By H.N. Burdett
Full disclosure: I am a college sports fan. As an undergraduate student, I was the sports editor of my college newspaper. As a graduate student, I was a stringer for the Associated Press, covering intercollegiate sports. After military service, during which I'd been sports editor of my army post newspaper before becoming its editor, I was a burnt-out sportswriter. Rather than applying for a position in the sports department, I began my journalism career on the rewrite desk of a metropolitan daily newspaper, later evolving into a political writer and editorial page editor. No more sportswriting thereafter.
Over these last several days of shocking allegations that a Penn State University assistant football coach is a pedophile rapist, I have given considerable thought to my long ago years as a sports reporter and editor. My conclusions are not based solely on the sickening crimes with which Jerry Sandusky has been charged, but the rape of young boys in showers has certainly triggered my reflections of bygone years.
Beyond what the Penn State tragedy has done to the lives of the alleged victims, beyond the termination of the careers and reputations of a university president and a legendary football coach, among others, what cries out for exposure is the entire culture of intercollegiate sports. It is a phenomenon that incites even the most rational and responsible among us to cheer our hearts out for the home team, then look the other way when reprehensible actions of some coaches and some players are brought to light.
As of this writing, no one has accused a single Penn State football player of anything inappropriate, much less anything as heinous as the charges against Sandusky. Still, had I been a member of the board of trustees of that university, I would have vigorously argued for canceling at least the Nittany Lions' game last Saturday against Nebraska, if not the remainder of their football schedule.
To the dyed-in-the-wool fan, this may seem unreasonably harsh - a presumption of guilt against the alleged perpetrator of despicable crimes in a nation that prides itself on the presumption of innocence. On another level, however, it would demonstrate that the university administration and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, consider the Penn State travesty worthy of a deep and serious investigation.
Any such probe must extend well beyond Penn State. It is high time for an in-depth examination of factors that have exponentially multiplied and thoroughly corrupted college sports - grotesquely distorting them into a culture that has spawned myriad circumstances revolving around the mindset that "jocks will be jocks." The Penn State nightmare is but one example of where sports hysteria has brought us.
This is not to suggest that anything as horrific as child rape is a common occurrence at universities, nor that what allegedly happened at Penn State is directly attributable to football. The obsessions that hold up players and coaches as more than campus heroes, but national icons to be worshipped, has a disturbing dark side - one that allows minor and major transgressions committed by these self-same idols to be routinely dismissed without as much as a second thought.
The focus of national attention must be on the irrefutable fact that college sports has become, in today's parlance, too big to fail.
In conjunction with the Sandusky case, we have learned that Penn State's football program raked in $72 million for that university's coffers last year. Multiply this figure by the amounts raised by higher-end Division I football and basketball programs and the overall picture becomes crystal clear. Are there any further questions regarding how and why coaches and players receive what amount to permission slips for getting away with behavior that would never be tolerated from any other faculty member or student?
If top-of-the-line football coaches often enough take home larger paychecks than Nobel laureate physics professors and university presidents, the obvious discrepancy might be answered by the ghost of Babe Ruth. When asked how he felt about being paid more than the President of the United States, the Sultan of Swat once responded: "I guess I had a better year than Hoover did."
When a college's football or basketball program is consistently selected for bowl games or the NCAA tournament, or finishes its season among the Associated Press poll of the top 20 teams in the nation, the profits accrued mount well beyond ticket sales. Proud, well-heeled alumni are eager to assure the continuation of the sports program's success by fueling it with hard cash. Bragging rights about your old school is fun and games, but it is also costly.
Not only is it costly in terms of dollars and cents, it is costly in what the mass lunacy over major college sports is doing to the very fabric of our society - most especially when we hold athletes and coaches to virtually the same meager standard that has been applied in recent years to junk bond pitchmen.
More than 50 years ago, University of Maryland President H.C. "Curly" Byrd was determined to build a state-of-the-art football stadium on the College Park campus. Byrd was widely known for the kind of charm that could coax cats down from fish trucks. The Maryland legislature was the fish truck; lawmakers were the purring felines. When the university president wanted something from the state's General Assembly, it was usually as good as done. Grumbling could be heard from those unable to fathom why the head of a state university might choose to build a football field at a time when the College Park campus library was, to put it mildly, a laughingstock.
