tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40345144023011544522024-03-11T21:50:41.693-07:00fred klein on sportsFred Klein, the former sports columnist of the Wall Street Journal, gives his take on the current sports scene, among other things.frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.comBlogger384125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-14654175137079090552023-12-29T20:22:00.000-08:002023-12-29T20:22:34.835-08:00Some Final Questions<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>It is my sad duty to report that Frederick C. Klein, author
of the Fred Klein on Sports blog, former Wall Street Journal sports columnist, husband,
father and general savant, passed away on the evening of December 26.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>It was his tradition to share an annual set of his burning
questions on his birthday, February 2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was planning to do so again this year, and had written this in advance. This is
his final column.<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Thanking each of you on his behalf for your friendship
and the attention you have given him and his words over the years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 2.25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">-<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i>Mike Klein, Fred’s son, who introduced him to
blogging in 2003.<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqkPo2yWfqEuvScYvKvyxN_ovhAO68PI1NGqWQA8cKQKIBmxOSrE0WEaaSnyietBCfIGA3khZa7t4infpqaJWtdGj7uNdw56p_AcHIjkFkZO3sUa9j-bxE5xWCpPrga9gsZVYZ22P7Hin_BYUWuX_2TLxIa1XViIOe9sJ8M44ZrCfZqBI4Oyg5vK81/s770/FredKlein2238.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="770" data-original-width="688" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqkPo2yWfqEuvScYvKvyxN_ovhAO68PI1NGqWQA8cKQKIBmxOSrE0WEaaSnyietBCfIGA3khZa7t4infpqaJWtdGj7uNdw56p_AcHIjkFkZO3sUa9j-bxE5xWCpPrga9gsZVYZ22P7Hin_BYUWuX_2TLxIa1XViIOe9sJ8M44ZrCfZqBI4Oyg5vK81/s320/FredKlein2238.png" width="286" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Some Final Questions, from Frederick C. Klein<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--When
was the last time I got up from a chair without saying “oof”?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--When
did I get to be a weather wimp? In Chicago I took single-digit temperatures in
stride, but in Arizona I shiver every time they’re below 60.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--When
will we admit that our “wars” against gun violence, drugs and climate change
are lost, and turn to dealing with the consequences? Whatever the polls show, entrenched
interests prevail every time in situations like those.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Why
has Wrigley Field survived for 110 years while the life expectancy of our newer
stadiums for any big-league sport, usually paid for by the taxpayers, is about 30
years?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--When
did the accent in standard discourse start to fall on the first syllable of
“in” words like insurance and install? That used to be country-folk talk.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Is
there a contest among American sheriffs to see who can put the most stars on
their collars?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Why do
governments like Syria, Iran and Venezuela, which make war on their own people,
expect international generosity when natural disaster strikes them?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Why
are contributions to university athletics departments tax deductible? They’re
in the entertainment business, pure and simple.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">`<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Isn’t
it remarkable that when I travel I spend more time packing my pills than my
clothes?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Is it
possible to open one of those little foil butter packets you get in restaurants
without getting butter on your hands?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Did
people in frontier Dodge City think that more guns would make them safer?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Can
you name a perfect thing? I can—M&Ms.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Is
there a bigger ripoff than those “tuneup” visits AC-repair outfits promote? You
pay them to come and tinker with your unit and discover “problems” you can pay them
more to fix. They violate a very-good rule: If it ain’t broke don’t fix
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Was
Sinatra better than Nat Cole? I can make an argument either way.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Is
there a better name for a baseball pitcher than Janson Junk, of the Milwaukee
Brewers?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Why
would anyone pay for a large soft drink in a restaurant that allows unlimited
refills?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Is
there a better TV serial than “Rocco Schiavone” (“Ice Cold Murders,” actually),
on Amazon Prime?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s about a grouchy
Italian detective demoted from Rome to a small town in the snowy Alps. He
solves murders but it’s mostly about him. It’s laugh-out-loud funny in some parts,
darkly insightful in others.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Why
does anyone still not know that all the world can see anything posted on
“social media”?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Were
you thrilled that the 2023 Stanley Cup final was contested by teams based in
Las Vegas, Nevada, and Miami, Florida?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Do
people still read Mordecai Richler’s books? I hope so. His “St. Urbain’s
Horseman” is a classic.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Are
some web sites engineered so that when you click on one thing you get another?
I think yes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Isn’t
it weird to get a Facebook “friend” request from yourself? And see that you and
he have only seven mutual friends?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Aren’t
drug ads informative? Otherwise, I wouldn’t have known I have a perineum. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Why
are Russian athletes allowed to compete in international competitions while
Putin makes war in Ukraine? Would Germans have been able to do this after
Hitler invaded Poland and France? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Is any
presidential poll taken before September ’24—after the national conventions-- worth
looking at?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Which
is the more-irritating ESPN personality, Stephen A. Smith or Pat McAfee?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Both” is an acceptable answer.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Don’t
you get the feeling that the presidential election will hinge on the price of
gas on election day?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Is
there a more useless computer feature than “autocorrect”? About the only word
it reliably respells is teh.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Does
any message from Norton not include a request for extra payments? <o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-59587720899422107872023-12-15T07:55:00.000-08:002023-12-15T07:55:37.184-08:00HANDICAPPING THE HALL, '24<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Baseball Hall of Fame, American sports’ most-exalted shrine, has few formal
requirements for admission. One is that the player, coach, etc., put in at
least 10 seasons in the Major Leagues. Another is that he be retired for five
years. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A third is that he pass the initial
ballot muster of a sports writers’ committee whose standards are generous.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s another requirement, though, and it’s
just as important for being unwritten or even publicly acknowledged. The Hall’s
annual major event is its new-member induction ceremony every July. With no
inductees there’s no party so it’s imperative that <i>somebody</i> be elected
each year.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
golden door to the Hall is through the annual sports writers’ ballot for the
recently retired. This requires a 75% favorable vote of an electorate that last
year totaled 386, and getting that many sports writers to agree on anything is
no mean feat. The wise men who run the Hall know that, so they created side or
back doors to their shrine. Those have been the veterans’ committees operating
with shifting labels over the years. The 75% rule also holds among those
groups, but with memberships of 16 former players or other baseball lifers that
amounts to 12 votes. When the scribes elected no one in 1971 and 1996, and the
vets stepped up to fill the void—with eight electees in 1971. Most of the
players people don’t think belong in the Hall were put there by the vets, and will
continue to be.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
year’s ceremony already has a speaker thanks to the vets. He’s <b>Jim Leyland</b>,
a longtime coach and manager who piloted four teams—the Pittsburgh Pirates,
Florida Marlins, Colorado Rockies and Detroit Tigers—to various levels of glory
over 27 years (1986-2013). He’s well liked and admired in the game. His is a
baseball family—Katie, his wife of 35 years, previously worked for the Pirates
and their two sons had baseball careers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Chances
are good he’ll have company on the podium because the writers could elect as
many as four ex-players this time. They’re an especially interesting group
because none of them won a World Series ring over a total of 69 years in the
Bigs. Just two of them even got to play in one.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
player most likely to succeed is <b>Adrian Beltre</b>, ex of the L.A. Dodgers,
Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox and Texas Rangers. The native of the Dominican
Republic best exemplified Woody Allen’s dictum that 80% of life is showing up.
He showed up for 2,933 games over a 21-year career, the 14<sup>th</sup> most
among the 20,532 men who’ve played in the Majors since they were started in
1876. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Third-baseman
Beltre never reached baseball’s heights but piled up some sterling stats,
headed by his 3,166 career hits. The 3,000-hit mark, sans steroids, is a Hall
admission card, and he had an annex-full of other trophies. He won’t be a
unanimous first-balloter, but he’ll be close.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b>Todd
Helton </b>got 72.2% of the vote on last year’s ballot, his 6<sup>th</sup> (of
a permissible 10), and nobody’s gotten that close without winning the next
year. The first baseman is unusual in two respects in the modern game—he played
his entire, 17-season career with the same team (the Rockies) and ended up with
a plus-.300 (.316) lifetime batting average. Rockies’ hitting stats have been
looked down on by baseball mavins because of the light air at their mile-high Coors
Field home, and the ballpark’s wide expanses, but his way was greased by Larry
Walker’s election in 2020.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Another
first-ballot possibility is <b>Joe Mauer</b>, the Minnesota Twins’ catcher. No
other catcher has won an American League’s batting title, but Mauer did it
three times—in 2006, ’08 and ’09—and he ended his career with a .306 lifetime
batting average. He was the AL MVP in ’09. Like Helton, Mauer played his whole
career of 15 seasons with the same team.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Homegrown, the native of St. Paul was, probably, the most-popular Twin
ever. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">A model of consistency, he had only
one plus-three full season earned-run average in his 16 seasons (1995-2010).
Interestingly, he was a natural right-hander who taught himself to throw lefty
after he broke his right arm twice by age seven. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Among the other ballot holdovers, outfielder
<b>Andruw Jones, </b>a 58% poller in 2023,<b> </b>has the next- best chance,
but it’s a big jump to 75. <b>Gary Sheffield </b>and<b> Alex Rodriguez, </b>big-time
sluggers, have big-time drug-related problems, and <b>Carlos Beltran</b> was a
key figure in the 2017 Houston Astros’ cheating scandal.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The rest of the first-year slate is
thin, led by <b>Chase Utley, David Wright, Bartolo Colon and Matt Holliday. </b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ll get the 5% vote needed to stay on the
ballot, with maybe one or two others. Stick around and you’ll get to see <b>Ichiro
Suzuki, </b>maybe the best hitter-of-the-baseball ever, on the 2025 ballot.
He’s a possible unanimous choice, and he, too, never played in a World Series.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-11900367428839163852023-12-01T05:16:00.000-08:002023-12-02T10:52:34.991-08:00MR. RELEVANT<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
National Football League’s most-remarkable story during my sports-writing tenure
(1983-01) was that of quarterback Kurt Warner. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The native of Dubuque, Iowa, didn’t start for
Northern Iowa U. until his senior year, and went undrafted professionally out
of college. Except for a brief tryout with the Green Bay Packers he had no
brush with the league for the three years he spent with the Iowa Barnstormers
of the Arena Football League, a minor circuit. Between seasons he worked as a
grocery-store clerk, among other such jobs. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The St. Louis Rams signed him as a
backup in 1998 but used him in just one game that year. Between seasons he was
left unprotected in the draft that attended the Cleveland Browns’ return to the
league, but wasn’t picked. He got into the Ram’s 1999 starting lineup at age 28
only after a late-preseason injury to the incumbent QB, Trent Green. Warner
then led the Rams to the NFL championship, winning league and Super Bowl MVPs along
the way. His 12-year NFL career would include another MVP award and a Super
Bowl appearance with the Arizona Cardinals. He’s a member of the league’s Hall
of Fame.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">What was mind-boggling about the
Warner odyssey wasn’t that he starred but that it took so long to happen. Even
25 years ago athletic talent almost never went unnoticed in this sports-crazy
land, with scouts of various rank plotting the progress of likely youngsters
from Little League-age on. To use a much-overused word, how the guy got to 28
without his potential being recognized was incredible. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Now it’s 2023 and we have another
Warner-like football player. He’s Brock Purdy, the San Francisco 49ers’
quarterback. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The parallels aren’t perfect--
Purdy was drafted after college in 2022 but as a seventh-round pick, 262<sup>nd</sup>
and last. That made him “Mr. Irrelevant”, the silly title given to the draft’s
annual last pick because of a silly promotion by the coastal city of Newport
Beach, California. It’s an “honor” that depends on the good nature of the
recipient, if only because its several days of celebration culminate in the
presentation of the Lowsman Trophy, a bronze depiction of a football player
fumbling. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Purdy pre-NFL wasn’t so much a nonentity as a
national-picture also-ran, albeit an honorable-mention one. He was a four-year
starter at Iowa State U., winning most of his starts (29-17) but never doing enough
to turn the right heads. Probably worse, he was (is) out of style at his
position for his time, a dropback QB when superhero run-pass types such as Patrick
Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson and Jalen Hurts are in vogue. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you
lined up those guys in the playground with Purdy, and asked the typical fan to
choose one for his team, chances are he’d pick one of them. If they lined up
for a decathlon, the 10-event Olympic competition whose winner is widely
recognized as the world’s best athlete, Purdy might well finish last. At a
listed 6-foot-1 and 220 pounds he is unprepossessing physically, and his boyish
mien makes him look younger than his 23 ages.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Differences in measuring
quarterback excellence also produce quite-different results concerning Purdy.
The two main devices are the official NFL one—called the Passer Rating—and
another called the Quarterback Rating, or QBR. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Passer Rating is the simplest, involving mostly
the stats that appear in a typical game’s box score. The QBR is the product and
possession of ESPN and purports to be far more inclusive, the result, the
network says, of about 10,000 lines of computer code, whatever that means.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say “purports” because no one outside ESPN knows
its formula for sure, the network guarding it like a national secret. Computer
generated and video monitored, it’s said to weigh various stats by “holistic,” real-game
importance; for example, a 40-yards-in-the-air pass completion is worth more
for the QB than a screen pass and 40-yard run by the receiver. Similarly, a pass
completion with a game on the line counts for more than one at “garbage time,”
when one team leads by two touchdowns or more in a game’s final minutes. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The gaps between the measures are
more than matched by their outcomes. The current NFL ranking puts Sam Howell of
the lowly Washington Commanders on top (?!), while Purdy is eighth. Purdy is
first in ESPN’s QBR, Howell is 21<sup>st</sup>. Goofy, huh? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the simple-minded like me, Purdy’s leading
the league in both completion percentage at 70.2 and average yards per passing <i>attempt
</i>at 9.4 yards is more impressive than either of the yardsticks. That last
thing means the Niners average a first down every time Purdy throws the ball,
much less connects. In other words, he’s a hell of a QB.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Obvious in both the Warner and
Purdy cases is that the football scouts’ handbook had and still has large holes
when it comes to talent evaluation. Purdy has assets that were hard to quantify—things
like field awareness and the head to cooly process complex info under duress. Both
of them fall under the heading of gridiron intellect.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At an
Arizona Fall League baseball game last month I talked with a man who said he’d
coached Purdy in a kids’ football league when the lad was a 12-year-old seventh
grader in the Phoenix suburb of Queen Creek. He averred he never saw a boy more
into, and knowledgeable about, the sport. “His dad told me Brock would watch a
TV game with a legal pad in his lap, taking notes about the plays. He’d have
been an ace at 12 if his hands had been big enough to get around the ball,” the
guy said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">That’s someone a good scout might
have checked out.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-58713914861991410452023-11-15T07:27:00.000-08:002023-11-15T07:27:11.216-08:00DEVALUATION<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In my
columnizing days I covered the U.S. Open tennis tournament annually, and got a
kick out of the way the New York crowds cheered for the underdogs in
early-round play and, after some won, complained that famous players were gone.
