Game, Set, Match

Yes, I have griped about New York before, but this guy nails it so thoroughly and so convincingly that I urge you to read this article. Here are a couple of key excerpts, the first dealing with the Empire State's self-delusion:

The numbers only begin to tell the woeful tale of New York, but they make a stark beginning. The figures - on tax burdens, public spending and population transfer, among others - outline a story of a government run amok and a state run into the ditch.

But numbers are cold. They only hint at the repercussions they have dealt to the residents of this woefully mismanaged state: fractured hopes, lost opportunities, divided families. The reasons behind those misfortunes are multiple and complex, but from a public policy standpoint, they distill to Albany's deluded belief that New York is still the Empire State, a realm so splendid that Americans will pay any price to live within its golden borders.

And this one so thoroughly and succinctly nails the so-called Republican Party that I want to high-five this guy from across the state:

Much of the reason for New York's idiosyncratic government traces to downstate, a region of enormous political clout, vast disparities of wealth and about zero interest in Albany. Overwhelmingly Democratic, it elects liberals who have so weighted state government to the left that Republicans - never too conservative to begin with - are satisfied with playing me-too politics.

Instead of offering a competing, perhaps healthier, vision of state government, the putatively conservative party has at best surrendered and at worst joined the opposition. New York Republicans are the ideological prisoners of their political adversaries, and content to be so.

Unchecked Republican control could be awful, too, of course (see Washington). The problem arises from the failure of a democratic imperative: a vigorous opposition.

Holy Toledo! And yes, God has a sense of humor. Y'all know what I have gone through these past few weeks, and this is the most devastatingly on-point precis of what stinks about this state that I could have written and that I have ever read. But what do you make of the fact that the spotlighted family to begin the article is named "Toledo"? A wink from heaven above!

PS: Please no public comment on recent personal events until I have had such time as to notify the appropriate parties.

Lasorda's grandstanding...

I remember the Monday flag-saving incident quite well. It was a Sunday afternoon game and I was driving with my cousin David the near the Long Beach traffic circle and we had the game on radio. Scully actually gave a great play-by-play of the save and resultant developments, and the game stopped for several minutes. Fans gave Monday a well-deserved, long standing ovation, and Scully was happy to relinquish the stage to Monday and the extended ovation.

But I hate hearing Lasorda's typical grandstanding version.

Given Lasorda's description, you'd have assumed he was almost neck-and-neck with Monday, racing toward those guys. Security was on those guys within a few moments of Monday saving the flag, and if Lasorda confronted those guys, it was after they were apprehended. There was a lot of commotion on the field after Monday saved the flag; I suspect Lasorda was only one of many arriving at the scene, and Monday's lukewarm corroboration simply jazzes up the whole story a bit more.

Monday was the hero that day, not Monday and Lasorda, as the blue-bleeder would like everyone to believe...

Rumblin', Bumblin', Stumblin'

Keith Jackson announces his retirement. How long will it take Chris Berman to retire his KJ catch phrases?

Wilbon channels Bruce

A strong opening:

I hate the NFL draft. I realize that saying anything against the draft amounts to blasphemy, but somebody's got to do it. The NFL draft is the most overrated, overhyped, obsessively overcovered non-event in sports. It's a nuisance, made-for-TV-by-TV event for people who couldn't tell a left tackle from a right guard, or zone from man-to-man coverage to save their mamas' lives.

and a defense of Mel Kiper:

It's too long. It's too slow. I hate the draft, but I love Mel Kiper, even though it's largely his fault that the draft has turned into a cottage industry for way too many people. I told Kiper I was writing this column today and that even though he makes his living analyzing the draft, he had to tell me one thing he hates about it. And though he was reluctant, Kiper said: "I hate the amount of time it takes to complete the first round. Fifteen minutes for a pick? It's disgusting. It should be eight minutes [for the first round] and then five from then on. The first round takes six hours. The first round lasts as long as a [Tony Kornheiser] bus ride across the country."

with a bit of the same lament that I made:

My problem is what the NFL draft doesn't tell us. The draft never even hinted to us that Tom Brady, chosen in the sixth round, was going to lead a team to three Super Bowls. The NFL draft never told us that Terrell Davis, also chosen in the sixth round, was going to lead the Broncos to back-to-back Super Bowl titles. It never told us Kurt Warner was going to lead the Rams to a pair of Super Bowl appearances because Warner was never even drafted. It never told us Brad Johnson, a ninth-round pick, was going to win more Super Bowls than Dan Marino.

