Toronto courts Wells
Is Wells worth the money?
TORONTO (CP) - The talk in Toronto all off-season has been on how the Blue Jays seemed to be paving the way for Vernon Wells' exit by removing him from their marketing campaigns and Christmas cards.
The contract offer they've made to the all-star centre-fielder would suggest otherwise. Wells is pondering a proposed seven-year deal believed to be worth US$126 million, a package that would by far be the richest deal in franchise history.
It would also be among the largest contracts ever handed out in baseball, ranking behind those given to Alex Rodriguez ($252 million for 10 years), Derek Jeter ($189 million for 10 years), Manny Ramirez ($160 million for eight years), Todd Helton ($141.5 million for 11 years) and Alfonso Soriano ($136 million, eight years).
Soriano's contract was signed this off-season and likely helped push the bar up for Wells, whose current contract expires after the 2007 campaign.
"We have made an offer and that's where it's at," Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi said in an interview. "We're not going to negotiate through the press, I'm not going to say where it sits."
Greg Genske, Wells' agent, didn't immediately return a message.
The offer is the biggest ever made by Ricciardi, dwarfing the $55 million for five years he gave starter A.J. Burnett as a free agent last winter, and would be the club's largest financial commitment to a player since Carlos Delgado signed a $68-million, four-year deal after the 2000 season.
Wells is due to make $5.6 million next year and should he hit the open market next fall, he'd likely fetch even more money than what's on the table now from an industry awash in cash. But the offer is the first clear indication of how far the Blue Jays are willing to go to lock up their marquee player.
"We will not talk about contract negotiations," an unusually terse Paul Godfrey, the team president, said Wednesday. "We're not going to make any comments."
On Friday, Godfrey said the Blue Jays had set a flexible deadline of about a month to get an extension done with Wells in order to not have the issue serve as a distraction from other matters of business.
If the Blue Jays don't get Wells' signature on a new deal, they can either play him this season and take two draft picks as compensation should he leave as a free agent, or try to trade him now.
There are already thought to be a handful of potential trade partners with their eyes on Wells, including the New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers, Texas Rangers and Chicago White Sox.
Wells' future has been a hot topic among Blue Jays fans since last spring, when he and the club agreed to revisit the possibility of an extension this fall. Debates over the sincerity of the team's desire to keep him have been commonplace, with some wondering if another big deal could potentially become an albatross on the franchise the way Delgado's contract did.
Delgado's deal came at another hopeful time for the franchise but when the team crashed and burned on the field in 2001 and suffered staggering financial losses, the payroll was eventually cut to around $50 million with some 34 per cent of that devoted to the first baseman.
Although the annual average value of the proposed Wells deal is similar at $18 million, the Blue Jays have more to spend these days and his salary would represent about 18-19 per cent of a payroll expected to be in the neighbourhood of $95-100 million.
Still, news that Wells was no longer being used in the club's marketing campaigns triggered speculation that he would soon be trade bait. That turned up another notch at the winter meetings when the team's Christmas cards began arriving in mailboxes minus the franchise player.
The rumour mill heated up again after the winter meetings when the Blue Jays came up empty on pitchers Ted Lilly and Gil Meche. Wells' name began surfacing in trade rumours for pitching.
Ricciardi said the Blue Jays have lukewarm interest in the remaining pitchers on the free-agent market and are doing their best to find an arm for their rotation via trade. Wells is not on offer.
"We're scouring the (trade) market, just trying to do some things," he said. "I think the (free-agent) market is a little thin for us."
The Blue Jays also took care of some housekeeping Wednesday, signing backup infielder John McDonald to a $750,000, one-year contract.
McDonald, 32, batted .223 with three home runs and 23 RBIs in 104 games last season. He began the year as a backup but took over as the starting shortstop when Russ Adams faltered.
He'll share time at shortstop this season with the recently signed Royce Clayton.
'Sopranos' Back in April?
"Sopranos" fans can set their countdown clocks now: HBO has set at least an approximate premiere date for the show's final episodes.
A little note on the show's homepage at HBO.com says "'The Sopranos' final season starts in April." That's not a lot to go on, but given the sometimes huge gaps between seasons (21 months between seasons five and six, for example), the semi-firm commitment from the network should be something of a relief.
HBO had originally planned for the final "Sopranos" arc to debut next month. However, HBO chief Chris Albrecht told TV critics last summer that the show's filming schedule, and thus the premiere date, had to be pushed back after series star James Gandolfini had knee surgery.
"Then we looked at the fact that we would be launching sort of in the middle of the [NFL] playoffs and the Super Bowl and all that stuff, and it seemed that for everybody's sake we would push back a few weeks," Albrecht said then.
"Rome" got the January premiere date instead; its second season debuts Sunday, Jan. 14. HBO also says it will re-air season six of "The Sopranos" beginning in mid-January (episodes are available on demand now). Assuming the network will want to air all 12 episodes before the new season begins, the final season of "The Sopranos" likely would premiere in mid-April.
'Pirates' sequel sets DVD record for 2006
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Talk about booty. Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" tallied first-week sales of 10.5 million units, according to the studio, making it the biggest home video debut of any new release this year.
The sequel, also the top box office earner of 2006, shot to No. 1 on the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert sales chart for the week ending December 10, and its draft pulled the original "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" back up to No. 9 a full three years after it was released.
On trade publication Home Media Magazine's video rental chart for the week, "Dead Man's Chest" also scored an easy victory, generating an estimated $12.9 million its first week out.
"Dead Man's Chest" is now poised to be the top-selling DVD of the year, beating another Disney title, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe," which was released in April and has since sold about 14 million copies.