Much the same thing now is happening in all our major sports as playoffs expand
and more teams are added.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Exhibit
A was the just-concluded baseball World Series. With the post-season tourney field
newly expanded to 12 teams from 10 the finalists were a No. 6 seed, the National
League Arizona Diamondbacks, and a No. 5, the American League Texas Rangers. The
D’Backs came into the Series with an 84-78 regular-season won-lost mark, the
third-worst record ever for a World Series contestant (the two worse were the
1973 New York Mets, at 82-79, and the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, 83-78, who
won). The Rangers brought a 90-72 record to the fray, setting the two-team win
total at 174. That was the lowest such figure ever for the event.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">People in Arizona and the Dallas
area couldn’t have been happier, of course, but the rest of the nation was
underjoyed. Television ratings for the five-game Series (won by the Rangers
four games to one) were the lowest on record, with viewership averaging less
than 10 million a game. By contrast, about that many people tuned in to the
NCAA women’s basketball championship final last March between LSU and Iowa.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The TV numbers were the latest—and
most vivid—recent example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. In answering
public demand to expand their playoffs our sports major leagues have devalued both
them and their regular seasons, our major entertainments and their main sources
of revenue. The more games our teams play the less valuable each becomes. This
invokes another popular saw, the Law of Diminishing Returns. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Exhibit B (or, rather, 1A) is the
National Basketball Association. It spread its playoff tent last season with a
complicated arrangement of “play-in” games, and wound up with a final involving
the Miami Heat, which had only the seventh-best won-lost record (44-38) in the
Eastern Conference.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Schedule length in any sport is
determined by commerce, not competition. They’re all too long, topped by MLB’s
162 games, but the NBA’s 82-gamer is the most problematic because its first
half (the months of November, December and January) is played in the shadow of
the National Football League, the undisputed champion of the airwaves. Until
Christmas only aficionados pay much attention to the hoopsters, and then not
really until the playoffs approach around March.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The NBA is trying to remedy that
this season with an in-season tournament plucked whole from England’s soccer Premier
League, the theft extending to its terminology (“group play” and “knockout
rounds”, with a “cup” that goes to the winner). Running from November 3 through
December 9, it’s being contested initially by six units of five teams each
followed by a single-elimination go-around culminating in a final. All games
save the final will count in the regular-season standings, with winning-team
players pocketing $500,000 each. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s
a nice prize even in a loop in which eight-figure annual salaries are common. So
far the tourney has been met mostly with guffaws, but at worst it couldn’t
hurt.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The NFL also has extended its
playoffs in recent seasons and beginning last year did the same with its
regular season, going from 16 games to 17. That addition (about 6%) is
equivalent to 10 more MLB games. Schedules change only in one direction (longer),
and sports leagues loathe odd numbers (home-road equity, don’tcha know?), so another
boost to 18 games surely will follow. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">In the NFL the main consequence of
more games is more injuries, the unavoidable result of football’s bruising
nature. After about week three of the schedule every player is nursing some
sort of hurt, and more-serious, game-missing injuries are common. Football is
unique in that its most-valuable players—quarterbacks—also are its most
vulnerable, and this year fully one-third of its putative starting QBs have
missed at least a game while healing. The big question each year at playoff
time isn’t so much which team is best as which is healthiest.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">As NBA basketball becomes faster
and on-court collisions harder and more frequent, injuries become more common, and
the too-long schedule more of a grind. The league has recognized this by going
corporate, legitimizing star absences with what it calls “load management.“ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That means it’s okay for players to sit out
games from time to time for no other reason than rest.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">As I reported in my blog of last
May 15, the league’s dozen-best players (Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokic, Luca
Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Stephen Curry, Kawhi Leonard, Lebron James,
Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, Ja Morant, Damian Lillard and Jimmy Butler) missed
an average of 23 games each last season, or about 28% of their teams’ schedules.
Theatrical plays notify patrons through program notes when leads are being replaced
by stand-ins. NBA teams should do the same.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Indeed, they should go further by putting
a warning on tickets saying the purchase price doesn’t guarantee the presence
of either team’s stars. Fans bear the costs of schedule devaluation, as they do
most things. But hey! It’s only your money if you give it to them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-19516689537088543112023-11-01T08:02:00.004-07:002023-11-01T10:38:10.709-07:00FALL BALL '23<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">October and November are my
favorite months in Arizona. One reason is that by this time the temperatures
have abated somewhat from their sizzling summer highs. Another is the Arizona
Fall League, the annual gathering of selected young baseball prospects seeking
Major League futures. The young men play a six-week, 36-game schedule at six of
the Phoenix area’s fine spring-training ball parks. It’s baseball at its purist
and most accessible.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">For reasons best known to itself,
Major League Baseball moved the league’s start up by a week this time,
incurring a Big Heat overlap. It also moved from a mostly day games to a mostly
nights schedule, and changed the day-game starting times to 2:30 p.m. from
12:30. Neither of those changes were popular with the old timers who make up
most of the league’s public, and attendance has fallen. Us codgers are used to
being dissed, though.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">MLB uses the Fall League to try out
possible rule changes. There were a bunch of those last year, in the name of
faster play, but few this time around. One changed the permitted time between
pitches with runners on base to 18 seconds from 20, and it went off without
much notice. The other was more interesting, permitting ball-strike challenges
to pitchers, catchers and batters provided they be done immediately, without
bench input.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> Each teams gets three per game, with successful appeals not counting. This took place only at Salt River Fields in Scottsdale, the only
park wired for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When a challenge was
called the strike-zone rectangle was shown on the park’s TV screen and the ball
zoomed in, for good or ill. I generally oppose electronic interference in our
games, but this one was handled with dispatch and was kind of fun. Look for it
at your local big-league park.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Putting on my scout’s hat (actually, the one I
usually wear), I attended a goodly number of AFL games during the season’s
first five weeks. I judged the general level of play to be a tad below that of some
past years, with no flaming talents like those of Vlad Guerrero Jr., Nolan
Arenado or Kris Bryant revealing themselves. Some of the kids could play,
though, and will be appearing in the triple-decked stadia in due time. About
60% of all fall leaguers make it to the Bigs, and this crew should be no exception.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The best pitcher I saw was <b>Ricky
Tiedemann</b>, 21, a left hander owned by the Toronto Blue Jays. Standing
6-foot-4, he has a mid-90s fastball and a nice array of breaking pitches, which
he isn’t afraid to use late in counts. A third-round draft choice in 2021, he’s
already made it to AA, and should be ready for serious promotion in a year.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The best hitter I saw was <b>Dominic
Keegan, </b>of the Tampa Bay Rays. He’s a solidly built customer who has hit
well at the college (Vanderbilt U.) and minor-league levels, and continued that
pattern here with numerous multi-hit games. In one game I saw he got the only
two hits the above-named Tiedemann allowed in a five-inning stint, and a double
and home run at that. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s listed as a
catcher, but his bio also mentions other posts, meaning it isn’t written in
stone. But wherever he plays his bat should make him welcome.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">My team, the Chicago Cubs, has two
prime prospects here, <b>Kevin Alcantara</b> and <b>James Triantos</b>. The
21-year-old Alcantara is the better-known of the two, having come to the Cubs
in the traumatic 2021 trade that sent All-Star first baseman Anthony Rizzo to
the New York Yankees. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alcantara is tough
to miss in the field, standing a very skinny 6-foot-6. His height makes for a
long swing and he can look bad whiffing, as he often does, but when he connects
he shows real power, and he’s graceful afield. Also, he has a lot of shtick,
including the nickname “The Jaguar” and a well-rehearsed home-run bat flip, so
he’ll be fun when (if) he makes it to Wrigley Field.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b>Triantos
</b>isn’t impressive physically but plays with intent and has been among the
AFL batting leaders all season with plus-400 marks. In one game I saw he had
four solid hits, including a single that sent the contest into extra innings.
He’s a second baseman, which could be a problem because the Cubs have a
long-term incumbent there in Nico Hoerner. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any hitter like Triantos should find a place somewhere,
though.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Chicago White Sox’s top AFL prospect is shortstop <b>Colson Montgomery</b>,
their top draft choice in 2022. At a filled-out 6-foot-3, and left-handed
batting stance, he’s a Corey Seager look alike, but he hasn’t been Seager-like here.
Still, Montgomery showed<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>some moxie in a
game Monday in which he came up in a tied ninth inning with the bases loaded
and one out. With a 3-2 count against a lefty reliefer he fouled off four
pitches, then drove a deep fly ball past a drawn-in outfield to drive in the
winning run. The Sox need a shortstop, and his draft status alone ensures him a
look.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I like short players with pop, and
<b>Corey Rosier </b>meets that description. He’s with the Boston Red Sox chain.
He’s fast afoot and makes good contact with his short swing. Another good
little guy is shortstop <b>Nasim Nunez</b>, a 23-year-old Miami Marlins
prospect. He’s sharp in the field and his 52 stolen bases in 125 minor-league
games last season adds to his attraction.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 6-3 and 230 pounds ,<b>Aaron Sabato </b>looks
like the home-run hitter he is, currently leading the league with seven. One on
Monday cleared the 410-foot mark in Glendale Stadium with room to spare. He’s
with the Minnesota Twins. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>An
interesting experiment here involves <b>Reggie Crawford</b>, a San Francisco
Giants prospect. Drafted in round one as a pitcher, his 6-4, 235 frame also
looks hitterish, and he was sent here to get some swings. Alas, a new Ohtani
doesn’t seem likely, because Crawford has been sub-.200 at the plate all season,
and never showed much in the games I watched.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There’s
still a week and a half to go in the season, so come on out if you can. A game
is well worth the price of admission, which is 10 bucks. It’s a rare bargain
these days. <b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-76241686282837460062023-10-16T09:24:00.001-07:002023-10-16T09:24:20.964-07:00JOCK TALK<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Anyone in
his or her ninth decade on this planet has regrets, and I am no exception. My
main one journalistically is the time I spent in sports press conferences or
locker rooms, taking down the words of coaches and players and, later, passing
some along to my readers. Occasionally a quote would illuminate a subject, but
the big majority of them were blather, verbal pablum designed to placate or
mislead the multitudes. Artificial intelligence could have provided better
content and, without doubt, soon will.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
subject of sports blab is timely because the TV and radio folks have decided we
want more of it. Interviews fill the airwaves and no place is microphone-proof,
even the playing fields. Baseball in particular is enamored with that, allowing
players to be mic’d and questioned while games are in progress and they are at
work. I could live happily without that.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Just as
TV action replays have been teaching tools for athletes, so has the constant
playing of interviews; jocks just out of school know just what to say, and
when. The best examples of this can been seen in the telecasts of the NFL and
NBA college-player drafts. After every early-round pick a microphone toter will
thrust his tool in the face of the chosen player and ask for his reaction. Invariably,
the kid will express delight with the team that chooses him, no matter how
woebegone, and promise to “work hard” to make it better. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, the subject of hard work is probably
the most overworked in sports. Yes, big-time jocks put it a few daily hours in
the weight room or on the running track, but most of their practice consists of
things others do for fun, like shoot baskets or play catch. Moreover, no exercises
would mean much unless the athlete is in the top .01% of the population in natural
abilities. As a 5-foot-8, 135-pound high schooler of ordinary physique I could
have bounced a basketball every spare moment between ages 5 and 18 and never
sniffed a college hoops scholarship, much less an NBA spot.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">In listening to jock talk it’s good
to note the way athletes speak of their situations. Rather than employing the
conventional “I” or the royal “we”, they prefer to use the word “you.” They
rarely lack for ego, but “you” introduces the common touch, implying that
anyone would do the same. Ian Happ, a Chicago Cubs outfielder, illustrated this
a few weeks ago in describing his team’s late-season, win-or-die throes (they
died). “You have no choice [but to win],” said he typically. “That’s what
you’ve got to do.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Flat-out statements of fact are avoided,
however obvious they may seem, mitigating any blame that may attach to them.
David Ross, the Cubs’ manager, described a starting pitcher’s very bad outing
thusly: “He kind of lost command a little bit out there.” And hey, if it was
just a small problem, it might be easily corrected.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">Similarly,
athletes often couch their own subpar efforts (over par in golf) in terms of
“struggle”; for instance, a basketballer who has just missed his last dozen
shots will confess to “struggling” from the floor. The reasoning here is clear:
struggle is noble and can lead to better things, while failure not only is
pathetic, it also may be terminal.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">A common excuse
for an athlete who is struggling is that outside factors may have “distracted”
him from his tasks. This can be counted upon to elicit a sympathetic response,
even when the distraction may be the TV commercials he’s shooting on game days
or the battery charge he faces. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">The sports world
is so committed to euphemisms it uses them to describe praiseworthy performances.
When a jock plays well his fellows and the sportscasters who ape them will say he
“stepped up” or “came up big.” More-questionable praise for one who gave his
all in a game is that he “sold out” for his team. Benedict Arnold’s descendants
might take heart from that one.<i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Setting goals is another subject
that’s usually addressed circuitously. Asked how he’d like to perform an
athlete will shy from the grandiose—“I want to play great and win!”—and focus
on something more easily obtainable, like “I want to be consistent” or “I just
want to stay within myself.” The retort to the latter—“Where else are you going
to go?” always remains unsaid.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Ego concealment is rampant, never
more so than when money is involved. A jock who jumps one team for a better deal
with another will pooh-pooh the money angle, saying “All I want is a ring”—the
bauble members of championship teams receive. Once the guy gets his ring he
might complain it had too few diamonds, but that’s another matter. One good
thing about the nine-figure contracts top players are getting these days is
that we no longer have to hear their nonsense about “feeding their families.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Journalists contribute to the
blather glut by passing it along mindlessly. Print beat writers—who qualify as
reporters—might plead that they are fulfilling their duty to objectivity by
relaying what the combatants have to say, but TV commentators and print
columnists, who are licensed to speak in their own voices, have no such excuse.
Ditto bloggers, who answer to no one. As a TV watcher I turn on a mental mute
when most jocks speak, and as a reader I skim past just about anything in
quotes. We’d all be better off if journalists use their eyes (and brains) more
and their ears less. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-76999926875896642282023-10-01T08:48:00.004-07:002023-10-02T08:28:10.945-07:00THE WICKED FLOURISH (continued)<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s
baseball playoffs time again and the Houston Astros are in them. No surprise
there—they’ve qualified for seven consecutive postseasons now. That’s the
second-best such record extant, behind only that of the 11-straight Los Angeles
Dodgers, a bigger-payroll team. And if they were asked, the Dodgers might opt
to swap records with the ‘Stros, because the Houstons have won two World Series
(in 2017 and ’22) during their streak, to the Dodgers’ one (in 2020).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You
might think that such excellence would be celebrated widely, but cheers are
pretty much limited to in or around the East Texas metropolis. The Astros go
about their business wearing a scarlet letter, albeit a “C” instead of Hester
Prynne’s “A.” The “C” stands for cheater, which is what the team was for all of
its championship 2017 season and a good-sized chunk of the next, before its
misdeeds came to light. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Short
memory is a lamentable modern condition, but I’d wager that most folks—or, at
least, most baseball fans-- recall what the Astros did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was to carry out the most egregious scam
in the history of American team sports. Some Astros’ brains devised a computer
program that doped out the signs of rival catchers and named it “Codebreaker.”
