The Sports Curmudgeon®

I’m back from eight days in France and trying to catch up on all the stuff I missed here at home. In France, the biggest sports story of the moment is obviously the Tour de France. I know exactly nothing about cycling as a sport other than the obvious thing that whoever has the lowest total time over the courses in the race is the winner. The teams, the individual riders, and the rivalries between and among the teams and the riders are mysterious to me. So, all I can tell you is that there are lots of folks riding in the race and there are large numbers of spectators who come out to watch the riders go by various points in the race. People in France are excited about it and I do not get it at all.

One good thing about being incommunicado vis a vis the US sports world at this time of the year is that I missed out on one of the rites of summer. Just as I was leaving, the baseball All-Star teams were being announced and the process by which managers fill out the team roster was about to begin. That meant there were in process at least a jillion sports columns/commentaries on “who got snubbed” in the naming of the All-Star teams. Those stories/commentaries are as certain as night following day. Those stories/commentaries always wind up as a pile of words that signify next to nothing. All I know is that Joe Flabeetz did not make the All-Star team again this year and that someone out there is bummed over that fact. Whatever…

I also missed out on the latest twists and turns in the soap opera that is the active/retired status of Brett Favre. Once again, let me reiterate my position on this matter:

NFL training camps are about to open. With only the smallest bit of patience, we will be able to determine just how badly Brett Favre wants to continue to play professional football and just what he is willing to do with regard to his contract status to play professional football if indeed that is what he wants to do. There is no need for speculation; there is no benefit in trying to detect nuance in the situation here. With patience, all will become clear in this matter very soon.

I notice that CBS and Billy Packer have parted ways after 26 years. I have to say that I am not saddened by this very much. I remember seeing Billy Packer play for Wake Forest when I was in college and I remember Billy Packer as part of a truly great announcing team with NBC. He teamed with Al McGuire and Dick Enberg to call college basketball games in the late 70s and early 80s. The three of them were absolutely fantastic together.

In the past decade or so, Billy Packer has come to take himself way too seriously. He really needs the ghost of Al McGuire to come back and reel him in - - the way the real Al McGuire used to do in those great telecasts. Because he does not have anyone with him live on the air to keep his pomposity factor below six trillion, Billy Packer now comes across as a bitter and angry scold. He probably isn’t that way in real life; if he were that way all the time, someone by now would have taken a tire iron upside his head. So, Billy Packer will now have to choose between doing college basketball on something less than “the big stage” or sliding into a life of anonymity. Frankly, I don’t think either of those choices is really appealing to him at the moment. I do not know what he will do; I do not really care what he does. However, I do hope that he does not find a way to make himself into the announcing world’s version of Brett Favre…

I know it is late for this comment, but I have been away so humor me. Wimbledon took two weeks to sort itself out. It is the largest field of the tennis tournaments and it takes longer than any of the others do. And after all of those elimination matches, the finals were the Williams sisters and Federer/Nadal. Is that sufficiently unsurprising that the preliminary matches might be called Much Ado About Nothing?

Having said that, the folks at NBC who had the television rights to Wimbledon had to be just a tad nervous at the end of the second week. On the women’s side - - where the viewers tend to be these days - - they had the prospect of the Williams sisters in the finals; they knew that match-up would produce ratings. On the other hand, they could have had a Saturday telecast of the women’s finals pairing Zheng Jie and Elena Dementieva. From NBC’s standpoint, Jie/Dementieva would have been a match where the TV audience might have fit into a phone booth because it would not have been all that exciting to lots of folks outside the Jie and Dementieva nuclear families. Nevertheless, NBC got the match it wanted - - and needed.

Soccer is indeed big in France but this is not the soccer season so coverage seems to be focused on potential problems with World Cup 2010. My French is not great but there was also some commentary on this matter on BBC World, so I think I have all of this right. It seems that FIFA has had a few anxious moments recently about staging the 2010 World Cup games in South Africa. FIFA went out of its way to place the games on the African continent for 2010, but all is less than perfect at the moment.

