The Sports Curmudgeon®

My long-suffering wife and I are about to begin a two-month period of traveling. Between now and Labor Day, we will be in 6 foreign countries and five US cities - - only one of the cities is within driving distance from our home.

The trip that begins on 6 July will take us to England, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The vast majority of that time will be spent in Africa on a photo-safari. Once we leave England, we have been told that we will have no Internet access and so I won’t even pretend to try to do any rants from “out in the field”. We get back on 30 July - - assuming of course that I do not have an unfortunate confrontation with a large carnivore. My best guess is that my next rant will be Monday 3 August.

Please come back then.

Stay well.

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I certainly did not know Steve McNair. All reports are that he was a good person in addition to being a good football player. I will remember him as an intense competitor who played the game with class and sportsmanship. Requiescat in pace, Steve McNair.

With Manny Ramirez returning to the Dodgers last weekend, it is fair to note that the Dodgers had the best record in baseball when he went out on his 50-game suspension and they still have the best record in baseball upon his return. That sentence alone is sufficient to assure that Manny Ramirez is NOT the MVP of the National League no matter what he does between now and the end of the season.

In Manny’s absence, Juan Pierre rose to the task of filling his spot in the line-up. Juan Pierre hit .317 over that 50 game stretch, stole 21 bases and scored 31 runs. Not too shabby…

Let me interject a note here from Scott Ostler of the SF Chronicle, which sums up very cogently a minor story from the recent past:

“Michael Jordan’s son Jeff quits the Illinois basketball team, issuing a prepared statement. Prepared statement? Heir Jordan averaged 1.0 points. Here’s your prepared statement: ‘I suck, I’m outta here.’ ”

Sony Pictures pulled the plug at the last minute on a film that was going to highlight Billy Beane and “Moneyball”. Brad Pitt was to play Billy Beane. I’m sure that Sony had its reasons for this cancellation but one of them had to be that the baseball-stat-dweeb demographic is small and that is the only demographic likely to be attracted to a movie about Billy Beane. The movie is not nearly as interesting now as it might have been five or six years ago for a simple reason.

Moneyball as demonstrated by the Oakland A’s over the past couple of years has been a miserable product. Oh by the way, what statistical analysis and cost/value calculation made it wise to offer Matt Holiday $13.5M last winter?

Maybe Moneyball was an overhyped concept to begin with?

Maybe the successful Moneyball era was an aberration and not a harbinger of things to come in baseball?

I do not know but I do know this: I would not go to see a movie about Billy Beane and his life and his triumphs over Herculean obstacles. Not today, not ever.

Al Davis and George Steinbrenner share a birthday. OK all of your astrology mavens out there, tell me what that means…

The Memphis Grizzlies continue to astound. This is the team that traded Pau Gasol essentially for Kwame Brown. This is the team that, last year, signed Darius Miles after the TrailBlazers were happy to cut ties with him and no other team in the league had even a mild interest. Miles gave the Grizzlies all of 3.5 points per game and 1.7 rebounds per game but because the Grizzlies signed him, he was not eligible for the NBA All-Pariah Team last year. Now the Grizzlies traded for Zach Randolph making the Grizzlies Randolph’s fifth NBA team since the start of the 2007/08 season. In addition, to top it off, there are reports that the Grizzlies are talking to and considering signing Allen Iverson as a free agent. All you can say to that is, “Wow!”

If they have Miles, Randolph and Iverson on the roster, one of the team colors sure looks as if it is purple and so they can market that team as the “Purple Gang”.

There are reports that Trevor Ariza signed a deal with Houston that was exactly the same money as the one he had been offered by Los Angeles ($33M for 5 years). Then he said he had to take care of his family and that is why he went to Houston. Let us analyze:

Money in both places is reportedly the same. That is what takes care of the family. No advantage in signing with either team there.

Chance to win more championships is higher in LA. Moreover, if Yao Ming’s injury is career ending and with the loss (to LA ironically) of Ron Artest, the Rockets may be on a precipitous downhill slide. Advantage LA.