And then there's stuff we never should have listened to. For instance, the draft told us the combination of Shuler (No. 3 overall) to Michael Westbrook (No. 4 overall) would be leading the Redskins to one playoff appearance after another. The draft told us that Ryan Leaf, Akili Smith, Tim Couch and Cade McNown were going to be studs.

The point I'm trying to make is this: Who knew?

Sometimes the picks pan out, sometimes they don't.

and then the finale, with which we all can agree (we can, can't we?)

While I'm at it, the only thing I hate nearly as much as the NFL draft is "American Idol." Actually, I don't hate "Idol" because I don't watch it. I hate it because people care so stinkin' much about it, because occasionally somebody has to look at the direction in which the popular culture is moving and simply rebel!

An impressive effort from Wilbon, who moved down my personal draft board due to overexposure, but in this column expresses a glint of the promise that once made him a high first round selection.

Rick Monday's Greatest Baseball Moment

As a kid, I mostly remember Rick Monday as a guy who was tagged as an underachiever, having been a #1 pick who didn't become a superstar, although he was a solid player.

That changed 30 years ago when he rescued an American flag from an attempt to torch it on the outfield grass of Dodger stadium. I remember the story in either People or one of the newsweeklies at the time (Time or Newsweek); I remember the buzz about it well.

I didn't know of Lasorda's role in what happened until reading the linked article - would have been hilarious if one of those jerks had taken a swing at him. They would have been pounded by a dozen ballplayers, and Tommy would have talked about how he beat up guys 20 years younger than himself forever... while bleeding Dodger Blue, of course.

I Hate E-Mail

An impassioned plea from a leading jihadi.

Kiper...

Kiper is one lucky guy, to be sure. This draft thing just kind of happened. I can remember doing some of the same stuff around 1980 and '81, reading Joel Buschsbaum's analysis voraciously, and, in those days, listening to the sports reports on the news radio stations every half hour on draft day to pick up the latest selections. Maybe I should have gone in the draft direction instead of the TGS direction, who knows, perhaps I could have been the next Kiper. I even did my own makeshift draft previews and reviews back then. The draft was a peripheral industry unto itself for a good many years, but it really started to mainstream when ESPN began growing by leaps and bounds in the '80s. Kiper, as they say, was just a guy in the right place at the right time, and like Dick Vitale is one of the ESPN-created monsters.

Regarding the draft, never has so much been said about so little!

Having said that, Kiper doesn't bug me too much. I haven't talked to him in a few years, but he always seemed a pretty nice guy to me, is an avid Gold Sheet reader, and in fact a pretty well-informed overall sports buff. On occasion I have heard him on ESPN radio doing a general sports show, and he comes across better than the majority of hosts, and knows a bit about other sports, too.

But I agree, the draft stuff grates, though I am more turned off these days by Chris Berman's caricature of himself (it was cool in the day to first hear Facenda utter the words "frozen tundra," and to hear his voice accompany the Raider theme song, but when Berman keeps repeating them, and other once-clever bits, ad nauseum, they lose their desired effect...and then some), Joe Theismann's smugness, and the whole attitude of the holier-than-thou NFL. The draft is an overkill extension of all of that, but in itself is merely the culmination of an entire draft "industry" that has spawned. I hardly watch the NFL Network, but sat in horror for a few minutes a while back when they were providing "live" coverage of the Indianapolis scouting combine. The entire NFL product, including the games themselves, is so over-hyped and overdone that it sickens me, and I was as captivated as anyone by the NFL for a long, long time. But no more.