It then set up video systems in their home and some other ballparks that would beam
the stolen signs to their team’s dugout. From there the scheme went low-tech:
the pitches were relayed to batters by bangs or lack therof on a dugout trash
can, silence meaning a fastball and one or two bangs, variously, meaning a curve
or changeup. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Almost
equally mind-blowing was Major League Baseball’s response to the wrongdoing.
The Astros were allowed to keep their ill-gotten 2017 trophy and fined a few
draft choices and a piddling $5 million, which is the cash maximum the game’s
owners allow themselves to be penalized no matter what they do. Worse, a review
ordered by Commissioner Rob Manfred wrote a report calling the program “player
driven and executed” even though it named for blame only one player, Carlos Beltran,
who at age 40 was in his last season anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A coach, Alex Cora, was suspended, along with manager A.J. Hinch and
general manager Jeff Luhnow. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For one (1)
year each. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Such
leniency should have been expected; it’s well known in other contexts that
firing or otherwise penalizing managers or execs is cheaper and easier than
doing the same to players. Further, our team sports have a complicated
relationship with rule-breaking; as the jocks put it “if you ain’t cheatin’ you
ain’t tryin’.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Baseball outfielders can
be counted upon to signal catches after they trap line drives, and all good
football offensive linemen have a few artful holds in their bags of tricks.
Sign stealing is a feature of both baseball and football, and it’s okay if done
with the naked eye instead of electronically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>On another level, the taking of performance-enhancing drugs is treated
as an individual offense, with no responsibility attached to the takers’ teams.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Astros’ sins were of a different order—obviously planned and carried out by a
team’s leadership with the intent of securing a competitive advantage over a
long period of time—and if that’s not condemned nothing is. But after their
brief penance manager Hinch reemerged as manager of the Detroit Tigers, coach
Cora popped up to manage the Boston Red Sox and player Beltran, hired and later
quickly fired to manage the New York Mets, now is in that team’s front office.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The only
cheater still out of baseball is GM Luhnow, and one can deduce that’s mostly a
function of his personal unpopularity. An engineer and management consultant by
trade, he came into baseball in 2003 as a data analyst with the St. Louis
Cardinals, having no baseball background and evincing open disdain for those
who do. That image was magnified when he became the Astros’ GM in 2011, already
carrying the nicknames “The Accountant” and “Harry Potter.” His claim to
ignorance of the sign-stealing plot is ludicrous given the fact he was the only
top Astros’ exec with the technical chops to put it together. Over the last few
years he’s busied himself with soccer teams in Mexico and Spain, but he’s said
he’s had feelers from several MLB clubs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No one would be surprised to see him back in the Bigs soon.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Baseball
man or not, Luhnow’s path to building the ‘Stros was tried and true. The team
tanked seasons 2011 through 2014, averaging just 58 wins (and 104 losses) a
year but accumulating prospects and prime draft choices. Except for a stutter
during the plague year of 2020 it hasn’t had a losing season since, meaning it knew
what to do with the players it acquired.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The team
knows when to hold, as it has with the infielders Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman,
lineup anchors who have been in Houston for 13 and eight years, respectively.
Under Luhnow’s successors it has shown it can identify hitters, such as young-vet
stars Kyle Tucker and Yordan Alvarez. It’s had good success developing
pitchers, and when in need it can pop for veteran help, as it did in August
when it assumed more than $50 million in salary obligations to reacquire the
Hall of Fame-bound pitching ace Justin Verlander, whom it had let go to free
agency the year before. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
year’s Astros lack the oomph of previous editions, having snuck into the
playoffs via two last-games wins, but once in them there’s no telling how far
they might go. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Virtue may not be
rewarded in sports but talent always is, and there’s still no lack of that in
Houston.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-83315754646553588392023-09-15T07:20:00.000-07:002023-09-15T07:20:16.005-07:00BS HIGH<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When it
comes to the corruption surrounding sports in the USA I’m not easily appalled,
but that barrier was breached the other day when I watched an HBO documentary
titled, appropriately, BS High. It was about “Bishop Sycamore High School,” a
non-existent entity created by a Columbus, Ohio, conman who recruited some 50
football hopefuls and put together a schedule of games highlighted by a contest
with rich and mighty IMG Academy that was televised nationally by ESPN.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
journalism, the production was lackluster. The game in question took place two
years ago (on August 29, 2021) and the circumstances surrounding it had
previously been published and aired, albeit to an Ohio audience smaller than
that of HBO’s. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Key facts were missing or
presented blurrily. The producers raised issues they did not later address, and
their ire was directed mostly at Ohio authorities for allowing it to happen
rather than at the (much) larger context in which it occurred.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Further,
it glorified its central figure, one Roy Johnson, who pulled off the scam
without any credentials as a coach or educator and with a checkered past. The
cheeky Johnson was interviewed extensively on camera, alternatingly laughing
and snarling, but clearly enjoying the attention he was receiving. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Attention, after all, was what his play was
all about, and he accomplished it in spades.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In a
scheme that predated the IMG game by a couple of years, Johnson cast his net
among local African-American boys who had those sports “dreams” we hear so much
about but had been passed over by college-football recruiters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Using the “sports academy” model that has
become ubiquitous in this land, he told the young men (and their parents) that his
“school” would give them the gridiron exposure they need to crack the
collegiate big-time.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">If the subject of academics arose
it was glossed over in Johnson’s pitch, and later. BS High never had any
classrooms or teachers, and the documentary produced no complaints on that
score from the recruits or their parents. And why should it? As one young
“student” put it, the deal was “you come, play ball and move up.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That view echoed a similar one voiced a few years before by Cardale
Jones, then a starting quarterback for Ohio State U.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>right there in Columbus. “Why should we have
to go to class if we came to play football?” he asked.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">At any rate, having charged
tuitions variously described in the show as $12,000, $16,000 or $20,000 (who
paid, how much and how was never spelled out) Johnson assembled a team a few
months before the 2021 season. It practiced on a rented field with the players living
in hotel rooms he never paid for and eating whatever he could scrape up. One
ploy he cheerfully admitted to was ordering 25 prepared chickens from a grocery
store and then not having them picked up until just before closing time, after
they’d been marked down. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">By that time he’d assembled an
eight-game football schedule against high schools that, apparently, asked few
questions. The first two games resulted in losses by scores of 38-0 and 19-7.
The televised IMG game, from a field in Canton, Ohio, connected to the NFL Hall
of Fame there, was so ludicrously one-sided—final score 58-0-- it wound up exploding
the whole scheme. Even though most of its players were older than the
high-school norm, Johnson’s team lacked talent and plan, and several of his
players suffered on-field injuries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
didn’t have enough helmets to go around, so players swapped them as they ran on
and off the field. The thing should have been whistled before the 60 minutes expired.
The stink it generated resulted in BS High’s last five games being cancelled,
and its players dispersed.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was
fitting that ESPN and IMG Academy were hooked in the scam. ESPN, ever hungry
for programming, has fed the professionalization of high-school sports by
featuring prep games on its stations. IMG Academy, in Bradenton, Florida, is
the model U.S. youth-sports factory. IMG was created <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the 1960s as International Management Group
by Mark McCormack, the visionary lawyer/agent who, with golfer-clients Arnold
Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, revolutionized jocks’ commercial ties,
generating income that far exceeded their on-field earnings. The firm now is an
octopus with international tentacles across the sports spectrum.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>IMG got
into the ed biz in 1987 by buying the Florida tennis school run by Nick
Bollietieri and quickly expanding its offerings to seven more sports (football,
basketball, baseball, soccer, golf, track and field and lacrosse).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its 1,000 or so current students, in grades
six through 12, attend academic classes in the morning and spend afternoons in
intensive sports training under professional eyes. Its teams criss-cross the
country playing games and its golfers and tennisers play national tournament
schedules. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Full
tuition for boarding students is about $90,000 a year, or $70,000 for day
students. Scholarships are available, but the place is there to make money so
not every student gets one. While the aim of most-students’ parents is a
college scholarship of some sort, the economics of that aren’t clear—just a
one-year, full-tuition payment exceeds the money value of many such “rides.”
Chalk up the rest to parents’ desires for vicarious thrills, the surrender of
colleges’ educational missions to their entertainment arms, and our general
sports craziness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>HBO’s
search for villains in its documentary began and ended with Johnson; the
producers waxed apoplectic over the fact that Ohio criminal law has no penalty
for deeds such as his. That left retribution, if any, to the civil courts via
lawsuits, a number of which Johnson is facing.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Equally to blame, though, were the
parents who turned their sons over to the conman and paid to do so. If any of
them thought to visit the “school” to check on his educational claims (a
subject not addressed in the show) they must have bought into the “just play
ball” reasoning. Not without cause, though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-77311202896441781622023-09-01T08:30:00.000-07:002023-09-01T08:30:25.085-07:00TENNIS ANYONE?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">In my columnizing days I looked
forward to the U.S. Open tennis tournament, which takes place every year around
this time. It meant two weeks in glorious Gotham on the Wall Street Journal’s
dime, my favorite way to travel. Wife Susie or one or another of my kids often
would join me for a few days, using tickets to which I had access. Sometimes a
New York friend, too.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">While I loved visiting the city
(living there hadn’t been quite as big a pleasure), I also loved the tennis. I
was an avid player then, so I had a feeling for the sport, and the Open offered
total emersion. I best liked the first week, when the side courts were active
and unfamous players would have it out in early-round matches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was something of a tennis maven, able to
hold forth on that 43<sup>rd</sup>-ranked woman from Sweden or that tall, lefty
Australian junior, and whatever the court the tennis was excellent. As Charles
Barkley said about the NBA, there are no bad players in the U.S. Open.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">But no more. Now I barely watch the
sport— maybe a set here and there on TV during the Grand Slam tournaments,
almost never a match start to finish. The main reason is that the stylistic
differences that used to flavor competition no longer exist. Just about every
top player plays the same, baseline-rooted game, and while small differences in
ability are decisive at the elite level they’re hard to discern with the naked
eye. It’s difficult to tell the players apart if they aren’t wearing
different-colored clothes. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Evidence of the change has been easy to see.
Wimbledon’s grass courts used to show wear in sideways-T-shaped patterns on
each side of the net, one path along the base line and another down the center
to the net. In recent years only the baselines paths show wear. Gone is the
so-called “big game,” the serve-and-volley style that brought glory to the
likes of Jack Kramer, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras and Martina Navratilova, along
with the puncher-boxer matchups that made for memorable duels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The great rivalries of recent-decades
past—McEnroe-Borg, Sampras-Agassi, Navratilova-Evert—were of that nature. Now
it’s all boxer-boxer, for better or (by me) worse.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The villain is technology, which
has changed tennis more than any other sport. Starting about 1980 the wooden
racquets that always had been standard in the game began giving way to ones
made of first, metal, and ultimately, graphite. The new materials created
weapons that were stronger, lighter and more flexible than before. They also
allowed larger racquet faces, from a former nine inches across to 10 to 12
inches, with corresponding increases in the size of “sweet spots,” the face areas
for optimum shot results.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Those things made tennis easier to play, which was good for recreational
players, and boosted the power of the pros’ games. At first it was supposed
that big servers would benefit most at the expert level and, indeed, service
speeds have zoomed. People oohed and aahed at 100 mph serves in Kramer’s day
but now top women players routinely register triple digits while the best men
exceed 130 mph.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Returners, however,
countered by stepping back a pace or two, and the new racquets permitted them
to blister back their deliveries almost as fast as they came in. That made net-rushing
unprofitable. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">What’s happened in tennis has been
paralleled in other sports, but with fewer consequences. Pole-vaulting heights climbed
radically with the 1960s switch from bamboo to fiberglass poles, and the advent
of high-tech clubs and balls have allowed the golf pros to conquer space, but
both sports have proceeded much as before, only over greater distances (PGA
Tour courses used to measure about 6,800 yards, today about 7,500 is the norm).
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In tennis, the whole serve-and-volley
game has been a casualty, probably a permanent one.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The predominance of the baseline
style has changed tennis in another important way, with longer rallies making for
longer matches. This comes through strongest at tennis’s biggest showcases, the
Grand Slam events (Wimbledon and the Australian, French and U.S. Opens). There,
the men play best-of-five sets singles matches instead of the best-of-three
format of the women, and the other men’s tournaments. Best-of-three setters
usually are concluded in about 90 minutes while best-of-fivers that go all the
way typically run about 165 minutes (two hours, 45 minutes).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Oftimes, though, four- or even five-hour
contests take place, sometimes punctuated by contestants cramping and/or
barfing. That’s inhumane. Murphy’s Law made its certain appearance in 2010 at
Wimbledon when John Isner and Nicolas Mahut played a fifth set that went 138
games (70-68) in a match that spanned more than 11 hours over three days.
Wimbledon didn’t allow a fifth-set tiebreaker then and the fossils that run the
place took eight more years to institute one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Such is the state of tennis governance.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Five-setters can be tough on
spectators, too. In my trips to the French Open, whose gritty clay (dirt)
courts permit the longest rallies, I learned that the seasoned match-goer
watches the first set of a men’s singles match and goes to lunch during the
second. If the sets are even after two, he or she might sip another glass of
Beaujolais before returning to the stands.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Men’s tennis in this century has
been dominated by three players—Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak
Djokovic—who have won 20, 22 and 23 Grand Slam titles, respectively. Federer,
now retired, is best known for his grace, Nadal for his athleticism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Djokovic’s main strength is stamina, as
attested by his astonishing 37-10 career won-lost record in five setters. They’re
running marathons out there, and when the men’s Slams grind to conclusions he’s
usually been the last standing, a man for his time if there ever was one. Usually,
I’ve been watching the highlights on Sports Center.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-41816670059772773722023-08-15T07:31:00.000-07:002023-08-15T07:31:13.861-07:00NEWS & VIEWS<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>NEWS-- COLLEGE
CONFERENCE ALIGNMENTS CHURN<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>VIEW— ITS
ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
tectonic plates of big-time college sports are on the move again, leaving carnage
in their wake. The U’s of Oregon and Washinton have left the PAC 12 for the Big
Ten, following the earlier switch by UCLA and Southern Cal. Arizona State,
Arizona and Utah moved from the PAC 12 to the Big 12, filling the holes left
when Texas and Oklahoma fled that conference for the SEC. Clemson and Florida
State are said to be mulling leaving the ACC for the SEC, Cal-Berkeley and
Stanford are talking to the ACC. You can’t tell the players without a
scorecard.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">Left in the dust
are the 64-year-old PAC 12, now all but defunct, and whatever vestiges of
regionalism the other conferences embodied. The Big Ten, once a prime source of
Midwestern identification and pride, now stretches from sea to shining sea, and
with Cal and Stanford the ACC (which stands for Atlantic Coast Conference)
would, too. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Traditional ties, such as
those between Oregon and Oregon State and Washington and Washington State, have
been torn asunder. Making the moves more head scratching, the severing of Cal
and UCLA was approved by the same Board of Regents that governs both.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">Another likely
casualty is the NCAA, a mere spectator to the above proceedings. The
conferences now have the power, and can be counted upon to use it. The NCAA
used to be potent politically and in the courts, but no more. Its decades of countenancing
exploitation and hypocrisy finally brought down its shame amateurism, and
through court-approved NIL (name, image, likeness) payments college athletes
are able to be paid by check. The organization now exists mainly to run a basketball
tournament.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">Behind the moves
is money. The key word is “content,” which is what the schools’ sports arms provide
to television and streaming operators. That’s the same thing the professional
leagues sell. The PAC 12’s collapse followed immediately on the league’s
failure to secure a TV contract that would have satisfied its members. Big-time
college sports are businesses pure and simple, separate from and often
conflicting with the schools’ educational missions. Contributions to university
athletics departments shouldn’t be tax-deductible.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>NEWS—THE U.S. WOMEN’S SOCCER TEAM BOMBS AT THE
WORLD CUP<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">VIEW—IF YOU WERE
SURPRISED YOU WEREN’T PAYING ATTENTION<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">The two-time defending
champs’ elimination in the round of 16 was regarded as shocking, but it
shouldn’t have been. The team’s pre-tourney games, all in the U.S., resulted in
narrow wins, and it had lost twice in its only previous foreign venture (to WC
host country New Zealand) this year. I watched its first WC game against Viet
Nam, which turned out to be the worst team in the 32-country field, and found
its 3-0 win unimpressive, remarking to wife Susie that it would be in trouble
against better units. Its next three games, against the Netherlands, Portugal
and Sweden, all resulted in ties in which it scored a total of one goal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its eliminating loss to Sweden came in a
penalty-kicks shootout.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">It's news-media bad
form in the U.S. to criticize female athletes or teams, but the soccer team’s pre-tourney
hype in this land went beyond praise, to adulation. This was from a press corps
that had little apparent knowledge of the women’s game beyond these shores.
