I finished “The Yankee Years” (by Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated magazine, and former Yankees manager Joe Torre) over the weekend. Most enjoyable, packed with a lot of information I’d forgotten or never knew.The book made clear that drug use plagued the Yankees just as it infested most teams in the 1990s and early 2000s. Front-office decision-making from about 2000 on was terrible, just terrible. It was stunning to be reminded of the awful pitchers the Yankees brought aboard (Carl Pavano, Kei Igawa, Kevin Brown, Esteban Loiaza, Jose Contreras, Jaret Wright, Jeff Weaver—even worn-out veterans like Randy Johnson and the age 44 version of Roger Clemens). There were a full dozen of these disasters and the team paid them $255 million collectively, or $2.04 million for each game they won. The decision-makers, though, remained with the team and it never seemed to occur to anyone that something was tragically wrong with the team’s player evaluation process. Torre himself comes across as a “go-along-to-get-along-guy” who seldom roiled the waters, took a tough approach to clubhouse issues, or failed to follow the party line. He honored the game’s code of secrecy, and managed to avert his eyes when signs of the drug culture appeared in the Yankee clubhouse. Much has been made of Joe’s “silent, brooding” image—slouched in the dugout, expressionless, barely moving, seldom speaking, staring Yoda-like at the field, hat bill pulled down over his eyes. After reading the book, I conclude he is hardly a brilliant, analytical baseball genius. He is well-liked by his players, of course, as is the parent who never disciplines his children. Torre was able to successfully navigate the harrowing experience of working for George Steinbrenner, the legendary Yankees owner, but did poorly with some of the schemers and frauds who gradually took over the front office as Steinbrenner’s health and vitality declined. By the mid-2000s, George was feeble, frail, and barely a figurehead in the front office. Others moved into positions of power and palace intrigue increased. Three general managers of competing teams at Oakland, Cleveland, and Boston came across as smart and capable executives, while the Yankee front office floundered. Though Torre never came out and bluntly said so, it is obvious that the arrival of Alex Rodriguez brought heavy baggage with it. Alex comes across as an extremely needy person, tone deaf to interactions with his teammates, and a player who choked mightily in post-season playoffs. The core of players in Torre’s early years, and especially pitcher David Cone and outfielders Paul O’Neil and Bernie Williams, shine in this account. Pitcher Carl Pavano, who was signed in 2005 for $39.95 million, won 9 games in four years, and rarely pitched due to a long and bizarre series of claimed injuries. Pavano rivals Kenny Holtzman among world-class assholes who’ve ever worn the Yankee pinstripes. (March 15, 2009)
Bob Sheppard, the public address announcer at Yankee Stadium since 1951, has retired at age 98. The New York Times noted that Sheppard debuted to a Yankee lineup featuring Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, Phil Rizzuto, and a 19-year-old rookie named Mickey Mantle. Sheppard was noted for his perfect diction, and stentorian tones. His deep, resonant baritone voice seemed to more imaginative fans to almost come from heaven. And when his signature greeting came—“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Yankee Stadium,” many of us believed it. (April 1, 2009)
It’s fairly thin gruel for sports talk radio listeners across the plains of central Indiana. Someone using the name Jon Michael Vincent—JMV for short—hosts an afternoon ‘drive time” show on WNDE—1260 AM. He is excruciatingly juvenile, obviously aiming for the age 14-26 male audience. Kravitz & Eddie (Bob Kravitz and Eddie White, co-hosts) over on WFNI-1070 AM (formerly WIBC—1070 AM) are blowhards (especially Eddie) who spend enormous amounts of time sniggering, burping, farting and talking about beer and boobs—junior high school boys locker room stuff—or wasting time on non-sports topics. The guy over on Radio 950 AM—Greg Rakestraw—is somewhat civilized, but struggles for an audience. The new guy in town—former IU basketball player and coach Dan Dakich—has a year or slightly more under his belt on WFNI—1070 AM, and is the most pleasant surprise. I expected little from Dakich, but he’s been mostly delightful. He’s frank, funny, a good conversationalist, and gets interesting guests. Most of us think he will eventually return to coaching. If he does, sports talk radio in Indianapolis will be the worse for it. (April 10, 2009)
Golden PR Moments For Baseball