Evidently, FIFA president/director Sepp Blatter announced that FIFA has a contingency plan for the games if things do not come together quickly in South Africa. It seems that there have been some “minor problems” that cannot be resolved such as stadium construction delays, the specter of power outages during the games themselves and transportation problems. I am not a civil engineer but if those problems are fundamental and no solution has been started yet, I don’t see how all of them will be resolved in two years - - and that would mean transferring the games to another country.

South African officials are not happy about this. They say all of this is a misunderstanding - - even though I do not see how an unfinished soccer stadium can be “misunderstood”. I have no idea how all of this will turn out but I do know that there will be big time politicking under way, if FIFA even hints that it might move the games elsewhere. Naturally, the French believe that they are at the ready to host the games should that become necessary…

Finally, here is an item from Brad Rock in the Deseret Morning News:

“Paul and Karen Dupaix of Tooele [Utah] were having their roof repaired last week when workers made an unsettling discovery: a human skull in the attic of their century-old home. News reports said it was lodged between the ceiling and storage cabinets along the wall.

“No word yet on whose skull it was or how it got there, but early suspicions are it’s Latrell Sprewell, waiting for his agent to call.”

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

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I’ll be off the air for about a week. My long-suffering wife will be the chairperson for a session at a symposium in Paris later this week and tomorrow is our 42nd wedding anniversary. So, I’m tagging along on this trip and we’ll take a few days and drive through the Burgundy region where we just might be able to find a good meal and a good bottle of wine.

Please check back after the 15th of July.

Stay well.

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I am neither a psychologist nor a sociologist by a long shot. Nevertheless, I believe we are looking at a case of misplaced anger in Seattle related to the loss of the Sonics to Oklahoma City. Let me explain.

Some people are saying that Howard Schultz is to blame for this outcome. Schultz owned the Sonics and chose to sell them. An “outsider”, Clay Bennett, offered Schultz $350M for the team. No one else offered him $351M; so, he sold the team to Clay Bennett who is from Oklahoma City and who had been involved with the NBA in providing “temporary housing” for the New Orleans Hornets after Hurricane Katrina. People say Schultz should have sold the team to a local owner or demanded a “no move” clause in the agreement.

Excuse me; Howard Schultz made a business decision to sell one of his assets. He took the highest offer for that asset. And that would be something to call blame down upon himself? Instead of being angry with Mr. Schultz, get mad at the local folks who could have bought the team but did not. Ask them where they were when it mattered. Ask them why they waited until the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute to step forward and announce that they would love to own the team. Do not get mad at a seller who took the best offer for the thing he was trying to sell.

If you want to look even further back into the processes to find people worthy of anger, look to the local and state politicians in Seattle and Olympia. Howard Schultz was trying to get a new arena for the Sonics; he saw that the political prospects for that new arena were nil and so he decided to sell. [Note: Once again, this is a business decision perfectly appropriate for a business owner to make.] That political situation is probably partly responsible for the lack of “local ownership bids” to buy the Sonics; that political situation opened the door for Mr. Bennett’s bid because he didn’t really care if he got a new arena in Seattle or not; in fact, he is probably a tad happier to be able to take his new toy back to his hometown.

Let me digress for just a moment here. Mr. Bennett’s preference/intention to move the Sonics was transparent from the outset. Anyone with two neurons close enough to play tennis with one another realized that to be the case. When things got down to the very end, some folks including Mr. Schultz said they never saw this coming. They expected Mr. Bennett to bargain in good faith with the city to get a new arena there. Yeah, right! Those kinds of statements reveal a level of human incompetence that is hard to imagine - - a level of incompetence such that if those folks took up skydiving, they would miss the ground.

The politicians out there believed they could get Mr. Bennett and David Stern and the NBA to back down on their demands for a gaudy new playpen. The political leaders played their hand that way and they lost. C’est la guerre. The eerie thing here is that an analogous situation already happened and the pols in Seattle do not seem to have taken note of it.

