Splinters From the Bench

Convincing Bud Selig Department

• Pete Rose will be the featured guest this weekend at an eastern Connecticut casino (Foxwoods Resort at Mashantucket, if you want to chopper out with me), where he will schmooze and sign copies of his new book. Spokescritters say 300 of the world’s biggest gamblers have been especially invited, and that enthusiasm is running high for the big event.  (January 23, 2004)

The Cat 'n' The Hat

• Another great name has passed from the major league baseball scene. Harry “The Cat” Brecheen died at age 89 in Oklahoma. He was perhaps best known for winning three games for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1946 World Series. It is impossible to resist noting that he was a contemporary of Harry “The Hat” Walker. (January 17, 2004)

What's Even Sadder Is Steve Stereotyping Prototypers

• ”People prototype you on what you can do and what you can’t do. . .I think it is sad how you can get prototyped. --Steve Smith, wide receiver, Carolina Panthers, talking to reporters in Houston a few days before the Super Bowl, and quoted in Mike Downey’s In The Wake of the News column in the Chicago Tribune. (January 31, 2004)

• Never let it be said that the Indianapolis Star is deaf to reader suggestions. A few weeks ago I wrote to complain about the lack of field goal and free throw shooting percentages in the Star’s statistics for Indiana University basketball.  On Thursday, January 29, the percentages were added. I have written again, this time to thank them.  (January 31, 2004)

• Maurice Clarett, the former Ohio State University football running back, has won his legal battle to be allowed to leave college and enter the professional football draft before his college class graduates. The NFL fought Clarett’s appeal to the courts, as did just about everyone else. At stake was the NFL’s cozy “farm system” which college football provided free of charge.  I’m all for Clarett on this one.  (February 22, 2004

• I’ve joked with friends about college basketball recruiters reaching down into elementary school and kindergarten in a ceaseless questing for advantage. This morning’s Chicago Tribune bore a note that Jon Scheyer, a 6-6 sophomore at Glenbrook North (Illinois) High School, received a scholarship offer from Marquette when he completed the eighth grade. We’re getting there. (March 26, 2004)

• Old farts are still lamenting the loss of single-class high school basketball in Indiana. Each spring at tournament time the argument is renewed. Most agree the state will never go back to one class. The new arrangement--four classes--gets far more youngsters carting off trophies and feeling good about themselves.  Everything’s ducky except the crowds and the economics. Attendance has gone from 786,024 in 1997--the last year for single class ball--to 440,914 last year, a decline of 44 percent. Tournament profits for the Indiana High School Athletic Association, which rules all state high school sports, dropped from $924,016 to $448,405 over the same period--a 51 percent decrease.  Serves ‘em right.  (March 28, 2004)

• Paul Horning told eager reporters recently that “excessively demanding” academic requirements and admissions standards were a big factor in Notre Dame’s declining football fortunes. Stephen Cass, an ornery Chicago Tribune reader, decided to see if the facts suppported Hornung.  He unearthed recent data freed by the NCAA on one indicator, average SAT scores for football players.  Stanford, Northwestern, Rice, Duke and Vanderbilt ranked 1-5 for highest average SATs.  Notre Dame, so demanding, so exacting and lofty, ranked No. 51 out of 115 Division I football programs, according to Cass, with an average SAT of 925. Cass noted that this puts Notre Dame below Purdue (No. 6 nationally), Indiana (No. 10), Ohio State (No.12), Penn State (No. 21), Iowa (No. 27, and Michigan (No. 46).  So much for another self-delusion up in South Bend?  (April 1, 2004)  

• Skip Myslenski’s late-March article in the Chicago Tribune about sagging attendance at Purdue University basketball games drew a sharp reply from John Remster, a devout (he made a 160-mile round trip as a basketball season ticket holder 10-15 times a season) and frustrated Boilermaker fan from Valparaiso.  Remster noted parking difficulties, ever-rising ticket prices, prohibition on food or drink in the arena, inconvenient shuttle bus schedules, and day-to-day neglect of fans on a myriad of small issues. IU fans can sympathize and join Remster in wondering why it seldom if ever seems to occur to university pooh-bahs to ask fans themselves why so many of them have stopped going to the games.  (April 12, 2004)

Let's Play Two!!

