HANDICAPPING THE HALL

 

               Baseball’s HITS (Heads In The Sand) era, stretching from about 1990 to 2005, when it finally got around to penalizing players found to use performance-enhancing steroid drugs, may be over, but the malady lingers on. Not only does steroid use continue in the game (albeit at a reduced rate) but the issue pops up again every year at this time, when voters ponder candidates for its Hall of Fame.

               Indeed, steroid use will be the main theme of the 2022 voting, with BARRY BONDS and ROGER CLEMENS up for their tenth and final year on the sportswriters’ ballot and ALEX RODRIGUEZ and DAVID ORTIZ leading the list of new nominees.

Slugger Bonds and pitcher Clemens were the best at what they did during long playing careers that ended in 2007, but multiple and sometimes sworn testimony to their guilt as users has turned their cases into an annual referendum on the subject, with each so far failing to meet the 75% majority needed for election. Running as a kind of entry, their ballot count has climbed from about 36% in 2013 to just over 60% last year, but it’s been on a 60% plateau for the last several years and a jump to 75 this time seems unlikely.

 If the two again fall short they will be transferred to one of the veterans’ committees the Hall maintains for candidates that may merit further review. The standards of those groups are lower than those of the writers, and in the 1973 movie “Sleepers,” set in the distant future, the Woody Allen character said tobacco was found to be a health food, so who knows what may lie ahead.

ARod and Ortiz both were tarred with the steroids brush, but mostly ARod. He’s been a kind of poster boy for PEDS, busted in tests not once but twice. The first in 2004, spanning the 2001-03 seasons in which he hit 156 of his 696 career home runs, carried no penalty because there was none at the time. The second resulted in a suspension for the entire 2014 season, the longest such action before or since.

 He screamed bloody murder after that last one, spraying denials and threatening to sue everyone in sight. He even organized a “fan protest” picketing of Commissioner Bud Selig’s office on his behalf, a move that caused chuckles. With time he fessed up and now enjoys a prosperous retirement. Don’t feel sorry for him because he’s an ESPN baseball analyst, Jennifer Lopez is or was his girlfriend and he’s worth a reported $400 million. But don’t expect to see his plaque in Cooperstown any time soon.

Ortiz reportedly was named in a 2003 document fingering some 100 major leaguers as users, but that supposedly secret doc has been disputed. He’s denied it and, loath to tar their stars, baseball execs have supported him in that. His baseball stats, including 541 career homers and 1,768 runs batted in, support his candidacy. So does a rosy public image as the good-natured “Big Papi” who brought joy to his Boston Red Sox constituency. He’ll be elected, it says here.

There are 13 first-timers on the 2022 ballot, and just a few besides ARod and Ortiz rate prolonged scrutiny.  These include a couple of former Philadelphia Phillies, JIMMY ROLLINS and RYAN HOWARD. Shortstop Rollins played for 17 seasons (2000-2016). He accumulated a notable 2,455 hits, and was the 2007 National League Most Valuable Player, but by me he fit into the very-good-but-not-great category most of the time. Big first-baseman Howard was the 2006 MVP with a monster year (58 home runs, 149 RBIs), but while he was a star in the early half of a 13-year career (2004-2016) he tailed off badly after suffering a torn Achilles tendon in a 2011 playoff game.

TIM LINCECUM stands out in memory as a frail-looking young man with an exaggerated delivery, but while the San Francisco Giants’ pitcher wowed ‘em for several seasons (2008-2011) his time at the top didn’t add up to the Hall. I expect that he, Rollins and Howard will get enough votes to stay on the ballot in future years, but not enough for quick election.

The other newcomers are MARK TEIXEIRA, A.J. PIERZYNSKI, JAKE PEAVY, JONATHAN PAPELBON, JOE NATHAN, JUSTIN MORNEAU, CARL CRAWFORD and PRINCE FIELDER.

Among the 15 holdovers none is more interesting than CURT SCHILLING. The 20-season-veteran pitcher, in his 10^th and last year on the ballot, polled 71% the last time around, and nobody who’s gotten that close didn’t get elected the next time. Schilling, however, has been anything but curt in his off-field utterances. He’s been a regular on right-wing media and in Trumpian style has blasted the press collectively and individually, hardly endearing himself to this particular electorate.

After last year’s voting Schilling said he wanted off the ballot. “The writers hate my politics,” he declared. I wondered if that included the nearly three quarters who wanted him in and, anyway, he doesn’t get to make that call. I don’t agree with his politics but admired his pitching (216 wins and 3,116 strikeouts, 15^th all-time) and voted for him several times when I could. My guess is that he’ll succeed this time. I can’t wait to hear his acceptance speech, if he chooses to make one.

SCOTT ROLEN, the former third baseman in his fifth year on the ballot, polled 53% last year and probably will come up short again. Ditto for OMAR VIZQUEL  and GARY SHEFFIELD, who narrowly trailed Rolen in 2021.

That leaves Ortiz and Schilling as the sole likely  sportswriters’ electees when the votes are counted next month, but they’ll have plenty of company at the induction. That’s because two of the Hall’s several veterans’ committees elected a total of six old-timers to membership, including GIL HODGES and MINNIE MINOSO. The committees offer a side door to the Hall that, in my view, is overused. I’ll do a blog on that one day.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A PROVIDENTIAL TIE

 

       There’s a new college-football Game of the Century every few years, and some years there are more than one, but for me there will ever be one, even though it was played in the last century. That was the Army-Notre Dame game at Yankee Stadium in New York on November 9, 1946, which makes this year its 75^th, or diamond, anniversary. A more-precious commemoration couldn’t be found.

       The game was contested in the glow of the victorious end of World War II at a time when college football ranked with baseball and horse racing as our nation’s premier sporting entities. The world was smaller then, so its highlights stood out in greater relief than they do now. To say the nation stood still while the contest played out might be an overstatement, but not much of one.

       The game’s objective qualifications for G of-the C honors are substantial. The U.S. Military Academy was at the crest of its war-years football glory, carrying a 25-game winning streak and ranked No. 1 nationally, the place where it ended the 1943 and ’44 seasons. The Fighting Irish also were unbeaten and ranked No. 2, although many thought they deserved the top spot. They looked like a dynasty in the making, which is what they turned out to be.

       Army’s coach was Earl “Red” Blaik and Notre Dame’s was Frank Leahy, both Hall of Fame bound. Backfield stars Felix “Doc” Blanchard and Glenn Davis, “Mr. Inside” and “Mr. Outside” respectively, led the Cadets while returning war vets quarterback Johnny Lujack and tackle George Connors led the Irish. The game featured four actual or eventual Heisman Trophy winners (Davis in 1944, Blanchard in ’45, Lujack in ’46, and Notre Dame end Leon Hart in ’49), something that never happened before or since.

       My personal reason for enshrining the game was less, uh, catholic.  I was eight years old at the time, living around the corner from Our Lady of Lourdes church in Chicago’s Ravenswood section, the only Jewish kid in a mostly Catholic neighborhood. Some of my pals, and most of my nonpals, were vocal Notre Dame fans, and in the weeks preceding the game their bleatings became too much for me. I’d never seen adults play football except in movie newsreels, and wouldn’t have known “Doc” Blanchard if he’d stuck a tongue depressor in my mouth, but in an effort to silence them I made a number of bets that Army would win. A lot of bets, actually.

       If the gesture made me feel good, the feeling was fleeting. It quickly became apparent to me that one of two things would happen: I’d lose the bets and suffer the consequences of being unable to pay because my net worth amounted to, maybe, 35 cents, or I’d win and be obliged to try to collect, a process that probably would yield more bruises than cash. November 9 loomed as doomsday, for sure.

       Those were radio days, and I tuned in to the contest on our home Emerson. I groaned whenever Notre Dame threatened to score and reacted similarly to each Army thrust. Back and forth the two sides heaved in a grinding, error-filled (10-turnover) defensive battle, and my stomach heaved with them. Against all odds, the outcome was a 0-0 tie. Everybody said that suited nobody, but everybody was wrong because it suited me fine, providentially so.

       The anniversary caused me to do some research on the game, and some of the results seem worth mentioning. College teams back then played nine-game schedules, while those of today play regular seasons of 12 games and up to three more in playoffs or bowls. Mighty Army’s line, tackle to tackle, averaged 194 pounds a man while Notre Dame’s averaged 214, both about 100 pounds a man less than current editions.