When that very question was posed to Byrd, his response was that if the seats were filled in his new stadium, he would build all the libraries any university would want. Once the stadium (bearing his name) was completed, he had a hunch that the football program would be on its way to becoming something special. And he was on target. The Maryland team immediately obliged with an undefeated season, achieved third in the AP's national rankings, and went on to demolish top-ranked Tennessee in the Sugar Bowl.
Over the next few years, the Maryland Terrapins accepted a couple of Orange Bowl invitations. As the football team paved its way to Miami, Byrd Stadium seats were filled to near capacity. But some five years later, the University of Maryland lost its academic accreditation. High on the evaluators' list of shortcomings was the university's woefully inadequate library for which a new and improved replacement had not yet materialized. Byrd, incidentally, was the only university president within memory who had once been his school's football coach. Among his early hires after taking over as the university's president launched the career of one of the most successful and powerful football coaches of all time - the legendary Paul "Bear" Bryant.
Eventually a decent library was built on the university campus, under the president who succeeded Byrd, Wilson Elkins. Elkins had been a track star and football player during his own undergraduate days. Unlike Byrd, Elkins's doctorate was earned rather than honorary. Nonetheless, the new university president had no sooner taken the university reins when he felt it necessary to pledge that the strength of Maryland's athletic program was among his highest priorities.
Though there may be no correlation whatsoever, the university's football fortunes, under Elkins and those who succeeded him, have since followed a roller coaster trajectory, but have reached nowhere near the lofty heights enjoyed in the 1950s when Curly Byrd was crafting his dubious legacy.
The worship and coddling of figuratively and literally the biggest men on campus - athletes and coaches - did not happen over night. It has been going on for what seems forever and it has obviously not been confined to the University of Maryland, where, indeed, it did not begin. And this progressive corruption has been anything but a dirty secret clinging to the nether parts of the realm of higher education. It has been a sore festering for decades as television and national advertising sponsors have elevated college football and basketball into Big Business. Outrageously large sums have even been contributed to enshrine the names of corporations on college sports stadiums and field houses for the further glorification of the corporate brand.
It is Big Business fueled by the sports mania that explodes seasonally in virtually every village and hamlet across the land. The tales are many, but those in a position to step forward to relate them are virtually non-existent. A code of silence to protect the guilty is rather obvious. What sports fan or booster club member has not heard stories of college coaches plying prospective athletes with promises of automobiles, pocket money and even willing and eager co-eds? Pressed for more information, those relating such anecdotes frequently respond by saying it is just some rumor, nothing anyone can prove. When such rumors persist, year after year, decade after decade, it is reasonable to at least suspect that where there's all that smoke, there just may be fire.
It is difficult to think of the stories I heard as a student many years back as rumors - particularly those that came from actual participants, or at least individuals who claimed to be personally involved.
In the perfect vision of hindsight, those anecdotes were red flags that should have signaled matters of legitimate concern. Why would anyone with even a marginal moral compass, including myself, not sound the alarm? That no one did is an indictment of the spell that sports mania had already begun to cast.
To argue that it was an entirely different era, a time when reputable media represented by responsible and respected journalists declined to reveal what they knew or had heard about the dalliances of United States Presidents, is at best a wholesale wimp-out. Times were indeed different in countless ways, but do morals and ethics have timelines?
A star basketball player required a passing grade in a composition to be eligible to suit up for the upcoming season. At the eleventh hour, the paper was delivered to the athlete's English professor who gave it a passing grade. There is no way to know whether the authorship claimant had ever read the paper that guaranteed his eligibility. I do know, however, that he did not write it. And I can further report that the go-between, whose concern about his buddy's plight led him to seek out someone capable of writing the paper the campus hero could not, later became an elementary school principal.
That same basketball player received a regular paycheck for part-time janitorial services to the university. His primary duties consisted of turning on the gymnasium lights prior to practice and turning them off after the athletes had all showered and departed for their respective destinations.
There was a professor who informed a couple of students who just happened to be football players that the night before the test was scheduled a copy of the final course exam could be found on the center of the desk in his unlocked office. I have no recollection of any football player that year who was ruled academically ineligible.
An intimidating, no-nonsense dean, known as an uncompromising disciplinarian who would not hesitate to expel or suspend students for relatively minor violations, became marshmallow-soft when athletes appeared on his carpet. A former college athlete himself, that university official chose to act as defense counsel for varsity lettermen rather than as their judge on cases ranging from public drunkenness to property theft to date rape.
