The Sports Curmudgeon®

I am neither a psychologist nor an addict so forgive any impreciseness here with regard to the meaning of “enabling” in the context of assisting folks to continue on with less than constructive behaviors on their part. Enablers allow addicts/people with less than fully socialized behaviors to escape the consequences of their behaviors thereby making it difficult if not impossible for the folks with problems to learn from their destructive behaviors. The “enabler” may rationalize that his/her enabling behavior is simply being helpful or being a good friend/parent; the enabler may also feel a certain degree of control over events because the enabler is “keeping things together”. Most enablers do not set out to become enablers with evil motivations. Nevertheless, enablers are not people doing good works.

I set this preamble because there is a lot of enabling behavior that needs to be discussed today in the sports world. And the poster child for someone living off enabling behavior at the moment is John Daly. Fans love Daly; he looks like “every-man”; he behaves like the guys you know at work – meaning he smokes and drinks and cavorts with women – except he was once a really good golfer. After Tiger Woods, he draws the largest galleries at tournaments. That is why sponsors give him exemptions to play in their events; he draws fans.

He needs those exemptions because he cannot play professional golf any more. He has had one tournament win in the last decade; he misses the cut in tournaments more often than he finishes in the top-20. He drinks too much; he continues to smoke and to say he is merely overweight would be most generous. Last week after spending lots of hours in a hospitality tent during a rain delay where he fired his caddy and had Jon Gruden carry his bag for the rest of the day, his score ballooned and he missed another cut. Butch Harmon was his swing coach and Butch Harmon fired his client. Harmon said the most important thing in Daly’s life now is “getting drunk”. Then this week, Daly missed his tee-time in the pro-am portion of the Arnold Palmer Invitational - - where he got a sponsor’s exemption from Arnie. That’s right; Daly blew off Arnold Palmer; that makes lots of sense for a professional golfer, no.

Those sponsors that give him exemptions are enablers. Those fans who pay to see him and cheer him on in the deteriorated condition he is in are enablers. The media that cover golf are enablers. The PGA itself is an enabler for allowing him in any of their events. Moreover, at some point, those enablers need to stop what they are doing lest John Daly kill himself. How would you like to be the PR person for the sponsor that gave Daly an exemption and had him collapse and die on the ninth tee on the Friday afternoon of your tournament. As Ricky Ricardo was wont to say, you would have some ‘splainin to do.

Interestingly, Daly injured a rib in a tournament last year when the click of a camera by a fan caused him to stop his swing in medias res. Last I read, Daly is “contemplating a lawsuit” against the sponsor and or the tournament - - the same sponsor that granted him an exemption to play in that tournament in the first place. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you…

By the way, there are a host of enablers around Michelle Wie too. She is not a fat, chain-smoking alcoholic, but her career has lived on her youth, her attractiveness, her potential as a 15-year old that never achieved anything near what it portended and those ever-present sponsor exemptions. She hasn’t been playing competitive golf long enough to have had a decade long drought with only one win; but considering the following and publicity and preferential treatment she gets, can you tell me the last tournament she won that was more important than an amateur event in Hawaii? There have not been many.

For years, enablers allowed Mike Tyson to continue to live a profligate life and behave as if he were just a small step removed from savagery itself. Look where that kind of enabling has led for Mike Tyson. In fact, here is a Quick Quiz:

Whose behaviors/addictions will bring about an earlier death - - Mike Tyson or John Daly? Explain your choice…

According to a report in the Rocky Mountain News, there is some enabling going on in Denver with regard to Kenyon Martin. K-Mart received a traffic citation for driving in excess of 100 mph in a 30 mph zone and another one for exceeding 100 mph in a 55 mph zone. Then based on a plea deal arranged with the prosecutor’s office in Denver, K-Mart was allowed to keep his driver’s license. Because he does not have to suffer any meaningful consequences of his obviously anti-social behavior, how can anyone expect that he might learn from his mistakes and find ways to avoid repeating them in the future?

Normally, at this point I would be suggesting that the good citizens of Denver march on City Hall with torches and pitchforks to root out the monster(s) that perpetrated this deal. However, it appears that the stink from the deal is already too much for City Hall and the prosecutor who forged this deal was put on leave-without-pay as per the Rocky Mountain News. Just a guess here, but I think that lawyer will learn from his improper behavior more readily than K-Mart will…

The Akron Beacon-Journal reports that when a young fan attending a Cavs/Knicks game in Madison Square Garden rushed onto the floor and into the Cavaliers’ huddle to get close to LeBron James, LeBron shook hands with the young man and then – through his people – arranged for the young man to be his guest when the Cavs played the Nets last night. I am willing to believe the young man is merely an ardent fan with no ill intention or pecuniary motivation here. Nevertheless, what LeBron James did is a form of enabling for fans to interfere with games/rush the floor/create distractions for players and other fans. If this becomes the 2008 version of “streaking” at NBA games, LeBron James was the enabler.

Here are some other enablers in the world of sports:

NASCAR honchos allow cheating to be a way of life in their sport because teams/drivers that get caught violating the rules to gain an advantage are not punished.

Baseball management looked the other way for more than a few years while players took steroids to build up their bodies.

Baseball union officials blocked any meaningful testing for steroids for years.

Roger Goodell did not take steps to prevent any more “Spygate style rule breaking” when he allowed the Pats to retain their win over the Jets in the first game of the 2007 season.

NCAA pooh-bahs enable student-athletes to ignore the “student” part of that description in the “revenue sports”. Oh and they enable colleges to find new ways for those same “student-athletes” to skirt the rules year after year after year by allowing those schools to continue to compete in the big money events.

I have found it more than a bit humorous that so many of the candidates in the 2008 Presidential primaries - - in both parties - - campaigned on the basis that there needed to be change in Washington. I found that humorous because there is nothing anyone can do to prevent change in Washington in January 2009; the administration is going to change even if it is the National Vegetarian Party that resurrects itself and wins the election. Change in Washington is inevitable in 2009. Would that change in the pervasive enabling behaviors in the sports world would undergo similar fundamental change in 2009. I could drink to that.

