Steve's Web Log

My All-Star Ballot

2010-06-30T21:28:00.000-04:00

It's All-Star ballot time again, as voting closes tomorrow at midnight. Here are my choices for this season's Midsummer Classic:

American League

First Base: Justin Morneau, Minnesota (.349 BA, 16 HR, 52 RBI, 1.063 OPS)
Second Base: Robinson Canó, New York (.358, 15, 53, .996)
Third Base: Adrián Beltré, Boston (.349, 12, 52, .948)
Shortstop: Derek Jeter, New York (.286, 8, 39, .762)
Catcher: Joe Mauer, Minnesota (.302, 3, 34, .809)
Outfield: Josh Hamilton, Texas (.343, 18, 58, .998); Vernon Wells, Toronto (.288, 19, 47, .912); Álex Rios, Chicago (.307, 13, 40, .891)
Designated Hitter: Vladimir Guerrero, Texas (.330, 16, 63, .923)
Starting Pitcher: David Price, Tampa Bay (11-3, 2.44 ERA)

National League

First Base: Albert Pujols, St. Louis (.310, 18, 57, .984)
Second Base: Martín Prado, Atlanta (.334, 7, 33, .859)
Third Base: David Wright, New York (.310, 14, 61, .937)
Shortstop: Hanley Ramírez, Florida (.293, 12, 50, .873)
Catcher: Miguel Olivo, Colorado (.308, 11, 38, .909)
Outfield: Manny Ramírez, Los Angeles (.322, 8, 39, .937); Jayson Werth, Philadelphia (.292, 13, 47, .927); Colby Rasmus, St. Louis (.275, 16, 40, .928)
Starting Pitcher: Ubaldo Jiménez, Colorado (14-1, 1.83)

Minaya's Media Paranoia Rears Its Ugly Head

2009-07-27T21:11:00.004-04:00

This is not going to be a column about journalistic ethics, for two reasons. First, your humble diarist is wholly unqualified to pass judgment on that subject. And, second, whether or not Adam Rubin “lobbied” the Mets for a job is irrelevant to the dismissal of Assistant GM Tony Bernazard.

Mets GM Omar Minaya chose the press conference in which he announced Bernazard’s dismissal to set his sights on Rubin, the beat writer for the New York Daily News. Rubin had written a few stories on Bernazard’s more controversial actions, including an incident in Binghamton, where Bernazard reportedly removed his shirt and challenged the double-A players to a physical altercation.

The press conference began with the usual Minaya double-talk about Bernazard before it took a surprising, odd turn.

“Once the reports came out, you know, of course we had to expedite more the investigation,” Minaya said, rambling. “Early in the process, early in the process, when the reports came out, I had to kind of tell myself, ‘Wow, these things are coming out.’ And I say this because coming from Adam Rubin, okay, and Adam, you gotta understand this, Adam, for the past couple of years, has lobbied for a player development position. He has lobbied myself, he has lobbied Tony. So when these things came out I was kind of a little bit, I had to think about it. And I was a little bit, you know, somewhat, kind of, we gotta find out about this. We really have to do a thorough investigation of this.”

SNY, airing the press conference live, used an inset to show Rubin, who looked incredulous. Finally someone handed Rubin a microphone, leading to an equally strange interaction.

Rubin: “Is what you’re alleging that I tried to tear Tony down so I could take his job? Is that what you’re saying?”

Minaya: “No, no, I’m not saying that. All I’m saying was, that I know that when you wrote the reports, but I am saying, that in the past, you have, have lobbied for a job…”

Rubin: “If I were interested in working in player development somewhere in the major leagues at some point in my life, how did that impact this situation at all?”

Minaya: “I said, because, when the reports came out a lot of these things were cross… I said ‘Who's writing these reports?’ and… in the back of my mind, Adam, you have told me you have told other people in the front office that you want to work for player development in the front office.”

Rubin: “So what you’re alleging is that… the only conclusion I can draw from that is that you’re trying to allege that I tried to tear everyone down so that I could take their position. Is that what you’re saying?”

Minaya: “Adam…”

Rubin: “It seems pretty despicable to say that.”

Rubin said later he had approached Mets COO Jeff Wilpon and asked for advice about getting a job in baseball, but not specifically with the Mets.

Minaya tried to walk back his comments in a hastily-arranged press conference with Wilpon about three hours later, but he stood by his basic allegation that Rubin had campaigned for a position with the Mets while working for the Daily News.

“That was not a proper forum for me to raise those issues,” Minaya conceded.

The larger point, however, is why Minaya chose to raise those issues at all.

Either he was insinuating that Rubin fabricated all or part of the Bernazard story, or he and the Daily News chose to devote an inappropriate amount of attention on the story, because Rubin felt spurned by the Mets organization.

But Minaya never denied the Bernazard-in-Binghamton story, and Minaya is in no position to question the zeal with which the Daily News covered the story. It’s completely irrelevant to the story, and any mention of it on Minaya’s part reveals bitterness and/or paranoia.

Obviously, there is a he said, he said element to this story regarding whether Rubin lobbied the Mets for a job. Notably, Wilpon seemed to support Rubin’s statement that he was only seeking “career advice.”

But Minaya held to his claim that Rubin wanted a job with the Mets. If that is true, it definitely approaches an ethical gray area. But, again, it’s completely irrelevant to Bernazard’s firing and only serves to harm what little credibility Minaya may have had left.

Rubin said this afternoon that today’s events make it impossible for him to cover the ballclub. “I don’t know how I’m going to cover the team now,” Rubin said. “I’m absolutely floored. I asked, ‘How do you get a job in baseball?’ That's it.”

The Daily News, to their credit, is standing by Rubin. “This was a well-reported, well-researched, exclusive story,” said the News’ editor-in-chief Martin Dunn, “and it’s a shame that the Mets deemed fit to cast aspersions on our reporter instead of dealing with the issues at hand.”

“We stand by Adam 1,000 percent,” his statement said.

Today offered Minaya one more chance, an opportunity to shed some of the negativity in Flushing. Instead, today was yet another bizarre moment in a season full of bizarre moments – a season increasingly likely to cost Minaya his job.

My All-Star Ballot

2009-07-03T14:52:00.001-04:00

All-Star voting concluded last night, and the teams are set to be announced Sunday afternoon. As I do each season, I waited until the very last minute to vote. Here is my completed ballot, with starting pitchers added:

National League

Catcher: Brian McCann, Braves (.309 average, 8 home runs, 33 runs batted in, .898 OPS)
First Base: Albert Pujols, Cardinals (.335, 30 HR, 77 RBI, 1.200 OPS)
Second Base: Chase Utley, Phillies (.300, 17 HR, 52 RBI, .982 OPS)
Third Base: David Wright, Mets (.338, 5 HR, 42 RBI, .913 OPS)
Shortstop: Hanley Ramírez, Marlins (.348, 13 HR, 58 RBI, .985 OPS)
Outfield: Ryan Braun, Brewers (.328, 16 HR, 58 RBI, .981 OPS)
Outfield: Brad Hawpe, Rockies (.333, 13 HR, 56 RBI, 1.008 OPS)
Outfield: Raúl Ibañez, Phillies (.312, 22 HR, 59 RBI, 1.027 OPS)
Starting Pitcher: Dan Haren, Diamondbacks (7-5, 2.19 earned-run average, 0.81 WHIP)

American League

Catcher: Joe Mauer, Twins (.392, 14 HR, 44 RBI, 1.134 OPS)
First Base: Justin Morneau, Twins (.309, 19 HR, 64 RBI, .963 OPS)
Second Base: Aaron Hill, Blue Jays (.301, 19 HR, 56 RBI, .845 OPS)
Third Base: Evan Longoria, Rays (.297, 16 HR, 63 RBI, .935 OPS)
Shortstop: Derek Jeter, Yankees (.307, 9 HR, 32 RBI, .828 OPS)
Outfield: Carl Crawford, Rays (.320, 8 HR, 38 RBI, 40 SB, .838 OPS)
Outfield: Torii Hunter, Angels (.304, 17 HR, 59 RBI, .952 OPS)
Outfield: Ichiro Suzuki, Mariners (.370, 6 HR, 20 RBI, .903 OPS)
Starting Pitcher: Zach Greinke, Royals, (10-3, 1.95, 1.02 WHIP)

Caked in Brown Mud at the Black

2009-06-20T23:59:00.001-04:00

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. –

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lies in sweetest bud.
All men make faults...
-- William Shakespeare

For about 45 minutes this morning here at Bethpage State Park, the sun made a cameo appearance in the Long Island sky, and the Black Course was basked in its warmth and glory.

But then, the clouds rolled back over the Island, and the rain began to fall again, ultimately scuttling play on this Saturday only slightly over an hour into the third round of the United States Open.

For all the storylines going into this tournament – Tiger Woods trying to repeat both in this tournament and at this venue, Phil Mickelson’s last tournament before his wife begins cancer treatment, the raucous and often well-lubricated New York fans – through the first three days here, the weather has stolen the show. It has now rained over Bethpage for 18 of the last 21 days, and this weekend’s bad weather seems likely to cause this Open to be the third Open decided on a Monday as a result of poor conditions. Puddles formed on greens and in fairways, and the galleries, caked in mud, looked like something out of Woodstock.

While the rain has been the main topic of conversation here this weekend, the golf has not been overshadowed completely. Woods, naturally, still commands a great deal of attention from the gallery, which built steadily after he began his second round today on the back nine shortly after 10 a.m. Mickelson saw smaller crowds, resuming his second round at 7:30 this morning and wrapping up by about 9:30 – after a dramatic birdie on the 17th hole. He didn’t take the course for his third round until some nine hours after fetching his ball from the hole on 18.

That’s because the inclement weather here on Thursday prevented a half the field from even starting their first round. The players who did wrapped things up earlier Friday, but those who had not yet started later Friday, when dry skies and soft conditions led to bountiful scoring opportunities.

Those golfers who began their rounds on Thursday averaged first-round scores that were 1.9 strokes higher than those who didn’t. Underscoring that point – while half the field began their rounds on Thursday, of the top 11 players on the leaderboard following the conclusion of the second round today, only one (Lee Westwood) saw the course on Thursday.

Woods (+3 after two rounds) was one of the unlucky ones who played Thursday. Mickelson (-1) was fortunate not to play on the rain-shortened first day. But both are looking up at Ricky Barnes (-8), Lucas Glover (-7) and Mike Weir (-6). Of that group, only Weir has the kind of experience that would portend success here. Barnes, a past U.S. Amateur champion, has never even finished in the top-ten in a P.G.A. Tour event; Glover is the 71st-ranked player in the world.

Last year’s epic Open at Torrey Pines featured a relative unknown, too, as Rocco Mediate went toe-to-toe with Tiger on a Monday playoff. While the U.S.G.A. should be commended for the way they have handled the adverse conditions, but one can’t help but wonder if the most-remembered thing from this Open will be the rain, and not what the players do inside the ropes.

For the Orioles and Their Rookie Catcher, Great Expectations

2009-05-29T23:59:00.001-04:00

BALTIMORE – Matt Wieters didn’t get a chance to ease into his major-league debut.

The Baltimore Orioles’ prized, 23-year-old catching prospect crouched down behind the plate and gave pitcher Brad Bergesen the sign for the game’s first pitch. Detroit Tigers leadoff hitter Josh Anderson attempted a bunt. Wieters sprang to his feet, pounced on the ball and fired a strike to first baseman Aubrey Huff. One pitch, one out in the major-league career of last year’s minor-league player of the year.

Embraced by Birds fans as a savior, Wieters went 0-for-4 at the plate tonight in a 7-2 romp by the Orioles. But neither the 0-for nor a thunderstorm that delayed the start of the game by 26 minutes dampened the enthusiasm amongst the 42,704 people here at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The Orioles said they sold roughly 15,000 tickets after general manager Andy MacPhail announced Tuesday that Wieters would make his debut tonight, and the crowd cheered each of his at-bats.

Wieters is the most prominent member of an impressive array of young talent the O’s have assembled. Adam Jones and Nick Markakis anchor an outstanding outfield. The pitching will take a few more years, with the likes of Jake Arrieta, Brian Matusz, Chris Tillman and David Hernandez—who made his debut Thursday night—in the Baltimore system.

For now, Wieters carries the hopes and dreams of a last-place team’s proud fanbase. But the Orioles play in the ultra-competitive American League East, and their pockets aren’t nearly as deep as the Yankees or Red Sox. They are trying to follow the Tampa Bay model, and Wieters is their Evan Longoria.

Welcome to the bigs, hon. No pressure – even after the 0-for-4. “Hopefully,” Wieters told the Baltimore Sun after the game, “they’ll keep cheering me for a few more games.”

N.C.A.A. Tournament Viewers Guide

2009-03-18T21:09:00.002-04:00

It’s N.C.A.A. Tournament Time; your humble diarist knows this because his employer sent out an e-mail reminding everyone that using up loads of bandwidth to watch basketball over the internet is a violation of company policy.

My response: Come and get me.

Anyway, the first round of the Tournament is annually the greatest two days in sports, so let’s break down what the viewer can expect, by time-slot. Let’s first start with announcer pairings, by site:

Greensboro, N.C.: Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg
Kansas City: Tim Brando, Mike Gminski
Philadelphia: Carter Blackburn/Dick Enberg, Jay Bilas
Portland, Ore.: Kevin Harlan, Dan Bonner
Miami: Ian Eagle, Jim Spanarkel
Dayton, Ohio: Verne Lundquist, Bill Raftery
Minneapolis: Gus Johnson, Len Elmore
Boise: Craig Bolerjack, Bob Wenzel

Now that we’ve got the voices set, let’s get to the games, starting with Thursday. All times E.D.T.:

12:20 p.m. – South Region (Greensboro, N.C.): No. 9 Butler vs. No. 8 Louisiana State (-2.5)
12:25 p.m. – West Region (Kansas City): No. 15 California State-Northridge vs. No. 2 Memphis (-19.5)
12:30 p.m. – West Region (Philadelphia): No. 9 Texas A&M vs. No. 8 Brigham Young (-2)

Like the 9s here. Though they’re not very significant, we can hope for a couple of close games to tip off the Tourney.

2:30 p.m. – West Region (Portland, Ore.): No. 12 Northern Iowa vs. No. 5 Purdue (-8)
(approx.) 2:50 p.m. – South Region (Greensboro, N.C.): No. 16 Radford vs. No. 1 North Carolina (-26)
(approx.) 2:55 p.m. – West Region (Kansas City): No. 10 Maryland vs. No. 7 California (-1)
(approx.) 3 p.m. – West Region (Philadelphia): No. 16 Tennessee-Chattanooga vs. No. 1 Connecticut (-20.5)

I don’t believe in the Big Ten. That being said, Northern Iowa is even less athletic. The game of the slot here is Cal and U-Md. If the good Greivis Vasquez shows up, the Terps should win.

(approx.) 4:55 p.m. – West Region (Portland, Ore.): No. 13 Mississippi State vs. No. 4 Washington (-5)

Ah, the Slot of Death, while CBS affiliates east of the Rockies are showing local news – though credit CBS for putting this game on CBS College Sports network. Good thing; this could be a good one.

7:10 p.m. – East Region (Greensboro, N.C.): No. 10 Minnesota vs. No. 7 Texas (-4)
7:10 p.m. – South Region (Kansas City): No. 10 Michigan vs. No. 7 Clemson (-5)
7:20 p.m. – East Region (Philadelphia): No. 14 American vs. No. 3 Villanova (-16.5)
(approx.) 7:25 p.m. – South Region (Portland, Ore.): No. 13 Akron vs. No. 4 Gonzaga (-12.5)

Welcome to the Big Ten Bloodbath. Honestly, I don’t see any of these games being particularly close, though at least one undoubtedly will.

(approx.) 9:40 p.m. – East Region (Greensboro, N.C.): No. 15 Binghamton vs. No. 2 Duke (-21.5)
(approx.) 9:40 p.m. – South Region (Kansas City): No. 15 Morgan State vs. No. 2 Oklahoma (-16.5)
(approx.) 9:50 p.m. – East Region (Philadelphia): No. 11 Virginia Commonwealth vs. No. 6 California-Los Angeles (-7)
(approx.) 9:55 p.m. – South Region (Portland, Ore.) No. 12 Western Kentucky vs. No. 5 Illinois (-4.5)

So U.C.L.A. has to come all the way across the country to play V.C.U.? I’m taking the points.

And now, onto Friday:

12:15 p.m. – South Region (Miami): No. 14 Stephen F. Austin vs. No. 3 Syracuse (-12)
12:25 p.m. – East Region (Dayton, Ohio): No. 9 Tennessee vs. No. 8 Oklahoma State (+2)
12:30 p.m. – West Region (Boise): No. 11 Utah State vs. No. 6 Marquette (-4.5)
12:30 p.m. – Midwest Region (Minneapolis): No. 14 North Dakota State vs. No. 3 Kansas (-10)

As much as I’d love to see North Dakota State give the Jayhawks a game, I don’t see it. Everyone and their mother are picking Utah State. I am, too.

(approx.) 2:45 p.m. – South Region (Miami): No. 11 Temple vs. No. 6 Arizona State (-4.5)
(approx.) 2:55 p.m. – East Region (Dayton, Ohio): No. 16 East Tennessee State vs. No. 1 Pittsburgh (-19.5)
(approx.) 3 p.m. – West Region (Boise): No. 14 Cornell vs. No. 3 Missouri (-13)
(approx.) 3 p.m. – Midwest Region (Minneapolis): No. 11 Dayton vs. No. 6 West Virginia (-8.5)

Temple can pull the upset only if Dionte Christmas goes off. I can’t wait for Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D-Mo.) tweets during the Mizzou game.

7:10 p.m. – Midwest Region (Miami): No. 12 Arizona vs. No. 5 Utah (pick ‘em)
7:10 p.m. – Midwest Region (Dayton, Ohio): No. 16 Morehead State vs. No. 1 Louisville (-21)
7:20 p.m. – Midwest Region (Minneapolis): No. 10 Southern California vs. No. 7 Boston College (+2)
7:25 p.m. – East Region (Boise): No. 13 Portland State vs. No. 4 Xavier (-10.5)

No respect for B.C. or Utah here. Probably for good reason; those should both be tight games.

(approx.) 9:40 p.m. – Midwest Region (Miami): No. 13 Cleveland State vs. No. 4 Wake Forest (-7.5)
(approx.) 9:40 p.m. – Midwest Region (Dayton, Ohio): No. 9 Siena vs. No. 8 Ohio State (-3)
(approx.) 9:50 p.m. – Midwest Region (Minneapolis): No. 15 Robert Morris vs. No. 2 Michigan State (-16.5)
(approx.) 9:55 p.m. – East Region (Boise): No. 12 Wisconsin vs. No. 5 Florida State (-2.5)

I really like the Seminoles here giving just 2.5. Also, Ohio State would lose to Siena if the game wasn’t at UD Arena.

The Candor of Brandon Dubinsky

2009-02-22T11:15:00.001-05:00

Following yet another listless performance last night in Buffalo, the New York Rangers’ young Alaskan center, Brandon Dubinsky, managed to articulate the root causes behind his club’s recent struggles that now find the Blueshirts clinging to the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

Following last night’s 4-2 loss to the Sabres, Dubinsky spoke to the New York Post’s Larry Brooks:

This was not even close to a 60-minute effort; hell no. We played 30 hard minutes, the first 10 and the last 20, and there isn’t any excuse for it.

We’ve got to be more accountable. We have to be more accountable to each other. It starts with each individual. I’m not excusing myself. There’s a responsibility we all have to ourselves and the organization.

There’s a reason each one of us is here. There’s a role each one of us has to fill. Whatever that role is, each player has to be his very best at it. We have to be tougher on each other; we have to make sure we hold each other accountable for getting the job done.

You know, we have a great group of guys, but maybe because we’re all such good friends, we don’t get on each other enough. Maybe we’re too willing to just go along with it and when that happens, it becomes contagious.

Your humble diarist can think of one good way to make the Rangers a little less comfortable in the clubhouse, and he’s in Hartford playing with the A.H.L.’s Wolf Pack.

Indeed, general manager Glen Sather’s decisions to cast away Sean Avery, Jaromir Jagr and Brendan Shanahan seem to have deprived the Rangers of the edge it takes to win in the N.H.L. Putting the club in the hands of Chris Drury, Scott Gomez and Markus Naslund has been an abject failure, a fact that has become clearer as the games have become more important down the stretch. When the going gets tough, the meek cower in the corner.

Bringing back Avery prior to the March 4 deadline may be too little, too late to help the Rangers stay in the playoff picture. Currently the occupants of the eighth and final spot in the Eastern Conference (and sliding fast), the Blueshirts hold a slim, three-point lead over ninth-place Carolina, with tenth-place Pittsburgh only a point behind the ‘Canes.

Avery was dismissed by the Dallas Stars—who still retain his rights—in December after only 23 games following his crude and misogynistic comments directed towards Calgary defenseman Dion Phaneuf and Avery’s ex-girlfriend, the actress Elisha Cuthbert. In order to join the Rangers, all teams with a higher waiver priority would have to pass on him. The Rangers, however, are reported to be the only team interested in claiming their erstwhile instigator.

Even if Avery’s presence isn’t enough to lift the team to the playoffs this season, it should signal an important change on Seventh Avenue: The clubhouse needs a shake-up. It shouldn’t just bother the Rangers’ players that their team is not winning. It should bother them that their teammates are not performing.

Bud Selig's Short Memory

2009-02-17T18:03:00.002-05:00

Somehow, through one embarrassing episode after another—José Canseco, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodríguez, etc.—Bud Selig continues to defend Major League Baseball's response to rampant steroid use during his tenure. Somehow, he continues to be as delusional and out of touch as the cheating athletes he protected.

On the same day Rodríguez tried to explain away his steroid use as a case of curiosity and naïveté, Selig in an interview with Newsday’s Wally Matthews vehemently disputed that he was in any way complicit in the proliferation of steroids in his sport during the past 15 years.

“I don’t want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn’t care about it,” Selig told Matthews. “That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I’m sensitive to the criticism. The reason I’m so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we’ve come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible.”

According to Matthews, “Selig pointed to the reduction in the number of positive steroid tests among major- and minor-league players during the past three years, as well as the institution of amphetamine testing as evidence that baseball's 2005 drug policy is working.”

But the premier ballplayers listed above—and the others busted in former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s (D-Maine) 2007 report and elsewhere—were using performance-enhancing drugs well before 2005. Selig claims that it was just too difficult to negotiate for any kind of drug-testing policy prior to 2002 as a result of the players’ association’s obstinacy.

“Starting in 1995, I tried to institute a steroid policy,” Selig said. “Needless to say, it was met with strong resistance. We were fought by the union every step of the way.”

Selig says that, following the prolonged strike that canceled the 1994 World Series, he wanted to do everything possible to avoid another work stoppage. But that’s an awfully convenient excuse when he and his fellow owners spent the mid-to-late 1990s raking in money hand-over-fist while the likes of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa used chemicals to help them launch home run after home run and shatter the kinds of long-standing records that mean so much to the game.

The union, obviously, deserves its fair share of the blame, too. And if allegations that the union’s No. 2, Gene Orza, was tipping off players before their drug tests are true, the M.L.B.P.A. will have so blatantly crossed a clear moral line that the owners would be more than justified in demanding new leadership at the union before any negotiations regarding a new collective-bargaining agreement.

But the union is supposed to look out for the players’ financial welfare; Selig is supposed to be the game’s chief protector. As rumors of drug use began to swirl in the late 90s, Selig claims he consulted with baseball men he knew and trusted, such as Diamondbacks manager Bob Melvin (then a coach with the Milwaukee Brewers), Braves president John Schuerholz and Yankees general manager Brian Cashman to gauge the extent of the problem.

“They all told me none of them ever saw it in the clubhouses and that their players never spoke about it,” Selig said. “[Padres C.E.O.] Sandy Alderson, as good a baseball man as you’ll find, was convinced it was the bat. Others were convinced it was the ball. So a lot of people didn’t know.”

It’s difficult to believe that steroid use could be as rampant as we now know it was, and Selig knew nothing about it. More likely, rather than make other concessions regarding salaries or risk another work stoppage, the owners chose willful blindness over their responsibilities to the game.

This isn’t a “what about the kids?” argument. Your humble diarist will save that for those who have a right to their moral indignation. This is about The Steroid Era, its players, its teams and its records. This is about Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens possibly going to jail for lying to a federal grand jury and a House committee, respectively. It is about Miguel Tejada pleading guilty to lying to congressional investigators. It is about each domino falling until an entire decade of a game so steeped in history and its records is nothing but a ten-year black mark.

Both the owners and players, under great public pressure, have done a commendable job in implementing as tough a testing regime as there is in professional sports over the past four years. But just because only eight major leaguers have tested positive for steroids since 2005 doesn’t mean either side gets a pass for the ten years that preceded that period. We’re talking about an entire era forever tainted with the stain of performance-enhancing drugs because Selig and the owners were either unwilling or unable to take a stand. It represents a complete and total failure of leadership over a ten-year period that will be remembered as long as the national pastime survives.

It was unadulterated greed on the part of the players and their union—who fought any effort to regulate drug use—that led to this. But it was also the greed of Selig and the owners he represents, who refused to draw a line in the sand in the face of all the ill-gotten profits that streamed in with the same frequency that baseballs artificially jumped out of stadiums across the game.

Selig can point to the good work he has done over the past four years to rid the game of steroids. But that doesn’t erase what happened before, particularly as we learn more and more about it with each passing day. Those stories and that era will be his true legacy.

A-Rod’s Non-Admission Admission

2009-02-09T22:20:00.004-05:00

“You know, one thing I’m learning as I get older, and hopefully a little wiser, is that honesty, the truth will set you free.” – Alex Rodríguez, Feb. 9, 2009.

Alex Rodríguez is guilty of being stupid and naïve, he told ESPN’s Peter Gammons today.

He says he doesn’t know what, exactly, he put in his body that triggered a positive test for testosterone and the steroid Primobolan. He says he doesn’t know who gave it to him. He says he didn’t even know he failed a steroid test until Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts—more on her below—told him about it on Thursday.

Rodríguez said he discontinued his steroid use after suffering a severe neck injury in Spring Training in 2003, but he reportedly failed the test during the 2003 season. It was after that season that Major League Baseball began drug testing players with disciplinary ramifications.

At least Rodríguez copped to it, which is more than one can say about Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens. He could have denied the report, or he could have said that whatever triggered the positive test he took unwittingly. He took responsibility. Just not for everything.

He says he knew what he was taking was illegal—though he wouldn’t use that word, citing the “culture” in baseball at the time—but he doesn’t know what it was. That’s pretty difficult to believe.

But last offseason, Rodríguez sat down with Katie Couric on “60 Minutes.” Couric asked him a direct question: Had he ever used steroids, human-growth hormone or any other performance-enhancing drug? Rodríguez answered unequivocally: “No.”

Gammons asked him today: “You were asked if you ever used steroids, human growth hormones or other performance-enhancing substances. You said no, flat-out no. In your mind, that wasn’t a lie?”

Rodríguez’s answer revealed just how detached from reality he remains: “At the time, Peter, I wasn’t even being truthful with myself. How am I going to be truthful with Katie or CBS? Today, I’m here to tell the truth, and I feel good about that. I think my fans deserve that. I’m ready to put everything behind me and go play baseball. You know, we have a great team this year. I couldn’t be more excited about the guys that we've brought in, Mark Teixeira, A. J. Burnett and CC Sabathia. It’s an important time in my life to turn the page and focus on what’s next.”

He also, bizarrely, accused Roberts of harassing him and his family, a charge Roberts, in a statement, called “absurd.” Rodríguez said, “I mean, what makes me upset is that Sports Illustrated pays this lady, Selena Roberts, to stalk me. This lady has been thrown out of my apartment in New York City. This lady has five days ago just been thrown out of the University of Miami police for trespassing. And four days ago she tried to break into my house where my girls are up there sleeping, and got cited by the Miami Beach police. I have the paper here. This lady is coming out with all these allegations, all these lies because she's writing an article for Sports Illustrated and she's coming out with a book in May.”

SI and Roberts responded quickly. Roberts, in a statement, said, “The allegations made by Alex Rodríguez are absurd. I’ve never set foot in the lobby of Alex’s New York apartment building, never spoken to the University of Miami police, and never set foot on his home property or been cited by the Miami Police for doing so.”

Forgive your humble diarist if he believes a respected former New York Times sports columnist over Rodríguez, who has every reason to lie, and everything to hide. After all, he has been hiding and lying about his steroid use from the public for at least eight years.

To be sure, Rodríguez’s admission today is a start. It’s better than most of the more narcissistic players have done. But, beyond the surface, a lot of what Rodríguez said today rings hollow.

Santana Is the Man of the Hour

2008-09-27T23:59:00.001-04:00

FLUSHING, N.Y. – Johan Santana is a prideful man. After throwing a career-high 125 pitches Tuesday against the Cubs, he volunteered to pitch on three days’ rest for only the second time in his career today against the Marlins. With the Mets down a game to Milwaukee in the National League Wild Card, manager Jerry Manuel relented.

Next to the Mets’ lineup in the clubhouse today here at Shea Stadium was a handwritten message reading, “It’s time to be a MAN.” The signature read simply, “Johan.”

Santana then took the mound and improbably threw a three-hit shutout that required 117 pitches to complete, pacing the Mets to a 2-0 victory over the Florida Marlins before slightly less than the announced crowd of 54,920 that, combined with a Milwaukee loss to the Cubs, brought the Amazins back into the first-place tie heading to the last game of the season.

“Wow, wow, wow, wow,” Manuel told the New York Times. “I think if I had to describe that one, I’d say that was gangsta. That’s gangsta. That’s serious gangsta right there.”

If this scenario sounds familiar, well, it is. Last year, the Mets went into the last series of the season tied with Philadelphia in the N.L. East. After Friday, the Mets found themselves a game behind. That Saturday, John Maine pitched a gem, taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning against these same Marlins. Later in the afternoon, the Phillies lost to tie the race yet again. On Sunday … well, you know how that turned out.

The Mets hope that Oliver Pérez isn’t Tom Glavine, even if he has a 6.26 earned-run average this month and he is pitching on three days’ rest for only the second time in his career.

“I hope that our offense takes the game,” Manuel told the Daily News.

In five starts this year against the Marlins, Pérez is 3-0 with a 2.03 E.R.A. Hotheaded southpaw Scott Olsen takes the mound for Florida. In Milwaukee, CC Sabathia will make his third consecutive start on three days’ rest against Carlos Zambrano for the Cubs, though Cubs manager Lou Piniella has suggested that he will only use Zambrano for a couple of innings.

Today’s game, however, gave Mets fans reason to believe. Santana commanded the crowd, and the Marlins, on a cool, misty day in the penultimate regular-season game at Shea Stadium. Knowing the Mets’ bullpen troubles, it seemed like the crowd tried to coax Santana through the entire game. How many times will the crowd stand for a pitcher’s at bat in the eighth inning with no one on base?

