Author: Jack

With the first week of the MLB regular season canceled – for the moment – most of the national baseball press seems to have taken sides in the contretemps.  Here are a few headlines from the last 48 hours or so:

“How Rob Manfred’s ineffective reign as MLB Commissioner led to baseball’s ‘disastrous outcome’”

And …

“MLB Commissioner Manfred blasted after announcing cancelation of games”

And…

“With MLB games canceled and fan apathy blooming blame rests solely on owners”

You get the idea – – and I think that narrative is wrong.  By that I do not mean that the owners – and Rob Manfred far more specifically – are the aggrieved party in this mess.  What I mean is that for every bungling mishandling of dicey situations faced by Commissioner Manfred, there has been a similar lack of ability to compromise on the other side of the table.  Please, do not try to make Tony Clark out to be a reincarnated Samuel Gompers; he is not; he and the negotiating team that he leads cannot be held blameless when it takes “two signatures” and a ratification vote on both sides to put a new CBA into effect.

It is not difficult to point to a half-dozen actions taken by – or dodged by – Rob Manfred that were not in the “best interests of baseball”.  If you were to go and rank the ten MLB Commissioners going all the way back to Judge Landis more than a hundred years ago, I would be surprised if you put Manfred in the top five.  Rob Manfred makes Bud Selig look like a certified genius.

But please do not forget to examine critically Tony Clark’s role in all of this.  Clark has been the Executive Director of the MLBPA for just over 8 years.  If you want to point to a problem with the game that has arisen or has captured national attention in that time, please stop and tell me how Tony Clark acted to make everything better.  Which side of the table opposed pitch clocks?  Which side of the table refused to have a Federal mediator try to bring the two sides together to get a deal done here?

In the opening paragraph here, I said that the games in the first week of the regular season have been canceled “for now”.  The question as to whether those games should be made up and/or how players will be compensated for games lost simply puts another barrier in the path to get a deal done.  Given the history of the lack of leadership skills shown by Rob Manfred AND by Tony Clark, another bone of contention is not a good thing.

And in the midst of all that sturm und drang, Derek Jeter made headlines this week announcing that he has stepped down as the CEO of the Miami Marlins AND that he is going to divest himself of his 4% ownership stake in the franchise.  Say what?

If you put any faith in the Forbes valuations of sports franchises, you can find that the last valuation from 2021 puts the Miami Marlins value at $990M.  That is the lowest valuation in MLB and the only team valued below $1B.  [Aside: the Marlins sold for $1.2B just 4 years ago meaning that if Forbes is correct, the Miami franchise has declined in value over the last 4 years and that is a rarity in US sports businesses.]  Nonetheless, Jeter’s 4% stake is worth a tidy $39.6M and his abrupt and surprising departure from the organization is surely not going to enhance the value of that stake when it comes to an outsider bidding for it.  Obviously, the $64,000 question is:

• Why?

Here is the salient part of Jeter’s prepared statement when he made his decision known:

“Today I am announcing that the Miami Marlins and I are officially ending our relationship and I will no longer serve as CEO nor as a shareholder in the Club. We had a vision five years ago to turn the Marlins franchise around, and as CEO, I have been proud to put my name and reputation on the line to make our plan a reality. Through hard work, trust and accountability, we transformed every aspect of the franchise, reshaping the workforce, and developing a long-term strategic plan for success.

“That said, the vision for the future of the franchise is different than the one I signed up to lead. Now is the right time for me to step aside as a new season begins.”

A difference of opinion that cannot be resolved regarding “the vision of the future” can mean almost anything; I was ready to ignore this whole situation until I read a column by Joel Sherman in the NY Post.  I recommend that you take a moment to follow this link and read that column in its entirety.

Joel Sherman is a baseball insider; he has information sources inside the game that are usually reliable.  If he is correct that this impasse over the future vision for the team boils down to a “$15M misunderstanding”, that might be almost as myopic a situation as the one demonstrated by the league and the players union at the negotiating table.

Finally, since I spent time exposing my feelings today about Rob Manfred and Tony Clark, let me close with an observation by scholar John Ciardi:

“The Constitution gives every American the unalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.”

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

 

 

Back when the announcement came that there was going to be a USFL 2.0 backed by FOX Sports in the Spring of 2022, I automatically assumed that FOX had acquired the rights to all the names and trademarks from “Original USFL” which existed – and then folded – back in the 1980s.  As of this morning, all I can say is that perhaps that assumption was correct and perhaps not.

Some the owners and executives from “Original USFL” have formed a legal entity known as “The Real USFL LLC” and that LLC entity has filed a lawsuit against FOX seeking to bar FOX from using the name “USFL” and the names/logos of the teams that played in “Original USFL.”  As I understand it, these are the positions of the two sides:

• “The Real USFL LLC” claims that FOX has taken the name USFL to which it has no rights and that it has usurped the names and team logos for 8 teams that used to play in the “Original USFL.”  That makes FOX an “unabashed counterfeit” according to the plaintiff.
• FOX claims that the names, logos and trademarks were abandoned by “Original USFL” and have been left fallow for more than 30 years.
• The plaintiff alleges trademark infringement (makes sense to me), false advertising (makes no sense to me) and false association (sort of makes sense to me).

Recall that “Original USFL” folded after it filed – and won – a lawsuit against the USFL claiming violations of anti-trust laws.  The problem there was that the jury decided that “Original USFL’s” claim was valid but that it only mattered in a trivial sense.  The jury awarded “Original USFL” one dollar which was trebled under terms of anti-trust law bringing the total haul from the victorious lawsuit to three dollars.  I claim no expertise in the law, but it seems to me that “The Real USFL LLC” might be on a similar glide path.

Assume for a moment that a court agrees with the plaintiff’s claims and issues a restraining order/injunction (I do not know the difference between these two things) to prevent FOX from starting its Spring Football season using those names and logos and the like.  It would seem to me that ruling would be favorable to “The Real USFL LLC” but not so damaging for FOX.  If the court says they cannot play football games between the New Jersey Generals and the Tampa Bay Bandits because of trademark violations, what stops FOX from following that court order and playing a game between the New Jersey Seashore and the Tampa Bay Hurricanes?