As a college student, I was uncomfortable hearing these stories. I was aware then, as I am now, that none of the participants would, on the grounds of self-incrimination, relate what they had told me to either appropriate authorities or the press. Still, it is a lame excuse for not exerting the effort to get them on the record. It is also true that I viewed my position of sports editor as reporting and commenting only on what was happening on the playing field. I might further plead that I was young, inexperienced and poorly qualified for investigative reporting. All true enough and, in the eyes of more than a few, these defenses might have at least a modicum of merit. Today, not so much.
If anyone learning of the aforementioned incidents had an inkling that turning a blind eye to cheating on test papers, receiving copies of final exams before they were administered, shrugging off corrupt university officials, would almost inevitably snowball into something far worse, the alarm might have sounded loud and clear.
Today I am the grandfather of a young man who once participated in youth baseball and basketball. When he was the very same age of the kid who was allegedly sodomized by a coach in that Penn State shower, I attended not only every game my grandson played but every practice, from beginning to end. I had no reason whatsoever to suspect inappropriate behavior by any of his coaches. But I was well aware of scattered newspaper accounts of pedophilia among Little League coaches and Boy Scout troop leaders around the country.
I had read such articles with both anger and sympathy. I wanted to get my hands tightly around the neck of any adult who would abuse any child. My rage built against low-life predators who would misuse positions of authority and trust to satiate their deviant appetites. At the same time, I realized that clouds of suspicion would form around dedicated coaches, often enough parents of players on teams to which they are assigned, who give generously of their time and experience to teach kids sportsmanship, fairplay and the many life lessons that can begin on playing fields. It is easy enough to envision such prospective mentors refusing to have anything to do with youth athletics and even the remote possibility of vicious accusations of misconduct from sports-crazed parents for no reason other than their kid not getting enough playing time.
Horrendous as the Penn State scandal is, it raises the hope that it may teach at least some of us that accumulated small transgressions beget palpably unacceptable larger ones. More than a few of us now know how we would react if we were to witness what the graduate assistant claims he saw in the shower room; we would not even think about calling the police or reporting it to the appropriate link in the academic chain of command. We would take immediate and swift action to stop the rape of a 10-year-old boy.
Had I witnessed a scene similar to the one the graduate assistant saw in the Penn State shower during my college days and done anything differently than what I know I would do today, my self-respect would have been lost, never to be fully regained; my life would have been in shambles and deservedly so.
###
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
CANNIBAL TIME REFLECTIONS
By H.N. Burdett
During the first Republican presidential candidate debate of this interminable election season, Newt Gingrich reminded his rivals of Ronald Reagan's admonition: "Thou shall speak no evil of a fellow Republican."
Gingrich knew full well that his cautionary note would fall upon deaf ears. But the former Speaker of the House of Representatives misses no opportunity to identify with Reagan and boast of his own authorship of Reagan's Contract with America.
The question was never really about whether the contenders' long knives would be unsheathed, sharpened and turned on one another, but when. The eight GOP aspirants for the White House participating in these got'cha forums - easily the most entertaining television sitcoms now running - have settled into the down and dirty business of devouring their own.
Cannibal Time has arrived in all of its full glory. And Karl Rove, the all-time heavyweight champion of campaign chicanery, professes not even to have a nag in the hunt. Turd Blossom, as he was lovingly addressed by George W. Bush, the Pinocchio to Rove's Gepetto, is just too doggone preoccupied carrying out his Grand Plan to waste time on these preliminary bouts to determine who will head his party's ticket next year. He is laser-focused on Republican domination of Congress for the next 30-40 years.
If the recipes for missionary stew the GOP aspirants are cooking up for one another do not actually bear Rove's own fingerprints, they sure read like pages ripped from his well-worn playbook. Rove absorbed the rudiments of the fine art of political mischief at the knee of that past master, Lee Atwater, and took it to new depths by guiding the hands-down worst president in United States history to re-election.
This time around, Rove is masterminding American Crossroads, a deep-pocketed, conservative political action group intent upon preserving government of, by and for the 1 percent, by wresting control of Capitol Hill rather than the White House. But just as old firehouse horses snorted and stomped their demand to be hitched up to the hook-and-ladder wagons whenever the alarm clanged, Rove becomes restless on the sidelines of the presidential nomination battle. There's less certainty about which presidential candidate Dubya's onetime "boy genius" favors than there is about the candidate he yearns to destroy. That would be Texas Governor Rick Perry.
