Splinters From the Bench

• Steve Alford’s won-lost record at Iowa in Big Ten play as the 2004-2005 season began was 34-46 (.425). File this information away for the inevitable upcoming campaign to have Steve named the next Indiana University basketball coach. (January 1, 2005)

• Exciting news! This morning’s Chicago Tribune featured a story about former University of Illinois basketball coach Lou Henson. A photograph revealed that Henson’s famed “Lou Doooo” is gone. Henson now combs his hair straight back over his head, Senator Joe Biden-style. He looks so much better.  Only Purdue Coach Gene Keady’s hair helmet rivaled Lou’s do for absurdity. Now the field is Keady’s alone—until another young bull—or old fool—comes barging into the territory, pawing, stamping, snorting, eager for the challenge. (January 26, 2005)

• Let us mark the fifty-first anniversary of one of college basketball’s most astonishing feats. On February 13, 1954, Frank Selvy of Furman scored 100 points in a game. On that night he made 41 of 56 field goal attempts. Selvy averaged 42 points per game his senior year.

• The howlers are in full-assault on Jose Canseco and his new book detailing baseball’s steroid problem. Top to bottom, everybody is denying every last syllable of it. This means one thing: Jose is telling the truth. The baseball family is reacting in the time-honored way of humans everywhere: kill the messenger. Kill him. Jose will be lucky if he’s not snuffed.  (February 16, 2005)

Synonym Of The Month

• . . .(under-achievement). . .”pretty well sums up the entire pro career of the Bears’ 2001 top draft pick in a nutshell, nutshell being a synonym for Terrell’s helmet on many a Sunday afternoon.” --Mike Downey, writing in the Chicago Tribune about the release by the Chicago Bears of controversial receiver David Terrell.  (March 1, 2005)

• I’ve made what I passed off as jokes about the day coming when college and professional recruiters would be dipping down into elementary schools and kindergartens to draft future star athletes. Oh, pooh-pooh, everyone says. But others see the same future. The March 12 Indianapolis Star carried a sports brief quoting John Calipari, the basketball coach at Memphis University, predicting that “within three years a high school junior, or even a sophomore, will put their name in and get drafted. . .”

• It was a thrill visiting the New York Yankees website and seeing a picture of Randy Johnson in pinstripes all cleaned up with a haircut and a shave. What an upgrade!  (March 7, 2005)

• Oh, no. It’s NCAA tournament time and once again some dang troublemaker is out there publicizing men’s basketball graduation rates. Non-graduation rates, more accurately. For starters, 42 of the 65 teams in the tourney graduate fewer than 50 percent of their players. Two men’s teams—Louisiana State and Minnesota—graduated zero players. No. 1-ranked Illinois graduated 47 percent. Bucknell and Utah State had 100 percent rates. Lackeys will spend the next year claiming it’s all just another big fat lie. (March 18, 2005)

• This was another of those NCAA finals where I prayed both teams would lose. Don’t care for Illinois for its sleaze, though I have no problem with new coach Bruce Weber. I don’t care for North Carolina for the obvious—it would make Billy Packer ecstatic if they won. So, Coach gets his revenge: Texas Tech gets to the Sweet Sixteen and Sean May gets rubbed in our faces. Enough. Bury this thing. Pray Bracey Wright signs with Turdestan. The Chicago Tribune is already speculating on who’ll be in next year’s Final Four in Indianapolis. Guess what? Indiana isn’t among them.  Duke, Florida, North Carolina, and Oklahoma, says the Tribune.(April 5, 2005)

• Little known and probably forgotten: Dave Winfield, who played most of his major league career with the San Diego Padres and New York Yankees, was drafted out of college by the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings (although Winfield never played college football), the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA, and the ABA’s Utah Stars. He chose major league baseball and signed with the Padres instead.

• There’s a move afoot in the NBA, led by its commissioner, David Stern,  to set up a minimum age requirement for players entering the league. Unfortunately, some eager reporter asked the Indiana Pacers’ Jermaine O’Neal what he thought about it. Jermaine said the move may be driven by racism.  The only racism I see in this is O’Neal making it a race issue.  (April 12, 2005)

• Left-fielder Hideki Matsui may be my favorite Yankee.  He just keeps piling up great stats, stays steady and solid, and keeps his yap shut. How wonderful—and how lucky he is, too—to have the built-in excuse of not speaking much English. He can stare quizzically at reporters, shrug, say “See ya” in Japanese, and get outta there.