Finally, that is enough negative commentary for the day; so here is a lighter one from the Morning Briefing column in the Los Angeles Times:

“Ken Shamrock lasted only 1 minute 14 seconds before being knocked out in Cage Rage 25 — a mixed martial arts competition — in London on Saturday. Shamrock is billed as ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Man.’

”Makes you wonder what they call the guy who beat him.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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We are five months from the beginning of the Olympic Games in Beijing. There is still plenty of time for scandals and corruption to surface relative to IOC officials and/or staffers. There is still plenty of time for drug cheats to flunk blood tests. Moreover, there is more than plenty of time for nonsense. Consider:

The Chinese government is concerned that the Dalai Lama will work to undermine the Beijing Olympic Games. I’d put that threat about at the same level as worrying that Al Gore will show up with his overhead projector and some new vugraphs and put the entire country and all of the Olympic athletes to sleep with a new lecture.

The water pollution problems in China have reached such a proportion that one river has turned red in color and developed a persistent froth. Keeping athletes hydrated with that kind of “water supply” might be tricky.

Air pollution in Beijing typically makes US cities such as Los Angeles look like pristine wilderness. That should be fun for the marathoners.

The Chinese have passed “No spitting” ordinances and plan to enforce them stringently during the lead-up to the Olympics and during the Games. Public spitting can result in a fine of 50 Yuan (about $16). Now, imagine what would happen if baseball were an Olympic sport and Major League Baseball sent its players there to compete…

Scott Ostler wrapped things up succinctly in the SF Chronicle recently with regard to these upcoming games:

“Fearing rain during Opening Ceremonies in Beijing, Chinese officials will seed the clouds with silver iodide. Peachy. The city already has deadly smog, so why not use rocket launchers to bombard the air with more chemicals?”

As the Iditarod draws to a close, there was a recent story in USA Today that was interesting. The dogs are subjected to urine tests for “steroids, stimulants, opiates, muscle relaxants” and other stuff that might mask pain or increase endurance. This testing has been in place since 1992. Obviously, the head of the Malamute Players’ Union never took any tutorial sessions with Donald Fehr with regard to fending off drug testing of his clients. Talk about invasion of privacy; I’ll wager that the collection of those urine samples isn’t done in private. Interestingly, that same story in USA Today intimated that the mushers sometimes blow marijuana smoke at or near the dogs as a way to calm them down.

The Iditarod bills itself as “The Last Great Race”. Well, if the mushers are packing a two-week stash of marijuana “for the dogs” as part of the victuals, I guess it could indeed be a great race…

No doubt, you have seen by now the video of the streaker who interrupted an Australian cricket match and who was decked by one of the cricket players. Somewhere, Mike Curtis is smiling and toasting that particular cricket competitor… But what I liked most about that story was the phraseology of the charges that will be brought against the streaker; he will be charged with “willful exposure”. Well, when you run stark naked onto a field and across a large piece of that field, I would venture to say it was not “accidental exposure”.

Here is a warning for my Canadian friends; I intend this with a full measure of the milk of human kindness. The NCAA is considering a “pilot program” that will allow Canadian universities to apply for NCAA membership at the Division II level and they could start play by 2009 and eventually become part of NCAA Division I activities. Here is my warning to my Canadian friends:

You do not have NCAA nonsense in Canada at the moment.

You are better off for that.

Think long and hard before you allow these goofs to have any dominion over your lives and your activities.

It seems that several schools in Western Canada (Simon Fraser University, the University of Alberta and the University of British Columbia) might have the most interest in becoming aligned with the NCAA. I am sure that there are some benefits that might accrue to those schools. But there will be monetary and social costs associated with allowing the NCAA, a group of nit-picking nitwits, to become part of the fabric of collegiate athletics in Canada. Be afraid; be very afraid…

In NFL news, Larry Fitzgerald announced on his website that he has redone his deal with the Arizona Cardinals and he will be getting a whole bunch of money ($30M guaranteed) over the life of the deal. Good for him; I doubt that he is worth all of that, but he is a really good receiver. There is one part of the reporting on this contract that I just do not understand, however. Supposedly, the contract gives Fitzgerald a unilateral veto over any trade. That’s not new in the world of sports but normally a no-trade clause is there to prevent a player from winding up on a sorry-assed team that exists halfway between oblivion and obscurity and is going nowhere fast. The problem here is that Larry Fitzgerald plays for the Arizona Cardinals; most players would use such a clause in their contracts from winding up on the roster of the Arizona Cardinals…

I said before that I liked the idea of the soon to be formed AAFL where pro teams would be located in areas that are hotbeds of college football enthusiasm. Evidently, I was alone in those positive sentiments. It appears as if the AAFL will fold before it plays its first game unless it gets a new majority owner AND a significant TV deal. Supposedly, this putative “new majority owner” had better bring $50M in mad money that he/she would not mind losing to the party. That could happen. Francis the Talking Mule might win American Idol too; you just never know…

Here is an idea that might save the AAFL. Suppose they interest Will Farrell in making a dumb-assed sports movie about a fledgling football league - - well you get the drift here - - and use the profits as a way to fund the league. Oh, wait. They need $50M right away; it might take such a movie loads of years to generate that kind of money in revenues let alone profits.

Arena Football has begun and the TV ratings have started out in the dumpster. For the opening game, the national ratings on ABC were 0.8. When the XFL was in its death throes, it still drew better on network TV on the weekends than 0.8.

Finally, here are comments from two sports columnists about the same sporting event. I do not think there is a whole lot more that anyone really needs to know here:

Nick Creme was recently inducted into the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame, and it’s about time. In 1949 Creme revolutionized bass fishing by creating the first rubber worm. Facing extinction, the bass retaliated by inventing beer. (Scott Ostler, SF Chronicle)

Nick Creme of Texas, inventor of the rubber fishing worm, is among new inductees to the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame. Creme previously had been honored as man of the century by the Society of Live Earthworms. (Greg Cote, Miami Herald)

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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In a recent rant, I wondered aloud if the Raiders were paying out humongous amounts of money – and guaranteed money no less – to free agents because that is the only way that the free agents would agree to sign with the Raiders and play for a team that sure looks as if it is adrift. It was the deal making Tommy Kelly the highest paid defensive lineman in NFL history that put me over the top back then. Now, the Raiders have signed WR Javon Walker to a deal that reportedly pays him a guaranteed $27M. Look, Javon Walker is a very good wide receiver; surely, the Raiders have gotten a better performer than the Bears got by signing Brandon Lloyd to pretend to play the same position. Nevertheless, the magnitude of Walker’s contract is off the charts.