Exhibit A: After Governor Perry leveled the charge that Ben Bernanke is guilty of nothing less than "treason" (a crime punishable by state execution), Rove ignored the Reagan dictum by telling the Fox News Channel, "You don't accuse the Federal Reserve Chairman of being a traitor to his country. And suggesting that we treat him pretty ugly in Texas - you know, that is, again, not a Presidential statement."
Exhibit B: When Perry expressed his view that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme," Rove seized the opportunity to allow as how this was "toxic" evidence that the Lone Star State governor is not a good fit for the White House. Again, Rove might have remained above the fray by using that golden opportunity to say nothing.
Exhibit C: Responding to Perry's comment that he believes President Obama's birth certificate is bogus, Rove interjected: "You associate yourself with a nutty view like that, and you damage yourself." Just as Pavlov's pooches salivated when the dinner bell sounded but before the vittles were served, Rove chose to brush aside the Great Communicator's advice and burnish his own reputation as the grating opionator.
But Karl Rove is not the only Republican intent upon taking down the Texas governor. Beseiged by accusations of sexual harassment by women employed by the National Restaurant Association when he was its chief lobbyist, Herman Cain told his supporters: "We now know and have been able to trace it(dredging up his past) back to the Perry campaign that stirred this up, in order to discredit me and slow me down." A spokesman for Perry held that Cain's suggestion was "reckless and false," then slyly raised the possibility that Mitt Romney's campaign just might be behind the surfacing of allegations against Cain. A spokesman for the Romney campaign simply dismissed this as "Not true."
Even Rep. Michele Bachmann, once the darling of the no-taxes-no-how-no-way Tea Party before she sank like a rock in the polls, got in on the act of trashing Perry. The Minnesota congresswoman took umbrage at the buzz that the tea-baggers are pressing her to exit the GOP nomination contest, then accused the Perry campaign of spreading a false rumor.
With Mitt Romney hopelessly mired at not much above 25 percent in the polls, which approximates what remains of the moderate wing of the Republican party - may it rest in peace - the presumably more authentic conservative Republican candidates are hell-bent on knocking one another out of their path to become the GOP nominee. Their reasoning is that if one paragon of conservative purity can rise from the pack, Romney, apparently at a loss to pinpoint any single core issue on which he has held a consistent conservative position, is toast.
And so Republican candidates are driven to slice and dice the Texas governor, who would have us believe that his candidacy has the endorsement of You-Know-Who. Though Cain and Bachmann have muddled Biblical prophecy with similar claims about the anointment of their own candidacies, the Celestial Powers indeed appear to be tilting the playing field in Governor Perry's favor by endowing him with the advantage of the bulging purses of oil barons.
As the intriguing game of inside politics spins wildly toward a conclusion that can only be guessed, relevant issues are short-changed. And they are, of course, multitudinous. U.S. unemployment and home foreclosures tear at the fabric of American society. The nation is plagued with staggering national debt. Conflicting obsessions with defense spending and entitlement programs remain inviolable. A solid Congressional bloc is pledged to stand firm on not raising taxes at a time when infrastructure deteriorates precariously, the country remains committed to a costly war, and rogue nations with various reasons for despising the United States either have access to, or are at the very brink of, obtaining nuclear weapon capability.
While a segment of rank-and-file citizens under the rubric of the Tea Party rails against wasteful government spending, Occupy Wall Street protestors vent their rage at the greed of bloated corporations and financial institutions that have milked and bilked countless investors dry, placing laissez-faire capitalism at the precipice of dissolution. And members of the two major U.S. political parties are at a standoff, refusing to budge from their respective entrenched positions of protecting the wealthiest, on one hand, and, on the other, preserving Social Security and Medicare while seeking what each and every other industrial nation has: national health insurance.
At the founding of the United States, Thomas Jefferson posited that from time to time the tree of liberty would need to be nurtured with the blood of patriots. Miraculously, only during the American Civil War did such an occasion arise internally. The echoes of that butchery pitting brothers against brothers have resounded so horrifically that nearly 150 years in its wake, grievances between states and regions have been settled at the ballot box rather than on the battlefield. Nonetheless, a global revolution is in progress. It began with Arab Spring in the Middle East, where blood ran in the streets but the uprisings continued undeterred.