When the Browns moved from Cleveland, the city had already built a new baseball park for the Indians and a new arena for the Cavaliers. When Art Modell told the politicians there that it was his turn to get a new playpen, they said there was no money. Modell tried to change their minds for a while and then left town - - leaving behind the team name and team colors. The city immediately – and miraculously – found the money to build a new football stadium and the reincarnation of the Cleveland Browns happened.

They have a new baseball stadium in Seattle and a new football stadium in Seattle. Then the money wasn’t there for a new basketball arena. Now, the city has the team colors and the team name. Whoop-de-damn-do! Now, the city has to find the money –immediately and miraculously – to build an arena or the NBA will not be obligated to put a team there. There is another precedent here for the Seattle city fathers to consider. I offer it because they seem not to be able to look outside their area for guidance.

The St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore in the 1950s. They left behind the team name and the team colors. There is no new stadium in St. Louis for an AL baseball team nor is there a great clamor for an AL baseball team after a 50 year absence. I think that is the choice staring Seattle in the face right now. If they want an NBA team, they need to dig deeply into their pockets to build a new top-shelf arena right away. That is a choice they can make; they do not have to do that. Nevertheless, choices have consequences; and absent a state-of-the art arena in Seattle, there is not going to be an NBA team there.

Seattle now serves as the exemplar for the next city that might harbor the idea that it will try to strong-arm the NBA. Sacramento wants a new arena and the city has been reluctant to build one for them. Memphis is for sale. New Orleans can opt out of its arena lease if attendance goals are not met. The NBA can point to Seattle and suggest to these other cities what could happen to their franchises. On the other hand, the league can go to Seattle and point to these other teams who just might become vagabonds and wind up in the Great Northwest… It is probably easier for politicians to recognize a precedent so recent in time as opposed to one that happened 10 or 50 years ago…

For those people who ask why the city of Seattle settled its lawsuit that would have kept the Sonics in town for the next two years before the judge rendered her verdict, the answer is the same here as for every answer in sports: Follow the money. Had the city prevailed, they would have kept the Sonics in town for two years as a hostage; that would have guaranteed a move at the end of those two seasons; attendance would have been horrible (the Sonics were 28th in the league in attendance last year). And for all of that, the city would have collected $22M in “rent” on the existing arena and some amount of tax revenue from the business generated there. The settlement gave them $45M immediately and another $30M if the city commits to funding and building a new arena for some other team in the next two years. The city settled the lawsuit for the same reason Howard Schultz sold the team to Clay Bennett in the first place; it was the best available business deal.

Therefore, the anger in Seattle needs repositioning:

The folks there can be angry with David Stern for aiding and abetting the hard-line that Bennett and the league took with the city of Seattle.

The folks can be angry with Clay Bennett for a moment but they really need to get over that since he would never have been able to buy the team if the city had built an arena for Howard Schultz in the first place or if one of the local jillionaires in Seattle had offered $351M for the team.

They can be angry with the Sonics’ GM and coaches over the past couple of years for putting a bad product on the floor.

But if sports fans in the State of Washington really want to blame someone for this the way to assess that blame is at the ballot box the next time the local and state politicos stand for re-election. They made their choice; that choice had consequences; if the populace does not like the consequences then the populace needs to make a choice of its own.

So, at the moment, the NBA has franchises in Oklahoma City and Memphis. What’s next? Sioux Falls, SD? Cheyenne, WY? Look at a map and examine the geography between Memphis and Oklahoma City. Between those two cities, you will find St. Louis and Kansas City – neither of which have NBA teams. The only way that makes any sense at all is if you follow the money…

Finally, here is an NBA comment from Dan Daly in the Washington Times:

“[Charlotte] Bobcats boss Michael Jordan used the second of his first-rounders to take Alexis Ajinca, a 20-year-old 7-footer from France. And you’re not going to believe this, but ‘Alexis Ajinca,’ translated into English, is ‘Kwame Brown.’ ”

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

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It is Independence Day; baseball is our national pastime; so let me focus baseball today…

I have already commented on the pathetic nature of the NL West. It has been mediocre for a couple of years now but the current status is approaching moribund. Arizona leads the division with a record of 43-43; that is merely an introduction to the malodorous condition there. The cumulative record for the five teams in that division is 190-239; if a single team played to that percentage for a season it would win 72 games and lose 90 games. As a division, these teams project to a team that is 18 games under .500. So, should we call this division “pathetic” or “useless” or “lamentable”? You make the call.