Put that contract along side the one that reportedly pays Bernard Berrian $16M in guaranteed money and a total of $42M if the contract runs its course and ask yourself how the marketplace for wide receivers makes any sense at all. Javon Walker tore his ACL three seasons ago; then, his first year with the Broncos was a good one but last year his numbers were “a bit off” as he had some problems with that same knee. Those are the credentials that led up to his contract with the Raiders. Meanwhile, Berrian had his best season ever in 2007 from a statistical point of view - - not all that unusual for a player about to become a free agent. However, his numbers were hardly staggering; 71 catches for 951 yards and 5 TDs.

By point of comparison, Randy Moss reportedly has a 3-year deal in New England that will pay him $27M. That looks a whole lot like Javon Walker’s deal and only Stevie Wonder could watch those two guys play wide receiver and think they were equals.

Here is a potential issue that is worth keeping an eye out for. Terrell Owens goes into the final year of his contract this year; he will make a paltry $7M between his salary and his roster bonus. Given a few more signings and TO will not be one of the top-10 wide receivers in the all-important “getting paid ranking”. And we do know that when Terrell Owens is not completely happy, he has ways to make that fact widely known. Stay tuned; film at eleven…

I certainly do not mean to pick on the Raiders or any of the wide receivers I mentioned above with this remark, but I think there is a trend in the NFL toward large amounts of guaranteed money in contracts that could hurt the product on the field. I am not advocating that players are being overpaid; I do think that players are not being paid on the basis of their performances and it is their performances on the field that creates the product that sells.

Huge contract guarantees are particularly awful when given to a high draft choice who has never played a down in the NFL and who may be only marginally better than a corpse on the field. Do not make me go through the litany of top-five picks who stunk worse than a rotting rhino on the veldt. But huge contract guarantees – or guaranteed payments – have been deleterious in other sports. Tennis comes to mind; they call it “appearance fees” in tennis. It hurts golf because top players do not play in PGA events to go somewhere obscure to take down seven figure “appearance fees”. Guaranteed contracts allow baseball and basketball players to give half-hearted effort except for “contract years”. I am not saying the NFL is doomed; it is not. However, this is not a positive trend.

The Denver Broncos signed two safeties as part of their free agency activity this year. Joining the squad will be Marquand Manuel and Marlon McCree. I wonder if the Broncos will quickly do a promotional tie-in with Sesame Street; you know, the Bronco’s secondary is “brought to you by the letter “M”…”

Todd Marinovich was not a top-five draft pick but he did go in the first round - - to the Raiders of course. He lasted there about two years – maybe three – and did nothing on the field to make anyone rush to sign him after he and the Raiders parted company. He also has had just a few “police blotter issues” in his life. Well, Todd has a younger brother named Mikhail who is a freshman football player at Syracuse. The jury is still out on whether or not Mikhail will ultimately be a better football player than Todd was. Interestingly though, a jury may get an early start with Mikhail regarding “police blotter issues”. Mikhail Marinovich was arrested – along with another teammate – in Syracuse for breaking into an equipment storage area in Manley Field House on the Syracuse campus. Marinovich is 20 years old; according to the police report, alcohol consumption was involved here; wow, that’s a surprise. The bad news for Marinovich as a football player is that he was chased down and caught by “university public safety officers”. That is not good news for a player who will have to go to a scouting combine and be timed in the 40-yard dash…

In case you didn’t immediately notice the letter “M” could also bring Mikhail Marinovich to you. Given his older brother’s police history with marijuana and methamphetamines - - also brought to you by the letter “M” - - I suspect he would not be someone the Sesame Street folks would want to join with.

Since the merger of the AFL and the NFL, the Detroit Lions have lost more football games than any other team in the league; at the moment, their total stands at 344. So far this decade, the Lions are a cumulative 40-88. Last year’s 7-9 record was the best in a while; but when you consider that they started strongly and stumbled home in December, this was not a team that delivered a tsunami of thrills to its fans. So what did the Lions do about two weeks ago? They raised ticket prices for seats in Ford Field. Scientists are working on a reliable blood test for HGH; if those same scientists are looking for blood samples rich in chutzpah/gall/insolence/unmitigated effrontery, all they need do is get samples from the folks associated with the Lions who decided to raise ticket prices this year. Yowza!

Bob Molinaro had a humorous column in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot regarding the things he could do with all of that “extra time” he discovered on Leap Day 2008. Here are three of his better ideas:

Search the Internet to find a college basketball team that takes the season two games at a time.

Because spring training is under way, try to find out what a first base coach does.

Limp a mile in Yao Ming’s shoes.

Finally, Scott Ostler had this observation in the SF Chronicle about the Raiders and their “commitment to excellence”:

“Impossible to win 19 games in the NFL? That’s what the experts say now that the Patriots were stopped one game short. But 19 wins is do-able. The Raiders over the last five seasons have won exactly 19 games.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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Much as I would prefer not to do it, I have to write about golf today. There was neither a stunning victory nor a monumental collapse to talk about over the weekend. In fact, if you gave me truth serum I would have to admit that I have no idea what tournament happened this weekend nor any idea who won or lost whatever Titanic struggle unfolded on the PGA links. No, I need to write about Tripp Isenhouer and his alleged killing of a hawk on a golf course.

Let me set the stage here by dismissing Trip Isenhour as a force majeure in the PGA world of golf. This is a man about to turn 40 years old who had been on the PGA Tour for three of the last four years and is now playing on the Nationwide Tour. Ben Hogan’s place in golfing history is in no danger…

According to court papers, Isenhour was filming a segment for something called Shoot Like A Pro when he became angry at the distraction caused by the squawking of a red-shouldered hawk. Reportedly, he hit balls at it while it was far off in a tree and when the bird flew to a nearer tree, Isenhour again took aim and hit the bird with a golf ball and killed it.