Thanks largely to the federal “Title 9” legislation of 1972 that vastly
broadened women’s athletic opportunities, the U.S. long dominated women’s
sports around the world. The rest of the world, however, has caught up on just
about all fronts; for example, none of best basketball players extant (Nikola
Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid and Luca Doncic) are Americans, and
the best baseball player (Shohei Ohtani) is Japanese.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">No doubt there will
be a lengthy post-mortem of the WC debacle, with coaching and team organization
getting most of the blame, but old-fashioned big-headedness shouldn’t be
overlooked. Future team members should be advised not to read their press
clippings. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">NEWS— THE
BALTIMORE ORIOLES SUSPEND TELEVISION BROADCASTER FOR PASSING ALONG A FACT<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">VIEW—WHAT ELSE
IS NEW?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">Kevin Brown’s
sin, in chatter before a July game against the Tampa Bay Rays in Tampa, was to
point out that the resurgent O’s had beaten the Rays three of five times there this
season after losing 18 of 21 from 2020 through ’22. It’s the kind of tidbit
that’s included in every team’s pre-game press notes, including the O’s before
the game in question. But mouthing it on O-paid air was a no-no.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">The incident was
only an extreme example of the state of play-by-play sports broadcasting on both
radio and TV. Broadcasters are not independent observers but employees of their
teams, expected to promote them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even
the best of them—Vin Scully, Harry Caray, Jack Buck, Jon Miller—are or were
“homers.” It was just that their teams allowed them to describe the games
before them, including, sometimes, the bad with the good.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">These days, homerism
has morphed into cheerleading, with nary a discouraging word allowed. I
subscribe to MLB’s Extra Innings package, which gives me access to just every about
game that’s televised, and to most of the boys (and sometimes girls) in the
booths home teams are the good guys, foes the villains. Home players are
referred to by first names or nicknames, like pals, foemen by family names.
Home guys succeed by merit, foemen by chance. Every crew of umpires or refs has
it in for the broadcasters’ employers; non-stop, one-way bitching over calls is
the rule. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Best choice to avoid the blather:
watch with the sound off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-42730294217013029892023-08-01T08:33:00.001-07:002023-08-01T10:25:24.850-07:00NFL WORST<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’m told
that the state motto of Alabama is “Thank God for Mississippi.” By that gauge
the Arizona Cardinals must have emitted a collective groan when the notorious
Daniel Snyder sold the Washington Commanders, nee Redskins. That left the Cards
as the clear choice for worst organization in the National Football League and,
maybe, in all American pro sports.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That’s
saying a lot, you say? Well, the Cardinals are that bad. For instance, what
other team’s lineage includes Al Capone? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>More
about Capone later, because the Cards’ “now” is plenty bad enough. Their
won-lost record last season was 4 and 13, which wasn’t the league’s worst but
it was close, and extended a losing tradition that dates to the team’s
founding. The club was among the 14 original members of what in 1920 was called
the American Professional Football Association, along with the Akron Indians,
Muncie Flyers and Chicago Bears. The loop changed its name to the National
Football League two years later.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In their 103 years of existence in Chicago
(1920-59), St. Louis (1960-87) and Arizona (1988-present) the Cards have won
just two NFL titles—in 1925 and 1947—and the first of those still is contested
by folks in Pottstown, Pennsylvania (current population about 23,000), who
believe their late and lamented Maroons were cheated by scheduling
manipulations. The Cards’ all-time record of 581-790-41 includes the NFL lead
for losses. Their winning percentage of .426 ranks third-lowest among the 32
current teams, ahead of only the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tampa Bay Buccaneers,
relative newcomers both.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s a
foregone conclusion that the season that begins next month will worsen those
marks. Since the end of last season the team has had its best offensive
player—wide receiver Deandre Hopkins—in effect quit, its best two defensive
linemen-- J.J. Watts and Zach Allen—leave via retirement and free agency,
respectively, and its defensive leader, safety Budda Baker, ask to be traded
before reneging.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quarterback Kyler Murray, the recipient of a
five-year, $250 million contract in 2021, is a sourpuss whose work ethic has
been questioned. He’s a smallish guy who likes to carry the ball, meaning he’s
injury prone. He missed the last six games of 2022 with a hurt knee and it’s
anybody’s guess when he’ll be combat-ready this year.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The Cards start the season with a
new head coach but the former one hasn’t exactly gone away. Kliff Kingsbury
(four-season AZ record 28-37-1) was fired only a year after he was given a
six-year contract extension at $5.5 million per, and the Cards have to keep
paying him until he finds a new job. He recently was seen enjoying the beaches
in Thailand. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Players thinking of joining the
team might heed a recent survey by the NFL Players Association that ranked it
last in the league in five of eight “quality of employment” categories,
including food service, weight room, locker room, training facilities and
treatment of families. Its overall rank among the 32 teams was last, by a lot.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And upstairs
in the front office, all is not well. The team has a new general manager after
the old one left for still-undisclosed health reasons after serving a
suspension for extreme DUI. The team was named in ex-Miami Dolphins coach Brian
Flores’ racism lawsuit against the league, for firing black head coach Steve
Wilks after just a season on the job (2018) so it could hire Kingsbury. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s also being taken to arbitration by fired former
vice president Terry McDonough, who charges President Michael Bidwill with a
Snyder-like list of beastly executive behaviors aimed at himself and other team
employees. Bidwill denies all. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Cardinals are one of five NFL teams that
are, essentially, family businesses, headed for decades by nepots (the others
are the Bears, New York Giants, Pittsburgh Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals). The
founding father was Charley Bidwill, who bought the team in 1933 for a reported
$50,000, including $5,000 in cash and $45,000 in assumed debts.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A lawyer and businessman, the basis of
Bidwill’s fortune was Sportsman’s Park, a Cicero, Illinois, horse track that
closed in 2002. In Illinois and elsewhere racing is a political business,
dependent on state legislatures for operating dates. Bidwill was splendidly placed
for that, being the son of a Chicago alderman and the brother of a state
senator. Reputedly and reportedly, his partner at Sportsman’s was Capone.
At the gangster’s death in 1947 Bidwill bought the track outright from Capone’s
lawyer, Edwin O’Hare.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">When Bidwill died later that same
year control of the team, and the track, passed to his widow, Violet. When she
died in 1962 they went to the couple’s adopted sons Bill and Charles Jr., the
latter nicknamed “Stormy” for his bad temper. The two didn’t get along and in
1971 they split, Bill taking the Cardinals and Stormy the track. Bill in 1988 took
the team to the Phoenix area. His son, Michael, runs it now.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The Arizona move didn’t improve
team fortunes-- it’s had but seven winning seasons in its 35 there. The sole
high spot came in 2008 when it made its only franchise trip to the Super Bowl
despite a 9-7 regular season won-lost record. The Cards’ original Arizona home
was Arizona State U’s Sun Devil Stadium¸ from where it annually trailed the NFL
in attendance. A new stadium, opened in 2006, cured that, but nothing else.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">If a vote were taken, Arizonans
would remove the Bidwills by a landslide margin. Tsk, tsk, in the NFL an owner
needn’t succeed to prosper—Snyder, who bought the Skins for $800 million in
1999, got $6 billion-plus when he sold, and the Cards must be worth at least
that. Not a bad return on Charley’s $50,000, huh? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-29710416951651281022023-07-15T07:58:00.003-07:002023-07-15T07:58:58.976-07:00A MAN FOR HIS TIME<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Major
League Baseball’s GEY (Great Experimental Year) is about half over, with mixed
results. The biggest change— the addition of a pitch clock—has been a success,
reducing average game times to two hours 38 minutes from 3:04 last year, all
from the elimination of dead time. Ditto for the new-found limits on pitchers’-mound
visits, which should be cut back further or eliminated altogether. Fewer
pitching twitches and, maybe, bigger bases have triggered an increase in stolen
bases, also good.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
rest, not so much. Increasing offense was the second aim of the GEY, through
limits on infield shifts, but the effects of that have been minimal, the
all-game batting average for the season’s first half hitting .248, up just five
points from last year’s full-season mark. Virtually unchanged has been the
strikeout rate at 8.7 per team per game, against last season’s 8.8. For five
straight seasons strikeouts have exceeded hits in MLB, and this year should
make it six. Nobody’s cheering that.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
continuing K epidemic probably is beyond rules jiggering. That’s because the
pitchers have gotten far ahead of the hitters, with no end in sight. Thanks
mostly to better coaching from the ground up, and to Tommy John surgery, which
has taken some of the risk out of throwing hard, today’s hurlers can put speed
on and do tricks with baseballs oldtimers could only dream of. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Triple-digit deliveries used to be rare but
now they’re commonplace; breaking balls literally “fall off the table,” to use
the announcers’ cliché.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Batters
have not been exempt from blame for the strikeout siege. Since that cute Nike
TV commercial of 1991 declaring that “chicks dig the long ball,” home runs have
dominated the game’s offensive landscape, jumping from .8 a game in ’91 to a
high of 1.39 in 2019, a 73% increase. They’ve since tailed off a bit, but the
fact their numbers have stayed high despite improvements in pitching testifies
to the continuing desire of batters to hit them. While it might make sense to
choke up on the bat a bit, the better to put wood on the more-elusive pitches,
the batters’ mantra seems to continue to be swing for the seats, and strikeouts
be damned. Back in ’91, batters struck out at a rate of 17% of official times
at bat. Last year the rate was 25%. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So here
we are in 2023 and a “new” type of player has emerged. He’s the type whose
entire game is the long ball. I put “new” in quotes because guys like that long
have been around. The prototype is <b>Reggie Jackson</b>, who for 21 seasons (1967-87)
terrorized foes of, consecutively, the Oakland A’s, New York Yankees and Los Angeles
Angels, enroute to 563 career home runs and a Hall of Fame spot despite what
seemed like a lot of whiffs. In retrospect, though, Reggie was quite restrained
at the plate, striking out 26% of the time, just a jot higher than today’s
“everybody” average, and his lifetime BA of .262 is about 20 points higher than
today’s. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A couple
of current players stand out as exemplars of the all-or-nothing ethos. One is <b>Joey
Gallo</b>. A bearded giant, standing a listed 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds, he has
made a living in baseball despite a career .198 batting average over nine
seasons (2015 to the present) with the San Francisco Giants, Milwaukee Braves,
Los Angeles Dodgers and, now, the Minnesota Twins. He’s consistent in that
regard, not hitting more than a full-season .200 since 2019. He stood at .183
for ’23 at the All-Star Game break.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Gallo
has power, though, with 192 home runs to his credit. He’s at times been a
part-time player, so that figure might not be overly impressive, but it works
out to a robust 38 homers a season on a 162-game basis. But the other side of
his weighted ledger is equally wowing—228 strikeouts a year. It’s cold enough
in Minny without him fanning the breezes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Based on
those numbers Gallo would get the “new guy” award, but he loses out because
he’s a good outfielder, having won Gold Gloves with the 2020 and ’21 Twins. The
other fellow I have in mind can make no such claim. He’s <b>Kyle Schwarber </b>of
the Philadelphia Phillies. After being drafted No. 4 in 2014 by the Chicago
Cubs, he came up in ‘15 as a catcher, his primary position at Indiana U. When
it quickly became apparent that wouldn’t work in the Bigs he was tried at first
base and left and right fields, with similar results. He now splits his time
between designated hitter and left field, the position where he can do the
least harm afield. He can catch a routine fly, and isn’t bad coming in on
balls, but is slow afoot and lost when one heads over his head. One thinks he
ought to wear his batting helmet out there.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At the
plate is where he earns his keep, a left-handed hitter cutting a Ruthian figure
at a thick-middled 6-feet tall and 230 pounds. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His .228 lifetime BA isn’t terrible by current
standards but it’s headed south, reaching just .184 so far this season. His
home run totals are just fine, though, numbering 221 to date and working out to
a round 40 per 162-game average, which in the eyes of his employers
over-balances his strikeout rate of 185. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Unlike
most one-dimensional players, Schwarber has done well in the game’s honors
department, winning All-Star Game places in 2021 and ’22 and a starting spot on
the U.S. team that was runnerup (to Japan) in last year’s World Baseball
Classic. He won a World Series ring with the 2016 Cubs and helped the Phillies
to the 2022 Series. He’s being paid a reported $20 million this year and is on
the books for the same figure in 2024 and ’25, not bad for a fellow of 30.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Steve Jobs could have had Schwarber
in mind when he said “Do not try to do everything. Do one thing well.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The trick, of course, is to find the right
thing. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="text-transform: uppercase;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-56529844512304143052023-07-01T07:50:00.000-07:002023-07-01T07:50:06.531-07:00KNUCKLEBALL PRINCESS<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’m
retired and, thus, have time to spare. I fill it partly by surfing the internet
for interesting stories. I found one the other day on the MLB.com website. Its
headline read “Knuckleball Princess.” Couldn’t pass up that one, huh?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
turned out that the headline was out of date. The story’s subject, Eri Yoshida,
is a Japanese woman of 31 years who as a 16-year-old became the first member of
her sex to play professional baseball in her homeland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The “princess” label was appropriate then but
not so much 15 years later. But as they say in the newsbiz, if you have a good
line you use it every once in a while.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What was
immediately newsy about Ms. Yoshida is that she had taken her act to the U.S.