Francisco Rodriguez has been the lights-out closer for the Angels this year; he has 34 saves already. If you are a Cardinals’ fan suffering from GERD, you may not want to read the rest of this paragraph. So far this year, the St. Louis Cardinals bullpen has blown 19 save opportunities. Rodriguez projects to 65 saves for the year; the Cardinals bullpen projects to 36 blown saves for the season. So, should we call the Cards’ bullpen “pathetic” or “useless” or “lamentable”? You make the call.

I think there are a few players out there who have had seasons well below the expectations of the teams that took them north out of spring training. The disasters that are Barry Zito and Dontrelle Willis have been discussed before; I mean there are other players who are not earning their keep so far this year. Obviously, this is not a complete list of underachievers for the year; but these four guys jumped out at me:

Carlos Delgado (Mets): Because he plays the field about as well as Edward Scissorhands would, the Mets expected him to produce big time at the plate. He is hitting .238 with 49 RBIs; that is not “producing big time at the plate”. In fact, he has a total of 73 hits this year and has struck out 66 times.

Andruw Jones (Dodgers): The Dodgers are paying this guy in the neighborhood of $18M a year. Granted, he has been out with a knee injury for about a month; but when he went on the DL, he was hitting .165 with 2 home runs and 7 RBIs in 43 games.

Paul LoDuca (Nationals): He signed his deal about 36 hours before the Mitchell Report named him as steroid user. He was supposed to be the veteran leader that would manage the Nats’ young pitching staff and show them what it meant to pitch at the MLB level. Problem is he cannot hit (.228, no home runs and 6 RBIs in 30 games) and he cannot stay healthy and he has lost the catching job. The Nats have tried him at first base and in left field. Watching LoDuca play a fly ball is like watching a drunk trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue.

Gary Matthews Jr. (Angels): Signed a big deal two years ago and did nothing last year. The Angels then signed Torii Hunter to play CF and moved Matthews to LF; Matthews has continued to stink. He is hitting .239 with 7 home runs and 33 RBIs in 82 games this year. At an average annual salary of $10M, he is an underachiever.

As of this morning, the San Francisco Giants project to win 72 games this year. Last year, the Giants won 71 games. Last year, the Giants had Barry Bonds on the squad. At the moment, it looks as if the Giants are one game better off with Bonds sitting at home and wondering if there is a conspiracy to keep him out of MLB. Just saying…

As of this morning, the leading home run hitter in the AL is Grady Sizemore; he has 21 in 85 games. That projects to 40 home runs for the season. For all those folks who kept saying that steroids did not help anyone hit a baseball, can you explain why it appears as if no AL player will hit more than 40 home runs this year? It was not all that long ago when hitting 50 home runs in a year was commonplace.

Shawn Chacon was cut adrift by the Astros after he attacked and choked GM, Ed Wade. No matter what might have been the provocation, what he did was assault and battery. Manny Ramirez suffered some “internal discipline” from the Red Sox after he attacked the team’s traveling secretary. Taking reports of what Manny did at face value, what he did was also assault and battery. Why the difference? It’s simple. Manny Ramirez is worth the grief he causes the Red Sox; Shawn Chacon is not worth nearly the grief he caused the Astros. If you do not think that is fair, book yourself passage to Utopia.

Speaking of the Astros, here is a cautionary word. I have read in two places now that if the Astros fire manager Cecil Cooper they will turn to Jim Fregosi. GM Ed Wade and Fregosi are buds from their days in Philly; the management in Philly created an environment where no one was accountable for actions and jobs were handed out and retained on a friendship basis. If that environment translates to Houston, it will not be good news for Astros fans. Oh, and by the way, my opinion of Jim Fregosi as a manager is that if you called him a wit you would only be half-right.