• Not only did he wear a world-class nickname, but he was a giant among coaches and a major figure in early civil rights efforts. Clarence “Big House” Gaines died April 18 at age 81. He coached 47 years at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina. His teams won 20 or more games 18 times, and won eight league titles and an NCAA Division II championship.  His most famous recruit was Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, who later became an NBA star. Gaines was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1982. If they haven’t done a documentary on his life, they ought to.  ”Big House”, by the way, got his nickname from his size: 6-5 and 265 pounds. (April 18, 2005)

Male Bonding

• “Spitting and chewing and scratching, all of that is part of baseball. If you’re ever in the dugout they are up to their ankles in (sunflower seed) shells, and these guys are spitting them out like machine guns.” --Frederick C. Klein, former Wall Street Journal sports columnist and book author, commenting on how sunflower seed chewing has replaced tobacco since major league baseball banned the latter in the 1990s.

Jus' Joshin'

• Josh McRoberts of Carmel has notified the Indianapolis Star, sponsor of the Indiana-Kentucky high school basketball all-star game,  (and of the state’s Mr. Basketball selection) that he will not be accepting a spot on the Indiana All-Star team. The breaking story gave no hint as to a reason why, but McRoberts, his parents, and his high school coach were all mysteriously unavailable and unreachable for comment, according to the newspaper.  McRoberts finished third—third, mind you—in Mr. Basketball balloting, an honor McRoberts, his parents, his coach, his many friends and supporters thought should have been his by acclamation (Luke Zeller of Washington and Dominic James of Richmond finished 1-2).   The Star quickly reacted by canceling an exhibition game pitting the senior all-state stars against a team of juniors which had been scheduled June 21 in Carmel. At the end of Day One, it was difficult not to conclude that someone was pouting big time and that the adults had joined young Josh in a great big hissy fit. The furor brought Josh’s mom, Jennifer Roberts, out of the underbrush in protest in the next day’s paper. She leapt into the fray to defend her son’s decision. Mom told the Star that Josh had injuries—“back injuries, leg injury, and all of that” which prevented him from playing and that the family “and the Duke (University) staff feels it is best for him to rest. It’s always been a dream of his to play at Duke and we don’t want to jeopardize that in any way. It’s a shame that people have to be so judgmental about this.” It is not the first time a player has bagged the all-star team.  Brebeuf’s Alan Henderson (an Indiana University recruit) quit the 1991 squad before the team convened to practice (he lost Mr. Basketball to Glenn Robinson) and Bonzi Wells (Mr. B runnerup to Bryce Drew of Valparaiso) quit in 1994 after one exhibition game.  A footnote for Indiana University fans to ponder in all this: None of 2005’s top three—McRoberts, Zeller, or James—ever apparently seriously considered attending IU. (April 22,  2005)

• Recruiting continues its reach lower and lower into the cradle. Cordell Passley, a freshman at Pike High School in suburban Indianapolis, has made an oral commitment to play basketball at the University of Tennessee, according to a note in the May 18 Indianapolis Star.  A story earlier this spring in the Star noted that there is now a scouting/talent evaluation service which nationally ranks basketball players from the fourth grade on up.  (May 18, 2005)

Metastasis

• The plague is spreading. Wisconsin is now home to a movement to ensure equality of outcome in high schools sports championships. It was only five years ago that the state’s private schools (56 of them) dissolved their sports association and merged with the public school group. When small private schools won two of the state’s class division basketball titles this March, the whine from public schools increased. Now the state’s athletic governing body admits it is looking at new ways to make sure more public schools and youngsters feel good about themselves, especially those who haven’t been winning their share of championships lately. Chicago Tribune columnist Barry Temkin reported on the sad spectacle in May.

Pain In Milwaukee

• May was agony for Marquette University poohbahs. Only God knows when it will be over. The pain actually began in the 1990s when school trustees, responding to the global sensitivity movement, dropped the nickname Warriors, which it has used since 1954, and replaced it with Golden Eagles. But about a year ago, somebody—only God knows who—decided that name was offensive, too. So the trustees on May 4 chose a new name: “Gold.”  That one provoked immediate outrage, too. So, within a week, the board threw up its hands and announced that students, alumni, season ticket holders, and faculty—why everyone on the planet wasn't included the trustees did not disclose--would be allowed to vote on still another nickname.  On the ballot this time—voting ends June 5, and then the top two choices will be presented for still another election, with the winner to be revealed July 1—presuming somebody else doesn’t bitch about it—are these thrillers:  Blue and Gold, Explorers, Golden Avalanche, Golden Knights, the just-resurrected Golden Eagles, Hilltoppers, Saints, Spirit, Voyagers, and Wolves. (May 31, 2005)
• Texas Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers is catching some flak for assaulting a couple of  TV cameramen. He has been voted a spot on the American League’s all-star team, and pundits are arguing whether he should be allowed to play.  A piece in the July 9 Indianapolis Star  bore the headline, “It’s Hard To Picture Rangers’ Rogers At The All-Star Game.” No, it isn’t. Not in this ridiculous society of ours. It’s easy. It’s impossible to picture him not being front and center. (July 9, 2005) (Post script: Kenny did show up at the game and shortly after, his 20-game suspension was cut to 13 games by an arbitrator.)