I can take the likes of Chris Mortensen and John Clayton when football season is going on, but when it's baseball time, I would rather not see those guys. And if I hear one more word about Brett Favre returning to the Packers, I might become physically ill. Isn't there something better to talk about? I've never seen a player so past his sell-by date still captivate the media in such a way. The Packers stink, Favre is over the hill, and Lombardi has been gone for almost 40 years. But you'd never know any of it from ESPN and the NFL...

P.S.--By the way, and I haven't spent too much time thinking about that infuritating Steelers-Seahawks Super Bowl the past few months, but in regard to all-time SB rankings I am now more apt to rate that game closer to the bottom quartile, if not somewhere in it. In retrospect, were it not the Super Bowl, it would have been about as dull as a regular season, Lions-Cardinals matchup, and it gets worse from there when adding in the pitiful officiating...

Mel Kiper

Bruce: I defer to your judgment on all things sporting, so if I offend, my apologies. After a morning of ESPN, I posted this at my fantasy league baseball web site (with some slight modifications):

I hate this guy. I mean, I really detest him. He speaks with the presumed authority of someone who has actually accomplished something in life, rather than a guy who focused on analyzing the NFL Draft and got lucky when TV coverage of it bloomed.

What I would like to see is how this guy's pontifications have panned out. As the late LOD* used to ask: "What's your dater?" Is there a KuiperWatch website that tracks this stuff? And is he offering anything more than recycled information from real scouts, dressed up in a pompadour and a scowl?

In any case, I wanted to know when the draft started, so that I could be done with Kiper for another year. So I go to the NFL page at SportsLine, and not only do I find out that it's a week from today, I find a clock counting down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds (it starts a week from today at noon, FYI). This whole draft thing is way out of hand. The good news is that Mel's annual 15 weeks of fame will be over in 8 days.

*LOD = Largest of Doctors. Lester Williams was a brilliant, 300+ pound physician in Nashville who educated many a student and resident. He was a native of the Boston area, and his trademark question was "What's your data?" whenever a claim was made. It came out, of course, as "What's your dater?"

PS: Updated to change the spelling from (Duane) Kuiper to Mel Kiper - thanks, Bruce!

PPS: I am glad to hear that he is a decent guy, but the draft stuff is just soooo irritating, especially when he gets fired up about some guy moving up or down the draft board. Just once I would like to hear him add something useful, like how the last x number of players whose stock fell during the draft actually fared in the NFL, or if guys who move up actually pan out. Instead, it comes off as incessant hype - and, as you say, much ado about very little.

Perhaps he has "grown" since Slick Willie has left office?

From Brit Hume's "Political Grapevine":

Former Clinton CENTCOM commander, Anthony Zinni — the most prominent of the retired generals attacking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — now says that, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, "What bothered me ... [was that] I was hearing a depiction of the intelligence that didn't fit what I knew. There was no solid proof, that I ever saw, that Saddam had WMD."

But in early 2000, Zinni told Congress "Iraq remains the most significant near-term threat to U.S. interests in the Arabian Gulf region," adding, "Iraq probably is continuing clandestine nuclear research, [and] retains stocks of chemical and biological munitions ... Even if Baghdad reversed its course and surrendered all WMD capabilities, it retains scientific, technical, and industrial infrastructure to replace agents and munitions within weeks or months."

Oops!

What a week in DC!

Big Dan poses on the Mall in front of the Washington Monument (he would want me to register his objection to the Masonic styling of the monument; consider it done).

Dan was a fantastic host, a great tour guide, a wonderful companion, and an intelligent conversationalist. My deepest thanks to him for his hospitality and companionship.

Dom had a great time with his group, People to People, giving it a 10 out of 10. He also earned a grade of 105 from his team leader, so he obviously impressed her. His nickname was "Silence", as he didn't say much at the beginning, but opened up as the week went on. When he made a comment in the gift shop one day, one of his student colleagues remarked "Silence speaks!". He formed a lot of friendships and has sent e-mails to his new friends, who are spread out across the country. Man, would I have loved to do that at the age of 13!

I'll have more photos and more reflections in the coming days.