       Players often went both ways then, and some of the game’s most important plays were defensive ones by players better known for their offensive skills. Arnold Tucker, Army’s quarterback, intercepted three passes as a defensive back and Lujack, functioning similarly, made a game-saving tackle on Blanchard.

       The tie permitted Army to keep its No. 1 ranking for the week, but while it played out its season without a loss it beat a weak Navy team by just 21-18 in their finale. Notre Dame finished stronger, thrashing Northwestern, Tulane and Southern California by a combined score of 94-6 and, as they do today, the displays enabled them to top the year-end Associated Press poll, which was considered definitive at the time.  Notre Dame would win 21 straight games after the Army tie and except for a 1948 tie with Southern Cal would go unbeaten into 1950. Its players who were freshmen for the Army game would finish their college careers with a record of 36-0-2.

       While I didn’t exactly root against Notre Dame in the Big Game, my childhood experiences rarely left me unhappy when the school lost in sports.  Nonetheless, my time as a sportswriter tempered that stance, as it did other such blanket aversions. Terry Brennan, a star of the ‘46 Irish team and later ND’s head football coach, retired to Chicago’s LaSalle Street financial district, and I came to like him quite a bit while interviewing him for a column.

        I did several pieces on Gerry Faust, the Notre Dame coach from 1981 through 1985, and kept in touch with him as I did with few other column subjects. Promoted from the high-school ranks to high-pressure ND, he didn’t shine in South Bend (his record there was 30-26-1), but he’s a fine guy and I wished him well in everything he did.

       And when the NCAA in 1996 instituted overtimes to eliminate football ties, I sighed on behalf of foolish little boys everywhere.

                

 

FALL BALL '21

 

               Of all the things whose loss depressed me during the pre-vax pandemic days of last year, the Arizona Fall League was near the top of the list. This annual baseball exercise for young minor leaguers was scratched, leaving a giant hole in my fall schedule. I rejoiced when it returned this year, back at its October-November calendar place after starting in too-hot September in 2019. By me, autumn is the best time of year in the desert, warm but not hot and with the bluest skies on the planet. If you’re planning a trip it’s the best time to come.

               The league ends its six-week, six-team, 36-game run on Saturday with its championship game, but team results are secondary to the league’s real purpose, which is to serve as a finishing school for some of the game’s top prospects in the 21-to-25-year-old age range. Each team sends seven to compete against their peers under the eyes of scouts, real and self-appointed. I’m one of the latter.

               MLB, which picks up the tab for the thing, also uses it to test proposed game changes. The big one this year was requiring two infielders on each side of second base when a ball is pitched, eliminating the radical shifts teams use to squelch pull hitters. The league batting average after four weeks was .267, against the Majors’ 2021 regular-season .244, so it seems to have worked in hyping offense. I hope they keep it.

               The size of the bases was increased to 18 inches square from 15, to prevent some first-base collisions and give base stealers a bit of a boost. Another good move, says I. A “robo ump” home-plate camera system to relay ball-strike calls to a live ump was installed at one of the league’s six ballparks, Salt River Fields in Scottsdale. It operated seamlessly; I judged that most fans didn’t know it was working until they were told. Its game-wide adoption is inevitable.

               Pitch clocks of 15 seconds with bases empty and 17 seconds with runners on were used, and enforced often enough to be noticed. I’ve seen no figures on game times but noticed no speedup. Lots of walks (22 in one game, 17 in another) was one reason, lots of strikeouts (to be expected these days) was another. Those usually are underestimated in discussions of baseball’s time problems.

               Talentwise, no player jumped out in the way Vlad Guerrero Jr., Kris Bryant or Nolan Arenado did in previous AFL go-rounds, but there were B-plus prospects aplenty. This year’s crop was headed by SPENCER TORKELSON, who was the No. 1 pick in the 2020 amateur draft, by the Detroit Tigers, after breaking Barry Bonds’ and Bob Horner’s home run records at Arizona State U. Just about all No. 1s appear in the bigs soonish and he’ll be no exception. The big first-baseball’s early-minors stats didn’t dazzle but he hit well here, going 9 for 20 with 8 walks and 4 strikeouts in seven games. Then he sprained an ankle, never to return, but it was apparent he got what he came for.

               The best prospect I saw was outfielder LARS NOOTBAR, 24, of the St. Louis Cardinals, but he was a ringer, having played 58 games with the Cards last season. The left-handed hitter is a finished product in the field and at the plate, where he showed power that belied his trim physique. One home run he hit at Camelback Park in Glendale cleared the fence and berm behind it and rattled around on the pavement in front of the Chicago White Sox’s spring headquarters building. He also has his own cheer—when he came to bat Cards’ fans on hand shouted “Noot! Noot!”

               The best all-around player I saw was outfielder ELIJAH DUNHAM, a New York Yankees’ chattel. Just 22 years old, he’s among league leaders in hitting (at .348) and had walked 13 times with just 8 Ks. He’s a perpetual-motion machine on field; in one game I saw he had three hits, walked, was hit by a pitch, stole a base and threw out a runner at second from left field. He also tore his pants and, probably, leads the league in dirty uniforms.

               The biggest surprise has been NELSON VELASQUEZ, a 22-year-old outfielder from Puerto Rico and property of my Chicago Cubs. Ranked as the Cubs’ 29^th best prospect coming in, and a 2017 5^th round draft choice, he’s hitting .366 with a league-leading 9 home runs and 1.194 OPS, which stands for on-base plus slugging. He has a sturdy build and quick, compact right-handed swing. Having stripped their roster to its skivvies the Cubs have plenty of holes to fill and can’t afford to ignore him.

               JETER DOWNS, 23, named to play baseball, is a middle infielder in the Boston Red Sox chain who hits stronger than his slim build. The mellifluously named J.J. BLEDAY, 23, the 4^th player picked in the 2019 draft by the Miami Marlins out of Vanderbilt U., oozes power and potential. Outfielder MATT WALNER, 23, from the Minnesota Twins’ chain, is a big guy (6-foot-5) who hits big and strikes out a lot, which makes him a typical major leaguer. First baseman JUAN YEPEZ, 23, from Venezuela, signed at age 16 by the Atlanta Braves and traded to the St. Louis Cardinals, and with five minor-league seasons under his belt, is near the top of every AFL hitting category.

 There are three catcher spots on just about every 26-man MLB roster, so WILLIE MACIVER’s prospects look good. He’s 25, a bit elderly for the AFL, but catchers take time to develop. The Colorado Rockies’ possession is speedy for the position, having stolen 20 bases at the AA level last season.

Pitchers are hard to track in the AFL because they appear only every fourth or fifth game, and then usually for short stints, but I saw a few standouts. More good news for the Cubs came from CALEB KILLIAN, 24, a tall righthander they obtained from the San Francisco Giants in the Kris Bryant trade. He got bashed for 8 earned runs in his 2-inning debut here but then pitched 12 scoreless innings. His minor-league card shows 112 strikeouts and just 13 walks with three Class A and AA teams last season. He has outshone RYAN JENSEN, a higher-touted Cubs’ pitching prospect and the team’s No. 1 2019 draft choice. Jensen struck out the first two batters he faced in a game last Monday, then gave up 10 hits and a walk to the next 17. Online speculation the next day concluded he must have been tipping his pitches.

R.J. DABOVICH, 22, from the Giants’ chain, throws in the high 90s, strikes out many and walks many, too. He was fun to watch. SETH CORRY, 23, also with the Giants, had the best curve ball I saw and wasn’t afraid to use it. JOHAN DOMINGUEZ, 25, from the Dominican Republic and the Chicago White Sox, has strikeout stuff.

There’s a week left in the season so catch a game if you’re in the neighborhood. You, too, can be a scout.

 

 

 

NEWS & VIEWS

 

               NEWS-- BRAVES, ASTROS SQUARE OFF IN THE WORLD SERIES

               VIEW-- YAY, BOO

               My rules for rooting in matters of sport are simple. As a born and bred Chicagoan, and resident there for 50 years, I root for any team that has the city’s name on its jerseys. Period.