Allow me to assume for a moment here that things are as they are reported - - mainly because there was video equipment running at the time and Mr. Isenhour has not tried to deny that any of this ever happened. If this is true, then Tripp Isenhour is slightly – but only slightly – above Michael Vick on the scale of humans who do despicable things to animals. Let’s get a couple of things straight here:

1. Tripp Isenhour – like all of his professional golf prima donna colleagues – has exactly no entitlement to abject silence every time they look down at the ground and see a white spheroid on a background of green or tan. The PGA employs crowd control goons to hold up signs to create silence while these pampered prisses hit their shots, but when these spoiled brats cannot even shoot an instructional video because a creature of Mother Nature deigns to make a noise, then those spoiled brats all need to be called out for what they are - - spoiled brats.

2. Absent this event, the odds against Tripp Isenhour making it into the news for his golf prowess any time this year were more than 100-1.

3. Had this been Tiger Woods who was similarly “interrupted” and enraged, he would not have killed the bird. Woods would have sent his caddy off to catch the bird and throttle it and toss it into the nearest water hazard.

Perhaps the time has come for fans to suggest to the PGA that abject silence during a golf swing is not a birthright nor is it essential to the continuation of Western Civilization as we have come to know it. Even better, maybe they should put Mr. Isenhour in the stocks about 300 yards out on a golf fairway and let other tour pros hit balls at him - - to see if that raises his awareness of what he did in any way.

Meanwhile, I do not want to let the animal rights goofs off the hook too easily here. These folks have been on the fringes of the sports news for a while now since Michael Vick took his final “perp-walk” and they needed to find a way to get their monotonous message in our faces yet again. When this happened last week, they lost not a single moment petitioning the PGA to “to condemn animal cruelty in wake of Nationwide Tour golfer’s killing of a hawk with golf ball.” How feckless and meaningless is that – except as a way to get your name and the name of your organization in the newspapers. Of course the PGA will condemn animal cruelty - - and so will I. However, animal rights activists and I will probably part company should we think about a joint trip down that path; I have no problem with killing and eating animals; most animal rights activists do; that is a gulf that is not going to be spanned.

By the way, is Dave Winfield hoping that no one puts his name in juxtaposition with this story? Sorry, I just did that…

Since I am talking about a minor sport here, – golf – let me keep on that minor sport vector and talk about pro rassling for a moment. The “event of the year” – Wrestlemania – will be happening in the next few weeks in Orlando Florida and boxer, Floyd Mayweather, Jr., will be part of the card “fighting” someone known as “The Big Show”. Pardon me, but I thought The Big Show was canceled when Keith Olbermann left ESPN and no longer did SportsCenter with Dan Patrick…

One report has Mayweather making $20M for this one appearance in this one show. I admit that I am guessing here, but I suspect that the accountants who did this deal are the same ones who did the $250M deal between MLS and David Beckham for Beckham to play soccer in MLS games. Two important words here: Not … Likely.

In boxing news, The Guardian reported in London that Evander Holyfield is pondering an offer from Mike Tyson to meet again for the third time. Will someone give me a break here? Does the winner get to fight Rocky Marciano?

I mentioned above the David Beckham/MLS contract that was so fraudulently portrayed as a payment to him for playing soccer in the US. Well, perhaps the MLS has matured to the point where not every aging and over-the-hill top shelf soccer player is needed in MLS. Celestine Babayaro was on the Nigerian Olympic team in 1996 and just a few months ago was playing for Newcastle United in the English Premiere League. He came to play for the LA Galaxy – alongside Beckham – and the Galaxy sent him packing. Maybe the level of competency in MLS is on the steep-rise portion of the curve…

In another minor sport/niche sport, I ran across this description of a sporting event and did not even understand the vocabulary. The sport is surfing and here is a “play-by-play” of sorts:

“It was a close duel for much of the 35-minute, best-two-waves final, with Slater [the winner of this event] posting an 8.67 out of a possible 10 to lead, then watching his rival slash a right-hander to the beach for a 9.33 to move in front.

”But if a statement was made, it was by Slater. During a 9.27 ride that would put him ahead to stay, he bashed the lip and spun a reverse, then rode backward on his swallowtail, fins first, for at least 15 yards before spinning back around amid cheers from the beach.”

Say what? Here is the only thing I think I know from the above prose: The winner probably did not fall off his surfboard and require a rescue by the lifeguards on duty.

Finally, some things just go together - - like peanut butter and chocolate. Other things just do not go together - - like mustard and milk. And sometimes when you put two things in juxtaposition, you find yourself drawing strange conclusions - - as did Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Anyone up for the Chugiak 500?

“Just imagine the possibilities if NASCAR ever took over the Iditarod:

“No more of those 1,150-mile overland marathons — just 200 laps ’round and ’round on the icy, high-banked Shaktoolik Supersledway.

“Malamutes and huskies bred with longer right legs for the constant left-hand turns.

“Side-by-side bumping, known as ‘trading fur.’

“Pit stops for a splash of Alpo and new right-side dogs.

“Yellow caution flags for, uh, dog debris on the track.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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Less than a month from now, the folks in the Washington DC area will be inundated with stories in the local papers about the glory of the new baseball stadium in town. Fans in other parts of the country will hear about it but won’t necessarily have it hammered down their throats for about a week. I said many times that I wasn’t anywhere near certain it would be ready to open on time; I was wrong it will open on time. But when you hear about the “glory” and the “magnificence” and the “paradigm changing nature” of the new park, please take all of that poesy with a grain of salt. Here are some things that are going on.

The stadium itself has 1,200 parking spaces. The DC government has decided that it will place restrictions on street parking around the stadium as a way to encourage people to take mass transit to the games. The Nationals have arranged with private parking areas to have spots for season ticket holders only and they plan to run shuttle busses to and from the park from various other hubs nearby the stadium. This is truly a “new paradigm”. You spend more than $600M on a stadium planning to recoup a large fraction of those costs from fans attending the games and then you make it inconvenient for them to come to the stadium.

The Nationals count their “season ticket holders” in a very generous way. If you buy a 20-game plan, you are a season ticket holder. The way I learned math, that would make you a “one-quarter-season ticket holder” but whatever… Last year, the Nationals had about 16,000 of these “season ticket holders” coming to see a miserable team in a miserable stadium. Let me paraphrase Dennis Miller in describing RFK Stadium:

It stunk like a guy eating cheese while getting a permanent inside the septic tank of a slaughterhouse.