by appearing in something called the Empire Professional Baseball League, a
minor league unaffiliated with Major League Baseball that has five teams based
in upstate New York, one of which is called the Japanese Islanders. That’s despite
the fact that all but six of that team’s rostered players appear to be
Americans. The “whys” of those last couple of things are illusive; my attempts
at elucidation failed. But I’m satisfied the EPBL is real, so this piece can
continue.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The New
York gig represents a comeback of sorts for the woman, a 5-foot-1, 115-pound right-hander
with a knuckleball speciality. She learned the pitch in her Yokohama hometown at
age 14 from a TV show on Tim Wakefield, who rode the delivery to a 200-win career
that spanned 19 MLB seasons (1992-2011), 17 of them with the Boston Red Sox.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">She’d pitched in a men’s U.S. minor
league before, beginning in 2010 as a dewy eyed 18-year-old with the Chico
Outlaws of the California-based Golden Baseball League, also unaffiliated. Her
three seasons with that club were interesting, to say the least. It reportedly
had high points, including a four-inning stint in which she surrendered but one
hit. But if she could be good she also could be horrid, giving up a total of 81
hits, 57 walks and 28 hit-batsmen over 78 innings, with a 7.62 earned-run
average. Back to the drawing board she went, pitching for and coaching Japanese
women’s teams. Still, she says she has “a dream in [her] heart” to succeed
among men in the land of baseball’s birth, so she’s trying again.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The idea of women beating men at sport’s
heights has enduring appeal even though it has little grounding in fact. Sexual
politics is a cause, as is our love of underdogs of all sorts. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Exceptions are eagerly seized upon-- in 2014
Mo’ne Davis, a 13-year-old girl playing on a Philadelphia team, pitched a
shutout in the Little League World Series, busting 70 mph fastballs past
bewildered boys. The crowd went wild, and Sports Illustrated put her on a cover,
along with a story that revealed her ambition to star in either MLB or the NBA.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">But while girls usually mature
(i.e., go through puberty) earlier than boys, and in the Little
League-eligibility ages of 11 through 13 often are taller and heavier, boys
mostly have passed them by the mid-teens and by adulthood have a sizable edge
in “lean body mass” (i.e., muscle). That’s the basis of male athletic
superiority. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Plenty of women can beat plenty of men
in plenty of sports, but at the elite level in which both sexes compete in the
same events over the same courses (e.g., track and field and swimming), men’s
records are about 15% better than women’s, across the board. That’s also about
the difference in average driving distance on the PGA and LPGA tours, which is
why the women pros compete on shorter courses than do the men. Yes¸ 29-year-old
Billie Jean King beat 55-year-old Bobby Riggs in their hyped Battle of the
Sexes in 1973, but a truer tennis test came 19 years later when Jimmy Connors,
then aged 40, handily beat 35-year-old Martina Navratilova despite getting only
one serve per point in his service games and letting Martina hit into the
doubles’ alleys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That said, however, Ms. Yoshida’s continuing
experiment bears notice. If a woman ever does play in baseball at a high level
it well might be as a knuckleball pitcher, whose soft, no-spin offerings depend
on unpredictable air currents for their motion. The delivery is as much an
intellectual exercise as a physical one, something that’s rare in sports. It’s
hard to hit but not hard to throw; the trick is getting it around the plate
consistently. Jocks of both sexes are take-charge types, out to impose their
wills on foes. The k-ball requires just the opposite.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Pat Jordan, a pitcher turned
writer, explained it best is his excellent autobiography “A False Spring.” He
wrote, “A knuckleball pitcher has no control over the peregrinations of the
ball. To be successful he [or, uh, she] must first recognize this fact and
decide that his destiny lies only with the pitch, and throw it consistently no
matter what.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Getting stats from the obscure
Empire League ain’t easy, but early returns on Ms. Yoshida there were not
great. In her first three innings she gave up five hits, four walks and two hit-batsmen,
and seven earned runs.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might help if she were bigger than 5-1,
115. I can think of no man that size who made a splash in the game (“Wee”
Willie Keeler stood 5-4 and weighed 140). She’s just 31, though, and that’s
young for a knuckleballer. Hall of Famer Phil Niekro, the model for the type,
pitched until he was 48 and was just getting started at her age. You go, girl! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">And oh yes, at last sighting Mo’ne
Davis was an infielder on the women’s softball team at Hampton U., in Virginia.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-78917223785070702912023-06-15T08:46:00.003-07:002023-06-15T08:46:58.857-07:00NEWS & VIEWS<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>NEWS:
PGA and LIV golf tours merge<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>VIEWS:
The Golden Rule applies—those with the gold make the rules<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
sudden combination of the Saudi Arabian-backed LIV upstart and the PGA Tour
surprised just about everyone, but it probably shouldn’t have. The new tour,
started last year, drew some of the game’s biggest names (Phil Mickelson,
Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka) with its nine-figure bonuses and big tournament purses,
and its deep-pocketed sponsor could endure almost endless losses while
establishing itself. It’s said no one should argue with anyone who buys ink by
the barrel. It’s equally true that competing with one who ships oil by the tankerful
is a formidable business foe.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Apparently,
the deal gives PGA execs control over the golf side of the new entity, yet
unnamed, while giving the Saudi’s Public Investment Fund control of the
business side. It might not go through. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some
PGA loyalists, properly feeling betrayed, grumbled at its announcement, but
there’s little doubt most of the swingers will be mollified by the bigger
purses the combination will produce. The hitch will be the U.S. Department of
Justice, which already was looking into anti-trust action against the PGA Tour
and now has more reason to do so. That the PGA also runs what used to be called
the European Tour makes its domination worldwide.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s the
latest and, by far, biggest example of “sportswashing.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s the practice of individuals, companies or
nations using sports to improve their public odor. Saudi Arabia is more a
company than a country, one that’s operated by the Al Saud family, its
residents employees more than citizens. It wages proxy war in Yemen and
imprisons or murders domestic dissidents. It’s been a frequent “washer,”
sponsoring international tennis and auto-racing events, luring the soccer stars
<b>Cristiano Ronaldo</b> and <b>Karim Benzama</b> to its resident league and
buying the Newcastle United team in the English Premier League.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, in a single swoop, it has purchased in
its entirety a prestigious professional sport.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
selling itself to such an interest, the PGA contradicted its own rhetoric in
initially fighting LIV. “Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of
the PGA Tour?” commissioner Jay Monahan asked his legions during the
hostilities. The oil sheikhs made the deal in hopes people will think pleasant
thoughts of golf when they think of Saudi Arabia. Instead, people now will think
of Saudi Arabia every time they think of golf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>NEWS:
The Major League Baseball season passes the one-third mark<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>VIEWS:
And the standings look upside down<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yes, the
teams each have more than 90 games left to play, and the roster depth that big
money buys shows up strongest in the late going, but the results so far have
been startling. The game’s best team by far, with a 48-24 won-lost mark as of yesterday
(June 14), has been the Tampa Bay Rays, which rank dead last on the payroll
list.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re used to seeing the resourceful Rays
outperform their paychecks, though, so more surprising have been the showings
of three other long-have-not clubs-- the <b>Texas Rangers, Arizona Diamondback
and Baltimore Orioles.</b> At early week all were tied for second in the
overall wins department, with 41. The Rangers lead the American League West
division following six sub-.500 seasons, the D’backs are atop the National
League West after leading the Majors in losses (with 110) just two seasons ago,
and the Orioles trail only the Rays in the AL East after going sub.500 in five
of the last six years and posting 100 or more losses in 2018, ’19 and ’21. Of the
three, only the Rangers are in the top third of the payroll list this season
(they’re 9<sup>th</sup>). The D’backs rank 21<sup>st</sup> and the O’s 29<sup>th</sup>,
the latter ahead of only the Rays.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Those teams trace different paths
to their current success but have a common link in the players they acquired in
the first round of the 2019 draft. The O’s chose first that year and picked <b>Adley
Rutschman, </b>a catcher out of Oregon State U. He became a starter last season
and finished second in AL rookie-of-the-year voting, and is having a better
year this season. With the eighth pick the Rangers chose third-baseman <b>Josh
Jung </b>from Texas Tech. As a rookie this year he’s among team leaders in
batting average (.288), home runs (13) and RBIs (40).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">At pick 16 the D’backs chose <b>Corbin
Carroll, </b>an 18-year-old outfielder from Seattle. He was brought up briefly
last year with good results, and has topped those in the current campaign. A tightly
wound little guy at a listed 5-foot-10 and 165 pounds (he looks smaller), he’s
flashed a rare combination of speed and power, leading his team in both OPS
(.989) and stolen bases (19). Best, he’s just 22 years old. His team is known
for making dumb trades, but even its laid-back fans would burn down Chase Field
if it let this young man get away.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">NEWS: The Denver Nuggets win the
NBA title.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">VIEWS: The runnerup Miami Heat were
a good story, too. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The Nuggets rode the otherworldly
skills of their placid-looking big man, <b>Nikola Jokic, </b>to their franchise’s
first championship, posting a 16-4 record in the playoffs. They were the best
team and played best, too, but their finals foe also distinguished itself by
making an unexpected run after posting the league’s 13<sup>th</sup>-best
won-lost record (44-38) during the regular season.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The Heat did it with nine undrafted
players on their 17-man roster, five of whom were in their playoffs rotation.
That’s in a league in which second-round choices in its two-round draft are
considered longshots to stick. There’s a lot more basketball talent around than
there used to be (see my blog of April 1), but it still takes a keen eye to
identify it. The likeliest Heat candidate to have it is their president <b>Pat
Riley</b>, who has succeeded <b>Jerry West </b>as the league’s wiseman. As a
player, coach or exec Riley’s teams have reached the NBA finals in six
different decades. There oughta be an award for that. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-53230678052182544512023-06-01T08:42:00.003-07:002023-06-01T08:42:49.457-07:00MUSICAL CHAIRS<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There
are, it’s said, three things most men think they can do better than anyone
else: start a fire, run a restaurant and coach a football team. By that
standard I’m not typical; while I can start a fire with the best of them I have
no desire to either run a restaurant or coach any sort of team.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">My sole venture into coaching was a
disaster. When daughter Jessica was a fifth grader she talked me into joining a
neighbor dad in guiding her school’s basketball team. In the weeks that
followed he and I issued many instructions to the young hoopsters but few were
followed, and on top of that we had to endure verbal pummeling from fellow parents
whose kids weren’t getting the playing time they thought they deserved. At
season’s end we both retreated to our dens, never again to emerge in that capacity.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Coaching is in the news as the
National Basketball Association season grinds to an end, as it is at the
conclusion of the seasons of any of our big-time spectator sports. Five of the
league’s 30 teams jettisoned head coaches, and while the number was small by
recent measures its composition was remarkable. Three of the now-ex
coaches—Glenn “Doc” Rivers of the Philadelphia 76ers, Nick Nurse of the Toronto
Raptors and Mike Budenholzer of the Milwaukee Bucks—have NBA titles in their
resumes, and a fourth—Monty Williams of the Phoenix Suns—led the league in regular-season
victories over the last three campaigns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Success, it seems, is no guarantee of job security.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">I suppose that many of you now are
saying “What’s the big deal?” Any fan older than age eight can tell you that
when a season doesn’t go as planned – or hoped—it’s the coach who gets the blame,
for the simple reasons that it’s cheaper and easier to fire him (or her) than
it is to fire the players. Further, players at the highest level have genius-level
skills while many people are qualified to coach, and the gesture satisfies the
universal popular desire for scapegoating. If volcanoes were handy everywhere the
exes would be in bigger trouble than they are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">In view of the above one might
reasonably ask who would <i>want</i> to be a major-league head coach or manager
in this day and age. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Besides having to command a locker room full
of prima dons, a few of whom probably eat dinner with the team’s owner more
often than he, a manager or coach must obey a list of unwritten rules that
would frustrate a saint. The main one of those is to never “show up” a player, making
taboo any public word or gesture that might imply criticism. Thus, when a
relief pitcher comes into a close game in the late innings and walks the first
batter he faces, the manager must stand by stoically, avoiding the eyes-rolling
or s***-mouthing going on in the stands.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The time when Casey Stengel
(allegedly) could say “I managed good but they played bad” is gone. Today, and
if he can, a coach must revert to humor to make that point. The classic in that
regard came from the football coach John McKay who, when asked after a loss
what he thought of his team’s “execution,” said “I’m in favor of it.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Yes, there’s the money, but while
head-coaching remuneration might be impressive by average-person standards it
pales in comparison with what players are being paid. At the top of the pro-coaches
pay list are a couple of men who’ve been around seemingly forever and have won
numerous championships--the football coach Bill Belichick (a reported $20
million a year) and the basketball mentor Gregg Popovich ($11.5 million)—but
after those the figures drop sharply. According to online sources the average annual
salary for the position in the National Football League is about $6.5 million.
The comparable figure for the NBA is about $3.5 million, and in the National
Hockey League it’s about $2.5 million. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Baseball managers bring up the rear
at the pay window. The L.A. Dodgers’ Dave Roberts leads that list at a reported
$6.5 million, but most men in the position fall into the $2 million-to-$4
million-a-year range and several are said to earn less than $1 million. That’s
hardly enough to keep them in Tums and Excedrin, and it’s all chump change
compared with the $30 million-to-$50 million-a-year range of the top stars of our
team sports.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Of job security there is little,
three to five years being the usual range for a head coach. Anyone needing to
move to accept a new job is better off renting a home than buying.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">On the good-news side, coaching is
a fraternity and once someone establishes himself as competent fall-back jobs
are readily available. This is especially true in football and basketball,
where there is easy movement between the college and professional ranks. Rare
is the out-of-work head coach in those sports who doesn’t have a buddy to hand
him an assistant’s job, there to sit out his banishment until a new head post develops.