Brewers are fun to watch...

I bet Paulie is still smiling...


The Brew Crew is getting Milwaukee excited. Agree with Paul, I like the way Yost manages this team, they have executed well and played fundamentally sound ball for the past two years, and with the quick start this season, all signs are pointing up. Milwaukee has been one of my favorite teams to watch since (to my wife's horror) I purchased that MLB "Extra Innings" cable TV package. As long as the staff holds together (and Sheets still hasn't rejoined the rotation), and the young charges continue their ascent (Hardy-Weeks-Fielder is one of the most exciting young infield troikas to come down the pipe in a while), the Brew Crew can hang around for a bit. I also like Bill Hall, one of the most-versatile roto players of them all.

Other early thoughts. The Cubs actually look kind of interesting, as they have upgraded their offense with Pierre and Jacque Jones. Zambrano is one of my favorite pitchers. Now that nobody is paying much attention, watch the Cubs contend. Early snake-bit award goes to Buccos, who have been in every game thus far, yet continue to find ways to lose. I cringe at what this might do to that team at the ticket office, however, as it's hard to imagine the turnstiles whirring once Jim Tracy and the Bucs limp home.

Tribe means business in AL Central. Like with every team, health is an issue, and I see where Belliard is already hurting a bit, but Tribe could go well north of 90 wins this season, and Hafner is my early nominee for possible MVP. Leyland has the Tigers off to a nice start, and if the staff coagulates, the team can roar. Watch Justin Verlander, who could win a Cy Young in the next couple of years. The Royals aren't as bad as last year. They're a real team now, still not great, but not another 100-loss mess. They could easily improve 12-16 games from last year's 56-106 (which was better than the 54-108 of 2004!).

I thought the Mariners had a different look in the first week, especially with the new import catcher, Kenji Johjima, providing an exciting new dimension. But the M's have fallen back into their old habits when getting handcuffed by Joe Blanton and Zito the past two nights. The A's are going to go north of 90 wins this season. Halos might keep pace and no suprise if the wild card comes from the AL West in '06. I am really enjoying seeing Tim Salmon back on the roster. He might be my all-time favorite Angel, and it is worth noting that he had been on the big team for four different uniform looks! His is the bat the Angels might have been seeking to help complement Vladdie, and he looks ready to produce at DH. Salmon is first class all the way, and in an era of so many prima donnas in sport, Salmon is a refreshing throwback.

Devil Rays are going to be exciting. Probably asking too much for ex-Washington State hoopster Mark Hendrickson to maintain the pace after his great opening win over the O's, but if he and another pitcher (still a longshot) step up aside Kazmir, the Rays can threaten .500, because they can score. In the NL West, it is all up for grabs, as the Pads look as if they will struggle to get above .500. But who knows, that might be good enough to win the division again! The potential distraction of Clint Hurdle and Dan O'Dowd getting the boot has Colorado on edge, but the Rockies are not horrible, and have been getting better than advertised pitching this week. If I had to predict and NL Worst, er, West, winner, I would reluctantly say the Giants (and I mean reluctantly). The division is still the pits, and even Arizona and the Rocks could find themselves in the thick of things.

Never thought I would ever feel sorry for Barry Bonds, but watching that ESPN show is kind of sad. In a sense, Bonds has to keep playing, because his only refuge is with the Giants, and home games at AT&T Park. Otherwise, he is almost like the Shah of Iran back in 1979. What will Bonds do once he retires? He will have to leave the country, or change his name, or do something along those lines. He has lived in the limelight, which has been shining on him since high school in San Mateo, so retirement was going to be tough enough on Bonds even before the steroids mess. Now, he has created an unbearable situation for himself. His best bet might be to buy some mountaintop retreat and become a hermit, exiling himself from public view, communicating to the outside world only via his website, so he can believe in his mind that he is still the center of all things in his own parallel universe. He is going to be a man with nowhere to go once his playing days end.

