The Chris Moeller Archives

Jack the Ripper

There's a dick in every group.

At the "Winter Warmup" in St. Louis this weekend, it's Jack Clark, a former cards' firstbaseman who told the Post-Dispatch today that he thinks Mark McGwire is a "cheater," a "creep," and that he should be banned from Major League Baseball. He added that he would refuse to say hello to McGwire or shake his hand at the "Warmup" autograph event Saturday and Sunday.

Ooh, somebody's mad. It takes a bit of blog space to count each of the ways in which Clark has embarrassed himself here. The most enlightening reveal into Clark's fragile psyche is his jealousy over the salaries of the players that came after him in the game-- "They should all be in the Hall of Shame. They can afford to build it. They've all got so much money."

These signs of deep-seeded animosity require a little background for understanding. This is a guy who spent himself into bankruptcy despite a lucrative, 17-year playing career. He collected 18 classic automobiles en route to a $6.7 million debt in Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, and this filing took place during the 2nd year of a 3-year, 8.7 million contract with Boston. This cat knows how to spend money.

In the early '00s, he took a job as hitting coach with the Independent League River City Rascals, who are based in the western St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon, Missouri. There was a not-so-subtle intent there of working his way up to a similar position on Tony LaRussa's coaching staff downtown, an offer that has yet to come and that was granted instead and accepted by McGwire this winter. We're dealing with a lot resentment here.

For two slugging firstbasemen renown in the same city and separated by only eight years in age, it's hard to imagine more disparate personalities.

McGwire left more than $10 million on the table when he retired after the 2001 season, feeling he could no longer play to his accustomed level of performance, while Clark is clearly obsessed with money-- not just in spending it, but in making it too, leaving the Cardinals in 1988 to become one of George Steinbrenner's high-rent Bronx whores.

McGwire was a well-liked and respected teammate by all accounts-- ever. Even Jose Canseco said this week that he was still a big McGwire fan. As a result of this popularity and strong standing, there's a legion of young players, about to become legion-er this spring, who have been tutored by Mac-- in the clubhouse or in his private gym in California. Clark, meanwhile, caused division in the Cards' clubhouse in 1987 when went down to injury during an early September game in Montreal. If Ozzie Smith's '88 autobiography, "Wizard," can be believed, a number of Clark's teammates thought he should have taken a cortisone shot in an effort to get himself back into the lineup for the pennant drive and the post-season instead of packing it in for the year, and as it turned out, for his career, as a Cardinal. The undermanned Birds wound up losing the World Series to the Twins in 7 games. Come to think of it, perhaps Clark is so anti-steroid that he even thinks cortisone (a steroid hormone-- albeit one that nobody seems to care about) is cheating.

Clark couldn't be helping out the club owners with his comments any more either than if he were a paid operative to help bust the players' union. The MLB Players Association is responsible for all of the money Clark squandered during his playing career and for the quality of his pension today. His harsh comments today indict many of his fellow players for their actions and health decisions, but where are the harsh words for commissioner Bud Selig, the Cardinals' ownership group headed by Bill DeWitt, or the actual rule-makers of the sport who were more concerned with gate receipts during the 1990's than the health of their employees when steroids started finding their way into clubhouses. Those indictments were strangely missing today, but then Clark still needs his post-game commentary gig on the Cardinals cable network. Pathetic.

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It turns out that the head of NBC Universal, Jeff Zucker, and his employee, Conan O'Brien, have a personal relationship that goes back to Harvard University. Conan was with the satire magazine The Harvard Lampoon while Zucker was the president of the student paper The Crimson. "As a prank," reports a 2004 piece in BusinessWeek, "O'Brien's staff stole all the Crimson issues one day before they could be delivered. Zucker called the cops. 'My first meeting with Jeff Zucker was in handcuffs, with a Cambridge police officer reading me my rights,' says O'Brien."

Zucker knows from comedy.

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Dave was at his curmudgeonly best last night.

posted by CM @ 8:25 PM