• “I see them in foul dugouts, gnawed by rats/And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain/Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats. . .” --Siegfried Sassoon, World War I-era poet, quoted in the Chicago Tribune April 26, 2004.

• Underage drinking, drunken driving, disorderly conduct, assault, falsification of a police report to theft, robbery, felony drug abuse, carrying a concealed weapon --List of offenses for which members of Ohio State University’s football team have been arrested in the past three years, according to an article in USA Today on May 4, 2004. 

Irish Football Takin' A Tip From Digger

• The spirit of Digger Phelps, who raised cupcake scheduling to an art form in the 1970s as Notre Dame’s head basketball coach, is riding to the rescue of the Irish football program. Athletic director Kevin White dipped deep into his bag of rich Corinthian leather to find the proper euphemisms, then announced plans to “overhaul” future Irish football schedules “in a way that will put us in a much more competitive position. . .from a success-oriented standpoint. We’re pretty much cleaning that slate and we’re recreating our tomorrow in the way we want to. . .(and). . .doing it with more clarity and more sanity.”  This is code for: from now on we’re loading up on cupcakes. Citing last year’s 5-7 record against a schedule with obviously too many good teams, White said “Nobody’s scheduling like we are.”  One of his assistants, John Heisler, revealed to eager reporters that Notre Dame is also moving to schedule seven home games each year, with only four away, and has asked the NCAA for permission to go to a permanent 12-game schedule which could raise the home game total to eight. Shame is no longer a word in the Notre Dame vocabulary. (August 20, 2004)

• Something called “announced attendance” for the Dolphins-Steelers NFL game played in Miami was reported by Associated Press at 72,225, but “the actual crowd was about 30,000.” Don’t they realize the nightmare they’re creating for future archeologists? When they’re digging around in the ruins and come upon these two tidbits, how will they know how many actually attended? They’ll spend unimaginable hours trying to reconcile these two numbers. Why does the NFL allow this? This is like politicians playing with the federal budget, or Enron financial statements. Why can’t we just have one big fat attendance figure and everybody agrees that’s it, that’s what history will record?  (September 27, 2004)

Kirk The Jerk

• The debate is roaring over the NCAA’s rule change in which football players whistled for penalties are identified by number on the public address system. Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz is leading the bitchers. “I think it’s ridiculous,” he told the Star’s Terry Hutchens. Then, revealing just how little imagination he has, Ferentz added, “I can’t imagine there’s a coach in the country that’s in favor of it.” Ferentz said the rule “has no place in college sports. I don’t think they (players, apparently--or maybe the Antichrists at the NCAA--it was not clear in the Star’s account) need the fans fully cognizant of who is involved in a violation. I don’t think the players need that kind of recognition. They’re not paid.”  (Some would debate that last allegation, the one about pay).  Hutchens had only to place a phone call to Gerry DiNardo, Indiana’s head coach, to confirm Ferentz’s paucity of imagination and uncover a more rational view. DiNardo sees no problem in the new rule. “In basketball, you’ve been raising your arms (when you’re called for a foul) for a hundred years, right? No one’s ever worried about embarrassing them.” Precisely so. Hutchens should have called Ferentz back, pointed out that basketball-playing kids from elementary school up have been asked to raise their hands for more than a century and not a soul seems to have suffered or protested. The rule’s been an NFL fixture for years. Why are college football players different? Why are Ferentz and Iowa football players different? The guy’s a buffoon. (September 30, 2004)  

Sammy The Jerk

• Temperamental Sammy Sosa, the Chicago Cubs’ big slugger, skipped his team’s final game October 3 without even bothering to ask permission or say goodbye to his teammates. Manager Dusty Baker was honked. So was general manager Jim Hendry. There was talk of Hendry “having to take action.” Sammy will get away with it. This is typical of modern athletes and management. I still say the best solution is the one which occurred to me long ago and far away, when the Yankees were putting up with one of the era’s biggest flamers, pitcher Kenny Holtzman (who achieved his greatest success with the Cubs). It takes an owner with a fat checkbook and a genuine thirst for retribution. George Steinbrenner then and still today could do it. So could Guy Grand, my fictional hero from the novel, The Magic Christian.  Here’s the final coup for dealing with these assholes: sign them to a lifetime contract--well, 10-20 years would do, depending on the target’s age at the time--with money piled so high they can’t refuse. As soon as the ink dries,  bench the player forever, so that he never plays another inning, another minute, another down. Ever. (October 4, 2004)

