Splinters From the Bench

• Let's see now. Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker said New York City's streets and subways were full of queers with AIDS, freshly paroled dangerous criminals, and foreigners speaking strange languages he didn't understand, and he wondered where they all came from and how they got in our country. He was correct as far as he went. For this he has been fined $20,000, suspended from baseball till May 1, and ordered to America's equivalent of Red China's "re-education camps," sensitivity training. I haven't heard a single soul claim Rocker's statements were inaccurate or untruthful. Outrageous? Certainly. Offensive to many Americans? Certainly. But if Rocker is to be held to this standard, why hasn't Al Sharpton been called to task for his incessant race-baiting? Why hasn't Jesse Jackson been sent to camp for calling Gotham City "Hymietown" Why does Spike Lee get a free pass to publicly say that Charlton Heston should be murdered? Why do liberals, for example, get to use this kind of language every day with impunity as they trash their enemies? The Rocker Unpleasantness illustrates why hypocrisy remains one of America's leading growth industries. (January 18, 2000)

• Atlanta Braves relief pitcher and antichrist, John Rocker, got a standing ovation from a crowd of about 10,000 at Kissimee, Florida, this week when he made his first appearance of spring training. Good! (March 18, 2000)

• Combined attendance at the 2000 state high school basketball finals was less than half that in the year 1997, the last year of single-class basketball in Indiana. Good!

• Downtown hotel lobbies are jammed with fans here for the NCAA basketball Final Four. They're shuffling around decked out in their branded merchandise, their huge shoes and puffy jackets, baseball caps, sweaters and T-shirts bearing the names of American icons, faces blank but eyes darting, shifting, searching for people who are somebody, for celebrities, famous people, people whose presence will make them feel better about themselves, help define their lives. Dick Vitale is having an autograph session at Circle Center as I write. He is rumored to have a dozen or more public appearances scheduled in the next few days, all for big cash. Merchandise vans, trailers, and huts have sprung up like mushrooms on city streets and lots. Vendors have snatched up every available empty space and opened for business. Police have promised to make spot-checks to assure that only "officially sanctioned" goods are sold. Budweiser has rented the Hyatt Hotel lobby for a five-day orgy of schmoozing. Every stick of furniture has been cleared away to make room for Bud, so there's no longer even a place to sit to read a newspaper. The NCAA and cohorts are trying desperately to convince us this is about everything but what it's all about: selling merchandise, making tons of money, and our fascination with celebritydom. The actual athletic contests are secondary. It's a beautiful story. (March 30, 2000)

• Butler University basketball coach Barry Collier was nowhere to be found last Monday, the day of the NCAA basketball finals in Indianapolis. He was said to be involved in delicate negotiations with the University of Nebraska for its vacant coaching position. Naturally, everyone wanted to keep this quiet. An article in the Indianapolis Star noted, apparently without irony, that although Collier was off-radar and Nebraska officials wouldn't say a thing, Collier had been reached on his cell phone and had told eager reporters that he couldn't talk or reveal where he was. If Collier really wanted to be unreachable, why was he carrying his cell phone? Why didn't he ditch it if he didn't want to be found? I don't get it, Coach.

• Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker ended his two-week suspension for telling the truth last night with his first appearance of the season before a home crowd of 34,903 in Atlanta. He pitched one scoreless inning in relief and was greeted with a prolonged standing ovation. Good! (April 19, 2000)

• Why are baseball fans cheering Rocker? My guess is that they're tired of hearing the wacko liberal politically correctoidians tell the rest of us how to live. (April 19, 2000)

• The San Diego Union-Tribune has reported that Atlanta's John Rocker yelled to a fan at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego that a photographer standing nearby was "the lowest scum of American society," then mocked the poor devil's earning power and told him to get back "to your $3.25 an hour job." What'll he be telling the truth about next?

• Now the NCAA has piled on by telling South Carolina it will cancel all NCAA-sanctioned sports events in that state, including a basketball tourney round scheduled for Greensboro in 2001 if the state doesn't remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse. If I'm South Carolina, I greet the NCAA with a flipped bird and a hearty "Cram it!", and I leave the damn flag up.