I want to be on record well before the fact on this one. If there is a Cubs/White Sox World Series or a Mets/Yankees World Series (hah!), it will be called a subway series. That’s fine. Here is what must not be allowed to happen:

The MLB marketing mules must not succumb to the temptations of cash and allow Subway restaurants to have any kind of promotional tie in with the World Series where former fat-guy Jarod plays any role at all. If the marketing mules go down that path to perdition, there is no physical torture that should be considered cruel or unusual.

Baseball survived the Black Sox scandal; baseball survived myriad work stoppages; baseball survived the Steroid Era; baseball might not survive Jarod endlessly hawking inedible sandwiches for the entirety of a World Series.

Have I made myself clear?

The gossipmongers are out in full force again linking A-Rod and Madonna in some kind of relationship that they paint as unseemly. [Aside: I’m not sure how one would have any relationship with Madonna that was seemly but that is not the point here.] Nonetheless, here is the detail I am looking for that will let me know that this story has run its course:

We learn that at the outset of their alleged passionate encounters she yells, “Batter up!”

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

“News item: Middle school teacher in Alabama sleeps with eight members of high school baseball team.

“Comment: That might be the strongest argument yet against the DH.”

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

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“To be or not to be. That is the question…” [Hamlet, Act III. Scene I] Shakespeare wrote those words about 400 years ago regarding a Danish prince who was having trouble deciding if he wanted to be a living organism or a corpse. Spoiler alert: At the end of the play, Hamlet is toes up…

The modern version of Hamlet would necessarily have someone posing the question, “To be a quarterback or not to be a quarterback. That is the question.” Maybe the play would be called Favrelet and while we do not quite know what might happen in 2008, we can be pretty sure that at some time he will wind up “not as a quarterback”. Until then, I would ask the sports journalists who cover the NFL and who comment on the NFL to resist the temptation to get an easy story out of this and give it a rest.

Dog bites man is not news. Bret Favre pondering his future as a quarterback is not news. If and when Favre signs with an NFL team (Packers or anyone else) and shows up in training camp, that will be news - - only because he said he was retiring a few months ago. If and when Peyton Manning shows up in training camp, it will not be news because Manning never hinted that he would not show up in training camp.

I have no animosity for Brett Favre and I have no doubt that if he played this year he would be better than at least 20 other starting QBs in the NFL – and maybe 25. What has worn me out is the constant drumbeat of “will he or won’t he” play this year. If we could give that story about a four-week rest, the answer will come to us rather clearly.

Since I started on an NFL vector today, let me continue. The league held its “Rookie Symposium” at a deluxe resort and spa last week. Every rookie attended; had they “cut class” it would have cost them a $50K fine. [Aside: Maybe the NCAA should consider this kind of sanction for its “student-athletes” as a way to get them into classes. Just saying…] The symposium covered such topics as money-management, dealings with the media, player conduct (on and off the field) and sexually transmitted diseases.

Specifically, the league told rookies to avoid things like hand signals that have any similarity to gang-style hand signals. The death of Darrent Williams last year has been linked to some of these misinterpreted hand signals. Additionally, the league has tried to warn rookies that they will have friends and family members coming out of the woodwork – all with their hands out in anticipation of some money – now that the rookies have “made it into the big time”. In addition, the NFL had players who have had some troubles in their lives come to speak to the rookies such as Koren Robinson and Jared Allen.

The bottom line here is that the NFL gave these rookie players a sense of what was coming at the players and what the league can do to help them if the players avail themselves of the help. Moreover, the players now know what is expected of them; and so when there are transgressions, they cannot use the “How was I supposed to know…?” defense.

The Baltimore Ravens plan to use some trained ravens as part of their pre-game hype/ ceremony/whatever this year. Personally, I would prefer not to have anything flying over my head that might choose to leave a present on my head, but that’s just me. The PETA people are outraged - - surprise, surprise!