               As a kid I had teams I hated, mainly the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals. That was because they regularly beat up on the teams I rooted for. I also thought the members of those teams were bad people, on general principles rather than because of any specific reasons. Virtue, I believed, was the exclusive province of my Cubs, White Sox, Bears, etc. How could it be otherwise?

               As an adult, and later a sportswriter, I tempered the “hate” part of the above equation, having learned that good guys and jerks are about equally distributed among our sporting entities. My anti-Yankee stance in particular was blunted by my contact with Joe Torre, the team’s manager in the late 1990s and early ‘00s, whom I found to be a pleasant and gentlemanly person. Now I’m firmly neutral about the Yanks, as with other non-Chicago teams.

               But the current baseball World Series, matching the Braves of Atlanta, Georgia, against the Astros of Houston, Texas, provides an exception. I’m for the Braves and against the Astros. The reason should be obvious to any sports-page reader. Between late-season 2016 and mid-season 2018, the Astros perpetrated one the biggest frauds in the history of any sport by stealing opponents’ pitch signs and relaying the results to their hitters.   

               Yes, sign-stealing is a baseball tradition, and all teams do it or try to, but this was no canny coach’s trick but an organized, team-managed project with electronic help, a TV camera in the team’s home-park centerfield stands. It was cheating on a grand scale and it worked, contributing to the team’s 2017 World Series victory. It was discovered only after a player the team traded away clued in his new teammates to the scheme. How it figured this wouldn’t happen boggles the mind.

               Once exposed, the Astros pleaded guilty, or pretty much so. They were fined $5 million and docked some draft picks. Three men (general manager Jeff Luhnow, field manager A.J. Hinch and his bench coach, Alex Cora) first were suspended and then fired. It is testimony to the seriousness with which capital “B” Baseball took those actions that Hinch and Cora got other managerial jobs as soon as they became available, Hinch with the Detroit Tigers and Cora with the Boston Braves. In baseball the wages of sin are more wages.

No players were penalized, assertedly because they contributed to the investigation but probably because the owners didn’t want players’ union grief. The other penalties were similarly soft. The Astros should have had their ’17 title revoked and their 2020 (or 2021) season cancelled. I know, that last thing wouldn’t have been good for anybody’s business, but I’m just sayin’.

The playing- field core of the team’s 2016-2018 roster—Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa and Yuli Gurriel—are still around, hammering out hits and soaking up money and home-crowd applause. Excellent as they are, their actions should lump them with the steroid-using cheaters when they come up for Hall of Fame consideration.

Among the most-galling parts of the scandal’s aftermath has been the way the press, etc., has come to treat it. Journalists love to portray athletes as battling obstacles, and the booing the ‘Stros receive in foreign parks is viewed as one of those, bravely overcome by the doughty Houstonians. Teesh and double teesh.

NEWS: THE PHOENIX SUNS’ DEANDRE AYTON BREAKS OFF CONTRACT TALKS, CLAIMING LACK OF “RESPECT” FROM THE TEAM

VIEW: BELIEVE THE MAN

Ayton, the first choice in the 2018 National Basketball Association draft and the starting center on the Suns’ league-runnerup unit last season, is a fourth-year player and thus is eligible for a star’s five-year maximum-extension contract, currently worth $172.5 million. He asked for that in talks but the team balked, reportedly offering only three- or four-year pacts. A few others in his draft class, including the Dallas Mavericks’ Luca Doncic and the Atlanta Hawks’ Trae Young, had gotten the max, setting  Ayton’s teeth on edge, as it were.

“I want to be respected, to be honest,” he was quoted as saying. “I want to be respected the way my peers are being respected by their teams.”

His answer was widely haw-hawed, but I don’t think it should have been. Player salaries in our Big Four pro spectator sports have climbed so high as to be abstractions to the young men who get them. Separated from any earthly needs, they have become valuable mainly as status symbols, like a player’s position in a playground choose-up game.

Let us consider where Ayton is coming from. At age 23, with just a year of college (or, at least, college ball) under his belt, the seven-footer from the Bahamas already has received almost $28 million for his NBA labors, and is due to get another $12 million this season. Even after taxes, etc., that’s enough to absolve him and his family from work for several generations. In all likelihood he’ll earn several times that $40 million before he’s done playing, max-extension or no. He’ll be able to buy an island in his home chain when he quits, so a few million dollars more or less is no big deal.

It’s not much different down the pro-jock food chain. The average salary in the NBA is more than $8 million a year, which means many players earn more in a month than their fathers earned in a lifetime. Even the league’s minimum annual salary of almost $600,000 should be enough to give a young man a nice cushion for later endeavors.

 That’s great by me-- as Babe Ruth said (or is said to have said), “nobody who works for somebody else is overpaid.” Respect, though, is another thing. There’s a worldwide shortage of it, with no end in sight.

 

SIDE DOORS

 

               The two-year-old saga about rich people trying to buy their kids’ way into high-toned colleges now is playing out in the courts, with predictable results. A number of the 50 or so people charged with giving or receiving bribes have pleaded guilty and been handed prison sentences measured in months instead of years. It’s no news that our courts treat upper-class criminals more kindly than less-favored ones, and the trials now in progress in Boston should have similar outcomes.

               The connection with sports is that most of the finagling that was done involved phony athletic credentials that allowed bribe-getting coaches to sneak academically unqualified aspirants past their school’s admissions officers. This is a familiar feature of American academe, so familiar it has a name-- “side-dooring.” That entrance portal is available to jocks of many stripes with no criminal involvement. Ivy League schools routinely bend their admissions standards to improve their teams and so do other NCAA members that claim not to award athletics scholarships. That also goes for our national military academies, which additionally will arrange prep-school rides for the athletically talented who haven’t made the grade in high school.

               It’s been noticed by some that the Government minions behind the current prosecutions had to stretch to identify a victim in the frauds. That issue also arose in a 2018 episode in which an FBI “sting” operation netted some coaches and middlemen for funneling under-the-table money from the shoe-company Adidas to A-level basketball recruits being wooed by schools affiliated with the company. The immediate parties in that one (the kids, coaches and Adidas) all stood to benefit from the schemes so it was decided that the universities involved had been defrauded, even though their coffers would have swelled had they succeeded in landing the kids in question. If they were capable of doing so, prosecutors might have blushed advancing that theory.

               College-sports revenues didn’t much come into play in the present cases because its side-door portals were connected to such “minor” (i.e., non-revenue) sports as tennis, soccer and water polo. That was because sought-after football and basketball recruits tend to be so well known that unfamiliar names can’t be slipped into the mix. In the minor sports admissions people tend to take the word of coaches for who should and shouldn’t be given special treatment, thus opening the way to manipulations.

               About $25 million was said to have changed hands in the deals, funneled through William “Rick” Singer, a former basketball coach who ran a firm that facilitated college enrollments. One of his biggest conduits was Rudy Meredith, a one-time soccer coach at Yale who pocketed $400,000 in one admissions scheme and lined up $450,000 in another before investigators stepped in.

But while corrupt coaches got most of the money some went to the supposedly victimized schools. A case in point involved Stanford U and John Vandemoer, its former sailing coach. A September 27 story in the New York Times, by Billy Witz, tells how Vandemoer turned over to the university the $770,000 he received from Singer to help gain entry for two students. The story said he pocketed nothing but was fired nonetheless and spent a day in jail and six months in house arrest after a felony guilty plea for racketeering conspiracy he says he entered because he couldn’t stand the expense of a criminal trial.

Putting aside the question of why any university save the Naval and Coast Guard academies needs a sailing team, the episode sheds light on the role in the bigger college-sports picture of men’s non-revenue sports and just about all of those for women. Begun to create recreational outlets for students, they now are maintained in part to enable the big-timers to claim they’re not just football or basketball factories. They survive because of small but dedicated alumni factions and, since the 1972 enactment of the so-called Title IX, the need to satisfy a government requirement that women and men have equal access to athletics scholarships.

 Except for a few places like Eugene, Oregon (for track and field) and Iowa City, Iowa (wrestling), the teams don’t pay their own way and depend on various kinds of charity to continue. They live precarious existences, always waiting for the axe to fall in the next economy wave. Revenue losses from Covid-19 brought wholesale slaughter to the minor-sport ranks; by one published tally 35 NCAA Division I schools alone cut 112 such teams between January and June of this year.

