The list of witnesses for Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings were released on Thursday. The names were ones you'd expect to see for such a proceeding. There's Mayor Bloomberg, former FBI director Louis Freeh, law professors, U.S. and district attorneys and, of course, David Cone.
Yes, that David Cone. The Yankees broadcaster and former Mets and Yankees pitcher has been summoned to Washington next week to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Presumably, the senators want to dig into Sotomayor's ruling that ended the baseball strike and avoided replacement players in 1995. Cone was an active member of the players association at the time, so it makes sense.
They should be sure to keep their questions quick, however. Cone handles downtime differently than a lot of people, as evidenced by his alleged behavior in the bullpen of Shea Stadium many years ago. Three women sued Cone in 1989, charging that the pitcher masturbated in front of them while sitting in the bullpen and asking for $8.1 million in damages. Nothing came of the lawsuit, except for an alleged parting line from Cone to one of the women that will live forever.
"You're a big baby. You're not invited to showtime anymore."
Cone also once sent a pile of his own feces to a friend in the opposing locker room under the guise of asking him to autograph a box of baseballs, and was the subject of a New York Magazine article that quoted no less than Darryl Strawberry as saying that there weren't many G-rated stories about the pitcher.
You could say that a man with such a background has no place as a majority witness in front of the United States Senate, but then you'd be ignoring just the sort of people who make up the United States Senate.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City and is a contributor to FanHouse.com and ProFootballTalk.com in addition to his duties for NBCNewYork.com.