There is a chance for Ariza to start in Houston and that was not gonna happen in LA. That does not “take care of the family” but it does “take care of the ego”. Game, set and match. Houston is the place he needs to be…

Speaking of “game, set and match”, the Wimbledon men’s final was a great tennis match. Some have said it was the greatest finals match in Wimbledon’s history; I am not nearly sufficiently fluent in tennis lore to agree or disagree, but when the final match is decided by a score of 16-14 in the fifth set and two of the previous sets had to go to a tie-breaker, that was a great match at a great venue.

The first round of the CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament is underway for the US men’s soccer team. Every other team in the tournament has a roster of 23 players; the US will have a roster of 30 players. The US asked for this exception “due to the extreme circumstances that teams face” when they play in consecutive international tournaments so close together. Sorry, but that is a hollow argument.

If that is such a hardship, the US should have picked between the Confederations Cup and the Gold Cup and forsaken the opportunity to be in the other one. Otherwise, suck it up and play the two juxtaposed tournaments. To make the argumentation here all the thinner, this tournament is being played in the US so the US men’s soccer team will have a home field advantage too.

Over the weekend, I got an e-mail that was siphoned off by my spam filter. It was one of those e-mails that offered me the opportunity to buy Cialis or Viagra online and save 50%. Great! But the name that the spammer put there as the sender of this message was “Peter”. Oh, come on now…

Sometimes when you put two things next to one another, you have to shake your head and ask how that happened. Consider:

For the 2009 season, Bill Belichick will reportedly earn $5M to coach the New England Patriots.

For the 2009 season, Jim Mora Jr. will reportedly earn $5M to coach the Seattle Seahawks.

So, is one of these guys vastly underpaid or is the other guy vastly overpaid? You make the call.

Finally, since I mentioned tennis and soccer today - - not a common occurrence to be sure - - let me close with this line from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“Didn’t do any good, but soccer star David Beckham, from the Royal Box at Wimbledon, sent a good-luck note to Andy Murray on Friday. Beckham is a big tennis fan when not busy failing to lift the stature of Major League Soccer.”

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

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According to news reports this week, FOX will discontinue Best Damned Sports Show after almost eight years on the air. The final new show has been taped and the network will put on re-runs through mid-August. I must say that its absence from the airwaves will not bring a wave of sadness into my life. I have said for quite a while now that I do not understand how the title of that show gets past the “truth in advertising laws”.

A few legacies of this program remain on television such as Michael Irvin, John Kruk and Rob Dibble. And of course, Tom Arnold pops up from time to time in a variety of places for no discernable reason. None of these folks is doing much to prove Newton Minnow wrong. Other alums include John Salley and Stephen A. Smith, Deacon Jones. I suspect that TV is not their best avenue to fame.

There is one player in the National League who – when he comes to your town or somewhere close enough to your town for you to make a visit – you should consider going out to the park to see him. He is enough of a reason to go to a ball game making the rivalry and the standings and things like that secondary. For me, that player would be Albert Pujols. Just looking at recent history, in the single month of June 2009, Pujols hit 14 HRs and drove in 35 runs. Do that every month of the baseball season and you would have 84 HRs for the year and 210 RBIs.

For me, the one player in the American League who fits that bill would be Ichiro. However, I will tell you now that the tandem of Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau has a very strong attraction for me too…

Watching the Confederations Cup games over the past couple of weeks made me wonder if US men’s soccer coach, Bob Bradley, and Buffalo Bills head coach, Dick Jauron, were separated at birth. Google images will let you decide for yourself…

I am glad that the NBA free agency season has produced as many surprising moves of big name players as it has. That is not because I think there is some cosmic importance contained in those movements; it is because it gets a small but vocal group of nit-picking nitwits to focus their attention elsewhere. The nitwits I am talking about had free rein after the Lakers won the NBA Championship; they were out there “merely pointing out” that Kobe Bryant has never won a championship without Phil Jackson.

In the modern vernacular, that is called “hating”. In my parlance, it is called “irrelevant”. While factually correct, it really adds nothing to the knowledge base. It is also true that:

Michael Jordan never won a championship without Scottie Pippen.

Michael Jordan never won a championship without Phil Jackson.

Red Auerbach never won a championship without Bill Russell.

