The Sports Curmudgeon®

Today I tried to poke fun at what a surgeon’s news conference might be like after a less-than-perfect surgery on a public figure such as Tiger Woods. When I wrote that, I did not realize that Gene Collier of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had written about the same thing yesterday - - but had also included the Curt Schilling surgery.

In addition to pre-dating my comments, Gene Collier’s are funnier by a mile and a half.

I commend this to your reading…

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After last Friday’s rant about things that make me sick in sports, I got an e-mail from a high school friend - - one of the “Boys of Summer” with whom I will take a baseball odyssey later this summer. He pointed out something that made him sick and as soon as I saw it, I realized I should have had it on my list too. Here is the text of his note to me:

“It makes me sick to see athletes point to the ‘heaven’ thanking the ‘heavenly being’ for their accomplishment(s) on the playing field, as if the ‘heavenly being’ was watching his/her endeavor. On second thought, perhaps that is the case, thus allowing you explain why disasters happen like earthquakes and cyclones that kill hundreds of thousands of people with one blow, perhaps the ‘heavenly being’ was watching the different sporting events around the world reveling in the ‘thank yous’ and turn his/her head!”

I cannot comment on the theological ramifications of a “distracted heavenly being”, but I can say unequivocally that athletes pointing to the heavens in the midst of a game are annoying at the very best. Someone – I don’t remember who so I can’t give proper credit here – once said that he would like to see an athlete point to the sky after a home run/TD run and then hear a booming voice from the sky say:

“Stop pointing! It’s impolite!”

Wimbledon marches on and the buzz surrounding it is virtually non-existent. In today’s Washington Post, the big Wimbledon article is on page 3 of the sports section and it deals with Billie Jean King and how she has seen Wimbledon change over the decades. There is nothing wrong with the article; it is well written. Nevertheless, it is not news that something has changed dramatically over the last three decades.

In memory of George Carlin’s passing, he had a view of tennis that I always found interesting:

“Technically, tennis is an advanced form of pingpong. In fact, tennis is pingpong played while standing on the table. Great concept, not a sport.”

While I’m at it, George Carlin did not think too highly of swimming and running as sports either:

Swimming is nothing more than “a way to keep from drowning.”

“Running isn’t a sport because anybody can do it. My mother can run. You don’t see her on the cover of Sports Illustrated, do you?

With Tiger Woods out of last weekend’s PGA event and the women playing in the distaff version of the US Open, you might have thought that the golf-watching crowd might have tuned into the ladies’ event in huge numbers. They did not and I think part of the reason is that women’s golf has not found a way to create and sustain a mega-star. The retirement announcement by Anika Sorenstam earlier this year will probably hurt women’s golf a lot more than was apparent when the announcement was made. Anika Sorenstam was the face of women’s golf and she had a following among golf fans that other women have not yet amassed.

Michelle Wie once was an attraction but her career has been one of hype and not accomplishment. In the women’s Open, don’t spend a lot of time looking for where she finished among the money winners; she didn’t. In Texas, they would say that Michele Wie is “all hat, no cattle.”

Now a bunch of women golfers have signed up with a modeling agency. The head of that agency told the LA Times that the women had not advertising opportunities and there was “not enough pizzazz on the LPGA Tour.” So, these women are going to work with a modeling agency to try to get people interested in them and their “golf fashions” as a way to get people interested in following women’s golf.

Before I hear even the first peep out of the knee-jerk feminists about how this is just another example of objectifying women, think for a moment about what these women are doing – and choosing to do on their own I might add. They are looking for a way to put themselves in the public eye as a means to bring attention to what they do for a living. That is not a bad thing for them to do; that is a very smart thing for them to do. I have no idea if this modeling agency can successfully promote these women away from the golf course, but I think it makes a lot of sense for these golfers to give this a try.

By the way, since I mentioned Tiger Woods’ absence from the golf scene above, I noted last week that his doctors said that they were pleased with the outcome of the surgery. I hope they are right. Nevertheless, can you recall a situation where a surgeon just finished an operation on a public figure and announced that he was unhappy with the outcome of the surgery? Imagine that news conference:

“Well, the OR team just didn’t bring the A-game today. The sutures ought to hold but we have done better in the past and we know we can do better in the future. It’s all about focus in there and I felt like we had too many distractions today – the anesthesiologist is getting a divorce and the chief nurse’s daughter is in a dance recital tonight. I’m sure the patient will walk again; I hope it will be without a noticeable limp.”

Finally, there are articles out there concerning the use of Viagra by athletes – particularly cyclists – as an athletic performance enhancer. There is no real debate that Viagra is a “performance enhancer” in another sense of the word, but now athletes may be using it outside the boudoir. Greg Cote had this observation in the Miami Herald regarding this situation:

“University of Miami scientists are researching whether the sex-aid drug Viagra improves the performance of cyclists at high altitudes. The study is an indication that evidently all diseases have been cured and scientists have officially run out of important things to research.”

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

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I read an item recently that the folks who run Major League Eating – those are the folks who put on competitive eating competitions such as the Nathan’s Fourth of July tribute to gluttony – are changing the rules for hot-dog eating competitions. No longer will it be who can down the most dogs in 12 minutes; now it will be who can down the most dogs in 10 minutes. The rumor is that Nathan’s is less than thrilled with the number of what are euphemistically called “reversals of fortune” that are seen on TV. Here I have to agree with Nathan’s; those “reversals of fortune” would make me sick too - - if I ever watched one of those things in the first place.

Perhaps the concept of “reversals of fortune” associated with eating events began with Wing Bowl – an annual event sponsored by WIP, a sports-talk radio station in Philly. The motto for Wing Bowl has been for a very long time now:

“You heave. You leave.”