“USFL 2.0” is scheduled to begin in late April – absent any sort of injunction of course.  There is another Spring Football entity out there seeking a relaunch in the Spring of 2023; that would be XFL 3.0; that is the league owned by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Dany Garcia.  At least for the moment, XFL 3.0 is proceeding along without legal entanglements or obstacles.  In fact, it appears that XFL 3.0 has charted a course for itself that makes it an ally/adjunct to the NFL.

About a week ago, the NFL and XFL 3.0 announced an “R&D partnership” whose purpose is to “expand the game of football.”  This partnership sets up a collaborative process in which the two partners will work together to create “forward-thinking physical and mental fitness programs for players.”  That is sufficiently open-ended that it could mean just about anything but there are some interesting – maybe tantalizing – nuggets in a statement made by Ms. Garcia relative to this partnership:

“We are bringing forward an XFL that is progressive and forward-thinking when it comes to innovation, leveraging the newest technology to enhance gameday experience. We have an open field for innovative rules to enhance in-game access. Sharing insights and practices between the XFL and NFL will do a tremendous amount of good for the game of football and support the player ecosystem overall.”

Please ignore the argle-bargle about “player ecosystem” and note the XFL 3.0 interest in “new technology” and “innovative rules”.

• Maybe this is where the NFL can try out new proposals for rule changes that do not get the necessary support of 24 teams to be incorporated into the NFL Rule Book and yet there is enough interest to see how they might play out.
• Maybe this is the laboratory where footballs with embedded electronic chips determine things like first downs and touchdowns “automatically.”
• Maybe this is where fans can see ways for a coach’s challenge to be adjudicated far more quickly than they are now.

I am not saying that all of those things would turn out to be positive additions to NFL football – – but at least there is a venue for them to be tested/vetted under real competitive conditions.  One thing I would hope that this “R&D partnership” would investigate is the various playing surfaces used in NFL stadiums.  There was a time when the choices boiled down to “real grass” or something known as Astroturf that was laid out on a concrete slab.  Many of those “artificial” playing surfaces existed for several decades until new ways of creating and maintaining “other than grass fields” became available.

There is currently a tradeoff that exists.  Grass fields tend to be “safer”, but they also tend to degrade into dirt field late in the season when many climates do not favor grass growing and after thousands of cleat impacts tear up the grass and its root system.  Dirt field are not nearly as “safe” as grass fields particularly if they freeze.  Artificial surfaces are not as safe as grass, but they are far more durable and far less subject to weather conditions or “wear and tear”.  I believe there is plenty of room for some joint R&D studies/experiments/evaluations in the area of playing and playing surfaces.  Let the guys in the white lab coats begin…

Finally, since today’s rant began with “legal stuff”, let me close with an observation by the so-called Bard of Baltimore, H. L. Mencken:

“The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.”

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

 

 

The NFL is a master at controlling the publicity machine for its product.  This may be the off-season, but the NFL has spaced out events along the calendar that it markets/hypes in ways that make those events far more meaningful than they really are.  The first of those concocted events is the NFL Combine that is held in Indy starting tomorrow.  In an unusual twist, the NFL was threatened with a boycott of the Combine by agents who represented approximately half of the players who were invited to participate.

How did that come about?  It seems that there are specialty coaches and trainers out there whose niche practices involve preparing players for the specific regimens presented by the Combine.  These specialists are highly valued by both players and their agents but the NFL Covid protocols originally put forth for the Combine would not have allowed these specialists to be at the Combine to work with and “coach up” their clients.  Here you had the makings of a labor/management dispute that might disrupt the Combine and the TV show that the Combine creates for NFL Network.  Unlike their counterparts in MLB, the agents and the players association and the league figured out how to resolve the issue like adults by modifying the Covid protocols in a way that is acceptable to everyone.

So, the show will go on – even though I will probably not watch more than 5 minutes of it – from March 1^st through March 7^th.  The first days are devoted to player/team interviews; the actual workouts go from March 3^rd through March 6^th.  An invitation to the Combine – and participation in the drills there – is important for draft eligible players who are not already identified by teams as first round picks.  Some simple math will tell the story here.

• Each team gets seven picks that means the basic draft is 224 players.
• Add in some compensatory picks and maybe the draft class gets as big as 250 or 260 players.
• The league has invited 324 players to the Combine this year.
• Ergo, sixty players or so who go to that Combine are not going to be drafted.  Participation in the drills is important and just getting an invitation is important too.

This may sound counter-intuitive, so let me explain my next point.  Everyone seems to think – and I concur – that this is not a vintage year for QBs coming out of college.  Nonetheless, there are several teams in the NFL that need to figure a way to upgrade themselves at the QB position – whether it be the Steelers who lost Ben Roethlisberger to retirement or the Bucs who lost Tom Brady the same way or it be the Panthers or the Broncos or the Commanders who just need significant improvement there.  With the overall impression that this is a less-than-stellar crop of graduating QBs, the workouts and the interviews become even more important than usual for both teams and players.  There have been some significant flameouts in first round QB selections over the years and it sure looks as if there can/will be more this year.

Compare that sort of “problem-solving behavior” with what is ongoing with the MLB negotiations.  After wasting about 6 weeks of potential negotiating time from early December until mid-January and then meeting only perfunctorily until mid-February, the two sides are reported to be “far apart” as an on-time start of the regular season is now in serious jeopardy.  There was a report in the Washington Post yesterday that Commissioner Rob Manfred and Players’ Association Chief, Tony Clark, met with each other for the first time in weeks and what they supposedly decided was that the two sides needed to meet more frequently and for longer periods to hammer out the issues.

• Pardon my ignorance, but what other possibilities might those two “leaders” have considered as potential avenues to reaching a new CBA?  Maybe they could negotiate some issues via seances?  Maybe they could send messages back and forth via carrier pigeons?