PETA has obviously communicated with ravens from all over the world because they have announced that the ravens will suffer trauma, confusion, and tension based on having to fly out of a “smoky tunnel” and be in the midst of all of the “noise” of the pre-game festivities. Since PETA can obviously communicate with these birds, why doesn’t PETA just tell the ravens to foul the stands repeatedly so that the team stops this cruel practice? Unless, of course, PETA cannot communicate with the ravens and once again is using hyperbolic rhetoric to garner publicity… They wouldn’t do that; would they?

Here is a rhetorical question:

In order to join PETA, does one need to be a PITA? [Work on that acronym folks; it will come to you soon…]

Now we have to keep this a secret or the PITAs in PETA will get even goofier than they are. There are boatloads of football teams that use animals – live ones, real ones – as mascots at football games. Off the top of my head, there is the Texas longhorn, the Colorado buffalo, UGA the bulldog, the Air Force falcon, the Army mule, the Navy goat and the team of horses that pull the Sooner Schooner. If anyone at PETA headquarters focuses on all of those situations, they might go into a condition of “righteous indignation overload”.

The promos for this year’s ESPYs have begun. Do not get me started on the self-eating watermelon that is the ESPYs. ESPN creates a meaningless award and exaggerates them as something that matters more than half a whit just so it can have programming to put on the air during the sporting dog days of summer. Then they try to pretend that it matters… I notice that Justin Timberlake will be the emcee this year. That means that even with a gun in my mouth, I would not watch this nonsense.

Here is a Quick Quiz:

What was the low point to date in Justin Timberlake’s life?

a. Being with Brittney Spears

b. Creating Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” as part of her pathetic attempt to resurrect her relevance

c. Being the emcee of the ESPYs.

Discuss in 100 words or less…

Finally, since I mentioned the infamous Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” above, I always wondered why she never used the “Cover 1 defense” as her excuse for that happenstance.

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

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Last night, I read that the NBA hired a retired Army Major General to be in charge of its referees. The initial reaction in the media seems to be that this is a bold move by David Stern to put the Tim Donaghy situation – and his allegations that some NBA games might not have been on the up-and-up – deep into the past. General Ronald L. Johnson served for 32 years as a combat engineer; he was at one time the Commanding General of the Army Corps of Engineers. For two years, he oversaw the activities aimed at rebuilding Iraq.

No one can question General Johnson’s service to his country nor can one question his ability to deal with complex problems. Nothing that I have read or heard would indicate that there is even a single venal bone in his body. I will stipulate that he is a man of honor and integrity and goodwill.

Having said that, I am not sure I see how a career in the US military or service in the Army Corps of Engineers has even a little to do with running the NBA’s referees. It is more than a stretch of the imagination for me to believe that Tim Donaghy did what he did in his associations with gamblers for 5 years because the NBA Front Office was disorganized or overworked. Let me review two milestones here to see how the addition of a senior military officer might make a change:

1. Donaghy consorted with gamblers and bet on various sporting events for five years without anyone in the NBA having a clue what was going on. That is not conjecture on my part; that is what David Stern told us. General Johnson is not clairvoyant nor is he a mind reader. His presence in this job five years ago would not have prevented the situation; he would have just added one more person to the “uninformed list”.

2. Donaghy claims that the league itself had a preference for the Lakers/Kings series to go seven games in 2002 and that preference made itself known to the officials in game six. The Lakers used a series of highly questionable calls in the fourth quarter to make a big comeback and force a seventh game. Now, explain to me how the presence of General Johnson would prevent that from happening or how his presence will prevent people from thinking it happened whether or not it did. Bottom line: He would not have and he will not.

David Stern said this in the announcement that General Johnson would be taking over this responsibility:

“Ron’s wealth of leadership and management experience, together with his engineering expertise in areas such as systems analysis, processes, and operations, make him an ideal candidate to lead our officiating program. Our referees are the best in the world but they never stop striving to improve and Ron has made a career out of getting the very best out of people.”

