June 2007 - Posts
Remember when Michael Jordan was running things in Washington and he took Kwame Brown with the No. 1 pick in the draft? That was in 2001 and no team had ever taken a high-school player with the first pick. At the time, people thought it was an interesting move. Soon enough, though, they thought it was proof that for all his brilliance on the court, Jordan had a lot to learn in the front office.
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It was probably back in the spring of 1986, the year the Angels would come within an out of going to the World Series, when Gene Mauch, their gnarly, cranky old manager instructed me on the failings of the modern ballplayer and why the great records of history weren’t going to be broken.
They made too much money, Mauch said, and because of all that money, they won’t have the desire to play into their late 30s and 40s. And because they were all soft and were going to retire early, they wouldn’t have time to compile big numbers like the old guys, by which he meant the stalwarts of his own generation.
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For the past couple of seasons, we've been talking about how baseball has become infected with parity. On June 24, 2006, 19 of the 30 major league teams were either leading their divisions or within six games of the lead.
The NL West didn't have a powerhouse team, but all five teams were separated by 3.5 games. In the NL Central, four of six teams were separated by 6 games. Only the NL East was out of control, with the Mets holding an 11-game lead over Philly.
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We can't have a playoff in college football because it would make the season too long and compromise academics. That's what college presidents tell us every time they vote to perpetuate the absurd BCS system of not choosing a legitimate NCAA football champion.
So where are these guys now to complain about the length of the college baseball season? Oh, I forgot. school let out a month ago, and the presidents are probably in Switzerland or Vienna, recharging their batteries after a busy year of moral rectitude.
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“Be always sure you're right, then go ahead.”
Davy Crockett, the famous frontiersman, adopted that line as his byword, and it served him well right up to the time he was sure it was right to join the defenders of the Alamo. Dying there cemented his legend and gave those Texans fighting for independence a rallying cry that echoes down to this day. CONTINUED >>
Where in the name of humanity is Roger Goodell?
You've probably read or heard about the war of words going on between former player and coach Mike Ditka and the NFL Players Association.
It's getting ugly, with former Bears player Dave Duerson, who is a member of the league's benefits board, accusing his former coach of not caring about players when he was leading the Bears and saying his group does plenty for disabled former players. Gene Upshaw, the head of the NLFPA, has been calling some of his own former constituents liars. Ditka is going on every media outlet that will have him demanding that someone do something for players who have been maimed by the game.
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News item, courtesy of the Associated Press:
SAN FRANCISCO - The prospect of a melee in the stands prompted a prominent auction house on Monday to withdraw a $1 million bounty on Barry Bonds' career-record homer baseball.
I’d accuse Heritage Auction Galleries of Texas of an unexpected attack of common sense in deciding not to lay out a million bucks in cold cash for Bonds’ record home-run ball. But to accuse anyone involved in the memorabilia market of a quality so utterly useless in the business would just be wrong.
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Joe Torre was a mediocre manager for 13 full seasons and part of another before being fired by the Cardinals in 1995 for the crime of not winning enough. His lifetime record with the Cards, Braves and Mets stood at 894-1,003. That’s a .471 winning percentage.
And if his career had ended there, he’d have gone down as a decent fellow who had a couple of good years but was never good enough - a Roger Craig kind of guy. Definitely not a Hall of Famer.
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It must be something in the clubhouse water, because suddenly everybody in baseball has gone bonkers.
That’s an exaggeration, or, as we writers like to call, it “an outrageous lie,” but it’s for dramatic effect, so it’s all right. In actuality, it’s just three people out of several thousand, but close enough.
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Hard to believe it, but the hottest sports city in the United States right now is Cleveland. The Cavaliers are in the NBA Finals and are in possession of LeBron James, the hottest property in the NBA. The Cleveland Indians are neck-and-neck with Detroit on top of the major leagues in run-scoring, and have a 2.5-game lead over the Tigers in the AL Central.
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