“There’s no tomorrow, there’s no tomorrow,” Santana told the Times. “The situation that we were in, there’s no tomorrow. To me, I don’t think about tomorrow. I’ve got to do it today. That’s the way you take care of business.”

There would have been no tomorrow at Shea had the Mets lost and the Brewers won. Since the opposite occurred, there will be a tomorrow here at this old, utilitarian stadium filled with so much promise, but laden with the specter of last year’s final game, which undoubtedly weighs so heavily on everyone’s mind. There will be no cheer louder at Shea than if Pérez can successfully navigate a scoreless first inning.

If the Mets win tomorrow, and the Brewers lose, the Mets will capture the Wild Card and face the Cubs on Wednesday evening at Wrigley Field. Should the opposite occur, the Brewers will head to Philadelphia for their Division Series on Wednesday. If both teams win or lose, there will be yet another game here Monday night between New York and Milwaukee to decide the Wild Card.

But for today, the Mets are back even, thanks to their star pitcher, who was, without question, a man today.

Johan Santana's Big Moment

2008-09-23T16:53:00.003-04:00

Tonight was made for Johan Santana. Surely, Omar Minaya hoped the Mets would coast to their second division title in three years, well positioned for a run to the World Series. But, in the back of his mind, Minaya had to be thinking: if only I had Santana taking the ball every fifth day last season.

Perhaps then, the Mets would not have squandered a seven-game N.L. East lead with 17 games remaining. Perhaps then, the Mets would not be suffering from yet another team-wide malaise that threatens to end their season before October once again.

As Wally Matthews put it this morning in Newsday, “If last year was the Collapse, this year is the Relapse.”

Like last season, the new version of the Mets’ late-season woes began with a shoddy, makeshift bullpen. From there, the poison ‘pen spread like a malignant tumor, until it has so damaged the psyche of the team that the starting pitching collapsed under the weight of having to carry the team, the offense did the same, and the defense crumbled.

Rookie starter Jonathan Niese failed to finish the fourth inning last night in a 9-5 Mets loss, getting the hook after surrendering a grand slam to Cubs starting pitcher Jason Marquis. Step one. The Mets now sit two-and-a-half games behind Philadelphia in the division, and more disconcertingly, only a game ahead of Milwaukee for the N.L. Wild Card.

Niese was tentatively scheduled to start the penultimate game of the season on Saturday, but, according to the (White Plains, N.Y.) Journal News’ Josh Thomson, the name “Staffinator” is currently listed as Saturday’s probable starter, likely a humorous way of saying “All hands on deck.”

Rather than the blind public optimism displayed last year by Willie Randolph—who could forget “The Champagne’s going to taste sweet?”—interim manager Jerry Manuel has embraced this role.

“That’s part of who we are. When you sign on with the Mets, you sign on with what happened last year, regardless,” Manuel told the New York Daily News. “As a manager of the team, my job is to separate that and to focus on what's going on this season. … But we have to exorcise those demons at some point, there’s no question about that. Some big ones, too.”

The schedule does not work in the Mets’ favor. Milwaukee opens a three-game series with Pittsburgh tonight at home, and while the Brewers have dropped 15 of their last 20 games, they have dominated the Pirates this season, going 10-1 against them. The Cubs leave Queens on Thursday and head to face the Brewers, but Lou Piniella is likely to take his foot off the pedal just a bit in those games to prepare for the playoffs.

After facing Sean Marshall tonight, the Mets will face Carlos Zambrano and Rich Harden for the Cubs. On Friday, weather-permitting, they welcome in the Marlins—who will likely be eliminated from contention by then—for the last series of the season. How did that work out last year?

“We have six games left, and I feel somewhat like a broken record, but everything we want to accomplish is right out there for the grabbing and right out there in front of us,” third baseman David Wright told the Daily News. “We have a week left, six games, and we’re in the driver’s seat.

“We knew it was going to be a tough road, but we need to play well for six games. Last year is over with, done with. It was a failed opportunity, but this year we have a golden opportunity.”

The Mets are counting on Santana being their stopper tonight. Since the All-Star Break, he is 6-0 with a 2.38 earned-run average. A win tonight puts the pressure back on the Brewers, who have been floundering worse than the Mets this season. A loss tells Milwaukee that despite their poor play, which resulted last week in the shocking firing of manager Ned Yost, the door is wide-open.

“As an organization you may think, here we go, blah, blah, blah, we’re going down this road again,” Manuel said. “But there has to be something good at the end of that road. If we keep pressing and pressing, something good’s going to happen.”

It helps to have a pitcher like Santana.

Hanging on for Dear Life

2008-09-17T23:59:00.000-04:00

For Team Tightrope, every game is an adventure, a crucible for the players, coaches and fans. Sometimes, they fall off, like Sunday, when they squandered a 4-2 lead in the ninth inning and—splat—hit the ground with a thud. But, occasionally, they manage to hold on, clinging for dear life as their bullpen threatens to unravel completely.

Such was the case tonight here before 25,019 fans at Nationals Park, as the Mets escaped with a 9-7 victory over the lowly Nationals, postponing—at least for one night—the Mets’ most recent late-season swoon. Carlos Beltrán slugged two home runs as New York’s offense continued to add onto their lead while the bullpen did its best to give it right back.

The Mets took an 8-2 lead into the bottom of the sixth inning, but a combination of Ricardo Rincón, Brian Stokes, Aaron Heilman, Joe Smith and Pedro Feliciano conspired to surrender five runs and jeopardize what should have been an easy victory. Luis Ayala was summoned from the bullpen to record the final out with the tying run at the plate, which he did, striking out Roger Bernadina to end the game. Mets manager Jerry Manuel tied a franchise record in calling upon eight different pitchers in the game.

“No, I’m not enjoying this, shoot,” Manuel told the New York Times after the game about having to call upon so many relievers. “Walking out there every three minutes, nobody wants to come see me. Shoot, they come to see the guys play. No, this is not the way we drew it up. But we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do to win. We’ll laugh about it hopefully in November at some time.”

The Mets have a ways to go there, trailing Philadelphia by a half-game in the N.L. East and leading Milwaukee by the same thin margin for the Wild Card.

Their bullpen woes, like last season’s historic collapse, are starting to take their toll on the rest of the team.

“It’s frustrating sometimes because you score some and you think, ‘Now we got them,’” Beltrán confessed to the New York Daily News. “I know they’re trying, but it’s hard to believe what’s happening.”

That mental state is something we’ve seen before from this club, and for many, it will seem all too familiar. Still, the Mets are in the driver’s seat over the final 11 games of the season, starting tonight when they will try to salvage a series split with Washington behind their ace, Johan Santana.

Manuel, when asked what he was hoping for tonight from Santana, quipped, “Hopefully nine innings, 170 pitches.”

Editor's Note

2008-09-04T17:27:00.004-04:00

Another N.F.L. season is upon us. A lot has changed since we last saw professional football: Brett Favre is a Jet, Joe Gibbs is back with his grandbabies (and NASCAR team) and Chad Johnson isn’t Chad Johnson anymore. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Giants did actually win the Super Bowl seven months ago.

One other thing has change: my picks will no longer appear in this space. They are moving to the new Tee’s Weekly Blog. Last season, I abandoned the picks feature right before my Mets folded like a cheap suit. But I’m picking it back up again. In 2006, I went 128-121-6, and I’m hoping to improve on that performance.

You may know some of my work on Tee’s Weekly already, and in conjunction with the launch of the new blog, Tee and I will be picking the entire season there against the spread. So don’t forget to visit, and enjoy the football.

As August Ends, the Mets Find Themselves in a Familiar Position

2008-08-31T21:38:00.002-04:00

It is the end of August, and the start of September is upon us, and once again the New York Mets are in first place. At this point last season, they led Philadelphia by just two games. This season, it is even closer; just one game separates the two teams. The parallels are as unavoidable this week as the Bush administration’s response to Katrina and Gustav.

Last season, the Phillies faltered early last September, allowing the Mets to open up a seven-game lead with 17 games left in the season. The Mets, though, imploded, squandering that entire lead before the nadir on the season’s final day, when Tom Glavine allowed seven runs while recording just one out, and the Phillies took the National League East flag by just a game.

Both the Mets and Phillies won today, the Mets finished August 18-11, the Phillies at 16-13. They have only three games remaining with one another—this Friday through Sunday at Shea Stadium.

Pedro Martínez went six grinding innings for the win for the Mets today, but he knows the month ahead will be even tougher if they want to avoid befalling the same fate as last year.

“Until I see that last day when we’ve won the division, I’m not going to be relaxed,” Martínez told the Associated Press. “Hopefully things can be different. I don’t think this team is giving you any hints of showing what happened last year. It’s a different group.”

José Reyes bears a great deal of responsibility for what happened last year, and he hopes to make up for it this September.

“We cannot worry about what happened last year, because this is a new year for us,” Reyes told the A.P. “We’re playing good baseball right now. Hopefully we can continue that.”

In the short term, they will have their hands full with tough opponents, however. Before they return home to face the Phillies, they head to Milwaukee to face the streaking Brewers, winners of eight of their last nine games. The Mets do luck out because they will not have to face CC Sabathia, who is 9-0 with the Brew Crew since being dealt from Cleveland; he threw a one-hitter today that the Brewers are challenging, appealing that the official scoring of the only hit—a slow roller to the third-base side of the mound—should be changed to an error on Sabathia.

The schedule will get easier after Philly, as the Mets’ only remaining road games after Milwaukee are here in Washington and in Atlanta. Philadelphia has the same teams left on the schedule: all four division rivals and four games with Milwaukee at home.

It seems, with just one game separating the two teams, neither team has the clear advantage. Philadelphia has a great bullpen, but the rest of their team has been only mediocre. The Mets are hitting and getting great starting pitching, but they have been let down by their bullpen time and again all season.

The true X-factor is the lingering impact of last year’s collapse on the Mets. Will they be driven by it, or will it consume and overwhelm them as the days in September dwindle and that crisp autumn chill fills the air? Mets interim manager Jerry Manuel thinks it will be the former.

“It has been a motivating factor the entire year.”

Live Blog: Men’s Basketball Gold-Medal Game

2008-08-24T04:40:00.004-04:00

Greetings from my Capitol Hill couch, where I have been taking intermittent naps all evening in order to stay up for the men’s basketball final between the United States and Spain, shown live coast-to-coast by NBC (the only event to be shown live across the country during this entire Olympics). Tip off is at 2:30 a.m. Eastern.

2:23 a.m. – Jim Lampley, who has been working the daytime (overnight in Beijing) shift during this fortnight, but he seems to be in studio tonight instead of Mary Carillo. Maybe he just punched her in the face until she deferred to him.

2:24 a.m. – Wukesong. Hehe.

2:26 a.m. – The first appearance of the old “N.B.A. on NBC” music. John Tesh walks to the bank to cash his royalty check.

2:30 a.m. – Craig Sager is holding up the “LeBron James Gold-Medal Shoe.” LeBron is holding up the “Craig Sager Gold-Medal Sportsjacket,” which is made out of actual melted gold medals.

2:31 a.m. – LeBron then puts down the jacket to nail a three to start the game. Pau Gasol answers with a three-point play.

2:35 a.m. – LeBron picks up two fouls in the first two-and-a-half minutes. No word on whether he has a special “LeBron James Two-Quick-Fouls Shoe.”

2:38 a.m. – And a second foul for Kobe. Uh oh.

2:39 a.m. – Spain leads by four. Largest American deficit of the Olympics.

2:41 a.m. – Spain goes up by five, but Chris Paul responds in two seconds with an acrobatic layup through three defenders, and he adds a free throw.

2:44 a.m. – Chris Fucking Paul. Doug Collins says that Spain, while ahead, is “getting seduced to play a [fast-paced] game they can’t win.”

2:47 a.m. – The U.S. is starting to press, and they now have a four-point lead.

2:51 a.m. – Breen and Collins are complaining about the officiating. Breen: “The official from Finland warns Mike Krzyzewski.” I always wanted to hear that sentence.

2:53 a.m. – End of first quarter: U.S. leads 38-31 in a high-scoring affair. And, as I always say, if you’re going to have an affair, it might as well be high-scoring.

2:56 a.m. – Kobe hits a three to make it a ten-point lead. I may be going to bed at halftime.

2:58 a.m. – The Lithuanian official is described as a “Sting-look-alike” by Breen.

3:03 a.m. – After a sloppy stretch, Coach K remembers that Chris Paul is on the team and rightly puts him on the floor.

3:08 a.m. – Dwyane Wade has 18 points in eight-and-a-half minutes. The U.S. could put up 140 tonight.

3:12 a.m. – I’m actually napping between entries. You try staying up for this.

3:13 a.m. – D-Wade and Rudy Fernández are trading daggers. U.S. leads by nine.

3:19 a.m. – Wade (21) misses at the buzzer, but the U.S. leads, 69-61 at halftime. Just close enough to stay awake for the second half.

3:22 a.m. – The halftime show features Part II of the Costas-Jacques Rogge. Did you know that Jacques Rogge is a Count in Belgium?

3:24 a.m. – Costas is tough with him. Perhaps he wouldn’t be terrible on “Meet the Press.”

3:33 a.m. – Did you know the 1972 team never accepted their silver medals after being ripped off by the officials? Doug Collins never mentioned that before.

3:34 a.m. – The second half begins with Sager quoting Coach K: “We need to play better defense without fouling.” Sager Bombs!

3:36 a.m. – Hey, Olympic officiating is inconsistent. Who knew?

3:38 a.m. – The U.S. lead is cut to four. Can we get Chris Paul in the game now?

3:41 a.m. – Back down to four again, and Coach K wants a time-out. When do we start to panic?

3:44 a.m. – Spain goes to a zone defense, still leading by four.

3:46 a.m. – The U.S. just committed about six fouls on the most recent Spanish possession. The officials called nothing.

3:50 a.m. – D-Wade’s first point of the second half. U.S. back up by eight.

3:51 a.m. – Selected DU!AN comment: “alright coach k, time to bring in Lezak.”

3:53 a.m. – ‘Melo hits a three to make the lead 11. Time to pull away.

3:55 a.m – Navarro hits a lefty runner to end the third quarter. U.S. 91, Spain 82. Still to close to go to sleep.

3:56 a.m. – Hey, the gold-medal match in water polo is just underway. Think I can stay up for that, too? How long is a water-polo match, anyway?

3:59 a.m. – Hungary leading the U.S., 6-4, at the end of the first quarter in water polo. Whatever that means. Meanwhile, here, the U.S. is “in a fight for their life,” according to Doug Collins. The lead is back down to five.

4:00 a.m. – Now the U.S. is just jacking threes, and Fernández hits a dagger to cut the lead down to two.

4:01 a.m. – There are about five Spanish fans wearing dresses and wigs. The Euro-Trash version of the Hog-etts.

4:02 a.m. – Four fouls on the U.S.’ most important player: LeBron. Coach K is leaving him in the game with 7:40 remaining.

4:03 a.m. – “Gigantic” shot by Deron Williams brings the lead back up to seven.

4:04 a.m. – Kobe helps key a 7-0 U.S. run before Fernández hits a three and brings the lead back down to six.

4:05 a.m. – And Kobe answers. “You don’t get three championship rings without understanding what pressure is all about,” says Collins. Playing with Shaq helped, I’m sure.

4:06 a.m. – Rudy Fernández blows by Dwight Howard for the dunk and the foul. 22 for Fernández; U.S. up 103-95.

4:09 a.m. – Four fouls on Dwight Howard, who is the only player on the U.S. team with the size to guard Pau Gasol. Gasol makes both free throws, and Spain has the lead down to seven with four minutes left.

4:10 a.m. – Gasol hits a mid-range jumper to cut the lead to five.

4:11 a.m. – Kobe! Bryant hits a long three and draws the contact from Fernández, who fouls out. Huge swing.

4:12 a.m. – Kobe completes the four-point play; 108-99, three minutes to go.

4:13 a.m. – But back-to-back buckets from Spain cut it down to four again. This is way too close.

4:13 a.m. – But D-Wade answers! 27 for Wade, and the lead is back up to 7 with 2:02 to play. Timeout, Spain. What a game.

4:15 a.m. – Collins: “This might be the biggest possession of the game for Spain.”

4:16 a.m. – Kobe fouls Navarro, and Júan Carlos hits one of the two, but Ricky Rubio saves the rebound for the Spaniards.

4:17 a.m. – Spain can’t score, and here come the fouls.

4:18 a.m. – Two clutch free-throws for CP3, and this one could be over.

4:19 a.m. – Even with the fouls, David Stern—who is in attendance in Beijing—should take notice of how much more enjoyable the game is without a million time-outs being called at the end.

4:21 a.m. – With a ten-point lead with less than 30 seconds remaining, it looks like redemption for the “Redeem Team.” And a Gatorade bath for Coach K, who, surprisingly, does not suddenly faint or begin melting.

4:23 a.m. – LeBron is exhorting the crowd in Beijing in a chant of “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

4:24 a.m. – Time runs out, and each of the players goes to shake hands with Breen and Collins. Hmmm.

4:30 a.m. – Did Kobe just say “Let that Mamba loose?”

4:33 a.m. – As much as I’d love to stay up for the medal ceremony, I can’t sit through the Michael Phelps retrospective right now.

Anyway, it wasn’t the greatest defensive performance in the world, but seeing these N.B.A. stars celebrate like schoolboys for their country makes it all worthwhile. Even though it’s after 4:30 a.m., and I’m still awake.

And, no, I’m not staying up for water polo.

The Yankees Are in an Unfamiliar Position

2008-08-22T23:59:00.002-04:00

BALTIMORE – Their explosion against an inexperienced and impotent Orioles bullpen tonight notwithstanding, the roller-coaster that is the 2008 New York Yankees’ season appears likely to end with the high-priced club failing to qualify for the postseason for the first time since 1993.

The Yankees, one night after getting drubbed in Toronto, 13-4, trailed Baltimore 4-3 going to the eighth before scoring two in the frame, and then adding another four more in the ninth to blow the game open. Bobby Abreu went five-for-five (all singles), and the Yankees twice hit back-to-back home runs: in the fifth (Robinson Canó, whose homer traveled 425 feet before careening off the awning of Boog’s Barbecue on Eutaw Street, and José Molina) and in the ninth (Cody Ransom, who is now two-for-two with two home runs since being called up from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and Xavier Nady).

New York prevailed, 9-4, with Mariano Rivera earned a four-out save. Mike Mussina allowed four runs over six innings for a no-decision. It was the Yankees’ first win in the opening game of a series in their last eight tries.

“It’s huge,” manager Joe Girardi told the New York Post. “It’s the one thing we haven’t been able to do. To get this win is huge.”

The Yanks still remain 10-and-a-half games behind Tampa Bay in the American League East, and 6 behind Boston (and 5-and-a-half behind Chicago) for the A.L. Wild Card. Boston comes to Yankee Stadium next week (and announced recently that they will do so without an ailing Josh Beckett).

With 34 games left to play, the Yankees are in the most precarious of situations. Losing two out of three in Toronto this week was a step in the wrong direction. And being this far behind means that the Yankees cannot afford more missteps if they hope to avoid closing down Yankee Stadium for good in September rather than October.

“We need to win a lot of games, more than just the first one [of a series],” Derek Jeter, who recorded his 2,500th hit in the first inning tonight, told the New York Daily News. “It means nothing unless we come out and play well tomorrow. We need wins, whether it’s the beginning, middle or end of the series.”

Those wins haven’t been coming lately; the Yankees have a losing record in August thus far. But, in order to overcome this deficit, they have to play a lot better than .500 baseball, starting immediately.

For proof of how desperate the Yankees are at this point of the season: their starting pitcher here tomorrow night? Carl Pavano.

A Sweep Leaves the Mets atop the N.L. East

2008-08-14T23:59:00.001-04:00

The most tantalizing thing about the 2008 New York Mets—particularly since the removal of Willie Randolph—has been their remarkable propensity to play up or down to the level of their given opponent. Coming into this week’s series here in Washington, the Mets had a losing record against teams with losing records.

They took care of business in the nation’s capital, however, completing a three-game sweep of the woeful Nationals—owners of baseball’s worst record, 44-78—at Nationals Park tonight before 31,058 fans, many of whom came dressed in blue and orange (and, regrettably, black) to root on the road team. The Mets outscored the Nats, 25-6, over the course of the series.

Thanks to a four-game sweep by the Dodgers over Philadelphia out on the West Coast, the Mets now hold a one-game lead in the National League East.

Oliver Pérez took the mound for the Mets tonight, and, for six innings, he was unhittable. The Nats tagged him for three runs in the seventh—pinch-hitter Pete Orr drilled a two-run triple, then scored on a bunt single by Emilio Bonifacio—to creep back to 5-3, but the Mets tacked on four insurance runs in the ninth to pace a 9-3 victory. It was the Nats’ seventh consecutive defeat, and, on nights like these, their chances of victory seem worse than Teddy Roosevelt’s likeness in the presidents race conducted between innings.

Since last season’s collapse, when Washington and Florida decimated the Mets’ playoff hopes during the season’s final week, the Amazins have struggled against mediocre teams. The Mets are 16-9 against Philadelphia and Florida this season—second- and third-place, respectively—but only 10-11 against Atlanta and the last-place Nats. Pérez is a case in point: the Mexican southpaw is 4-0 with a 1.23 earned-run-average against Philadelphia and Florida this season.

“At this time of the year, every win is huge—no matter who [sic] you play,” Mets manager Jerry Manuel said after the game tonight. “Washington is looking to knock you off. They’re looking to make a mark for themselves.”

The Mets will need to duplicate that approach this weekend; they head to Pittsburgh now for a four-game set before hosting Atlanta next week at Shea.

“That’s been our weakness this year,” Mets center-fielder Carlos Beltrán said. “We’ve not been able to take advantage of teams under .500. Coming in here, we know that every time we come here, the Washington Nationals always find a way to play good baseball against us. This time, we really approached them the same way we approached the Phillies and the teams in contention.”

The Mets are still a flawed team, though the return of Billy Wagner next week will shore up their biggest weakness: the bullpen. If Ryan Church can come back from post-concussion syndrome, it will add a power bat in right field, despite the contributions of Daniel Murphy, who has been a revelation over the past two weeks.

If they can play as they did in this series, and as they have against the better teams, the Mets can emerge as the frontrunners in the National League East and avenge last year’s disastrous finish.

The Mets’ Bullpen Continues to Offer Little Relief

2008-08-12T11:44:00.005-04:00

When we last left the New York Mets, it was shortly before the July 31st trading deadline, the Mets held a precarious half-game lead in the National League East, and general manager Omar Minaya was examining his club’s most pressing needs.

Your humble diarist urged him to explore opportunities to improve the bullpen. He failed to do so, and the Mets’ bullpen has lost three of the team’s ten games since.

Yesterday’s 7-5 loss to Pittsburgh at Shea Stadium was the nadir, as four members of the Amazins’ patchwork bullpen—necessitated by Billy Wagner’s appearance on the disabled list with a strained left forearm—faltered over the final three innings, allowing the Pirates to score six unanswered runs. The Mets remained two games behind Philadelphia in the National League East.

The biggest obstacle in making up that deficit has unquestionably been the atrocious bullpen. In August, the bullpen has surrendered 23 earned runs in 28 innings, equivalent to a 7.39 earned-run average. Interim closer Aaron Heilman has been demoted; he has allowed six earned runs in four-and-a-third innings this month. He has been, by far, the worst of the bunch, and it was he who blew a one-run lead in the ninth inning yesterday afternoon.

The trouble is that manager Jerry Manuel doesn’t have a lot of options. “Everything from here on out is a possibility,” Manuel said after yesterday’s debacle, but what that actually means is unclear.

With Heilman no longer closing games, and Wagner a week away from returning, it is expected that recent call-up Eddie Kunz will be asked to close. Kunz was promoted from Double-A Binghamton on Aug. 4 and has appeared in only three games, all Mets losses, allowing one earned run over two-and-a-third innings. He went 1-4 in Binghamton this season, with a 2.79 E.R.A. and 27 saves.

“I don’t want to put him there in that situation,” Manuel said, referring to the closer’s role, “but he’s got to be considered.”

The Mets could use Brian Stokes, who was called up from Triple-A New Orleans as a spot-starter on Saturday night against Florida, in the bullpen. His bullpen history, however, does not inspire confidence. Last season, as a reliever for Tampa Bay, he went 2-7, with a 7.07 E.R.A. His W.H.I.P. was 1.84, and hitters batted an astounding .403 against him.

A third, more radical option would be to move a starter to the bullpen and call up Jonathon Niese or allow Stokes to remain in that spot in the rotation. Oliver Pérez or John Maine could be moved to the bullpen, but Pérez is 2-2 with a 1.77 E.R.A. since July 1, and Maine will make his first start tomorrow night here in Washington since July 28 after a short stint on the D.L. Messing with his arm by using him out of the bullpen could backfire, leading to ineffectiveness or further injury.

Over the course of the season, the Mets have outscored their opponents by 98 runs over the first three innings of each game. During the next three innings, however, that differential slips to +2. From the seventh inning on, however, the Mets have been outscored by their opponents by a staggering 51 runs.

“We can’t continue to perform this way late in the game,” Manuel said. “We’ve got to do better than that. I’ll just have to make some adjustments.”

The options for Manuel and the Mets, however, are few and far between. If Wagner returns healthy next week, that will help stabilize the ninth inning, but the seventh and eighth will remain in flux. Manuel will likely continue to ride the hot-hand; currently, that is Duaner Sánchez, and, to a lesser extent, Pedro Feliciano. Moving Maine or Pérez to the bullpen at this point in the season, barring a scheduled turn through the rotation that requires only four starters, would be a foolhardy overreaction.

This is largely the same bullpen that helped the Mets squander a seven-game lead over the last two-and-a-half weeks of the 2007 season. Other than relying on the return of Sánchez, Omar Minaya did little to improve this glaring weakness, even during the course of the season. (In all fairness, Wagner was injured on Aug. 2, two days after the trade deadline.)

The Mets’ next 14 games are against clubs with losing records, but the Mets are only 30-33 against teams under the .500 mark. They begin a three-game set tonight against the woeful Nationals at Nationals Park. Failure to reverse some of these disturbing trends will almost assuredly lead to the same kind of disappointment the Mets suffered last season.

At the Trade Deadline, Assessing the Mets’ Myriad Needs

2008-07-29T16:37:00.004-04:00

With only 48 hours remaining before baseball’s non-waiver trade deadline, and the Mets holding a precarious, half-game lead in the National League East, general manager Omar Minaya is examining the club’s most pressing needs and looking for potential answers to them among the players on the trading block.

Following last night’s bullpen implosion—leading to a 7-3 loss to Florida that moved the third-place Marlins to only a game behind New York—Minaya would be well-served to address his team’s relief woes first and foremost. According to ESPN.com’s Buster Olney, the bullpen is indeed Minaya’s top priority.

Statistically, the Mets’ bullpen is around the league average. Their earned-run average is 3.99 (N.L. average: 3.96), they have allowed 1.33 walks and hits per innings pitched (1.38), and their on-base-plus-slugging allowed is .708 (.728).

Billy Wagner (0-1, 2.00, 26/32 saves) has been their best reliever, but he has been experiencing shoulder pain recently. He was unavailable last Tuesday when the Mets blew a three-run lead in the ninth inning against Philadelphia.

Mets manager Jerry Manuel anointed Duaner Sánchez (5-1, 3.97) his set-up man about a month ago, but Sánchez has struggled recently, allowing 20 baserunners (hits and walks) in 10.2 innings this month.

Scott Schoeneweis (1-2, 3.02) has also been effective, but he had a nine-inning scoreless streak broken last night, allowing three runs in the pivotal eighth inning.

Joe Smith (1-3, 3.56)? He has allowed four earned runs in his last two-and-two-thirds innings pitched. Pedro Feliciano (2-2, 4.10)? He has a 12.60 E.R.A. in July.

Aaron Heilman (1-4, 4.76) has fallen into some bad luck this month, posting a 5.02 E.R.A., but also striking out 17 batters in 14.1 innings. Ironically, Heilman may be the best major-league trade bait the Mets have, as a few teams still regard him as a potential starter, something the Mets do not. The Mets may look to move Heilman, and possibly Schoeneweis, for an outfielder, while making other deals to overhaul their bullpen, according to the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger’s Dan Graziano.

Some of the names suggested for this overhaul include: Oakland righty closer Huston Street (2-3, 4.00, 18/23 saves), Seattle lefty Arthur Rhodes (2-0, 2.53), San Francisco southpaw Jack Taschner (2-1, 2.95), and Texas lefty “Everyday” Eddie Guardado (1-2, 3.49). Guardado has been unlucky; his W.H.I.P. is only 0.98.

Minaya’s second priority is the outfield, though that will be affected by the availability of Ryan Church. Church suffered a concussion in Atlanta on May 20, and since that time, he has been shut down and re-activated twice as a result of post-concussion syndrome. The Mets have been taking it very slow with Church; he last played on July 5. Church is expected to make a few rehab starts in Port St. Lucie, Fla., over the weekend, but it’s difficult to guess how his body might react to that kind of activity.

The Mets’ outfield today consists of Carlos Beltrán (.266/.364/.460) in center, Endy Chávez (.272/.315/.329) in right, and Fernando Tatis (.322, .373, .533) in left. Tatis has been a godsend, but he has already played more games this season—55—than in any season since 2002, when he batted .228 for Montréal. His defense is suspect, too; prior to this season, he had played a total of 30 innings in the outfield in the majors.

If the Mets knew they could count on Church to be healthy and productive in right field, perhaps a platoon of Tatis and Chávez in left—particularly using Endy for late-inning defense—could suffice. But if Church is limited or unable to play, the Mets may not be able to squeeze enough production out of their existing corner outfielders.

The big names are out there: Matt Holliday, Jason Bay, and the troubled Manny Ramírez. Whether the Mets have or want to part with the requisite prospects to acquire one of these players is unclear, but Church’s availability will certainly impact Minaya’s thinking. A more realistic possibility might be Seattle’s Raúl Ibáñez, who could be shopped in a package-deal with teammate Arthur Rhodes.

As for Ramírez, if Boston is really desperate to unload him, the Mets may be able to acquire him for the rest of the season while surrendering little talent in return. Perhaps a trade away from Boston and to his hometown of New York would—at least in the short-term—placate the enigmatic slugger.

The starting rotation also may be a concern for Minaya. John Maine left last night’s start with shoulder soreness in his throwing arm, and he is scheduled for an M.R.I. today. Pedro Martínez is scheduled to make his first start since July 12 on Friday, and even when healthy, he hasn’t been very effective this year.