I suspect that neither the owners nor the players fully grasp the degree to which they are alienating fans.  Yes, I know that there are always blowhard fans who swear they will never even watch another game on TV because they are disgusted with the nonsense put out by “billionaires versus millionaires.”  Forget those fans; they are sounding off simply to hear themselves bloviate.  But there is a tone and tenor this time around that is not taking sides in the dispute but that is expressing something along these lines:

• Baseball as a game has its problems.  The games take too long and there is not enough action in the games to maintain interest for many fans.  There is a cadre of baseball fans who clearly would prefer the league and the players union to focus their efforts on improving the on-field product instead of finding new and different ways to disagree with each other.

When you read a report on the status of the negotiations, take a moment and read some of the comments by folks who comment in terms other than the superlative.  When I try to do that, I come away with the idea that some of those fans are on their way to “abandoning” baseball as their “sport of choice” AND that a major part of the reason for that choosing is the nonsensical  inability of the owners and players to come to an agreement that will allow fans to just enjoy baseball.

Here is some reality:

• Max Scherzer is one of the more militant players involved in the negotiations.  When all is said and done, he will make more than $40M per year for the next three years to pitch – – or not pitch – – for the NY Mets.  No crocodile tears needed.
• The LA Dodgers will have a payroll well north of $200M and will not be heading for the poorhouse with about 34,500 fans showing up for every home game.  Notwithstanding what the accountants report on the tax returns and all the reporting is perfectly legal, the LA Dodgers are not “losing money.”
• The fan in the stands would love to “trade places” with either the players or the owners – – but the vast majority of the fans recognize that they do not have the ability to “trade places” with the players…

Finally, let me close today with an item from Dwight Perry’s column last weekend in the Seattle Times:

“The next time ‘Do you believe in miracles?!’ — coined by Al Michaels 42 years ago last week — will next be uttered when:

• the Detroit Lions win the Super Bowl

• baseball owners come out the winners in the players strike

• the Russians go an entire Olympics without testing positive.”

Or as a fourth possibility:

• when Rob Manfred throws a surprise birthday party for Tony Clark…

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

 

 

As I continue the process of weaning myself away from Football Fridays, I will take the opportunity to use a Friday as the time to look back to last September when I made all my predictions for the upcoming NFL season.  I made predictions about NFL coaches who were on the hot seat; I predicted that Father Time might catch up with some very good players and I predicted the final records for all 32 teams.  Making predictions is easy – – so long as there is no accounting for those predictions down the road.

Here in Curmudgeon Central, we believe in accountability.  In addition, I have no difficulty admitting when I am wrong as I usually am in endeavors such as these.  So, I will review what I predicted and grade myself on the various categories of the predictions here the way report cards were given out when I was in school.

Let the carnage begin…  I had eight coaches on my hot seat list.  However, three of them were there with a very specific caveat.  I said that Matt LaFleur could have been on the hot seat if his relationship with Aaron Rodgers totally deteriorated.  It did not.  I said Mike McCarthy needed a playoff slot to meet Jerry Jones’ expectations for the team and thereby keep his job.  The Cowboys made the playoffs and McCarthy is still the coach of the Cowboys.  I said I fully expected Zac Taylor to be the coach of the Bengals next year (in 2022) but the pre-season expectations for the Bengals were so sky high that he might fall victim to them.  The Bengals met all of the pre-season expectations and Taylor will be the coach in Cincy next year.

I did not see the complete flame-out that Urban Meyer delivered to Jax.  I do not feel too badly about that since I do not recall reading anywhere that he would not make it through the season in his first year with the Jags.  I also missed on Brian Flores’ departure from Miami and – to be candid – I still do not see why he was fired and replaced by someone whose résumé is underwhelming.

I hit on four of the coaches who were fired at the end of the season:

1. David Culley – Texans
2. Vic Fangio – Broncos
3. Matt Nagy – Bears
4. Mike Zimmer – Vikes

I missed on one coach I thought would be fired without a playoff slot.  I had Kliff Kingsbury in that category and he is still the coach of the Cards despite staring the season at 7-0 and then going 4-7 in the final 11 games.  Mark this down; Kingsbury will be on my hot seat list in 2022…

So, for the category of “Coaches on the Hot Seat” I will give myself a solid “B” .

            The next prediction category had to do with Father Time catching up to some recognizable players.  Here is the list – – and how 2021 went for those players:

• Calais Campbell:  He continued to play well – – but he was not selected to the Pro Bowl as he had been for the previous 7 consecutive seasons, and he registered only 1.5 sacks for the season which is the fewest since his rookie season in 2008.
• Ezekiel Elliott:  He is still a productive running back – – but his rushing yards per game and his total yards per game were lower in 2021 than in any prior season.
• Derrick Henry:  He had carried the ball 681 times in the previous 2 seasons and this year he got hurt and missed 9 regular season games.
• A.J. Green:  I totally missed on this one; Green caught more passes in 2021 than he did in 2020 or in 2018 and his yards per catch were increased as well.  He missed all of the 2019 season with an injury.
• Ben Roethlisberger:  I doubt that any objective observer of the NFL in 2021 would not acknowledge that Big Ben’s Hall of Fame career was  over and done with at the end of the season.
• Andrew Whitworth:  He played in 15 of the 17 regular season games and was not a “weak link” on the Rams’ offensive line.  Count that one as a missed prediction.

My assessment here is that four of the six Father Time predictions were on target and two were not.  In the world of soothsaying, that deserves a grade of “C”.

Now comes the time when I have to face up to my specific predictions for teams and divisions.  I will start with the AFC East.  Here are my predictions:

• Bills – – 13-4
• Pats – – 10-7
• Dolphins – – 9-8
• Jets – – 3-14

I have the teams finishing in the exact order they would up the season and I have two of the teams – – Pats and Dolphins – – with their exact record.  I had the Bills winning two more games than they did, and I had the Jets winning one game fewer than they did.  Overall, I will give myself a grade for the AFC East of an “A”.