The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements here are not simply parodies of the revolutions across the pond; they are very real. An enormous question mark looms over their staying power. What will rise from the ashes here is no more known than the ultimate outcome of the outcries elsewhere. What does seem likely is that when the smoke finally clears, a different world may well emerge. Whether it will be a better one or even more dangerous than it is today will ultimately depend on the wisdom and actions of its leaders.
In this country, where confidence in national lawmakers plunges toward non-existent, and where the performance of the executive branch is acceptable to less than 50 percent of the electorate, there are few clues that any of the Republican presidential candidates, or any politicians of either party, are paying all that much attention to the mammoth tasks remaining before whomever is elected to lead the reeling, wobbling country that is known far and wide as the most powerful sustained democracy in the free world.
###
During the first Republican presidential candidate debate of this interminable election season, Newt Gingrich reminded his rivals of Ronald Reagan's admonition: "Thou shall speak no evil of a fellow Republican."
Gingrich knew full well that his cautionary note would fall upon deaf ears. But the former Speaker of the House of Representatives misses no opportunity to identify with Reagan and boast of his own authorship of Reagan's Contract with America.
The question was never really about whether the contenders' long knives would be unsheathed, sharpened and turned on one another, but when. The eight GOP aspirants for the White House participating in these got'cha forums - easily the most entertaining television sitcoms now running - have settled into the down and dirty business of devouring their own.
Cannibal Time has arrived in all of its full glory. And Karl Rove, the all-time heavyweight champion of campaign chicanery, professes not even to have a nag in the hunt. Turd Blossom, as he was lovingly addressed by George W. Bush, the Pinocchio to Rove's Gepetto, is just too doggone preoccupied carrying out his Grand Plan to waste time on these preliminary bouts to determine who will head his party's ticket next year. He is laser-focused on Republican domination of Congress for the next 30-40 years.
If the recipes for missionary stew the GOP aspirants are cooking up for one another do not actually bear Rove's own fingerprints, they sure read like pages ripped from his well-worn playbook. Rove absorbed the rudiments of the fine art of political mischief at the knee of that past master, Lee Atwater, and took it to new depths by guiding the hands-down worst president in United States history to re-election.
This time around, Rove is masterminding American Crossroads, a deep-pocketed, conservative political action group intent upon preserving government of, by and for the 1 percent, by wresting control of Capitol Hill rather than the White House. But just as old firehouse horses snorted and stomped their demand to be hitched up to the hook-and-ladder wagons whenever the alarm clanged, Rove becomes restless on the sidelines of the presidential nomination battle. There's less certainty about which presidential candidate Dubya's onetime "boy genius" favors than there is about the candidate he yearns to destroy. That would be Texas Governor Rick Perry.
Exhibit A: After Governor Perry leveled the charge that Ben Bernanke is guilty of nothing less than "treason" (a crime punishable by state execution), Rove ignored the Reagan dictum by telling the Fox News Channel, "You don't accuse the Federal Reserve Chairman of being a traitor to his country. And suggesting that we treat him pretty ugly in Texas - you know, that is, again, not a Presidential statement."
Exhibit B: When Perry expressed his view that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme," Rove seized the opportunity to allow as how this was "toxic" evidence that the Lone Star State governor is not a good fit for the White House. Again, Rove might have remained above the fray by using that golden opportunity to say nothing.
Exhibit C: Responding to Perry's comment that he believes President Obama's birth certificate is bogus, Rove interjected: "You associate yourself with a nutty view like that, and you damage yourself." Just as Pavlov's pooches salivated when the dinner bell sounded but before the vittles were served, Rove chose to brush aside the Great Communicator's advice and burnish his own reputation as the grating opionator.
But Karl Rove is not the only Republican intent upon taking down the Texas governor. Beseiged by accusations of sexual harassment by women employed by the National Restaurant Association when he was its chief lobbyist, Herman Cain told his supporters: "We now know and have been able to trace it(dredging up his past) back to the Perry campaign that stirred this up, in order to discredit me and slow me down." A spokesman for Perry held that Cain's suggestion was "reckless and false," then slyly raised the possibility that Mitt Romney's campaign just might be behind the surfacing of allegations against Cain. A spokesman for the Romney campaign simply dismissed this as "Not true."