The Times story made clear the ties between Singer and the august institution in Palo Alto, California. It said that when Vandemoer turned over one Singer check for $500,000 to Bernard Muir, Stanford’s athletics director, he was met with warm congratulations. When the coach tried to explain the source of the money Muir cut him off, saying “we know Rick.” The piece said Singer was known to other Stanford coaches and sometimes entered Vandemoer’s office unannounced even though a key card was needed for access to the athletics-department building. Stanford’s “side door” also included a front door, it seemed.

The list of colleges with which Singer did business was long, also including Georgetown, the U. of Texas, UCLA, Cal Berkeley and Southern Cal. One female student he “helped” was a family friend of a USC trustee. Far from being victims of the frauds, the universities involved were beneficiaries. The corruption that sustains their entertainment enterprises runs deep. At the least it should spur Congress to take a critical look at the tax-free status their athletics revenues enjoy.

 

 

 

LUCK

 

               Of all the adages swimming around in our heads maybe the dumbest is the one about how it’s better to be lucky than good. It’s a common one in sports, trotted out every time an errant play turns a game. Gary Kasparov, the chess champion and no-nonsense guy, wrote it off rightly as ridiculous. Said he, “In any competitive endeavor you have to be damned good before luck can be of any use to you.”

               This is not to say that luck plays no role in sporting outcomes—far from it. Every day a bloop hit or phantom pass-interference call decides a contest, to the glee of some and despair of others, and having money on the game multiplies the hurt to losers. Every gambler can regale you for hours about the “bad beats” he’s suffered, more than anyone else has had, for sure. The good breaks he’s received usually are forgotten in the recitation.

               In team sports as elsewhere, the role of luck can be quantified, more or less. The more games that are played in any competition the less luck figures into the final standings, and the more points that are scored the less it can determine any individual result. By those guidelines Major League baseball with its 162-game annual regular-season schedule, and NBA basketball, with its single-game point tallies of 200 or so, are the least luck-bound and low-scoring ice hockey and soccer are the most, with football somewhere between.  Hockey has a term to describe the games decided by fluke goals: “Puck Luck.” But even there random occurrences tend to balance out over an 82-game National Hockey League schedule and the best teams usually come out on top.

               Come playoff time, however, the leavening effect of the long run disappears, and randomness is magnified. Baseball’s post-season begins with a couple of one-and-done “play in” games that round out the final playoff fields of eight teams, four in each league. Those are total crap shoots.  The best-of-five games divisional series’ follow, then the best-of-seven league-championship and World Series rounds.  Taken together that’s a good chunk of starts, but sweeping one round doesn’t affect later ones, so survivors start from “go” each time.

               The subject of luck occurred to me because the Chicago White Sox, my No. 1A favorite team (the Cubs are No. 1), are in the playoffs. If luck in the broad sense really matters in baseball, then the White Sox are among baseball’s biggest losers.  But they recouped much of that in 2005 with a mind-boggling hot streak that resulted in their World Series victory.

               What the Irish call “bad cess” began for the Sox when they committed baseball’s all-time worst blunder by getting caught throwing the 1919 World Series, resulting in the lifetime suspensions of the heart of the roster that also had won the ’17 title. That would be their last championship in 88 years, a span of futility topped only by my Cubbies’ 108 years ending in 2016.   In that period the Sox won but one American League pennant (in 1959) and rarely challenged for another. Their best team in that era was that of 1994, when they led their division into August only to have the remainder of the regular season, and the playoffs, cancelled by a players’ strike. That never happened before and hasn’t since.

               Relatedly, the Sox have spent the last 40 years as the No. 2 team in a two-team market, trailing the Cubs in every financial category.  Bad management decisions contributed to that status, but so did geography, their South Side of the city trailing the Cubs’ North Side as an entertainment lure. That’s denied them the wherewithal to be regular title contenders in a money-driven game.

               As 2005 dawned few saw the Sox as world beaters, and man-for-man they weren’t. They wound up winning 99 regular-season games without leading any important league individual statistical category, taking a Golden Glove or Silver Slugger award or having anyone elected to play in that year’s All-Star Game. What they had was a group of solid veteran position players led by first-baseman Paul Konerko, outfielder Jermaine Dye and catcher A. J. Pierzynski, and that year’s best and luckiest starting-pitching rotation. Mark Buerhle, Freddy Garcia, Jon Garland and Jose Contreras went through the season injury free, each making 30-plus starts and pitching 200-plus innings. If that wasn’t lucky nothing is.

               The Sox’s good fortune really kicked during the playoffs. They swept the Boston Red Sox in the Division Series, beat the L.A. Angels four games to one in the ALCS and eliminated the Houston Astros in straight sets in the World Series. Their 11-1 record has been matched only once, by the 1999 New York Yankees, in the extended-playoff era.

               This is not to say the wins were easy or without oddities. With his team leading 4-2 in game two of their series, Red Sox second-baseman Tony Graffanino muffed an inning-ending double-play grounder that set up the Chicagoans’ winning three-run home run. Scott Podsednik, a speedy but light-hitting White Sox outfielder who’d hit no home runs in 568 regular-season at-bats, hit one against the Red Sox and a walk-off shot that gave the team a 7-6 win in World Series game two.

 Buehrle, Garland, Garcia and Contreras pitched consecutive complete-game wins against the Angels, an eye-popping feat 16 years ago and just about impossible now. Game three of the Houston series was won in 14 innings on a home run by Geoff Blum, a backup who’d had just one previous post-season at-bat.

In a play that still amazes, game two against the Angels went into the bottom of the ninth inning in Chicago tied 1-1. With two outs, the canny Pierzynski swung and missed a low pitch for strike three but saw that the ball might have skimmed the dirt and took off for first base while the Angels were leaving the field. After extended and spirited discussion the umps let him stay there. His pinch runner stole second base and scored on a Joe Crede hit for a Sox 2-1 win. TV replays showed the ball was cleanly caught but they weren’t used to affect decisions until three years later. Bad luck, Angels.

The White Sox team that’s going into this season’s playoffs looks like better on paper than the ’05 edition.  It features a cast of flashy young hitters, a good starting staff and the baseball’s best 1-2 bullpen pair of Craig Kimbrel and Liam Hendriks. Alas, though, it so dominated its weak division that it played few regular-season games of consequence and often seemed uninterested as it plodded through a near-500 second half.  At their best the Sox can beat anyone, but they can lose to anyone, too. A little good luck wouldn’t hurt.   

    

TOO FAT

 

               Another National Football League season is here—goody-goody—and as usual I’ll be spending an inordinate amount of time watching it on the tube. I’m hard-pressed to explain this. Basketball players are better athletes than footballers and the numberless hours I spent on Chicago’s softball diamonds gave me a mental and visceral connection to the parent sport of baseball. By contrast, as a too-little kid I steered clear of the “F” sport, my participation pretty much limited to autumn games of "touch" in the alley behind my Paulina Street home.

               In recent years I’ve also developed moral qualms about football. Beyond a doubt it’s a gladiatorial sport that requires players to roll the dice with their health. I tell myself they’re volunteers, and adult pros accept the risks they face, but I doubt if many make the choice with the full understanding of what could be in store for them. Neurological injuries caused by the game’s incessant head butting are the main danger; a recently reported survey of 3,500 retired NFL players, average age 53, showed that 12% said they were suffering with “severe” cognitive issues, and 25% said they had symptoms of clinical depression or anxiety. That probably understates the true extent of the situation, because self-reporting usually minimizes such things and neurological damage can manifest itself many years after the causative blows.

On top of that is the damage to bones and joints that football brings. Rare is the NFL player who hasn’t gone under the knife at some point as a high-schooler, collegian or pro, and multiple surgeries are the rule for veterans. Mark Schlereth, who spent 12 seasons as an offensive lineman with the Washington (then) Redskins and Denver Broncos (1989-2000), underwent 29 operations, 20 on his knees (15 left, five right) and the rest on his back, shoulders and arms. A connoisseur of such things, he’s said “If I could take back the back surgery, I’d take another 20 knee surgeries instead.”  