[Aside: Larry the Cable Guy said once that he was on the Clay Aiken diet. That’s where you “pop a Clay Aiken CD into the player and try to keep your food down.” Not an easy thing to do…]

Reading about the change in rules by Major League Eating, it got me to thinking about some things in sports that make me sick – in the figurative sense but not necessarily in the regurgitative sense. So, I started compiling a list…

At the top of my list was the exploitation of young girls by parents and coaches in the sports of gymnastics and figure skating. Referring to these youngsters as “pixies” or “jumping beans” simply attempts to deflect attention from the fact that a vast majority of them are unnaturally small human beings for their age. Many people get themselves properly incensed at the exploitation of child labor to do things like make clothing or sneakers; these athletic endeavors also exploit the labors of children. Makes me sick…

Closely related to the example above – but not limited to gymnastics and figure skating – are parents who live vicariously through the athletic exploits of their children. You can read about lots of them in stories about parents making asses of themselves at youth sporting events. Makes me sick…

The exploitation of children who are involved in sports does not begin and end with parents and event organizers; ESPN takes their share of the spoils from such exploitative activities. If you do not believe that, then tell me why high school basketball and football games are televised nationally and why kids signing letters of intent regarding where they will go to college are “must see TV”. They never show the kid who has been a whiz at physics on TV as he decides between MIT and Cal Tech. Makes me sick…

DJs at sporting events are an abomination. Indoors at a basketball game, all they do is provide noise; outdoors at football games, they are a distraction from the game; outdoors at baseball games, they reach the pinnacle of their annoyance. In a baseball game, these creative geniuses feel the need to escort every batter to the plate with some goofy song. Obviously, they think what they are doing is clever. Actually, what they are doing is demonstrating the far reaches of their talents. Makes me sick…

Every fan at any sporting event who participates in the wave should be evicted immediately from the premises. On the way out, (s)he should be fingerprinted and biometric data should be taken to assure that (s)he is not permitted into any sporting venue in North America for the next year. After that, any subsequent participation in the wave should result in a lifetime ban from live sporting events. Makes me sick…

Any mascot for any team who does anything to encourage or start fans in doing the wave is a miscreant of the highest order. That mascot – annoying to begin with – would engage in behavior to lead other people to do something heinous. We would not put up with that in other areas of society and should not put up with it here. Perhaps a penalty of having to listen to 96 non-stop hours of ABBA and Celine Dion songs would be a sufficient deterrent? Makes me sick…

Any fan who uses his/her cell phone to know when (s)he is on camera so (s)he can wave to the folks at home needs to be evicted from the ballpark the same way people doing the wave are evicted. The only difference is that said individuals should also have their cell-phone usage privileges revoked for the next year too. Makes me sick…

Sideline reporters who have to interview a coach on their way into the locker room at halftime or on their way out of the locker room at the end of halftime are guilty of a crime against humanity – or at least that segment of humanity that happens to be watching that sporting event on TV. The overseer in the truck who commands that sideline reporter to commit that act is not often singled out for criticism but (s)he too needs to feel the sting of punishment. Maybe burying him/her in elephant excrement in the hot sun for 12 hours would be a sufficient deterrent? Makes me sick…

Any football player who holds up four fingers at the start of the fourth quarter should not be allowed to participate in the fourth quarter of that game. What is that supposed to prove? That he has been keeping track of the quarters and can actually count to four? Makes me sick…

While on the subject of players and numbers, can we put a stop to athletes referring to themselves in the third person? Makes me sick…

Knowing I am in the minority here, I would really like to do away with fantasy baseball/football/NASCAR/golf/whatever. My intent is not to deprive people of their fantasy fun; the intent is to limit the crawl at the bottom of the screen during live sporting events. When stations have to provide info on individual players in various games, the amount of text in the crawl is only slightly shorter than Moby Dick. It is distracting. Makes me sick…

Starting a game with a rendition of The National Anthem by someone who cannot sing or by someone bound and determined to make that song into a mini-series is an abomination. So is inviting a celebrity with no singing talent whatsoever to sing Take Me Out To The Ballgame or God Bless America in the seventh inning of a baseball game. Bad singing is not a marketing stroke of genius. Why cannot teams find a dozen local people who can actually sing and put them on a rotating list to handle these “chores”? If that gets too complicated, they could always use a recorded instrumental version of The National Anthem - - that is if they could get their stupid DJ to “work it into his mix”. Makes me sick…

When CBS labels a December college basketball game as part of the Road to the Final Four, you have to wonder if these guys are using a map or if they are so far out in space that they need a radio to contact the Earth. The Road to the Final Four begins in March; if the CBS marketing monkeys insist, they can use the phrase after Valentine’s Day. If they use it before that, they should have to watch Dorothy venture down the yellow brick road on a continuous loop for 96 hours. Makes me sick…

Now lest you think that I am a person wallowing in misery at all times, let me give you a few of the sweetest sounds in sports. It will give you an idea of where I find joy, peace and happiness:

The sound of a referee counting to ten over the defunct boxing career of Tonya Harding.

That giant “whoosh” that happens every April as Dick Vitale inhales for the first time since mid-November - - - BAY-BEE.

The crunching sound that emanates from Fay Vincent as he tries to redirect all of history to make it seem that he – and his buddy Bart Giamatti – actually knew what the hell they were doing when they ran baseball in the late 80s and early 90s.

There, I’m feeling MUCH better now… [/Gomez Addams]

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

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First, let me comment about two NFL “bad boys”. Marshawn Lynch, RB-Bills, was involved in a hit and run situation more than three weeks ago. After subpoenas were issued to three of his teammates and to several officers of the Buffalo Bills Football Club, it seems that Lynch and his attorneys have reached an agreement for a plea bargain. He will plead guilty to two driving violations and serve no jail time for either one. Meanwhile, the victim, who was a temporary hood ornament on Lynch’s auto, is out of the hospital and has retained the services of a personal injury attorney. The bottom line:

The Bills still have a running back who is wearing their colors and not orange overalls.