Naturally, you would presume that with the magnificence of the new stadium all of those fans in DC who had been starving for baseball for all those decades would be knocking themselves out to get tickets. New stadiums have done that to attendance just about everywhere else even without that level of pent up hunger for baseball in their fandom. As of the last week in February, the Nationals had sold 18,000 season tickets – a rise of approximately 12%.

The Washington Post has already begun its drumbeat to build up the stadium. In its Food Section last week, there was a feature article on the culinary delights that will await fans in the new park. Of course, sushi and vegetarian options will be available - - as if no other park in any other city had thought to do something so new and different. But what caught my eye was something that may indeed be the biggest “paradigm shift” in recorded history. An outfit known as “Kosher Sports” will have several kiosks in the stadium that will feature – according to the Washington Post – kosher hot dogs, potato knishes and Italian sausage.

I am not a graduate of any culinary institute; I am not a theologian; I have never participated in any rabbinical studies. But the juxtaposition of “Italian sausage” and “kosher” is a bit difficult for me to get my brain around. Those two things go together about as naturally as do peanut butter and champagne - - or maybe Roseanne Barr and Aida.

If you go searching for information about how Italian sausage might get to be kosher, check out www.worldpork.org. According to that site, “If it’s about pork, you’ll find it at NPPC’s World Pork Expo,” this June in Des Moines, Iowa.

Speaking of baseball stadiums, the nonsense about the “re-naming” of Wrigley Field goes on and on and… Seemingly lost in the rhetorical flourishes is a statement from the Illinois Sports Facility Authority – an entity which might think of buying the stadium from The Tribune Company at some date – that it will take between $350M and $400M in renovations to fix up Wrigley Field. That’s close to the cost of a completely new stadium so that should give you an idea of what Wrigley Field is like. Other than its iconic status, it is basically falling apart.

Here’s an idea for Chicagoans. How about someone with more money to spend than brains paying for the naming rights to Wrigley Field and changing the name to Comiskey Park? Talk about cheesing off the fan base…

I am beginning to hear stuff on sports radio that it’s about time for Barry Bonds to get an offer to play for some major league team because he can “help a team win” and because he would be the player that would “put such-and-such a team over the top.” Let me be clear about this; I don’t care a fig if Barry Bonds plays baseball this season in the major leagues, the minor leagues or in the Inter-Galactic League. But the rhetoric is what is really over the top. Unless I was in a coma for a while and missed a few seasons, the last team that Barry Bonds put over the top won 71 games last year and the Giants have been mediocre at best for several years now with him as their centerpiece. Barry Bonds might be relevant if he were with a contending team but he will be irrelevant at best with a team like Tampa where he might “lead them” all the way up to 78 wins. So what?

If Barry Bonds is to be of value to any major league team, it would have to be an American League team where he would DH for most of the time and actually play in the field about once every three weeks. If he has to play the outfield on an “every day basis” – whatever that means for someone like Bonds who prefers to make his own decision as to whether or not he will play in any given game – he will cost a team about 10 wins over the season. He can’t run anymore; he cannot get to balls down the line or in the gap to cut them off; his arm is good but not great; and if he makes a leaping catch to snag a fly ball over the top of the left field wall, check to see if his eyes were open when he made the catch. His only position on a baseball team anymore is “batter”. That is fact and not wishful thinking or social commentary or any other nonsense of that sort.

In college basketball, Harvard may have some recruiting violations on their hands and the NCAA is “looking into it”. When the NCAA looks into things, oftentimes it takes until the glaciers come again and then recede again before they find anything; so it may be a while until those super-sleuths unravel whatever is going on there. But I think there is a larger question here:

Shouldn’t the folks at Harvard be smart enough to find ways to cut corners without even raising suspicions that something untoward is going on?

Finally, here’s an item from Dan Daly in the Washington Times:

“So I’m watching the Tournament Formerly Known As The Bing Crosby Pro-Am on the Golf Channel, and I’m thinking: Maybe that’s what the NFL should do to spruce up the Pro Bowl — let celebrities play. Who, after all, wouldn’t tune in to see Shawne Merriman blindside Kenny G?”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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Probably because the NCAA Women’s Final Four will be in Tampa/St. Petersburg Florida in early April this year, the St Petersburg Times has focused coverage on women’s college basketball. And In line with the “inconvenient truth” related to women’s sports in America that I wrote about in late January this year, the economics of women’s college basketball just is not working out all that well.

The latest figures for a full season that seem to be available are those from the 05/06 season. According to the figures filed by the Division 1 member schools with the US Department of Education, the net loss for women’s basketball as a whole was $169M. One item in the coverage by the St. Petersburg Times tells me that the numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt because according to 80 schools, the revenues for women’s basketball matched the costs of women’s basketball to the dollar. The chances of that actually happening at two schools are minuscule; for me to believe that this was the case at 80 schools, you would have to convince me that the Enron accountants were keeping the books at those schools.

Nevertheless, the economics are staggeringly bad and it is not a matter of the haves making lots of money while the have-nots lose even more money. In the larger conferences, schools lose an average of $1M on women’s college basketball and some lose in excess of $2M. Moreover, the comparison with men’s basketball is stark and unmistakable. In the same “accounting period”, the men’s game made a net profit of $240M.

Now I need not be told that one of the major reasons for that profit is the lucrative local and national TV deals for men’s college basketball and that women’s college basketball has no national deal that begins to rival the local sum of the local deals available to schools in the ACC for example. So, if anyone is predisposed to tell me about how all of this will change once that happens, I agree it will. The problem I see is that men’s college basketball has had a fanatical following that manifested itself in large attendance figures for the last 50 years and those attendance figures engendered some small TV exposure that begat the huge deals. For women’s college basketball in most places, the arenas are far closer to 15% full than they are to 100% full on most nights.

The only meaningful portion of the NBA regular season is about to happen, as teams with playoff aspirations – and championship aspirations – jockey for inclusion and seeding position in the upcoming playoffs. Everything up to now was just Kabuki Theater; now things get serious. And the teams in the Western Conference went through a shakeup at the trading deadline. Here is my abbreviated assessment of how the NBA West will shake out:

The Lakers made the greatest improvement obtaining Pau Gasol and giving up nothing more than a bag of toenail clippings. They could be the overall #1 seed; they will certainly be in the top 3.