Don't know what to say about the Phils, other than I hope they turn things around soon. The pressure will build on Charlie Manuel, quickly. Nats look pretty scrappy, let's hope they get big crowds at RFK this week to shout down the Mets and their fans in front of Paul, Dom, and Dan.

By the way, I suspect Paul is still smiling after having is picture taken with perhaps the hottest woman on the planet at that Predators game. Attending any sporting event after that experience is going to be a bit of a letdown...

Don't mean to jinx my prediction

But how about the Brew Crew? If this team can sustain its hot start through about 30 games, and get a little separation, they could be looking at 95+ wins and a division title. Premature? Maybe. But I like the makeup of this club, I like the rotation (and Sheets hasn't even pitched yet), and like the attitude.

The Tigers are off to a good start, but if one of these teams is going to be the one about which we say in August "Remember how well they started - who'd'a thunk they stink up the place at this point in the season?", it'll be the Tigers. Remember the Dodgers' start last year?

Terry Pluto on Indians' Opening Day

Opening Day: That's what it's all about
By Terry Pluto

Cleveland always has been an Opening Day town, even for Indians fans who don't live anywhere near the city.

For some of us who grew up during the dark decades of Indians baseball, Opening Day was a time to dream. It was a time to walk down the West Third Street Bridge...

I have some friends from out of town who have moved to our area and are sick of stories about going to games down the West Third Street Bridge.

I understand.

That little walk is not a part of their lives, as it is to many of us.

They didn't have a father who would put them on his shoulders, like my dad did. They didn't have the joy of feeling on top of the world as I looked at the vast, never-ending sea of blue that was Lake Erie.

Or the massive old Cleveland Stadium, a baseball palace to me.

Or the old, neon Chief Wahoo sign on the roof of the ballpark. He stood on one leg, holding a bat and spinning around until he seemed ready topple over, much like the teams of our youth.

Or the first sight of the incredibly green grass as you came up the old, concrete stadium ramps and caught first sight of the infield. Remember, this was a black-and-white, three-channel TV world for many of us, which makes the colors of the ballpark so vivid in our memories.

There is no reason for people from out of town to understand this any more than many of us would relate to the passion of sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley Field or paying homage to the Green Monster at Fenway Park. That belongs to Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs fans, and they have been romanticized in movies, novels and countless magazine and newspaper stories.

Being a Cubs or Red Sox fan and reveling in your team's losing long has been chic.

From the outside

To the outside world, being an Indians fan from 1960-93 just seemed stupid. It's kind of like feeling nostalgic for the era before indoor plumbing. Why would anyone feel like that?

Many of us know better, especially on this day when the Tribe plays its first home game of the season.

Some of us will spend this day thinking of players long gone, names we thought we'd forgotten: Fred Whitfield, Fred Beene, John Lowenstein, Sonny Siebert, Tom Veryzer, Charlie Spikes, Daddy Wags, Sugar Bear Blanks, Super Joe Charboneau.

All this can be set to an old sound track of Herb Score, Jimmy Dudley, Bob Neal and Joe Tait -- those faint baseball voices of our past.

For so many of us, Opening Day is about bad teams and good memories. It's about my aunt, who listened to every baseball game for 50 years -- TV on with the sound down, the radio supplying the details. Aunt Pat never trusted Paul Shuey.

Maybe you had someone like Aunt Pat, an elderly, hardcore fan who hadn't been to a game in 30 years, yet never missed one on television or the radio.

Baseball happening every day often becomes reason enough to help them get through the final days of their lives, when the pain of age and the edge of loneliness can seem unbearable...

At least until the first pitch.

Perhaps you came to the Indians later, or your kids did. It's the Jacobs Field generation. They grew up with a sparkling ballpark, with winning teams, with packed stands and with the Bob Feller statue waiting to welcome them on East Ninth Street.

What it is now

For these fans, it's Tom Hamilton who is the voice of the team.

It's Kenny Lofton, Carlos Baerga, Manny Ramirez, Sandy Alomar, Albert Belle, Jim Thome and Charles Nagy who make them smile.

It's Mike Hargrove as a manager, not as a twitch-hitting first baseman.