There are certainly a lot of questions on this Mets roster—bullpen, outfield, and rotation—and Minaya will be charged with answering them over the next 48 hours. If Church and Maine are going to be available, he should make the bullpen his top priority. If not, the Mets will have to decide to what extent they want to make a run this year or hold back and protect the long-term health of the franchise.

A Late-July Showdown in the National League East

2008-07-22T14:26:00.001-04:00

First-place in the National League’s East Division is on the line tonight at Shea Stadium, with the surging New York Mets, a little more than one month removed from replacing Willie Randolph as manager, and the brash Philadelphia Phillies, who, after leading the division all year, now find themselves dead-even with their streaking rivals.

Last season, of course, ended with the Phillies overtaking the Mets on the season’s final day after the Mets squandered a seven-game lead over their last 17 games. Thus far this season, it was the Phillies who opened up a significant lead over the Mets, and the Amazins who have engineered a charge, going 19-12 since firing Randolph and installing Jerry Manuel as interim manager.

The Phils and Mets will meet for three games: tonight’s contest will feature newly-acquired Joe Blanton (5-12, 4.96 earned-run average in the American League for Oakland) against Mets ace Johan Santana (8-7, 3.10); tomorrow night pits the recently-recalled Brett Myers (3-9, 5.84) against the struggling John Maine for New York (8-7, 4.22); and a noon start on Thursday means the aged Jaime Moyer (9-6, 3.90) will be able to make the early-bird dinner after facing the Mets’ Oliver Pérez (6-6, 4.36), who has surrendered nary a run to Philadelphia in 18 1/3 innings this season.

The Florida Marlins, incidentally, sit only one game behind the co-leaders, setting up a riveting, three-team pennant race over the 2008 campaign’s final two months.

The rivalry between the Mets and Phillies has definitely reached critical mass over the past three years, even though they have been separated by just 90 miles or so for the past 46 years. There were Jimmy Rollins’ comments last spring about the Phils being “the team to beat,” The Collapse, Carlos Beltrán’s retort this spring about how the Santana trade made the Mets “the team to beat,” and now this race.

This upcoming series has stoked the fire even more, with Myers telling the Cherry Hill (N.J.) Courier Post today that he “can’t think of a better team… to come back against. I hate them.”

Mets closer Billy Wagner—questionable for this series with a muscle spasm in his left (throwing) shoulder—urged the Shea Stadium faithful to ride the rival Phillies hard.

“I hope our fans wear them out,” he told the New York Post.

The Mets seem to have the pitching advantage, especially with Santana on the mound tonight. The southpaw is looking forward to the opportunity to contribute to the Mets’ pursuit of the divisional crown the squandered last year.

“That’s what I’m here for, these kind [sic] of games,” Santana told the New York Times. “We put ourselves in this situation, and that’s where we want to be.”

Santana will take the mound tonight in precisely that situation, a function of the Mets’ improved play over the past six weeks or so. The offense is clicking, despite missing Moises Alou and Ryan Church in the outfield. Endy Chávez, Fernando Tatis, and Damien Easley have all played important roles in filling in the gaps in the Mets’ lineup.

While Maine has struggled, Santana, Pérez, and particularly Mike Pelfrey have pitched well since the managerial change, which also included replacing pitching coach Rick Peterson with Dan Warthen. The bullpen has also improved vastly; they were 7-11 with a 4.10 earned-run average under Peterson—8-2 with a 3.23 E.R.A. since Warthen took over.

Their improved play has the Mets tied for first, with an opportunity to put some distance between them and the Phillies, starting tonight.

“This is all you can ask for, to control your own destiny,” David Wright told the Times on Sunday. “Everything we want to accomplish is right there in front of us, so we have to go out there and grab it.”

Six Straight Wins for Manuel’s Mets

2008-07-10T23:59:00.002-04:00

FLUSHING, N.Y. – On the same day the Mets learned that they had likely lost sweet-swinging, injury-riddled outfielder Moises Alou for the season, one of Alou’s unlikely replacements keyed the Amazins’ sixth consecutive win with four runs-batted-in, including a go-ahead home run.

The Mets completed a three-game sweep of the San Francisco Giants here before 48,755 on a glistening summer afternoon at Shea Stadium. Their victory today, by the score of 7-3, kept them only a game behind Philadelphia in the loss column for first-place in the National League East only a weekend before the All-Star break.

They overcame a poor start by John Maine, who lasted only four-and-two-thirds innings, allowing three runs, two hits, eight strikeouts, but also five bases-on-balls. Maine said after the game that it was “a wasted start.”

“I had nothing all game,” Maine told MLB.com.

Maine left after allowing a two-out double to Randy Winn in the fifth that tied the score at three runs a piece. The Mets bullpen threw four-and-a-third scoreless innings.

David Wright led off the seventh with the first of his doubles, and Fernando Tatis—having driven in two runs already in the third inning with a double—launched a home run into the left-field bleachers to double that total. The Mets added two insurance runs later in the inning.

“It was a good day for Fernando Tatis to have a good day,” Mets general manager Omar Minaya told the Daily News, alluding to Alou’s setback.

The Mets will get some help after the All-Star break next week when Angel Pagan and Trot Nixon are expected back from the disabled list, but neither can replace the sort of production a healthy Alou can provide. And with Ryan Church’s situation remaining uncertain—he was placed back on the D.L. earlier this week after migraine headaches forced him out of the lineup last weekend in Philadelphia—they can use all the help they can get in the outfield.

“When you lose [Alou and Church], you think of replacing them with like pieces,” Mets interim manager Jerry Manuel told the Daily News. “If you look around, you might have that piece staring you in the face.”

Tatis, who is hitting .463 this season with runners in scoring position, has even taken some pressure off Minaya to acquire a more established outfielder. “Right now we’re going to go with our guy,” Minaya said yesterday.

In winning their sixth straight, the Mets not only established a season-high, but it is their longest winning streak since 2006. They are now 48-44, the first time since April 19 (10-6) that they are four games over .500.

More importantly, the Mets seem more confident over the past few weeks.

“We’re getting that attitude back, that swagger, that confidence back that we haven’t had all year,” David Wright told reporters after the game.

The Mets are now 14-9 since firing Willie Randolph and installing Manuel as skipper. While it’s difficult to ascribe that reversal of fortune completely to the managerial change, the Mets players seem to responding to Manuel in a different way.

Billy Wagner told ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark:

I don’t want to bash Willie because I liked him. But before, it was more of The Yankee Way. It wasn’t The Mets Way. There was no facial hair. You could never have music in the clubhouse. You couldn’t have kids around. Believe it or not, some of us in here actually like kids…We’ve found out it’s pretty easy to play when you stop playing for stats and just go out and play hard and play to have fun.

In less than a month’s time, Manuel seems to have brought a different attitude to the Mets, and the team has played better, perhaps as a direct result of it. Approaching the All-Star break, the Mets are in the thick of this divisional race and playing their best baseball in two seasons.

Each day Manuel is at the helm, the Mets seem closer and closer to putting the uninspired play of the past season-and-a-half behind them.

At the Halfway Point, the Mets Are Treading Water

2008-06-30T16:51:00.002-04:00

The New York Mets are 6-6 since Jerry Manuel took over for Willie Randolph as manager two weeks ago. They were 34-35 under Randolph, but because of some woeful play by the rest of the division, Manuel’s squad sits only three games back of first-place Philadelphia on the last day of June.

Since Randolph was fired in the wee small hours of the morning of June 17, the Phillies are 2-9, the second-place Marlins are 4-7, and the Braves are 5-7 and now sit a game back of New York in fourth. With a win tonight in St. Louis, the Mets would become the only team in the division to play .500 baseball in the month of June.

Just because the Mets continue to play at the same winning percentage doesn’t mean that nothing has changed. Manuel has deviated from Randolph’s approach in a few noteworthy ways. David Wright had been the only player in either league to play every inning of every game, but, in his first game as interim manager, Manuel started Wright at designated hitter, and then benched him for an entire game last week after observing “fatigue.” He has used a stronger hand in dealing with José Reyes and Luis Castillo. Interim pitching coach Dan Warthen made a few adjustments in Oliver Peréz’s delivery that he credited to his fine pitching in a Mets win yesterday over the Yankees.

Manuel’s most difficult challenges have been related to the media. Perhaps out of loyalty to Randolph, members of the press have targeted the interim manager, making mountains out of every molehill he creates. Last weekend, when he said that the Shea Stadium fans were the “fertilizer” that helps the players blossom, the New York Post suggested that Manuel was comparing Mets fans to manure. Today, after Manuel expressed yesterday that the Mets played second-fiddle to the Yankees in New York, both tabloids mocked him and his club.

His comments:

We’re kind of like the second team… The Yankees have won 26, 27 [sic] championships. They’ve been here longer, I would think… That’s just the way it is. That’s just my opinion now. I don’t speak for everybody else. That’s my opinion. And being a baseball person all these years, from the outside, I’ve seen it that way. In Chicago, if you asked me, “What was the favorite team in New York?” I would have to say, “The Yankees.” I don’t have a problem with that. I love playing them… Shoot, use that as motivation. If you want to be first, win. Win some world championships. Don’t be first just by popularity, or who wears what jersey. Win some championships and you can claim first. I don’t have a problem with that.

They were innocuous comments that epitomized the attitude the Mets ought to have, particularly at the ownership level, but the press ran with it, splashing “We’re No. 2!” across the back-pages. On the day the Mets won this year’s incarnation of the Subway Series from their cross-town rivals, it was their manager, said the media, making them look like second-banana.

Manuel and the Mets, however, have bigger fish to fry than the Yankees and the media right now. They open up a four-game set in St. Louis tonight before traveling to the first-place Phillies over the holiday weekend for four games. It is an eight-game road-trip that has the capacity to make-or-break their season.

Even though the Mets have only played .500 ball since firing their manager, there are reasons to be encouraged other than the horrendous play of their competitors. Ryan Church returned to the lineup yesterday, and the Mets hope to get Moises Alou back for the weekend in Philly. Barring any further setbacks or other injuries, it would give the Mets their complete, Spring-Training lineup for the first time this season.

David Wright, after two-week-long slump, is hitting again, and Carlos Delgado drove in a team-record nine runs Friday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. Peréz was dominant yesterday. The Mets, believe it or not, do have reason to be optimistic about their chances in the National League East.

The next eight games will go a long way in determining whether the Mets can truly contend.

The Court’s Gun Ruling Makes D.C. Less Safe

2008-06-26T12:44:00.003-04:00

Residents of the District of Columbia—and the entire nation—became less safe today when a five-to-four majority of Supreme Court justices ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Justice Antonin Scalia, in an expansive and characteristically-dismissive opinion, wrote that the poorly-written sentence adopted in 1791 ought to void a long-standing ban on handguns in Washington by applying an antiquated idea to modern-day society.

Of course, Scalia isn’t just a conservative; he’s also an originalist, so his interpretation was expected, and may even be the legally-sound one, even if it seems to contradict U.S. v. Miller, the 1939 case that represented the High Court’s last foray into Second Amendment issues. In that case, the Court ruled that a sawed-off shotgun was not protected because it was not a weapon commonly used in a militia, which seemingly upheld the right to keep and bear arms as a collective one, not an individual right, as the majority have done today. In Miller, however, the Court never directly addressed the meaning of the Second Amendment, and it was that opening that led to today’s decision.

Scalia goes further, however, in declaring that legislatures cannot mandate that guns be kept locked or disassembled inside the home. “The requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock,” he writes, “makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional.”

This seems to strike down Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws that require adults either to store loaded guns in a place that is reasonably inaccessible to children, or if they decide to leave their guns left out in the open, to use a safety device to lock the gun, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a leading gun-control advocacy group. According to the Brady Campaign, the risk of homicide in the home is three times greater in households in which at least one firearm is present.

Justice Scalia, true to his public persona, turned prickly a few times during his majority opinion, using some ironic language. He declared Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote one of two dissenting opinions, “dead wrong,” at one point, and later said that the dissenters’ logic “would be rather like saying ‘He filled and kicked the bucket’ to mean ‘He filled the bucket and died.’ Grotesque.”

In a decision that is likely to lead to a higher murder rate in this city, perhaps Scalia, even if his constitutional reasoning is correct, should tone down the death metaphors. Or perhaps he’s just trying to ruffle some feathers.

Scalia does strike a concillary tone in the very last paragraph of his 64-page opinion:

We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns… But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.

Of course, the Second Amendment is outmoded, and while it is regrettable that the Court could not find a way to balance the individual right to keep and bear arms with the safety of D.C. residents, it is not surprising.

Justice Stephen Breyer tried to do just that in his own dissent: to balance common-sense gun-control regulations against an individual right to self-defense. He does so admirably, showing that laws were enacted just after the ratification of the Bill of Rights in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia to regulate the storage and usage of weapons. He also makes a persuasive argument for gun-control, but his argument is more pragmatic in nature, not constitutional.

This decision is hardly the final word on the subject, and legislatures across the land—including the D.C. City Council—will try now to find a way to draft effective gun-control legislation that complies with these new guidelines. Pray that they can because, while this ruling may be constitutionally correct, holding other factors constant, a greater prevalence of firearms can only increase gun violence.

And, to those who see today as a victory for liberty, remember that these Supreme Court justices are confirmed by the United States Senate, a legislative body in which residents of the District of Columbia have no voice or vote. Taxation—and judicial activism—without representation, indeed.

Bowden Should Bear the Blame for the Bumbling Nats

2008-06-24T23:59:00.001-04:00

In their fourth season in the nation’s capital, and in their first season in their glistening new riverfront ballpark, the Washington Nationals are the National League’s worst team, and they seem further from contending now than at any point since the team moved down from Montréal.

In an 8-3 loss to the Angels tonight before 28,531 at Nationals Park, the homestanding Nats made a whopping four errors, as they allowed six runs to score in the top-half of the first inning. They have dropped four straight games and are just 30-49 nearly halfway through the season.

Their struggles this season—on pace easily to be their worst since moving to Washington—can be traced to their history in this city.

The situation general manager Jim Bowden inherited four years ago was not an enviable one. The team at that time was owned by Major League Baseball, and the owners had disincentives in making the Nats competitive, both to save money and to provide more wins for their respective teams. The Nats were still funded better than the Marlins or Devil Rays, for example, but it is fair to say that Bowden did not have much with which to work.

During the first two seasons in R.F.K. Stadium, Bowden sought to keep the Nats from floundering in an effort to raise interest in the team. If they were at least mediocre, attendance would be respectable, and the franchise might have some value to potential owners. And since M.L.B. owned the team, it was in their best interest to keep the short-term value of the club high, with little regard for the long-term, to increase their profit margin.

Bowden, serving two masters, really, signed Vinny Castilla and Cristian Guzmán in his first offseason, surrendering two compensatory draft picks. Castilla was 37 years old at the time, and Guzmán batted .219 in his first season in D.C., before missing all of 2006 and most of 2007 with a shoulder injury.

Since the Lerner family took control of the team in July 2006, however, Bowden has been forced into rebuilding by team president Stan Kasten, late of the Atlanta Braves organization. His history, and some of the moves he has made thus far, suggest he is ill-suited for that role.

The Lerners took over and found a barren farm system, due to the tight purse-strings of M.L.B. and some of Bowden’s short-sighted trades and signings that robbed the organization of its draft picks. The Nats, however, have done little to address this issue. They have been saddled with Guzmán, but they also resigned Dmitri Young this offseason to a two-year, $10 million contract after a successful season last year, when he was a minor-league free-agent.

He signed Mets castoffs Paul Lo Duca and Johnny Estrada as catchers in the offseason, blocking Rule V selection Jesus Flores—another catcher acquired from the Mets. Flores has won the job anyway, and the Nats even experimented with Lo Duca in the outfield here tonight in an 8-3 loss to the Angels, an experiment that lasted only an inning-and-a-third, and included a throwing error, before Lo Duca left with dizziness.

[The new blog, Fire Jim Bowden, looks at Trader Jim’s transactions in far greater detail, and your humble diarist recommends it highly.]

Bowden also traded for Lastings Milledge and Elijah Dukes, two young men with a history of legal problems. So far, neither has played well this season, but both are athletic and talented. Their acquisitions, however, represent a big gamble: having two very good African-American ballplayers on the team would be good for the organization, especially in this city, if they can stay out of trouble.

The Nationals have an opportunity to build something in this city. The new ballpark is fresh and fan-friendly. But outside of Milledge and Dukes (and possibly Flores), Bowden has done a poor job assembling this roster, and the Nats would be well-served to make a change before their window of opportunity closes in Washington.

Minaya and the Mets Face a Media Backlash

2008-06-19T16:31:00.004-04:00

If the Mets’ intention in firing Willie Randolph under the cover of darkness early Tuesday morning in Southern California, 3,000 miles from home, was to minimize attention, it is safe to say that the Wilpon family and general manager Omar Minaya grossly miscalculated.

Instead, the Mets find themselves a national laughingstock. Jon Stewart and David Letterman are lampooning them. The New York tabloids have clearly taken Randolph’s side and are taking shots at the Mets at every turn. Minaya’s press conference on Tuesday afternoon from Anaheim, Calif., was dissected that evening on “Sportscenter,” as quotes involving which flight he chose to take out west the day prior were parsed.

The consensus is nearly unanimous: the Mets could not have handled this situation any worse. As discussed in this space Tuesday, firing Randolph where and when Minaya did was a classless, disrespectful, and undignified act. But no one could expect the sort of public backlash that has ensued.

Willie Randolph—from his years as a player with both the Yankees and the Mets, and his time as a coach on Joe Torre’s staff in the Bronx—has a lot of friends in the New York media, and they came out for him over the past few days. In doing so, they have colored the coverage in a way that is almost surreal, though not terribly surprising in its only-in-New-York sensationalism.

Bill Madden’s column ripping Minaya ended up on the front-page of the Daily News yesterday under the headline “Cowards in the Night.” Today’s front-page headline calls Randolph a “class act.”

The Post, as one might expect, took it to a whole other level of outrageousness. Yesterday’s covers featured a dismayed Mr. Met, and Fred Wilpon, his son Jeff, and Minaya wearing clown noses. Today’s back cover even more blatent, as it features interim manager, and Randolph’s bench coach, Jerry Manuel wielding a knife behind Randolph, with the headline “Stabbed in the Back.”

That headline stemmed from a conversation last week between Manuel and Tony Bernazard, vice president of development for the Mets, and Omar Minaya’s right-hand man. Randolph confronted Manuel just a few days before his termination about the meeting, and Manuel denied that it had anything to do with the manager position.

“He asked me, and I understood completely, what with the way things have been around here the past few weeks, and with my name out there all the time as his successor,” Manuel told the Post.

“Friends” of Randolph told the Post that he now believes that Manuel was undermining him and angling for his job as Minaya and Bernazard schemed. Not to say that it isn’t justified, but Randolph’s paranoia was a recurring problem during his three-and-a-half years at Shea.

That sort of mentality seemed to manifest itself in Randolph’s comments to Ian O’Connor of the Bergen (N.J.) Record about how he thought he was the victim of a racially-tinged double standard about his management style. Those comments probably had as much to do with Randolph’s firing as the team’s uninspired play thus far this season.

But it’s clear that, in the three days since he was given his walking papers, Willie Randolph is winning the battle of Perception, a word Omar Minaya used frequently Tuesday. The perception of his firing has been framed by the media as a dark deed that could only be done at 3 a.m. New York-time. Randolph embodies class, and the Mets organization showed none of that when they summarily dismissed him following the team’s third win in four games. The perception of Tony Bernazard “as giddy as a schoolgirl,” as Newsday reported, in the minutes after Randolph was let go lends credence to Willie’s paranoia.

In the end, as the joke goes, it’s not paranoia if they are really out to get you. Whether Randolph was the victim of a secret, Wilpon-Minaya-Bernazard-Manuel cabal is unclear. But the perception is that he got a raw deal. Fans are sending their tickets back to the team. One Long Island businessman is sending Fred Wilpon frozen chickens in the mail as a form of protest.

With this change, the Mets hoped they could turn the page from last year’s collapse and this season’s difficulties. But sometimes perception is reality, and the perception, as framed by the media, is that the Mets bungled this move and mistreated Willie Randolph. Today, in the New York media, Omar Minaya is the puppet and Jeff Wilpon the puppeteer. Tony Bernazard is Gaius Cassius, and Jerry Manuel is Marcus Brutus.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream.

Meanwhile, on the field, the Mets won for the fifth time in eight games last night.

Minaya’s Midnight Massacre Claims Randolph

2008-06-17T08:01:00.004-04:00

At each and every juncture, it was as if the Mets were trying to jerk manager Willie Randolph around—right up until the very end, when general manager Omar Minaya fired him early this morning, one game into a West-Coast road trip.

It was shortly after 3 a.m. back East (midnight in Anaheim, Calif.) when the Mets announced the shake-up—in which Randolph, pitching coach Rick Peterson, and first-base coach Tom Ñieto were dismissed—which is, undoubtedly, the way Minaya wanted it: quick and quiet, and too late to make the morning tabloids back in New York. Minaya flew to Orange County secretly as the Mets won the first game of their road-trip, a 9-6 victory over the Angels, and their third win in the last four games. After the game, when the team returned to its hotel in nearby Costa Mesa, he met with the three coaches. Bench coach Jerry Manuel was then named interim manager.

The team issued a bizarrely-worded press release after midnight to announce the move to the media. It was by-lined “ANAHEIM, Calif., June 17, 2008,” and entitled “Mets Name Jerry Manuel Interim Manager.” Talk about burying the lede.

The whole thing was sort of Nixonian. It is speculated that the Mets did not want to fire Randolph on Father’s Day. How they came to the conclusion that the following night, 3,000 miles away, was somehow more appropriate is baffling.

It was emblematic of how Randolph and his coaches had been treated during this entire process. For weeks now, as rumors swirled about his job status, the Mets allowed Randolph to twist in the wind, holding organizational meetings, and then refusing to guarantee his job security. The implication was Steinbrenner-esque: turn this around now, or you’re done. But the Mets—Minaya and his bosses, owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon—were too cowardly to come out and say that.

It created a peculiar situation in which the players and coaches were fighting to turn their season around while the guillotine hovered overhead. The Mets had just come off taking two out of three from Texas at home, and their win tonight moved them to 34-35, within a game of the .500 mark.

The timing of the move, of course, suggests that this decision had been made days ago, although a team source told Newsday that it wasn’t made until Monday morning. Still, perception counts for a lot, and, to a man, this move—at this time—seems classless, chaotic, and cowardly.

It also reportedly led to surreal scene in the lobby of the team hotel, as players were told of Randolph’s firing by media members as they returned for the evening. Carlos Beltrán and Carlos Delgado “seemed indifferent to the news,” reported Newsday. Ramón Castro told the paper, “I’m in shock. I don’t know what to say.”

The news was shocking only in its timing. The “Willie Watch” had been ongoing since Opening Day, especially considering the collapse last season, squandering a seven-game lead to the Phillies over the season’s final three weeks. It was clear that Randolph’s job would be threatened by a poor start to the season, and so it was.

Perhaps it really is the right move. Perhaps a shake-up will enliven the clubhouse. Perhaps Jerry Manuel—whom your humble diarist knows as a good, fair baseball-man—will speak to these players in a way that Randolph could not, though the importance of the manager in baseball is often overstated.

Looking at the situation, it is difficult to shake the unctuous way in which Randolph’s dismissal took place. Moreover, it wasn’t handled the right way throughout this entire process. And now the focus shifts to Minaya, the man responsible for this move, and for this aging, flawed roster. If the Mets continue to play inconsistent, uninspired baseball, he ought to be next on the firing line.

Sunday Mornings Will Not Be the Same

2008-06-14T08:00:00.001-04:00

NEW YORK – Of all the times to lose Timothy John Russert, Jr., Father’s Day weekend seems the cruelest.

When Tom Brokaw appeared suddenly on NBC, interrupting its coverage of the U.S. Open golf tournament yesterday, it was obvious that the news would be somber, but it was no less surprising. Tim Russert was dead at age 58, Brokaw quickly announced, his voice quivering as he told the world of the loss of his friend and colleague.

Russert’s was a life cut short, but a life lived fully. The son of a Buffalo garbage-man, he worked for New York Democrats, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Mario Cuomo. He transformed “Meet the Press” into the Sunday talk show of record in America. He left an indelible image as someone who brought insight, authority, and passion to NBC’s election-night coverage every four years.

The dry-erase board he used on Election Night 2000—it read “Florida, Florida, Florida”—sits in the Smithsonian, but, today in Washington, it was another dry-erase board that captured the mood. Outside NBC’s Washington bureau on Nebraska Avenue Northwest yesterday sat a white-board left by a mourner: “Tim—We will miss you.” A bouquet of lilies lay across the ground in front.

Russert always ended his show by saying, “If it’s Sunday, it’s ‘Meet the Press.’” But, ever since he took the reins in 1991, if it’s Sunday, it has been Tim Russert. “Meet the Press” was the most-watched Sunday morning talk show and also the most essential, because Russert was America’s finest interlocutor, diligently researching before each interview. A law-school graduate, Russert’s “Meet the Press” interviews frequently resembled cross-examinations.

In my household, Russert was always on at 10:30 every Sunday morning, right after Dick Schapp’s Sports Reporters. It was once said about Dick Schapp that he didn’t collect stories, he collected people. The same could be said of Russert. For all of his Buffalo roots—and his love of his hometown Bills—it is difficult to imagine someone who loved Washington and politics as much as Tim Russert.

The next five months won’t be the same without him. It is difficult to imagine campaign and election-night coverage without his knowledge or his infectious enthusiasm. He will be missed by the millions of Americans for whom he sought the truth and explained the political process. When he said, “this is big,” America leaned into the television set to listen.

Russert also spoke often about his father, Tim Russert, Sr., or, as he called him, “Big Russ.” In 2003, he wrote “Big Russ and Me: Father and Son—Lessons of Life,” a poignant, touching examination of the father-son relationship.

This son went on Amazon.com last night and bought two copies: one for himself, and one for his dad. On this Father’s Day, we lost a national treasure. On this Father’s Day, a son lost his dad, and “Big Russ” lost his kid. On this Father’s Day, we are all reminded to cherish each and every day as if it were Father’s Day.

The Mets Find New Ways to Lose

2008-06-12T23:59:00.002-04:00

FLUSHING, N.Y. – Billy Wagner blew yet another save today—his third consecutive blown save—but, unlike last night’s 13-inning rescue by Carlos Beltrán, the Mets’ bullpen this time completed the coup de grâce in a 5-4, 10-inning loss to Arizona.

And so the Mets, as they have done since last September, keep finding new and creatively soul-crushing ways to lose baseball games. They now sit three games under-.500, 31-34, seven-and-a-half games behind first-place Philadelphia.

It was the Mets’ sixth loss in their last seven games, and each defeat has been more frustrating than the one prior.

Last Thursday in San Diego, Scott Schoenweis hit a batter with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth to force in the winning run in a 2-1 loss. Friday, the Mets squandered a fine performance from Johan Santana and lost, yet again, 2-1. They lost again, 2-1, on Saturday on a tenth-inning, walk-off home run by Scott Hairston off Pedro Feliciano. On Sunday, behind Pedro Martínez, the Mets jumped out to an early lead, but Wagner allowed a three-run, go-ahead home run to pinch-hitter Tony Clark in the eighth inning, and the Padres completed the four-game sweep.

“Absolutely the worst,” Wagner said after Sunday’s game. “If it gets worse than this,” he added before reconsidering, “I don't think it can.”

It did.

The bullpen gagged again on Tuesday night as the Mets arrived back at Shea to take on the Diamondbacks, allowing six runs in four innings in a 9-5 Mets loss. Then the Mets turned over a 3-0 lead to Billy Wagner in the ninth inning last night—after a career-best pitching performance from Mike Pelfrey—but the closer allowed yet another three-run home run—to Arizona’ Mark Reynolds—and the game went into extra innings.

Beltrán’s two-run home run in the 13th took Wagner off the hook, but that was small consolation to the southpaw.

“It’s hard,” Wagner said after last night’s game. “It stinks. It’s hard to go out there and give it up. That hurts.”

Fast-forward to today’s game. Johan Santana strikes out ten batters over seven shutout innings. The Mets lead 4-0 going to the top of the eighth, but Joe Smith gives back half the lead, and the Mets take a 4-2 lead into the final frame.

Enter Sandman. But Wagner issued a leadoff walk, and after pinch-hitter Stephen Drew hit a Baltimore Chop up the middle for an infield-hit, the tying runs were on base. The next batter, Chris Young, delivered the only hard-hit ball of the inning with a double lined down into the left-field corner that scored one and left the tying run on third base with no outs. A walk to then Augie Ojeda loaded the bases.

After an Orlando Hudson ground ball to short that allowed José Reyes to throw home for the force play, Conor Jackson hit a slow ground-ball to Reyes, but the Mets were unable to turn the inning-ending double-play, and Drew scored from third with the tying run.

“I’m sick to death to sit there and see where our team’s going and have a chance to win and go out there and just suck,” Wagner told the Daily News. “I can’t say anything about our team. I suck. I can’t get it done right now.”

In the bottom of the ninth, Reyes delivered his own leadoff single, and a sacrifice-bunt by Endy Chávez moved the winning run to second with one out. But both David Wright and Damion Easley hit sharp ground balls to the left side on which the Diamondbacks made diving stops to save the game.

“I thought we had it won right there,” Easley said, after Stephen Drew robbed him of a game-winning hit.

Aaron Heilman surrendered a run in the top of the tenth, and the Mets—and the 47,042 fans here at Shea—were out of fight. Even in the bottom of the ninth, with the winning run on second base, Shea was quiet.

“These are such strange times for this ballclub,” remarked Mets play-by-play maven Gary Cohen during that inning.

Before the game today, manager Willie Randolph said that he “couldn’t ever remember a sequence of games” like the ones the Mets had just played. And that was before the Mets blew a 4-0 lead in the eighth inning today.

Randolph will undoubtedly find himself back on the hot-seat if the Mets have a poor weekend against Texas here at Shea, although it’s nearly impossible to imagine any possible way that the Mets’ recent struggles should fall on his shoulders. It is fair to say that this team is suffering from a crisis of confidence since their epic collapse last September, but Randolph is the antithesis of that. He exudes calmness under pressure.

If the Mets continue to falter over the next four-to-six weeks, they should look to making some roster changes before the trading deadline. But, as the old saying goes, you can’t fire all the players, so management may have little choice but to make other changes.

Down the Stretch, Big Brown Fails to Deliver

2008-06-07T23:59:00.001-04:00

ELMONT, N.Y. – It may have been the quarter crack on his left front foot, or the sweltering 90-degree heat, or just the strain of running three races in only five weeks, but when jockey Kent Desormeaux called upon Big Brown with the Belmont Stakes and the Triple Crown on the line, the colt did not respond.