Those three facts do not diminish the accomplishments of Michael Jordan or Red Auerbach except in the minds of people who are spring-loaded to seek out ways to diminish their accomplishments. And, the fact that Kobe Bryant has always had Phil Jackson as his coach when he won his four championships does not diminish his accomplishments in any way either.

The St. Louis Rams are up for sale; according to reports, the asking price for the team is somewhere north of $900M. Damn! If my IRA had not tanked in the last 9 months, I might have considered making a bid… One of the rumored interested parties in this deal is Rush Limbaugh. I have no idea if the reports of his interest are correct or not but here is something that I would love to have. I want a transcript of the first private conversation between NFL owners, Rush Limbaugh and Al Davis. I have a feeling that would be akin to the transcript of a conversation among Noam Chomsky, Salvador Dali and Immanuel Kant.

Interestingly, there has not been a huge outpouring of stories about someone buying the Rams and moving them back to LA. Recall, there is a gentleman out in the LA area who has the approval to build his own stadium in the City of Industry pursuant to a commitment from an NFL team to move there. And, therein lies the rub…

The proposed stadium would cost about $800M to build. Purchasing the Rams with the intention to commit to moving them to LA would cost $950M (to pick a figure north of $900M). The NFL would probably impose a relocation fee on the new owner; I have no idea what that fee might be, but it will not be pocket change. In any event, the total cost of the deal – for one buyer if it is the same guy building the stadium in LA or two people assuming one builds the stadium and the other buys the team and pays the relocation fee – starts to get into the neighborhood of $2B.

Granted, interest rates are pretty low right now. Nonetheless, this is a huge risk in the current economy. Adding to the financial risk is the fact that if someone bought the Rams and targeted them for a move to LA in 2012 – it would take that long to get the new stadium built – think about how the team will be supported in St. Louis in the interim. At the moment, the Rams play in a taxpayer funded dome with – what is reported to be – a sweetheart lease. The first option for the team to get out of the lease is not until 2014 so add some cost to the total for the deal here to pay St. Louis to break the current lease.

Maybe such a buy-and-move deal might have made sense five years ago; I do not think it makes financial sense in 2009.

Finally, here is an item from Dwight Perry in today’s Seattle Times:

“The quote, ‘He wanted relief from an embedded ball,’ was uttered by:

“a) A PGA Tour official, at last week’s U.S. Open, after Phil Mickelson encountered trouble on the 13th hole.

“b) The Braves’ team trainer, in 1968, after Hank Aaron tried to dig in against Bob Gibson.”

[Close call here. It could have been either one.]

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

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When I was a kid, my grandfather, who had come to this country as an immigrant with a tradesman skill, believed that education was the way to a better life for his kids and grandkids. Nonetheless, he held onto the idea that one should always have a trade/skill to fall back on if necessary. His world-view was that a skilled trade was something that would always be in demand somewhere - - whereas book-smart jobs or professional jobs might just evaporate one day as they had in the Great Depression. Forget how this affected me in my growing up; that is not important. Consider how my grandfather would advise anyone who might think of becoming the Head Coach of the Detroit Pistons. This is not exactly a “steady job”:

Rick Carlisle was NBA Coach-of-the-year in his first season in Detroit and then took the Pistons to the conference finals in his second year, 2003. Then they fired him.

Larry Brown came in and won the NBA Championship with the Pistons in 2004; he and the team “parted company” in 2005.

Flip Saunders then took the Pistons to three consecutive Eastern Conference finals and the team fired him.

Michael Curry was just fired as coach of the Pistons after the team finished under .500 and made an ignominious 0-4 exit from the first round of the playoffs.

It would seem as if being coach of the Detroit Pistons is about as stable a position as being a wife of Henry VIII.

Stephon Marbury is an NBA free agent. He has no agent so he speaks for himself; and evidently, what he is saying is that NBA free agents should think twice before they sign with the NY Knicks because of Coach D’Antoni’s system and because of the way the organization treats its people. Here is what he said to the NY Post:

“I wouldn’t want to play in that system. That system can’t win championships. You can’t win championships if you don’t talk about defense. In Boston, the coaches even play defense.'’

