ve got to look back at the pictures at the time and look if I ever really met Jose Canseco.”
Prophet or pariah?
All things aside in this great big mess I have to say that, honestly, if you’re paying to watch Jose Canseco box…you pretty much deserve to get stuck with Ozzie. Seriously, why would you want to go watch the tainted former MVP perform in the ring?
Perhaps the saddest part of this whole freak show that is Jose’s life is the fact that this is the guy that cleaned up baseball.
Bud Selig and his merry band of nitwits tried their best to discredit him. Former players like Curt Schilling took to their blogs and lambasted him. Players like Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro, Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire his behind their representatives.
But in the end, Canseco was right. And they were all so very, very wrong.
There is something incredibly pathetic in that fact.
I Hate To Burst Your Bubble, But…
Insult is no longer allowed to be added to injury. Greed needs a boundary. The dot.sports bubble is about to burst.
Billionaire NFL owners and millionaire players insult our common sense as they cut up a 10 billion dollar revenue pie paid for by foreclosed fans.
Squeezing literal blood from a stone, owners have extracted huge TV prepayments, sent layoff notices to staff and invented “personal seat licenses” (the infamous mortgage derivative of sports) this year.
Help me understand: I pay for my seats, I pay shipping and handling and parking and overpriced concessions and logo’d merchandise and, in addition, I have to buy the right to be reamed for a price *larger* than my actual tickets?
Why? To pad the vault before a pending lockout designed to prevent the players from cutting a bigger slice of the pie – despite overwhelming evidence of the premature deaths and shortened life expectancy of players.
Hello, injury… meet insult. Football may be the most obvious right now, but baseball and other pro sports share the vastly inflated economic disparity vs. the fans. Bread and circuses?
Not that the players are underpaid (well, the Pittsburgh Pirates, maybe) – rather, under taxed. Due to tax breaks for new construction, some players in new top condos in NY pay *one fifth* as much tax as a couple in Queens pays. Hello, insult?
We forget that players work half a year, not full-time. And many duck local taxes in the “home” towns of their ballparks through high-priced advisors.
And the owners are rigging the game. Consider this: DirectTV would have actually paid the owners *more* if there were a lockout than if games were played.
Apart from the TV deals and away gate ticket sales the league divides, owners collect from their stadium (gate) receipts for home games, naming rights, sponsorships, luxury suite revenue, concessions and local broadcast rights.
In addition, your own stadium brings in extra money for concerts, events, a pro shop, and $12 hot dogs. And the trend has clearly been for private stadium ownership.
When owners saw the market trend move from individual fans to corporate buyers a few years back, they raised prices, expanded luxury boxes, and brought in arugula (the aromatic salad green). Let companies treat clients and vendors from their subscription, right? And serve wine and brie, right? Never mind that the crowd sounds different and TV shots are filled with empty seats, right?
Wrong. As the economic bubble burst, companies can’t afford overpriced seats and those that still might are *embarassed* to be seen as spending frivolously. The warning signs are visible during many baseball telecasts. The dot.com bubble burst. Then the housing bubble. Then the mortgage derivative bubble. Then the Madoff bubble (can you say Wilpon?). Then the jobs bubble. Soon the public pension bubble. And state budgets. Is DoubleBubble next?
New Rule: Team owners want a hefty percent of everything? Ok, you guys get the pain too.
1) Since each concussion costs 2 years lifespan, here’s the fair way: Team owners must experience exactly the same concussion in their luxury boxes that any player sustains on the field. Use automated hydraulic helmets or retired players with ball-peen hammers to invoke the “neuron-for-a-neuron” clause of the new collective bargaining agreement. Have owners and players share the same health plan (like maybe senators and citizens should?).
2) Since PSL’s are basically a real estate transaction, shouldn’t owners pay a tax like we do? Like a developer selling condo units. Sales and capital gain per every PSL. 40,000 seats @$10k PSL per = $400 million revenue… what’s the fair local tax on that? 25% = $100 million.
In the last few years, most people have seen their pensions and long-term benefits disappear – most corporate workers large and small, as well as teachers, firemen, policemen in the public sector – the promises were unrealistic and impossible to sustain.
Players may be “entertainers” and push for whatever contracts the market will bear. But the money eventually comes from or is passed on to the public – a broke public, mind you – and a market that can’t bear it anymore.
At what point is economic disparity so extreme that stadiums are empty or, even better, they will look like the streets of Cairo?
Can you say Twitter?
So You Say There's A Recession…Don't Tell Baseball That
They say that funeral homes are the only industries that are truly recession proof.
Baseball, however, is making a good case of why Bud Selig has more in common with your local undertaker (other than, you know, just looking like him).
According to numbers provided to our pal Maury Brown at Biz of Baseball, Major League Baseball brought in a record $6.6 billion in gross revenue during the 2009 season. That amount was a 1.5 percent increase over the previous high of $6.5 billion in ’08 and was produced despite a 6.58 percent decrease in total attendance from the previous year. Maury is also reporting that $433 million in revenue sharing money will be sent from the big-market behemoths to the teams crying poor in smaller markets.
Large or small market, this owning a baseball team business sounds like a pretty swell business to be in. Rake in plenty of cash during a down economy, all while turning your pockets inside out when agents, players and fans wonder why you’re not spending more in the offseason.
Then, when the news breaks that you’re actually printing money in denominations much larger than what you local schmoe ever sees you spin the news as evidence that baseball’s never been more popular. (Without, of course, mentioning that the cost of taking a family to one game is higher than it’s ever been.)
Look, I don’t begrudge owners in making a good old American dollar off the good old American game. They’ve opened up new avenues of revenue and deserve the windfall.
All I’m saying is that you should keep this post in mind next time you hear an owner cut budgets or say he can’t afford to keep a homegrown star. The Yankees and Red Sox aren’t the only teams making money when it comes rolling in like this. These “small market teams” are turning a tidy profit AND saddling up the revenue sharing troth.