A sweaty—yet festive—crowd of 94,476 jammed Belmont Park here today to see Big Brown become the 12th horse to capture the elusive Triple Crown, but, yet again, they left the track disappointed when he was pulled up by Desormeaux and finished last. He instead became the 18th horse to fail in the Belmont after winning the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, including the last 11 contenders.

Big Brown was crowned the overwhelming, 2-5 morning-line favorite, and those fans rooting for history had reason to be optimistic this morning when the second choice, Casino Drive, was scratched due to a cracked hoof. The odds on Big Brown closed at 1-4. Conversely, the longest shot in the race, Da’ Tara, went off at 38-1.

Da’ Tara is a pace-setter, so it was unsurprising when he broke to the front from the starting gate. His fractions, however, were pedestrian, including running the first third of the one-and-a-half-mile race in 48.3 seconds.

Big Brown stalked the leader for much of the race, but the slow fractions made that less concerning to Desormeaux and trainer Rick Dutrow. Big Brown was not expending too much energy in the first six or seven furlongs.

Then, at the top of the stretch, Desormeaux chose to make his move, and he summoned the power and speed that propelled Big Brown to convincing victories in the first two legs of the Triple Crown. But Big Brown failed to accelerate.

“I had no horse,” Desormeaux said after the race.

Once he sensed that Big Brown was not responding and the race was lost, the jockey, in a safe and honorable move, eased up on his mount, ensuring the heretofore undefeated colt would become the first Triple Crown contender to finish last in the Belmont Stakes.

Both jockey and trainer said they could find no physical problem with the horse.

“It was a very disappointing race, but the horse looks like he’s fine,” Dutrow said.

“He was in no way, shape, or form lame or sore,” said Desormeaux, though he did suggest that Big Brown may have been fatigued.

Da’ Tara and mount Alan García held the lead and crossed the finish line in an unhurried 2:29.65 against a hazy, platinum sky. His trainer, native New Yorker Nick Zito, spoiled the last Triple Crown bid, Smarty Jones’ in 2004, with 36-1 Birdstone.

When asked to compare the two wins, Zito said, “They both were surprising, and both gratifying. They were both long-shots.”

Da’ Tara is undoubtedly one of the most unlikely Belmont champions. He had only one career win—a wire-to-wire win in a January maiden race at South Florida’s Gulfstrem Park. He had run in only one graded stakes race previously—a ninth-place finish in the Florida Derby, also at Gulfstream.

But so it has been here at the Belmont Stakes over the past three decades: unmemorable winners like Da’ Tara, Sarava, and Birdstone, and the spoiled dreams of Triple Crown hopefuls like Big Brown. Many in racing bemoan their failures, perceiving each defeat to be a missed opportunity to grow their sport.

The effect a Triple Crown winner would have on horse racing is unclear, though perhaps it could be argued that, judging by the crowd’s disappointment, each failure could discourage those casual fans from coming back. Ultimately, though, it is the difficulty of the Belmont Stakes—the “Test of a Champion”—that makes this event so unique and the Triple Crown so impressive.

Having to run three races in five short weeks is far from the norm these days in horse racing, particularly among elite horses. It would be akin to playing triple-headers in the World Series, or football playoff games on back-to-back days.

Big Brown, a good horse in a particularly weak class, seemingly ran out of gas when faced with that test. It was disappointing, to be sure, but hardly remarkable. A mile-and-a-half over this track has proved to be too daunting a task for many fine horses over the years, including more than a few horses more deserving than Big Brown.

But it was more than just Big Sandy that claimed Big Brown’s chances; it was the cumulative effect of a grueling five-week trial that no other horse has been able to conquer for 30 years.

Big Brown Can’t Save Racing from Irrelevance

2008-06-06T14:14:00.003-04:00

Of all that Big Brown can accomplish Saturday across a mile-and-a-half of scorching Long Island dirt—winning the Belmont Stakes and becoming horse racing’s first Triple Crown-winner in 30 years—he will not save racing from slowly disappearing from the public consciousness.

Horse racing is far removed from the glory and majesty it commanded the last time a thoroughbred captured the Triple Crown: Affirmed in 1978. Since then, 11 three-year-olds have won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, and each time a horse falls short in the Belmont, the racing community feels as if an opportunity to “save” their sport slips farther out of their grasp.

It is unlikely, however, that even a Triple Crown-winner like Big Brown can return horse racing to the prominent place it once held in American sporting culture. Increasingly, racing is becoming a niche sport, understood and enjoyed by fewer and fewer people in this country.

The bloom is off horse racing’s rose, with Americans seeing the seedier side of the sport, rather than the glamorized versions of yesteryear. They saw Eight Belles, the filly, euthanized on the track after the Kentucky Derby. They saw Barbaro pull up at Pimlico two years ago and eventually be put down when he was not able to overcome his injuries.

There is even an uglier side to horse racing, and Bernie Goldberg of HBO’s “Real Sports” series did a fine job uncovering it last month: the sale of old or failed racehorses to the horsemeat trade. It is illegal to slaughter horses in this country, but not in Mexico, where many American thoroughbreds are condemned to a violent, inhumane death. The images in Goldberg’s report, many of which were provided by animal-rights organizations are gruesome and unsettling.

Even Big Brown’s connections represent the dark underbelly of the sport. Andy Beyer wrote a fantastic column in Thursday’s Washington Post about owner Michael Iavarone and trainer Rick Dutrow. Dutrow, specifically, raises questions. In addition to a personal drug problem and a grandiose wager he made on his horse, Saint Liam, in the 2005 Breeders’ Cup Classic, Dutrow’s training tactics have been called into question.

Beyer outlined the suspicious success that Dutrow’s horses seem to have in their first starts after joining his stable, and Dutrow himself has admitted to administering the anabolic steroid Winstrol to his horses, in addition to a 60-day suspension he served in 2005 when two of his horses tested positive for mepivacaine, a banned substance that deadens pain and could allow infirm horses to keep running hard, doing even more damage to their bodies.

So while a Triple Crown would probably be a short-term boon to horse racing, it seems unlikely that it would last. Horse racing is a five-week season to the casual fan, between the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont. With the deaths and drugs and unsavory characters, racing undermines its own efforts to turn those casual fans into something more.

So watch the Belmont Stakes tomorrow on television, or be among the 120,000 expected to cram into Belmont Park to see the race in person. Take in the revelry and the pageantry. Don’t look too closely, however. You may not like what you see.

...

Projected order of finish (with morning-line odds):

1. Big Brown (2-5)
2. Denis of Cork (12-1)
3. Macho Again (20-1)
4. Casino Drive (7-2)
5. Take of Ekati (20-1)
6. Da’ Tara (30-1)
7. Ready’s Echo (30-1)
8. Ichabod Crane (20-1)
9. Guadalcanal (50-1)

Randolph Receives a Stay of Execution, But the Mets Falter Again

2008-05-26T23:59:00.002-04:00

FLUSHING, N.Y. – Willie Randolph escaped the gallows here today, but after his New York Mets played yet another sloppy, flat, uninspired game, one must wonder just how long his reprieve will last.

Hours after a two-hour, closed-door meeting with owner Fred Wilpon, his son Jeff—the team’s chief operating officer—and general manager Omar Minaya, Randolph’s squad fell to first-place Florida, 7-3. The last 15 Mets were retired in order, and by the eighth inning, isolated chants of “Fire Willie!” could be heard here in pockets of a near-deserted Shea Stadium.

If today’s meeting was intended to “clear the air,” as Randolph and Minaya put it at a late-afternoon press conference before batting-practice, it did little to accomplish that, at least publicly. Despite Minaya’s double-talk, Randolph’s job seems to be in serious jeopardy, and his status remains a distraction in the clubhouse.

“There is no limbo—period,” Minaya said. “Willie is the manager. As I said this weekend, Willie has the support of the general manager, has the support of the ownership.”

But when Randolph was asked if the Mets assured him that he would remain as manager through the end of this season, he replied, “No, they didn’t say that.”

Minaya also said that the meeting was more about Randolph’s comments in last Monday’s Bergen (N.J.) Record, in which he complained of unfair treatment and suggested that racial bias could be affecting the public’s perception of him as a manager, than about the team’s poor play. Randolph apologized publicly for those comments Wednesday, and also placed a phone call at that time to the Wilpons, but they never called him back, according to published reports.

“Ownership was disappointed in the comments,” Minaya said, adding, “But they’re also very disappointed in how the team is playing.”

As well they should be. The Mets are now mired in fourth-place, six-and-a-half games behind the Marlins. They host Florida for two more games before welcoming Joe Torre’s Los Angeles Dodgers into Shea for a four-game weekend set.

Before and after tonight’s game, the team offered unanimous, if tepid, support for their embattled skipper. Sports Illustrated’s Jon Heyman asked first baseman Carlos Delgado directly if he feels Randolph should remain as manager.

“I’ll tell you what I think: we need to play better,” Delgado said. “This is not about the manager. I’m not in the position to think or not think. They don’t pay me to think. They pay me play baseball.”

Asked more pointedly by Heyman to answer the original question, Delgado turned snarky.

“If you want to be an ass, I can be an ass, too,” he said.

Carlos Beltrán was asked why more players aren’t coming out in unqualified support of Randolph.

“That’s not in our hands,” Beltrán said. “It’s not my decision.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

And if the Mets don’t feel strongly about wanting to save Randolph’s job, it certainly showed here tonight. José Reyes made a two-out error in the first inning that led to two unearned Marlins runs. Reyes got one back with a leadoff home-run, and the next two Mets, Luis Castillo and David Wright, followed with hits.

Beltrán, batting cleanup with little protection behind him due to injuries to Moises Alou and Ryan Church—the latter of whom is only available to pinch-hit—inexplicably laid a bunt down the third-base line for an infield single. It was the type of play that comes from trying too hard.

Delgado hit a shallow sacrifice-fly to plate one run, but light-hitting catcher Brian Schneider grounded out weakly to first base, and rookie outfielder Nick Evans, playing in his third big-league game, flied out to right field. Considering the lineup, Beltrán should have been trying to drive the ball. The top-four in the Mets’ lineup tonight (Reyes, Castillo, Wright, and Beltran) had 8 hits in 16 at-bats; the next four (Delgado, Schneider, Evans, and outfielder Endy Chávez) went 1-for-14.

Reyes added another home-run the next inning to give the Mets the lead, but starting pitcher Mike Pelfrey, after retiring the first two hitters in the third inning, allowed a hit, a walk, and a hit batsman to load the bases with two outs. Veteran outfielder Luis Gonzalez drove in three runs with a bases-clearing double that bounced behind a diving Carlos Beltrán in shallow center-field that gave the Marlins a lead the Mets would never seriously challenge.

That rally seemed to take the life out of the Mets, an all-too-familiar sight these days. When they fall behind, they seem to lack the will to fight back. Some would like to blame that on Randolph, but, as one anonymous Met told MLB.com’s Marty Noble, “It’s pretty hard to manage when no one’s on base.”

That gets to the heart of the issue. It is difficult to argue that the Mets’ struggles this season—or even back to the second half of last season, particularly in September—are Randolph’s fault. And while this is also a flawed team in a lot of ways, nearly every one of the Mets is also underachieving this season, from young stars like José Reyes and David Wright, to veterans like Beltrán. So while Randolph may not be to blame for the team’s lackluster play, it is reasonable for ownership to feel compelled to do something.

“I can understand the front office wanting to shake things up to jump-start us,” Wright told the New York Post. “I’m not opposed to that, but we, as players, need to step it up. For me, it’s unfair for Willie to be taking the brunt of this when we’re not getting the job done.”

Someone is going to take the brunt of this if the Mets continue to play as poorly as they did tonight, and Randolph is the easiest scapegoat—or so the front-page of tomorrow’s New York Post proclaims. It isn’t fair to the Mets’ skipper, but as the old baseball adage goes, you can’t fire all the players.

As the Losses Mount, Randolph Twists in the Wind

2008-05-25T20:20:00.003-04:00

EAST MEADOW, N.Y. — One week ago, things finally seemed to turn around for Willie Randolph and his New York Mets, but following six losses in his team’s last seven games and some controversial, racially-tinged comments to the media, Randolph’s job security has never been more tenuous.

The Mets swept the Yankees last weekend in an abbreviated two-game series in the Bronx, but, since then, Randolph has accused fans and the media of unfair treatment (and insinuated that his race could be affecting the public’s perception of him), third-baseman David Wright has suggested that his teammates may not care as much about winning as he does, the Mets were swept in a four-game set to the division-rival Braves, and the Amazins then dropped two of three games in Colorado.

Omar Minaya, the Mets’ general manager, made a rare road trip west of the Mississippi, meeting the team in Denver for this weekend’s series after the sweep in Atlanta. His presence did not go unnoticed.

“I thought I saw him in the back sharpening his machete,” Randolph joked to the New York Times Saturday morning, after the Mets had lost their fifth consecutive game. “He saw me coming, so I think he slipped it in his back pocket. I don’t know if that made me feel any better.”

Turning serious, Randolph, according to today’s Times, continued: “I’m around Omar all the time. Obviously, when all this stuff is going on around me, and he shows up, everyone thinks, ‘Why is he here? He doesn’t go on many trips.’ Whether Omar’s here or not, whether they support me or not, it really, to me, is irrelevant. It’s going to be what it’s going to be. I’ll go down to the last day trying to win a ballgame. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I came here. All that stuff is out of my hand [sic].”

The trouble began last Monday morning, only hours after the Mets embarrassed the crosstown Yankees in Yankee Stadium. Ian O’Connor, a well-known columnist for the Bergen (N.J.) Record, wrote a column entitled “Randolph bares his pain,” in which the New York skipper expressed his displeasure with the ingratitude he perceives from fans towards him and his ballclub.

“They don’t like me?” Randolph told O’Connor last Sunday. “‘We don’t like Willie.’ Wait a minute, why don’t you like me? I don’t get it. Did I do anything to you? If you look at what I’ve done for your club, you should like me a little bit."

“If you look at my body of work since I’ve been here,” Randolph continued, “I’m proud of that, because prior to that Mets fans were hiding. You couldn’t even find them ... The season’s just starting, and you’re booing my guys already? You’re booing your team?”

Mets fans have been too quick to boo Randolph and some of his beleaguered stars, like Carlos Delgado and José Reyes. But after last year’s epic late-season collapse, their patience is understandably short.

One of the fans’ major criticisms of Randolph last season was that he seemed to remain calm as the Mets’ lead slipped away. As your humble diarist wrote in this space last week:

As the Mets frittered away a seven-game lead over the final two-and-a-half-weeks of the 2007 baseball season, callers to New York’s sports-radio stations and anonymous commenters on the internet called Randolph to be more demonstrative and ditch his calm persona. They wanted Randolph to chew out his team after they played uninspired game after uninspired game. Instead, Willie stayed positive and supportive, walking around the locker room after games, shouting to himself, “We’re gonna win this thing,” even while his team hit rock-bottom. There was also an unfortunate quote about the champagne tasting sweet when the Mets eventually won the division.

Randolph told O’Connor that he believes the public perception of him as placid-to-a-fault is misinformed, and he blames the Mets’ team-owned network, Sportsnet New York (SNY) for creating that misconception.

“They’re the artists; I’m the canvas,” Randolph said. “They paint the picture the way they want to. They want to show me when somebody gives up a home run or somebody makes an error, so they want to see me [using profanity].

“Well, my players are watching the monitors in the bullpen going, ‘Look at Skip, he’s cursing us out.’ That’s not how I lead. But when the game is over, I’m [on them]. ‘And why don’t you turn over a couple of [food] spreads?’ I’ve done that. You might not know it.

“Why [isn’t] SNY shooting me when I’m ready to go down the dugout clapping my hands and patting guys on the butt, schooling them during the game? I’m on the top step every game… Why don’t you show that side of me so people can say, ‘Wow, jeez, Willie’s fiery’? ... You watch any manager in baseball, you see him look like a bump on the log sitting there. They don’t move; they don’t talk. I’m as animated and as demonstrative and as involved and as intense as any manager in baseball.”

Randolph excluded Ozzie Guillen from the conversation, but wanted to know why the traits often admired in the calm, cool and collected likes of Joe Torre are portrayed as flaws in Torre’s former third base coach.

“Is it racial?” Randolph asked. “Huh? It smells a little bit.”

Asked directly if he believes black managers are held to different standards than their white counterparts, Randolph said: “I don’t know how to put my finger on it, but I think there’s something there. Herman Edwards did pretty well here, and he won a couple of playoff [games], and they were pretty hard on Herm. Isiah [Thomas] didn’t do a great job, but they beat up Isiah pretty good... I don’t know if people are used to a certain figurehead. There’s something weird about it.”

These comments ran Monday, but were largely ignored until Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, and Keith Hernandez addressed them on SNY’s game broadcast Tuesday afternoon. By then, Mets fans on sports-radio and the internet were upset, feeling as if the Mets’ manager had called them out as racists.

There is some truth to what Randolph said. The public perception of him as aloof or oblivious to his team’s struggles is unfair. And that the main criticism of his management is related to his style rather than his decisions makes it difficult to quantify his supposed shortcomings.

The trouble with Randolph’s comments is that they hinted at a hidden, almost megalomaniacal paranoia. Randolph can’t claim that his leadership style is to keep his emotions private, only to complain that he isn’t portrayed in the media as passionate enough.

Randolph claims he was asked directly if he felt that there was a double-standard for managers with regard to race; that when he asked, “Is it racial?” he was repeating a question asked of him. To an extent, Randolph is probably right that race is one of the factors that may make some element of the Mets’ fan-base disinclined to liking him—sort of like those white Hillary Clinton-voters in West Virginia and Kentucky who told pollsters that race influenced their vote—or the sorts of fans who complain that the Mets have too many Latino players. But Randolph should have known that fans wouldn’t like him insinuating that they are prejudiced against him for his skin color.

Your humble diarist supported retaining Randolph at the end of last season, and comments about race like that ultimately are not going to alter that position. At some point, as Mike Lupica pointed out this morning in the Daily News, the Mets need to start winning. José Reyes needs to get on base more, and, when he does, he needs to get picked off less. David Wright needs to become more consistent. Carlos Beltrán needs to hit better from the left side. Oliver Pérez needs to settle on one arm-slot.

It is difficult to pin their failures on the manager, but, if the Mets don’t start winning soon, that is exactly what Fred and Jeff Wilpon may do, fair or not. Minaya gave Randolph the dreaded vote-of-confidence this weekend, but the Wilpons have yet to return Randolph’s phone call from Wednesday.

Meanwhile, today’s loss in Colorado was the Mets’ sixth in their last seven games. They return home tonight, and before the Mets face the first-place Florida Marlins tomorrow night at Shea, Randolph will meet with Minaya and Mets ownership to discuss the events of the past week.

When asked today if he still expects to be the manager after that meeting, Randolph replied, “I don’t see why not.”

Two Teams with Two Very Different Managers

2008-05-20T12:40:00.003-04:00

When the latest edition of the Subway Series began in New York this past weekend, Mets manager Willie Randolph was planted firmly on the proverbial hot-seat, his club meandering its way to a mediocre first month-and-a-half of the season. Following a rain-shortened, decisive two-game Mets sweep at Yankee Stadium, his pinstriped counterpart, Joe Girardi, finds himself in an equally precarious position.

As the Mets frittered away a seven-game lead over the final two-and-a-half-weeks of the 2007 baseball season, callers to New York’s sports-radio stations and anonymous commenters on the internet called Randolph to be more demonstrative and ditch his calm persona. They wanted Randolph to chew out his team after they played uninspired game after uninspired game. Instead, Willie stayed positive and supportive, walking around the locker room after games, shouting to himself, “We’re gonna win this thing,” even while his team hit rock-bottom. There was also an unfortunate quote about the champagne tasting sweet when the Mets eventually won the division.

Of course, they didn’t, and there was no champagne on that final Sunday in September. Randolph barely retained his job, and when the Mets entered their series with the Yankees at 20-19, and a clubhouse in turmoil, the back pages of the New York tabloids proclaimed that a bad series could cost Willie his job.

After a loss Thursday at home to Washington, Mets closer Billy Wagner commented to the assembled media that it was a “fucking shocker” that players like Carlos Beltrán and Carlos Delgado left Shea Stadium without taking questions, echoing Mets erstwhile catcher Paul Lo Duca, who told reporters last year that “they [referring apparently to the Mets’ Hispanic players] speak English, believe me.”

Lo Duca denied that his comments were racially-motivated, and Wagner made a similar statement Friday before Randolph called a team meeting to clear the air and try to right the ship. The significance of Yankee Stadium as the setting for the meeting was not lost on Randolph, the former Yankee.

“I will say this,” Randolph told the Daily News’ Bill Madden, “talking to them in this place I found myself getting very emotional, thinking about Thurman, Catfish, Reggie, Lou and all the others and all the winning we did here. We won because we played smart. We played the game right. We hustled. We were accountable to each other and, yeah, we even fought sometimes.”

“That’s what was missing here,” an anonymous player told the Daily News’ John Harper Sunday night after the Mets pounded the Yankees, 11-2. “We needed to care more about each other if we’re going to be the kind of team that wins a championship. I think we kind of took that for granted. The meeting made us realize that.”

And so, for now, all is right with the Mets, at least until today’s day-night doubleheader in Atlanta. Meanwhile, the Mets left their victims in the Bronx battered and bleeding. Joe Girardi, thus far, has not been able to provide the stability that has allowed the Yankees, 20-24 on the young season, to overcome slow starts during the tenure of this predecessor, Joe Torre. In 44 games this season, Girardi has, amazingly, used 38 different starting lineups.

Girardi has only one full season as a big-league manager under his belt, and it certainly was a turbulent one, winning the National League Manager of the Year award with Florida in 2006, and being summarily fired by ownership after the season.

The injuries to Alex Rodríguez and Jorge Posada have undoubtedly affected the Yankees, but as with the Mets, injuries are to be expected with veteran teams. The Yankees’ slow start has more to do with the ineffectiveness of their young pitchers—with whom they refused to part in the offseason for the Mets’ new ace, Johan Santana—and woeful starts from players like Robinson Canó and Jason Giambi.

Rodríguez returns to the lineup tonight, and the pressure could not be any greater. The back-page of today’s New York Post proclaims “Here Comes A-God!”

Joe Torre always succeeded in overcoming bad Aprils and Mays by keeping his team on an even keel, much like Willie Randolph tries to do for the Mets. Girardi seems to have a different philosophy, and it is unclear whether that will serve him well in the Bronx this season.

Reviewing Nationals Park

2008-05-01T12:03:00.002-04:00

Three years ago today, your humble diarist attended his first major-league game in our nation’s capital—a game at R.F.K. Stadium between the home-standing Nationals and the Mets. While that game is recalled in your humble diarist’s mind for personal reasons today, it is with this anniversary in mind that the Nationals’ new ballpark is reviewed.

First this note: henceforth, this journal will be based in Washington. Starting today, entries without a dateline emanate from here in D.C. With that said, let’s get onto the review of Nationals Park. Games attended were April 23 and 24 against the Mets.

Architecture: Big thumbs-up for the limestone on the exterior rather than the now-ubiquitous brick. A brick ballpark would feel very out of place in this town. Rating: Five out of five.

Seating: Pretty good sight lines, with lots of open concourses. The premium seats right behind home plate were three-quarters empty each night, however. Rating: Three.

Parking/Transportation: Parking is a huge issue. Metro was alright, but they still has some kinks to work out—Thursday night’s game coincided with a Wizards playoff game in Chinatown, and Metro recorded the third-highest ridership in their history. Rating: Two.

Neighborhood: All the construction around High Street should improve things when completed. Rating: Two.

Concessions: The half-smoke at Ben’s Chili Bowl is the best deal at the ballpark: less than two dollars more than one would pay on U Street. Red, Hot, and Blue barbecue is also available, in addition to a wide selection of beers and conspicuously quiet coffee stands. Rating: Five.

Fan base: There were a lot of Mets fans here, but the Nationals really seem to be catching on. Rating: Three.

A rating of 20 puts Nationals Park second among ballparks attended by your humble diarist.

…Ballpark Standings…

Oriole Park at Camden Yards (Baltimore) – 23
Nationals Park (Washington) – 20
Fenway Park (Boston) – 19
Citizens Bank Park (Philadelphia) – 19
Yankee Stadium (Bronx, N.Y.) – 17
Shea Stadium (Flushing, N.Y.) – 16
R.F.K. Stadium (Washington)* – 13
Le Stade Olympique (Montreal)* – 12
Veterans Stadium (Philadelphia)* –12

* – no longer in use

Welcome to Bracketville

2008-03-20T10:39:00.002-04:00

For the first time in four years, George Washington is not in the N.C.A.A. Tournament. This means a return to objectivity in this space.

Let’s get onto it:

East Region

Most overseeded team: (6) Oklahoma.

Most underseeded team: (7) Butler.

Best first-round game: (4) Washington State vs. (13) Winthrop.

Most outstanding player: Tyler Hansbrough, North Carolina.

Best player you’ve never heard of: Pat Calathas, Saint Joseph’s.

Best freshman: Eric Gordon, Indiana.

Best name: Longar Longar, Oklahoma.

First-round winners (Italics denote upset): (1) North Carolina, (8) Indiana, (5) Notre Dame, (4) Washington State, (11) Saint Joseph’s, (3) Louisville, (7) Butler, (2) Tennessee.

Sweet Sixteen: North Carolina, Notre Dame, Louisville, Tennessee.

Elite Eight: North Carolina, Louisville

Final Four: North Carolina

Midwest Region

Rock, chalk, Jayhawk!

Most overseeded team: (2) Georgetown.

Most underseeded team: (15) Maryland-Baltimore County.

Best first-round game: (6) Southern California vs. (11) Kansas State.

Most outstanding player: Michael Beasley, Kansas State.

Best player you’ve never heard of: Stephen Curry, Davidson (though, by now, you should have heard of him).

Best freshman: Beasley.

Best name: Ken Bone, Portland State (head coach)

First-round winners: (1) Kansas, (8) Nevada-Las Vegas, (12) Villanova, (4) Vanderbilt, (6) Southern California, (3) Wisconsin, (10) Davidson, (2) Georgetown.

Sweet Sixteen: Kansas, Vanderbilt, Southern California, Georgetown.

Elite Eight: Kansas, Southern California.

Final Four: Kansas.

South Region

Time to pick someone other than a one-seed.

Most overseeded team: (9) Oregon.

Most underseeded team: (4) Pittsburgh.

Best first-round game: (7) Miami, Fla. Vs. (10) St. Mary’s, Calif.

Most outstanding player: D. J. Augustin, Texas.

Best player you’ve never heard of: Dionte Christmas, Temple.

Best freshman: Derrick Rose, Memphis.

Best name: Da’Veed Dildy, Stanford.

First-round winners: (1) Memphis, (8) Mississippi State, (5) Michigan State, (4) Pittsburgh, (6) Marquette, (3) Stanford, (10) St. Mary’s, Calif., (2) Texas.

Sweet Sixteen: Memphis, Pittsburgh, Marquette, Texas.

Elite Eight: Pittsburgh, Texas.

Final Four: Texas.

West Region

A cake-walk for the Bruins.

Most overseeded team: (10) Arizona.

Most underseeded team: (13) San Diego.

Best first-round game: (3) Xavier vs. (14) Georgia.

Most outstanding player: Joe Alexander, West Virginia.

Best player you’ve never heard of: Courtney Lee, Western Kentucky.

Best freshman: Kevin Love, California-Los Angeles.

Best name: Gyno Pomare, San Diego.

First-round winners: (1) California-Los Angeles, (9) Texas A&M, (5) Drake, (4) Connecticut, (11) Baylor, (3) Xavier, (7) West Virginia, (2) Duke.

Sweet Sixteen: California-Los Angeles, Drake, Xavier, Duke.

Elite Eight: California-Los Angeles, Xavier.

Final Four: California-Los Angeles.

Final Four

Championship Game: California-Los Angeles over Kansas.

The Cauldren of Religion, Politics, and Race

2008-03-17T22:04:00.002-04:00

At the start of the primary season, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was positioned as a post-racial candidate: the product of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, Obama eschewed any rhetoric of racial politics, except the notion of uniting Americans of all creeds and colors.

Recently unearthed sermons, however from the former pastor of his Chicago church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, have brought these issues to the fore, to Obama’s detriment.

Over the past week, crude video clips of Rev. Wright suggesting that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were a case of “America’s chickens [coming] home to roost,” or that black Americans should sing “God Damn America” rather than “God Bless America” as a result of their treatment by the government have dogged Obama, undermining his message of hope and unity by broadcasting controversial and inflammatory messages.

“I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue,” Obama said Friday, saying that he’d never heard any of them personally.

Still, distancing himself from Wright is going to be difficult for Obama. He considered Wright a spiritual advisor. Wright married Obama and his wife, and he presided over the baptisms of their two daughters. The title of Obama’s most recent book, The Audacity of Hope, was lifted from one of Wright’s sermons.

In fact, over a year ago, Sen. Obama’s campaign had already recognized the need for distance from the pastor. In February 2007, as Obama was announcing his candidacy, he disinvited Wright from speaking at that event. Wright told the New York Times then that Obama told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons… It’s best for you not to be out there in public.”

Rev. Wright is hardly the only religious figure in America to take political positions. Pat Robertson endorses presidential candidates. Catholic bishops publicly announce that they intend to deny the Eucharist to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights.

Rev. Wright’s comments, of course, come not only from a religious and political background, but also from a racial one. If religion and politics are a combustible combination, adding race to the fix only throws gasoline on the fire.

One of the national T.V. networks interviewed a female churchgoer at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side about Rev. Wright’s “controversial” statements. “That’s not controversial,” the woman said. “That’s called being black in America.”

To a great extent, she is right. Your humble diarist is far from qualified to speak to what it’s like to be Black in America, and that is exactly the point. And while Rev. Wright is at times overtly critical of the U.S., he does not seem to thrive in the victimhood of all African-Americans, as do some well-known black religious figures.

From Saturday’s New York Times:

The minister’s defenders say the statements that have been playing this week on television are outliers, taken out of context, and that he is not anti-white. The United Church of Christ, the denomination of the Chicago church, is overwhelmingly white. And Mr. Wright is an equal opportunity critic, often delivering scorching lectures about black society, telling audiences to improve their education and work ethic.

“I can remember Jeremiah saying in probably half his sermons: Everyone who’s your color ain’t your kind,” Richard Sewell, a church member, said in an interview last year.

It is disquieting to see conservative whites on talk radio attack Wright as a “race-baiter” without acknowledging his equal criticism of the black community, in addition to the shameful truths at the basis of some of his arguments.

Furthermore, isn’t it unfair to hold Sen. Obama responsible for every position his pastor takes? Massachusetts Democrats don’t question Sen. Ted Kennedy’s commitment to protecting abortion rights because he is a Catholic. President Bush certainly does not fall in line with the United Methodist Church on the issue of capital punishment.