• The news has been chock-full of stories of sports violence lately, and a lot of it between fans and players. Fans taunt players mercilessly, pour beer on them, throw debris onto playing fields; players charge into the stands after fans. Soccer fans and players alike riot regularly around the world. This week a baseball game at Wrigley Field in Chicago was halted for 10 minutes when Los Angeles Dodgers players vaulted into the stands to fight fans. We're edging toward the inevitable: fans bringing firearms to games and shooting players on the field. And of course the players will shoot back. Not a question of if, only when. We'll get there. (May 18, 2000)

Must Be Something In That Bloomington Water

• Northeastern University has fired Joy Malchodi, its women's basketball coach "in the wake of an internal investigation into her conduct," according to USA Today. She's been given an administrative position in the athletic department. USA Today's account notes that Malchodi came to Northeastern from none other than Indiana University, where she "was known for yelling and swearing on the sideline."

• Associated Press photographer Stam Lim took a picture the night the Lost Angeles Lakers won the NBA championship that sums up American culture as few ever have. Lim attended the post-game rioting in Lost Angeles and in the middle of a street littered with trash, with a burning vehicle in the background, he captured a photo of a Lakers fan crouched in feral readiness to attack. The fan bore aloft a poster of a Lakers player (No. 34) roaring and trash-mouthing in triumph. The fan, his own face a contorted snarl, was mimicking the poster's pose and jabbing his finger into the air in the ever-popular "We're No. 1" gesture. The fan is wearing a complete Lakers uniform, including jersey, baggy pants, shoes, and, for good measure, a baseball cap with the Lakers logo on it. (June 28, 2000)

Same Thing's Happened At Dang Near Every Wedding I've Ever Been To

• USA Today reports that a sophomore football player at the University of Utah, tight end Ben Allison--is recovering after being shot in the chest at a family wedding in West Jordan, Utah, in late August. Police believe the fracas, in which another guest was also wounded, was gang-related. "A number of suspects" are said to have been identified, but no arrests yet made.

• Local cranks and troublemakers are trying to pressure the Indianapolis Colts into standing for something and disciplining defensive back Mustafah Muhammad, freshly convicted of domestic battery (code for kicking the crap out of your wife). Colts management is standing fast, however. After much mumbling and foot-shuffling, team president Bill Polian finally confessed that the team will not be punishing the lad. A few local nut-cases were contacted by the Indianapolis Star for reaction. Their observations were instructive, and no doubt reflect thundering majority American opinion. Tom Bowers, co-director of something called Kelley MBA Sports and Entertainment Academy at Indiana University, said he didn't think the conviction caught many NFL fans by surprise and added that he doubts they'll care either, after a few months have passed. "People have short memories," he quipped. Staff writer Stephen Beaver noted that not a single fan or sponsor has protested, and no plans for a boycott are evident, though a local women's shelter is said to be thinking about protesting. The president of a Colts fan club said Muhammad ought to be punished but he was supporting the team no matter what. "When I bought my season ticket, I didn't buy it to see one person," he said. And Eddie White, a vice president at Logo Athletic Inc., the Indianapolis company supplying the Colts and other NFL teams with apparel, said the Muhammad Unpleasantness hasn't come up yet in company pow-wows. "I don't know if it's our role to be a moral judge," White intoned. " I think this issue is a lot more complicated than that." Spoken like a true Clintonista, and doubtless seconded by countless millions of Americans. (September 5, 2000)

• Hardly a day has gone by this summer without a sports section photo of one of the Williams sisters pouring out of their cut-out, skimpy tennis costumes. Somehow, the camera guys unfailingly manage to zoom in on crotch or boobs. America's sports editors know what their readers want. Female body parts stop us in our tracks every time.

• One my all-time favies, Beautiful Bernie Lincicome of the Chicago Tribune, is heading west to be the lead columnist for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. Posturers, frauds, incompetents, jerks and idiots in Chicagoland's sports world can breathe a sigh of relief. Those out west better buckle up. Bernie's a Vicar of Vitriol who suffers nobody gladly.