The "Pirates" sequel also will likely become the No. 1 live-action DVD ever. That honor currently belongs to the original "Pirates," which sold 9.9 million DVDs its first week out (and another 1.1 million VHS cassettes) and went on to sell more than 18 million units, discs and cassettes combined.
The strong sales debut of "Pirates" sounded a vote of confidence among DVD boosters, many of whom were cringing in the wake of a broadcast earlier this month on NBC's "Today" in which an executive from file-sharing service BitTorrent predicted DVD's days were numbered due to digital downloading.
"With the incredible success of 'Pirates,' it is evident that the home entertainment industry continues to flourish," said Bob Chapek, president of Buena Vista Worldwide Home Entertainment, Disney's video distribution arm.
The success of the "Pirates" DVD isn't limited to the United States. In the United Kingdom, the film sold nearly 1.5 million DVDs its first of release, a record. And in Japan, "Pirates" sold nearly 1 million units to become the No. 1 live-action movie of all time in that country.
Elsewhere on the First Alert DVD sales chart, Universal Studios' big-screen "Miami Vice" debuted at No. 2, while the previous week's best seller, "Superman Returns," slipped to No. 3.
Two animated features that have been in stores for several weeks, Disney's "Cars" and Fox's "Ice Age: The Meltdown," finished fourth and fifth for the week, while "Beerfest" debuted at No. 6, one notch above "24-Season 5."
In rental stores, "Miami Vice" debuted at No. 3, with estimated earnings of $7.9 million. "Beerfest" bowed at No. 6, with $6.1 million, more than 30% of its theatrical take.
`Raymond' dad Peter Boyle dies in NYC
NEW YORK - Peter Boyle, the actor who transformed from an angry workingman in "Joe" to a tap-dancing monster in "Young Frankenstein" and finally the comically grouchy father on "Everybody Loves Raymond," has died. He was 71.
Boyle died Tuesday evening at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease, said his publicist, Jennifer Plante.
A member of the Christian Brothers religious order who turned to acting, the tall, prematurely balding Boyle gained notice in the title role of the 1970 sleeper hit "Joe," playing an angry, murderous bigot at odds with the emerging hippie youth culture.
Briefly typecast in tough, irate roles, Boyle began to escape the image as Robert Redford's campaign manager in "The Candidate" and left it behind entirely after "Young Frankenstein," Mel Brooks' 1974 send-up of horror films. The latter movie's defining moment came when Gene Wilder, as scientist Frederick Frankenstein, introduced his creation to an upscale audience. Boyle, decked out in tails, performed a song-and-dance routine to the Irving Berlin classic "Puttin' On the Ritz."
It showed another side of Boyle, one that would be best exploited in the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond," in which he played curmudgeonly paterfamilias Frank Barone for 10 years.
"He's just obnoxious in a nice way, just for laughs," Boyle said of the character in a 2001 interview. "It's a very sweet experience having this (success) happen at a time when you basically go back over your life and see every mistake you ever made."
When Boyle tried out for the role opposite series star Ray Romano's Ray Barone, however, he was kept waiting for his audition — and he was not happy.
"He came in all hot and angry," recalled the show's creator, Phil Rosenthal, "and I hired him because I was afraid of him." But Rosenthal also noted: "I knew right away that he had a comic presence."
Boyle had first come to the public's attention more than a quarter century before, in the critically acclaimed "Joe." He met his wife, Loraine Alterman, on the set of "Young Frankenstein" when she visited as a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine and Boyle, still in monster makeup, asked her for a date.
On television, he starred in "Joe Bash," an acclaimed but short-lived 1986 "dramedy" in which he played a lonely beat cop. He won an Emmy in 1996 for his guest-starring role in an episode of "The X Files," and he was nominated for "Everybody Loves Raymond" and for the 1977 TV film "Tail Gunner Joe," in which he played Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
In the 1976 film "Taxi Driver," he was the cabbie-philosopher Wizard, who counseled Robert DeNiro's violent Travis Bickle.
He did dozens of other films, including "T.R. Baskin," "F.I.S.T.," "Johnny Dangerously," "Conspiracy: Trial of the Chicago 8" (as activist David Dellinger), "The Dream Team," "Monster's Ball," "The Santa Claus," "The Santa Claus 2," "While You Were Sleeping" (in a charming turn as Sandra Bullock's future father-in-law) and "Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed."
The son of a local TV personality in Philadelphia, Boyle was educated in Roman Catholic schools and spent three years in a monastery before abandoning his religious studies. He later described the experience as similar to "living in the Middle Ages."
He explained his decision to leave in 1991: "I felt the call for awhile; then I felt the normal pull of the world and the flesh."
He traveled to New York to study with Uta Hagen, supporting himself for five years with various jobs, including postal worker, waiter, maitre d' and office temp. Finally, he was cast in a road company version of "The Odd Couple." When the play reached Chicago he quit to study with that city's famed improvisational troupe Second City.
Upon returning to New York, he began to land roles in TV commercials, off-Broadway plays and finally films.
Through his wife, a friend of Yoko Ono, the actor became close friends with John Lennon. "We were both seekers after a truth, looking for a quick way to enlightenment," Boyle once said of Lennon, who was best man at his wedding.
In 1990, Boyle had a stroke and couldn't talk for six months. In 1999, he had a heart attack on the "Raymond" set. He soon regained his health, however, and returned to the series.
Despite his work in "Everybody Loves Raymond" and other Hollywood productions, Boyle made New York City his home. He and his wife had two daughters, Lucy and Amy.