Last week, Obama compared Wright to “a crazy uncle” with whom he doesn’t always agree. Such an analogy was regrettable. Obama should have immediately made clear that he does not intend, necessarily, to accept spiritual guidance and foreign policy advice, for instance, from the same source. Americans have no doubt seen for more than seven years what a foreign policy supposedly inspired from the divine has wrought.

It is clear, in his writings and speeches, that Obama does not view America and the world through the same lens Wright does. The closing line in The Audacity of Hope reads, “My heart is filled with love for this country.” Suggesting that Obama is a closet anti-American plays upon our ugliest racial prejudices, making white voters, even those inclined to support Obama, that he is one of “them,” and not one of “us.” Obama’s argument, which he is expected to make in a speech about race and the Wright controversy tomorrow in Philadelphia, is that there is only “us”: Americans.

Throughout his campaign, Obama has positioned himself as post-partisan and post-racial. Those ideas—or ideals—comprise the very essence of his campaign. Sen. Obama has pointed to the tactics of Sen. Clinton and her camp, while fighting for many of the same policy goals, as the dangerous, destructive brand of politics from which America ought to rid herself. Wright’s rhetoric on race and society, though Obama may regard it as well-meaning, should serve as a similar model.

The reason why Obama must distance himself from Wright and his sermons in his speech tomorrow is not just because they are controversial or wrong, necessarily, but because they challenge his forward-thinking campaign of optimism. For Obama to win, he must convince Americans that he is the same as they are, but his campaign is different. Not the other way around.

Let the Madness Begin

2008-03-15T23:59:00.001-04:00

NEW YORK – Playing in their fourth game in four days (Georgia Bulldogs: “Try two games in one day!”), Pittsburgh manhandled Georgetown, out-rebounding the Hoyas, 41-29, en route to a 74-65 victory in the Big East Championship Game here tonight at Madison Square Garden, as March Madness began in earnest.

DeJuan Blair, a Pittsburgh freshman listed at 6’7”, 265 pounds, gathered ten rebounds, including seven offensive boards, despite being limited to 21 minutes because of foul trouble. Blair outmuscled the seven-foot-two-inch Georgetown All-American senior, Roy Hibbert, all night long.

“[Blair] is a big body down low, really active,” Georgetown senior guard Jonathan Wallace told the Washington Post. “We were stopping their initial sets and plays, but second-chance points is [sic] what kept them ahead.”

Of Pitt’s 41 rebounds, 19 came on the offensive glass. They thrived in a grueling, physical game, despite having played each of past three nights, and despite going with only a seven-man rotation tonight.

“We had to outrebound them,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said in the post-game press conference. “We talked about it. For whatever reason, I didn’t think we were playing as aggressive as we needed to, say, ten games ago. And I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was the numbers, maybe it was the practices that we were unable to do. But when we got all our guys back and we were able to get back into it and do the things we do, we have just been more physical, more aggressive, and just more like we normally are; I mean, more like Pitt.”

The Panthers captured the Big East’s automatic bid to the N.C.A.A. Tournament, but the Hoyas are—rightly—seen as the conference’s best chance to make hay in the Big Dance. First, they have to put this loss quickly in their rear-view mirrors.

“We’re not a group that feels sorry for ourselves,” Georgetown head coach John Thompson III told the Post. “We have to grow. We have to get better. As I said all year, we have to be better next week than we are this week. So you don’t want to ruin the third part of the year because you’re feeling sorry for yourself about losing tonight. We have to move on.”

Move on they shall, likely as a two- or three-seed in the Tournament. The Big East seems likely to earn seven bids: Pitt, Georgetown, Louisville, Connecticut, Marquette, West Virginia, and Notre Dame. Villanova—and, to a lesser degree, Syracuse—will likely be among the last teams left out when the brackets are released tomorrow evening.

Despite the ease with which Pittsburgh pushed Georgetown around, the national landscape is open enough to give any of ten teams a real chance to cut down the nets in San Antonio. No. 1 North Carolina barely survived Virginia Tech yesterday in the A.C.C. Tournament. No. 2 Memphis was unchallenged by a particularly weak Conference U.S.A. this year (An ironic logo on the court during yesterday’s championship game read: “Conference U.S.A.: Where Competition Lives.”). No. 3 California-Los Angeles was bailed out by the officials twice last week, allowing them narrowly to defeat No. 11 Stanford and unranked Cal, respectively, at home. No. 4 Tennessee lost yesterday in a chaotic Southeastern Conference tournament.

Tennessee will likely move down to a two-seed, with the winner of the Big 12 Conference championship tomorrow (either No. 5 Kansas or No. 6 Texas) taking their place. No. 7 Wisconsin can clinch a two-seed with a win in the Big 10 Championship over unranked Illinois (and they may also be a two-seed even if they lose, since there is so little time between the game and time at which the brackets are released that the committee may not be able to change the draw).

Pittsburgh may be peaking at the right time, but that is no guarantee of N.C.A.A. Tournament success. Syracuse, three years ago, became the first team to win four in four days, and they earned a five-seed. But they were knocked out in the first-round of the N.C.A.A.s.

A wonderful month has begun.

Rice’s Dismissal Spoils Senior Night at G.W.

2008-03-08T14:00:00.000-05:00

Tonight at Smith Center in the Foggy Bottom section of Washington is the final home-game of a forgettable 2007-08 season for the George Washington University Colonials. It is also Senior Night, an evening to celebrate those players who dedicated four years of their lives to their friends, families, teammates, classmates, and themselves.

Yet tonight won’t really be a celebration, because G.W.’s only scholarship senior won’t be there. In order to tell this story, let’s go back, as Bruce Springsteen would say, to the streets of Philadelphia.

At Strawberry Mansion High School, a stocky guard named Maureece Rice broke the city’s all-time scoring record held for 48 years by the great Wilt Chamberlain. Before Chamberlain, the record was held by Tom Gola.

Both Chamberlain and Gola were listed by ESPN recently as two of the top-25 college basketball players of all time, while Rice was kicked off his college team with only two games remaining in his career, the ultimate disappointment in a lost season for Rice and G.W.

George Washington head coach Karl Hobbs did not elaborate Thursday on why Rice had been dismissed from the squad. He had been suspended twice already this season, each time for one game (on Nov. 24, at Maryland-Baltimore County, and on Dec. 23, against Longwood), for unspecified violations of team rules. He reportedly has left the school and returned home to Philly.

Even when he was on the court this year, he was not the player that Hobbs and G.W. had seen in the past. Rice and the Colonials qualified for the N.C.A.A. Tournament in each of his first three seasons. As a sophomore during G.W.’s historic 27-3 season, Rice was named Atlantic 10 Sixth Man of the Year, averaging 12.6 points-per-game. Last year, as a junior, he led the team in scoring, tallying 16.2 points-per-game. In addition, he was named Most Outstanding Player of the A-10 Tournament, as the Colonials swept their way to an automatic N.C.A.A. bid.

This season, Rice averaged 9.2 points-per-game, though some of his struggles could be attributed to his assumption of the point-guard position following a season-ending knee injury to sophomore Travis King in the Colonials’ second game. Still, it was clear that Rice’s struggles encompassed both on- and off-the court issues.

Rice’s entire G.W. career was clouded in controversy, from the very beginning. Prior to his senior year of high school, it was claimed that he abruptly left an Adidas summer camp over complaints about his selfishness on the court. After four years at Strawberry Mansion, Rice found himself academically-ineligible for N.C.A.A. play, so he enrolled at Lutheran Christian Academy, also in Philadelphia. Lutheran was later revealed, in 2006, to be a so-called “diploma-mill,” by the New York Times and the Washington Post, as the entire institution seemed to consist of little more than a basketball team.

Then-G.W. president Stephen Joel Trachtenberg told the Times that he was “embarrassed” by the story, and it certainly cast a pall over the Colonials’ record-setting season. G.W. had two players from Lutheran: Rice, and Omar Williams, a senior in 2006, and the highest-ranked recruit of Hobbs’ first full recruiting class at G.W. While the circumstances surrounding Lutheran proved to be embarrassing for the school, both Williams and Rice had been success-stories to that point, both athletically and academically.

For Williams, G.W. was the impetus of his peripeteia; he graduated that spring with a degree in sociology. With Maureece Rice’s dismissal Thursday, it seems that the opportunities that George Washington presented him, both on- and off-the-court, may be wasted.

In a 2002 article on Rice in Philadelphia Magazine, his mother, Debra Rice, said that, while she supported his goal of becoming a professional basketball player, she really wanted to see him earn his college degree. He likely will not earn that degree, at least this year at George Washington. While it is not publicly known what Rice did to warrant his dismissal, it is nonetheless sad to see a young man seemingly fritter away four years’ worth of full scholarships and appearances on three N.C.A.A. Tournament teams.

Forty-eight hours ago, George Washington was planning to honor Rice, presenting he and his family with a framed jersey as a keepsake of his four years here. But, tonight, his name won’t be called, no bouquet of flowers for his mother. He won’t even be in the building. He also likely won’t be in the very same building two months from now, as the dean of his college reads aloud the names of each member of the 2008 graduating class.

Questions will linger about Rice’s initial recruitment, or the athletic department’s handling of him during his time at G.W., but, tonight, it will be nothing but sad and unfortunate. No, Rice hasn’t thrown his life away yet; he’s only 24-years-old. But it shows that he still has much to learn.

Rice’s father, Curtis Toomer, tried to teach him these lessons in high school.

“I tell him, ‘You have to be aware of everything you do,’” Toomer told Philadelphia Magazine in 2002. “You have to set a good example. Because you never know what little five-year-old kid is watching, saying, ‘Hey, that’s Maureece Rice. I want to be just like him.’”

Clinton Stems the Obama Tide, But the Math Is Still Against Her

2008-03-05T16:24:00.001-05:00

Having lost 11 consecutive contests between February 6 and last night, Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) gained some much-needed momentum yesterday by winning Democratic primaries in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island. Her tactics, mainly consisting of tearing down her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), were unquestionably effective.

She attacked Obama on national security, asserting that she was the candidate voters wanted to answer the phone in the White House residence at three o’clock in the morning. She attacked Obama by raising the name of Antonin (Tony) Rezko, an Obama contributor whose trial on federal corruption charges begins Monday in Chicago (Obama, incidentally, has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and he has donated all of Rezko’s contributions to his campaign to charity). She attacked Obama on trade, suggesting that his criticism of the North-American Free-Trade Agreement was posturing, and he did not side with those in Ohio, in particular, who had been adversely affected by free-trade.

While both candidates’ protectionist pandering was very unsettling to your humble diarist, Clinton’s attacks on Obama on this issue served to knock him off the pedestal upon which he had been placed. By suggesting that he was telling Ohioans one thing—N.A.F.T.A. ought to be renegotiated—and the Canadians another, Obama became just another politician who will say almost anything to get elected.

The Obama campaign half-heartedly denied that they reached out to the Canadians, and the senator likely has reservations about N.A.F.T.A. and other free-trade agreements with regard to labor and environmental standards. Still, it was badly mishandled, and it helped deflect attention from the fact that Sen. Clinton ‘s criticisms of N.A.F.T.A.—an agreement she said four years ago was “on balance” a positive one—are a fairly recent phenomenon, mainly confined to the Rust Belt.

Clinton’s kitchen-sink strategy wasn’t quite a full-blown fuselage of attacks, but it was close, and it clearly worked. She reclaimed key constituencies: the less-educated, white women, the elderly, and Latinos. Since Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, these voters had been bleeding over to Obama, but she reclaimed them yesterday in Ohio and Texas, either by questioning Obama’s credentials, or playing to the voters’ fears, depending on which side of this race one falls.

Obama had hoped to deliver a knockout-blow to New York’s junior Senator, but, instead, her victories have ensured that this campaign is going to last at least six more weeks, when, on April 22, Pennsylvania will hold its primary. Still, even with a victory in Pennsylvania, a state who demographics and election rules seem to favor her, Clinton will almost certainly find herself behind in pledged delegates.

According to today’s Washington Post:

By some calculations, Clinton would need to win more than 60 percent of the vote in the dozen contests remaining between now and June 7 to catch Obama in pledged delegates—a steep challenge given that, so far, she has won that much in only one state, her onetime adopted home of Arkansas. Even in New York, where she is a sitting senator, she won 57 percent of the vote. She won 55 percent in Michigan, where Obama was not even on the ballot.

Even in Texas, where she narrowly won the primary last night, she could actually lose in the delegate count as a result of apportionment rules and the results of a simultaneous caucus held last night (final results of which were not yet available at the time this was published).

Obama, however, also finds himself in a precarious situation. In one night, he seems to have lost the momentum he gained in winning 11 straight contests (12 if you count Vermont, which he won last night). One may wonder, as did Bill Kristol last night on Fox News Channel, if Obama has “peaked.”

In a way, Clinton’s wins last night may force the party elders who make up the superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention to intervene to avoid a protracted, potentially destructive campaign. Some worry that the Clintons’ attacks will only become sharper, and they wish to avoid the sort of scorched-earth race that would only serve to strengthen the position of John McCain and the Republicans in November. NBC News’ Tim Russert made an analogy this morning that compared this race with the notion of mutually-assured destruction during the Cold War; only, the Clintons actually seem willing to go down that path, even if both candidates emerge from the nominating process in tatters.

Over 300 superdelegates, a little less than half of the superdelegate total, remain uncommitted. Clinton leads Obama among superdelegates, but his lead among pledged delegates is significantly larger than hers among superdelegates. (You, too, can play along with the delegate count on this nifty page from Forbes.) According to the Obama campaign, Clinton gained but four net delegates last night.

Having gained momentum but little in the delegate count, Clinton not only has a new raison d’être for her campaign, but it also allows her to reiterate her calls for delegates from Michigan and Florida to be seated at the convention, despite both campaigns agreeing that they would not be seated. It is unlikely that the party would allow the Clinton campaign to change the rules in the middle of the game. Without those delegates, it seems out of the realm of possibility for her to win more elected delegates than Sen. Obama, and many superdelegates are going to be unwilling to buck the will of the voters.

Yes, in winning Texas and Ohio, Clinton shows again that she can win big states. But Obama has won more states and more delegates, and, short of completely destroying Obama or tarnishing the entire process, there seems to be little Clinton can do about that.

Of Messiahship and Whisper Campaigns

2008-03-03T11:20:00.002-05:00

For every moment that the cult-of-personality surrounding Barack Obama’s presidential campaign makes one uncomfortable, his indefatigable opponent, Hillary Clinton, manages to stoop so low that any principled person would find it nearly impossible to support her.

Perhaps you agree with Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) that the government ought to require every citizen to enroll in a medical-care plan. Perhaps you feel that Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) is showing his naïveté when he suggests that the U.S. should meet with foreign heads of state hostile to this country. Perhaps you even feel that Sen. Clinton was justified in supporting the war in Iraq, given what was known at the time, and Sen. Obama’s criticism is convenient given hindsight. Perhaps you also somehow believe that Sen. Clinton is infinitely more experienced than Sen. Obama; that “experience,” by some means, comes from geographic proximity from the White House. (In which case, Sonny, the homeless guy who lives in Lafayette Park, would be the perfect running-mate!)

Still, even if you support Sen. Clinton on her policy merits, it is difficult to reconcile oneself with the way in which she has undertaken her campaign for the Democratic nomination. In Nevada, her campaign launched 30-second robocalls that used the phrase “Barack Hussein Obama” four times; this was seen as part of a larger whisper campaign to insinuate that Obama is a Muslim. In South Carolina, Sen. Clinton’s husband, President Clinton, tried to link Obama with former candidates Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who were seen as racially divisive. Sen. Clinton also announced that she would seek to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida, despite the Democratic National Committee’s decision—with which each campaign publicly agreed—to disqualify those delegates as punishment for those states moving their primaries to earlier dates. Clinton won both states, but Obama wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan. In California, leading up to its Super Tuesday primary, controversial push-polls were used on her behalf.

Since that time, Obama has captured 11 consecutive contests, and the anxiety of the Clinton campaign in advance of tomorrow’s primaries in Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Rhode Island has been demonstrated by the myriad tactics she has employed over the past few weeks. Two days after stating in a debate that she was “honored” to run against Sen. Obama, she railed against him in an Ohio event for an Obama mailing about health-care that she felt distorted her positions, raising her voice to say, “Shame on you, Barack Obama.”

Most observers agree that, if Obama captures both Ohio and Texas, the pressure for Clinton to end her campaign will be palpable in Democratic circles. Most polls show a slight Clinton lead in Ohio and a slight Obama lead in Texas. Obama will likely win Vermont, and Clinton seems to have the edge in Rhode Island. Still, even if Clinton wins both big-prize states tomorrow, most predict she will only gain as many as ten net delegates on the day, a drop in the bucket as she tries to make up a deficit of around 150 elected delegates.

Hence Clinton’s desperation. Last week, it was reported that Clinton would employ a “kitchen-sink” strategy against Obama, trying to hit him on multiple levels—some of which were legitimate, but others have not been completely above-board. On Friday, the Clinton campaign debuted an ad that asked Americans which candidate they trusted in an international crisis.

“It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing. Something’s happened in the world,” a deep-voiced narrator intones, as children sleep in the dark. “Your vote will decide who answers the call. Whether it’s someone who already knows the world's leaders, knows the military. Someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?” Clinton, answering a phone, says she approves the ad.

Obama quickly responded that Clinton already had her “red-phone” moment, and she voted to allow President Bush to commence the war in Iraq. The ad seems to have little, if any, positive impact for Clinton.

So the Clinton campaign seems to have resorted to what worked in Nevada: the whisper campaign that Sen. Obama is a Muslim. Last week, the campaign allegedly leaked a photo of Obama wearing West African clothing on a Senate trip in 2006; it is customary for visiting politicians on goodwill trips to dress in native garb. Talk linking Obama with Islam, however, had hit such a crescendo that Obama was forced to discuss his faith at an event yesterday in Toledo, Ohio.

According to the New York Post:

“I am a devout Christian,” he told voters in this key state.

“I pray to Jesus every night and try to go to church as much as I can.”

In some of his strongest comments to date, Obama, in response to a question about his religious beliefs, said he wanted to put an end to “so much confusion [that has been] deliberately perpetrated.”

Last night, on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” Clinton refuted the assertion that Obama is a Muslim. Kind of.

It was reminiscent of a scene from the movie “Caddyshack”—the only scene in which Bill Murray’s slow-witted assistant greenskeeper encounters the eccentric, wealthy country-club member played by Chevy Chase.

“People say, you know, that I’m an idiot or something because all I do is cut lawns for a living,” Murray says.

“People don’t say that about you… as far as you know.”

Look: the blind, fervent devotion that Obama’s supporters show is at times uncomfortable for your humble diarist. It is difficult to see people at these rallies fainting. It reminds one of a brand of demagoguery that history has shown to be dangerous. But listen to Obama’s words. Read his books. The support he has engendered seems to have less to do with him and more to do with Americans’ desire to change our political discourse, in addition to our policies.

Then take a look at the tactics being employed by his opponent. Watch her campaign play to the fears of average Americans that Obama attended an Islamist madrassa, or that he was sworn in as a senator on the Koran. Watch her try to subvert rules to which she previously agreed.

Whether Obama can deliver on the hopes of a post-racial, post-partisan politics is up for debate, but a repudiation of Sen. Clinton’s tactics in the campaign by voters in the four states going to the polls tomorrow would be a good start.

Amid P.E.D. Scandals, Time for Selig to Go

2008-02-14T23:59:00.002-05:00

Between Congressional hearings yesterday on Capitol Hill and the disclosure today that federal prosecutors have obtained a failed drug test from Barry Bonds following the 2000 season, it has become unmistakably clear that baseball’s steroid problem is not going away any time soon.

[That disclosure, while already revealed in the original indictment in U.S. v. Bonds, was actually preceded by a report that Bonds failed a drug test in 2001, immediately following his record-setting, 73-home-run season. That erroneous report was a result of a typographical error. Still, it proves the point that this story dominates baseball coverage in this time. In short, your humble diarist references the copy of Game of Shadows on his desk more often than his dictionary.]

Congress and the Justice Department are—rightly or wrongly—filling a leadership vacuum left by the commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig, against whom the following charge must be made: in perpetuity, the time in baseball from 1995-2005 will not only be known as “The Steroid Era.” Rather, it will be known as “The Steroid Era led by Bud Selig.”

Selig points to the collective-bargaining process as an excuse for his failure to prohibit and test for steroids. The fact is, however, that when push came to shove over the past few years, every aspect of his proposed testing regime has been adopted. He and his fellow owners could have used their capital to force stricter testing.

Instead, they covered their mouths and held their other hands over their noses. It makes one wonder how, with both hands occupied, they managed to collect all of the money they made as a result.

Like in 1997, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa enthralled the nation with each chemically-enhanced swing of the bat. Or in 2001, when Bonds shattered McGwire’s record by swatting 73 home runs in a season.

Bonds now holds the game’s single-season and career home-run records, but, rather than reporting for spring training this month, he is defending himself in federal court against a perjury indictment. Roger Clemens was doing roughly the same thing in a different venue yesterday, appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The greatest hitter and the greatest pitcher of this generation: disgraced. The game of baseball: disgraced. Under whose watch?

Fair or not, Bud Selig won’t be judged by his introduction of the wild card (good), or interleague play (not terrible), or the World Baseball Classic (too early to judge). He won’t be graded based on the expansion of baseball’s fan base, either, because it was done under false pretenses—mammoth home runs and super-sized sluggers that cooked up in a laboratory.

Selig claims he knew very little about the drug culture that was pervasive in Major-League clubhouses over the past decade. Whether that’s true is ultimately irrelevant. If Selig knew and did nothing, he made a deal with devil for which the sport is still repaying in its credibility. If he didn’t know, his willful blindness was almost more egregious.

Selig recently signed a three-year contract extension that won’t expire until after the 2012 season. Until he is gone, it is impossible for baseball to move past this distasteful period, and the government will continue to do what Selig couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do.

“Someone Isn’t Telling the Truth”

2008-02-13T21:31:00.009-05:00

Brian McNamee has lied many times during his sordid life, most of which came to the fore today in hearings on Capitol Hill regarding steroids in baseball. In accusing his former client, Roger Clemens, of using performance-enhancing drugs, McNamee had less reason to lie than did the accused.

Of the two principals seated at the rectangular table in the hearing room at the Rayburn House Office Building, McNamee and Clemens, one lied today. They lied in press conferences, in depositions to attorneys for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and before the committee assembled today. That committee sought to determine which individual was untruthful.

“If Mr. McNamee is lying,” chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said today during his opening statement, “then he has acted inexcusably, and has made Mr. Clemens an innocent victim. If Mr. Clemens isn’t telling the truth, then he has acted shamefully, and has smeared Mr. McNamee. I don’t think there’s anything in between.”

Just because there isn’t anything in between doesn’t mean that today’s hearing brought the public any closer to the truth, though both McNamee and Clemens had their respective credibility challenged effectively and aggressively during a surreal hearing that featured a handful of jaw-dropping, did-that-just-really-happen moments.

Waxman also added in his opening statement (pg. 5):

Mr. Clemens has visited with many Committee members personally in the last few days. One point he and his attorneys have made is that it would make no sense for him to testify under oath if he actually used steroids. In judging his credibility, the risk that he takes by testifying today needs to be taken into account.

It is also relevant that Mr. Clemens is credible and convincing in person. I’m also aware of the tremendous amount of good that Mr. Clemens has done through the Roger Clemens Foundation, and I thank you for helping so many children.

But it is also true that as we’ve moved forward in our investigation, we have found conflicts and inconsistencies in Mr. Clemens’ account. During his deposition, he made statements that we know are untrue. And he made them with the same earnestness that many of the Committee members observed in person when he visited your offices.

In other areas, his statements are contradicted by other credible witnesses or are simply implausible.

Waxman cited the deposition of Andy Pettitte, Clemens’ teammate for the past nine seasons with both the New York Yankees and Houston Astros. Pettitte claimed that Clemens told him in 1999 that he had used HGH (pp. 20-21):

Q. What did you ever talk to Clemens about with respect to HGH?

A. I remember a conversation in 1999 where Roger had told me that he had taken HGH.

Q. Where were you when that conversation happened?

A. I believe we were at his house.

Q. And what did he tell you?

A. That’s really all I can really remember, you know, about it. I can't remember specifics about the conversation. That’s just, you know—that’s really all I can remember about the whole conversation.

Q. Were you surprised to hear that?

A. No. Not really because I had never—you know, I’ve—you know, I don’t think I’d ever heard of it before at that time. So I think it was just like—it kind of just maybe made me curious, you know.

Clemens denied that conversation took place in his deposition (p. 69).

Q. Have you ever had a discussion with Andy Pettitte about anabolic steroids?

A. I have not. Again, I don’t—I have not talked to Andy about growth hormones or steroids.

Q. Not about human-growth hormone either?

A. Again, just in general, if there would have been the topic of the day or, you know, a conversation about it. But nothing in detail.

After Waxman and the ranking Republican, Tom Davis (Va.), gave their opening statements, Clemens gave his:

I appreciate the opportunity to tell this Committee and the public—under oath—what I have been saying all along: I have never used steroids, human-growth hormone, or any other type of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. I think these types of drugs should play no role in athletics at any level, and I fully support Sen. Mitchell’s conclusions that steroids have no place in baseball. However, I take great issue with the report’s allegation that I used these substances. Let me be clear again: I did not.

McNamee asserted, in his opening statement (pg. 1), that his prior statements to federal prosecutors, Sen. Mitchell, and congressional investigators with regard to Clemens were true:

I have no reason to lie, and every reason not to. If I do lie, I will be prosecuted. I was never promised any special treatment or consideration for fingering star players. I was never coerced to provide information against anyone. All that I was ever told was to tell the truth to the best of my ability, and that is what I have done. I told the investigators that I injected three people, two of whom, I believe, confirm my account. The third is sitting at this table.

The floor was then opened up for representatives to ask questions of the witnesses, and the first interlocutor, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) set the tone for the hearing:

Q. I’m going to ask you a few questions, Mr. Clemens, and I first want to make sure that you’re very clear: You understand that you’re under oath, is that correct?

A. That’s correct, Mr. Cummings.

Q. And you know what that means. Is that correct?

A. That’s correct.

Cummings quickly got the most glaring issue with Clemens’ denials:

Q. Now Mr. Clemens, I want to ask you just one thing. In his deposition, Mr. Pettitte told the committee that he had a conversation with you in 1999 or 2000 in which you admitted that you used human-growth hormones. Is this true?

A. It is not.

Q. So you did not tell Mr. Pettitte that you used human-growth hormone?

A. I did not.

Q. And—but at the same time, you just said that he’s a very honest fellow. Is that right?

A. I believe Andy to be a very honest fellow, yes.

Q. Very well. Let’s continue. In his deposition, Mr. Pettitte was honest and forthcoming with the committee. He told us things that were embarrassing, that we had no way of knowing, except through his own testimony.

First, he confirmed that Mr. McNamee injected him with HGH in 2002, which is in the Mitchell report. You understand that, right?

A. I do.

Q. Then he told us that he injected himself again in 2004. We did not know about the 2004 injection, but he volunteered that information because he wanted the committee to know the entire truth.

It was hard for Mr. Pettitte to tell the committee about the 2004 injections. The circumstances, which he described in length, were exceptionally personal and embarrassing.

But it was even harder for him to talk about you, Mr. Clemens. He’s friends with both you and Mr. McNamee, and he felt caught in the middle.

During his deposition, he was asked how he would resolve the conflict between two friends. Here is what he said, and I quote: “I have to tell you all the truth. And one day, I have to give an account to God, and not to nobody else, of what I’ve done in my life. And that’s why I’ve said and shared the stuff with you all that I would not like to share with you all,” end of quote.

Now, Mr. Clemens, I'm reminding you that you are under oath. Mr. Clemens, do you think Mr. Pettitte was lying when he told the committee that you admitted using human-growth hormones?

A. Mr. Congressman, Andy Pettitte is my friend. He will be my—he was my friend before this. He will be my friend after this. And, again, I think Andy has misheard.

Q. I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.

A. I believe Andy has misheard, Mr. Congressman, on his comments about myself using HGH, which never happened. The conversation that I can recall that I had with Andy Pettitte was at my house in Houston, while we were working out, and I expressed to him about a T.V. show, something that I’ve heard about three older men that were using HGH and getting back their quality of life from that. Those are the conversations that I can remember.

Andy and I’s friendship and closeness was such that, first of all, when I learned, when he was—when he said that he used HGH, I was shocked. I had no idea.

When I just heard your statement and Andy's statement about that he also injected himself, I was shocked. I had no idea that Andy Pettitte had used HGH.

My problem with what Andy says, and why I think he misremembers is that if Andy Pettitte knew that I had used HGH or I had told Andy Pettitte that I had used HGH before he would use the HGH, what have you, he would have come to me and asked me about it. That’s how close our relationship was.

And then, when he did use it, I’m sure he would have told me that he used it. And I say that for the fact that we also used a product called Hydroxycut and ThermaCore. It had ephedra in it, from what I understand to be a natural tree root. I believe ephedra was banned at some -- 2004, something of that nature. A player in Baltimore passed away because of it.

Andy and I talked openly about this product, and so there’s no question in my mind that we would have talked—if he knew that I had tried or done HGH, which I did not, he would have come to me to ask me those questions.

Q. Well, let’s continue. In the deposition, we wanted to make absolutely sure, because we knew the significance of this, that Mr. Pettitte had a clear recollection.

And let me read another excerpt from the deposition. And this was a question to Mr. Pettitte.

“‘You recollect a conversation with Mr. Clemens. Your recollection is that he said he was taking human growth hormone.’ Answer, ‘Yes.’

‘And you have no doubt about that recollection?’ ‘I mean, no, he told me that.’”

Now, Mr. Clemens, you know Mr. Pettitte well. You just, again, described your relationship. You described him as a close friend in your deposition.

Would he tell the Congress that one of his close friends was taking an illegal performance-enhancing drug if there were any doubt in his mind about the truth of what he was saying?

A. Mr. Congressman, once again, I believe in my—I’m sorry?

Q. I just want you to just go ahead and answer that. Do you think he would do that?

A. I think he misremembers of our conversation.

Clemens seemed to be brooding, angry, and less than entirely coherent. Cummings asked direct and pointed questions that clearly rattled the seven-time Cy Young Award-winner.

McNamee also faced strong scrutiny, mainly from the minority (Republican) members of the committee. Rep. Dan Burton (Ind.) pointed out lies from McNamee’s past, vaguely alluding to a 2001 rape investigation in Florida in which the police believed that McNamee was not truthful, but they declined to file any charges. He also read from McNamee’s initial denial to the press that he was involved in the distribution or use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Burton, notorious during the 1990s for his seemingly-personal vendetta against President Clinton (one that featured an amusing story of a pumpkin-head effigy of Vincent Foster and a pistol), said, “This is really disgusting. You’re here as a sworn witness. You’re here to tell the truth. You’re here under oath, and yet we have lie after lie after lie after lie… I don’t know what to believe. I know one thing I don’t believe, and that’s you.”

