JM - I don't think it is a done deal, for one thing the DRays most likely will make it to NY in time, if for some reason they don't the article says the Yanks will seek a forfeit, and that is up to the league. If anyone is interested Hurricane Frances caused other problems in both baseball and football. Read below if you care to:
Hurricane Frances and the priorities of MLB and the NFL
It makes perfect sense that this Apocalyptic Dolphins offseason would get punctuated by a controversy involving a natural disaster. That and this report from The Miami Herald's Dan Le Betard
The only way for this to be more oddly symbolic is if this hurricane had been named not Frances but Wannstedt.
We did a lot of genuflecting in sports after Sept. 11, producing a lot of lip-service yammering about how once again games had been put in their proper place. But then the NFL's greedy and insensitive thinking reminds us yet again that we never seem to learn anything about perspective until after we've gotten to the part that involves grieving and crying.
A fourth exhibition game? One crummy exhibition game couldn't be canceled so that Dolphins defensive tackle Larry Chester and offensive lineman Wade Smith could stay home and help their pregnant wives barricade their house against an unpredictable monster of a storm?
Was it really so important to save four quarters of slop football played by reserves nobody can name that we had to send these players on a flight to New Orleans that may not have been allowed to return?
Saying this is idiotic is an offensive comparison to idiots everywhere.
The NFL is already gouging fans with these fake games, playing twice as many exhibitions as are necessary as part of a gluttonous money grab, even if it means that Michael Vick gets hurt and the entire Atlanta season immediately swirls into the toilet.
But you can't listen to your pleading players and cancel even one of those exhibitions because of an approaching storm the size of the entire state of Florida?
Mayor Alex Penelas was on television Saturday morning threatening any local employers who forced their employees to come in to work under these conditions, but that's what the NFL just did to the Dolphins.
The reminder that these players are nothing more than ATM machines with good 40 times echoed after Friday's decision, when the peace of mind of distracted Dolphins was ignored by a league that treats its product more like meat than your average butcher.
Even as Dolphin players threatened to boycott the game, and even as the clown union of these players took its customarily meek position as the flimsiest protective body in sports, the NFL insisted that we get a good, long glimpse at Miami's third quarterback in New Orleans instead of having Sage Rosenfels back at home, making sure everything was OK with his two-week-old daughter.
You say the NFL knew the forecasts that Hurricane Frances would slow down?
I say meteorologists who have been studying these things for decades can't get these things right.
And you don't take a risk like that to salvage a worthless exhibition game.
Dolphins players, en masse, should have stayed home, anger and outrage and fines be damned. Instead of being herded onto that team flight like cattle, they should have ignored their coach, their owner, their commissioner and a league that was putting money before safety.
Kudos to receiver Chris Chambers for missing the flight and turning off his cell phone so the team couldn't reach him. It might not look good for a man who just got a big contract, but it represents a conviction of beliefs and priorities, and a strength and leadership this team could use.
The Dolphins aren't the only ones thrown into upheaval by these huge winds. The Marlins are going to get shafted, too, this cash-strapped franchise not only losing enormous crowds for a canceled Cubs series but also losing valuable home games in a pennant race.
Unbelievable and unfair as it is, the Marlins might have to play what were home games as doubleheaders in Chicago, and then go the last month of the season without a single day of rest to boot.
The fair and right thing to do would be to delay the start of the baseball playoffs and leave three games here against the Cubs as a possibility before the start of the postseason.
But postponing the playoffs would cost too much money.
And, as we've seen with the Dolphins, cash comes first. That and this report from The Miami Herald's Dan Le Betard