Even Rep. Michele Bachmann, once the darling of the no-taxes-no-how-no-way Tea Party before she sank like a rock in the polls, got in on the act of trashing Perry. The Minnesota congresswoman took umbrage at the buzz that the tea-baggers are pressing her to exit the GOP nomination contest, then accused the Perry campaign of spreading a false rumor.
With Mitt Romney hopelessly mired at not much above 25 percent in the polls, which approximates what remains of the moderate wing of the Republican party - may it rest in peace - the presumably more authentic conservative Republican candidates are hell-bent on knocking one another out of their path to become the GOP nominee. Their reasoning is that if one paragon of conservative purity can rise from the pack, Romney, apparently at a loss to pinpoint any single core issue on which he has held a consistent conservative position, is toast.
And so Republican candidates are driven to slice and dice the Texas governor, who would have us believe that his candidacy has the endorsement of You-Know-Who. Though Cain and Bachmann have muddled Biblical prophecy with similar claims about the anointment of their own candidacies, the Celestial Powers indeed appear to be tilting the playing field in Governor Perry's favor by endowing him with the advantage of the bulging purses of oil barons.
As the intriguing game of inside politics spins wildly toward a conclusion that can only be guessed, relevant issues are short-changed. And they are, of course, multitudinous. U.S. unemployment and home foreclosures tear at the fabric of American society. The nation is plagued with staggering national debt. Conflicting obsessions with defense spending and entitlement programs remain inviolable. A solid Congressional bloc is pledged to stand firm on not raising taxes at a time when infrastructure deteriorates precariously, the country remains committed to a costly war, and rogue nations with various reasons for despising the United States either have access to, or are at the very brink of, obtaining nuclear weapon capability.
While a segment of rank-and-file citizens under the rubric of the Tea Party rails against wasteful government spending, Occupy Wall Street protestors vent their rage at the greed of bloated corporations and financial institutions that have milked and bilked countless investors dry, placing laissez-faire capitalism at the precipice of dissolution. And members of the two major U.S. political parties are at a standoff, refusing to budge from their respective entrenched positions of protecting the wealthiest, on one hand, and, on the other, preserving Social Security and Medicare while seeking what each and every other industrial nation has: national health insurance.
At the founding of the United States, Thomas Jefferson posited that from time to time the tree of liberty would need to be nurtured with the blood of patriots. Miraculously, only during the American Civil War did such an occasion arise internally. The echoes of that butchery pitting brothers against brothers have resounded so horrifically that nearly 150 years in its wake, grievances between states and regions have been settled at the ballot box rather than on the battlefield. Nonetheless, a global revolution is in progress. It began with Arab Spring in the Middle East, where blood ran in the streets but the uprisings continued undeterred.
The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements here are not simply parodies of the revolutions across the pond; they are very real. An enormous question mark looms over their staying power. What will rise from the ashes here is no more known than the ultimate outcome of the outcries elsewhere. What does seem likely is that when the smoke finally clears, a different world may well emerge. Whether it will be a better one or even more dangerous than it is today will ultimately depend on the wisdom and actions of its leaders.
In this country, where confidence in national lawmakers plunges toward non-existent, and where the performance of the executive branch is acceptable to less than 50 percent of the electorate, there are few clues that any of the Republican presidential candidates, or any politicians of either party, are paying all that much attention to the mammoth tasks remaining before whomever is elected to lead the reeling, wobbling country that is known far and wide as the most powerful sustained democracy in the free world.
###
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
A TALE OF TWO DIAMOND LEGENDS
By H. N. Burdett
My two favorite baseball managers were featured in major sports page articles on the same day this week. One capped a 33-year career the right way: leaving his job three days after capturing his third World Series title. The other, though a year older than his retiring colleague, had signed a contract to manage the 2012 Washington Nationals, commenting that he did not plan to hang on for just one season but was in it "for the long haul."
Departing St. Louis Cardinal Manager Tony La Russa, 67, told the press it was time for him to do other things. After this past storybook season, there is indeed little else for Tony Terrific to prove. His Cards battled from 10 1/2 games behind Atlanta for a playoff spot as late as August 25. Saint Louis squeezed into the playoffs on the last day of the National League season. The club then proceeded to upset both Philadelphia and Milwaukee and, in one of the more thrilling comebacks in baseball annals, got up from the mat and vanquished the explosive Texas Rangers in the World Series.