The next division I covered was the AFC North.  Here are the predictions:

• Ravens – – 12-5
• Browns – – 12-5
• Steelers – – 9-8
• Bengals – – 5-12

Other than the prediction for the Steelers who finished 2021 with a record of 9-7-1, every other prediction here is an unmitigated disaster.  I hang my head in shame.  The grade for the AFC North is a well-deserved “F”.

Next up was the AFC South and here are the predictions:

• Titans – – 11-6
• Colts – – 9-8
• Jags – – 3-14
• Texans – – 2-15

The Titans won the division with a 12-5 record and the Colts finished second at 9-8.  Moreover, the Jags finished exactly at 3-14.  The only miss here was the fact that the Texans won 4 games this year instead of the two I had predicted.  I believe the proper grade for the AFC South predictions is an  ”A”.

            The last division in the AFC was the AFC West.  These were the predictions:

• Chiefs – – 14-3
• Chargers – – 10-7
• Raiders – – 7-10
• Broncos – – 5-12

I over-estimated the Chiefs – – but they still won the division by 2 full games; I underestimated the Raiders significantly; they won 10 games not only 7.  I think the grade for the AFC West predictions is a “C”.

Continuing on with the predictions for the NFC, I began with the NFC West.  Here are the predictions:

• Seahawks – – 13-4
• Niners – – 10-7
• Rams – – 10-7
• Cards – – 9-8

Obviously, I had by head in an anatomically impossible place when I evaluated the Seahawks back in September.  They finished last in the division with a 7-10 record.  Both the Rams and the Cards won two more games than I had predicted but I did hit the Niners record on the head.  Overall, my grade for the NFC West is a “D”.

Next up was the NFC South and here is how I read those tea leaves:

• Bucs – – 14-3
• Saints – – 10-7
• Panthers – – 6-11
• Falcons – – 5-12

I over-estimated the Bucs and the Saints by one game each and the Falcons were better than I thought by two games.  In my defense, all the teams here were pretty close to what I expected in terms of how the division would wind up.  Overall, I think the grade for the NFC South should be a “B”.

The next division I took up was the NFC North.  These were my prognostications:

• Packers – – 13-4
• Vikes – – 8-9
• Bears – – 6-11
• Lions – – 3-14

Ladies and gentlemen let me bask in the glory of those predictions for a moment here.  OK, basking time is over…  The only error in my record predictions for these four teams is that I had the Lions finishing at 3-14 when they actually finished at 3-13-1.  The grade for the NFC North is an “A+”.

            Having basked in the glory of success for a moment, let me now sink into the muck and mire of some bad predictions for the NFC East.  Please try not to giggle when you look at these predictions:

• Football Team – – 10-7
• Cowboys – – 9-8
• Giants – – 7-10
• Eagles – – 5-12

In this unmitigated disaster of predicting, the closest I came to reality were the Football Team, Cowboys and the Giants; those predictions were off by “only” 3 games; the Eagles prediction was off by 4 games.  As I gather up my dunce cap to go and sit in the corner of shame, I will accept that the grade for the NFC East must be an “F”.

            Let me review the “grades” in order to come up with a “Grade Point Average”

• A+ = 1
• A = 2
• B = 2
• C = 2
• D = 1
• F = 2

GPA = 2.35

Hey, that beats the GPA earned by the future US Senator John “Bluto” Blutarsky at Faber College…

Having dispatched the specific numbers in the predictions, let me now go back and find tidbits in there that turned out to be right on or dead wrong.

In assessing the upcoming season for the Patriots, I said:

“I am not ready to anoint Mac Jones as a star QB at the NFL level – and truth be told he does not have an outstanding set of pass-catchers with him – but I do believe that he can operate in the Josh McDaniel offensive milieu.”  That turned out to be accurate.

            Speaking about the NY Jets and Zach Wilson, I said:

“Zach Wilson shows a lot of promise, and many folks think he will be a star in the NFL for a decade or so.  Even if that is completely correct, it is not going to matter much in 2021; he will see lots of pressure behind an offensive line that was damaged by an injury to Mekhi Becton.”  Zach Wilson was sacked 44 times in 13 games in 2021.

Regarding the Baltimore Ravens, I said:

“Lamar Jackson took a half-step back last year; I think he takes a full step ahead this year.”  Actually, Jackson took another half-step backward in 2021 before he was injured for the final 5 games.

I completely whiffed on assessing the Browns in September.  Here is probably part of why that was the case:

“What the Browns need most is for that defensive unit to improve from last year; the offense was fine, but the defense was just okay.”  The Browns’ defense this year was fine; it was the offense that let the team down.

Regarding the Colts’ prospects in 2021, I said:

“The early part of the 2021 season could be “make or break” for the Colts.  Here are the first 5 weeks: host Seahawks, host Rams, at Titans, at Dolphins, at Ravens.  Ouch!”  After the first five games in 2021, the Colts’ record was 1-4.  Ouch indeed…

Here is part of what I said about the Chiefs in the upcoming season:

“For the first 7 weeks they host the Browns, at the Ravens, host the Chargers, at the Eagles, host the Bills, at the Football Team, at the Titans.  I think the Chiefs will be 5-2 at that part of the season and then assert themselves in the mid-season and down the stretch.”  Actually, the Chiefs were only 3-4 at that part of the season before coming on stronger than I had anticipated in the latter parts of the schedule.

I had this assessment of Sam Darnold as the Panthers’ QB very wrong:

“I am not nearly as sour on Sam Darnold as many other commentators seem to be; I think he was saddled with a mediocre roster and a goofy coaching staff in NYC.”  Darnold only started 11 games for the Panthers in 2021 before being benched.

Here is everything I had to say about the Bears back in September:

“I think the Bears will finish third in the division at 6-11.  Then, the Bears will be looking for a new head coach in the offseason.  Maybe Justin Fields is their QB of the future, but Andy Dalton is their QB of the present and with what is around Dalton that is a ticket to mediocrity.”  That seems to have been pretty accurate.