Coaches in their 50s with a dozen or more jobs in their histories aren’t
atypical. If you don’t mind moving and taking occasional salary cuts, it’s not
a bad profession.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">And one person’s trash is another’s
treasure, so a quick move to another top job often is available. Of the
above-mentioned recent NBA fires, Nurse and Williams already have found new posts—Nurse
with the 76ers and Williams with the Detroit Pistons-- and Rivers is said to be
in the running to fill other vacancies. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The musical-chairs analogy is apt, and the
music is playing.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-12184387494286335492023-05-15T08:39:00.003-07:002023-05-15T10:55:44.093-07:00LAST TEAM STANDING?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>OK
sports fans, time for a quiz. What do these eight men— Kawhi Leonard, Paul
George, Joel Embiid, Ja Morant, Julius Randle, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Chris
Paul and Jimmy Butler-- have in common? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>All are
National Basketball Association stars and the best players on their teams, or
nearly so. And all have missed games due to injury during the current NBA
playoffs.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some of
their absences already have been crucial. The Los Angeles Clippers, minus George
for the duration and Leonard for three games, were bounced from the tournament’s
first round in five games by the Phoenix Suns, and the Milwaukee Bucks, top
seeded in the East, suffered a similar fate to the Miami Heat with Giannis out
for two of those games. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without
playmaker Paul for the last four games, the Suns lost in six to the Denver
Nuggets in round two.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>More
rounds remain so the injury story of this year’s playoffs hasn’t been
completed. Many of the games so far have been brilliantly played, with epic
individual performances by Butler, Stephen Curry and Devin Booker, among
others, but the way things are going the race could be won not by the best team
but the last one standing. The NBA season has gotten so tough and grueling that
it rivals the National Football League’s in having injuries dictate its
outcomes. And instead of looking for ways to limit the damage, the league mostly
makes it worse.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Schedules
in our major spectator sports long have been governed more by commerce than by competition,
but nowhere has the “more is better” philosophy been more damaging than in the
NBA. The league has had a 82-game regular season since the 1967-68 campaign,
but the game today is immeasurably faster and rougher than it was then, and the
playoffs are longer. First-round playoff series’ used to be best-of-five-games,
now they’re best-of-seven like the other three rounds, and this season a
six-game “play-in” tourney was added among the seventh-through-10<sup>th</sup>-place
finishers in the two geographic divisions to determine who made the final eight
in each. A winner now could play as many as 30 playoff games, against 28
before. Maybe that’s not a big deal, but it’s not nothing.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the
NFL, the injury bug bites hardest on the quarterbacks. They’re the most
important players on the field but also the most vulnerable, often gazing at
receivers downfield while behemoth lineman intent on their demise bear down
upon them. It’s a wonder they aren’t hurt more often than they are. In
basketball the stars bear the injury brunt because they play more minutes than
lesser lights and are more the defenses’ focus. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Basketballers
aren’t bent on mayhem the way footballers are, but the cagers play unpadded—in
their underwear, by appearance—and they don’t call the courts “the hardwoods”
for nothing. Spectators and photographers sit only a few feet from the side and
end lines, adding to the danger. Both effort and intensity increase during the
playoffs, and the unwritten but real refs’ dictum to “let the boys play” kicks
in. And even an elderly gent like 38-year-old LeBron James is logging 40-minute
games during the current go-round. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You
can’t make any money while the store is closed so the NBA, like our other pro
leagues, is loath to cut back on its schedules. It has addressed its injury
problem in part by going corporate, legitimizing what it calls “load
management.” That means it’s okay for players to sit out games from time to
time for no other reason than rest. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The injured parties here are the fans, who no
longer can count on seeing their favorite players when they buy tickets. To
find out how often that happens I counted the absences during the
just-concluded regular season of the dozen players I considered the league’s
best. Embiid, Nikola Jokic, Luca Doncic, Antetokounmpo, Curry, Leonard, James,
Kevin Durant, Booker, Morant, Damian Lillard and Butler missed a total of 274
games for rest or injury, with Durant’s 35 the most and Jokic’s 13 the fewest.
That works out to about 23 games each, or about 28% of their teams’ schedules.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Other players get hurt, too; 10 seasons
ago 28 players appeared in all 82 NBA games but this season the total was 10. The
league record for consecutive games was set by A.C. Green, a much-traveled frontcourter,
whose streak totaled 1,192 games from 1987 through 2001. That’s way short of
the baseball mark of 2,632 games set by Cal Ripken Jr., but it’s just about as
remarkable; as Green put it, “Ripken didn’t have to fight off two or three guys
every time he went to catch a pop up.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The NBA’s current streak is 392, held by Mikal
Bridges of the Brooklyn Nets, so Green’s mark won’t be topped soon, if ever.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">To the question of why all the
basketball injuries, the reasons are several. One, of course, is that even with
load management the NBA schedule is too long. Another is the increased speed of
the game, which ups the stress all around. A third, by me, is the fact that the
wealthy pro athlete of today (and just about all NBAers are wealthy, or should
be) is a jock in season and out, and probably is working out somewhere when he
isn’t playing.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All proper workout schedules have a rest
component, but given the competitiveness of big-time sports few jocks can
resist thinking that one more rep, or lap, could be the difference between a
starting job and the bench, or somesuch. There’s a thin line between peak
fitness and a pulled hamstring, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>so all
teams and their fans must hope their star’s next step won’t put him on the
injured list.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-25271361297682892132023-05-04T07:04:00.000-07:002023-05-04T07:04:44.438-07:00DERBY PICKS<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the
“Who Says There’s No Good News?” department, a notable entry last year. The
Stronach Group and the state of Arizona settled their dispute, allowing AZ
horseplayers to again watch the simulcasts from Gulfstream Park and Santa
Anita, among other Stronach tracks. Thus, at Kentucky Derby time, I’ve had a
decent chance to be prepared and share my views on the race with you, my dear
readers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At no charge, of course-- extra
or otherwise.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Derby has been interesting during my two-year hiatus. In 2021 the winner on the
race course, Medina Spirit, was disqualified months later for a drug violation,
and last year an 80-to-1 shot, Rich Strike, snuck past two battling favorites at
the wire to cause agita coast to coast. Add the 2019 race, when winner Maximum Security
was taken down for interference and the 65-to-1 runnerup replaced him in the
winners’ circle, and the warning to “hold all tickets” never has seemed more
apt.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
return to what Warren G. Harding called “normalcy” would dictate that a
favorite prevail this year, and there’s a clear one. He’s <b>Forte</b> (post
position 15), who leads the field in wins (6, of 7 starts) and money won (about
$2.4 million), and was both the two-year-old champion and the dominant
three-year-old on the busy Florida winter circuit. About the only knock against
him was that he won the Florida Derby by a scant length after going off at
1-to-5. A 1-to-5 shot is expected to win by a city block.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So I’ll
have <b>Forte</b> in my exacta tickets, but he’ll go off at 3-to-1 or less and
to make any money I’ll have to pair him with longer shots. Also on both my
tickets will be <b>Angel of Empire</b>, (PP.14), 8-to-1 in the morning line.
He’s a late-runner who won two Derby preps by daylight margins. Because of the
odds I’ll be rooting mainly for him.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
nice thing about the Derby is that you get double-digit odds on very-good
horses. I’ll put two of those—<b>Kingsbarns,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></b>(PP. 6) and <b>Two Phils</b>, (PP.3)—on one of my tickets. Both are
12-to-1 in the morning line. Kingsbarns runs in front-- always a good place to
be—and Two Phils travels well, having won races at four different tracks.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On my
other ticket I’ll have <b>Derma Sotogake</b>, (PP. 17), and <b>Mage</b>,
(PP.8). Derma, off at 10-to-1, is Japanese owned and trained, and those horses have
been doing well worldwide. Mage, 15-to-1, was a close second to Forte in the
Florida Derby, so he seems to belong among the best.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To
summarize, barring late scratches and mind changes I’ll bet two $1, four-horse
exacta boxes—3-6-14-15 and 8-14-15-17—costing a modest $24. Putting down a few
bucks makes any race more interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enjoy.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-67041731737070666332023-05-01T08:45:00.001-07:002023-05-01T08:45:05.312-07:00RACE TO THE BOTTOM<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A few
weeks ago the Dallas Mavericks played the Chicago Bulls in the final NBA
regular-season game for both teams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Mavs sat Kyrie Irving and three other usual starters and limited their best
player, Luca Doncic, to the first quarter. Their remaining players made a game
of it but eventually bowed, 115-112. A spot in the “play in” tournament, the
precursor to the playoffs, was on the line, but while the loss cost the Mavs
that distinction they gained a better place in the next player draft.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">In a word, the Mavs “tanked”—lost
on purpose. That’s not uncommon in our big-time professional sports but it was
unusual that the team was frank about it — “an organizational choice,” coach
Jason Kidd called it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The league responded with outrage,
fining the Mavs $750,000 and saying their action (inaction, really) “undermined
the integrity of the sport” and “failed our fans and our league.” But note the
careful wording of that statement, the “our” instead of “their.” Chances are
that many if not most Mavs fans, aware that their mediocre team’s title chances
were close to nil, thought that a better draft position was worth more than a
play-in game or two. Likewise, the three-quarters-mil fine was a pittance to
the team’s famously rich owner, Mark Cuban; indeed, he was docked $600,000 for
doing pretty much the same thing in 2018. “Losing was our best option,” he said
then. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What we
have here is a classic example of unintended consequences. All four of our
major pro- sports leagues— in baseball, football, basketball and hockey--
replenish their rosters annually with a worst-goes-first amateur-player draft,
designed with the laudable purpose of improving their laggard teams. But what
we see annually is the unedifying spectacle of a race to the bottom among teams
who believe that’s their best road to the top.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now,
losing on purpose isn’t as easy as it may appear. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No athlete, pro or weekend hacker, wants to
lose, and with few exceptions will put out his or her best effort once the
opening bell or its equivalent sounds. Fact is, in contact sports like football
and hockey, less than whole-hearted effort can lead to injury. What happens,
then, is that clubs will pare their rosters by trading away useful players for
prospects or draft choices, hoping that their fans will stick with them while the
kids they acquire grow up to fuel a renaissance. If they pick wisely, it’ll
work. If not, it won’t.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That’s
been an option for decades but it took the baseball 2006 Washington Nationals
to formalize it. That team, transplanted from Montreal the year before, and
with dim short-term prospects, embarked on what top execs Stan Kasten and Mike
Rizzo publicly called “The Plan,” whose essence is expressed in the paragraph
above. The Nats endured losing seasons from 2006 through 2010 but accumulated
the wherewithal to draft such worthies as Stephen Strausburg, Bryce Harper and
Anthony Rendon. A period of success followed, culminating in a 2019 World
Series victory.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Other
teams took note. Theo Epstein tanked the Chicago Cubs in 2012 through ’14 while
he put together the roster that won the 2016 Series, ending an epic, 108-year
title drought. The Houston Astros were doing the same thing at about the same
time, with longer-lasting results. It’s noteworthy that those things happened
in baseball, where the gap between the Majors and draft-level players is the widest
among our Big Four. That entrenched the lesson.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Baseball
and football have straight-out worst-goes-first rules, and the NFL’s exciting
bottom race this season came down to the final game. The Houston Texans, who do
few things right, led most of the way, but surprised by winning two of their
last three games to finish at 3-13-1 in the won-lost-tied column. That allowed
them to be aced out by the Chicago Bears, who came in at 3-14.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Bears, with a new coach on board, were not terrible to start, standing at 3-4
after the first seven games. Then they traded away (for draft choices) their
two best defensive players—lineman Robert Quinn and linebacker Roquan Smith—and
went into a 10-game swoon. Among the early losses in that stretch were a few in
which they were competitive, but they finished in full fade, being outscored 39
to 105 in their last three outings. Of such performances are No. 1 draft positions
made. The team being hard up all around, they traded that top spot for more
picks, but their talent deficit is so large it’ll probably take at least one
more quite-bad season to get them into any title mix. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The NBA and
the NHL have tried to avert too many overt tankings by creating draft lotteries
involving the several worst teams every season (their number has varied), but
last placers still have an edge for the top spot, so the races continue. In
hockey this season three teams—the Anaheim Ducks, Chicago Blackhawks and
Columbus Blue Jackets—battled to the wire for last. The Blue Jackets were bad,
finishing 4-9 in their last 13 games. The Blackhawks were worse at 2-11, but
the Ducks put the puck in the net by going out at 0-13. The Ohioans and
Chicagoans tied for second-worst in the standings, with the former getting the
best of the tie-breakers. Anaheim will have a 25.5% lottery shot at No. 1, the
Blue Jackets 13.5% and the Hawks 11.5. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The top
draft prize in hockey this year is substantial. He’s Connor Bedard, a smallish,
beardless Canadian youth of 17 years who averaged better than a goal a game in
his last two seasons of junior play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He’s hailed as a unique talent, one who can set the league afire, but
there’s many a slip ‘twixt the juniors and Bigs and any sport’s draft remains a
crapshoot. Remember that when the numbers are drawn and the names are
announced. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-39485699768526860412023-04-15T08:15:00.001-07:002023-04-15T08:15:50.857-07:00WE WUZ ROBBED<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The National
Basketball Association’s seemingly endless playoff schedule starts today (April
15), made longer by the new play-in sked that began last Tuesday (4/11), but
one of the game’s dominant themes already is reverberating through the
land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the “We Wuz Robbed” cry from
fans who think their teams have been or will be victimized by referee
unfairness. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s a
claim that follows all sports, probably out of the ingrown touch of paranoia we
all harbor, but none more so among our American Big Three than basketball. My
hometown Phoenix Suns have been especially irate of late, citing a 21-25
per-game free-throw-attempt deficit during the regular season as <i>prima facie
</i>proof of evil doings. If it’s occurred to them and their fans that, maybe,
the Suns just foul more than foes, they’ve kept it to themselves.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hoops sport is singled out because its
refs have more to do with the outcome of its games than most others. The
on-court banging around that characterizes the NBA—and is celebrated by the
league’s boosters-- is so pervasive that fouls might be called on just about
every play. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As it is, NBA refs call 48
personal fouls in an average game. That compares with the average of 12 penalty
mark-offs a game in the National Football League, a total that in itself stirs
anger.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
notion that game officials or the league itself favors some teams at the
expense of others also is strongest in the NBA. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The model favored team is, of course, the New
York Knicks, probably because of general hinterland bias against the
metropolis, but also because of the 1985 draft-lottery drawing that gave the
Knicks the right to acquire giant center Patrick Ewing, that year’s prize.
Anti-Knick vibes have waned in recent decades, probably because the perceived favoritism
hasn’t brought the poor guys a title since 1973. Now, I guess, the LA Lakers,
from the West Coast metropolis, are said to be the pets.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Anyone
who’s been close to sports knows that the whole idea of organized official bias
is ludicrous. I’ve known refs or umps professionally or personally (my nephew
David Trachtenberg calls high-school basketball and volleyball games in the
Denver area), and can say unreservedly that no other group matches them for pure-hearted
devotion to their sports. Big-league game officials today make good money—NBA
refs top out at $550,000 a year and MLB umps at $450,000—but just about all of
them started out officiating kids’ games at $50 a pop, and that rate or close
to it still prevails in the playgrounds. Without such heroes organized sports
in this country wouldn’t exist.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This is
not to say that there is no such thing as official bias. It exists, but perhaps
not in ways, or for reasons, some might expect. For these I refer to the book
“Scorecasting,” by Tobias J. Moskowitz, a professor of finance at Yale U., and
L. Jon Wertheimer, an editor at Sports Illustrated magazine. It took a
statistical look at some of sports’ popular verities and debunked more than a
few of them. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Published in 2011, the book is a
dozen years old and some things have changed in that span, but because it draws
on mountains of data that aren’t easily moved, its main conclusions remain
valid. One, for example, showed that the NFL practice of “icing” placekickers
by calling last-second timeouts doesn’t work— success rates with and without
them were almost identical. Another showed that NFL teams that “went for it” on
fourth down anywhere near the 50-year-line did better than ones that made the
conventional choice of punting. A third questioned the widespread practice of
removing from NBA games players with five (of the permitted six) fouls with
considerable game-time left. Those guys foul out so infrequently (about 20% of
the time) that it’s better to keep their production by letting them play.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The book’s most interesting
conclusions have to do with home-field advantage; that’s one of the enduring
truths of all team sports, with home edges of 55% to 60% across leagues since
time immemorial. I’ll spare you from reading, and myself from presenting, most
of the stats, but using clever measures it eliminated as causes such factors as
home-field familiarity, home comforts and visitors’ travel weariness. What it
found, regardless of nation, sport or decade, was official bias in favor of home
teams. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The difference was strongest in low-score
soccer, where European-league home teams win or tie about 60% of the time. Data
dating from the 1800s showed that soccer refs consistently give home teams
edges in extra time, red cards and penalty kicks, things that often are
decisive in one-goal outcomes. In baseball, millions of MLB data bits collected
electronically for more than 20 years show that ball-strike calls favor home
teams. In basketball the homers get the breaks on not only personal-foul calls
but also on ones involving ball-possession changes. The differences are small, usually
amounting to just a few percentages, but you can drown in a lake that averages
a foot deep.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The authors assert, convincingly,
that the reasons behind the discrepancies have nothing to do with conscious
bias. One is the all-sports dictum—real although unspoken—that the players
should decide the games; for that reason, they say, umps are especially hesitant
to make “ball four” or “strike three” calls on close pitches, and penalty
frequency in all sports declines late in close-fought contests and in playoffs.