Lynch may face a short suspension from Roger Goodell but he will not serve that suspension in a cell with a cellmate nicknamed Titan’s Ramrod.

The victim will be cashing a sizeable check part of which will pay for her silence on the matter.

And so it goes…

Adam – please do not call me “Pacman” anymore – Jones has been made into a victim and a sympathetic figure. That is not an easy transition; “The Corner Back Formerly Known As Pacman” (TCBFKAP) would have to elevate his life several notches to qualify as a ne’er-do-well. Nevertheless, Don Imus made another of his “edgy” and “sarcastic” comments about “TCBFKAP” and now a lot of folks feel as if Jones is the victim here.

Jones wants to be called Adam Jones from here on out. I have no idea how the Orioles’ outfielder feels about the possible confusion here, but that is for the outfielder and TCBFKAP to work out. This is just a guess on my part, but TCBFKAP would probably be happy to be known as “Pacman” so long as he is never called “The Defendant” ever again.

Since I mentioned Jones, you must recall the incident that put him over the top as an anti-social miscreant where he “made it rain” at a Las Vegas strip club and a riot ensued and folks were shot and one person wound up paralyzed from the waist down. Now comes news that one of the women involved in that melee – one who allegedly got into a fight with some of the strippers over the dollar bills that were raining down – turned up in a NYC morgue recently. Her family seems to think she was thrown off the roof of an apartment building. Let me try to connect some dots here:

Engages in fight with naked women at a strip club, shots fired disabling a security guard, dead body, allegations of her person being thrown off a roof resulting in a corpse, ties to an NFL bad-boy.

Can the NFL tell me again why they put pressure on ESPN to cancel that mini-series about the NFL team that had so many miscreant players?

Don Imus was not the only person making remarks that might politely be described as “stupid beyond belief” in the last week. In a freestyle rap, Shaquille O’Neal lit into his former teammate and current bete noire , Kobe Bryant, with more than a couple of truly nasty comments. The most repulsive – and repeated – comment had to be:

“Kobe, tell me how my ass tastes…”

You can try to convince me about the nature of freestyling rap and how it intends to claim dominance over others by means of words and not actions. Even if I believe you, this line is over the line of marginally bad taste and fully into outrageous territory.

Meanwhile, the Sheriff of Maricopa County has revoked Shaq’s honorary deputy sheriff badge based on these comments. And that too is “over the line” regardless of my comments about outrageousness above. Everyone here needs to step back, look at what happened, and calm down for a moment:

Shaq was an idiot – not a clown. What he said was not funny and was not intended to be funny. He hurt himself by his words as much as he did Kobe Bryant.

The folks at ESPN who have played this out into some kind of clash of cultures should be ashamed of themselves. I heard one of the talking heads wonder just what the nature of the relationship between Kobe and Shaq was and how this might affect that relationship. Spare me…!

The Sheriff needs to cut back on the caffeine. If Shaq was worth giving an honorary deputy sheriff badge in the first place, then this rap is not a reasonable justification for taking it away from him. Honorary deputy sheriffs have all the societal impact of butterfly farts.

By the way, for the lawyers in the audience, what might be the outcome if Shaq sued the Sheriff on First Amendment grounds alleging that his loss of a “job” was due to the Sheriff infringing on his free speech rights? It might be an interesting legal case except for the fact that it would give a longer lifetime to that embarrassing and offensive “rap video”.

A high school basketball player is thinking of skipping his “one-and-done” year in college on his way to the NBA by going to Europe to play professional basketball there. It is a long story and has to do with his multiple SAT test scores needed to achieve a level whereby he could play as a freshman at Arizona. If he is good enough to play in Europe, I say good for him. The NBA rule says he has to be one year out of high school to enter the NBA Draft; it does not say – and it would not dare say – that he had to spend a year playing NCAA basketball.

Some gloom-and-doomers say this will send a stampede of kids to Europe instead of college. So what? Is living and playing in Europe so much worse than living and playing at a college? It’s not like any of the “one-and done” players are going to take 30 credit-hours per semester and study Greek Literature in their year at school. In fact, they probably will not attend more than 10 hours of class in their second semester.

Two factors will mitigate against a torrent of “one-and-doners” raining down on Europe:

1. Most European leagues have limits on the number of “imported players” that can be on any team roster.

2. US passports will be harder to come by for some of these kids with arrest records and potential outstanding warrants and judgments standing as barriers.

Nevertheless, I wish that all of the “one-and-doners” would go to Europe and not to college here in the US. Maybe then, the NCAA would focus as much as 1% of its attention to the “scholar” portion of “scholar-athlete”. What am I saying? Despite his voluminous rhetorical gas, that will never happen under the leadership of the anamitronic suit dummy known as Dr. Myles Brand.

Oh, by the way, Wimbledon is underway and they have not had rain postponements yet. That can only mean that TCBFKAP has not been to London this week…

Finally, Greg Cote had this comment in the Miami Herald last weekend:

“Wimbledon starts Monday, and Roger Federer will try to extend his 58-match winning streak on grass courts. Federer is believed to be the most successful performer on grass since Cheech & Chong.”

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

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The Las Vegas police department has made an arrest in the Javon Walker case. Hotel surveillance tapes show Walker getting into a car with at least two other men; subsequently, Walker was found beaten and robbed on a street corner with significant facial injuries including a possibly fractured orbital bone. Walker claims he was robbed of $3K in cash and that he lost $100K worth of jewelry.

I can understand people in Vegas walking around with $3K in their possession. Not everyone in the city does that, but it is not an outrageous horde of cash in that town. What I guess I will never understand is why anyone would wear $100K worth of jewelry and then get into a car with two unknown/unidentified men. Sounds to me as if Javon Walker is a few shingles short of a full roof. On the other hand, perhaps we shall hear some further info from the man who was just arrested…?