Here is part of what I had to say about the Football Team:

“Is Ryan Fitzpatrick good enough at age 38 to play an entire season under center effectively?  He need not be a star; he needs only to be steady and effective.  I think he can get it done.”  Ryan Fitzpatrick played less than one game before being injured; he completed 3 passes for the season for a total of 13 yards.

            Here is a mixed bag of observations related to the Eagles:

“There are plenty of question marks here including who their QB is, the game management skills of their new head coach, the corps of wide receivers and the corps of linebackers.  I am not a “Jalen Hurts-hater”, but I am not sold on his ability to be a #1 QB in the NFL.  Joe Flacco’s days as the QB of a contending NFL team are in the past.  Gardner Minshew is Jalen Hurts with a better arm and worse legs.”  Hurts got the team to the playoffs, but I still do not see him with a high ceiling.  The coach could have been a bit better on game day, but he also could have been a ton worse than he was.  I stand foursquare behind my assessments of Joe Flacco and Gardner Minshew.

I will close today with Winston Churchill’s assessment of Clement Atlee because after you have seen how I fared on my predictions for the NFL season, you will probably agree that Sir Winston could easily have said something similar about me:

“Mr. Atlee is a very modest man.  But then, he has much to be modest about.”

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

 

 

As we approach the final days of Black History Month, I have noticed several pieces that list the best Black baseball players of all time.  I saw my first baseball game in 1948; my family did not even have a TV set at the time.  We got a TV soon after that and I have watched baseball since then.  That goes back a long way – – but baseball goes back a lot further.  So today, I will give you my list of the best Black baseball players that I saw play.  That means there is no one here from the Negro Leagues simply because I never saw a Negro League game.  It also does not include Satchel Paige because I only saw him once or twice on TV when he was probably 50 years old.  The list is alphabetical:

• Henry Aaron – – In addition to 755 home runs, his career batting average was .305
• Ernie Banks – – The best shortstop I ever saw
• Roy Campanella – – An eight-time All-Star and a three-time MVP
• Larry Doby – – An All-Star seven times
• Bob Gibson – – Great pitcher, great athlete, intense competitor
• Ken Griffey, Jr. – – He made the game look easy, but it is not easy.
• Tony Gwynn – – He and Ted Williams are the best pure hitters I ever saw.
• Reggie Jackson – – He went to a high school that was in the same division as my high school.
• Willie Mays – – Selected to the All-Star team 20 times, his career OPS was .940.
• Joe Morgan – – He was an MVP in two consecutive seasons
• Frank Robinson – – An All-Star 12 times, he was the NL MVP (’61) and the AL MVP (’66)
• Jackie Robinson – – His societal importance tends to overshadow his baseball prowess
• Ozzie Smith – – A great defensive player who was always fun to watch
• Frank Thomas – – He was called “The Big Hurt” and it was appropriate

That is my list.  I intended the list to include a dozen players but could not winnow down the list any more than this.  So, in the end, it is a Baker’s Dozen – – plus one.

Thinking about great baseball players in the past reminded me that Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times had an interesting perspective on MLB in the present:

“Critics say Major League Baseball has devolved into too many strikeouts and too little action.

“But enough about the bargaining sessions.”

Speaking of those CBA negotiations, let me offer a tiny ray of sunshine here on a day where it is snowing as I look out my window.  According to several reports from folks covering the CBA talks, the two sides have agreed on three issues.  These three are minor points in the negotiations and do not have any major impact on the real sticking points here – – those that effect how many dollars will go to players and how many dollars will remain in the pockets of the owners:

1. The two sides have agreed to a universal designated hitter.  Since I hate the DH, I obviously do not like this outcome – – but if it is a starting point to get the negotiators off the dime and on to a signed CBA, so be it.
2. The two sides have agreed to implementing a draft lottery in baseball.  I have not seen the details as to how that would work but it is intended to reduce the incentive for teams to tank in order to get a better draft pick.  The NBA has a lottery system, and it does not seem as if the lottery is fully effective in eliminating tanking there.
3. There will be a change in the draft-pick compensation for teams signing free agents.  In the last CBA a team signing a free agent could be penalized by losing a draft pick.  That is going to be eliminated. I am not sure why that is a big enough deal that it was a sticking point in the first place but let us thank God for small favors now that it is resolved.

Moving on …  The hot rumor of the day – – not confirmed but widely reported – – is that ESPN has hired Troy Aikman away from FOX to become the color analyst for Monday Night Football.  I have seen no word regarding what happens to the three guys who have done MNF for the last several years, but it is not reasonable to think that ESPN is going to present us with a 4-person announcing team.  Let me assume the rumor is correct here; here is how I think the next shoes might fall:

• Clearly, either Brian Griese or Louis Riddick – – and possibly both – – will have to be reassigned by ESPN.
• I wonder if play-by-play guy, Steve Levy, has sufficient gravitas to be Aikman’s partner.  Ergo, might ESPN be looking to make a change in that position also?  Remember, Al Michaels is a “broadcasting free agent”…
• Who at FOX gets to work with Joe Buck for NFL games?  Looking at the current folks on FOX, my two favorite choices would be Greg Olsen and/or Jonathan Vilma.  My absolute least favorite would be Mark Schlereth; he never shuts up.

Finally, apropos of nothing, let me close today with an observation by Ambrose Bierce that I ran across just yesterday:

“Conservative, n.  A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.”

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

 

 

You can always count on humorist Brad Dickson to find a way to merge current events in the sports world with current events in the world at large.  Here is one of his Tweets from yesterday:

“Biden’s really getting tough with Putin. He just threatened to send Juwan Howard to the front lines.”

Last season, the New York Knicks made the playoffs finishing 4^th in the Eastern Conference; Julius Randle was named the Most Improved Player in the league and coach Tom Thibodeau was named Coach of the Year in his first season on the Knicks’ bench.  It was quite a turnaround for the Knicks.  In the two previous seasons combined, the team won a total of 38 games; last year the team record was 41-31.  That sort of performance would generate excitement almost anywhere, but things tend to be magnified in NYC so expectations for this season were sky high.