Still, the day was most notable for the bizarre and far-fetched moments that occurred, one remarkable twist after another. From discussions of Clemens bleeding through the seat of his pants, to masses on his buttocks, to charges of tampering with a witness (a former nanny) who contradicted Clemens’ testimony, to the positively wacky story of Clemens’ wife being injected by McNamee with HGH (Roger Clemens asserts this occurred without his foreknowledge), it was just completely wacky.

What was also strange was how the committee members seemed to break along party lines on a seemingly non-partisan issue. On the whole, the Democratic members were much more likely to believe McNamee, whereas the G.O.P. was more skeptical of the allegations.

While the Republicans were vicious in their attacks on McNamee, he withstood them for the most part. While Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) repeatedly asserted, somewhat correctly but certainly argumentatively, that McNamee was “a drug dealer,” and Davis revealed that McNamee’s Ph.D. was from a “diploma mill,” McNamee was candid about his previous inconsistencies. It is unlikely that he will face legal jeopardy as a result of his testimony today.

Clemens, on the other hand, may. ABC News reported that as many as six F.B.I. agents attended the hearing, in addition to Jeff Novitzky, an I.R.S. agent responsible for indictments against Barry Bonds and sprinter Marion Jones. Bonds’ trial is scheduled for this spring; Jones has pleaded guilty to making false testimony to investigators. Should the committee choose to refer the case to the Justice Department, or should Justice choose to open an investigation, anyway, Clemens could face perjury charges.

Until today, it was a case of Clemens’ word against McNamee’s. That is what makes Pettitte’s statement so important, and so damning, to his former teammate. While the statements of McNamee and Pettitte may not be enough for a criminal charge to stick to Clemens, in the court of public opinion, the Rocket appears to be the one lying to Congress. More than three-fourths of respondents to an ESPN.com poll think Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs.

Rep. Cummings had a second opportunity to question, and hurt, Clemens towards the end of the hearing.

"I listen to you very carefully, and I take you at your word, and your word is that Andy Pettitte is an honest man, and his integrity is impeccable,” he told Clemens. “It’s hard to believe you, sir. I hate to say that. You’re one of my heroes. But it’s hard to believe you.”

New York Fetes Its Unlikely Champions

2008-02-05T17:37:00.000-05:00

NEW YORK – The 177th tickertape parade ever held here along the stretch of lower Broadway known as the Canyon of Heroes was the first ever to honor the New York Football Giants, and at least a million Giants fans, clad in blue, white, and red, erupted accordingly.

At 11 a.m., on the corner of Broadway and Wall Street, in the heart of this city’s world-famous Financial District, the bells of Trinity Church rang out. A priest emerged from the gothic building, adorned in a white robe and a yellow cape, and climbed atop a ladder to observe the festivities from above. In one hand, he clutched a censer; in the other, he held a Giants poster.

About halfway through the parade came the float for which all these Big Blue revelers had been waiting: the float containing Tom Coughlin, Michael Strahan, Eli Manning, and the Vince Lombardi Trophy. As the float passed Trinity Place, Strahan held the trophy, pumping his arms into the air, undoubtedly satisfied with his decision to forgo retirement and play this season.

The most popular chant today was that of “18-1! 18-1!,” mocking their vanquished opponents in Super Bowl XLII, the heretofore undefeated New England Patriots. Chants of “Boston sucks!” were also prevalent.

Toilet paper and tennis balls were tossed from one side of Broadway to the other as crowds gathered in the hours leading up to the parade. Fans on the west side of Broadway at Trinity Place banked balls off the structure at 100 Broadway and onto the east sidewalk. When the parade began, paper—some shredded, some whole letter-sized sheets—rained down from the windows of office buildings.

The parade traveled north to City Hall Park, where the Giants each received a key to the city.

“On behalf of the team, I just want to tell you all how proud we are to be able to bring a championship back to New York City,” Eli Manning told the crowd there. “I believe that we play football for the greatest city in the world, and all of you all deserve to have the greatest football team in the world. It’s been an honor to play with this group of guys, who have such character, such closeness amongst us, coaches who prepare us for every game. We’ve had our ups, we’ve had our downs, but everything we’ve gone through this season has made it so special.”

“Ups” are always higher, and “downs” always lower, in New York, but the Giants’ season was truly improbable. They began 0-2, rattled off six straight wins, and staggered inconsistently into the playoffs. Once there, however, they visited Tampa Bay, Dallas, and Green Bay, and won each game—a fact Michael Strahan, doing a Howard Dean imitation, emphasized at a ceremony at Giants Stadium in New Jersey this afternoon.

They then faced the 18-0 Patriots, with the Golden Boy quarterback and the genius coach, and emerged with a thrilling win rivaling the greatest Super Bowls of all-time. I’ve already delved into the unlikelihoods involved in this run, so I won’t repeat myself here, other than to make this point:

After the game Sunday night, Giants co-owner John Mara, whose late father, Wellington, epitomized class during his 45-year ownership of the team, addressed the crowd at the Super Bowl in Glendale, Ariz., and Giants fans watching around the world.

“It’s the greatest victory in the history of the franchise, without question,” he told Fox’s Terry Bradshaw, with his mother, and Wellington’s widow, Ann Mara standing proudly beside him. “And I just want to say to all you Giants fans who have supported us for more than 30 years at Giants Stadium, for all those years at Yankee Stadium, and some of you even back to the Polo Grounds: this is for you!”

Standing here in the Canyon of Heroes, I can say that this is for all these fans here. This is for the fan that remembers Mel Hein and Tuffy Leemans (G.W. alum); Frank Gifford, Charlie Conerly, and Joe Morrison; and Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor. This is also for the kids in the crowd—those playing hooky from school to see their heroes up close.

This is for me, too. It’s for my family, friends, and co-workers, people with whom I’ve watched games on Sundays and rehashed them on Mondays.

This is for a special friend who told me in August that the Giants were bound for the Super Bowl, when I, and most “experts,” thought they would have a losing record. It’s for her because, win or lose, she believes, and she dons that blue jersey each Sunday and screams and yells with all of her Giant heart.

Most of all, though, this is for my dad. It’s for the guy who went to those games at Yankee Stadium, and when he couldn’t, he drove to Connecticut or Eastern Long Island to watch the game broadcasts that were blacked-out in New York City. It’s for the man who dressed his son in a No. 56 Lawrence Taylor jersey at age three. It’s for a guy who sat silently from the point the Patriots scored until Eli and the Giants drove down the field for the win, and for the man who hugged his son when the clock finally read “0:00.”

This is for you, Dad, because this game, this parade, this championship—this is for all of us.

Perfection Denied, the Giants Are Most Improbable Champions

2008-02-03T23:59:00.000-05:00

Super Bowl XLII was going according to script when Tom Brady and the hitherto undefeated New England Patriots scored to take a 14-10 lead with 2:42 remaining in the fourth quarter. That was until Eli Manning and the Giants’ offense wrote a new ending.

Manning led New York 83 yards down the field in 2:07 for the Super Bowl-clinching touchdown, etching the final score, 17-14, in the Vince Lombardi Trophy with a 13-yard pass to Plaxico Burress, who had boldly guaranteed victory earlier in the week. In doing so, Manning captured the game’s Most Valuable Player award, following his brother Peyton, who won the award in last year’s Super Bowl. But, more importantly, Manning, his head coach, Tom Coughlin, and the Giants completed the most astounding run in playoff history, going from beleaguered, bickering underachievers to world champions in a matter of six weeks.

Manning had help on that final drive from David Tyree. Tyree spent most of the year strictly on the special-teams unit; he only caught four passes this season. His third—and final—catch of Super Bowl XLII, however, will be remembered by football fans for generations.

The Giants faced a third-and-five, on their own 44-yard-line, with only 1:15 remaining. Manning dropped back and was rushed. Implausibly, he escaped the clutches of at least three Patriots, ran right, stepped up, and hurled a pass towards the middle of the field. A sack, in that situation, would have lead to a low-percentage fourth-down conversion attempt.

“You try to get small and see if you can squeak through [the defenders],” Manning told the New York Times.

Tyree, covered by all-pro safety Rodney Harrison leapt at the 25-yard-line in front of the defender, caught the ball at the apex of his jump, and pinned it against his helmet with one hand as Harrison tried to knock it away. Eventually, he laid on the ground, clutching the ball between his hands just inches above the ground, stretching to the 24-yard-line.

“I tried to get the ball to him and it just floated,” said Manning. “[Tyree] just made an unbelievable catch. Jumping up, holding onto that ball, guys hanging all over him.”

“Some things just don’t make sense,” Tyree told the New York Daily News. “I guess you could put that catch up there with them.”

The whole game didn’t make sense, really. That these Giants, with this coach, and this quarterback, had felled the supposed greatest team ever assembled, the perfect football team with the genius coach and the ideal, heartthrob quarterback, Tom Brady.

But the Giants prevailed, and they, not New England, are champions of football. Just like Plaxico Burress predicted.

That statement—that the Giants would win, 23-17—had been ridiculed by the media, and by the Patriots themselves.

“We’re only going to score 17 points?” a surprised Brady said this past Wednesday. “Okay. Is Plax playing defense?”

If Brady was surprised by Burress’ prediction, he must have been even more surprised when the Giants’ defense held his record-setting offense under 17.

Big Blue sacked Brady five times—Justin Tuck had two sacks and a forced fumble near the end of the first half—and dropped him to the ground nine times. All five sacks came when New England spread the field with at least three receivers. Using intense pressure, the New York disrupted Brady’s timing, even when they weren’t hitting him.

“We knew, to win the game, we had to get on him early,” said Tuck. “We never let him get in an offensive rhythm. He made some errant throws and held the ball a little longer than he normally does. That’s a combination of pressure in his face and the secondary doing a great job of locking down all of the receivers.”

It was enough to hold the most prolific offense of all-time to only two scores. But the last of the two came near the end of the game, when the Giants defensive front seven appeared to be completely exhausted. Still, it gave the Patriots a four-point lead, and New England entrusted their defense to hold Manning and the New York offense.

Eli Manning and his offense—his team—believed, however, that the next 2:39 were their time.

“[Manning] was walking up and down the sideline, telling everyone, ‘This is what we play for. This drive. This moment,’” center Shaun O'Hara said. “He never wavered in his confidence, never wavered in his belief that we were going to go down and score.”

Eli had long been derided for his lack of fire and emotion, by the media and past teammates—or, in the case of Tiki Barber, a past teammate-turned media personality. But there was no question that the end of Super Bowl XLII was Eli Manning’s Moment.

“That’s the position you want to be in,” said Manning. “You want to have the ball in your hands, three minutes left, go down, you’ve got to score a touchdown. That’s where you want to be.”

Besides the catch by Tyree and the touchdown to Burress, Brandon Jacobs converted a fourth-and-one at the start of the drive, and Manning found wide receiver Steve Smith on a key third-and-11 the play preceding the touchdown to give the Giants a first down on the 13-yard-line.

“Those were the great plays and the plays you need to make to become world champions, and they did it,” said New England linebacker Tedy Bruschi.

The Pats got the ball back once more, but the Giants defense was stout. Brady mis-fired for Jabar Gaffney on first down, and, on second down, rookie defensive tackle Jay Alford charged up the middle and sacked Brady for a ten-yard loss. After incompletions on long passes down the sideline for Randy Moss on third- and fourth-downs, the Giants had won, and the Patriots had been beaten for the first time all season.

And now, in the football world dawning tomorrow, Eli Manning has outplayed Tom Brady, complete with a winning touchdown drive that channeled Joe Montana. And Tom Coughlin has out-coached the great Bill Belichick.

Belichick made some curious decisions, including a bizarre call to go for a conversion on fourth-and-13 at the Giants’ 31-yard-line with a 7-3 lead in the third quarter. The Giants’ defensive schemes (featuring pressure, pressure, pressure—particularly up the middle) flummoxed the Pats’ vaunted offense, and New England did not adjust. Don’t be surprised if Giants’ first-year defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo becomes the new head coach in Washington.

The Giants, meanwhile, seemed motivated to win, not just for their own glory, but to deny the Patriots their historic, perfect season. Some of the Giants felt that it was being treated as a fait accompli. After the game, Michael Strahan angrily referenced a particular statement made during Fox’s pre-game show by Howie Long in which Long suggested that the margin by which the Giants lost their last game with New England—a 38-35 Patriots win in Week 17—may have given Big Blue “a false sense of security.”

“We didn’t treat them like some Greek myth,” said Tyree.

The Giants seemed genuinely annoyed, not intimidated, by New England, and they took it out on the Pats. Even on the final drive, the Giants used the Patriots confidence (or arrogance) as motivation.

“And on our last drive,” Giants receiver Amani Toomer told the Boston Globe, “Richard Seymour was out there telling us, ‘Hey, guys, get ready to go home.’ What’s the sense in tempting fate like that?”

After all the talk of undefeated seasons, “19-0” t-shirts, commemorative books already on Amazon.com, and the arrogance of Belichick and his team, the parade Tuesday won’t be in Boston; it will be up Broadway, from the Battery to City Hall, in Lower Manhattan’s “Canyon of Heroes.” The Giants spoiled the perfect story and wrote one of their own.

In the moments after the game, Antonio Pierce told the media, “Maybe the book should be called ‘18-1: The World Champion New York Giants.’ Someone should write that book.”

Dr. Strangecoach or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Giants

2008-02-02T23:00:00.000-05:00

Dear reader, your humble diarist—if you were not aware of this already—is an idiot. Just a month ago, he wrote in this space that the Giants should play their starters in the season’s final game against New England because they had no chance in the playoffs, anyway.

He didn’t believe—despite people (okay, one person) who told him otherwise. For example, he wrote, on Dec. 26, 2007, in previewing the Pats-Giants showdown in Week 17:

Here’s the reality that Coughlin ought to embrace: the Giants’ best chance for glory this season isn’t in the playoffs, or on a February evening in the Arizona desert; it’s the chance to knock off perhaps the greatest team of all time and spoil their perfect season Saturday night in the New Jersey swamps.

It seems that, with the Giants and Patriots poised to meet tomorrow night in Super Bowl XLII in Glendale, Ariz., analysis of the Giants’ postseason chances in this space may not have been very accurate.

Of course, many have argued that the Giants’ playoff run was spurred by the full effort they gave in that game, a three-point loss to New England on Dec. 29; even the Giants, to a man, have acknowledged this. But that doesn’t make your humble diarist any less wrong, and he certainly doesn’t deserve the second-person narrative, so I might as well ditch it mid-sentence and call myself a dope right now.

In their past four games, starting with the loss to the Pats before the largest regular-season television audience in a decade, the Giants have shown levels of heart of which I did not think they were capable. Big Blue is no longer an underachieving collection of spoiled egos led by a maniacal despot; the Giants are now the lovable, overachieving underdog, a selfless group led a former tyrant who has seen the light and is now so warm and cuddly that he could just as easily be in the Puppy Bowl on Sunday as the Super Bowl.

Tom Coughlin’s tenure with the Giants was turbulent from the very start. As early as Dec. 2004, Coughlin’s first season in New York, one anonymous Giants veteran told the New York Post’s Kenny Palmer, “We will not win here when he’s the coach… there’s no team atmosphere or camaraderie.”

The Giants kept Coughlin, and they went to the playoffs the next season, and then again last season, losing each time in the first round. Still, there was great dissension with regard to the way Coughlin ran the team; Tiki Barber admitted that he may not have retired last year if Coughlin weren’t the Giants’ coach.

But, then, something extraordinary happened. Even if it was piecemeal, Coughlin changed.

“When he first came here, I said to myself, ‘I can't play for this man. He’s crazy,’” defensive end Michael Strahan told Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle this week. “He has come around. His demeanor in the locker room is a lot more at ease. He is smiling; he uses the word ‘fun’ and ‘enjoyment,’ and it blows my mind every time he uses it. I never expected that out of him.”

No longer would Coughlin throw tantrums on the sidelines, fine players needlessly, or belittle injured players. He softened up some of his bad habits, the ones that drove players away from him. Not that he’s an easygoing “player’s coach,” though.

“I made up my mind [after last season] I was going to do a better job of communicating,” Coughlin said this week. “When it’s time to work, we’re still going to work. I haven’t changed who I am or what I believe in.”

Plainly said, Coughlin doesn’t seem like such an asshole anymore.

Coughlin’s first year was also the year the Giants traded for Eli Manning, selected first in that year’s draft. Manning took over the starting job in mid-November, and Big Blue dropped his first six starts. And while he led them to the playoffs the next two seasons, he was—to put it kindly—inconsistent.

Even this season, Manning’s play was shaky until the New England game, when he posted the first of three consecutive 100-plus quarterback ratings. He has thrown for four touchdowns in the playoffs without an interception.

Perhaps more importantly, Eli hasn’t seemed as impotent or feckless. His receivers no longer show him up (perhaps attributable to Jeremy Shockey’s absence), and he looks the part of field-general, leading the Giants down the field on key scoring drives this postseason.

He looks the part, even if he doesn’t quite look as confident—or as dreamy—as the Golden Boy, Tom Brady. Brady and the New England Patriots (in case you haven’t heard) enter Super Bowl XLII with an undefeated, 18-0 record. They are the Evil Empire of the N.F.L. Their coach, the unapologetically smarmy Bill Belichick, was personally fined $500,000 this season by the league for his involvement in an elaborate scheme to spy on his opponents’ signals.

The Giants still suffer from an anti-New York bias when it comes to popular support: a poll on ESPN.com revealed that 52 percent of respondents will root for New England on Sunday evening. But, in this battle of Good vs. Evil, the Giants are on the side of the angels.

For this longtime Giants fan, their play over the past month shows that the attitude of the entire team has changed, from Coughlin and Manning on down. The Giants are scrappy. When things go against them, they toughen up and overcome their obstacles. They seem to relish in the underdog role.

So I’m predicting a 27-24 victory for the Giants. Sure, the G-Men are huge underdogs, and they are facing perhaps the greatest team ever assembled, under—outside of Bill Walsh—the smartest head coach ever.

The Giants, however, have vanquished three consecutive opponents while the public underestimated them. And considering some of the gaudy scores predicted by the talking heads, I think it’s fair to say that respect is once again eluding them.

Here’s the new reality: I didn’t think this team had a chance at a playoff berth when the season began; I had them at 5-11. When they made it, I never thought they would beat Dallas or Green Bay on the road after losing to each, handily, in the regular season. And I certainly never thought I would be heaping such effusive praise on Tom Coughlin or Eli Manning.

I have been proven wrong by the Giants time and again over the past month, and I am coming around. Unless, of course, that is going to be a jinx.

If that is the case, I take back everything I just wrote. The Giants don't stand a chance.

The Mets Acquire Santana—and Center Stage

2008-01-29T20:47:00.000-05:00

In a week in which the minds of most New Yorkers are focused on football, the New York Mets vaulted ahead of the hometown Giants—and the National League East—by completing a trade for Johan Santana, baseball’s best pitcher over the past four years.

All credit to Mets general manager Omar Minaya, who seemed confident in his chances to land a star pitcher earlier this winter when it seemed that the Yankees and Red Sox were the favorites for Santana. But like some Cold War concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, both teams slowly withdrew from the process, actually rescinding earlier offers as the time passed. Minaya waited out the A.L. East rivals, and, pending a contract extension and a physical, Santana is headed to Queens.

The contract could be a minor issue; Santana is seeking a six- or seven-year deal, while the Mets would prefer to offer only five years. It’s a safe bet, though, that the Mets and the two-time Cy Young Award winner will find the middle ground and sign an extension by a 5 p.m. Friday deadline. Santana is represented by Peter Greenberg, who also negotiated José Reyes’—arguably below-market value—contract extension with the Amazins.

“For our younger pitchers to develop under a guy like Pedro, a guy like Johan, you can’t ask for any better situation,” said Mets third-baseman David Wright, according to the Associated Press. “He’s going to go out there, and he’s going to give you seven or eight innings every five days, and he’s going to get you a win. That’s just what it comes down to. I’ve gotten a chance to get to know him a little bit the past couple years. He seems like a great clubhouse guy. He’s going to fit in perfectly with the chemistry that we have.”

That chemistry undoubtedly needed a boost after last September’s epic collapse, in which the Mets blew a seven-game lead over the season’s final three weeks and lost the N.L. East by one game to Philadelphia. Now the Mets are the Spring-Training favorites, leaving the Phillies and Braves behind.

New York will send four young players to Minnesota for their southpaw ace: outfielder Carlos Gomez, and pitchers Philip Humber, Kevin Mulvey, and Deolis Guerra. Gomez has “plus-plus” speed and defensive range, but has struggled against big-league pitching, batting only .232 (with a .594 O.P.S.) in 125 at-bats in the majors. Humber projects as a back-of-the-rotation starter. Mulvey also doesn’t seem to be an ace. As for Guerra, who is only 18 years old, he shows a lot of promise, but hasn’t yet pitched above the high-A level.

In this agreement, Minaya didn’t only protect Reyes—who was never going to part of any trade offer—he also made the deal without surrendering the Mets’ top prospect: a 19-year-old, five-tool outfielder named Fernando Martínez.

The deal, on its face, looks like a coup for Minaya and the Mets, and for Santana, who desperately wanted out of Minnesota without having the distraction of pitching in a walk year. Once Santana signs a contract, Minaya will have delivered Mets fans the ace they coveted all winter, and the Mets will be poised to recapture the division title they squandered last fall.

In Which Your Humble Diarist Finds a Candidate

2008-01-26T23:59:00.000-05:00

Over the past two months, I—in addition to abandoning, temporarily, the second-person narrative—have been keenly following the race to become America’s next president. Which leads me to this admission: for the first time tonight, I donated to a candidate for political office.

I suppose it began, in all places, on Deadspin. Some may know Deadspin as the website that brought to the world Chris Berman’s “You’re with me, Leather,” or Carl Monday, tireless crusader against public masturbation. But the site’s editor, Will Leitch (buy his new book!), is seemingly a smart, well-rounded fellow with a particularly keen interest in politics.

The day after the New England Patriots (Booooo!) romped the Pittsburgh Steelers despite Anthony Smith’s guarantee that the Steelers would win, Leitch used a piece from December’s Atlantic Monthly about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to illustrate a point about the media’s obsession with this phenomenon. Leitch’s analogy was a bit flawed, but it pointed to a generational divide, both in the way in which Americans look at political candidates, and the way in which sports fans view the notion of guaranteeing victory on the field.

The Atlantic piece was written by Andrew Sullivan, who is the author of a recent book entitled The Conservative Soul. Sullivan’s central thesis is this:

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce.

It was a strange argument, considering the source. Then again, Sullivan is difficult to pigeonhole: a gay, British-born, Oxford-educated conservative. Still, I began to think of the election in generational terms, and, as a 25-year-old, it is fair to say that I relate to Obama’s message: one of hope and change, both of the policies furthered by the Bush administration over the past seven years, and of the sort of politics and partisanship furthered by both Republicans and Democrats over the past 20 years.

That message is resonating among millions of younger Americans, as demonstrated by the record turnout in each of the four primaries or caucuses held thus far. While he has garnered more votes and more delegates than his competitors, the desk still seems to be stacked against Obama.

His chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), represents a change in policy, but not a change in politics. In the last debate, Monday night in Myrtle Beach, S.C., she touted her “16 years” of experience in fighting the Republicans, including eight as first lady to her husband, Bill.

Bill Clinton became a divisive figure in the campaign. Eschewing the traditional role of statesman-cum-politician usually associated with a former president, Bill actually became the attack dog for his wife in recent weeks, calling Obama, among other things, “a fairy-tale.” The First Black President—as Toni Morrison famously called him—was now trying to stop he who would be the first black president.

Adding to the racial overtones: today, when it became clear that Obama was cruising to a huge victory over his wife in South Carolina, he reminded the press that Rev. Jesse Jackson twice won the Palmetto State, a gentle yet unseemly reminder that Obama, like Jackson, is a Black Candidate.

The Clintons have tried to make this election about identity politics because they know that Hillary’s core constituencies (older folks, whites, and women) are more likely to deliver her the nomination than Obama’s consitituencies (younger Americans and blacks). They’ve also played dirty, using push polls that stress Obama’s middle name (Hussein) to hint at his Muslim ancestry, and Bill Clinton has distorted Obama’s record and statements out on the stump.

In many ways, voters in South Carolina rejected the Clintons’ tactics; among those influenced by Bill’s role in the campaign, which accounted for nearly 60 percent of voters, according to exit polls, Hillary only won 37 percent of the vote. While Clinton leads in most of the Super Tuesday states that will vote on Feb. 5, it is possible that, not only will Obama be the beneficiary of a bounce from South Carolina, but there may be a growing backlash against the “Billary” tag-team.

Obama is a below-average debater but an incredible, moving speaker. His victory speech tonight in South Carolina was as inspirational as his speech after winning the Iowa caucuses, but it also included more specific examples of his positions, answering a major criticism of his campaign.

In that speech tonight, he derided

the politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon, a politics that tells us that we have to think, act and even vote within the confines of the categories that supposedly define us, the assumption that young people are apathetic, the assumption that Republicans won’t cross-over, the assumption that the wealthy care nothing for the poor and that the poor don’t vote, the assumption that African-Americans can’t support the white candidate, whites can’t support the African-American candidate, blacks and Latinos cannot come together.

We are here tonight to say that that is not the America we believe in.

Listening to the rhetoric of Obama compared to Clinton it becomes clear that he is on another level, albeit a level that doesn’t necessarily have the same appeal to the elderly, who are more concerned with issues like Medicare and Social Security than they are with the ideal of post-partisan politics. More than the identities of race and gender, transcending the age-gap—he won every age-group tonight except those 65 and over—remains Obama’s main challenge.

“This election is about the past versus the future,” said Obama. “It’s about whether we settle for the same divisions and distractions and drama that passes [sic] for politics today, or whether we reach for a politics of common sense and innovation, a politics of shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.”

It remains to be seen whether Obama is the person—and whether this is the time—to deliver that future. It is a future in which I believe, though, which is why I opened my checkbook—virtually, of course, since I used my credit card over his website—tonight for the first time to support a candidate for public office.

Only, I’m not sure if it went through. I hit submit in the minutes after his victory speech, and the page tried to load for about five minutes before eventually turning blank. Hillary Clinton may have an advantage going into Super Tuesday, but, tonight, Obama has more backers than even his website can handle.

At Lambeau, Redemption Is Best Served Cold

2008-01-20T23:59:00.000-05:00

The ball fluttered in the frigid Wisconsin night, just like the two prior wayward kicks from kicker Lawrence Tynes. All came with the score tied, 20-20, but this one appeared true, drawing towards the center of the uprights. The only question was if it was long enough.

For the New York Giants, shivering on their sideline, the ball’s flight seemed interminable. But it kept cutting through the air, and Big Blue and their fans sounded like golfers. Get there!

It did, with about four yards to spare. And the Giants, having vanquished the vaunted Green Bay Packers at historic Lambeau Field in sub-zero temperatures, are going to the Super Bowl.

The Giants, truth be told, should have won the game easily. They were clearly the better team in the storied stadium in Green Bay, Wis., but they made the kinds of mistakes with which road teams in the playoffs don’t get away. Not against the Packers and Brett Favre. Not at Lambeau.

Tynes’ second miss came as time expired in the fourth quarter, and the coin toss went according to script, with the Packers securing the first possession of overtime. But Favre ad-libbed, throwing an interception to Corey Webster on Green Bay’s second play from scrimmage that set up the Giants at the Packers’ 34-yard-line.

Still, the Giants’ offense could not get a first-down, and it seemed unlikely that Tynes could make a 47-yard field-goal, especially since he had missed from 43 and 36 yards in the fourth quarter. Tynes, however, didn’t even wait for head coach Tom Coughlin to call for the field-goal unit; he sprinted right onto the field after the Giants failed on third-down.

“I knew I could get it there,” Tynes told the New York Daily News. “[Coughlin] was going to have to pull me off that field.”

Seconds later, Tynes again would be sprinting, this time towards the Giants’ bench, his right arm raised in the air with one finger pointing to the sky, while his holder, veteran punter Jeff Feagles, extended both arms to the sky from his knees where he held for the fateful kick. In 20 years, Feagles had never been to a Super Bowl, and Tynes wanted to make the kick for him.

“Get this guy to the Super Bowl,” was Tynes’ last thought.

Now all the Giants go to the Super Bowl, despite, in many cases, their best efforts. Two of their first three drives resulted in field goals instead of touchdowns. At the end of the half, Plaxico Burress could not maintain possession on a long pass from Eli Manning inside the five-yard-line, and the Giants went into halftime down, 10-6.

After opening the second-half with a 12-play touchdown drive that consumed 7:04, the Giants held a 13-10 lead. On the ensuing Green Bay possession (which began on the Giants’ 39-yard-line after a 49-yard kickoff return), Sam Madison committed an unnecessary roughness penalty on a third-down, and what would have been a 41-yard field-goal attempt was instead a 12-yard touchdown pass for Brett Favre that put the Pack back on top, 17-13.

Again the Giants’ offense, however, drove back down the field, with Ahmad Bradshaw capping a seven-play drive with a four-yard touchdown run. But, once again, the Giants made a crucial mistake. After R. W. McQuarters intercepted a Favre pass at the Giants’ eight-yard-line, Ryan Grant swatted the ball out of McQuarters’ hand, and the Packers recovered, ending the play with a 12-yard net gain, leading ultimately to the field goal that tied the score at 20.

Which is where the scored stood through the end of regulation after the two Tynes misses. All of these chances squandered, and now the Packers were getting the ball to start overtime, with the mystique of Favre and Lambeau and Lombardi and the bitter cold.

The beloved Favre, however, faltered in overtime; for the game, he was outplayed by Manning, despite Elisha’s supposed aversion to cold weather.

“I stayed next to those heaters all day. I wasn’t gonna get cold,” said Manning, determinedly.

After the game, Manning’s father, Archie, hugged him and said, “I’m awful proud of you.”

For Eli, playing all his life in the shadows cast by his father and brother Peyton, surely this was affirming, on the eve of the next most-important game of his young career.

“Redemption,” Shaun O’Hara told Newsday when asked for a word to describe what he just experienced. Redemption for Tynes after missing two potential game-winning kicks. For Manning after another up-and-down regular season. For Tom Coughlin, who began this season on the shortest of leashes. For the Giants defense that couldn’t stop anyone in the beginning of the season. For an entire team that was picked to lose in Tampa, Fla., then in Irving, Tex., then finally in Green Bay.

One may not remember when the Giants were 0-2, and a half away from being 0-3 before they put their season together at FedEx Field against the Redskins. But the Giants do. They remembered two bad losses to the Cowboys—and avenged them last week in Dallas. They remembered an embarrassing loss to the Packers in their home opener in Week Two—and they avenged that one, too, when Lawrence Tynes did his best Matt Bahr-impression.

