New
York Trade Winds
Going, going, gone, went Jaun Gonzalez. Say it
ain’t so; say so long to Sammy Sosa as well.
The Yankees got shut out in their pursuit of the two
slugging all-stars. Is there any justice? The answer is "yes," in the person of David
Justice, Halle Berry’s ex beau, whom the Yankees acquired last week from
Cleveland in exchange for Ricky Ledee and a couple of marginal prospects to be
named later.
Sosa was Steinbrenner’s guy from the start.
Sources say that Steinbrenner viewed Sammy as the Second Coming of Reggie Jackson,
with an even greater potential upside. According to Yankee insiders, George was willing to
create an elaborate ruse by trading for Gonzales, and deliberately breaking off salary
negotiations after making a proposal that The Boss knew would be refused. The plan was
that afterwards Sosa would fall more cheaply into the Yankees’ lap.
• SOUND BITES • |
•
MOSTLY MOZART: For anyone who thinks our City isn’t polarized comes this shocking
quote about the Puerto Rican Day Parade from Kathy Jolowitz, president of the East 84th
Street Block Association in Manhattan: "I feel their parade should go from 96th
Street to 125th Street - that’s Spanish Harlem. People living on the Upper East Side
don’t go to their community and blast Mozart all day." Holy xenophobia, Batman! |
•
CAP AND FROWN: Another Hillary rumor has her heading out to carpetbag in Massachusetts
if the Senate thing doesn’t work out. The story making the rounds has Harvard
University approaching the first lady’s people to see id she’d be interested in
becoming president of the institution. Neil Rudenstine, Harvard’s prez, announced
last month that after close to 10 years, he was stepping down at the end of the next
academic year. A Harvard spokesman had no comment, but a spokeswoman for Clinton dismisses
the talk: "At the moment she has a pretty clear career goal." |
•
THERE GOES THE NABE: From the sleepy hamlet of the Hamptons called Remsenburg, which
is near Westhampton, comes word that two of the most powerful women in American are
looking for houses. Multimedia superstar Oprah Winfrey is rumored to be looking for a
house on the beach and we hear that Hillary Clinton has been trailing through town looking
for a summer rental with Secret Service agents in tow. |
| • YESTERDAY!
Yes-that was Paul McCartney on the cover of AARP’s-the American Association of
Retired Person - magazine last month. The thinning mop haired one turned 58 last month. |
Sosa’s team, the Chicago Clubs, had something
else in mind. They tried to commit a 4th of July Day Massacre of the Yankee minor league
system. The Yankee braintrust persuaded Steinbrenner to grin and bare the Club fiasco,
save a fortune, and hold on to their prospects to use in other transactions before
baseball’s July 31 trading deadline. A Yankee official said, "the money not
spent on Sosa would be used during the next off season to lure Cleveland Indian slugger,
free-agent to be, Bronx native, and fan favorite
Manny Ramirez."
Sources also tell NYConf that the
Knicks are ready to finally let loose of Patrick Ewing.
The seeds were planted this week during the NBA draft when
the Knicks stockpiled on guards via the draft and trades. The Knicks hierarchy’s
master plan is to package their surplus of
guards in trades that would bring back some blue-collar type power forward, and put them
in a position to trade Ewing to Miami where he could team up with fellow Georgetown alum
and close friend Alonzo Mourning and ex-Knick coach Pat Reiley.
Once that’s done, Cabevision will turn its attention
to finalizing the purchase of
San Antonio Spur superstar center Tim Duncan, and then opening up the vault to
ensure that Duncan plays at The Garden for at least as long as Ewing
has, but with much better results.
Lookin' Good
The Chelsea Clinton that New Yorkers are sure to see
a lot more of this summer–she’ll be campaigning for her mother–won’t
look like the old college
girl we’re used to.
Instead, she’ll be coiffed up with the best of them.
When the 20-year-old Stanford junior filled in for her mom at a state dinner at the White
House for King Mohammed VI of Morocco, we heard that Chelsea had Christophe do her
hair, makeup, and nails before the event. Christophe, for those with a good memory,
is the eponymous salon that gave Bill Clinton his famous flight-delaying hair cut a
few years back.
We hear that Chelsea will appear at a Gen X fundraiser for
her mother over the Labor Day weekend in Southhampton and possibly some other Hillary for
Senate events this summer in the Hamptons which are now in the planning stages.
Merger
Madness
Although the CBS-Viacom merger is all but one, sources tell
NYConfidential that internal chaos has ripped through the corporate office, leaving
employees wondering who’ll be the "Survivors" of the shakedown.
On the CBS side, layoffs have begun. Recently, CBS.com took
a hit, as nearly 50 employees received their walking papers. CBS’s Executive Producer
of New Media Adam Wiener saw that the CBS eyes were wide shut, and bailed to go to
work in Silicon Ally. More CBS new media employers are likely to follow.
One CBS employee, who will not be leaving the network any
time soon, is Don Hewitt. Hewitt just inked a new 4-year deal to stay on as Exec
Producer of CBS’s perenial survivor "60 Minutes."
Meanwhile, the M in Viacom subsidiary M-TV ought to stand
for Mutiny after Viacom’s Sumner Redstone snatched WWF’s TV rights from
the USA network, and is set to telecast the non-animated, wrestling deathmatches on
primetime M-TV. Employees of the music video cable channel that already glamorizes
"gangsta rap" are reportedly fed up by the network’s planned foray into
"Trash TV." Sources say that there’s talk at M-TV headquarters in Time
Square of a mass exodus of M-TV employees almost equaling the number of weeks that Britney
Spears has been on top of the M-TV video countdown charts.
| Confidentially
New York . . . |
 |
E-MAIL your items to: conf@queenspress.com |
