Redsoxasia Has Always Been the Enemy

I was going to write today about how Mayor Bloomberg of New York ought to be concerned about more pressing things on his crime blotter than an alleged assault by Pedro Martinez of Don Zimmer in another city (Boston). For those of you on Mars during this last weekend, there was a brouhaha at Fenway that featured the 72-year old Zimmer seeking out Martinez and taking a swing at him. Video clearly shows Pedro sidestepping him like a toreador would a slightly demented bull, and Zim's momentum -- aided by Pedro's hands around his head -- carrying him to the ground.

It was a bizarre form of instant interpretation that Pedro had somehow assaulted Zimmer, instead of the other way around. I expect that sort of thing from partisan fans, although I probably wouldn't want them on my jury interpreting video surveillance during my capital murder trial. But the Mayor of New York, calling for the arrest of Martinez, using words like "disgraceful" and actually threatening to arrest Pedro once he set foot in New York? "Intimidation" is one word that comes to mind, "lunatic" another. You'd think in a city where the cops shoot a guy down for going for his wallet and there's still a couple of murders a day the mayor would have more to worry about.

And no doubt some of Bloomberg's political advisors have told him he's made his point in pandering to Yankee fans, so he better reign in those horses of rhetorical excess which border on criminal threats of intimidation (yes, it's a crime to threaten to arrest somebody when you have no jurisdiction or authority to do so -- most especially for a misdemeanor that did not actually occur).

But that's not the point. Today when I went to dredge up the AP wire stories on Bloomberg's threat...I couldn't find them. They weren't in the AP article database. They weren't on the ESPN wire mirror of AP stories, although all the other stories from that day are there. GoogleNews comes up blank. You can find references to the Bloomberg threat, but the original AP article has mysteriously disappeared.

Now the fact that Mayor Bloomberg owns a news service may just be a coincidence. But I remain perplexed as to how a widely-disseminated AP article can disappear so completely.

Any ideas?