The NY Giants released corpulent back-up QB, Jared Lorenzen. The Giants’ website had listed him at 6’ 4” and 285lbs. Many folks believed that weight was pre-breakfast. Lots of players have nicknames but Lorenzen has to be the all-time leader in that category. Some of the handles attached to him were:

J-Load
The Abominable Throwman
The Pillsbury Throw-boy
Lord of the Ring-Dings
Hefty Lefty

For the moment, he will simply have to be known as - - unemployed. However, if the Oakland Raiders were to sign him, the Raiders would certainly set an unofficial NFL record. The #1 QB in Oakland at the moment is JaMarcus Russell about whom rumors circulated in the off-season that his weight had gone north of 300lbs. Russell and the team denied those rumors; but if you put Russell and Lorenzen on the same squad, that would have to be the heaviest tandem of QBs in NFL history on one team. Given the Raiders’ performance over the past 5 years or so, they may be looking to set records however they can.

Speaking of the quarterback position, I can never recall a situation similar to the one that exists in Green Bay at this time. With training camp not all that far away, the Packers have three QBs on their depth chart – Aaron Rodgers, Brian Brohm and Matt Flynn. I can never recall a time when none of the quarterbacks on a team’s roster had ever started an NFL game. [Obviously, this was the case for every team in the year the NFL was started but let us not be pedantic today.]

ESPN has the Packers/Vikings for its opening week MNF telecast this year. That is the night when the Packers are scheduled to retire Brett Favre’s jersey. Early indications are that ESPN will take this game over the top:

The entire Monday Night Countdown bunch will be at Lambeau that night – not in Bristol.

There will be two hours of pre-game hype from this crew meaning the telecast of the “game” will start at 6:00 PM EDT.

There will be halftime stuff of course and then these folks will do a postgame show from Lambeau Field.

Pardon the Interruption will originate from Lambeau Field that night.

You just know that Brett Favre will join the “guys in the booth” for a while. Actually, that will be refreshing to have a “football guy” there as a guest as opposed to the star of some soon-to-be-released Disney movie.

But wait, there’s more… There is a second MNF game that night. ESPN will do the Denver/Oakland game after the game in Lambeau Field. Therefore, if I have the math right, football coverage will start on ESPN at 6:00PM on September 8; Green Bay/Minnesota will go from 8 – 11:30; Denver/Oakland will begin at 11:30 and run until 3:00AM EDT. Are you ready for some football?

The NFL and ESPN are reportedly in negotiations regarding the late season package of games that have aired on NFL Network the past few years. NFLN has been unsuccessful in getting on many major cable systems; the disputes are all about money no matter how either side tries to portray that they are the ones trying to best serve the viewing public. NFLN found itself in a bind last year with the late regular season game between the Pats and the Giants. It was the game that the Pats needed to win in order to complete their 16-0 regular season and NFLN had the game. That raised a clamor from football fans who wanted to see the game but could not. Politicians got involved and the NFL allowed over-the-air telecasts of the game.

That annoyed some of the satellite providers who thought they had paid for exclusive rights to the games. Dish Network used to have NFLN on its basic package; after the “give away” last year, Dish Network now has NFLN on a premium package so NFLN is available to fewer homes through that channel than last year. NFLN has not turned out to be the cash tsunami that the league owners thought it could be because the NFL has not been able to strong-arm the cable networks into paying top-shelf rights fees and putting NFLN on the basic packages everywhere.

In contrast, MLB is about to start its 24/7 baseball channel and it will open with almost 50 million homes connected to it. How did MLB get it done? Well, they gave a part ownership stake to Time Warner and Comcast and Cox and etc. The NFL seems not to be able to bring itself to a “sharing posture” and so they are reportedly talking with ESPN – and maybe other broadcast partners – about those eight games that have been fenced off for NFLN. Stay tuned, this should be interesting.

One more note about the NFL and television… NBC has the Super Bowl next February. That network is hoping to charge $3M for each of the 30-second commercial slots in the Super Bowl telecasts. In case you didn’t do all that well on your SAT Math test, that works out to $100K per second. How can that be worth it?

Finally, Greg Cote had this note related to football and radio broadcasts in the Miami Herald:

“FIU [Florida International University] football broadcasts will switch this season from WMCU to WINZ. What that means is, the 99.9 percent of South Floridians who have never listened to FIU football on radio and don’t plan to will now have a different station to ignore.”

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

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Last week, I said that the folks involved with golf on TV could not admit that the absence of Tiger Woods would have a huge effect on the popularity of the sport. That would be sort of like having a Presidential candidate – of either party – admit that (s)he has some significant political debts that will have to be repaid when/if (s)he is elected. And to give you and example of how the TV execs will try to get everyone to look through rose colored glasses, consider that the head of The Golf Channel told Jeremy Fowler of the Orlando Sentinel that the draw for golf on TV now that Tiger Woods is out for the year is – drum roll please:

“Who’s going to win the FedEx Cup?”

No peeking; no Googling. Here is a Quick Quiz:

1. Who leads in the FedEx Cup standings at this moment?

2. Who is second?

3. What do the FedEx Cup and Ryuji Imada have in common? [And the famous Cliff Clavin answer of “Neither has ever been in my kitchen,” is unacceptable.]

4. Briefly describe the scoring system for the FedEx Cup.

5. Give the dates of FedEx Cup tournaments.

Another important golf event for later this year will be the Ryder Cup. The American team has been stomped in the last two competitions; and with Woods on the shelf, you would have to wonder if they should even show up. Except for the fact that Tiger Woods isn’t all that special in Ryder Cup play. I did use Google to come up with this statistic; believe me, I do not carry this kind of stuff around in my head. In Ryder Cup play, Tiger Woods’ record is 10-13-2. So, maybe the Americans can replace him with someone who can play over .500 this time around…?