The Suns got Shaq and a mountain of question marks. I said when they made this trade that I did not understand it and I did not see how it would work. I remain unconvinced it was a good deal for Phoenix.

The Mavs obtained Jason Kidd in a deal I said ought to embarrass the NBA because to make it happen they had to trade a guy who has been sitting home mowing the lawn for about two years. Kidd is a good player but I do not think he is enough to make the Mavs into anything more in terms of a fearsome playoff team than they have been for the past 2 years.

When the Rockets lost Yao Ming to a foot injury, they lost any chance of getting deep into the playoffs. In fact, I think much of their long winning streak at the moment is a mirage. I think they should be in “wait-till-next-year” mode already.

The Cinderella team – the New Orleans Hornets – will get a lot of coverage but as Cinderella, they are entering the playoffs with the clock at 11:00 PM. It will be a fun ride, but not a long one.

The Jazz made no trade deadline moves and they are still right in the middle of things. I do not expect them to win it all, but if they get a couple of players on a roll, they can make life difficult for any opponent.

The Warriors were last year’s Cinderella but the more minutes they give to Chris Webber the less chance I give them to make it through the first round this year. They may not even make the playoffs.

The Blazers were hot and bright back in December/January and have now faded. I doubt they will be involved in the playoffs.

The Denver Nuggets are all sizzle and no steak.

And you’ll notice that I have not yet even mentioned the defending champions – the San Antonio Spurs whose weakness seems to be that they win championships only every other year.

The Bottom Line: The West is where the interesting race is shaping up and by “race”, I mean the positioning of the eight playoff teams from #1 all the way through #8 and the one or two good teams who will sit home and watch. In the East, there are a couple of interesting teams in Boston and Detroit – and if you are a LeBron acolyte, in Cleveland too – but the “race” to see who gets into the playoffs in the last two or three spots in the East is irrelevant. In the East, pay attention to the top of the standings and ignore all teams whether in or out of the playoffs who did not win at least 45 games in the regular season.

As teams tried to make themselves better at the trading deadline, Ron Artest did not move from the Sacramento Kings. That is interesting in and of itself because Artest is a top-flight player on the court. It says something that no contender or aspirant team pulled the trigger and added him to their roster when he would clearly make almost any team within sight of the playoffs a better team. As long as he does not meltdown… and that is the “problem” with Ron Artest. He’s got so much baggage, his nickname ought to be “American Tourister”…

Consider that Artest was the Defensive Player of the Year four seasons ago and has been on the All-Defensive Team three times. Add to that the fact that it is not unreasonable to expect him to get 18 points per game plus 8 rebounds per game plus 2 steals per game. Artest can opt out of his contract and become a free agent this summer - - as can Gilbert Arenas, Elton Brand and Jermaine O’Neal. I am sure a PR person for any contending NBA team will say that is the reason their team did not make a push to get Ron Artest because they did not want to “mortgage the future”. I guess I’m just not buying that one…

Finally, here is syndicated columnist Norman Chad on the imbalance of power between the NBA West and the NBA East:

“The Western Conference is stocked with versatile rosters boasting quality big men and great point guards. The Eastern Conference has pretty much three teams — the Celtics, the Pistons and LeBron.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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Five years ago, I called for a cap on the number of reporters who should be allowed to cover Spring Training and tried to define a set of trite story angles that the ones permitted to attend Spring Training need no longer foist upon us.

Needless to say, this reporting cap is not in effect but here is a perfect example of what I meant by recycling of stories and story angles. Put this in terms of good news and bad news; consider:

Good News: We are not – on a daily basis - reading/hearing about what Barry Bonds is denying that he did or did not do and what Federal prosecutors are thinking about doing next to him.

Bad News: We are – on a daily basis - reading/hearing about what Roger Clemens is denying that he did or did not do and what Federal prosecutors are thinking about doing next to him.

From all of that baseball/prosecutorial news stuff, Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle laid preemptive claim to a great line should things really go south for Roger Clemens:

“If Clemens is sentenced to prison and winds up in solitary confinement, will he be considered the ace in the hole?”

A staple of Spring Training reporting has to do with pitchers trying to make a comeback from injury or trying to eke one more year out of their arms. One such pitcher this year is Bartolo Colon who got himself an invitation to the Red Sox camp trying to become their #5 starter. The interesting thing about that story is that one could marry it with another item in the baseball cosmos this spring. Donald Fehr said that the MLBPA would consider blood-testing regimens if there was evidence that the blood tests were effective. That commits Donald Fehr to exactly nothing, but it is newsworthy because it is a new position for him. How does that relate to Bartolo Colon – who surely does not look like a “Roid Ranger?

Do the WADA chemists have a reliable blood test for chocolate?

I haven’t yet read that angle on the story but we may need to examine it one of these days. If Colon actually makes it to the major leagues this year and you get to see one of the games that he pitches, check out that centerfield shot of him on the pitcher’s mound. Then, ask yourself if he is not the current active player most worthy of the moniker, El Caboose.

Jason Schmidt is trying to come back with the Dodgers. LA paid him $16M a year for three years and got all of six starts out of him in the first year of that deal. Already, Schmidt has been “shut down” this spring. He and the team say this is all part of the rehab and it was planned to be this way all along and you should move along because there is nothing to see here. That could be the case. It could also be the case that the Over/Under for the number of starts that Jason Schmidt gets this season is 2.5 - - while he collects his next $16M installment…

Jason Marquis is trying to make the Cubs as one of the folks at the back end of their rotation. For some reason, he decided to make it known that he wanted to be traded if he wasn’t going to be a starter who fit prominently in the Cubs’ plans. I surely do not understand this one at all. If Jason Marquis cannot make it as a starter in the Cubs’ rotation, why is some other team going to give up any asset at all to bring him in and make him a starter on their team? It can’t be because Marquis showed just how wonderful a person he is with that kind of outburst.