No offense to General Johnson here, but “leadership” within a command structure is more than a little bit different from “leadership” in the civilian world. As Commanding General of the Corps of Engineers, he could get thousands of his subordinates to put their left hand over their right ear at noon simply by issuing an order for them to do so. Now he will deal with referees who generally believe that they know what they are doing and simply need to be told when and where to show up and do their thing. Oh, and the referees have a union too and a collective bargaining agreement. Last time I checked, there wasn’t a Union of Sergeants in the Corps of Engineers who might want to discuss various directives that came down from “the head shed”.

By the way, if “engineering expertise in areas such as systems analysis processes and operations” was truly critical to the job of overseeing the NBA referees, then David Stern and his cohorts in the league office have been asleep at the switch for the last 25 years. The fact is that all this expertise demonstrates that General Johnson is an intelligent and organized person with the ability to focus on getting a job done. But whatever engineering expertise he has will not come into play in this new job. Overseeing basketball referees can be done without any PERT charts…

Look, I have a significant preference that General Johnson succeeds in this endeavor. I do not want the NBA to devolve to a status in the sporting world one small step above the WWE. I do not think that Vince McMahon would be a worthy successor to David Stern. Nevertheless, this hiring is being blown out of proportion by the PR trolls. General Johnson will succeed in this job based on his ability to create an information network that will allow him to know more of what is going on with his referees than has existed in the past. It will have nothing to do with his service in the Army or his experience in managing people in high stress environments or his engineering expertise.

General Johnson, bonne chance!

In case you missed this one, the NY Jets and the NY Giants are about to drop the news on their season ticket holders that they will need to purchase Personal Seat Licenses in order to keep the privilege of buying season tickets once their new stadium is built. Seating capacity is supposed to be 82,500; every seat will have a seat license that will cost between $1K and $20K. It is a one-time charge and I read one statement where someone called it an investment that will grow with time because no one else can buy that seat without the PSL that you hold. I do not think I will put that investment in my IRA thank you…

As you might imagine, some of the NY fans are less than happy with their ownership about all of this. Their plight and complaints notwithstanding, the NY fans may be getting a bargain here compared to what the Dallas Cowboys will reportedly do to their fans. Dallas too is building a new stadium; I believe it is scheduled to open next season but it may not be until 2010. Here is the deal in Dallas:

Each of the 80,000 seats will have a PSL.

The PSLs in Dallas are not a one-time payment; they expire in 30 years and will have to be renewed then at whatever the market will bear. [Maybe they should be called Personal Seat Leases not Licenses?]

The “cheap” PSLs in Texas will cost $2K (vice $1K in NY).

The “top-shelf” PSLs in Texas will cost $150K (vice $20K in NY)

Comparing those two situations, the owners in New York look like small time con men while the owner in Dallas looks like a major league extortionist. But don’t tell that to the Giants’ or Jets’ fans…

Finally, here is a comment from the St. Paul Pioneer-Press illustrating the difference between the court of public opinion and the courts of law in the US:

“O.J. Simpson came to Minnesota last week to do some fishing with his girlfriend’s relatives. It’s the greatest news to hit the North Star State since the arrival of syphilis in the mid-19th century.”

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

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July represents an important part of the baseball season because 31 July is the trading deadline for teams where players need not clear waivers. Therefore, GMs need to assess the real prospects of their teams for this season during this final month of the “free-trading time” to decide how and if they will participate in the many swaps that will happen in about four weeks. I happen to think that the AL Central is the division to watch most closely because the AL Central has interesting storylines and it might be the source of a big trade at the end of the month.

The division shapes up as an enigma at the moment. There are tons of questions including:

Will the White Sox continue to win? They have had strong pitching so far…

Will the Twins continue to manage their inventory of smoke and mirrors? That has to be part of what got them where they are now…

Will the Tigers stop being disappointing? This was the team that was going to score more than 1000 runs this year, remember?

