Home Run Derby

Baseball has a long history of its players cheating.

Spitballs, corked bats, interference, sharpened spikes, stealing signs, and performance enhancing drugs among those transgressions. 

And sometimes, there’s cheating that happens off the field.  And not just marital infidelity.  There’s also the guys who try to cheat Uncle Sam out of his take.

So in honor of this April 15th – TAX DAY – here’s a look at Baseball’s biggest tax cheats.  Well, the ones who got caught anyway.

Derek Jeter

In 2001, Jeter purchased a $13 Million Apartment in Trump Towers near the World Trade Center.   Which would make you think he’s a resident of New York.  But Jeter has claimed to be a resident of Florida since 1994 … I wonder if it’s merely a coincidence that Florida has no state income tax. 

Well, the New York Department of Taxation and Finance didn’t think it was a coincidence, and in 2007 charged Jeter with evading three years worth of  Taxes from 2001-2004.   New york said that Jeter was indeed a resident of the Empire State and not the Sunshine State.

Jeter reportedly settled the case with New York in 2008.  The terms and value of the settlement are unknown.

Barry Bonds

Okay this one is totally speculative and unofficial since the Feds didn’t include any Tax Evasion charges in their indictment of Bonds back in 2007. 

But it was widely reported in 2006 that Bonds handed over at least $80,000 in ”possibly undeclared $80,000 in cash from memorabilia sales” to his mistress, Kimberly Bell.  Bell said that Bonds “instructed her to deposit the money in amounts less than $10,000.”

My guess is that the Feds dropped the Tax Evasion charges because Bell was an unreliable witness – she’s got man-hands, after all.

(more…)

This week’s HRD Wayback Machine takes up back into the 1970’s and early 80’s.  

Back then, big name sports stars weren’t lining up to do commercials for Gatorade.  Instead, they were lining up to do commercials for Aqua Velva. 

Okay, Aqua Velva looks a lot like Gatorade, but it was (still is) a men’s aftershave.  I think it was orginally meant to be a mouthwash.  Your dad probably used it.  Personally, I don’t know anyone who used that stuff.

And with the tagline “A man wants to smell like a man” … the cheese factor in the Aqua Velva spots was simply priceless.  Even worse than that Johnny Bench commercial for Bubble Fudge.

Pete Rose was the posterboy for Aqua Velva … and he wasn’t afraid to sing the Aqua Velva jingle.

The cameo by Vic Tayback (Mel from the TV show Alice) makes that whole commercial for me.

But that’s not Charlie Hustle’s best work.  Here’s Rose simultaneously taking batting practice and putting on the charm on a female reporter. 

(more…)

I’ve updated the 2009 Hall of Fame Vote Tracker with six more BBWAA writers’ votes.  We’re up to 38.

Writers joining the list are Phil Arvia, Phil Pepe, Mike Nadel, Steve Aschburner, Jack McCaffery, and Garry Brown.  All of them voted for Rickey Henderson, meaning Corky Simpson is still the only writer (that we know of) who doesn’t think MLB’s all-time steals leader belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Rickey Henderson is still above 97% of the vote and will probably finish with a higher percentage than that.  But even more interesting is the three-way logjam of Jim Rice, Andre Dawson, and Bert Blyleven at 68.4% of the vote.  Each one has a legit chance to make the Hall this year – but fans of Rice’s HoF final chance at enshrinement have to be concerned, as he’s tracking lower than he did in 2008.  But there’s over 500 ballots to go.

Curiously, Delaware County Daily Times writer Jack McCaffery is both the first writer to vote for the maximum of ten players and the first writer to vote for a write-in candidate.  That write-in was cast for Pete Rose. 

(more…)

Josh Beckett is the latest face of a World Series Champion to grace the bright orange box that supplies my breakfast almost every morning.  Which means that they actually put a World Series MVP on the cover of a Wheaties Box.

Too bad it’s about four years late.

You see, Josh Beckett isn’t the World Series MVP for the 2007 Champion Boston Red Sox.

He was the World Series MVP for the 2003 Champion Florida Marlins.

The past four seasons (2004-2007), General Mills has put a member of the World Series Champion on the cover of the Wheaties box.

And the past four seasons, it hasn’t been the World Series MVP.

(more…)

Joe Morgan loves Barry Bonds.

He makes this abundantly clear every time he announces a Giants game. He always has a new interview for that special time before the game when he “catches up” with Barry (it seems more like stalking to me).

Now, there is nothing wrong with this on the surface. It’s fine that Joe has a standing play date every time he’s in San Francisco and that Barry has found a member of the media he doesn’t wish would die a fiery death.

Barry might want to think about this, though, because Joe has gotten quite close to another prominent baseball figure in the past, and that player went on to get banned from baseball. I’m talking, of course, about Joe’s graceful aftershave conversation with Pete Rose in this classic 1979 Aqua Velva commercial.

(more…)