Joint injuries generally aren’t life-threatening, but even when corrected surgically they tend to get worse over time. Joints that have been injured are more prone than others to arthritis and other ravages of age. I recall seeing Dick Butkus, the personification of football ferocity, hauling himself around stiff-legged 25 years after his playing days ended. As a result of his football injuries he has a metal knee replacement, and other surgeries left one leg 1 ½ inches shorter than the other.

But while brain and joint damage stem from the nature of football and, thus, are inevitable, another important football health issue isn’t. I mean the sort of intentional obesity to which some players, especially linemen, subject themselves. In brief, most of those guys are too fat, and have to be to keep their jobs.

 There was a time when a “big man” playing at or near his natural weight could have a fine NFL career; the starting O-Line of the 1965 Green Bay Packers, a great team by any measure, consisted of center Ken Bowman, guards Jerry Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston and tackles Forrest Gregg and Bob Skoronski, each of whom weighed in at between 230 and 250 pounds. Today, they’d have to buy tickets to get near an NFL field at those weights.

As late as 1985 300-pounders were considered freakish in football; remember the fuss when William Perry, a defensive lineman nicknamed “The Refrigerator” for his blocky build and love of food, debuted with the Chicago Bears at that weight? It turned out he was a pioneer. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the average weight of starting offensive linemen in the league jumped from 254 pounds in 1970 to 277 pounds in 1990, to 309 pounds in 2000 and to 315 pounds today.

The reason for the increase is simple: the bigger a lineman is the harder he is to move. Some of the increase may be muscle, but most is fat. One study I came across reported that the average body fat of an NFL lineman is 24.8%, 0.2% short of the clinical definition of obesity. That was about twice the body-fat average of players at the other positions.

Football players work hard and maintaining their weight is about as much trouble as gaining it. A case in point was Joe Thomas, a perennial All-Pro offensive tackle in his 11 seasons with the Cleveland Browns, ending with his 2018 retirement.  He played football in high school at about 240 pounds, bulked up to 300 at the University of Wisconsin, and added about 25 pounds more as a pro. His 6-foot-6 frame enabled him to do that without loss of mobility, but it was not without effort. A piece last year on overweight football pros on the ESPN.com website described his typical daily playing-days menu thusly:

               Breakfast—Four pieces of bacon¸ four sausage links, eight eggs, three pancakes and oatmeal with peanut butter.

               Lunch—Pasta with meatballs, cookies and “a salad maybe.”

               Dinner—A whole deep-dish pizza, a sleeve of Thin Mint Girl Scouts cookies and a bowl of ice cream.

               On top of that came a couple of daily protein shakes and between-meals and bedtime snacks. “If I went two hours without eating I’d want to cut off your arm and eat it,” he told the ESPN reporter. “We got weighed on Mondays and if I lost five pounds my coach would give me hell.”

               Fun it wasn’t, he continued, saying he “crushed Tums” nightly but still had constant heartburn, and gulped various pain meds and anti-inflammatories to cope with his aches. In the first two years of his retirement he began eating and exercising “like a normal human,” threw away the meds and lost 60 pounds. “The health benefits were amazing,” he exulted.

               The other side of the coin is grim, as personified by the abovementioned Mr. Perry. His weight crept up throughout a nine-year NFL career (1985-94) and kept climbing in retirement, eventually nearing 450 pounds. He lost most of that later, but not in a healthy way. Now, at age 58, he’s in a wheelchair, suffering from diabetes and circulatory issues, among other things.  One only can hope that the memory of the cheers he received in his prime eases his current condition.

               The NFL’s unhealthful fatter-the-better regime could easily be halted by the league establishing an upper limit on weight. Olympic freestyle wrestling did this in the 1980s after huge men, such as the 400-pound American Chris Taylor, had come to dominate the heavyweight division by size alone.  A top weight limit of 130 kilograms (286 pounds) was put into effect for the 1988 Games and by 2021 it had been adjusted to 125 kg (275).  That’s big enough, dontcha think?

              

 

 

 

BASEBALL ZOMBIES

 

               For some baseball teams September is the month for edgy watching of scoreboards for the progress of the divisional races, or, at least, a lingering hope for same. For others, that hope has been abandoned and the remaining games exist only for the accumulation of gate receipts and individual stats.

               Unfortunately, my home-town Chicago Cubs and my new-home Arizona Diamondbacks are in the latter category, and have been for some time. Indeed, both have been zombies since early summer, plodding along from defeat to defeat with no hope of reward. Such is the downside of baseball’s long, long season. It would have been merciful to put both out of their misery long ago.

               An interesting argument could be made over which of the two teams is worse. The D’backs have an overall edge with a 44-90 won-lost mark as of Monday (9/1) to the Cubs’ 58-75, but the Arizonans have been less terrible in recent weeks. They started the season well enough, posting a 14-12 record in April, but then took a cannonball dive by going 8-48 in May and June, a scarcely believable fall when it’s remembered that baseball is a game in which the best teams win about six of 10 while the worst go about 4-6. Included in that May-June swoon was a 24-game road losing streak, the worst in the sport’s officially recorded history.

               The Cubs have had a weird year, begun with the off-season trade of their best starting pitcher, Yu Darvish, for a passel of pink-cheeked prospects. The message sent out by that deal was clear, but the team began well enough anyway, winning 38 of their 65 games at mid-June. Gravity then set in, leading to losing steaks of 11 and 12 games since, with a record 13-game home losing streak among them. They engineered an epic salary dump at the July 31 trade deadline, erasing just about all human reminders of their 2016 World Series triumph. Since late June they’ve been the worst team in baseball, with no end in sight.

               Nobody expected much of the 2021 D’Backs, so the Cubs’ collapse was the most notable. Pending free agency dictated that they let go some of their World Series core, but few expected that Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez and Kris Bryant all would be jettisoned, along with the ace relief pitcher Craig Kimbrel. That was in addition to the veteran outfielder Joc Petersen, who’d been moved earlier. The haul the Cubs received in return included only two bona fide Major Leaguers, second baseman Nick Madrigal and relief pitcher Codi Heuer, both from the Chicago White Sox, and Madrigal already was out for the season with a hamstring tear.

               It would be nice to report that the Cubs had a bunch of promising young minor leaguers ready to debut at Wrigley Field, but such was not the case. MLB.com’s ranking of minor-league systems had the Cubs 22^nd among the 30 teams before the July moves, and they moved up only four spots afterward. Some of the newly acquired players are pups, too young to be reflected in such rankings, but it can’t be said that that other help from below is near at hand.

Instead, the Cubs have filled their roster with journeyman players with little long-term upside. The prime example of that is outfielder Rafael Ortega, who has played well in Chicago but is 30 years old and with his seventh big-league organization. Frank Schwindel, Matt Duffy and Patrick Wisdom are similar in age and biography. Two of the team’s remaining vets, Ian Happ and Jason Heyward, have struggled all year to get their batting averages above .200, and can’t be counted as assets.  Trusty vet Kyle Hendricks is their sole proven pitcher.

To create any interest among the Cubs’ faithful owner Ricketts will have to open his purse big time in the offseason. A reputed billionaire, and with one of the game’s highest ticket-price structures, he should have ample resources for that, but he does strange things so who knows? If he falls short my friend Eddie Cohen, founder of Cubs Fans Anonymous, is threatening to revive that organization and have followers march on Wrigley with torches and pitchforks.

The D’backs’ prospects are at least as discouraging. This season has revealed several useful young players, including second baseman Josh Rojas, first-baseman-outfielder Pavin Smith and catcher Daulton Varsho, and MLB.com rates their farm system as ninth best. But their pitching is beyond woeful, last week ranking 29^th among the MLB’s 30, and it will take more than minor-league help to correct that.

 The team went the big-money route in 2020, luring the San Francisco Giants’ World Series hero Madison Bumgarner to the desert with an $85 million contract, but he’s been mediocre at best and has three more years and $60 million owing. It got a pick-me-up a few weeks ago, when lefty Tyler Gilbert threw a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres in his first big-league start, but he’s no kid at age 27 and got whacked for four runs on nine hits in five innings in his next start.

I can’t look into anyone’s pockets so I don’t know what resources the D’backs owners can command, but by rep they don’t match those of the Cubs. The team doesn’t draw well even when it wins so much help from that source is unlikely. The team stood pat last off-season, hoping for internal improvement. It’ll take a truckload of that to get it out of its present rut. 