Do you happen to recall the year before the WNBA started how the NBA and its marketing machine decided to create interest in the new league? The slogan that the WNBA players kept telling us was “We got next.” That was about a dozen years ago; and at the moment, the WNBA – truth be told – don’t got squat. Women’s college basketball has grown; the WNBA peaked in its second season (1998) when average attendance was announced as 10,869. Since 1998, attendance has fallen every year even though attendance figures and actual bodies in the arena have nothing to do with one another. You would have thought that the league would have given away enough tix in one of those years to claim an up-tick in attendance, no?

Well, there is a small up-tick reported so far this season. Average attendance so far in 2008 is 6,673, which is up 2.5%. The LA Sparks lead the league in attendance with an average of 10,121. Note that the leading attendance this year is less than the average attendance in 1998. The good news is there is an up-tick; the bad news is it is a small rise from a precipitous fall.

The WNBA “mystery” is why women players who generated interest as college players create little if any “buzz” as WNBA players. It may take a marketing maven to figure this out, but maybe the buzz they created as collegians would carry over if these players stayed in the same general area and played for a pro team near their college. Maybe the WNBA needs to use the old – and long defunct – NBA “territorial” draft for a while. Given the numbers, I don’t think it could hurt…

I have written more than a few times that the sport of horseracing survives despite the best efforts of the people who run the sport to drive it into extinction. With all the interest generated Big Brown this spring and with attention focused on whether or not he just had a bad day at the Belmont, you might think that the sport could start a drum beat to have fans anticipate a “showdown” with Curlin – last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic winner and the presumptive “best horse in the world at the moment”. However, because of some bad planning earlier on, it looks as if that will not happen.

The folks who run the Breeders’ Cup put the races at Santa Anita this year and next year too. Santa Anita has one of those new synthetic track surfaces that some horsemen love and others detest. Curlin’s trainer detests it and says Curlin will not run on it; I believe he is the trainer who called the new polytrack surface a mixture of “kitty litter and old rubber bands”. Curlin has never raced on grass but will do that this summer with the aim of running on the turf in the Breeders’ Cup races. You would think that the people running the sport would recognize the strong feelings out there regarding synthetic track surfaces and not schedule their World Championship Thoroughbred races somewhere with such a racing surface until there was a more uniform acceptance of those surfaces.

By the way, if Curlin takes to the grass and wins his “prep race” on the grass, he might go to Paris to compete in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in October. Winning that race in France would make him the horse with the highest earnings in history – and that race will not be easily available to US race fans – or potential race fans – because of geography. Like I said, horseracing survives in spite of the dedicated efforts of the people who run the sport to kill it.

The NHL and the New York Rangers have so many lawsuits filed against each other that the parade of lawyers to the bar in the courtroom probably has to be choreographed as carefully as a pro ‘rassling match. In the latest suit, the NHL seeks to force MSG – run by James Dolan of NY Knickerbockers’ fame – to sell the NY Rangers. The NHL claims that part of the agreement of every team in the league which grants them a franchise is that the team agrees not to sue the league - - which the Rangers have done. Forget the legal intricacies here; the real question is whom does one root for in this latest suit:

In the red corner, we have Gary Bettman who has been NHL commissioner for about 15 years and the person generally regarded as the author of the lockout that cost the NHL an entire season.

In the blue corner, we have James Dolan who is generally regarded as a paranoid doofus whose rich father gave him MSG and the Knicks and the Rangers as play toys.

Nevertheless, imagine that the NHL prevails in that suit and forces Dolan to sell the team. You are now going to be the buyer and if you keep the team in NYC, you are going to have to play your games in Madison Square Garden where the landlord will be the guy who was forced to sell you the team. Alternatively, you could move the team to Kansas City. How deep into your pocket are you going to go to buy into that situation in order to own a team in a league run by Gary Bettman?

Finally, Bob Molinaro had this observation in the Virginian-Pilot recently:

“Quick hit: After NASA is finished exploring for signs of life on Mars, it should turn its attention to the WNBA.”

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

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If you make a list of the major sports in the US, you won’t get much of an argument putting the NFL, MLB, the NBA, college football and college basketball on the list. You will get arguments about whether the NHL, NASCAR, MLS and the PGA Tour belong on the list. I think the second group does not. And so, that means that of the major sports in the US at the moment, only MLB is actually playing games. So, let me offer some baseball stuff first today.

I realize that it is only about halfway through the baseball season, but would it be fair to conclude that whatever it was that was wrong with the LA Dodgers last year, it wasn’t former manager, Grady Little. This year’s iteration of the Dodgers has pretty much the same core group of players as last year and they added a manager with World Series credentials. The team is doing worse than last year’s team did at this point. Look, I’m not trying to intimate that Grady Little belongs in the Hall of Fame as a manager; but the problem here is the talent on the field and it is usually the GM that assembles that talent and presents it to the manager - - at least that would seem to be the root of the problem to someone who is looking at the situation from 3000 miles away.

To be sure, the Dodgers are not out of the NL West division race because all the teams in that division are “seriously flawed” - - and that would be my description if I were being purely diplomatic. But if you are a Dodgers’ fan, would you want the GM who assembled this bunch of very highly paid players on the roster being the one who decides how many of the young prospects to deal off in order to get a grizzled veteran who can help in a divisional title run for this year? I wouldn’t.

The Dodgers are not “one player away from the World Series”. The Dodgers are a team with very ordinary pitching and below ordinary offensive prowess. They do not hit for power; they are last in the league in home runs and doubles. They do not create scoring situations for themselves; they are 14th in the National League in drawing walks. That would mean they need to string together bunches of singles to score and the team batting average is only .262 so that does not happen nearly often enough.