Washington National Manager Davey Johnson, 68, will never even come close to La Russa's 2,728 major league victories, which place him third on the all-time list behind legendary skippers Connie Mack (3,731 wins) and John McGraw (2,763). In fact, Johnson has managed 607 fewer games than La Russa's teams won.
Nor is Johnson likely to match La Russa's record of six league titles - three each with the Oakland A's and the Cardinals. But, considering that La Russa has managed for three decades plus three years and Johnson for only 15 years, the Nationals' manager has a .561 winning percentage to attest to his ability. And Davey does have one World Series title to his credit, with the 1986 New York Mets that won 103 games.
Johnson also guided the Baltimore Orioles into the American League playoffs in 1996 and l997. Contrary to his cozy relationship with the Washington front office, Johnson could not stand Oriole owner Peter Angelos. The two stopped talking with one another. And, in the most preposterous blunder of Angelos's turbulent ownership of the Baltimore team, he fired Johnson on the very day he was named 1997 American League Manager of the Year.
There are many stories about Johnson, who may be one of baseball's last truly colorful characters. My own favorite DeeJay anecdote harkens back to when he was an Oriole second baseman and the team was managed by the redoubtable Earl Weaver. A computer nut, Johnson had put together a litany of statistics to prove that Weaver's lineup was all wrong. Davey brashly took his computations into Weaver's office, dropped them on the desk and informed his manager that the numbers proved conclusively that he should be batting clean-up. Without favoring the stats with as much as a glance, Weaver gathered them together in both of his hands, crumbled and tossed them into his wastebasket. Johnson said he then left Earl's office, but he was confident that once the door between them was shut that Weaver went straight to the basket to have a closer look at the numbers.
The gods of baseball are a vengeful lot. Where boneheaded decisions by team owners are concerned, their vengeance is especially cruel. There's no need to remind the Boston Red Sox faithful of this fact. The day after Christmas 1919 is one that will live in infamy in the land of the bean and the cod. For on December 26 of that year, the Sox, sold pitcher George Herman Ruth to the New York Yankees.
During the eight years Ruth toiled on the mound and began hitting baseballs to distances denied mere mortals, the Red Sox racked up four World Series titles. Ruth's most significant contributions to those years of glory were with his arm rather than his bat. Wearing the Boston uniform, he had won 94 games against a mere 46 losses. In the 1918 World Series, Ruth's string of 29 1/3 innings without relinquishing a single run set a Series record thought to be unbeakable. And it held up for a full 43 years before it was eclipsed by Whitey Ford, who posted 29 2/3 scoreless innings in the 1961 Series. Had the Babe, who finished his career with 714home runs, not hit a single ball out of the park, he was a lock to have entered the Hall of Fame as a pitcher.
After Boston discarded him, Ruth, of course, went on to become the greatest baseball player ever. Conversely, the Red Sox toiled a full 85 years without winning another World Series until 2004 when they swept the Cardinals in four games.
But if Peter Angelos had even heard of the Curse of the Bambo, his outsized ego blinded him to its cautionary message. Not only have the O's not won a World Series since 1983, they have not had a winning season in the 14 years since Davey Johnson was sent packing. Call it the Curse of DeeJay.
But Angelos did have a chance to redeem himself from the notorious Johnson debacle. There were reports that the Oriole owner attempted to hire none other than Tony La Russa to manage his team.
Angelos, a celebrated class action litigator who readily admits to not knowing much about baseball, was said to have felt he would be more comfortable with another lawyer guiding his team on the field. La Russa, who has never practiced law but does have a law degree from Florida State University, sensibly and politely declined Angelos's offer.
While Davey Johnson is convinced he has a 2012 National League pennant contender in the nation's capital, as well as a front office that both understands baseball and tolerates his myriad idiosyncrasies, some 30 miles to the east of Washington the Orioles continue to struggle under the Curse of DeeJay. And the gods of baseball are doubling over with laughter at what they hath wrought.
###
My two favorite baseball managers were featured in major sports page articles on the same day this week. One capped a 33-year career the right way: leaving his job three days after capturing his third World Series title. The other, though a year older than his retiring colleague, had signed a contract to manage the 2012 Washington Nationals, commenting that he did not plan to hang on for just one season but was in it "for the long haul."
