Monday Night at the ballpark

OK, everyone. Stop complaining. Charlie Manuel fixed his lineup for Monday night’s series opener against the Rockies. Ryan Howard is no longer buried in the hinterlands with David Bell, Mike Lieberthal and the pitcher’s spot. Instead, he has been bumped up to the fifth spot.

Chase Utley is no longer in the bottom half of the order, either. Now he’s in the No. 2 hole and Aaron Rowand is hitting behind Howard at sixth.

Though there isn’t the lefty-righty balance that all managers like, it seems as if Manuel is on to something here. It will be interesting to see how long this order lasts.

Birds of a feather…
Here’s a new one – a pigeon flew into the press box before the game and perched itself on the telephone directly to my left. Upon review I noticed the bird had tags – probably for identification – around his ankles.

After checking out the scene and realizing there was nothing to do in the press box, the bird flew away.

Later, Kent Tekulve sat in the seat in front of the bird’s perch.

No, we’re not doing well, thank you
After Forbes magazine printed a story where it reported that Major League Baseball and its teams were enjoying increased revenues and that the New York Yankees were the first professional club to reach a value of $1 billion, baseball’s executive vice president of labor relations and human resources, Rob Manfred issued a press release in response.

It read:

“Forbes has never had access to financial information from Major League Baseball or the individual clubs. The estimates published in the current issue of the magazine materially misstate the financial performance of the industry as a whole and of the individual clubs.”

A long time ago I used to write for a business newspaper in Harrisburg, Pa. Never during that time did an executive of a company issue a statement to downplay any type of favorable story about them. In fact, it was always the opposite.

It sounds pretty odd: A big time magazine writes a story lauding your growing revenues and the company issues a statement saying it’s misstated. Why?

Well, the collective bargaining agreement ends at the end of this season and Manfred certainly doesn’t want the players union to use the Forbes information as fact. At least that’s my quick, dime-store analysis.