There is an independent minor league baseball team in Atlantic City - - the Surf. They just hired Cecil Fielder as their manager for 2008, which would be a throwaway item in the agate type of most sports pages save for one thing. About ten years ago, Fielder was in hock to the Trump Plaza Casino in Atlantic City for more than $500K. Evidently, one of the local reporters there asked Fielder how this might affect him and Fielder said:

“Gambling has never been a temptation for me.”

What part of that response does not compute? If one is not tempted to gamble, how does one run up a $500K gambling tab? Oh, I get it now. He’s not tempted to gamble; he just does it…

Harkening back to the abundance of Roger Clemens news this spring – which MLB needs like Darfur needs more refugees – there is a piece of the story that did not get a lot of play – much to the delight of MLB. Even considering the tarnished reputation of the source here, Denny McLain said he is “certain” that Roger Clemens is not telling the truth. Denny McLain is the author of an autobiography titled, I Told You I Wasn’t Perfect. Let us just say that is a gross understatement and leave it at that.

McLain is also a two-time Cy Young winner and the last pitcher to win 30 games in a season. So he has some”pitching cred” but the PR machine at MLB wants to keep him at least a parsec away from anything having to do with the game. McLain was suspended in his career for consorting with gamblers; he was indicted and convicted of cocaine trafficking – but the conviction was reversed on procedural grounds; he was convicted of stealing a couple of million dollars from the pension fund of a company he owned and served about 5 years in prison for that. He is not an ambassador of the game by any stretch of the imagination so the MLB gurus had to breathe a sigh of relief when this story happened and then quietly disappeared.

From his “inside knowledge” McLain proclaimed with regard to the Roger Clemens mess:

“There are a lot of guys on death row with a lot less evidence.”

Finally, staying with the baseball theme for today, here is an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

Maker’s Mark bourbon will honor Johnny Bench with 3,000 limited-edition bottles with the Hall of Fame catcher’s picture on the label.

Which certainly gives a whole new meaning to the question: “One or two fingers?”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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Sorry this is a bit later than usual. I just returned from an appointment with the cardiologist for a stress echocardiogram. Everything is normal. In addition, the visit proved conclusively – despite what some folks say about curmudgeons – that I do actually have a heart.

I will refrain from over-indulgence in heaping praise on Brett Favre on the occasion of his retirement announcement for a while. Too often, I have seen couples break-up and then get back together when someone changes his/her mind. I am not saying that will happen here, but it is a possibility. Brett Favre is/was a great QB; Brett Favre has become an annoyance as a soap-opera figure playing the latter day Hamlet on his decision to play again or to retire.

Let me make a few comments on the early flurry of free agent signings in the NFL. Now the market will calm down a bit so that teams can make more rational and less emotional decisions on how much to pay to whomever for however long. Leading the parade of irrational exuberance – to steal Alan Greenspan’s phraseology – in player signings had to be the Oakland Raiders. They signed safety, Gibril Wilson away from the Super Bowl Champion NY Giants with a deal worth a total of $39M and with $18M guaranteed. I know that players on Super Bowl winners get to cash in if they are free agents, but this is a bit much. Gibril Wilson is being paid like Troy Polamalu; the problem is that Gibril Wilson is merely a better than average safety while Troy Polamalu is an elite performer.

There is an old joke that begins with the question, “What is the difference between a dog and a fox?” The answer is, “About five tequilas.” Well, that Super Bowl win seems to have turned Gibril Wilson from a dog to a fox.

Nevertheless, that deal is perfectly understandable compared to the one the Raiders bestowed on Tommy Kelly who is coming off an injury and who was good but not special at his defensive tackle position prior to that injury. Kelly got $50M over seven years making him – take a deep breath here – the highest paid defensive tackle in the history of the NFL. Somewhere, Mean Joe Greene is shaking his head and wondering why the hell he had to be born 30 years too early.

Here is one possible explanation for the Raiders sudden burst of pecuniary generosity. Maybe none of the free agents on the market would even consider going there to play for the team without huge contracts and huge guarantees. Maybe “The Black Hole” is no longer only the section of fanatic Raiders’ fans at their home games; maybe the Raiders are themselves a black hole where football talent goes to languish in the obscurity of losing. Could be…

When the Browns re-signed Derek Anderson to a long-term deal, that pretty much committed them to make Anderson their starting QB. I have heard the bravado coming from Brady Quinn that he is prepared to compete for and win the starting job in Cleveland; that is nice; it is also not going to happen unless Anderson is injured or incarcerated. Frankly, it would be nice to see some of the expert analysts focus on how Brady Quinn himself set much of this in motion.

The Browns traded up to get Brady Quinn in the draft after he plummeted from a “top-5 pick” to the end of the first round. But Quinn and his agent spurned the Browns contract offers and held out of minicamps and then out of training camp for more than two weeks. When he finally signed his deal, it was not significantly more than what had been reportedly offered to him several months before. So, he missed out on so much work that when the Browns canned Charlie Frye after the first game of last season, Brady Quinn was not ready to go into the game and he opened the door for Derek Anderson. Now he will sit behind Anderson yet again. When – not if but when – Quinn and/or his agent seek to be traded so that Quinn can get a starting job, please recall that much if not all of his current situation is of his own making.

The Jets signed Alan Faneca to play guard for them. Faneca is a blue-chip player; that deal will make the Jets a better team; Alan Faneca can make any team in the NFL better. Then the Jets paid Calvin Pace $42M over 6 years with $22M guaranteed. No peeking now and forget Google is there; what team did Calvin Pace play for last year and what position did he play?

The Miami Dolphins signed Josh McCown to join John Beck on their quarterback depth chart. The Dolphins also signed a bunch of other free agents which they will have to do because the cupboard is pretty bare down there. But if any Dolfans thinks that the tandem of McCown/Beck – or Beck/McCown if you prefer – will lead the team to the Promised Land, then the Promised Land just morphed into the Love Canal.

Despite the thoughts of Thomas Wolfe, it appears you actually can go home again. Brian Griese is headed back to Tampa Bay. It is amazing that a player who has been “found wanting” in so many venues can actually find a way to return to one of them. Tampa traded to acquire him; it was not a simple free agency signing.