 

 

  

NILISM

 

               The word “nil” means zero in soccer, but capitalized and turned into the acronym NIL it means a whole lot in college sports. The letters stand for name, image and likeness, and sale of the use of them will put legal income in the pockets of some college athletes without altering their competitive status. It’s a change that will revolutionize the games collegiates play, with results we now can only guess at. The saying “watch what you wish for” seems to apply here.

               The new era began legally on July 1 but the money has yet to start flowing in earnest. There will be rules governing what sort of income is and isn’t okay, but as yet they are unclear. Twenty six states have passed laws permitting NIL payouts, creating a hodgepodge of regulations.

The NCAA has given its reluctant approval, and has drawn its own lines, but it and most other actors in the field are hoping for Federal action that will unify and clarify. This in itself is revolutionary; heretofore the NCAA has resisted any Federal involvement in its affairs, the camel’s nose in the tent thing, you know. It’s not an idle fear and I’ll treat it later.

Even at this early time, though, a couple of things about the new era seem certain. One is that it will involve a lot more money than was previously imagined by me and, I’d bet, most other people. The other is that it won’t be distributed equally or nearly so. About 450,000 students in the NCAA’s 1,100 or so member schools are varsity athletes and the soccer-word nil will apply to most of them.  For a lucky few, however, it will be a bonanza, creating a new class of undergrad millionaires. A good thing, huh? Or maybe uhuh.

The magic word is this context is “followers.” Sure, jocks may be able to pick up a few hundred dollars, or even a few thousand, signing autographs at a booster’s auto dealership or being teacher-counselors at summer sports camps. In one deal already announced, a Miami gym owner has pledged to pay each of the U. of Miami’s 90 scholarship football players $500 a month for each year they’re eligible, or $540,000 a year in total, for promotional services.

  Another avenue for spreading the wealth, at least among football and basketball players at the “Power Five” conferences, will be income from electronic-game makers. NFL players reportedly each take in $48,000 a year from those sources, and less-numerous NBAers $400,00 a year. The per-player divisor will be much higher among the colleges, but the haul still should be substantial.

But the real money will come from endorsements on the so-called social mediums. Being elderly, I don’t have much truck with these, but many (maybe most) under-40s do, and reputedly they can be persuaded to buy or do things suggested by the “influencers” that create content for the likes of Instagram and TikToc. According to online sources their followings can be sold to advertisers for annual rates of up to eight cents a year. Multiplied by hundreds of thousands of followers and by several advertisers, those pennies can turn into big dollars. To paraphrase Ev Dirksen, a hundred thousand dollars here and hundred thousand there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

That’s apparently what’s in store for Spencer Rattler, the quarterback of the U. of Oklahoma Sooners and Heisman Award candidate. With a catchy name, blond coif and strong arm, he’s big on social media, and his agency, led by the famed Leigh Steinberg, is painting quick millionaire status for him. Much the same goal has been set for Bryce Young, the projected starting QB for the U. of Alabama’s always-highly-rated football team, and he’s a sophomore who has yet to start a college game.

But while the big majority of social-media money will go to footballing and basketballing collegiate males, they won’t get it all. The Cavinder twins, Haley and Hannah, play basketball beautifully at Fresno U. and maintain a lively online presence for their reported four million (yep) followers. Margzetta Frazier, a UCLA gymnast with show-business aspirations, does likewise for a smaller but still sizable audience. A high-school hoopster, Mikey Williams from San Diego, also is said to be poised to cash in big from people mesmerized by his flying dunks.

Still, the economic prospects of, say, a second-string offensive guard at Purdue aren’t brilliant, and that could lead to difficulties. Income inequality is well established in professional sports, where players earning a measly one or two million per locker next to teammates pulling down 20 times as much, but it might not play as well in the college realm. Will the above-mentioned kid, living in a dorm and riding a bike around campus, go all out to block for his penthouse-living, Cadillac-driving QB?

 Maybe more importantly, playing a big-time college sport while pursuing an education (one hopes) already is a fulltime job and then some, so where will the time come from to make in-person or online commercial appearances? Rich or poor, the number of hours in a collegian’s day is fixed, and there are distractions aplenty as it is.

The NCAA’s retreat from its historic stance on amateurism already has had consequences. It’s both cause and effect of the loss of political clout that led to the retreat; years of its hypocrisy and money-grubbing has alienated even spineless pols who used to support alma mater no matter what.

 Further, no matter what the rules, income opportunities for jocks inevitably will turn recruiting into the Wild West and lead to the survival of the fattest. Traditional conference structures could collapse and “superconferences” form; for evidence see the recent move of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC from the Big 12 and the talks now underway between the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12. The situation may make the just-pay-‘em folks happy, but everyone doesn’t root for ‘Bama or Ohio State. Like I wrote above, watch what you wish for.

                

O NEWS & VIEWS

 

               NEWS: Simone Biles bows out of Olympics, citing mental health concerns.

               VIEWS: GOAT or “goat”?

               As the Olympics began there was no doubt about which of the 11,000 or so athletes in its various fields deserved to be called the star. It was Biles, the gymnast with the Atomic Ant physique, whose 2016 O Games all-around gold medal, and five other world-championship all-around firsts, stamped her as a performer without peer, the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) in her demanding sport.

               But then, shockingly, the 24-year-old packed it in after the first event of the all-around final last Tuesday, saying she wasn’t in the right “head space” to continue to compete. Her teammates carried on without her but could muster only a silver medal in the event in which they’d been heavily favored to win. 

               Reaction was swift, and while like just about everything else these days it divided along red-blue political lines, that which came to my attention was mostly positive. No definite diagnosis was offered but it was assumed that the gymnast suffered from a mental illness, and that was apt grounds for her action. USA Gymnastics, her sport’s U.S. governing body, applauded “her bravery in prioritizing her well being.”  The head of the World Health Organization said what she did put the seriousness of mental illness in a proper and overdue spotlight.

               One cannot judge Biles without having lived in her leotard, but a few observations seem in order. One is that she’d embraced her celebrity, even reportedly fashioning a “GOAT” emoji to decorate her texts. Another is that she constantly pushed the envelope of gymnastics by developing new and more difficult twists to her routines, thus bringing her closer to the edge of an already dangerous sport and increasing her possible anxiety about bringing them off.

 And while her leaving took the weight off herself it increased it on the teammates she left behind.  Said Sunisa Lee, the 18-year-old who took over team leadership by default, and whose gritty performance helped the U.S. team gain a silver, “it was the most pressure I’ve ever felt in my life.” Lee went on to establish her own stardom by winning the Games’ individual all-around gold medal.

Biles is a young woman with the biggest part of her life ahead of her. One hopes that her new self-knowledge will guide her future actions.

NEWS: Women make up 49% of 2021 Olympic athletes, bringing virtual gender equity to the Games.

VIEWS: It’s the U.S.’s Title IX at work worldwide.

This year’s sex breakdown compares with 44% women in 2012 and 46% in 2016 and caps a 50-year rise. The boost corresponds to the tenure of Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendment Act of 1972, which decreed that American schools and colleges provide women students with athletic opportunities equal to those of men. While still controversial in some circles, it unquestionably sparked nothing less than a sports revolution. U.S. world domination of women’s basketball and soccer has been one result, but it’s had global implications as well.

For proof one need look no further than the web site of the University of Southern California, which quadrennially leads the U.S. collegiate pack in producing Olympians. It notes that this year 65 Olympic athletes are present or past Trojans, representing 32 different countries. It’s a bigger contingent than that of 164 of the 205 nations represented in Toyko. Thirty nine of the 65 are female, led by Katinka Husszu of Hungary, a four-medal-winning swimmer at the 2016 Games. Additionally, two USC coaches are in Tokyo coaching foreign teams.

Foreign women (and men) athletes come to U.S. colleges for education (one hopes), but also for the superior sports facilities and coaching the institutions offer. The free room and board that comes with an athletic scholarship is a potent lure—most other countries offer no equivalent aid. Most imported jocks are represented in tennis and golf, but swimming and track and field also rank high. It puts a new twist on the term “home team,” huh?

NEWS: Skateboarding debuts as an Olympic sport.