With Chipper Jones flirting with a .400 batting average this late in the season, I got to thinking about why it has been 67 years since anyone accomplished that feat. Yes, I know the snarky answer is that Ted Williams is no longer playing and that’s the reason. But in a more serious vein, it isn’t as if the pitching in MLB has gotten all that much better in the past six decades. In fact, expansion has diluted it badly. So why no .400 hitters?

Here’s a hypothesis. In the 1940s – and before – the huge majority of baseball games were played in daytime. I believe there were a couple of American League ballparks in 1941 that did not yet have lights so when Ted Williams played there it was always daylight. And young hitters learn to hit in the daylight. Therefore, perhaps the preponderance of night games now makes hitting slightly more difficult than it used to be? Like I said, it’s a hypothesis…

The Washington Nationals are averaging just fewer than 29,000 people per game in terms of announced attendance. Stipulating that this figure bears no resemblance to the actual number of hominids in the stadium who are there to watch the game, one might think this is an impressive stat for a team that is just plain miserable. But it is a mirage…

When the Nats came to DC, they averaged 33,600 per game in their first year and that was in RFK Stadium. Just to refresh your memory, RFK Stadium is Dante’s Seventh Ring of Hell with even more wretched food choices and cleanliness. Now the Nats play in a state-of-the-art stadium in a town that was “starved for baseball” and they are drawing almost 5000 fewer fans per game than they did. Given that this new stadium cost the DC taxpayers $612M, if the team plays to an average of 30,000 fans, that means the cost to provide each of those seats was $20,400 to the residents of DC. I’m glad I don’t live there…

I saw my first live baseball game in 1949; Robin Roberts was the winning pitcher that day. I recently read something about Roberts – who is now 81 years old – and went to look up his stats. Here is a part of his stat line you are not likely ever to see again until and unless the entire philosophy/strategy of major league baseball makes an orthogonal turn:

Robin Roberts appeared in 676 games – 67 of which were relief appearances late in his career. In that career (from 1948 – 1966) he threw 4688 2/3 innings for an average of 7 innings per appearance. That’s impressive enough but…

Robin Roberts threw 305 complete games.

Let me turn for a moment to the PGA Tour because I want to be on record as having thought of this way ahead of time lest it comes true. The TV ratings for PGA golf for the rest of this season are going to be minuscule at best; without Tiger Woods in contention, people will do other things than watch golf on TV on summer weekends. The PGA won’t acknowledge this publicly; the TV networks won’t either; the Golf Channel can’t say anything like this or it will lose the few viewers that it does have. But it is gonna happen.

Now, suppose – remember I said SUPPOSE – that Tiger Woods’ knee surgery/rehab is not fully successful. Don’t tell me it can’t happen; it just did. And suppose that Tiger Woods can no longer play tournament golf not because he can’t hit the ball but because his knee will not allow him to walk the course for four consecutive days. If that comes to pass, what are the odds that the PGA will allow him to ride a cart and use the Casey Martin decision – which the PGA lost in the Supreme Court – as the justification to change to ancient and sacrosanct rules of golf that they asserted were beyond the laws of the US? I say the PGA makes that change after a deliberation of 15 nanoseconds. And when they do, please make a note to go and look up the words “irony” and “hypocrisy” in the dictionary…

By the way, when Tiger Woods misses the British Open this year, it will break his streak of playing in 46 consecutive Majors. No, that streak is not even close to the record held by Jack Nicklaus of playing in 146 consecutive Majors.

Speaking of Woods and Nicklaus in Majors, we know that Woods is closing in on Nicklaus’ record of 18 major tournament wins. However, Nicklaus also finished second in 19 major tournaments; to date Woods has only finished second five times. He still has a way to go there…

Finally, here is a baseball observation from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“There is a new movie about Japanese baseball called The Zen of Bobby V, starring former big-league manager Bobby Valentine. Analysts said it is final proof the film industry has officially run out of good ideas.”

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

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I think I can explain the sudden quietude of the sports world. Boston area sports fans are napping for moment in the afterglow of the Celtics’ latest NBA Championship in order that they may replenish their energies and focus all of their attention on the Red Sox assault on the World Series. That is the next objective for the New England sports maniacs, but they have had an exhausting time of it what with the Sox win last year and the Pats compilation of 18 straight wins over the winter and then the Celtics championship. Those fans need a small rest now; my guess is that by the All-Star break, they will be back at full energy and with full focus.

The Celtics win in six games over the Lakers offers an interesting – though not quite ironic – view of the playoffs as a whole. The Lakers won the NBA Western Conference, which is clearly the better conference in terms of the density of quality teams. The Celtics stood out in the East and were able to finish off those Western Champions in six games. However, earlier in the playoffs the Atlanta Hawks took the Celtics to seven games. The Hawks finished eighth in the East and could not even muster a .500 record for the year. But they took the Celtics to seven games and the Lakers did not.

Do I think that means the Hawks are better than the Lakers? Of course not.

Do I think that means the NBA manipulated that early series to increase fan interest in Atlanta where fan interest has been lukewarm at best for the last decade? No, I do not.

Do I think that the Celtics win over the Lakers pointed out at least one serious flaw in the Lakers as a team? You bet I do.

The Lakers have a transcendent player in Kobe Bryant, a really good player in Pau Gasol, a much better than average player in Lamar Odom and an experienced point guard to run the team in Derek Fisher. So, how did they lose?

They lost because the Lakers do not play defense. For most of the time, they don’t even put up a façade of playing defense. There is no helping out on defense; there is no intensity on defense. And to compound that problem, the Lakers are not a strong rebounding team. They jump well but all of the folks who play on the front line can be muscled out of the way. Any game where the officials are of a “let-them-play” mentality will have the Lakers at risk.