Next stop is Glendale, Ariz., on Feb. 3 against the unblemished New England Patriots, to whom the Giants lost, 38-35, in a Week 17 classic. That night, Coughlin elected to play his starters despite the game having no meaning whatsoever to the Giants, who had already locked in their playoff seed. The Giants’ effort, many have said, brought the team together and can be credited with their extraordinary playoff run.

“We know how good [the Patriots] are; we know what it takes to beat them,” Coughlin told the New York Times. “Hopefully we can make it happen this time.”

One more shot at redemption—the ultimate redemption against the perfect team on the sport’s biggest stage.

Shivering on the Precipice of a Super Bowl

2008-01-19T23:59:00.000-05:00

Your humble diarist is writing this a few minutes before midnight Eastern on Saturday night, and the current temperature at Austin Straubel International Airport in Green Bay, Wis., is -9 degrees. As in nine degrees below zero. The wind chill is a staggering -29.

Luckily, it won’t be quite that cold tomorrow at nearby Lambeau Field for the N.F.C. Championship Game between the New York Giants and the hometown Packers: the forecast is for a temperature of 2 degrees above zero at the beginning of the game, dropping to near 4-below by game’s end (wind chills from -13 to -19).

Such weather causes frostbite to exposed flesh in around 30 minutes, but, surely, the Giants and Packers aren’t really worried about that. Not with a trip to Super Bowl XLII at stake.

It would seem like the ultimate home-field advantage for the Packers to play in such adverse conditions, but history suggests that such extreme weather offers neither team a distinct edge. In the 1967 N.F.L. Championship Game at Lambeau, the Packers defeated the Cowboys in temperatures more than ten-below, but only on a Bart Starr quarterback-sneak with less than 20 seconds left.

The Giants are no strangers to playing in harsh conditions, having won nine consecutive road games, including two playoff games. Still, it is no secret that Eli Manning would prefer to play in warmer surroundings, even if he won’t admit it publicly.

“If it’s cold or windy you can make adjustments and deal with it when the time comes,” said Manning. “We’ve played in wind, snow, cold, whatever they throw at us. Whatever the conditions are we will be fine.”

Weather aside, the Giants have enough about which to worry in the Packers, who defeated them soundly in Week Two, 35-13. It was the Giants’ second game under new defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.

The New York defense has improved markedly since then, and the Giants’ 59 sacks led the N.F.L. this season. Pressure on quarterback Brett Favre, even if only to disrupt his timing, will be an important part of holding down Green Bay’s offensive attack.

On the other side of the ball, the Giants will likely rely heavily on running backs Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw and ask Manning to help move the ball without turning it over. It has been a winning formula in their first two playoff games, wins at Tampa Bay and Dallas.

The Giants last week avenged two losses to Dallas in which the Cowboys won rather easily. Likewise, the Packers dominated New York in the second half of their prior matchup, including allowing Favre to complete 14 consecutive passes.

After that first game with Green Bay, which moved the Giants to 0-2 on the season, head coach Tom Coughlin said, “I think we’re a better football team than we’ve shown. Obviously, I don’t have any real ground for saying that. It’s just a belief.”

That belief has been born out thus far in the playoffs, and the Giants can take one step closer to validating their coach’s faith on—cue John Facenda—the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field tomorrow.

The Giants Quiet the Critics—and the Cowboys

2008-01-14T19:47:00.000-05:00

Athletes and preening sports columnists disagree about the effect of so-called “bulletin-board material”—quotes or video clips from one team that serve to motivate the other. There can be no question, however, that it provided the extra incentive that propelled the New York Giants to victory last night in Dallas.

Following Big Blue’s 21-17 victory over to Cowboys in the N.F.C. Divisional Playoffs last night, the Giants seemed to reference every extra incentive that they received from Dallas, starting with Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo’s trip to Cabo San Lucas with pop star Jessica Simpson during the bye week, to brazen wide receiver Terrell Owens telling the public to “get your popcorn ready,” and Patrick Crayton predicting that he, Owens, and the rest of the Dallas receivers would run unfettered through the Giants’ depleted secondary.

And then the Cowboys’ owner, Jerry Jones, provided each player two tickets to the N.F.C. Championship Game next week in that player’s ticket allotment for this week. Learning about this during the week seemed to solidify the Giants’ collective resolve to avoid a third loss to Dallas this season.

The Giants will play the Packers in Green Bay next Sunday for a berth in Super Bowl XLII. They have now won their ninth-consecutive road game, a new N.F.L. record.

Again, Eli Manning was solid if not spectacular, completing 12 of 18 passes for 163 yards, with two touchdowns, both to veteran receiver Amani Toomer. Most importantly, he did not throw an interception or lose a fumble for the second consecutive game.

“It wasn’t fancy,” Manning said after the game. It didn’t have to be.

That was because the Giants’ defense, shredded in the two regular-season match-ups with Dallas, held their own, particularly in the second half. When Dallas moved the ball, they did so relatively slowly, and the Giants’ patchwork secondary, dealt another blow when first-round draft-pick Aaron Ross left the game in the third quarter with a shoulder injury, took away the deep pass.

In the first half, the Cowboys had touchdown drives of 9 (in 4:57) and 20 plays (in 10:28). Then, to open the third quarter, they drove 62 yards in 14 plays, over 8:07, but the New York defense held on third-down, and Dallas settled for a field-goal. With the exception of taking a knee with one-second left in the first half, the Cowboys had scored on three of their four possessions. While Antonio Pierce told the New York Times, “I’ve never been that tired before,” it was the Cowboys who actually appeared the worse for wear, particularly up front.

Finally, in the fourth quarter, the Giants started to stop the run, and, even more importantly, they began to pressure Romo. After being stymied for three quarters, defensive ends Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora, in particular, were hurrying Romo, and his throws became rushed and less accurate. The offensive line was having difficulty stopping the ends, picking up the blitz, and even staying set before the snap.

Romo, meanwhile, of whom it is said that “he leads the league in smiles,” was now rattled. He began barking at his linemen, telling them when they missed assignments. He even picked up a devastating intentional grounding penalty with the Cowboys in Giants territory that torpedoed their penultimate possession.

The Giants got the ball back, and ran twice, hoping to pick up a first down and seal the win, but content, at the very least, to run some time off the clock. Manning, however, was sacked on third-and-five, and the Dallas had some life.

Enter the Big Blue defense. Other than an improvised, backhanded flip from Romo to tight end Jason Witten that picked up 18 yards and a first down, the Giants revamped secondary held, for the most part, and R. W. McQuarters, who also contributed a key punt return that set up the Giants’ last touchdown drive, intercepted a fourth-down pass in the end zone with nine seconds left to seal New York’s victory.

After the game, the Giants made it clear that making the N.F.C. Championship Game wasn’t the only thing on their minds.

“That’s what happens with people like that,” linebacker Kawika Mitchell said of the Cowboys. “They stick their foot in their mouth, and they end up going home early. We’re still in the dance, and we’ll be having some fun, while they’ll be watching us on T.V.”

Michael Strahan said that Owens and Crayton could have the popcorn watching the N.F.C. Championship Game at home, and linebacker Antonio Pierce added, “We do have the salt for everyone who was a little salty towards us. We have enough butter and salt for all of that popcorn.”

Owens, meanwhile, began to cry behind sunglasses during his press conference, ostensibly defending his quarterback, but also serving to keep the Cabo Controversy alive by simply mentioning it.

“This isn’t about Tony,” Owens said. “You guys can point the finger at him. You can talk about the vacation. And if you do that, it’s wrong. It’s not fair. It’s really not fair. That’s my teammate. That’s my quarterback. We lost as a team. We lost as a team, man.”

One of the first things head coach Tom Coughlin told the team after the game was that he had been assured that Jerry Jones would be sending those N.F.C. Championship Game tickets to the Giants shortly. A huge cheer rang through the locker room.

“Not that we needed any motivation,” said defensive end Justin Tuck. “But you just don’t say things like that to a hungry football team.”

After the Giants vanquished Dallas, and Tampa Bay—with the outspoken Ronde Barber—before that, the Packers would be well-served to keep their mouths shut between now and Sunday evening.

“What Do You Want Me To Do?”

2008-01-07T20:05:00.000-05:00

After two weeks of relative silence, Roger Clemens has begun a multimedia offensive against his former trainer, Brian McNamee, including a defamation lawsuit, a “60 Minutes” interview, and a press conference this afternoon that included a taped phone call between the pitcher and his accuser.

It wasn’t exactly the Rose Mary Woods tape, but it was close. Clemens and his Houston attorney, Rusty Hardin, played 17 minutes of a phone conversation taped Friday evening, in which Clemens asks McNamee to tell the truth, but doesn’t ask him to tell the public that he lied to federal investigators and former Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine), and McNamee says that he felt pressured by the feds to talk, but doesn’t actually say that he fabricated the allegations against Clemens.

McNamee repeatedly asks Clemens, “What do you want me to do?” but the answer is never, “Come forward and tell the public that you made it all up.”

Those who are predisposed to believe Clemens will see an innocent man trying desperately to save his reputation. But many, including your humble diarist, will still be skeptical.

Andy Pettitte—Clemens’ best friend, long-time teammate and training partner—admitted the day after the Mitchell Report that McNamee’s allegations, that he injected Pettitte with human-growth hormone twice, were true. Pettitte, who can be seen peddling bibles on television, is known as a deeply religious man.

Why would McNamee lie about Clemens and not Pettitte? Why, as Clemens and his lawyers assert, would the feds want McNamee to implicate Clemens? McNamee was being used as a witness against Kirk Radomski, his supplier and a former Mets clubhouse attendant.

McNamee’s attorneys insist that their client was trying to tell Clemens what he wanted to hear in their phone call. “He was playing down the middle, like somebody who is still trying to ingratiate himself,” McNamee’s attorney, Richard D. Emery said. “That’s the tragedy of this whole thing, that McNamee is this guy who still loves Roger but had to tell the truth.”

Clemens’ attorneys use those statements by McNamee in their defamation suit, which alleges that McNamee’s fabrications “injured Clemens’ reputation and exposed him to public hatred, contempt, ridicule and financial injury… McNamee made the allegations with actual malice, knowing they were false.”

McNamee’s lawyer said he talked to his client shortly after Clemens’s news conference and said, “It’s war now.”

Which means that this is certainly only the first of what are expected to be many offensives. The next battle may occur on Capitol Hill on January 16, when both Clemens and McNamee, among others, have been invited to appear before a House committee holding hearings about the Mitchell Report. Congress did not intend to invite Clemens initially, but aids to the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), said that it seemed as if Clemens was daring them to ask for his testimony through his most recent denials.

Ironically, while Clemens is being criticized for his strong response, he initially was relatively silent following the report’s release, choosing only to issue a statement through Hardin. Many thought that his silence equated to guilt, and that leap to judgment irked Clemens.

“I’m angry that what I’ve done for the game of baseball and the personal, in my private life, what I’ve done that I… I don’t get the benefit of the doubt,” he told Mike Wallace in an interview aired last night on CBS.

That attitude smelled of an unbecoming superciliousness. Wallace Matthews wrote in today’s Newsday:

The fact is, minus a piece of paper from a lab with Clemens’ name and blood type on it, Clemens vs. McNamee probably never will be conclusively settled. But this much we know for sure: Once again, Clemens tests positive for the big three: arrogance, entitlement and stupidity. Throw in self-pity, and he’s hit a grand slam.

That is a big reason why Roger Clemens doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt. The other is his explanation for why McNamee would lie. Why would the feds and Sen. Mitchell pressure him to accuse Clemens—falsely? What would they have to gain?

In time, there may be answers to these questions, but, for now, Clemens’ defense seems very specious.

Manning and the Giants Stand and Deliver

2008-01-06T18:35:00.000-05:00

After defeats in their first two playoff games the past two seasons, head coach Tom Coughlin, and his embattled quarterback, Eli Manning, finally broke through with a 24-14 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers today in Tampa.

Manning cast aside his struggles during the second half of the season with an efficient, if unspectacular, day. He completed 20 of his 27 passes for 185 yards, including two touchdowns and, most importantly, no interceptions. For Elisha, today perhaps can help him shed the same criticism leveled against his brother for so many years: that he can’t win the “big game.”

His brother, Peyton, didn’t win his first playoff game until the 2003 season. Such comparisons are largely absurd; they are different men, different quarterbacks, in different situations. But they are instructive in this way: they remind us that Eli, who just turned 27 this past Thursday, is relatively young still.

In the first quarter, the Buccaneers focused on stopping the run, pacing eight or even nine men in the box. Using this strategy, they held the Giants to minus-two yards of first-quarter offense. They were daring Manning and the Giants to beat them through the air, and Elisha was up to the task. He led them down the field for two touchdown drives in the second quarter to take a 14-7 lead, largely through the air.

The second half opened with a fumble recovery on the opening kickoff by Corey Webster, who was replacing the injured Sam Madison at cornerback. After a field goal gave Big Blue a two-score lead, they used the running game, largely with Ahmad Bradshaw, to ice the victory. They were only able to run the ball because Manning opened things up in the passing game, forcing Tampa Bay to alter its original game-plan.

“Eli had a great game today,” wide receiver Amani Toomer told the Associated Press. “He took what was out there and didn’t force anything. He doesn’t get real excited; there is more than one way to lead a team… and he showed that today.”

The Giants head next Sunday to Dallas to face the N.F.C.’s best team this season, the Cowboys. Dallas won both matchups this season, and their win in Dallas in Week One was the Giants’ only road loss this season. Including today, the Giants have won all eight road contests since.

“I think as a team we seem to perform better on the road,” defensive end Michael Strahan told the A.P. “I didn’t know we won eight in a row. That’s a great thing, because when it’s the playoffs, if we’re going to go as far as we want, we have to win every game on the road.”

That’s looking forward. Today, however, was a form of vindication for Manning and Coughlin. They won a winnable game today. Few expect them to win next Sunday in Dallas; Las Vegas has installed the Cowboys as a roughly eight-point favorite. Today, however, in this one game, the gauntlet was thrown down, and Eli Manning picked it up and led his team to a playoff victory for the first time in his short, yet turbulent, career.

Time for Action, Not Talk, From the Giants

2008-01-05T23:44:00.000-05:00

This season began for the Giants with controversy regarding statements by Tiki Barber, their former all-pro running back. It is only fitting that the playoffs—the “second season,” in N.F.L. parlance—begins with controversy regarding statements by Barber’s twin brother, Ronde.

Ronde, a cornerback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, whom the Giants will face tomorrow in the N.F.C. Wild-Card playoffs, hosts a weekly show on Sirius, and, like his brother, he isn’t afraid to speak his mind. A few weeks ago, as Tampa Bay coasted to a N.F.C. South division title, he said that he was looking forward to facing Big Blue.

“Of course we want to play the Giants,” he said. “They [win] ugly, [tight end Jeremy] Shockey’s hurt and Eli [Manning] has been inconsistent.”

Then, earlier this week, he expounded upon his comments, adding that Manning “can be had” because of his inconsistent play, and he said that wide receiver Plaxico Burress was not “overly fast” or “athletic.”

Burress has taped Barber’s comments about him above his locker, and the team has placed the entirety of the statements squarely on the proverbial bulletin board. As if they needed a reminder of how close to home the comments hit, Tiki will be on the Tampa Bay sidelines as his brother’s guest.

On the field, the Giants will likely be without cornerback Sam Madison and center Shaun O’Hara, and possibly without linebacker Kawika Mitchell. All three were injured during the Giants’ valiant and honorable, 38-35, loss last week to undefeated New England.

It was argued in this space that trying to win was the right course of action, and, even if the Giants had chosen to rest some of their players, there is no guarantee that these players would not have been injured, anyway. Tampa Bay, however, has had essentially three weeks to prepare for this game.

This season has seen a new Tom Coughlin, a kinder and gentler head coach. Neither Coughlin nor Manning has won a playoff game with the Giants, dropping their first two bites at the postseason apple. This has led to the kind of statements Tiki made during the offseason, and his brother has echoed over the past few weeks.

While a 10-6 record may be regarded by many as a positive season, after four full years together, it may finally be time for Coughlin and Manning to lead their team past the first round of the playoffs, lest the bright lights of New York becoming more penetrating, and the whirlwind that already surrounds this team begin to erode at their permanence.

Obama’s Audacity Is Rewarded—and His Hope Affirmed

2008-01-03T23:25:00.000-05:00

In Iowa, a state that is less than two percent black, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), a black man, has won the Democratic Caucus for U.S. President by convincing a coalition of young people and first-time participants in the caucus process that a drastic change was needed in the White House.

Obama won this caucus going away, and his victory was sealed across the board, according to polls. On each defining issue, Obama was the preferred candidate, from the war in Iraq to the economy (and even health care), even with approximately 57 percent of his support coming from individuals under 30 years of age; young people are relatively unreliable and disloyal supporters. Even amongst women, the supposed core constituency of Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), Obama was the preferred candidate.

The unlikelihood of an Obama victory is difficult to convey. Obama may have said it best in a stump speech last week:

“The only reason I’m here is because of a belief in things that might not seem possible. I mean, when you are a black guy named Barack Obama running for president, you got to have hope. Right? You have to be hopeful about that.”

With 98 percent of caucuses reporting, Obama captured a surprisingly-high 38 percent of the delegates, with former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) in second with 30 percent, and Clinton, in a disappointing performance, about a half-percent behind that. Obama’s victory can best be explained by Democratic voters’ desire for change over experience.

Clinton tried to offer Iowans both change and experience, but Obama successfully portrayed her as part of the problem in Washington.

The Democrats now move to New Hampshire five nights from tonight, where another Obama victory could propel him in front of Clinton on a national level. While Clinton leads each national poll for the Democratic nomination, Obama outperforms her in every head-to-head race against any Republican candidate.

“The polls show I’m the only Democrat who right out beats every Republican they can throw up there,” he said earlier this week on the stump, in his increasingly preacher-like manner. “I beat Mitt, I beat Rudy, I beat John, I beat Fred, I beat Mike. I beat John. Who else? I’ll beat ’em all, beat ’em all! I’ll beat Keyes. Who else they got?”

Ironically, one of Obama’s struggles thus far has been to shore up black voters in states like South Carolina, many of whom have expressed support for Clinton. They seem hesitant to “waste” their support on a candidate who can’t win.

But, as Iowa tonight showed, and New Hampshire can show Tuesday night, Obama may have more than a puncher’s chance. His victory speech tonight from Des Moines was moving, combining elements of Kennedy and King, and Obama shares many characteristics with both. He speaks of hope, and its promise shines like a beacon straight through the cynicism of the politics embodied by Hillary Clinton.

On the Eve of the Iowa Caucuses, More Questions Than Answers

2008-01-02T13:53:00.000-05:00

With the Presidential nominating process set to begin officially tomorrow night in the Hawkeye State, it is difficult to remember—or even imagine—a scenario as uncertain as that facing Iowans, and the nation as a whole.

On the Democratic side, most polls show a virtual three-way tie between Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), and former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.). Clinton and Obama do not represent two different ideologies, but the dichotomy they signify could not be clearer.

As the Washington Post pointed out this morning, Democratic voters are looking for change: domestically and internationally. Not the nuanced incrementalism of John Kerry, necessarily, but a sharp, sudden reversal of the perceived damage done by seven years of President Bush. And while each candidate is proposing just that, they are framing it in such a way that demonstrates their difference.

Clinton says that she has the experience to deliver that change, seven years’ experience in the U.S. Senate, and an unclear and vague notion of her role as First Lady in the eight years prior to that. Obama asserts that, as a relative outsider, he is more able to achieve these changes because he doesn’t belong to the same Washington culture that Clinton does (while not-so-cleverly reminding the voters that Clinton voted for the Iraq war in the Senate). Recent polls show that Obama’s case has gained a lot of traction in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

Edwards has tried to out-position Obama on this issue—particularly with his pledge not to accept money from those evil Beltway lobbying groups—and, while he has had some success in Iowa, where he finished a surprising second four years ago, it is unclear how much momentum he can build nationally, even if he wins tomorrow night in Iowa.

Ironically, if Clinton had decided to skip Iowa, as she once contemplated, and like fellow New Yorker Rudolph Giuliani on the Republican side, she may have been in better shape to capture the nomination than she is now. Facing Obama and Edwards on the ground in Iowa has weakened the air of inevitability around her, and her supporters seem to lack the enthusiasm of the other two major candidates. They may soon lack the plurality needed to hold off her opponents.

On the Republican side, with Giuliani sitting this contest out, it looms as a battle between two former governors: Mike Huckabee (Ark.) and Mitt Romney (Mass.). Huckabee completed an incredible surge this fall to take the lead in the polls from Romney, who is the more established candidate. However, in recent days, it seems that lead has tightened, and the race projects as a dead-heat.

Huckabee has done some unconventional and interesting things, and both candidates have clearly spent a good deal of their time marketing themselves to conservative Republicans concerned about taxes, terrorism, immigration, and religion. Huckabee seems more earnest, but Romney is clearly more knowledgeable and polished.

While Romney seems assured to finish in the top-two in both Iowa and New Hampshire, where Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) is his main rival, not winning either contest could severely damage his candidacy, and a loss in Iowa to Huckabee could weaken him against McCain in the Granite State. Clearly, this is also the best-case scenario for Giuliani, who, running a “national” campaign, would prefer not to see Romney emerge from the first two votes as the Lead Dog.

While the G.O.P. caucus is intriguing, it lacks the completeness of the Democratic race, which features all three front-runners making a full effort at Iowans over the next 36 hours. Ten months from Election Day, one can reasonably imagine any one of seven people making an acceptance speech that night—or as soon as all the votes are tallied.

The N.F.L. Blinks—and Forces Coughlin’s Hand

2007-12-26T20:53:00.000-05:00

After a year-and-a-half of legal wrangling and virulent ad campaigns, the National Football League, which was scheduled to air the Patriots-Giants game Saturday night exclusively on its eponymous cable network, blinked, arranging for a historic three-way simulcast with both CBS and NBC.

This is the 16th game aired by N.F.L. Network since last year, but, with the Patriots seeking to become the first team to go through a 16-game season undefeated, it is the first one for which the N.F.L. has made this sort of arrangement. N.F.L. Network is available in less than 40 percent of households with televisions. All previous games were only available over-the-air in the home markets of the participating teams; this game was scheduled to be aired on ABC affiliates in Boston and Manchester, N.H., and on My Network-affiliate WWOR in New York.

“We have taken this extraordinary step because it is in the best interest of our fans,” N.F.L. commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “What we have seen for the past year is a very strong consumer demand for N.F.L. Network. We appreciate CBS and NBC delivering the N.F.L. Network telecast on Saturday night to the broad audience that deserves to see this potentially historic game. Our commitment to the N.F.L. Network is stronger than ever.”

This presents a quandary for Giants head coach Tom Coughlin. The Giants are locked into the fifth-seed in the N.F.C. Playoffs; no matter if they win or lose, the Giants will play at Tampa Bay next weekend. Undoubtedly, Coughlin’s top priority concerning Saturday night’s game was to ensure that his squad was rested and healthy for the following week.

Now with an unprecedented audience watching, combined with the pressure of providing a legitimate effort for posterity, is it possible that Coughlin will coach with the sole purpose of winning the game? That’s not to say that a coach would ever try to lose, but he might have larger things on his mind.

Take, for instance, this weekend’s Sunday night game: Tennessee at Indianapolis. The line opened with the Colts favored at home by three points, but it has swung nine-and-a-half points toward the Titans, making them six-and-a-half point favorites. Tennessee can assure a playoff berth with a win Sunday night, or a Cleveland loss earlier in the day; the Colts have clinched the second-seed, and a first-round bye, in the A.F.C. Playoffs, and their coach, Tony Dungy, is expected to rest his best, most-valuable players.

Coughlin, as a coach, should do likewise. Having already lost Jeremy Shockey, Derrick Ward, and Mathias Kiwanuka for the season to fractured fibulas, and with the hobbling Plaxico Burress and the fragile Brandon Jacobs as their top playmakers left on offense, playing them would be madness.

But isn’t this situation mad? The first team to 16-0? The first television simulcast since Super Bowl I? Neither the fans nor the players, one can imagine, want to roll over and let the Pats celebrate their perfect season in the Meadowlands. The Giants have long been a proud organization, right down to their silly theme song from a few years ago.

The league, too, would like for the Giants to give a true effort. With all the hype and exposure this game is receiving, the N.F.L. does not want anything to compromise the integrity of the Patriots’ accomplishment, should they win. Besides, with this many eyeballs on the broadcast, they want a compelling game, not a coronation. Philadelphia and Baltimore showed that this Patriots team does have some weaknesses, and, with the right combination of strategy and fortune, the Giants have a real shot if they choose to play their regulars. Coughlin should pull out all the stops: trick plays, onside kicks, and a pregame pep talk from Don Shula (with the rest of the 1972 Dolphins on the sideline putting the champagne on ice).

Resting their starters does give the Giants their best chance to win their third Super Bowl this season. But how likely is it that this Giants team can even defeat Dallas or Green Bay in the Divisional Playoffs, should they beat Tampa Bay?

Of course, Coughlin can’t feel that way, and, if he does, he can’t publicly acknowledge it, either through his words or actions. So he’ll almost assuredly rest Burress, and he’ll likely rest Jacobs and Michael Strahan, and perhaps Eli Manning for a portion of the game. And the Pats likely will win by three scores, becoming the first team to go 16-0 in the regular season.

But here’s the reality that Coughlin ought to embrace: the Giants’ best chance for glory this season isn’t in the playoffs, or on a February evening in the Arizona desert; it’s the chance to knock off perhaps the greatest team of all time and spoil their perfect season Saturday night in the New Jersey swamps.

Yes, Virginia

2007-12-24T11:41:00.000-05:00

On Sept. 21, 1897, The New York Sun published what was to become the most widely read letter to a newspaper. It was sent by 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, who lived with her parents in Manhattan.

Below is the full text of that letter and the reply written by Sun editorial writer Francis Pharcellus Church:

Dear Editor,

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it's so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon
115 W. 95th St.

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernatural beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God he lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10 thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Mitchell’s List is Only the Tip of the Iceberg

2007-12-13T22:52:00.000-05:00

The names have been bandied about, even before the investigation began 20 months ago, but to read the detailed narrative of steroid use by Major League players, including those whose performance alone would easily qualify them for the Hall of Fame, is nothing short of surreal.

For those who haven’t read Game of Shadows, it must have been unusual reading the report compiled by former Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine). For those who have, the most important section of the report was the one outlining the steroid distribution ring run by former Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski.

Pardon the pun, but that’s where the juice was. The public has heard about B.A.L.C.O. (with Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, and Jason Giambi) and the internet human-growth hormone ring (Rick Ankiel, Paul Byrd, and Jay Gibbons, among others), but the information—and extensive paper trail—provided by Radomski had yet to be released, and it implicated three All-Stars, including perhaps the best pitcher of his generation.

Brian McNamee was identified “as one of Radomski’s customers and a possible sub-provider.” He’s also identified as the man that Roger Clemens asked to inject him with steroids with the Blue Jays in 1998.

Clemens was traded to the New York Yankees in 1999, and in 2000, he got his friend a job as an assistant strength and conditioning coach with the Bombers.

According to McNamee, during the middle of the 2000 season Clemens made it clear that he was ready to start using steroids again. During the latter part of the regular season, McNamee injected Clemens in the buttocks four to six times with testosterone from a bottle labeled either Sustanon 250 or Deca-Durabolin that McNamee had obtained from Radomski.

McNamee stated that during this same time period he also injected Clemens four to six times with human growth hormone he had received from Radomski, after explaining to Clemens the potential benefits and risks of use.

McNamee also trained Andy Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch, both of whom are alleged to have used steroids and/or H.G.H. in this report.

The 2000 Yankees were a hotbed of steroid use originating from Radomski, as were the 2003 Dodgers. Todd Hundley knew Radomski from his time with the Mets, and he introduced Paul Lo Duca to him. Lo Duca, according to Mitchell’s report, then hooked Radomski up with a handful of his teammates, including Eric Gagné.

The most interesting part of the information coming from Radomski are the copies of scores of checks and money orders from big-league players to Radomski for thousands of dollars. Something about the image of a player’s personal check, with his signature, is particularly damning.

Still, much of today was ultimately unsatisfying. Or, as Will Leitch—one of the few real baseball romantics left in his generation—put it:

This is what MLB paid $20 million for? This took nearly two years? Essentially, Sen. Mitchell has two sources, a bunch of media reports, Jose Canseco's book and every player in baseball (save two) ignoring his requests to talk.

And many will agree with that. This report is only complete with regard to B.A.L.C.O., Radomski’s ring, and the internet H.G.H. pharmacy. Surely there are others who are breathing easy tonight while Clemens (who denied using any performance-enhancing drugs through his attorney following the release of the report) and the other players named today face extreme scrutiny.

But save a good deal of that scrutiny, as Mitchell did, for management for all the capitulation on steroids over the years in the name of collective bargaining and increased revenues because, you know, chicks dig the long ball.

Commissioner Bud Selig said he views this report as a call to action, and he has already taken steps to clean up the game. Whether he chooses to suspend some of the players named in the report remains to be seen, though Mitchell seemed to indicate that he found that unwise (and Don Fehr, in his press conference this evening, obviously agreed).

The only player, other than Bonds, for whom today will have Hall of Fame implications is Clemens. Truthfully, however, it’s difficult to say that Clemens’ career before 1998 was worthy of induction. Unless he is exonerated, one can expect many voters to hold this against him.

And that’s the problem with Mitchell’s report. Clemens is the biggest fish in Mitchell’s pond, but he’s also one of the few about whom the only evidence is the word of one man (in this case, McNamee). It should be mentioned that McNamee’s statements to Mitchell were done in the presence of government officials, who warned McNamee that false statements made to Mitchell would jeopardize his immunity deal with the Feds.

Really, Mitchell’s report doesn’t get us any closer to ending all of the speculation. It is not the last chapter in the saga of what is now known as the “Steroids Era” of baseball. It can help move into a brighter, cleaner day, but it sheds no more light on the events of the past. All it does is make fans speculate even more, even if they say they’re tired of this story. If this is what we know about now, how much don’t we know?

After a Disheartening Loss, Hobbs Loses His Cool

2007-12-10T15:18:00.000-05:00

To call George Washington’s head basketball coach Karl Hobbs “animated” is like calling Mike Huckabee “religious.” Sure, it’s accurate, but it’s also a gross understatement; perhaps adding the adverb “insanely” before each adjective would be more instructive.

Following an embarrassing 68-36 loss on national television last night at Virginia Tech, Hobbs (G.W. Hatchet photo) was irritated by the effort and performance of his squad. “They out-physicaled [sic] us, they out-ran us, they out-shot us—they dominated in every phase of the game,” he said at his postgame press conference.