Let me be kind and say that the Knicks have not quite delivered on those lofty expectations to date this season.  As of this morning the Knicks record is 25-34; they are in 12^th place in the Eastern Conference and are 3.5 games below the line that would earn them a play-in shot at the playoffs.  Julius Randle has not “continued to improve” his stats  year over year as should be expected for a player that won the Most Improved label last season; the phenomenon of regression to the mean is very real even in situations where fans may not wish for it to be.  Randle’s season has not been disaster; that would be far too harsh a judgment, but the reality is:

• Points per game – –  down 4.6
• FG %-age – – down 3.5%
• 3 Pt FG %-age – – down 10.5%

Randle has taken a lot of heat for those numbers but nothing quite like the heat felt by Coach Thibodeau.  Reports in the NY press have it that folks in the Knicks’ Front Office want to pin the blame for the unsatisfactory season on Thibodeau and want him fired for it.  In my mind, that is ridiculous.  One of the main reasons that the Knicks surprised folks last year was a healthy Derrick Rose; might it not be remotely possible that the Knicks’ misfortunes this year could be tied to the fact that Derrick Rose has been injured since early December and has missed 33 games this year?

The NBA Coach of the Year is decided by a vote of sportswriters from all around the league; Thibodeau has won the award twice in his career.  That process is clearly subjective, but it does represent the thinking and the observations of people outside the Knicks’ organization.  Those people thought that Thibodeau did the best coaching job in the league last year.  Now, there are supposedly folks “upstairs” in the Knicks’ organization who think that Thibodeau lost a bunch of his “basketball-IQ points” over the offseason and that he should be jettisoned.  Seriously …?

The New York Knicks have won exactly one playoff series since the 2000-2001 season.  Jeff Van Gundy left the Knicks in mid-season in 2001 and since then the Knicks have had 14 head coaches in the intervening 21 years.

• Maybe – just throwing this out as a hypothesis – the Knicks Front Office and the team owner do not know what to look for when they go out on the market to hire a head coach?

If that hypothesis has any validity, why should anyone in NYC who is a Knicks’ fan think that firing a two-time winner of the Red Auerbach Trophy will result in a coaching upgrade on the Knicks’ bench next season?

Meanwhile out in LA – another city where expectations and fan reaction are magnified – the Lakers are almost as disappointing as the Knicks.  The Lakers’ record this morning is 27-31; they are in that part of the Western Conference standings where they would get to play themselves into the playoffs.  However, LeBron James has had some nagging injury woes tis season; Russell Westbrook has simply not fit in with the team and has even been benched for critical times in games this season and Anthony Davis is hurt yet again.  Notwithstanding that sort of player performance/availability issues, there are rumblings that Lakers’ coach Frank Vogel will not be back next season.

Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times assessed the Lakers’ situation this way:

“A cargo ship packed with luxury cars caught fire and is aimlessly adrift in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

“Sort of the nautical equivalent of the L.A. Lakers.”

The “problem” in NY and in LA is the same “problem”.  The roster is not well constructed.  In NY, Tom Thibodeau wants his team to play solid defense and win games by limiting how many points the other guys score.  When the Knicks’ Front Office chose to acquire Kemba Walker in the last off-season they gave Thibodeau a player who cannot play the way Thibodeau wants his team to play.  Walker’s calling card in the NBA is as a scorer; his defense is best described as “accidental” because that is more polite than saying even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.  Kemba Walker is not a bad player; the “problem” is that he cannot do what he is asked to do for the Knicks.

In LA, the roster is composed of three superstars and a bunch of guys.  Moreover, the three superstars do not bring different skill sets to the court.  None of them are shut-down defenders; all of them love to shoot three-point shots and unless Russell Westbrook can dominate the ball, his effectiveness as a scorer is limited.  And none of that should be counted as debits on Frank Vogel’s coaching ledger.

Finally, I found this item in Gregg Drinnan’s blog, Taking Note, recently:

“Mike Lupica, in the New York Daily News: ‘Dr. Oz vs. Dr. Phil in an old-time steel cage match — no way to root, right?’”

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

 

 

The Gregorian calendar – the one used by most of the world today – began because of a papal edict in October 1582.  It had to be an accident such that almost 440 years after the institution of the new calendar, the day symbolized as “2/22/22” would fall on a Tuesday.  Or maybe there was some sort of alien intervention they have been keeping secret all these years…?

If you follow college basketball even a little bit, you know by now that Michigan coach Juwan Howard and members of the Wisconsin coaching staff got into a “physical confrontation” and Howard threw a punch.  Here is the short form of how this came to be:

• Wisconsin led Michigan by 15 points with about 30 seconds left in the game.  Wisconsin had the benchwarmers in the game to finish it out.  [Good and proper move.]
• Howard ordered his team to press.  [Perfectly within the rules of the game but a futile gesture at best.]
• Wisconsin players on the court could not handle the press so Wisconsin coach Greg Gard called a timeout.  [Perfectly within the rules of the game but hardly necessary.]
• In the “handshake line” the coaches exchanged words making sure the other guy knew that none of that late game nonsense was appreciated and things escalated quickly from there.

[Aside:  The “handshake line” is symbolic nonsense; the expressions of “good game” by the winners and the losers is anything but heartfelt.  Getting rid of the “handshake line” would be a big plus for college basketball when they go through the rules’ change process this off-season.]

Juwan Howard has been suspended for 5 games – which is for the rest of the regular season.  Greg Gard will not be suspended but will pay a $10K fine.  Both were in violation of the Big-10 “sportsmanship policy” but only Howard actually threw a punch which landed gently on a Wisconsin assistant coach.  So, the debate item of the day would be formally presented in this way:

• Resolved:  Juwan Howard received a punishment whose severity matches the impropriety of his action(s).

The reason this statement would never make it as a real debate topic is that there are three possible sides to take.  Howard’s punishment is “just right;” Howard’s punishment is “too severe;” and Howard’s punishment is “too lenient”.  Call this a Goldilocks’ debate topic if you will.

