#1) Pete Rose. There is talk that the new commissioner is willing to talk about lifting Rose's lifetime ban. Pete says he's suffered enough. Pete bet on baseball. Pete bet on games his own team was playing in while he managed that team. Compounding the issue, he then lied about it for years. He only stopped when one of his advisers told him if he came clean, they might forgive him. MIGHT. Big word, small chance. Talk all you want, just leave him where he is.
#2) Alex Rodriquez. Why is it that these guys think if they deny hard enough and threaten legal action, officials will cower in fear. But when the officials show they are ready to carry on with the battle, these liars back off. Why? Heaven forbid they have to sit in that witness chair and swear to tell the truth - about everything. Lie about one little thing and your serving time for perjury, even if they never prove you cheated.
A-Rod is currently making the sack cloth and ashes tour, starting with the commissioner, continuing with the Yankee brass, planning his confession to the media and finishing with his teammates. How's he doing? Well the Yanks met with him in stony silence and told him to forget getting his "Milestone home run totals" bonus. To show him they meant it, they told him to go ahead and sue us. There's that old witness chair thing again. When the Hall of Fame voting rears it's ugly head (and A-Rod's head), I think his chances should go the same way Bonds, McGwire and Clemens voting is going. Nowhere!
#3) The people in charge of the Little League baseball team. They restructured the territorial lines from which they could choose players in order to get the best players in the city. When they got caught, Little League officials stripped the team of it's championship and suspended the offending team leaders. Now the parents are up in arms, saying that the kids shouldn't have had their "fairly won" championship taken away, that the Little League officials were being unfair. These parents say the kids didn't do it, it was the people in charge. They shouldn't be upset at the Little League, they should be upset with the perpetrators of the crime, Their own officials.Mike Lupica said it best: "But in the end, what Steve Keener, the head of Little League baseball, did was right and proper, and not political, despite all the political pressure he now faces. If they get away with it, the kids grow up thinking that rules, especially at the youth level is really some kind of buffet table. Choose the ones you want to follow."
#4) Ya' gotta love Tark the Shark. Jerry Tarkanian, former coach of the Las Vegas Runnin' Rebels, has passed away. He was a good coach, winning 761 games in his 31 years as a head coach, but he was an even better recruiter, which led to most of his battles with the NCAA. He spent more time on the carpet at NCAA headquarters than the office cleaners, but the NCAA officials were never very successful at nailing him. Tark knew how to bend the rules and even, according to rumors, how to break some without getting caught. One sports writer interviewed Tark after a meeting of coaches and the rules committee. "How come," he asked the master rules-bender Tarkanian, " you voted for every single rules change that tightened up the restrictions?" "Because," he replied, "some teams might follow them."
Dean Smith should not be linked with cheaters, but I wanted to mention one important fact about him. He may have been the one major reason for the collegiate shot clock. Dean took advantage of the rules at the time, to keep the ball away from stronger teams when he developed the '4-corners offense.' In this set, he positioned one man at each of the four corners of the half court and had a ball handler dribble around until he got double-teamed, in which case he would pass to the teammate left unguarded, run over and take the return pass and start all over again. Granted, he had the players needed to execute this plan, but he went out and got them and used them effectively.
Last Thursday, Southern Mississippi lost in overtime to Florida International, 73-71. Late in January, Southern Miss had two players declared ineligible, reducing their roster to seven players. When 3 players fouled out, So. Miss. played the final minute with only four players on the floor. Where was Dean Smith when you needed him?
Annie-O commented that there were 20 some televised games listed in the Rochester paper yesterday. I told her that there were over 140 Division I games scheduled in the country that day and 42 were being televised on some national network.
***THEY SAID IT***
"A record 2.7 million Canadians took in the Eugenia Boughard-Maria Sharapova Aussie Open quarter-final. Of those, 99 per cent were males ages 18-35; the rest like tennis." -- RJ Currie
"Some tough new rules are in effect for the NBA All-Star Game this weekend. For example, if a player tucks the ball under his arm and runs the length of the court, he'll be warned for traveling." -- Brad Dickson
"Laker star Kobe Bryant had season-ending shoulder surgery. Don't worry, Kobe should be up and not passing to anyone in no time." -- Alex Kaseberg
"The Buffalo Bills just signed ex-Dolphins pariah Richie
Incognito. Well, bully for them." -- Dwight Perry
"Former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian dead at
age 84. Tark holds the NCAA record of most towels chewed in a
season." -- Tony Chong
"Question: Who is the only one who could consistently hold Michael Jordan under 20 points a game? Answer: His college coach, Dean Smith, by keeping him on the bench." -- Bob Ryan"Reviews of “50 Shades of Grey” aren’t great. But in New York, anyone wanting to see some real torture can always buy Knicks tickets." -- Janice Hough
"According to a recent study, referees under six feet tall call more penalties than refs six feet and over. This puts a whole new spin on playing a man short" -- RJ Currie
"At the Colorado Rockies’ fantasy camp, an 88-year-old rushed the mound after a brush-back pitch. This happened on Monday afternoon, and he arrived at the mound late Tuesday morning." -- Brad Dickson
"NFL Films patriarch Ed Sabol has died. He was XCVIII." -- TC Chong
" Bad news for Dodgers fans, the 2015 season may still be in a TV blackout. Worse news for Lakers fans. The rest of their 2015 season won’t be." -- Janice Hough
CP-
No comments:
Post a Comment