Another is the tendency toward conformity found in all human groups, mirroring
people’s psychological desire to be agreeable to those around them. Thus, the home-field
edge grows with crowd size and the nearness of the crowds to the playing
fields. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">For more (and there’s a lot more) you
gotta see the book. It’s not light reading, but it’s worth the effort for serious
fans. It’s available on Amazon for $17, plus delivery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And no, I’m not up for a slice. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><u style="text-underline: words;"><o:p></o:p></u></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-20069674625351256532023-04-01T07:56:00.003-07:002023-04-01T07:56:39.143-07:00BETTERBALL<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To
say that the NCAA men’s basketball tournament has been upsetting is to say the
least. A No. 16-seeded team beat a No. 1, a No. 15 beat a 2. All four regional
top seeds didn’t make it to the round of eight. Kentucky, Duke and Kansas were
out by the Sweet Sixteen, Florida Atlantic, Creighton and San Diego State were
in. What in the world was going on?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
TV commentators and sports-blab radio hosts were full of complicated answers, of
course, but a simple one should suffice. It’s that lots of good young
basketball players are around these days, lots and lots. Too many to man merely
the game’s traditional blue-blood college teams and conferences, for sure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In case you haven’t noticed, or even if you’d
only sensed it, basketball has become our best-played team sport, by a mile.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Not
only are there more good teams than there used to be, but the players also are
better individually, also by a mile. I wasn’t much of a basketballer myself—the
playground on which I grew up had hoops but was covered in gravel, and you
can’t really play basketball on that stuff. But my first paying newspaper job,
in 1957 at age 19, was covering Champaign High School sports for the
Champaign-Urbana (Illinois) Courier, and the basketball coach there, Lee Cabutti,
was nice enough to give me a grounding in the game’s tactical side. That gave
me a leg up as an observer.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">`<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
reporter and fan I’ve followed the game closely since, and its improvement in
all areas can only be called immense. Back in the 1950s most players over
6-feet-4-inches tall could pretty much be written off as stiffs. Today point
guards routinely top that height. High-school teams now are better than good
college teams were then. The NBA is so good it can be enjoyed as performance art.
The women’s game has kept pace, and then some; on a percentage basis its
improvement has surpassed that of the men’s.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of that can be
traced to the nature of the game. It’s five players on a side as opposed to
nine in baseball and 11 in football, meaning that it affords individuals a
greater chance to shine. Basketball courts require less real estate than baseball
or football fields and, thus, are more suitable to urban environments.
Equipment costs are small—a ball alone suffices, no protective gear is needed.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Football can be dangerous—someone’s out to get
you on every snap. Baseball can be boring—an outfielder can stand around for
hours and get maybe two or three balls hit his way. Basketball is the most fun
to play and practice; a kid can spend a pleasant day alone dribbling and
shooting, and games can be played one-on-one or two-on-two, up to the
regulation five-on-five.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Coaching
is better at every level, and not all of it takes place on a court in a formal
setting. Just about every pro or major-college game is widely televised, and
with instant replay and ex-coaches or players at every microphone, every game
is a clinic for those at home. Kids today know about things like ball screens
and box-and-ones from early ages. It’s like with computers—it’s as though they
were born with the knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
while basketball was a seasonal sport in ancient times, it’s year-around today,
with the high-school season followed by summer camps and AAU leagues.
Specialized high schools that put sports first flourish; even some public
schools play “national” schedules that include air travel to meet out-of-state
foes. Some high-school games are on ESPN, and the players are too sophisticated
to say “Hi, mom!” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Behind
all that is the sociological change that has affected all our sports, but
basketball the most: the field gates and gym doors opening wide to
African-Americans. It was anything but instant. It’s well known that Major
League Baseball was integrated by the elevation of Jackie Robinson by the
Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, but less known that basketball took a full two-more
decades before all its heavy bars were lifted.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">The NBA signed
its first black players in 1950, but it was a young and not-influential league
at the time. The college game ruled then and took it’s time manning up. My
school, the University of Illinois, had its first black basketball starter in
1957. He was Mannie Jackson, who later played for and still-later owned the
Harlem Globetrotters. The Southeastern Conference didn’t integrate its teams until
1966, probably not incidentally the same year an all-black five from the
University of Texas at El Paso defeated a favored all-white squad from the
University of Kentucky for the NCAA crown.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">In that same
fateful year the empire struck back by banning dunk shots with its so-called
“Lew Alcindor Rule,” informally named for the 7-foot-2 star, later Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, who that season would lead UCLA to the first of three NCAA titles
in his tenure there. Then as now most high schools followed college rules, so
dunks were forbidden at that level, too. The NBA permitted dunking at the time
but the practice wasn’t suffered gladly by foemen; any player who leaped for
one could expect to have his legs cut out from under him.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the time the rule was repealed in 1976,
just about everyone cheered. Dunking added a new dimension of showmanship to basketball
and made it more fun to play and watch. Kids today learn to dunk on tiny goals
before they learn to shoot.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">The
African-American ascent has lifted basketball, and brought riches to a few, but
by me it hasn’t been<i> </i>an unmitigated boon. Too many black kids— and some
white ones, too—fritter away their youths dribbling basketballs and dreaming
hoops dreams to the exclusion of other goals, but for even the very talented
making an NBA roster remains a struck-by-lightning proposition. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someone should write a pamphlet for
high-school basketballers titled “Have a Plan B.” Don’t read it, don’t play. <i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-38092349845972963922023-03-15T08:31:00.002-07:002023-03-15T11:44:02.202-07:00BUYING A TITLE<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I was
born and raised in Chicago, which the great Bob Verdi (with an assist from Carl
Sandburg) called “the city of broad shoulders and narrow trophy cabinets,” so I’m
acquainted with sports scarcity. That’s one reason I fit in nicely with the
area around Phoenix, Arizona, my home for the last 25 years.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Phoenix
has representatives in all four of the major American team sports, but has
little to show for itself in the prize department. The basketball Suns,
football Cardinals, baseball Diamondbacks and hockey Coyotes have put in a
total of 139 seasons in what we call the Valley of the Sun but have produced
exactly one championship, that of the 2001 D’backs. If that ain’t a record for
futility, it has to be close.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>During the
last few weeks, though, folks hereabouts have been downright giddy over the
prospects of the Suns. That stems not so much over the team’s won-lost record (37-32
as of yesterday, fourth best in the NBA West) as its outlook after the addition
of Kevin Durant, one of the hoops sport’s certified superstars. The costs of
the move were great (details below), but the upside is considerable. The local consensus
is that the Suns have bought themselves an NBA crown.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If they
succeed they will join the crowd—that’s the way it’s aways been done and,
probably, always will be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The teams with
the biggest payrolls don’t necessarily rule their leagues, but the teams with
the smallest never do. The rule is that if you want to get into the post you’d
better ante.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Indeed,
that’s how Phoenix got its only title. The D’backs entered Major League
Baseball in 1998 in typical expansion-team fashion, with a low-payroll roster
of rejects and rookies and a won-lost record to match—65-97 and last place in
the National League West. The team packed ‘em in that first season, but solely
on the basis of novelty. Its managing owner, Jerry Colangelo, also had owned
the Suns and knew that Phoenicians were an easily distracted lot that wouldn’t long
back a loser, so he almost tripled the team’s $29 million first-year payroll
over the next couple of years in search of some instant success and history.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mostly, he paid up big for two proven
pitchers—future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, who’d be in the
Hall if he’d kept his mouth shut. The result was the 2001 World Series victory
in only the team’s fourth season, the quickest that’s been done. Subsequent
D’backs’ owners reverted to bottom-third payroll status, with predictable
on-field and gate results.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Baseball is the sport with the
highest correlation between spending and winning. That’s because it’s the only
one without a salary cap. The game’s money gap between top and bottom is
huge—an eight-times difference going into this season between the No. 1 New
York Mets (at $336 million) and the No. 30 Oakland A’s ($42 m). That
discrepancy dates from the game’s distant days, when the New York Yankees could
pay Babe Ruth $80,000 a year (in 1930) when $10,000 was a good annual big-league
paycheck.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Low-payroll baseball teams can make title runs
with canny management that builds rosters that feature young and relatively
low-paid players, but only one (the 2015 Kansas City Royals, with a No.
17-ranked payroll) has won the biggest prize of late. In the NFL and NBA, the
difference between the biggest and smallest spenders is about 2x, and a team
like the Kansas City Chiefs can realize championship dreams at No. 24 on the
salary list, but it won’t stay there long as its ring-wearers look to get paid.
In this season’s NBA, the top half-dozen title contenders (the Milwaukee Bucks,
Boston Celtics, Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Philadelphia Warriors
and Suns) all rank among the league’s top 10 salarywise.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Basketball is a five-players-at-a-time game,
where a single player can make a big difference, so the Durant acquisition seems
to tilt the floor in the Suns’ direction. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A near-seven-footer with an unblockable shot, he’s
one of the game’s half-dozen best players, and his 27.3 points per game scoring
average is tops among active performers. He was the league MVP in 2014, owner
of two championship rings (2017 and ’18) and a 13-time all-star in a 15-season
career. The Suns’ incumbent aces—Devin Booker, Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton—reached
the league’s championship finals without him in 2021, so the trip to the top
seems short.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But, but, but Durant comes with
caveats. He’s 34 years old, and while his skills seem undiminished when he
plays he hasn’t played much of late. He missed the entire 2019-20 season with
injury, sat out 50 games the next year and 27 the next. He’s already missed
more than 20 in this one, and in warmups before the fourth game of his Suns’
tenure sprained an ankle and might miss the next two or three weeks, it’s said.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Further, new Suns’ owner Mat
Ishbia’s new trinket is mind-bogglingly expensive even by modern-sports
standards, with Durant pulling down $43 million this year and about $150 million more over
the next three of the four-year deal he reached last season with the Brooklyn
Nets. The Suns are on the hook for only about a quarter of his current-season
haul, but his contract added a reported $35 million to the team’s “luxury tax”
bill. Even the new billionaire on the block must have swallowed hard over that
one.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Finally,
it would be no exaggeration to say the Suns mortgaged their future to get Durant.
The deal sent to the Nets four of the team’s No. 1 draft choices—in 2023, ’25,
’27 and ’29—plus two very good young players-- Mikal Bridges and Cam
Johnson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bridges was a first-team
All-NBA Defensive Team choice last season, and as a Net he’s blossomed into a
big-time scorer as well, averaging a Durant-like 26 points a game in his first
13 games in Brooklyn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At age 26, he
promises to be going strong after Durant has been pensioned.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And as
for the all-in Suns’ title prospects this season, maybe yes and maybe no. Other
teams also have some great players, and they get the ball, too. As the
racetrack announcers say post-race, “Hold all tickets.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-19988628189598550742023-03-01T07:39:00.000-08:002023-03-01T07:39:47.358-08:00TICK, TICK, TICK<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Baseball
always has been the game without a clock, but no more. Starting this season
there will be lots of clocks- in centerfield, around home plate, on the
second-tier facades. They’ll be measuring the maximum time between pitches the
rules specify (15 seconds with the bases empty, 20 when runners are on base),
the time between innings (two minutes, 15 seconds) and the time batters have to
be in the box and ready to hit (with eight seconds remaining on the pitch
count). Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That’s
just a few of the changes the lords of the game have decreed to take effect in
spring training, and in the new campaign. Another will be a requirement that
each pitch begin with two infielders on each side of second base with their
feet on the dirt. That’ll eliminate the radical shifts that have helped prune
batting averages in recent seasons. Still another will be an increase in the
size of the base bags to 18 inches square from 15 inches. That’s aimed at
reducing injuries and making it a bit easier to steal, the stolen base being
another casualty of game trends. Retained from last season—surprisingly to me
because it’s so unbaseballlike—is the practice of beginning extra innings with
a runner on second base and no outs. Fewer extras has been the goal there.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To all
of those I say “Hurray!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m old, and
thus a baseball traditionalist in most things, but times change and so should
the National Pastime. Baseball’s stately pace and low-octane offenses have
been<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>detriments in this quick-thrill
era, with declines in just about every measure of public interest. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’m a
bit of an expert on the above changes because they’ve been previewed during the
last two Arizona Fall League seasons, which I’ve attended extensively. I’ve no
stats to back my judgement but I think the anti-shift measure will have the
most noticeable effect. How can it not, opening as it does bigger holes for
pull hitters to hit through? The likes of Kyle Schwarber and Anthony Rizzo must
be celebrating.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>By
cutting the base paths by a few inches (4.5, actually) the bigger bases should
result in a few more “safe” signs, but a bigger boon to would-be thieves could
be a new rule to limit to two the number of times a pitcher can throw to a base
to hold a runner on. The main aim of that wrinkle, though is brevity, not
larceny.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Ever
heard the term “Five O’clock Lightning”? It referred to the late-inning run
barrages produced by the 1927 New York Yankees, a gang still revered for its
offensive power. Baseball games back then—all day games—began at 3:30 p.m. and,
thus, were in their late stages around 5. Game times ran about two hours-- so
the fans could be home for dinner, one supposes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Baseball
has gotten fussier since, and game times are longer, exceeding three hours in
recent decades. Last season’s average was three hours, 11 minutes. That’s too
long for current tastes, thus the advent of the clocks. Will they work? Sure
they will, and the effects should be relatively seamless. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t hold a watch to the Fall League games
I attended last year and the year before, but I can’t recall one lasting more
than three hours. The penalty for a pitcher exceeding the clock is an automatic
ball, with an automatic strike for an unready batter. Such calls were made only
once or twice a game here, with little dispute. Commentators can be counted
upon to obsess about them early on, but complaints should quickly fade.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Fall
League games were contested by kids in their early 20s, though, and they do
everything faster than their elders, so the net effect on game times in the
Bigs is uncertain. The game’s rulers should heed the self-help plans, which
note that there are things one can control and things one can’t. In the latter
category is the one that, by me, has affected baseball most over the current
century. That would be the improvements in pitching. Big-league pitchers these
days are monsters—big guys who can throw strawberries through battleships.