VIEWS: Ouch!

Daredevil sports are nothing new to the Olympics, but usually when the daredevils crash they come down on soft materials, like foam, sand or snow. Not so in skateboarding. In an effort at verisimilitude the Tokyo Games laid out a “street scene” course of ramps, stairs and railings made of or set in concrete. No soft landings on that stuff.

I suppose that was okay for the male side of the event, where most of the contestants (and all three medal winners) were in their 20s and of the age of consent, but the “women’s” side was mostly teens, and some just barely-- the gold and silver medals went to kids of 13 and the bronze to a 16-year-old. When they crashed I expected their moms to run out to succor them.

   Clearly change is called for, something along the lines of gymnastics, which some years back raised its minimum O age to the year an athlete turns 16. If gymnastics were staged on concrete it’d long since have been banned.

NEWS: NBC’s Olympic coverage enters its 33^rd year, at great cost.

VIEW: Does the network own the Games, or vice versa?

NBC began broadcasting the Olympics in 1988 and its current contract, worth a reported $12 billion, runs to 2032. It’s the Games biggest single supporter by far but one wonders who’s getting the best of the deal.

The network’s previous Summer O anchor was Bob Costas, who sometimes added tart commentary to his hosting. This time it’s Mike Tirico, an affable sort whose style is best suited to one of those happy-talk morning shows.  Event announcing has been predictably rah-rah-USA, the features fawning to their subjects with dollops of pathos. The IOC loves it, I bet.

The worst example of NBC brown-nosing has been it’s parroting of the term “Russian Olympic Committee” in referring to the Russian team. You’d think those athletes compete wearing waistcoats and carrying briefcases. That’s the term the IOC decreed as a fig leaf for its capitulation to Russia’s horrendous cheating in past Games. They’re just Russian, folks, all 300-plus of them, and they look to be having as good a time as any in Toyko, God love ‘em.

 

 

 

 

 

 

              

              

OLYMPICS 'SI,' IOC 'NO'

 

               Let me say from the beginning that I like the Olympics. Indeed, I’m a big fan, having covered eight of them (Summer Games in Los Angeles, Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney; Winter Games at Calgary, Albertville and Lillehammer), and rank the experiences among my most memorable.  For color, excitement and quality of athletic performance they can’t be surpassed. Many a grizzled pro has been touched by the Olympic aura and known to shed a tear on a medals platform.

               What I don’t like is the International Olympic Committee, which puts together the events.  It’s a self-appointed, self-perpetuating body that’s responsible only to itself, and a bunch of boodlers to boot. Its allegiance isn’t to the athletes or to sport in general but to itself—it’s perks, profits and whatever it can plunder. The world would be better off without it.

               For proof one need look no further than Olympiad XXXII (don’t you love those Roman numerals?), set to begin next Friday (July 23) in Tokyo. Already delayed for a year, it’s an Olympics that few really want, proceeding amidst a covid pandemic that has reached crisis proportions in its host country. Foreign visitors have been barred and domestic attendance sharply curtailed. Competitors must be masked and observe social distancing when they aren’t on their fields of play, even among their teammates. They’ve been asked to show up, perform and get out, with mingling or loitering not encouraged. So much for the international amity the Games are supposed to promote.

 Spectators must be masked throughout their visits. No cheering or shouting will be permitted, although one no knows how those edicts will be enforced. Be advised, though, that prime game seats will be filled by the VIP throng that always accompanies the Games— IOC functionaries, sports’ federation bureaucrats and sponsors and their pals. It’s estimated they’ll be more numerous than the 11,500 or so men and women who will compete. There’s no room for athletes’ families but plenty for them, and in Tokyo’s best hotels. The latter perk is ever the case.

The opposition to these Games has been most pronounced in Japan, a wealthy country with a disciplined population but one that was slow to react to the pandemic. Distribution of vaccines was hindered by the government’s refusal to accept international efficacy tests, insisting instead on ones involving only Japanese, and at first it allowed only physicians and nurses to administer the shots. Vaccines finally are widely available but the national vaccination rate of less than 20% lags well behind that of other developed lands, and hospitalizations have risen sharply of late. Ashai Shimbun, the country’s leading newspaper, last month called for the Games to be canceled on public-safety grounds. So did the Toyko Medical Practitioners’ Association.

Local opposition also has an economic basis. Like just about every recent Summer Games Tokyo’s costs far exceeded expectations, reportedly about doubling its $15 billion initial budget. The IOC put up only $1.5 billion, leaving the Japanese government and private interests holding the bag, and the ban on most foreign visitors rules out much recapture through tourism spending.   By contrast, the IOC makes most of its income from the awarded-in-advance sale of TV rights—coming to about $4 billion this time around—and will make out fine if the Games go off on schedule.

IOC members also do all right in the pocket-stuffing department, with bribery instances and allegations attending every recent Games, usually involving the awarding of the host cities. In this one, the chairman of the Tokyo Organization Committee had to resign when a French investigation showed his group made a $2 million payment to a firm run by the son of a prominent IOC member. And that’s just the one that came to light. “Swag bags” at IOC functions are famous for their opulence. No IOC member ever exited an airliner from the rear, it’s said.

It’s no wonder, then, that the “show must go on” mentality that’s long animated the Games also has obtained in this one. Hey, the show went on in Munich in 1972 after terrorists kidnapped and killed 11 Israeli athletes, and merely hiccuped in Atlanta in 1996 after a bomb blast in an outdoor evening concert in Olympic Plaza killed two people and injured more than 100. What’s a little flu compared to that?

The same ethos governs the way Olympic competitions are run. Putin’s Russia made a farce of the 2014 Winter Games it hosted in Sochi by sending out a battalion of doped-up athletes to dominate the medals board. Then it tried to hide its misdeeds with a B-Movie scheme to swap “clean” urine for dirty by passing the samples through a hole in the wall of the Games’ testing lab. It later doubled down on that offense by hindering efforts of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to investigate it.

 A few sports federations, including the one governing track and field, booted the Russians from their events, but the harshest penalty the IOC could muster was to prohibit the Russian flag and anthem from its parades and victory stands.  Russian athletes competed In Rio in 2016 under those terms and will again in Tokyo under the supposedly neutral banner of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC).  Better for business if you keep ‘em in, don’t you know?

Some sports, such as basketball, ice hockey, soccer, skiing, boxing and tennis, are so thoroughly international they don’t need the Olympic platform.  Most of the others stage annual world championships whose titles equal Olympic gold in achievement if not acclaim.  If they seek a bigger stage those activities could combine their events every four years and sell a TV package.

But yeah¸ I know, that probably ain’t gonna happen, so we must hold our noses to enjoy the Games. I suppose it’s possible for the IOC to reform itself, but its scam is too successful for that. Such is life.

   

 

 

NEWS & VIEWS

 

 

NEWS:  A noted track athlete was suspended when a performance-enhancing drug was found in her system. She blamed it on a burrito.

VIEWS: Ay, caramba!

Shelby Houlihan, who holds the American women’s records in the 1,500- and 5,000-meter runs, last month was handed a four-year competitive ban when she tested positive for nandrolone, a hairy-chested steroid favored by weightlifters, after a December race. It eliminated her from contention for this year’s Olympics.

Houlihan reacted with dismay and made a list of everything she’d eaten during the week before the test. She said the likely culprit was a burrito she’d purchased at a food truck near her Beaverton, Oregon, home that might have contained pork raised in Mexico. Some Mexican meat producers are said to use steroids to beef up their animals.

Her contention, rejected by a sports court, caused many eyes to roll, but it had been tried before, and successfully. In 2015 Duane Brown, an offensive tackle for the Houston Texans of the National Football League, beat a 10-game league drugs rap when he produced restaurant receipts indicating he’d scarfed at least 10 hamburgers and two steaks during a pre-test trip to Mexico. Apparently, size counts in such matters.

Further, the burrito defense isn’t the most unlikely ever offered. In 2011 several members of the North Korean women’s national soccer team said their positive pre-Olympic tests stemmed from a native deer-musk remedy they’d taken after being struck by lightning.  American bicyclist Tyler Hamilton said his elevated testosterone level was due to his having absorbed a “vanished twin” into his body in utero.