• A week later, the Cubs announced they were fining Sosa one day’s pay--$87,400--for his error in judgment. What courage.  (October 11, 2004)

Cupcake-O-Rama

• The spirit of Digger Phelps is alive and well at Notre Dame. The Irish basketball schedule for 2004-2005 has been released. Anyone who remembers Phelps’s modus operandi in South Bend in the 1970s and 1980s when Digger had the Irish in the national spotlight will smile again when they see the coming year’s cupcake parade. Notre Dame’s preseason schedule includes: St. Joseph’s (Rensselaer, Indiana), Quincy College, Harvard, Indiana-Purdue at Fort Wayne, Charleston Southern, DePaul, Army, Marist, Western Illinois, and Samford. Since Notre Dame joined the Big East Conference in basketball it gave up its ability to pack its entire schedule with the likes of these turkeys, so the second half of the year actually features legitimate opponents such as Villanova, St. John’s, Connecticut, Boston College, Pittsburgh, and a made-for-TV game with UCLA. Phelps’ scam featured 16-18 home games, and roughly two-thirds of the entire schedule crammed with cupcakes. This assured Notre Dame of a 15-0 start every season. All that was then necessary to reach the magic 20-win plateau and that coveted NCAA tourney bid was to play about .500 against a handful of legitimate opponents. The latter always included several marquee games for national television. Notre Dame was not in a conference in those days and so could tailor an entire season’s schedule in this manner.  (October 25, 2004)

• Among the amusements following the player-fan smackdown in Detroit at a Pacers-Pistons game was NBA commissioner David Stern (and others) going on at great length about how the dignity of the NBA had been damaged.  Beg pardon. The NBA has long fostered the environment which spawned this ruckus, by its lax discipline of the many felons already in its midst, by marketing “edgy” players with “attitude”, by selling Niagaras of beer at games, by encouraging or tolerating raucous boorishness and profanity from fans. “Dignity” and the “NBA” are mutually exclusive terms, and Stern and other league apologists are clowns to suggest otherwise.  (November 28, 2004)

• Dan Patrick interviewed Coach as a lead-in to ESPN’s big game between Ohio State and Texas Tech (coached, of course, by Coach) this week.  Patrick mentioned the Recent Unpleasantness Involving The Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons Fans, then asked Coach to comment on the apparent decline in good behavior in America’s world of sports. Coach’s reply was that standards of behavior have declined. Neither Coach nor Dan Patrick betrayed even a hint of recognition or amusement at the absurdity of Coach lamenting the bad behavior of others.  (December 17, 2004)

For A While There, He Didn't Have A Leg To Stand On

• Comedians joke about stuff like this but we seldom see it in print. The December 21 USA Today carried a brief note in the sports section about a former Oklahoma high school basketball star, Keith Smith, being kicked off the Colorado basketball team. It mentioned that in October of 2002, Smith had entered the University of Oklahoma Medical Center for foot surgery, but woke up to discover they’d operated on the wrong foot.  Later, Smith got the correct foot fixed, but at a different hospital.

• The Chicago Tribune’s sports staff revealed in a year-end confessional its voting record for the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2005 inductees. Eligibles included Andre Dawson, Bruce Sutter, Ryne Sandberg, Goose Gossage, Bert Blyleven, Jim Rice, Don Mattingly, Wade Boggs, Lee Smith, Tommy John, Alan Trammell, Jack Morris, Dave Parker, Steve Garvey, Dale Murphy, and perhaps more. Each writer could vote for up to 10 players. Columnist Mike Downey refused to vote for Boggs and his .328 career average and 3,010 hits, and named only three players for inclusion: Rice, Sandberg, and Dawson--but “voted” to have Pete Rose put on the ballot, though Rose is banned from baseball for gambling. Writer Dave Van Dyke cast a write-in ballot for Rose. I’d have been tempted to send in a blank ballot, but alas, voter harassment and disenfranchisement prevented me from casting a vote. At least I’ve made my intentions clear.  (December 31, 2004)

Back to top