During a “roving camera” moment in the fifth American league playoff game in California, eager photo-journalists gave us a series of tight close-up face shots of three Yankees infielders. The camera lingered only two or three seconds on each. They began with Alex Rodriguez, then moved to shortstop Derek Jeter and then second baseman Robinson Cano. Each of them, at the exact moment they were onscreen, their heads the size of dinner plates, ejected a huge stream of spittle. It seems unlikely this was choreographed, so it must have been just blind luck that all three hawked and spat in such seamless sequence. What could top this as an image-builder for big leaguers? How about the obligatory wide-angle shot of the team dugout, showing a floor always soaked and covered with spit, spilled drinks, empty plastic bottles, crushed paper cups, sunflower and peanut shells, unidentified precious bodily fluids and other festering debris, giving the panorama the look of a rot-reeking landfill. Didn’t any of these lads have a parent who taught them not to throw garbage on the floor at home, or spit, evacuate or excrete there? Has anybody in team management noticed this spectacle? Where are the grownups? (October 26, 2009)
The basketball season’s arrival has brought us brutal reminders about the abuse of language in our pathetic culture. Sports writers, apparently without the permission of anybody, are substituting the word “length” to describe height. A coach describing the opposing team’s center, who stands 7 feet 3 inches high, says “that guy’s got tremendous length.” A writer commenting on a team with a notable shortage of tall players says the team “lacks length.” Nobody in the real world talks like this. A tall guy is a tall guy, and a team with a lot of tall guys has a lot of height on its roster. When will the Obama Administration legislate to stop this outrage? (November 17, 2009)
The Day Nate Thurmond Opted For Life
The Indiana-Kentucky basketball game in early December provided a Kodak Moment wonderfully illustrating the talent and strength mismatch between the two teams. There was a scramble for a loose ball right in front of DeMaArcus Cousins, Kentucky’s strapping (6-10 and 260 or so pounds) freshman center. Indiana’s Verdell Jones, a skinny (6-5 and 186 pounds) guard, had the ball and Cousins bent over, grabbed the ball, and lifted it and Jones off the floor to about waist level. Officials and other players rushed in to prevent any eruption of violence, and there was none. The episode retrieved from my memory a story told years ago in a magazine article by Nate Thurmond, who was a monster center in the NBA in the 1960s and 1970s. The league was then dominated by 7-foot-1-inch Wilt Chamberlain, whose strength was legendary, as was the awfulness of his free-throw shooting. Thurmond told of a game against Chamberlain’s Philadelphia 76ers. Wilt got the ball down low, crouched, and began to spring skyward for a slam dunk. Thurmond was guarding him, and instinctively grabbed Wilt’s forearms to prevent him from getting off the shot. A split second after doing this, Thurmond realized that Chamberlain was soaring toward the rafters with not only the basketball, but with Nate Thurmond, too, and for another split second Thurmond had the fear flash through his mind that Wilt was going to dunk him as well as the basketball. Nate said he let go--and saved his own life. (December 12, 2009)
(1) Lew Alcindor, (2) Bill Walton, (3) Bill Russell, (4) Oscar Robertson, (5) Wilt Chamberlain, (6) Pete Maravich, (7) Larry Bird, (8) David Thompson, (9) Jerry Lucas, (10) Patrick Ewing, (11) Jerry West, (12) Elvin Hayes, (13) Ralph Sampson, (14) Christian Laettner, (15) Magic Johnson, (16) Michael Jordan, (17) George Mikan, (18) Tom Gola, (19) Tim Duncan, and (20) Bill Bradley—ESPN’s list of the top 20 college basketball players of all time (December 26, 2009)
At Last! A Remedy For The Incredible Shrinking Cagers Problem?
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“Here’s what we need on draft day: Picks go up on stage, shake the commissioner’s hand, take off their shoes, and a bar descends from the ceiling that gives us a true measurement. We get a snapshot, and the matter is settled once and forever.” –Sports Illustrated magazine, in a brief item (labeled “No More Tall Tales”) about Michael Beasley, the No. 1 pick in last spring’s draft, who has already shrunk two inches from his listed college height of 6’10”.
Gene, Gene, Gene
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Gene Keady, the highly respected old Purdue basketball coach, had been off my radar for a year or so. Then at halftime of the IU-Gonzaga game, there he was again—part of the Big Ten Network’s halftime experts panel. He looked sharp in a dark grey suit and blue tie. But then my gaze drifted upward, to one of the most god-awful hairpieces in the universe. Now there is a visible gap of an inch or two of baldness encircling Gene’s head, between the fringe of real hair at about ear-level, and the bottom edge of the wig/comb-over, which is shiny black—it almost looks shellacked, for cripe’s sake!--and combed up from the back and over the top to the right side. There’s a sharp color contrast between the two, to make it worse. Where are his children, his family members, friends? Where are the caregivers, who might be able to intervene? Gene is a fine man, a wonderful man. But you can’t let a loved one go out in public looking like this. You just can’t. You want to grab Gene by the lapels and shake him and ask him what is he thinking. Somebody’s got to convince him of the truth—bald is cool and he should ditch the rug. (December 6, 2008)