My position is that the punishment is a bit lenient.  No, I do not think Juwan Howard should be terminated as the Michigan coach and cast aside by the Big-10; that would be going overboard.  I do think that he should be suspended for any and all tournament games that Michigan may play this year (both the Conference Tournament and the NCAA or NIT Tournaments).  This is not Juwan Howard’s first physical confrontation with an opposing coach; he and Mark Turgeon got into it last year and the two had to be physically restrained.  Howard’s punch in this incident was harmless; the recipient cannot have suffered any physical injury from it.  Nonetheless, recidivism should be punished far more severely than a “first offense” lest the behavior become more frequent.

There is another point here.  When I watched the replay of the “handshake line” and the subsequent melee, my mind immediately focused on an item that I had on my clipboard for future comment in a rant.  It turns out that the city of Rome, NY had to cancel the balance of two youth basketball leagues due to “poor parent behavior.”  One league was for 3^rd and 4^th Grade Boys and the other league was for 5^th and 6^th Grade Boys.  It was not a single incident that caused the cancelations; over the course of the season; two coaches had already resigned from their positions due to “parent interactions” and it turned out that the program overseers thought it necessary to assign a police officer to be at all the game venues.  Here is a link to the report on this situation in the Rome Sentinel.

Two hundred kids participated in the two leagues; those kids are being deprived of an activity they obviously enjoy because some chronological adults cannot behave like actual adults.  As someone who officiated hundreds of recreation league games for kids, the action taken by the authorities in Rome NY is very disheartening to me because I have seen how much enjoyment kids derive from such games.

And that is another reason why I believe Juwan Howard’s punishment is too lenient.  His loss of control and his demonstrated behavior has been seen now by millions of people some of whom are predisposed to turn a basketball game into a melee.  It is wrong when it is a game at the Big-10 level and it is wrong when it is a game at the 3^rd and 4^th Grade Boys level too.

Switching gears now…  Let me return to a topic I have commented on previously – the Lia Thomas situation and the women’s swimming competition.  I am sorry to bring this up because I am certain that many folks have heard more than enough about the matter.  However, I have come to a conclusion as to how we can accommodate transgender individuals in athletic competitions.  For years – and continuing into the current times – it has been acceptable and even enlightened to arrange for separate competitions for men and women.  The number of sports where women and men compete separately far outnumber the sports where they compete on an equal footing.  So, if that is acceptable and sustainable, then why not expand the concept to include:

• Cis-Males
• Cis-Females
• Trans-Males
• Trans-Females.

Seems to me like “problem solved”…

Finally, let me close today with some advice for those parents in Rome, NY who caused the cancelation of those basketball leagues.  The advice comes from Voltaire, and it explains how one succeeds in the world:

“To succeed in the world, it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.”

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

 

 

Today is Presidents Day.  Great Presidents exhibit leadership in times of difficulty; not-so-great Presidents fail to do so.  Not to worry, I have no intention of turning today’s rant into a political jeremiad; I mention this point because in the narrow world of sports, we are seeing the continuation of a lack of leadership in one of our major sports.  Naturally, I am referring to Major League Baseball.

The owners declared a lockout back in early December.  Pitchers and catchers were supposed to report to Spring Training a week ago; Spring Training games were supposed to begin a couple of days from now.  The regular season is scheduled to start at the end of March.

So, what happened…?

• Between the beginning of December and last weekend, the two sides negotiating the new Collective Bargaining Agreement only managed to find time on their busy schedules to meet a handful of times.
• Pitchers and catchers could not report to Spring Training camps that were locked out.
• The first week or so of Spring Training games have already been canceled.
• Supposedly, if there is no agreement which will allow Spring Training to begin by February 28^th, the regular season will not start on time.

Most of the national media have chosen to blame Commissioner Rob Manfred for this debacle.  Make no mistake, Manfred deserves a huge helping of opprobrium today and that helping should be slathered in a gravy derived from mule snot.  At the same time, let us not forget to serve a similar helping of that concoction to Tony Clark as the head of the Players’ Association.  In order to have meaningful negotiating sessions, it takes all parties to the dispute to come together and at least try to come to a resolution of the problems.  Tony Clark has not exactly been pushing for the sides to burn the midnight oil to get to a degree.  Recall that – according to reports – when Manfred and the owners proposed to have a Federal mediator brought in to try to assist in the negotiations, it was Clark and the union that would not agree.

I said above that this situation represents the continuation of a lack of leadership in baseball.  Here’s why…  Baseball had significant “labor unrest” from the 1970s through 1994 when a mid-season strike by the players caused the cancellation of the end of the regular season and the World Series.  Then there was a period of calm on the management/labor front for about 25 years until 2020 – The Year of COVID-19.  How or why that viral species managed to resuscitate the old labor/management anger in baseball is a mystery to me, but it did.

Take yourself back to the earliest days of the pandemic; we had lockdowns because there were no vaccines or effective medicines available.  We were not even sure about the transmission modes for the virus; handwashing became for a while the national pastime.  Just about every sport was on hiatus – – but by summertime it seemed that baseball could begin a “return to normalcy” with games played in front of empty grandstands.  I assert that would have been a huge win for baseball itself had both the owners and players chosen to avail themselves of that opportunity; both sides found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The owners cried poor; without fans in the stands, they would be paying players based on an economic model that assumed the live gate revenue stream would be intact.  The players pointed to their signed contracts and demanded nothing less than a full pro-rata share of that contract for games played in the regular season.  And with that divide, the MLB season in 2020 was a meager 60 games.

Think back on another point in the early summer of 2020.  With virtually all US sports in mothballs, the TV networks were scrambling to fill air time.  They were showing Korean League baseball on a routine basis because if they did not do that, they would be rummaging around in their archives to show reruns of My Mother the Car.  [Aside:  If you do not recognize how desperate the TV execs would have to have been to do that, Google is your friend.]  I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that ESPN was deep into negotiations to acquire the rights to Saudi Arabian camel racing simply as a way to put live sports on the air.