Next season, the Lakers will get Andrew Bynum back. What Bynum needs to do for the Lakers to be the best player that the team can add would be to play solid team defense for 32 - 35 minutes a game, get 14 rebounds per game and score 8 points per game. The Lakers do not need him to score; in fact, it might be counter-productive to try to make him into a scorer within their offense. What they need is an energetic defender and a strong presence in the middle as players jockey for position to grab rebounds.

Can Bynum do that? Well, he is very big and he’s young and strong. He probably has the ability to do that; the question is will he and/or will he be allowed to do that?

Many times I’ve said that it takes three years to assess an NFL Draft because many players at many positions take a year or two to develop their skills for play at the NFL level. Some folks have even said that a five-year retrospective is what you really need to do that. Well, the 2005 crop of draftees have been around for three seasons and frankly, the crop doesn’t look very good from the perspective of the players taken at the top of the draft. Consider:

Alex Smith was taken first. He has had one decent season and two less than acceptable ones. Let’s be kind and say that he isn’t a complete bust but if he was the player at the top of the heap in that year, then there just might be problems lower down…

Ronnie Brown was taken second. He’s been good if not stunning - - when he has been healthy which has not been all of the time.

Cedric Benson was taken fourth. He has not been good on the field; reports are that he was not all that good in the locker room; he has had more than a few missed games due to injuries and he has been an off-the-field problem. He is also now unemployed.

Cadillac Williams was taken fifth. He’s been fine when he’s been on the field, which isn’t all that often.

Pacman Jones was taken sixth. He has loads of physical skill and has demonstrated them on the field - - when allowed to play. From the neck down, he may be a Hall of Fame quality player; from ear-to-ear, he is an accident in search of a time and place to happen.

Troy Williamson was taken seventh. He can fly. The problem is that he can’t catch a cold. Even if they allowed stick-um once again, he would have problems.

Mike Williams was taken tenth. He is already out of football. He had trouble getting in shape and keeping weight under control. Supposedly, he also had difficulty making it to meetings and practices on time.

Folks, that is seven of the top-ten picks in the 2005 NFL Draft and I do not think that it is such a horrendous stretch of logic to say that the teams making those selections have been less than fully satisfied with what they got.

Finally, here is an observation from syndicated columnist, Norman Chad:

“The Yankees and Red Sox play each other 72 times a season, not counting the playoffs. Contractual restrictions with MLB allow ESPN to carry only 64 of them.”

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

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It has been a while since the geniuses who run the NCAA have been in the news but the drought is over. The NCAA is holding a hearing in Seattle – behind closed doors of course lest “the bad guys” find out what the NCAA is planning to do in the name of truth, justice and the American way. The question before the august panel of NCAA sages is whether or not Indiana University needs to have additional sanctions rain down on their heads in the aftermath of the Kelvin Sampson rule-breaking rampage. Indiana University in the person of its AD, Rick Greenspan, issued a statement thanking the NCAA for allowing IU to present its case from an institutional perspective as part of the hearing. Wow, he actually thanked these goofs for due process. Imagine how low one’s expectations must be if you thank the inquisitors for listening to your side of the story.

The NCAA accuses Kelvin Sampson of rule breaking with regard to phone calls to potential recruits and with providing false information to NCAA investigators. An NCAA spokesthing said that sanctions could range from loss of scholarships to a ban on any post-season play for the school.

Here is some free advice for the NCAA wizards; it might actually make future miscreants take notice. The bad guy here is Kelvin Sampson and not the current coaching staff or the kids on the present team. So how about including the following sanction:

Any member school that hires Kelvin Sampson as a coach/assistant coach or in any capacity within the athletic department of that institution prior to January 1, 2017 shall be banned from participation in any post-season basketball tournaments for five years from the date of Sampson’s hiring.

Moreover, such sanction shall not – repeat NOT – be foreshortened if that member institutions wakes up, slaps itself on the forehead, screams something akin to what the hell were we thinking and fires Sampson’s ass.

While thinking about basketball and Seattle, it comes to mind that the lawsuit between the city of Seattle and the new owners of the Seattle Supersonics over where the Sonics shall play next season has begun. In case you aren’t following this suit deposition by deposition, the suit is not just about the Sonics “deserting the city”. The team acknowledges that they have a lease with the arena in Seattle and they offer to pay the rent in any circumstance. Nevertheless, the city wants more; they want the team to play in the arena in Seattle whilst the team pays the rent. The city claims that the team has to be held to a standard of “specific performance” meaning collecting the rent for nothing is insufficient.

I guess I have to ask why that is important. Attendance at Sonics game last year was mediocre; how can it be anything more than that in the next two years if the city prevails? The new owner of the Sonics is from Oklahoma City and he will eventually take the team there – whether or not that is a sensible decision – despite the outcome of this suit. So what does the city gain from having the team play there in lame duck status for two seasons?

And if the city really decides that it has to have a basketball team after the Sonics leave town, the only way they will get one is to build a new arena for the new team – be it an expansion team or a transplanted franchise. Can you say Portland or Sacramento? If the city fathers find a way to do that, then one might have to ask them why they went through all of this grief with the Sonics when a new arena would have kept that team in town for the next two decades at least.

Continuing to focus on Seattle, the Mariners recently fired GM Bill Bavasi. I thought the Mariners had a chance to be really good this year; instead, they have the worst record in major league baseball and more than a small measure of that blame has to land in the GM’s office. The Mariners are four games worse than the Washington Nationals and the Nats would not necessarily be favored to win the Minor League World Series this year. In recent years, Bavasi has signed some free agents who have just landed with a thud in Seattle such as Adrian Beltré, Richie Sexson, Jeff Weaver and Carlos Silva. Sexson’s contract is up this year granting the team a bit of relief but the other guys are signed long term. No one else in MLB wants any of these guys on a long-term basis.