Ninety-five-miles-an-hour fastballs used to be rare, now they’re commonplace.
So are the drop-off-the-table breaking balls that make the heaters look hotter,
a product of the coaching pitchers receive from an early age.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Breaking balls are tougher on young arms than
fastballs, but now there’s Tommy John surgery for injured wings. Strikeouts are
up--way, way up—by about 25% in the last 20 years, to over 40,000 a season since
2017, and the trend seems inexorable. There have been more strikeouts than hits
in the Majors the last few years! More strikeouts mean more pitches, whatever
the time between them. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The way pitchers are deployed has contributed
further to blunting offenses, sending the game-wide batting average last year
to .243, the lowest since 1968. Time was when starting pitchers were expected
to finish, or at least last well into games. Now they’re deployed in relays,
the better to keep batters off balance. In the 1960-1980 period, teams utilized
an average of about 2.5 pitchers a game. Last year’s average was 4.67. That
movement also seems here to stay.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Nothing turns
off TV sets like a mid-inning pitching change, and little has been done of late
to speed that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One typically begins with
a stroll by the manager to the mound, where he takes the ball from, says a few
words to, and pats the fanny of the outing hurler. The reliefer saunters in
from the distant bullpen and another discussion takes place. Then he fusses
around a bit and throws up to eight warmup pitches. Eight?! What was he doing
in the bullpen, for heaven’s sake? Tick, tick, tick.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If
baseball is serious about moving things along, the whole “warmup” issue—one
that it can control-- should be addressed. It’s the only sport that allows
players to practice on the field while a game is (supposedly) in progress. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Enough
warming up. Enough playing catch. Play ball, already.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-74998570050917750112023-02-15T07:49:00.002-08:002023-02-15T14:43:40.076-08:00COLLECTING<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The word
“collective” has a strong political scent, connected as it is to the
wealth-sharing philosophy of taking the land or tools of formerly independent
operators and combining them into larger entities in the name of social equity.
As Karl Marx put it, “From each according to his ability, for each according to
his needs.” Nice thought, maybe, but it seldom worked very well.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
while Soviet-style collectives reside in the dust bin of history, a new
incarnation of the word now is on every tongue in the robustly capitalistic world
of big-time American college sports. Just about every school that charges admission
for its games has one or more of the things, the better to leverage the wealth
created by the opening of money-making opportunities for their athletes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Those
new riches—allowing the jocks to be paid by check rather than cash—came about
in July of 2021, when the National Collegiate Athletics Association, bowing to
legal and journalistic pressure, began the NIL Era, the initials standing for
name, image and likeness. Now college athletes can cash in on just about
anything they do off the playing fields, endorsing products, signing autographs
or, even, playing catch with somebody’s kids. Thanks to the wonders of social
media, they can monetize their often huge followings on the likes of Instagram
or TikTok to produce incomes their parents envy. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The powers
behind the collectives are boosters, people (mostly men) who back their love of
their favorite college teams with m-o-n-e-y. Booster clubs are established
college institutions, existing to gather and funnel the green stuff to the
schools’ athletics departments. That’s within NCAA rules (and tax deductible),
but the largess of some of the good ol’ boys also extended to payments that
weren’t. When I covered the 1956 University of Illinois football team for the Daily
Illini student newspaper, the players joked about the “$20 handshakes”
they received from boosters after games.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The practice no doubt was repeated at other schools, with inflation
affecting the amounts as the years rolled by.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some boosters kicked in more than could be passed by hand. The “godfather” of the
UCLA national championship basketball teams of the 1960s and ‘70s was Los
Angeles businessman Sam Gilbert, who kept the hoopsters in clothes, cars,
spending cash and other things. Ed Martin, a Detroit numbers-racket operator,
played the same role for the University of Michigan’s “Fab Four” era <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>basketball teams, by his own admission paying
hundreds of thousands of dollars to players. For the transgressions the NCAA
later stripped the school of its 1992 and ’93 Final Four banners. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now,
boosters can operate openly, in effect buying players for their schools if they
can link their support to a commercial purpose. The collectives pool boosters’
money and expertise, and serve as middlemen. Formally
unaffiliated with their schools, but actually quite close, they operate in a
gray area of law and regulation that’s turned college-sports recruiting into a
veritable “Wild West.” The universities used to spend their considerable political
clout fending off the government hand. Now, they beg for it. The NCAA, once
impervious to outside influence, sees its own bleeding away, and its very
existence threatened.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>NIL
money wasn’t supposed to be a lure in athlete recruiting, but by all accounts
it has come to dominate it. The poster boy for the new era has been Jaden
Rashada, a tall, skinny, strong-armed football quarterback from Pittsburg, California,
who was on just about every college’s wish list. He’s the model of the
young jock on the make, having attended three different high schools in search
of tutoring, playing time and media exposure.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Rashada
made the University of Miami his initial college choice but backed off when the
University of Florida’s collective reportedly put together for him a four-year
NIL package worth about $13 million. When that didn’t pan out he again opted
for free agency, finally jumping to Arizona State University. The value of such
deals needn’t be reported, but one can surmise that ASU interests kicked in
handsomely.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
advent of NIL money coincided with a liberalization of transfer rules in
college sports, and it also weighs heavily there. Schools used to subject
varsity athletes to transfer limitations not applied to other students, mainly sports
sit-out periods and conference limitations, but those now are gone. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The so-called transfer portal, through which
kids can seek greener pastures, has come to rival the high-school route for new
roster blood. Coaches have to recruit their own players annually. Needless to
say, they hate it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
schools hate it, too, because much of the money the collectives collect used to
go to them, to be spent at their direction. Some of the institutional funds go
to the so-called minor sports that don’t support themselves financially; look
for more cuts in those. The total amount of money available to college athletes
through collective-assembled deals and those negotiated by players’ individual
agents (they can have them now) isn’t known, but one published report put it at
about $500 million.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Almost all of that is going to footballers and
male basketballers in the “Power 5” conferences (the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC
and PAC 12). Several multi-million-dollar individual deals have been reported, including
an $8 million package assembled for Nico Iawaleava, a quarterback recruit from
Long Beach, California, signed by the University of Tennessee. The trinkle-down
isn’t bad, though, Sports Illustrated reporting that the “baseline” deal for a
Power 5 scholarship football or hoops player comes to about $50,000 annually.
It’ll take some of those kids a few years to equal that figure diplomas in
hand, should they find time to get them.<o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-48735296856519849382023-02-01T07:31:00.002-08:002023-02-01T07:31:46.297-08:00? ? ? ? ? ?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I turn
85 tomorrow but still have more questions than answers. Here are some of them:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Why
did the founders think lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices were a
good idea? Wouldn’t a term like 20 years make more sense? Or how about a
mandatory retirement age of 75?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>-- Relatedly,
shouldn’t anyone who proposes starting a presidential term at age 80 or more be
laughed off the stage? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Don’t you love those casino ads
where everyone’s a winner? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Don’t
you wince a bit when you read about Ukrainian successes in its war with Russia?
It seems to me that Putin is more dangerous losing than winning.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Don’t
you hate it when you’re smarter than your teams’ coaches or managers?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Why do
basketball coaches whose teams are losing by a dozen or more points order
last-minute fouls or timeouts to prolong games?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>-- What
does Prince Harry do? Besides complain about his family, that is.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Why do people walk or bicycle at
night on the unlighted streets of my neighborhood without carrying lights or
wearing reflective gear? I’ve narrowly missed hitting a few.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--When
will England admit its error and apply for reentry to the EU?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Why it is that when a friend and
I ask a waitperson to split our check, he/she usually asks “50-50?”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--Don’t
you hate those tiny pills that get lost in the folds of your hands?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Why is it that Republicans regard
as fraudulent only elections they lose but happily accept the results of others,
even in the same jurisdictions?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--How many people hobbling around
with canes or walkers have undergone unsuccessful back surgery? 30%?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>50%? 70%? I’d love to see a reliable report
(but don’t expect to).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Why the frantic search for motive
every time there’s a mass shooting? The shooters are crazy and their reasons
make sense only to themselves.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Doesn’t the Cleveland Indians’
new name—the Guardians—leave you cold?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It sounds like an insurance company. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Are there more-infuriating companies
to deal with than the credit-reporting firms—lately by me Experian, but
Transunion and Equifax as well? They plant unsubstantiated land-mine debts in
your file and it’s up to you to correct them, and then they’re almost
impossible to contact. There oughta be a law—lots of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Why does Major League Baseball
schedule April night games in Northern cities where the weather is sure to be
terrible?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Why are some computer problems
fixable by turning the unit off and then on again? Other appliances don’t work
that way.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Why am I getting so many craft
videos on Facebook? I mean, watching a guy make a boat from a fallen tree was
interesting, but not something I’m about to do.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Don’t you hate dealing with
people who tell you how busy they are? That type has so much to do it never
gets anything done.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Why are old people famously the
targets of scams? The older I get the less tolerance I have for bullshit.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--How could bitcoins have come and
gone without me knowing what one is?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Is there a dumber cliché for an
average person than “everyday American?”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Isn’t it amazing that the best
ice-hockey player in the world, Auston Matthews, grew up in Scottsdale, AZ?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Does anyone who talks about wanting
“protein” have any appreciation for food?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Is anyone really happy about USC
and UCLA joining the Big Ten? I mean besides jocks from Minnesota or Wisconsin,
who’ll get trips to L.A. in the winter.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Do you love it when the TV people
wire baseball players and talk to them while they’re playing the field? I
don’t.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Is there a nicer scheduled sweet
moment than hearing Chicago Cubs’ fans sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game?”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Have you noticed that fewer
companies are including telephone numbers on their websites? I guess they
figure (no doubt rightly) that they’ll get fewer complaints if they’re harder
to reach. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Is it a good thing that men no
longer are expected to shave?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--How come when you switch from one
football game to another on TV you always land on a commercial?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Is anything better after dinner
than a mini Heath bar?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--Isn’t it worth the price of
Sirius XM radio to hear Artie Shaw records on 40’s Junction?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">--When did “land line” phone
numbers become unacceptable for commercial purposes?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Just askin’.<o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034514402301154452.post-86825460312923300352023-01-15T08:00:00.002-08:002023-01-16T12:51:35.099-08:00THE WRONG LESSON<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We love
giving ourselves pats on the back, and there have been plenty of those in the
wake of the heart attack suffered by the Buffalo Bills’ 24-year-old defensive
back Damar Hamlin during that game in Cincinnati a couple of weeks ago.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Rightfully, the main kudos went to
the medical personnel who were Johnny-on-the-spot to render aid to the young
man. National Football League games are superbly set up for that sort of thing
and the response was excellent. If someone is to have a heart attack an NFL
field is the perfect place for it. I can think of nowhere else save a hospital
ER where help would be so close and effective.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The NFL
itself came out looking well, if only because it did the obvious things that
were appropriate in that sort of situation. The game at hand was cancelled,
albeit after a bit of dithering, and no play-over that would have knocked the
rest of the schedule on its ear was mandated. The league loves complexity so
some “maybe” scenarios involving neutral-field playoff games were tossed in,
but if we’re lucky they’ll be avoided.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We fans
received plaudits for not demanding that the show go on regardless. At the
stadium respect was shown for the occasion and concern for the victim’s
condition was then and later manifested abundantly. As it turned out Hamlin was
a community-minded person whose toys-for-kids project was buoyed by an
outpouring of funds as he recovered.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At the
risk of spoiling the party, though, I think it should be pointed out that the
main lesson apparently drawn from the episode was the wrong one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In classic overstatement, the Arizona
Republic declared in a headline it engendered “A Seminal Moment” for how we
regard sports, but in fact sudden death or catastrophic injury remain rare on
our big-time fields of play, struck-by-lightning occurrences that happen once every
several generations.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Indeed,
one reasonably might ask if Hamlin’s heart attack should be blamed on football.
The tackle that preceded it was unremarkable and would have gone unremarked if
not for its result. One interpretation was that it involved a sharp blow to the
chest that upset his heart’s cycle, but an underlying condition might have been
involved that further investigation could uncover. If someone suffers a heart
attack on the tennis court should it be counted as a tennis injury? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Only
twice have big-league American athletes died as an immediate result of a
playing-field injury, and neither involved football: Ray Chapman of the
Cleveland Indians succumbed after having been hit on the head by a pitch in a
1920 baseball game and Bill Masterton of the Minnesota North Stars after
striking his head on the ice following a check in a 1968 hockey game. Chuck
Hughes of the Detroit Lions suffered a fatal heart attack in a 1971 NFL game
after a play in which he wasn’t involved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His death later was ascribed to an advanced case of arteriosclerosis. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Football
is a dangerous sport but ranks well behind others as an immediate cause of
death. Besides boxing, which aims to injure, in most risk are thoroughbred-racing jockeys, who are killed at
a rate of more than one a year and whose serious-injury stats are cataclysmic.
When the great jockey Laffit Pincay retired after a suffering a broken neck in
a spill, it was reported he’d sustained 11 broken collar bones, 10 broken ribs,
two spinal fractures, two punctured lungs and two broken thumbs, among other
things, in a 30-plus-year career.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The real
danger in football isn’t in any “big bang” but in the sometimes-muted bang,
bang, bang of everyday play, in practice sessions as well as in games. That the
effects of such injuries were cumulative and often delayed long was suspected and
finally made clear as a result of 2005 and 2006 papers by Dr. Bennet Omalu, then
of the Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, coroners’ office. Following examinations
of the premature deaths of Pittsburgh Steelers’ players Mike Webster and Terry
Long, he found evidence of a protein buildup in their brains called Chronic
Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, similar to that of much-older victims of
Alzheimer’s Disease. In sports the condition formerly had been associated
mainly with boxers.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Subsequent autopsies of the brains of more
than 200 former footballers by Boston University showed the disease to be
common among that group. One recent study showed that ex-NFLers in their 50s
were 10 times more likely to be diagnosed with dementia than men in the general
population. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The crunch
and grind of football, plus the explosion in the body weights of many of the
men who compete at its highest level, have had other unfortunate, long-term
results. Present and former NFL players have been shown to have 3.5 times more
Parkinson’s disease, three times the rate of arthritis and 2.5 times more
cardiac disease than other men. Opioid addiction, stemming from years of
gulping pain killers to cope with football’s ordinary bruises and sprains, is frequent
among the recently retired. Visit any NFL locker room after a game and you’ll
see men creeping around like those 30 years older.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After an
initial period of denial the NFL has recognized those truths and acted on them.
On the gridiron it has improved helmet design, instituted concussion protocols
and made it easier for injured players to seek their own medical diagnoses and treatment.
It’s reportedly paid out more than $1 billion in additional benefits to
ex-players coping with their game’s ravages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>None of
that, however, changes the fact that football is a gladiatorial sport, one that
should come with a warning label. Players should play, and we should watch,
with that in mind.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>frederick c. kleinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15282114548919289124noreply@blogger.com2