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Splinters From the Bench
- New Year's Day Prayer:
May there be another baseball strike in 1999, and add professional
football, the NBA, professional golf and tennis to it. May they
board up the stadia nationwide and convert them to nuclear waste
dumps capped with concrete 50 feet deep, the earth salted in all
directions 10 miles around. May the strikes last forever and forever
and forever, so long as any of them shall live, eternal vomit,
over and over and over and over again, until we are all dead.
Amen. (January 1, 1999)
- The University of
Notre Dame's trustees voted Feb. 5 not to join the Big Ten.
University president Father Edward Malloy rushed forward to say
the decision "first and foremost" would benefit academics.
He and others postured, as they always do, about how this has
nothing to do with money. This of course is code for: it has everything
to do with money. Studies last fall showed that substantially
all Notre Dame's academic programs ranked last or near last
when compared with Big Ten schools. The "benefit"
may be that this decision will spare Notre Dame such unfortunate
comparisons. In any case, we'll have to listen to Notre Dame's
huffing and puffing for a while; then we can get back to the real
business of the American people--making money and deluding ourselves.
(February 5, 1999)
- The Big Ten women's
basketball tournament is playing to mediocre crowds in Indianapolis
this weekend. Here's the truth of it: interest as well as crowds
would improve for this event if they played in the nude.
- If I'm betting, I'm
betting the Indiana Pacers will not even make the NBA finals.
Something tells me this team won't do as well this year as it
did last. Management essentially stood pat during the off-season,
apparently believing that with the Michael Jordan (and
therefore the Bulls) gone, the roster it had was good enough to
take it all. Don't think so.
- I attended the 30th
anniversary banquet of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in
late March with a neighbor and friend who graciously provided
a free ticket. This was a delightful trip down the memory lane
of Indiana high school and college basketball. Legends lived again.
Phil Wills, Walter Jordan, Steve Collier, Steve Green, Kent Benson,
John Laskowski, Wayne Radford, Willie Long, and other familiar
names from the 1950s and 1960s shared the stage. Wills averaged
42.2 points a game in his senior year at Grass Creek High School
in 1957. That's still the state record. I remember him particularly
well because our neighbor, Arnold Carlson, a well-known
Scorched Corners character and electrician, was a Grass Creek
native and so regarded Wills as his adopted son when Wills was
blazing away oncourt. I was a sophomore in high school that year
and can still hear Arnold regaling us with tales of Wills's exploits.
Wills later played several years at Purdue. Grass Creek,
in Fulton County, is of course long gone, a casualty of school
consolidation. Former Purdue star Walter Jordan stepped
off the pages of Gentleman's Quarterly, articulate, thunderously
massive, and dressed to the nines for this banquet. Tom Carnegie,
now in his seventies or eighties, was master of ceremonies. Seven
members of the 1949 Jasper High School state championship team
showed up to be honored. The legendary Danny Danielson,
wealthy tycoon and (seemingly) lifelong IU trustee, sat at a nearby
table, suntanned, diamond-encrusted, radiating power and, one
presumes, ardent support for Coach Knight. The meal was excellent,
the youngsters in the audience wide-eyed. It was a great pleasure
being among oldsters sharing memories of a great time in their
lives and mine. (March 28, 1999)
- It was only two weeks
ago that University of Connecticut guard Khalid El-Amin
led his team to a national basketball championship. Soon after,
he was arrested and charged with marijuana possession. Now everyone's
apologizing, showering Khalid with love and sympathy. About 250,000
people showed up in Hartford for an April 16 parade honoring the
team. The mantra of our age was everywhere. Banners shouted, "Khalid
El Amin We Support You!" Citizens along the parade route
were interviewed and made it clear they were forgiving. "He
just made a mistake," said one, Rudy Vogel. It's amazing
how often we hear this phrase in public dialogue. Serial killers,
war criminals, child molesters, bank robbers, hit-and-run drunken
drivers, dope addicts, politicians, felons, morons, miscreants
of all descriptions--all they've really done is make a mistake.
Isn't it time we stop being judgmental and get on with the really
important business of the people? We live in an increasingly ridiculous
society--that's what we're "getting on" to. (April
17, 1999)
- The Lost Angeles Lakers
NBA basketball team released Dennis Rodman from his contract
earlier this week and told him to go home. Can it be that someone
in authority in professional sports has finally stood up and done
the right thing?
- The adults who manage
the Indiana high school all-star basketball team have added two
players to the boys' team roster for its upcoming June games against
Kentucky. One of those adults, games director Patrick Aickman,
was quoted in the April 21 Indianapolis Star explaining
that "My feeling is to give as many kids as possible an opportunity
to be selected an Indiana All-Star." The truth is that every
single high school basketball player already has this opportunity.
The problem is that the teams are chosen based on individual
talent. Aickman's poorly-coded message seems to be that justice
will be ours only when every player is chosen for the team.
The Star, which sponsors the Indiana-Kentucky series, could
end the suffering of our young people immediately by naming
every player in Indiana to its all-star teams. (April 21, 1999)
- This morning's
Indianapolis Star reports that three former members of the
University of Massachusetts women's basketball team have filed
a lawsuit against the school, claiming their coach's "yelling,
insults and obscenities" made their personal lives unbearable.
This is not good news for Coach. Dare we hope that some
former Indiana players will be emboldened by this legal breakthrough
and seek damages of their own? (October 17, 1999)
- As one of the Braves'
relief pitchers--it might have been Terry Mulholland--walked
off the field in tonight's World Series game, the camera
was on him as he left the mound and began the trek to the dugout.
Just a stride or two into the trip the fella flipped the old double
bird (index and little finger upraised) to the Yankee Stadium
crowd. It was not a subtle gesture. The camera was only on him
for a second or two before retreating, roaring away to other
grotesqueries. Typically TV covers the pitcher's lonely walk
all the way to the dugout, but not this time. There was not a
single peep about this from the announcers then or during the
rest of the night. Why would they not comment on such an episode?
You can bet if it were Coach they'd have gone global with
it in an instant.
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