It's Rick Manning as a broadcaster, not as a light-hitting, fearless-fielding phenom in center.

Opening Day is about memories, about family, about time passing.

For many of us, it's our favorite day of the year.

NBC should have given me a call...

Any of these, or Meredith Vieira?

What is NBC doing? The network has hot fillies such as Campbell Brown and Natalie Morales already in the stable, not to mention the scorching Sharon Tay, who hosted the morning news program on local KTLA before moving to MSNBC. Or how about giving our favorite Amy Robach a chance? Instead, for the new hostess of Today, they pull in Meredith Vieira, the pride of Tufts, who resonates with the middle and upper middle-aged preppies in the Northeast, but will play as well in the Sun Belt and Far West as a winter chill.

I admit that I have checked out Meredith a few times, but at this age, I need a little more pizzazz than the Tufts Tornado to tune in on a semi-regular basis.

I was hoping to have a reason to watch the show again after disavowing Katie C. years ago, and having trouble stomaching Matt Lauer for more than a few minutes at a time. More Al Roker, Ann Curry, and a new babe such as Campbell B. or Natalie Morales to marginalize Lauer, and I might have started to tune in again. But I don't think Meredith V. brings me back into the Today fold...

Puck Patrol...

Good job, Paulie!

I must be getting older, because I would have been satisfied chatting up the blondie's redhead mom...

Happy Birthday, Luca!

On 4/5/6, Luca turns 7!

(This is a photo of him collecting his "diploma" from Fr. John upon graduation from Kindergarten last year - dig those striped pants)

Another awesome photo

...but first, the backstory.

One of the members of the Vanderbilt Doctors' Rotisserie League (VDRL - ask your doctor friends why that's an amusing acronym, or Google it for yourself) is an oncologist by the name of Eric Raefsky whose group has 4 tickets to the Predators' home games, as well as passes to Jack Daniel's No. 7 Restaurant inside the arena (Gaylord Entertainment Center). First things first: the buffet at JD's would be the envy of all but the finest hotels - nothing like showing up two hours before the drop of the puck and dining on the best foods while looking out over downtown Nashville. But I digress.

Four league members (Eric, Runcie Clements (a Vandy Law School grad who puts me up each year), Tim Heller (a new guy to the league from St. Genevieve, Missouri), and me) are watching the game with two middle-aged Southern women seated behind us, asking each other questions that betray a complete lack of knowledge of hockey. Stuff like "Does hockey have three or four periods?" and "When there is a penalty, does one team have fewer men on the ice than the other?". Tim, who is a very gregarious guy, chats them up, answers their questions, and politely inquires as to why they are at a hockey game, seeing as how they are so "new" to the game.

Now these ladies are attractive in a matronly sort of way, and clearly would have been "lookers" back in the day. One of them tells Tim that she is there because her daughter is one of the Preds' Puck Patrol members. We got a little embarrassed at that point, given that we had been gawking at the female members of the Puck Patrol, but regaining our compsure, we asked which one. The mom proudly said "the natural blonde". Oh boy... Well, is she going to come say hi to her momma? "She always stops by sometime in the third period". That's when I say: "Well, if she comes by, I want to get a picture with her". "Alright" says her momma.

And here is the conclusion of the story:



Oh, man, do I love Nashville!

Awesome photo

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Opening day is almost here and March Madness is building to a crescendo. It's a great time of year. Brucie, I'm feeling a lit more optomistic about the Phils and agree you should take the over given that the number is 82 1/2.Her are some quiick predictions. Look for the Halos,A's, and Injuns to make a lot of noise in the AL. It'll be a great race between the 2 California clubs in the AL West. Not so sure about the Jays even though they spent a ton. Also Bosox will have a real tough time keeping up with the Yanks. Chisox remain very tough and could repeat.In the NL look for the Mets to be a bust. They spend every year and end up like the Redskins of MLB. If the Phils pitching holds up they could contend. The Pads will run away and hide in the NL West. The Giants will be distraced all year with the Bonds fiasco and the other two teams stink. Ditto for the Cardinals in the Central