This is an amazing statement from Starbury on so many levels that it could be the basis of a senior thesis on sports psychology. First of all, Stephon Marbury was never – as in not ever – a defensive minded player for the entirety of his career in the NBA. Yes, he can defend marginally better than Jason Kidd; on the other hand, a garden gnome can defend marginally better than Jason Kidd. Secondly, since Starbury has never – as in not ever – won a championship at any level past high school, what credentials does he bring to the discussion about what it takes to win a championship? He may, in fact, be absolutely correct in his assessment; but he has too much baggage with the Knicks and too little in the “accomplishments section of the ledger” over his entire career to run his mouth with any credibility here.

Yesterday, I wrote about some of the financial doings and decisions going on in the NHL. Here is another one. About a month ago, the NHL held its awards presentation ceremonies in Las Vegas. That is a great idea since this is a celebratory event and Las Vegas is a great place to go for “escape” and “vacation” and things of that ilk. Obviously, that led someone to ask the question about if there might ever be an NHL franchise in Las Vegas and reportedly George McPhee – GM of the Washington Caps – answered in this way:

‘’I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Our sport has been remarkably successful in places that aren’t traditional markets.'’

I too would have little problem with a franchise in Las Vegas. It is a place where visitors from all over North America – and indeed all over the world – are routinely in town. Even if there are only 5,000 to 7,000 dedicated hockey fans living permanently in town (and there are likely a few more than that), there will always be visitors who might be interested in taking in an NHL game while on holiday there. Having said that, George McPhee must not be paying close attention.

Memo to George:

1. How are the NHL and its franchise in that non-traditional market known as Phoenix doing? Does the word “bankruptcy” come to mind?

2. How are the Florida Panthers doing at the gate and in terms of local radio and TV deals? Does the word “pathetic” come to mind? They played to 22% empty seats at home even though they discounted tix below face value.

According to an item in the Totally Random column in the LA Times, a high school soccer goalkeeper named Meghan Huggins in Arkansas earned a soccer scholarship to Lamar University. Her comment to the local newspaper on that accomplishment was as follows:

“I wish I could major in soccer in college, but they make you get an actual degree in some kind of something.”

Please copy that down and tape it to your computer screen so that when you read the next bloviating nonsense from the NCAA about their “student-athletes” most of whom will go on to become pros in something other than athletics, you can reach back and ground yourself in reality with Ms. Huggins’ words. I checked the Lamar University website for her, but could not find a major in “Some Kind Of Something”…

With regard to current events, it is pretty clear that waterboarding is not an activity that is in favor with the current administration to the degree that it was with the previous administration. I do not want to get into any debate about whether or not waterboarding is or is not torture; that is for the administration in office to determine. Nevertheless, I do have a question for the powers that be when it comes to hostile interrogation of suspects regarding terrorism:

Would it be torture to make these captives watch – on a continuing basis – reruns of ESPN’s Cold Pizza?

I would probably do just about anything to make that go away…

Finally, here is an insightful analysis of the “Alex Rodriguez phenomenon” from Bill Simmons of ESPN.com:

“No modern athlete brings more to the idea table. He plays in New York for a team that stopped making the World Series as soon as he arrived. He has made statistical history but cheated to do it. He’s our highest-paid athlete in a tanking economy. He’s the star client of this generation’s most despised agent. He’s handsome and articulate, only his polished personality is so contrived nobody can connect to him. If gossip rags and blogs had a Thank God for This Athlete fantasy draft, he’d unquestionably be the first pick.”

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

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The Montreal Canadiens have a new owner. Someone in the family that brews Molson beer paid something north of $500M to buy the team and the arena they play in. The previous owner, George Gillett, is a 50% owner of the Liverpool soccer club in England - - along with Texas Rangers’ owner Tom Hicks - - and Gillett needed to sell some holdings outside that Liverpool asset to raise capital just as Hicks has the Rangers up for sale after Hicks sports enterprises defaulted on a series of loans in the $450M range. This is sort of interesting for two reasons…

First of all, it made NHL ownership meetings look a bit unseemly. Tom Hicks still owns the Dallas Stars; George Gillett owned the Montreal Canadiens; simultaneously, those two men are equal partners in a completely separate business interest. I guess no one on the NHL Board of Governors can spell “conflict of interest”.