Will the Indians make a run for the division title or will they pack it in for 2008? Therein lies the potential for a huge trade…

Will the Royals continue to play games? Will anyone care?

C.C. Sabathia’s contract is up this year and even though he is making something in the neighborhood of $10M per year now, he will probably command a much larger salary in free agency this winter. If the Indians think they will not be able to sign him then and if the Indians do not like their chances for a playoff run this year, Sabathia may be available at the end of the season to a contending team. True, he may be a “three month rental” in terms of that new team because of free agency, but he is a starting left-handed pitcher with a career ERA below 3.90. That will make him interesting to other contending teams.

Nevertheless, I really wonder how many top-shelf prospects a team ought to give up on to get Sabathia in 2008. This has clearly not been the best year of his career; his record is a meager 6-8; he has already walked almost as many batters in 2008 as he did in all of 2007. In the last two seasons, his ERAs were 3.21 and 3.22; this year his ERA is 3.80. Obviously, a team seeking to get Sabathia will have to fork over a hot prospect or two; is that worth it in the long term?

San Diego Padres’ manager, Bud Black, was upset with the fans in San Diego. From my experience, those fans are hardly raucous, rowdy or rude; nonetheless, Black was not happy. When Padres’ closer, Trevor Hoffman, gave up home runs to consecutive batters in the ninth inning of a recent game, the crowd showered him in boos. Said manager Black:

“I didn’t like it. This city should be very proud of a player like that for everything he’s done on the field and in the community. I don’t think it’s fair.”

Trevor Hoffman is the all-time leader in saves and Black thinks that should get Hoffman a pass in situations like this one. Maybe he’s right. But don’t ask the fans in Philly or NY about it. In those towns, Hoffman might have to hire a food taster if he did this more than twice in a season…

Speaking of closers, the Brewers activated Eric Gagne yesterday. I wonder if the fans in Milwaukee regard this as a positive step or not…

The AD at Indiana University, Rick Greenspan, will leave that job in December. This comes on the heels of NCAA sanctions resulting from Kelvin Sampson’s less than fully successful and downright underhanded tenure as the basketball coach there. The problem boils down to something pretty simple. Sampson came to IU under a cloud; the program at Oklahoma was sanctioned for recruiting violations/irregularities. At IU, there seems to have been no adult supervision of this guy that they brought in with a history of cheating and skirting NCAA regulations. Surprise!!! He cheated again and got caught again. Say whatever you will about Robert Montgomery Knight as a social animal; nothing even close to this ever happened in his multiple decades at Indiana.

In the wake of the NBA Draft, the summer rookie league is beginning to come together and I find it interesting that the NBA holds these games in Las Vegas. It would be too much of a risk to put a franchise there and to expose players, coaches and referees to the evils of gambling and gamblers in Vegas - - yet it is OK to let rookies go there and stay a while and play there. I guess the rookies are more immune to the temptations that might present themselves…

Prior to the NBA Draft, Georgetown center, Roy Hibbert, worked out for several teams. After time with the Utah Jazz, Brad Rock of the Deseret Morning-News had this item:

“You have to appreciate Georgetown center Roy Hibbert’s assessment of the Jazz coaching staff at his workout last week.

“’Those guys are stone cold over there,’ Hibbert told reporters. ‘I can’t even get a read on those guys. No smiles over there at all. They’re all about business.’

“Good point. Why don’t they lighten up?

“Answer: You’d be serious, too, if Greg Ostertag had been your center for 10 years.”

The Bulgarian weightlifting team will not travel to China to compete in the Olympics next month. Eleven of the lifters tested positive for the same drug last month and would be disqualified. What a show of teamwork by these guys. However, it must have gotten crowded in that locker room stall when all eleven of them went in so José Canseco could stab each of them in the butt. How did they manage that?

Finally, here is an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“Several broadcasters are threatening to sue after a fierce electrical storm in Vienna, Austria, and resulting power outages wiped out their satellite feed during last week’s thrilling Euro 2008 soccer match between Germany and Turkey.

“God’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.”

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

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