November 2007 - Posts
If you believe everything you read, you’d think that Penn State coach Joe Paterno works cheap. After a long battle in the Pennsylvania courts, the university was forced to part with the salary its paying Paterno, and it turns out to be a relatively paltry $512,220.
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It’s nearly two days now that I’ve been trying to think of something intelligent to say about the murder of Redskins’ safety Sean Taylor. I’ve not had a great deal of success. It’s too numbing of mind and spirit.
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I’m watching the Knicks lose another game – their eighth in a row - and this one’s by double digits. The final against the Pistons is 98-86, and the 12-point margin is actually an improvement over the last two losses, which were by 26 points to the Warriors and 32 to the Kings. Still, when you get outscored by a total of 70 points over three games, you’ve probably got a problem.
In the Knicks’ case, it’s pretty evident who the problem is. It’s the guy in the expensive suit on the sideline who’s assembled this magnificent team and concocted the brilliant offense that has produced such stunning results.
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When the indictment came down on Barry Bonds, I e-mailed Michael Gilberti of Red Bank, N.J., the chief legal correspondent of Open Mike to get his take. He’s a former assistant D.A. for the U.S. Justice Department in Newark. The last time we heard from him in this space, he was dead on about the federal case against Michael Vick.
He read the indictment this morning, and sent me the following analysis:
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The better things are going, the more some people worry. These are the glass-half-full folks, the ones who can watch the most gorgeous sunset ever seen on earth and worry about whether it means it’s going to rain the next day.
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The most senseless suspension in the history of sports is over. After missing 25 games for no good reason, Ricky Williams has been cleared to play football again.
I don’t know if, at age 30, he can still help Miami, which needs all the help it can get. I hope he can, and I hope he can help himself. He’s been thoroughly abused by fans and media, but, while he may have made a few decisions most of us wouldn’t make, he’s never hurt anyone, never got into a bar fight, never been charged with assaulting a woman, never tried to get an unfair advantage on the field. He’s a very shy guy who has trouble dealing with attention, but he’s not a bad person.
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The classic definition of chutzpah is the man who’s on trial for murdering both his parents and throws himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan. That one’s just been trumped by David Stern, the NBA commissioner who just told the City of Seattle that unless it digs into the taxpayers’ pockets to build the SuperSonics a new arena, Seattle will never have another NBA franchise.
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Collusion is a bad thing, we all have to admit that. But we also have to admit that if Major League Baseball really is trying to hold down Alex Rodriguez’s next contract, we’d be willing to overlook our objection to price fixing.
That’s the fear raised on Thursday by the players association in a statement after the league’s G.M.s held their annual meeting. The club executives each shared information about their general goals for the offseason, and the union thinks such openness could have included discussions about how to hold costs down.
The teams say no specifics were involved. That leaves me imagining the Yankees saying, “We need a new third baseman. Anyone know where we can get one?” And the Devil Rays – oops, they’re now just the Rays, although even without the Devil in their name, they’re still hellish – said, “We’d like to win, but not so much that we’re willing to pay money to do it.”
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Michael Phelps is the Michael Jordan, the Wayne Gretzky, the Hank Aaron, the Tom Brady, the Tiger Woods, the Roger Federer of his sport. But other than once every four years, most Americans are barely aware he exists.
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Michael Phelps is the Michael Jordan, the Wayne Gretzky, the Hank Aaron, the Tom Brady, the Tiger Woods, the Roger Federer of his sport. But other than once every four years, most Americans are barely aware he exists.
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The problem with holding people you don’t really know as paragons of virtue and clean living was driven home on Thursday in a terrible way in a Pennsylvania courtroom. Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill sent Eagles coach Andy Reid’s two sons to prison for drug violations, and described the Reids as “a family in crisis.”
According to the Associated Press, O’Neill told one of the sons, Britt Reid, “It sounds more or less like a drug emporium there with the drugs all over the house, and you’re an addict.”
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