• Doug Flutie is still playing professional football and performing Sunday heroics for the Buffalo Bills. He's doing it about 15 years after his then coach, Mike Ditka, of the Chicago Bears, and his rival for the Bears quarterback job, the uniquely obnoxious Jim McMahon, said he was a worthless runt turd who didn't deserve to be on an NFL roster let alone actually play in the league. Revenge is its own reward. He'll soon surpass the 50,000 yard mark in career passing yardage, something only four quarterbacks in professional history have done (and not one of them is Jim McMahon). Good job, Doug.

• I'm all for tradition, but one that needs some rethinking is the Yankees' hauling in over-the-hill-gang members to sing the National Anthem. For Saturday night's World Series opener, it was aging rocker Billy Joel who wasn't up to the demands of the tune. Saturday night they dragged out the Metropolitan Opera's venerable Robert Merrill. I'd prefer to remember both of them when their voices were up to the challenge.

• Fox Sports cameras are certainly in love with celebrities. Each World Series game so far has featured extensive panning through the crowd in search of glitterati. . .Jesse Jackson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lopez and her sweetie, the legendary rapper Sean "Puffy" Combs, Spike Lee, Matthew Broderick. . .but nobody's yet been able to spot that lifelong Yankees fan, Hillary Clinton.

• The Yankees hauled in Don Larsen, Yogi Berra, and Phil Rizzuto--all heroes from my childhood-- to toss out ceremonial first pitches for the first two games of the World Series in Yankee Stadium. All three were shockingly grey and shaky--coots by any definition. A rude and solemn reminder that I am not far behind on the conveyor belt to oblivion.

• I recently found myself in the Hoosier Dome in downtown Indianapolis watching the Indiana-Penn State football game. Several things stood out. First was the nonstop noise provided by Dome management. Throughout the seemingly interminable three-hour disappointment there was rarely a moment not filled by the Dome's handlers with roaring rock music, advertisements, or other hype screeched at hysterical, near-deafening sound levels. Someone obviously has discovered something essential about the human condition here, and it must have to do with the public's absolutely consuming need to be continuously entertained, stimulated. Second, it is obvious from concession prices that this long ago ceased to be the average man's affordable entertainment. A bottle of beer sells for $5.75 (that's $138 a case). A hot dog, soft drink, and a sack of peanuts go for $2.75 each. Parking runs from $5 to $10 and tickets sold for $25 and up. That mythical American family of four would have to spend a minimum of $100 to get inside the building and another roughly $40 to treat each member to a modest snack and drink. And of course the concourses bulge with kiosks and huts offering NCCA- and NFL-sanctioned clothing and other souvenirs. So it would take a gutty, doggedly determined family of four to escape for less than $200. For my part, I refused to buy anything, even though I was hungry and thirsty. I am not part of anyone's "target audience."

• High school football players are dying at about the rate of one per week this fall. Ten have died so far, most from medical conditions not related to football injury on the field, according to an USA Today story October 30 The newspaper noted that the football death rate is eight-thousandths of one percent, since over 1.2 million students play high school football. By comparison, 3,427 teenagers were killed in automobile accidents in 1998, some 34 times the football fatality rate. But, strangely, the handwringers aren't yet screaming that young drivers be forced to wear helmets and pads when behind the wheel. Give them time. (November 1, 2000)

• "Piazza is playful and frivolous, the perfect Bambi to Clemens' random shotgun, all soft eyes and snapping bubble gum. This is not to diminish the special delight the rest of us get when New York eats its own, and if the Subway Series offers nothing else, it is a lovely auto-cannibalism. It could be better only if Piazza hit himself in the head with the bat and Clemens ran face-first into one of his own fastballs." --Columnist Bernie Lincicome of Denver's Rocky Mountain News, commenting on the recent World Series Unpleasantness involving the Yankees' Roger Clemens and Mets catcher Mike Piazza.

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