I do not know if the financial gurus who run the major sports here in the US have focused on this question yet, but what is going to happen when/if Budweiser is sold to a European/Brazilian consortium? Bud and its allied brands are huge sports sponsors here in the US; if they are not the biggest spenders, they have to be in the top five. Now suppose the new corporate masters decide to cut the ad budgets by 75% or to devote 75% of the current ad budget to overseas sports such as soccer and cricket. What will happen to ad revenues and TV rights fees here in the US after that event? Cue the Fifth Dimension; it could be the dawning of the Age of Aquarius…

Oakland Raiders’ wide receiver, Javon Walker, was found unconscious on a street corner in Las Vegas. He had been robbed and he suffered a fracture to his orbital bone - - that’s the eye socket for those of you who never paid attention to human anatomy in high school biology classes. According to the LV Review-Journal, Walker was seen spraying high priced champagne on the crowd at an upscale club at the Wynn Resort in Vegas the night before this incident. The Raiders signed Walker as a free agent for 3 years/$27M; in no way do I think he is worth anywhere near that pay level. Now he may have a serious injury that could cost him much if not all of the 2008 season.

They say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Javon Walker probably wishes that the eye socket fracture would stay behind him in Vegas…

Finally, here is a thought from Jay Leno relative to the NFL Draft:

“Cincinnati, they did pretty good. They took a bail bondsman in the first round and a probation officer in the second.”

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

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The Mets fired Willie Randolph last night. It came after the Mets won their first game on the West Coast (against the Angels in Anaheim). Randolph and two of his coaches returned to the hotel to find GM, Omar Minaya, there at midnight. That’s when they got word that their services were no longer required or desired. The most obvious question here is why Minaya could not have made this decision 24 hours sooner and obviated a transcontinental flight for these three guys. Whatever.

The fact of the matter is that Willie Randolph was not nearly as brilliant a manager as he was made out to be in 2006 and early 2007 by an adoring NY media nor was he nearly as bad a manager as he was made out to be in late 2007 by a hyper-critical NY media as the Mets melted into a puddle of goo in September. The Mets’ team is old; they do not play defense well; their pitching is a lot better on paper than it has been on the mound. An objective observer – that eliminates 95% of Mets’ fans – might entertain the hypothesis that it is the guy who assembled this crew who is to blame and who ought to be “taking the rap”.

Here is an interesting angle on this matter. Rockies’ manager Clint Hurdle selected Willie Randolph to be one of the NL coaches at the All-Star Game. You know MLB does not want anything to happen there to deflect attention from the game and its attendant festivities; so what is the over/under before Hurdle changes his mind or Randolph announces that he will be with his family on a vacation on another continent that evening? Remember, the game is in Yankee Stadium in NYC; it would be a huge “distraction”.

Meanwhile, Hank Steinbrenner has been running his mouth again. Yankee starting pitcher, Chien-Mien Wang, injured his foot running the bases in an interleague game. Steinbrenner fumed that it was time for the National League to come into the 21st Century and adopt the DH rule. Excuse me; but if the Yankees’ pitchers had to run the bases every time they played, maybe they would be conditioned to do so. It’s not as if Wang had been asked to run a triathlon; he was merely rounding third and heading home; millions of kids under the age of 12 do that in Little League games every day of the summer.

Since I’m on the topic of baseball, the NL West is a miserable agglomeration of teams at the moment and has been for a couple of years now. The division leading Arizona Diamondbacks would not be leading any other division in baseball. After starting the year with a 20-8 record, the D-Backs have put together a slovenly stretch of 17-25 and they still hold a comfortable 5.5 game lead.

The Mets – bad enough to fire their manager at midnight – would be in second place in the NL West; the Cincinnati Reds – last in the NL Central by more than 12 games – would be in second place in the NL West. The LA Dodgers are in second place in the NL West and they just went through a stretch where they endured 24 consecutive innings without scoring a run.

There are 16 teams in the National League. You have to ignore the Washington Nationals because they are really a Triple A team in disguise - - on their better days - - so it is interesting to note that the NL West is wonderfully represented at the bottom of the rankings in terms of runs scored:

Dodgers: 292 runs rank 12th
Rockies: 291 runs rank 13th
Giants: 281 runs rank 14th
Padres: 269 runs rank 15th
Nats: 261 runs rank 16th

It was not all that long ago that the Padres were NL West champs with a record of 82-80. That division has been mediocre at best for a while now…

The Cubs have the best record in baseball and continue to win in the face of the injury to Alfonso Soriano. It would seem to me that if a team’s $136M player had to hit the bench for more than a month, it might put a cramp in the team’s style. It has not; so maybe Soriano is way overpaid? Just saying…

I read about a man named Jim “the Mouth” Purol who has Ripley’s Believe It or Not as a sponsor for his “stunts” that raise money for charities. “The Mouth” has smoked 159 cigarettes simultaneously in the past and once crammed 270 drinking straws into his mouth at one time. Why those feats raised money for charities is mysterious to me but if they worked, good on him.

In his latest stunt, Purol will sit in every seat in the Rose Bowl next month. There are more than 95,000 seats there and this event projects to about 5 days of nail-biting stand up/sit down action. The event will be open to the public – obviously for a donation of some kind – as people outside his nuclear family will presumably show up to watch this event and empty their pockets.

Purol earned his nickname “The Mouth” with his drinking straw and cigarette stunts. After he finishes this one, maybe he should be “The Butt”?

Many people believe that bad things happen in threes. If so, perhaps the recent deaths of Jim McKay, Tim Russert and Charlie Jones complete a cycle. Jones was not as well known as the first two men, but Charlie Jones was a top-shelf sportscaster for NBC for more than three decades doing everything from AFL football to golf and tennis on NBC. RIP to all three men.

Finally, some market wisdom from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“A letter handwritten by Hank Aaron in 1951 sold at auction for $24,150. I’m thinking that unless the letter came in an envelope stuffed with about $24,000 cash, somebody overpaid.”

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

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