Baseball had the opportunity to seize the day and to become the first sport to get back on the air and they found a way not to allow that to happen.  And that was a significant mistake on the part of both sides.  Baseball as a sport has seen its TV audiences shrink; there are myriad hypotheses as to the causes there but one of the causes is that the baseball fanbase is losing older folks and not replacing them with younger folks.  Many people attribute that aging of the fanbase to a lack of interest in baseball by young sports fans.

If major league baseball were to have been the only live major US sport on TV for the months of June, July and August of 2020, there was an opportunity to engage and attract younger audiences who might have grown tired of watching college basketball reruns from 1986.  That younger audience did not get that opportunity; the delayed “Opening Day” in 2020 was on July 23^rd when the NFL Training Camps were already in progress.

The owners would not take short-term losses in exchange for the opportunity to attract new fans who could add to live gate revenues and TV audiences down the road.  Players would not shave even a farthing off of their pro-rata contract demands.  And that set the stage…

Now,, the two sides cannot agree on how many teams will make the playoffs in baseball.  They cannot agree on revenue sharing among the major league teams.  They cannot agree to have a mediator try to get them to a resolution of the situation.  There is a huge failure of leadership on both sides of the table and fans should not take sides in the matter.  For anyone who thinks that one of the sides is “less culpable” then the other – – thereby making it one’s favorite in the situation – – let me suggest that all one does there is to identify the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs.

Major League Baseball needs positive and effect leadership on this President’s Day; it has seen none of that from the combatants in the Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations.  In fact, it seems that that two sides have fallen into the habit of opposing any and all things favored by the other side simply out of habit.  That leads me to conclude with this observation about “habit” from author Marcel Proust:

            “The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.”

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

 

 

P.J. O’Rourke died earlier this week. He was a humorist and satirist par excellence.  He was an early contributor to National Lampoon and eventually its editor in chief.  Other writings found their way into publications with varied audiences such as Car and Driver, Playboy and Rolling Stone while still finding time to be a panelist on NPR’s program Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.  His conservative/libertarian views were never mainstream but reading his defenses of such positions was always entertaining.

Rest in peace, P. J. O’Rourke.

Having been off the air for the last 4 days, let me loop back and comment on things that happened several days ago.  During the Super Bowl game, there was a minor “dust up” on the sidelines when Aaron Donald pushed Joe Burrow out of bounds.  I said to the folks I was watching the game with, that was the time when replay would actually be valuable.  The officials had to “break up” a confrontation and that confrontation had nothing to do with “game action” since the play had been whistled dead.  That should trigger and instant replay all by itself with two specific purposes:

• First and foremost, who started the kerfuffle?
• Second, did anyone else join in or respond/retaliate to the start of the kerfuffle?

Based on replay, the referee can determine who started it and what he did.  That could lead to a penalty – – or even to an ejection.  Same goes for players who retaliated in some way that was disproportionate to the instigation.  Normally, I am not a fan of replay since it stops the game and sometimes does not unambiguously “get it right”.  But in this case, I believe that replay has a larger beneficial effect on the sport.

• All it will take is a couple of ejections of key players from a game for the coaches to begin to pay a lot more attention to “controlled aggression” as opposed to “unconstrained aggression”.

Next, I want to talk about the NBA trade that sent Ben Simmons, Seth Curry, Andre Drummond and a couple of first round draft picks to the Nets for James Harden and Paul Milsap.  Fans and sports radio commentators in Philly are basically in ecstasy over the trade; one of them said that there was no team in the league that could now match up with the Sixers’ triumvirate of Joel Embiid, James Harden and Tobias Harris.  From his point of view, only a cruel twist of fate might keep the Sixers from the NBA championship this year.  I hope that no regular reader here will be surprised to learn that I am far less optimistic about this player exchange than that.

First, the Sixers just get a whole lot worse on defense than they were a week ago – – and that is with Ben Simmons refusing to play for the team for “mental health reasons”.  Going all the way back to his college days at Arizona State, Harden was an offensive force and a defensive liability.  However, as his NBA career progressed and he became a dominant offensive force, his defense eroded to a similar extent.  My personal assessment over the past year or two is that Harden no longer even tries to expend much energy on the defensive end of the floor; he gives up points almost to the extent that he creates points.

So, comparing Harden to Ben Simmons – – who similarly created no points and allowed no points while on the sidelines this season – -, the trade would be seem to be a wash.  But wait; there’s more…

James Harden has found himself “at odds” with a variety of very good players in the NBA when Harden and those other very good players had to share the court and the ball.  Perhaps the names Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving resonate with  you…  Harden has maneuvered a trade for himself twice in the last 14 months; what is it about James Harden’s recent history to make one think that he and Joel Embiid will become inseparable bosom buddies?

Maybe all those “Harden rough spots” will be ironed out in Philly.  This trade seems to have had a “Lourdes Effect” on healing since Ben Simmons’ mental health issues appear to have been miraculously abated by moving him to a team about 100 miles to the northeast of where he used to be.

Moving on…  About three weeks ago, the first sportsbook connected to an MLB stadium opened at Nationals Park in Washington DC.  The book is operated by BetMGM, and it is linked to an app available from Bet MGM that allows for in-game wagering on Nats’ games so long as the wagers are placed withing a two-block radius of the park.  According to the announcement of the sportsbook’s opening:

• The 4,000-square-foot on-site sportsbook will offer full-service beverage and dining options, six betting windows, betting kiosks, and 40 big-screen TVs year-round.

This is only one such manifestation of MLB’s new cozy relationship with new “corporate partners” who happen to be in the sports betting “industry”.  If you want to look for hypocrisy, look no further than baseball’s gambling relationships today and the continued ostracization of Shoeless Joe Jackson and/or Pete Rose.

Finally, I began today noting the passing of P.J. O’Rourke; let me close with two of his observations about the American human condition:

“No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity.”

And …

“There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible. “

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