American sprinter Dennis Mitchell claimed his 1998 ban stemmed from his having had sex with his wife four times the night before the positive drug test. “It was her birthday,” he explained. Another American sprinter, Lashawn Merritt, made an opposite claim, saying he’d taken a penis-enhancing product called ExtenZe just before his 2010 test. “Any penalty I have received will not overshadow the embarrassment and humiliation I feel,” he lamented.

NEWS: Major League Baseball announces a crackdown on pitchers’ use of sticky substances on baseballs.

VIEW: Get a grip!

               Finding itself in an era of pitcher domination, MLB last week instituted 10-game suspensions for pitchers found to be doctoring balls, and said it would actively enforce the ruling. The backdrop to the declaration is several years of declining batting averages and soaring strikeout rates. Not long ago a batting average of .230 and a 100-a-year strikeout pace gave position players tickets to the minors. Today such stats are, um, average.

               Another impetus for the move is the newish baseball stat of “spin rate”, which measures a delivery’s rotations and is much on the lips of the game’s TV and radio announcers. High spin rates allow pitches to better retain their velocity and “break” more sharply. Having a better grip on the ball helps with that. A lot.

               Doctored baseballs go back to the game’s earliest days, with enforcement against them waxing and waning over the years. One notable (and confessed) diamond physician, Gaylord Perry, played hide and seek with the umps over a 21-year career (1962-83) that resulted in 314 wins and a Hall of Fame berth. Apparently, today’s pitchers haven’t needed to be as creative as Perry in fashioning their potions; a browse of the internet reveals that commercial products with names like Spin It, Spider Tack and Gorilla Gold are readily available to stickum seekers.

               The first week of the ban created some interesting displays; Oakland A’s pitcher Sergio Romo dropped (and quickly raised) his pants when approached by umps for an on-the-mound inspection. The first pitcher to be ejected was the Seattle Mariners’ Hector Santiago, in a game last Sunday. He squawked loudly, claiming his only stick-aid was sweat mixed with legal resin.  Expect to hear that defense repeated in days to come amid much sturm und drang.

NEWS: Several pro-team athletes say “no” to covid vaccines.

               VIEWS: Just say “yes.”

               While our professional sports are joyfully kicking the traces of about a year and a half of restrictions caused by the covid virus, rearguard actions are being waged. Among the recalcitrant are Anthony Rizzo and Jason Heyward of the Chicago Cubs. Due to their stances and those of unnamed others, the Cubs say they are unable to reach the 85% vaxxed mark for all personnel MLB has set to allow teams to return all their activities to pre-covid “normals.” As of the last official pronouncement, eight of the majors’ 30 teams had fallen short.

               Rizzo and Heyward are veteran players and reputed clubhouse leaders of their team. Both said they weren’t anti-vax but want to “see more data” before receiving their jabs, although neither specified what that data might be. Their choices will sit heavily on their teammates, who must continue to observe masking and social-distancing protocols in their dugouts, weight and locker rooms and medical and training facilities until the 85% cutoff is met.

               Yeah, I know, not getting vaxxed has become a “freedom” issue with some, although that particular freedom amounts to a willingness to catch and pass on a potentially fatal illness that continues to spread. And yeah, big-time jocks have the same right of expression as the rest of us, whether or not we applaud what they say. But the prominence and wealth their positions command do, or should, carry with them greater-than-usual responsibility, making them role models even if they don’t wish it. They should ask themselves how they’d like to live in a world that follows their examples.             

BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER...AND MORE FRAGILE

 

               It’s universally accepted that today’s American professional baseball players are bigger, stronger and faster than those of any previous era. Richer, too. Much richer.

               But it’s now becoming clear that another adjective should be added to those above. It’s “more fragile.” That is to say they are getting injured at a greater rate than any time in the measurable past, and the situation is getting worse.

               Due to Covid last season was a short one of 60 games, and played after an unprecedented two months’ pause, so comparisons with that season would be misleading. But in the season that began with spring training in late February, and through the first two months of the regular season, the number of injuries that resulted in Injury List stints increased to about 350, 31% over the same 2019 period.

 Pitchers accounted for most of that figure, but the sort of “soft-tissue” injuries (hamstring, groin, oblique or calf-muscle strains or tears) position players usually suffer also rose, more than doubling the 2019 level.  With the presence of names like Justin Verlander, Chris Sale, Corey Kluber, Mike Trout, George Springer and Corey Seager, you could put together a pretty fair All-Star team from the current IL. At just about every point of the season at least a half-dozen of the 30 MLB teams have had a dozen or more players in sick bay at any one time, or about one-third of their 40-man rosters.

Some in baseball attribute the rise to a bounce from the herky-jerky 2020 season, but the trend continues what’s been happening in the Major Leagues for quite a while. Definitions and reporting accuracy have changed over time, but MDEdge, a medical website, has charted a steady annual rise in baseball injuries dating back to 1974. One of its papers counted 8,357 IL designations between 1998 and 2015, or close to 500 a year.

Ironically, much of the increase stems from advances in medical treatment. Exhibit A is the so-called Tommy John surgery, in which a ligament from another bodily part (or from a cadaver) replaces a torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) that binds the body’s elbow bones. It’s named not for the physician who perfected it (Dr. Frank Jobe) but for an early recipient. The left-handed John got the surgery in 1974, 11 years into his career, sat out that year and the next, and returned to add 164 wins to what would be a 288-win, 26-year stand (1963-89).  His success became living testimony for the procedure.

Before the surgery came along, pitchers with severe “sore arms” were flushed from the game, never to return. Sandy Koufax (1955-66) was a prime example. Now, with the operation at about a 90% success rate, they’re back after about a season and a half. It’s estimated that about one-third off all current MLB pitchers have had it, some more than once.

UCL injuries stem partly from the greater elbow strain required to achieve today’s hyper-fast deliveries (the average fastball last year measured 94 mph against 92.7 in 2015) and from cumulative overuse. The latter phenomenon begins in childhood, where talented youngsters are identified early and encouraged by ambitious parents and coaches to concentrate on a single sport and position.

 Back in the day kids played the sport in season, utilizing (and resting) a variety of muscles. Today, between Little League, age-group , school  and “traveling” teams, baseball prospects can play as many as 70 organized games a year before turning 18, plus long and intense practice sessions. Tommy John himself (he’s 78) is a bit of a nut, having spoken out against the covid vaccine from the hospital bed from which he was recovering from the illness, but he made plenty of sense when he declared against too-early sports specialization.

The position-player equivalents to pitchers’ elbow ligaments are the oblique muscles, which stretch across the abdominal cavity and control trunk flexion and rotation.  Maybe it’s me but I don’t recall hearing much about them until a few years ago. Now they are a major injury category, their rise corresponding to the “swing for the fences” mentality of today’s batsmen. Oblique strains don’t match other soft-tissue injuries in frequency but they typically take longer to heal, with IL times often stretching into months. There were 22 of them in the Majors through May, up from 12 in 2019.

The most common muscle injuries in baseball are hamstring, groin and calf sprains. These have always been part of baseball, a consequence of the game’s stop-and-start nature that has players running full tilt after sometimes-long periods of idleness.   Supposedly, these are controllable through exercise, but they continue to rise despite advances in exercise technique.

Part of this problem, I think, is that smart as their trainers might be they don’t teach ballplayers to exercise properly. For instance, a player in the on-deck circle will swing a weighted bat to prepare his arms and shoulders to hit but won’t stretch his legs to prepare to run as soon as he makes contact. Similarly, infielders and outfielders play catch before the start of each inning when, really, they are most vulnerable from the waist down after bench-sitting. Players today look a lot better in their underwear than those of 20 years ago, but they’d benefit from more attention to flexibility and less to muscle.

By me, though, the major cause of the injury surge is the fact that the wealthy ballplayer of today is a jock 24/7 and 365/365, and probably is working out somewhere when he isn’t playing. There’s such a thing as being in too-good shape, especially among adherents to the “no pain, no gain” school of exercise.

Like in other highly lucrative sports, competition for positions and roster spots in baseball is extreme, and players looking to rise, or who feel others nipping at their heels, believe that one more rep at whatever they’re doing will give them an edge. It’s hard to prove, but I think that too often that's what lands them on the IL.  In brief, they need to be protected against themselves.