Another signing that I do not understand is Isaac Bruce to the Niners. I like Isaac Bruce; I’m not sure he is a Hall of Fame WR, but he will surely get consideration for that honor when he is eligible. However, it sure seems apparent to me that he has lost two full steps – not just one – and that really limits what he can do as a WR. I wonder how long it will be until the Niners tell all of us, how Bruce is “like an assistant coach on the field” or that he is a “clubhouse leader” or a “great role-model for the young wide receivers on the team”. I do not doubt he can be all of those things. But can he be a WR to turn around a losing team? I don’t think so.

Did you know that today is National Grammar Day? So, let us celebrate by going back and diagramming all of the sentences in this rant. Or not…

Finally, now that the NFL Scouting Combine is over, here is a perspective on that nonsense from Scott Ostler in the SF Chronicle:

“At the NFL combine, the 40-yard dash is always exciting. But for my money, the key drills are the Guitar Hero manual-dexterity test and the paper-scissors-rock IQ test.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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From here in the nerve center of Curmudgeon Central, I have issued and all-points bulletin to locate Al Gore. The opportunity for another lecture about global warming – which he will doggedly try to label as a “speech” – is out there waiting to be inflicted on us. The opportunity comes from Alaska and the Iditarod. The race began in Willow, Alaska and not Wasilla, Alaska. One could easily miss that fact when reading about the race because the spellings are so similar; could this be a cover-up on the part of an evil cabal who deny that the Earth is getting warmer? The real reason for the move is that Willow is north of Wasilla and there is actually snow in Willow while there is not enough to mush sleds on in Wasilla. Think about that – not enough snow in Alaska; this calls for Al Gore to prepare some overhead charts and dim the lights and put millions of folks to sleep.

Major League Soccer has expanded in to the Philadelphia suburb of Chester. The league awarded a new franchise and the state government will put up about $50M to build a soccer-only stadium facility to seat 18,500 folks. Some reports say the stadium will cost $115M. Having some familiarity with Chester PA, I can tell you with certainty that the additional $65M will not be coming from the city coffers. Chester is a town in desperate need of being kick-started into the late 20th century. Presumably, the new owners and the politicians who helped spearhead this bid will consider how to get fans to and from this stadium conveniently and securely. If not, this will be a very empty facility no matter who plays whatever sport there.

Lest anyone think that I am being too negative on MLS with regard to this expansion announcement, I have to say that MLS has managed very well to keep the news about its league and its players squarely in the positive zone. That is not the case at all for the Australian Soccer League. That league held its championship game recently in which the Newcastle Jets beat the Central Coast Mariners by a score of 1-0 and the only goal was a disputed goal. The Mariners’ goalkeeper struck the referee; and when all of that was adjudicated, the goalkeeper was suspended for 18 months by the league. Why is that important; he is also one of the goalkeepers on the Australian team that would play in the Olympics this summer in Beijing. If FIFA decides to endorse the Australian League punishment, he is out of action for more than year everywhere on the planet.

But it gets worse… The Central Coast Mariners – remember they lost the championship game – held a post-season celebration soon after this game. One of the players on the team was born in Germany and he decided to show up at the party dressed as – you guessed it – Adolf Hitler. Can I make something very clear here? Adolf Hitler was a funny character in Mel Brooks’ movie/play The Producers because that was a farce and the “humor” of the Hitler character was part of the farce due to the monstrosity of the real Adolf Hitler. Nevertheless, when anyone shows up at a public event dressed as Hitler, it is not funny. Period. Exclamation Point. End of Message.

I got an e-mail message this morning about a girls’ high school basketball game in the first round of the Pennsylvania State Championship Tournament. Butler won the game 66-4; the e-mail said there was a “statistical edge to Butler in offensive rebounds”. Butler had 35; the losers had zero. The losing team took 14 shots in the game and turned the ball over 42 times. Here is the scary part:

In order to get into the state tournament, this losing team had to win its league championship/ area championship/whatever.

Imagine what would have happened to one of the teams that finished near the bottom in that league/area had that team played Butler.

Not a pretty picture…

Speaking of women’s basketball – sort of – Michael Cooper is the coach of the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks. Cooper played in the NBA for about 10 years and has various stints as a coach in the NBA D-League and the WNBA. As I recall, he was also an interim coach for the Nuggets for a couple of months several years ago. He knows the game and so when he says that Tennessee All-American, Candace Parker, is “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy and Magic Johnson”, my first thought was that she must be a really special player. But then I wondered if Cooper’s statement wasn’t a distillation of just why the WNBA has not caught on. Why did he not compare Candace Parker to Lisa Leslie, Nancy Leiberman and Sheryl Swoopes?

Coach Cooper does Candace Parker a disservice. As good as she has to be to earn that sort of accolade from him, she will not – repeat not – remind any fans of those three Lakers’ Hall of Fame players on the court. She will be an outstanding player but is not going to achieve the standard he set with that off-hand remark. It is not fair to her and it is not in the best long-term interests of the WNBA.

Bob Knight is joining ESPN as an analyst for March Madness. After the disdain he showed for “the media” during his 40 years as a coach, this is a stunning reversal of direction for Knight. Recall he once said that sports writing was “one or two steps above prostitution” as a life endeavor. However, it does reinforce the seminal truth of the advice given to Bob Woodward by Deep Throat during the Watergate affair, “Follow the money…” It is pretty obvious why ESPN wants Knight. He is outspoken; he knows the game, and he is controversial; some will tune in hoping to see him lose it and bash a co-host over the head with a chair.

Here is what I hope for. I hope that Knight will actually criticize some of the coaching decisions made during the tournament. After all, some of them are just plain wrong - - but you won’t hear that from anyone else on ESPN. Recall also, that Knight even criticized the moves/capabilities of other coaches while he still competed against them; his commentary about Dale Brown at LSU was far more candid than the commonly accepted standards of “coachspeak”

Who knows? If Bob Knight can become a functioning member of the sports media, perhaps Michael Moore can become a neocon, Rosie O’Donnell can become a supermodel, Bob Dylan can sing an aria at The Met and Jerry Springer can become mayor of … Wait, that last one already happened.

Finally, since today has been a potpourri of secondary sports, let me close with a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald that will tell you all you need to know about another secondary sport:

“The Indy Racing League and Champ Car circuits have merged, effectively consolidating two factions of too few fans into one disinterested group.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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