Secondly, this is interesting because of the price that the Canadiens’ franchise drew. Down in Phoenix, there is another NHL team up for sale and the latest news is that Jerry Reinsdorf will lead a group bidding to buy the team for $148M and to keep the team in Phoenix. I guess no one on the NHL Board of Governors has connected the dots that when you put a franchise in a place where there are lots of fans and lots of interest in the sport, you get a more valuable property than when you put an ice hockey team in the middle of a desert.

The Reinsdorf bid is interesting for another reason. Recall that the NHL successfully blocked the sale of the team to Jim Balsillie for $212M on the provision that he would immediately move the team to southern Ontario. That means that the creditors of the bankrupt Phoenix team will now have $64M less money to spread around to cover the debts of the team. Obviously, I would defer to the lawyers out there who read these rants to explain why the other creditors – the NHL itself is one of the largest creditors of the bankrupt team – do not file a motion with the bankruptcy judge asking that the NHL claims go to the back of the line here since it was the NHL that took $64M out of the “kitty” for the creditors to share.

The finances of sporting enterprises have derailed. The fault lies ultimately with sports fans; the greedy player agents and the slimy owners are merely the implementers of the fans’ illogic. Consider:

Last year Jake Long got about $30M to sign his NFL contract before he ever played a down in the NFL. It seems as if he will be a good player but when the Dolphins signed him, he might have been Tony Mandarich.

This year, Matthew Stafford got about $40M to sign his NFL contract before he ever plays a down in the NFL. Is he Peyton Manning or is he Tim Couch? We will know in a couple of years; he has $40M no matter what.

In the NBA, guaranteed contracts to the tune of about $125M are handed out to players who are “good” but are not nearly among the elite players on the game. Jermaine O’Neal and Rashard Lewis come to mind here.

In baseball, the Washington Nationals – a team going nowhere – decided it made sense last winter to pay Adam Dunn $10M. For what? So he could hit .250 and strike out 175 times?

These expenditures are the tip of the iceberg; there are tons of other examples and the way NBA teams are lining up to go on a spending frenzy after the next season portends some more humongous overpayments. However, the blame for all this belongs with the fans who complain but then go ahead and pay the added – and sometimes outrageous costs that allow the owners to pass along these ridiculous deals to the players via their agents. The Yankees’ “$2700 seats” are only one outrageous example of fans paying the freight here. Ticket prices in lots of other baseball venues are sky high; NFL teams routinely charge a couple of hundred dollars a game for decent seats; NBA ticket prices are significantly overpriced considering that most regular season NBA games aren’t worth watching at all. Yet, fans continue to pay those prices and that leads advertisers to believe that paying huge ad dollars to TV networks must be sensible since these folks must have loads of disposable income.

As Sonny and Cher sang years ago,

“And the beat goes on…”

Ricky Rubio – one of the myriad point guards drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the recent NBA Draft – reportedly does not want to play in Minnesota and would rather play in New York for the Knicks. Rubio’s agent says that they also have offers to have Rubio play in Turkey and in Spain. Who knows if those offers are real or imagined? Here is what I conclude from the story as it has unfolded so far:

Despite David Stern’s best efforts to make the NBA into a global sporting enterprise, the following for the NBA and the dissemination of NBA news in Spain cannot be all that great. If it were, why would Ricky Rubio want to play for the Knicks? Has he seen that team play anytime in the last three years or so?

Here is an item from Brad Rock in the Deseret Morning News that puts perspective on one of the stories making the rounds these days:

“ESPN the Magazine is planning an October edition on the beauty of the human body, complete with photos of athletes posing ‘nude but artfully covered.’

“We already have that, don’t we?

“I think it’s called Wrestlemania.”

Finally, here is an observation from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald about the Dolphins top draft pick this season:

“Dolphins No. 1 draft choice Vontae Davis supposedly was arrested in Illinois, but claims mistaken identity related to his wallet being stolen. Not good when a cornerback is the one getting picked.”

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

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