Departing St. Louis Cardinal Manager Tony La Russa, 67, told the press it was time for him to do other things. After this past storybook season, there is indeed little else for Tony Terrific to prove. His Cards battled from 10 1/2 games behind Atlanta for a playoff spot as late as August 25. Saint Louis squeezed into the playoffs on the last day of the National League season. The club then proceeded to upset both Philadelphia and Milwaukee and, in one of the more thrilling comebacks in baseball annals, got up from the mat and vanquished the explosive Texas Rangers in the World Series.
Washington National Manager Davey Johnson, 68, will never even come close to La Russa's 2,728 major league victories, which place him third on the all-time list behind legendary skippers Connie Mack (3,731 wins) and John McGraw (2,763). In fact, Johnson has managed 607 fewer games than La Russa's teams won.
Nor is Johnson likely to match La Russa's record of six league titles - three each with the Oakland A's and the Cardinals. But, considering that La Russa has managed for three decades plus three years and Johnson for only 15 years, the Nationals' manager has a .561 winning percentage to attest to his ability. And Davey does have one World Series title to his credit, with the 1986 New York Mets that won 103 games.
Johnson also guided the Baltimore Orioles into the American League playoffs in 1996 and l997. Contrary to his cozy relationship with the Washington front office, Johnson could not stand Oriole owner Peter Angelos. The two stopped talking with one another. And, in the most preposterous blunder of Angelos's turbulent ownership of the Baltimore team, he fired Johnson on the very day he was named 1997 American League Manager of the Year.
There are many stories about Johnson, who may be one of baseball's last truly colorful characters. My own favorite DeeJay anecdote harkens back to when he was an Oriole second baseman and the team was managed by the redoubtable Earl Weaver. A computer nut, Johnson had put together a litany of statistics to prove that Weaver's lineup was all wrong. Davey brashly took his computations into Weaver's office, dropped them on the desk and informed his manager that the numbers proved conclusively that he should be batting clean-up. Without favoring the stats with as much as a glance, Weaver gathered them together in both of his hands, crumbled and tossed them into his wastebasket. Johnson said he then left Earl's office, but he was confident that once the door between them was shut that Weaver went straight to the basket to have a closer look at the numbers.
The gods of baseball are a vengeful lot. Where boneheaded decisions by team owners are concerned, their vengeance is especially cruel. There's no need to remind the Boston Red Sox faithful of this fact. The day after Christmas 1919 is one that will live in infamy in the land of the bean and the cod. For on December 26 of that year, the Sox, sold pitcher George Herman Ruth to the New York Yankees.
During the eight years Ruth toiled on the mound and began hitting baseballs to distances denied mere mortals, the Red Sox racked up four World Series titles. Ruth's most significant contributions to those years of glory were with his arm rather than his bat. Wearing the Boston uniform, he had won 94 games against a mere 46 losses. In the 1918 World Series, Ruth's string of 29 1/3 innings without relinquishing a single run set a Series record thought to be unbeakable. And it held up for a full 43 years before it was eclipsed by Whitey Ford, who posted 29 2/3 scoreless innings in the 1961 Series. Had the Babe, who finished his career with 714home runs, not hit a single ball out of the park, he was a lock to have entered the Hall of Fame as a pitcher.
After Boston discarded him, Ruth, of course, went on to become the greatest baseball player ever. Conversely, the Red Sox toiled a full 85 years without winning another World Series until 2004 when they swept the Cardinals in four games.
But if Peter Angelos had even heard of the Curse of the Bambo, his outsized ego blinded him to its cautionary message. Not only have the O's not won a World Series since 1983, they have not had a winning season in the 14 years since Davey Johnson was sent packing. Call it the Curse of DeeJay.
But Angelos did have a chance to redeem himself from the notorious Johnson debacle. There were reports that the Oriole owner attempted to hire none other than Tony La Russa to manage his team.
Angelos, a celebrated class action litigator who readily admits to not knowing much about baseball, was said to have felt he would be more comfortable with another lawyer guiding his team on the field. La Russa, who has never practiced law but does have a law degree from Florida State University, sensibly and politely declined Angelos's offer.
While Davey Johnson is convinced he has a 2012 National League pennant contender in the nation's capital, as well as a front office that both understands baseball and tolerates his myriad idiosyncrasies, some 30 miles to the east of Washington the Orioles continue to struggle under the Curse of DeeJay. And the gods of baseball are doubling over with laughter at what they hath wrought.
###
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