Raffy And Sick--A Precious Memory. . .

• Baseball star Rafael Palmeiro’s 10-game suspension for steroid use sent eager reporters scuttling to the archives, where they found and splattered all over our TV screens a film clip of Palmeiro testifying before Congress last March. Raffy wagged his finger and indignantly told the Congressional rabble before him that he had never used steroids—never!  Who among us was not transported back to the late 1990s and Sick Willie’s famous nationally televised finger-wagging denial that he had never—never!--had sex with that woman. . .? (August 3, 2005)

• If anyone hears of a fund set up to sue the NCAA for trying to dictate politically correct school nicknames and mascots, let me know so I can donate. Bet your money, meantime, on the certainty that we’ll search far and wide through the nutless, gutless, hairless crowd of ninnie schools to find a single one who’ll fight back.  (August 8, 2005)

• Noteably absent from the NCAA’s list of condemned offenders were The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.  Why do they get a pass? The nickname, after all, glorifies drunken brawling and hell-raising by ethnics.

• The Chicago Tribune sports section carried this historical footnote in today’s edition:  Walter Young, a rookie, made his first start (at first base) for the Baltimore Orioles September 11, and may now be logged in the record book as the largest, or biggest major leaguer ever.  Walter is said to stand 6 feet 5 inches tall and weigh 322 pounds.  He was 1-for-3-at the plate in his debut. (September 12, 2005)

• We’ve joked about colleges recruiting kindergarteners, but it’s no joke now. A national “scouting” organization is tracking America’s basketball players at least down to the fourth grade level.  An Indianapolis lad, Kevin Ferrell, was the top-ranked fourth grader in 2003. Now a sixth-grader, he’ll be featured in  the next issue of Stuff Magazine, according to a sly note in today’s Indianapolis Star.  (September 18, 2005)

• One of this world’s truly great Chicago White Sox fans, in an e-mail this week, noted that he would not be going to Chicago to see his beloved boys play in the team’s first World Series since 1919—and the first in his lifetime. He said he saw them play five games this season in Comiskey Park—“they can’t MAKE me drop that name,” he roared, parenthetically—and they lost four of them, so he’ll manage his viewing quite well from behind the couch at home, thank you.  It reminded me that we share a stubborn dislike of the corporate naming of things. Comiskey Park, as it was known for generations, long ago slapped on a corporate banner like most major sports arenas around the country.  Like the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, come to think of it.  They can sell their souls and naming rights to any dang greedy fool company they want, I’m stickin’ with the perfectly, wonderfully suitable place name it originally had—the Hoosier Dome.  (October 18, 2005)

• Buddy Rice, the 2004 winner of the Indianapolis 500 mile race, married Michelle Noonan November 5 in the shadow of Camelback Mountain in Paradise Valley, Arizona. Buddy honored the occasion with a suit and tie, but insisted on wearing shoes and baseball cap all bearing the logo of DVS, one of his racing sponsors, for the ceremony.  (November 5, 2005)

• Pete Rose’s son,  Pete Rose, Jr.,  has pleaded guilty to distributing GBL, a drug sometimes used as an alternative to steroids. His dad, who is under a lifetime ban from baseball for betting on baseball while managing the Cincinnati Reds, and who also spent five months in prison in 1990-91 for income tax fraud, told eager reporters, “I don’t think Pete ran a red light or had a speeding ticket. That’s the kind of kid he is. I wish people understood how small the mistake he mad is.”  Moments later, the senior Rose added that his boy “is a baseball player. He just wants to play baseball.”  Young Rose, age 36, has in fact recently been a minor league baseball player and had a brief stint in the majors in 1997 with the Reds, where he went 2-for-14 at the plate, with nine strikeouts.  (November  9, 2005)

He Cleans Up Pretty Nice

• I began the year with a prayer that Johnny Damon would get a bath, a haircut and a shave in 2005. I ended it with free-agent Johnny signed by the Yankees and appearing at a press conference scrubbed up and shorn clean in Yankee pinstripes.  Under all that Mansonesque scruff, mange, and fur, there is a handsome guy who should fill the centerfield hole with aplomb. A delightful Christmas present. (December 25, 2005)

Celebrity Left-Overs From 2005      

• Dick Butkus, former linebacker for the Chicago Bears and not known for subtlety or half-efforts, walked out with two games left in the season on a Montour, Pennsylvania, high school team he’d agreed to coach as part of an ESPN television “reality show.” The team had a 1-6 record and Butkus had chided the players for poor attitudes and lackadaisical play. He’d apparently seen all he could stand. The MSNBC cable network canceled The Dennis Miller Show. And Louis Nye, a comedian who became famous playing the role of Gordon Hathaway on the Steve Allen Show in the early 1950s, died late in the year at age 92.  The country is poorer with all three offstage. Butkus and Miller, at least, can still mount comebacks.  (December 31, 2005)

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