Empyreal Environs

Julian Tavarez will be suspended for 10 days as a result of the punching incident against Joey Gathright and the Devil Rays. He’ll be eligible to pitch on April 13th. I’m beginning to suspect that the front office signined Tavarez as a headlining freakshow to diffuse attention from the rest of the clubhouse. No one will care about Keith Foulke’s love life or Manny Ramirez’s hairstyle while Tavarez is doing one-arm pushups in the bullpen to bulk up in time for April 18th, the first game of the first series with Tampa Bay.

I don’t know what to make of Carl Pavano’s latest ailment. He supposedly bruised his left buttock while diving for a ball and required an MRI. He either has the pain tolerance on par with the protagonist of “The Princess and the Pea” or the Yankees are swathing a more serious injury with an innocuous impairment. Pavano is not expected to return to the rotation until the end of April at the earliest.

Just days after the Twins opened the door for left-handed pitching phenom Francisco Liriano to pitch for them from the bullpen, the young pitcher was collared for driving under the influence. The first thing that popped into my head when I read this was Dwight Gooden. Let Gooden be a lesson to young players who allow their adulation or addiction to dictate the course of their lives. Not everyone is blessed with left-handedness and the ability to throw a mid-90s heater and a slider better than that of Johan Santana’s. It would be a loss to baseball (not to mention a few of my fantasy teams) if such talent were wasted.