At which point, according to published reports, Andrew Alberg, sports editor for the student-run Hatchet, asked if “every phase of the game” including being “out-coached.”

Hobbs replied, “You can say that if you want,” and declined to elaborate.

But following the press conference, Hobbs reportedly took Alberg aside and reprimanded the young scribe. Alberg writes:

After the press conference, Hobbs took [me] aside in the tunnel and said, “When I get some top-50 recruits, you can ask me about being out-coached.” Asked if he is exonerated from any blame because he does not have top-notch recruits, Hobbs said, “No,” but restated, “When I get some top-50 recruits, you can ask me about being out-coached.”

Adam Kilgore, the Washington Post’s Virginia Tech beat writer, wrote that “Hobbs became heated during a verbal altercation with a student reporter and was pulled away by Athletic Director Jack Kvancz.”

First: Was it a legitimate question? Perhaps, but it also reeked of bear-poking. Coaches take losses—particularly ones in which their team plays extraordinarily poorly—seriously, and Alberg’s question had to feel like the Salt March to Dandi to Hobbs’ chasm of a wound.

But Hobbs’ response seems like bullying, and citing the lack of “top-50 recruits” seems like a reinforcement of either his recruiting failures (not really) or bemoaning an institutional reality—that is that, despite his best efforts, Hobbs can’t, nor can virtually any coach, recruit that level of talent to G.W. (bingo).

Which leads one to wonder if Hobbs is happy in Foggy Bottom. After each of the past three seasons, his name has come up for jobs with schools in power conferences, such as St. John’s and Cincinnati, though that has seemed to cool since last spring, when some of G.W.’s recruiting practices were called into question.

As was written in this space, G.W. did nothing wrong regarding that issue—except perhaps not defend their student-athletes strenuously enough. But it has affected Hobbs’ recruiting; he was forced to pass on Jeremy Wise, for example, who is averaging 17.4 points-per-game for Southern Mississippi this season.

G.W., meanwhile, is struggling at 3-4, having dropped all four of their games this season not played at Smith Center, and their 36 points amounted to their worst offensive output since the 1994 Atlantic 10 Tournament against a deliberately low-scoring, John Chaney-coached Temple squad. The loss of the Colonials’ only point guard with collegiate experience, Travis King, to injury for the rest of the season has muddled G.W.’s offensive playbook, leading to countless turnovers and bad shots. Last season, G.W. had the best turnover differential in the A-10; this season, they are the worst in that category.

These losses are undoubtedly disheartening for Hobbs, and so is the woeful play of his team. In order to right the ship and improve as they approach conference games, the always energized, often irritable, and sometimes pouting Hobbs would be well-served to approach this season on more of an even keel. He can start by apologizing to the student he berated last night in Blacksburg.

At the Garden, Heralded Freshmen Playing Like, Well, Freshmen

2007-12-04T23:59:00.000-05:00

NEW YORK – According to the estimable NBADraft.net, the first six players—and an astounding nine of the first ten—projected to be chosen in the 2008 N.B.A. Draft are college freshman. Three of the top-ten, including the first two, were on display here tonight at Madison Square Garden in the Jimmy V Classic.

In the first game of a doubleheader, Kansas State’s freshman sensation Michael Beasley fought double-teams from Notre Dame frontline, and a bout of asthma, to tally 19 points and 13 rebounds. Beasley and his frontcourt-mate and fellow freshman, the explosive Bill Walker, who red-shirted last year, were not enough, however, to overcome the inside-outside attack of the Fighting Irish, who were led by the slimmed-down sophomore Luke Harangody (19 points, 14 rebounds) and the homecoming junior point guard Kyle McAlarney (18 points), who missed half a season last year following an arrest for marijuana possession.

The Irish pulled away to a 68-59 victory, improving them to 6-2 on the young season, which their losses coming on back-to-back nights in the Virgin Islands to Baylor (by four points) and Georgia Tech (by one point). Tonight’s win could be a résumé-builder to get Mike Brey’s squad back to the N.C.A.A. Tournament.

Kansas State, with such a young team, figures to improve going into conference play. They are now 5-3, without a quality win, and with losses to George Mason in Orlando and at home to No. 19 Oregon. First-year head coach Frank Martin will have to find a way to work off the double-teams that Beasley is sure to face the rest of the season.

The 6’-9” D.C.-native made only 8 of his 20 field-goal attempts, and the Wildcats did not have the guard play to get quality shots for him and Walker at the end; Kansas State did not register a field goal over the last three minutes of the game. Still, Beasley showed his athleticism, post moves, and rebounding technique and instinct tonight, but he was not able to demonstrate the outside game to prove accurate the comparisons made between him and last year’s Big 12 freshman sensation: Kevin Durant.

The second game, featuring No. 2 Memphis and No. 24 Southern California, was a sloppy affair; each team turned the ball over 21 times, and Memphis made only 7 of their 18 free throws. Tigers prevailed, in overtime, 62-58, to remain undefeated.

Memphis has the projected second pick in the Draft in point guard Derrick Rose, but he had an off night (in part due to Tim Floyd’s implementation of the triangle-and-two defense), scoring only nine points to go along with four assists, a career-high ten rebounds, three steals, and five turnovers. He seemed almost careless, lacking the precision necessary to be a successful college point guard. His passes lacked purpose, and the shots he created for himself were often awkward and off-balance. But Memphis has Joey Dorsey and Chris Douglas-Roberts (who actually played like a freshman for most of the game), so, while they hope that Rose can make plays, he doesn’t feel the burden of his entire team in the way that Beasley does in Manhattan (Kansas, that is).

"[Rose] drove in on a couple of them, I’m like, ‘Why’d you do that?’” Memphis coach John Calipari told ESPN.com.

“I was trying to score,” Rose told him.

“Oh, okay,” he responded, “but there’s [sic] five guys out there guarding you.”

As for Southern Cal, everything begins with O. J. Mayo, who actually played in control until the last five minutes of regulation. For example, with 2:45 remaining in the second half, and S.C. trailing, 50-49, Mayo bricked a 25-foot three-point attempt from the top of the key; it was a shot that would have given even Jamal Crawford pause in this building. Mayo finished with 16 points on 6-20 from the field.

Meanwhile, Davon Jefferson was as explosive as Walker in the first game, and he figures to be a first-round pick, like Mayo, should he decide to leave L.A. after this year. Jefferson collected 13 rebounds to go along with 12 points, including two monster, rim-rocking, extremely athletic dunks. Still, he only shot 3-11 from the field, and he turned the ball over 6 times.

Coaches love to say that, by the time March rolls around, freshmen aren’t really freshmen anymore. But this is the beginning of December, and the team that played and executed best is the one with the junior point guard and the sophomore big man; this passes for veteran leadership in college basketball these days. At Kansas State and Southern Cal, and at the point-guard spot for Memphis, they will be counting on their star freshmen growing up in a hurry.

Amid Unending Questions, the Tragic Death of a Young Man

2007-11-27T16:55:00.000-05:00

Sean Taylor’s short life ended tragically early this morning, about 24 hours after being senselessly gunned down in his own bedroom in the middle of the South Florida night. It is a complex story, to be sure, but, today, it can be boiled down to this: Sean Taylor is dead at age 24.

The enigmatic Taylor had his share of on- and off-the-field missteps, and those certainly found their way into news stories about the shooting. Most notably, Taylor was arrested two years ago, also in Miami, for brandishing a weapon and assaulting a man Taylor accused of stealing his all-terrain vehicles.

Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon has drawn the ire of Redskins fans and bloggers for some comments he made yesterday in a chat on the Post’s website:

I know how I feel about Taylor, and this latest news isn’t surprising in the least, not to me. Whether this incident is or isn’t random, Taylor grew up in a violent world, embraced it, claimed it, loved to run in it and refused to divorce himself from it. He ain’t the first and won’t be the last. We have no idea what happened, or if what we know now will be revised later. It’s sad, yes, but hardly surprising.

Many around Taylor and Redskins Park say that, since the birth of his daughter last year—who, tragically, was in the bedroom with him at the time of the shooting—he had matured. I’m sure, on a lot of levels, that’s true.

The circumstances behind the shooting—phone lines were cut; a knife was left behind in another apparent home invasion a week ago—seem to indicate that this wasn’t just a robbery, but a specific, premeditated burglary. What happened to cause this won’t be known for some time, but one hopes that those who are responsible for taking an 18-month-old’s father from her with her in the room are brought to justice swiftly.

Redskins vice president of football operations Vinny Cerrato called it “a deliberate attack,” and one can’t help but wonder why Taylor was targeted in such a way. Wilbon could very well be right, and, in his defense, he was just answering a question he had received in a direct way. Considering the circumstances surrounding the shooting, it isn’t an unreasonable conclusion to draw, just an unfortunate time to draw it.

Another Post columnist, Mike Wise, wrote today that, “It should be mentioned that, disturbingly in this violent country, Sean Taylor became another young, black male whose dreams perished before his 25th birthday. He just happened to be richer and more famous than the rest.”

It’s true that Taylor had associated with violent people in the past, that he seemed, upon entering the league, to be another young, black athlete drawn to what many deride as the “thug life,” a life in which guns are prevalent. It isn’t clear whether his association with that lifestyle was a factor in his murder, though it seems likely that at least the ubiquitousness of firearms in that lifestyle may have claimed yet another victim.

But, today, it doesn’t really matter. Wise asked from Redskins Park whether Taylor was killed, “for what, men seeking his material wealth? Revenge? His fearless nature? No one is sure today. No one here cares.”

Keeping the District Safe Means Keeping Guns Out

2007-11-26T15:19:00.000-05:00

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is a curious sentence: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Its grammar is highly questionable, and so, too, is its meaning. The only time the Supreme Court has ever directly addressed this issue was in 1939, in U.S. v. Miller, when the Hughes Court unanimously upheld the National Firearms Act of 1934, which prohibited, among other weapons, shotguns with barrels less than 18 inches long.

Justice James McReynolds, no friend of the Roosevelt administration (actually, no friend of anyone, particularly Jews, women, etc.), wrote in Court’s opinion:

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.

Furthermore, even in 1939, it was clear to the Court that the notion of a “well regulated militia” seemed outdated:

The signification attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. “A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline.” And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.

Courts across the nation had upheld this embraced the notion of the Second Amendment guaranteeing a collective right as opposed to an individual one, until an appeals court struck down a law earlier this year that virtually outlawed handguns in the District of Columbia. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to consider the case to determine if the D.C. law violates “the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes.”

The District wants to keep the law banning handguns to prevent a relatively high crime rate from skyrocketing further. Gun-rights advocates and civil libertarians disagree, arguing that an expansion of gun rights would actually prevent crime.

Robert A. Levy, a scholar from the conservative-libertarian Cato Institute, told the Washington Post that this was “good news for all Americans who would like to be able to defend themselves where they live and sleep.

“And it’s especially good news for residents of Washington, D.C., which has been the murder capital of the nation despite an outright ban on all functional firearms since 1976.”

Only it isn’t, really. An expansion of gun rights would not be a deterrent, and vigilantism wouldn’t make D.C. safer. The District has a compelling interest in the regulation and prohibition of certain weapons that courts determine unrelated to “a well regulated Militia.”

The N.R.A., Unintended Consequences crowd has tried to apply an antiquated sentence in the Constitution to a faulty and dangerous world-view. America is a more dangerous place to live because of the Second Amendment and the undermining of sensible gun control laws in its name. Every citizen in the U.S. would be well-served if the government were to pry Charlton Heston’s gun from his cold, dead hands.

If the Supreme Court, when it rules on this case in the spring, expands the right to bear arms to an individual right rather than a collective one, it will be doing so in contradiction to past case-law, and at the peril of D.C. residents and all Americans.

Bonds’ Hubris Is Finally Catching Up with Him

2007-11-15T20:10:00.000-05:00

There it is, right at the top of the page: United States of America v. Barry Lamar Bonds. The American public against the holder of the most hallowed record in American sports.

A federal grand jury indicted baseball’s all-time home-run king today on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice, accusing him of lying when he told the grand jury that he didn’t know that the substances given to him by Greg Anderson, his personal trainer, were illegal steroids.

Anderson had been spending the better part of a year in federal detention for contempt related to his refusal to testify before the grand jury, ostensibly against Bonds. But Anderson was ordered released today from custody, fueling speculation that he has now decided to testify.*

For Bonds, his indictment is ironic: as part of his agreement before testifying in front of the grand jury, he was granted immunity for anything to which he might admit. According to the indictment, the only way his testimony could be used against him is if he was found to be untruthful.

On or about December 4, 2003, Bonds testified before the grand jury. Bonds received an order of immunity… and was informed that pursuant to that order, neither his testimony nor any information directly or indirectly derived from his testimony could be used against him in any criminal case except a prosecution for perjury, false declaration, or otherwise failing to comply with the court’s order.

Each of the four perjury charges relates to a specific statement Bonds made to the grand jury: (a) he didn’t knowingly take steroids supplied by Anderson; (b) that Anderson injected substances into Bonds’ body; (c) that Anderson did not provide Bonds with human-growth hormone; and, (d) that Anderson didn’t provide him with anything until 2003.

Presumably, federal prosecutors now have Anderson’s testimony* to support the physical evidence against Bonds, which, it was revealed in the indictment, includes positive tests for anabolic steroids. It seems like a solid case, and the prospect of Bonds in prison seems very real. The irony remains: if he had just told the truth—like Jason Giambi, for instance—he could have avoided this indictment.

In Barry Bonds’ world, however, his twisted sense of pride is more important than conforming to some silly convention, like telling truth under oath. Bonds has always had nothing but contempt for his teammates, the fans, the media, and, now, evidently, for authorities. That contempt has cost him clubhouse cohesion, fans’ respect, and favorable media coverage, but now it may cost him his freedom.

[Ed. note: Following press time, it was widely reported that Anderson is not cooperating with the government.]

Giuliani and Robertson Aren’t Such Strange Bedfellows

2007-11-07T16:41:00.000-05:00

I was speaking with an acquaintance of mine over the weekend—a middle-aged, African-American member of the news media—when he revealed, to my surprise, that he was campaigning for Rudolph Giuliani for president.

It seemed out of character for someone who had privately complained to your humble diarist about a conservative bias at a certain cable news outlet to lend his support to the candidate most likely to continue the failed foreign policy of the Bush administration. But many moderate Republicans and independents see Giuliani as one of their own, uncorrupted by the hypocrisy of the Christian Right.

Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Giuliani today is not necessarily a departure from Giuliani’s record; rather, it is confirmation of Giuliani’s conservatism. Rutgers history professor David Greenberg wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post on Oct. 28, a week and a half before Robertson’s endorsement:

On issues such as free speech and religion, secrecy and due process, civil rights and civil liberties, pornography and democracy, this moralist and self-styled lawman has exhibited all the key hallmarks of Bush-era conservatism… if you’ve managed to keep liking President Bush, you’d have no trouble loving President Giuliani.

Robertson today said that Giuliani was “a proven leader who is not afraid of what lies ahead and who will cast a hopeful vision for all Americans.” But Giuliani’s brand of hope is like Bush’s: based on fear. Consider Giuliani’s repeated invocations of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to enhance his candidacy.

It sounds a little like the drumbeat leading up to the war in Iraq. Sure, Sept. 11 had little to do with either thing, but it sure plays upon the worst fears of many Americans.

Yes, it’s true that Giuliani is for some measures of gun control, but he’s also the same mayor who put homeless people in jail for no real crime. And, while he lived with two gay men during his separation from his ex-wife, actress and news anchor Donna Hanover, he opposes both gay marriage and civil unions. He’s also personally pro-choice, but he has stated that he would appoint judges who would strictly interpret the Constitution, which is right-wing code for “won’t find any penumbral rights in there, like the right to choose.”

Could Robertson have found another candidate who better exemplified his values? Absolutely. Could he have found another candidate who, at this point, seemed more likely to defeat the likely Democratic opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.)? Hardly.

Giuliani represents the strongest candidate: both in America-first, civil-rights-be-damned foreign policy, and attitude. He seems tough. He was known as a tough-as-nails prosecutor and a take-no-shit mayor. In that way, he’s Pat Robertson’s perfect candidate; he’s the one guy who will do anything to keep Hillary and the Clinton Deviance Machine out of office.

So Giuliani shifts right to capture the nomination by courting the Pat Robertsons of the world, but, during the general election campaign, when he tries to remind voters about his gay roommates, liberal and moderate voters—like my aforementioned friend—would be well-served to distinguish between his personal history and his political actions. Giuliani is either playing the evangelicals, or he’s playing moderates.

The past seven years of George W. Bush should serve as a model to show which group is more likely being deluded into thinking that Rudy is one of them.

There Are No Sympathetic Characters in the A-Rod Saga

2007-10-30T20:51:00.000-04:00

Oh, the greed, the audacity, and the arrogance. The greed of Alex Rodríguez to walk away from $150 million; the audacity of Scott Boras to announce that his superstar client was opting out of his contract during the decisive game of the World Series; and the arrogance of the Yankees and spoiled son Hank Steinbrenner for expecting otherwise from their erstwhile slugger because of Yankee Birthright.

First, A-Rod: an enigma wrapped in a paradox. A player who once offered to take a pay-cut to have a chance at a World Series in Boston, but a “24 + 1” player who seems enraptured with personal statistics and achievements. Rodríguez spent the whole season talking about how much he wanted to stay in New York with the Yankees, but then he opts out, anyway, without even meeting with Yankee brass.

Meanwhile, construction is underway on an additional circle of hell solely for talent agents, and there’s going to be a whole wing for sports agents named for Scott Boras (incidentally, Drew Rosenhaus will be upset about this). Picking the night of Game Four of the World Series—Will Leitch commented yesterday that, had the Series gone to a seventh game, Boras would have waited until then—to announce this overshadowed the Red Sox, the Rockies, and all of baseball.

As for the Yankees, it plays a little like King Lear-meets-the-South-Bronx with Hank and Hal Steinbrenner machinating for George’s power and fortune. In the four weeks that has followed the end of their season, the Yankees have driven away a manager (who led them to 12 consecutive postseason appearances), Yankee icon Don Mattingly, and Rodríguez, their best player (and likely recipient of two M.V.P. awards in four years in pinstripes).

Meanwhile, as Joe Girardi was being announced today as the Yankees’ next manager, Torre and Mattingly appear poised for Chávez Ravine, with Grady Little’s resignation as Dodgers skipper. Don’t be surprised to see Los Angeles become a player for A-Rod should Torre take over.

We won’t know why Rodríguez opted out—or why he and Boras made the announcement during the World Series—until after he finds a new home. Boras is too shrewd to reveal any information about A-Rod’s preferences until he has received all offers. But signs during the Yankees’ managerial search indicated that Rodríguez had little interest in playing for Girardi, whom A-Rod saw as a Buck Showalter-type during Girardi’s time as a player and coach in New York.

Perhaps the Yankees thought they could at least negotiate an extension, and that A-Rod would stay anyway because the Yankees could offer more money than anyone. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony—the ultimate illogicality—for baseball’s richest player and its most reviled agent to walk away from the most lucrative offer?

Of course, it’s possible that A-Rod will actually garner a higher salary on the open market, though, without the Yankees in the mix, it seems somewhat unlikely. But the events of the past month could not have transpired any worse for the Yankees.

Oh, and did I mention the hated Red Sox won the World Series two nights ago?

Amid the G.O.P. Squabbling, a Common Target

2007-10-23T14:30:00.000-04:00

During a Republican presidential debate Sunday night in Orlando, Fla., the eight candidates—many of whom have questionable conservative credentials—appealed to the right-wing of their party, not by bolstering their own respective case, but by reminding likely primary voters that you-know-who likely looms in the general election next November.

According to a search of the New York Times transcript of the debate, the name “Hillary” was spoken 23 times by the eight G.O.P. hopefuls (and another nine times in questions for the candidates), many of whom hoped to turn her candidacy into a sound-byte that would resonate amongst Republican voters, who view a Hillary Clinton-presidency, not with trepidation, but with cataclysmic terror.

Former Mass. governor Mitt Romney:

We’re not going to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House by acting like Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton wants to run the largest enterprise in the world, the government of the United States… She hasn’t run a corner store. She hasn’t run a state. She hasn’t run a city. She has never run anything. And the idea that she could learn to be president, you know, as an internship, just doesn’t make any sense.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson (Tenn.):

I simply disagree with [Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani] on those issues. And he sides with Hillary Clinton on each of those issues I just mentioned.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.):

First of all, I think it is important that [health care] will be one of the defining issues of this campaign, because we know that there will be Hillary-care resurrected.

Giuliani:

There are two things I agree with Hillary Clinton on. First of all, we’re both Yankee fans. Well, wait a second. I became a Yankee fan growing up in New York. She became a Yankee fan growing up in Chicago.

Second, she made a statement last week—and I’ve been very critical of her, but I want to tell her I agree with this one. Quote, Hillary Clinton: “I have a million ideas; America cannot afford them all.”

I'm not making it up. I am not making it up.

One more time: “I have a million ideas, America can’t afford them all.”

No kidding, Hillary. America can’t afford you.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee:

You know, it’s interesting, the most… wonderful reaction we’ve had in this entire room is when Hillary’s name is mentioned. It gets louder than an Aerosmith concert. But I want to say this—you’ve asked: What’s the difference? No matter which one of us is on this stage—and, look, I like to be funny, let me be real honest with you. There’s nothing funny about Hillary Clinton being president.

Huckabee—who has had a very impressive last month or so—makes the point squarely: the greatest point a Republican candidate can make to enhance his standing with voters is not by showing he is necessarily more conservative than his fellow hopefuls, but that he is stronger than the other competitors.

So far, Giuliani best exemplifies that competitiveness, which likely explains his slight edge in the polls thus far. Thompson’s commitment to the race has been questioned, and the last thing that G.O.P. loyalists want is someone less dedicated to defeating Hillary next November than they are.

My friend Reid Wilson, who runs the Politics Nation blog at Real Clear Politics, asked yesterday: “The shots Republicans take [at Clinton] haven’t changed in a decade. Will they need to break out new arguments about her to have a shot at taking her down?”

In a general election, perhaps, though Clinton would likely enter such a race with staggeringly high unfavorable ratings to begin with. It’s possible that the same attacks could backfire against the Republican candidate, but, for now, in the race for the G.O.P. nomination, they are working just fine, as strength and ferocity seem to be the qualities most highly sought by primary and caucus voters.

After 12 Turbulent Years, Torre Walks Away

2007-10-18T17:49:00.000-04:00

For 12 years, Joe Torre took a lot of shit as manager of the New York Yankees. But, today, he flew down to the Yankees’ headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and declared that he had finally had enough.

After being forced to wait 10 days after the Yankees were eliminated from the playoffs, he was presented with only a one-year offer at a 29 percent cut in base salary. Rather than continuing to endure a blustering owner, the rabid New York media, a fickle fan base, and enigmatic players, and, ultimately, this final disrespect, Torre waited until the Yankees came back to him, and then he left them at the altar.

And with Torre goes the last vestige of class in the Yankees organization. For the Yankees to deem this season a failure—a season in which they overcame numerous injuries to an aged roster—reveals their arrogance. To penalize a man who has qualified for the postseason in each of his 12 seasons reveals their detachment from reality.

It was clear that Torre and Yankees president Randy Levine (G.W. class of 1977) had difficulty co-existing, and the Yankees’ sudden penny-pinching with Torre reflects that. Sure, $5 million is still more than any other manager in baseball, but Torre recognized the insult of a low-ball offer from an organization without any budget constraints.

Brian Cashman called today, “a difficult day,” but that may not have been all about Torre. The Yankees are entering a period of extreme flux. Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettitte are free agents, and Alex Rodriguez likely soon will be. Torre’s departure—and the identity of his successor—may be a determining factor in where these players end up next season.

The future for the Yankees is unclear, as is Joe Torre’s future. Torre has yet to comment, but, surely, he reached his wit’s end with his own version of the Bronx Zoo. Now that the zookeeper is gone, who will keep the animals in check?

N.F.L. Picks: Week Five

2007-10-06T13:50:00.000-04:00

Now that baseball is over—What’s that? It isn’t?!?—I can devote more time to this feature: fifteen minutes instead of five. My increased dedication and effort is sure to show, though perhaps not in wins and losses.

NEW ORLEANS (-3) over Carolina – David Carr is playing quarterback for the Panthers, right?

KANSAS CITY (+2) over Jacksonville – Whatever.

WASHINGTON (-3.5) over Detroit – To simplify the offense for Jason Campbell, Al Saunders is shortening the Redskins’ playbook to only 700 pages.

TENNESSEE (-8) over Atlanta – The eight-point spread is still two more points than Vince Young earned on his Wonderlic.

HOUSTON (-5) over Miami – Ugh.

Seattle (+6) over PITTSBURGH – I had to pick a road team at some point.

NEW ENGLAND (-16.5) over Cleveland – Not this road team.

Arizona (-3.5) over ST. LOUIS – Kurt Warner (part-time) returns to St. Louis.

N.Y. GIANTS (-3.5) over N.Y. Jets – Don’t count out that home-field advantage.

INDIANAPOLIS (-9.5) over Tampa Bay – Not sold on Tampa yet.

San Diego (+1) over DENVER – Not sure why I’m still waiting for Norv Turner to pull things together.

Baltimore (-3.5) over SAN FRANCISCO – Mike Nolan should buy fewer suits and spend his money on more shoes for Junior.

GREEN BAY (-3) over Chicago – Let the Brett Favre-lovefest continue.

BUFFALO (+10) over Dallas – Too many points. Actually, probably not, but that’s why I’m terrible at this.

Last week: 9-5. This season: 30-27-5 (53 percent).

Tying Up Some Loose Ends

2007-10-03T15:00:00.000-04:00

Forgive me if I’ve been a little preoccupied with tremendous choke-job that occurred last week in Flushing to attend to my regular matters this time of year. Kudos to that organization, though, for retaining the man who best acquitted himself during this collapse: Willie Randolph.

Anyway, I went 9-5 last week against the spread in my football picks. Combined with 9-5-2 in Week 3, I now stand at 30-27-5, or 53 percent. Just take my word for it.

Lastly, some baseball postseason awards and predictions (I was so tempted to name David Ortíz M.V.P.):

A.L. Most Valuable Player: Alex Rodríguez, New York (.314, 54 home runs, 156 runs-batted-in, 1.067 on-base-plus-slugging)
A.L. Cy Young: C. C. Sabathia, Cleveland (19-7, 3.21 earned-run average)
A.L. Rookie of the Year: Dustin Pedroia, Boston (.317, 8, 50, .822)
A.L. Manager of the Year: Eric Wedge, Cleveland
A.L. Division Series winners: Boston in four, Cleveland in five.

N.L. Most Valuable Player: Matt Holliday, Colorado (.340, 36, 137, 1.012)
N.L. Cy Young: Jake Peavy, San Diego (19-6, 2.54)
N.L. Rookie of the Year: Ryan Braun, Milwaukee (.324, 34, 97, 1.004)
N.L. Manager of the Year: Bob Melvin, Arizona
N.L. Division Series winners: Colorado in four, Chicago in four.

For Glavine and the Mets, Their Season Has Come and Gone

2007-09-30T19:03:00.000-04:00

After recording 303 wins in his Hall-of-Fame major-league career—including a World Series M.V.P. award—Tom Glavine could only record one out today against the last-place Florida Marlins, and, because of that, the Mets’ season has ended.

The Mets’ 8-1 loss today, combined with a 6-1 victory for Phillies over the Nationals, culminates perhaps the greatest, most stunning collapse in baseball history. The Mets led by seven games with 17 remaining in the race for the National League East, but have lost the division by one game.

In fact, today’s loss ended a 1-6 homestand against second-division clubs. Two wins out of seven games would have been enough to force a one-game playoff (with the wild-card as a safety net).

“You could see this coming,” David Wright said after the game.

Glavine surrendered seven runs in the first inning, and the Mets never rallied, scoring their only run on a wild pitch in the bottom of that inning. The sellout crowd at Shea came to the gamed amped, but their energy was zapped away before the Mets even came to bat.

The Mets’ energy was gone, too, and, after showing so much fight yesterday, their season ended with little more than a whimper. It was an exceedingly disappointing end to an exceedingly disappointing season, and there will be plenty of time to discuss the hot stove following the conclusion of the postseason.

But let’s cast aside the notion that Willie Randolph should lose his job over this collapse. Twenty-five guys with Willie’s attitude would have won this division, and, if the organization decides to give Randolph the pink slip, it would be an injustice.

Fortunately, Omar Minaya seems to see the big picture.

“I’m not going to look at one year,” Minaya said after the game. “When I look at the job Willie Randolph has done, I look back on this job the last three years. I am pleased with the work he has done.”

There are plenty of players who deserve the blame for this, though some of them—José Reyes, for instance—the Mets will have to turn them around rather than cast them aside. Reyes’ lack of production, and hustle, over the past month were extremely disconcerting, and the Mets will need to find a way to recapture his focus and enthusiasm.

“We are a team,” Pedro Martinez said. “And we fucked this up as a team.”

Unlike last year, though, when the Mets seemed ever-so-close, this offseason’s motto ought not be “wait ‘til next year,” because, during the winter, Randolph and general manager Omar Minaya should be doing anything but waiting.

But, while they plot their moves for the winter for the next month, Minaya, Randolph, and the Mets will be watching eight other teams contend for a World Series.

The Mets Fight Their Way Back to a Tie

2007-09-29T21:52:00.000-04:00

FLUSHING, N.Y. – At the risk of hyperbole, today’s game here at Shea Stadium was the strangest, most exciting 13-0 game ever played in the history of the national pastime. It featured a bid for a no-hitter, a bench-clearing fracas, and it helped the Mets back into a tie for first-place in the National League East with only one day remaining in the 2007 regular season.

That is because the Phillies fell, 4-2, at home to the Washington Nationals later this afternoon; the game here was well-decided prior to first pitch in South Philadelphia.

And perhaps that put some pressure on the Phils. Perhaps they felt the heat of John Maine hurling seven-and-two-thirds hitless innings before surrendering a swinging bunt. Maine was pulled immediately after—with a 12-run lead—allowing only the one hit and striking out 14 Marlins.

“We weren’t going to lose today,” Maine told the Associated Press after the game.

Philadelphia may have also been disturbed by the Mets’ sudden show of fight, as the benches emptied twice in the bottom of the fifth inning, culminating in a shoving match between José Reyes and Marlins catcher Miguel Olivo.

“We probably could have used something like that a month ago,” Billy Wagner told MLB.com. “Nothing brings a team together like a brawl.”

Olivo was ejected for his part in the fray, and, ironically, it was his replacement, Paul Hoover, who delivered the only Florida hit this afternoon.

“You couldn’t have rolled the ball any better,” Maine said. “What are you going to do?”

For the Mets—who have never pitched a no-hitter in 45 years of existence—they will no longer try to make history; they will try to prevent it. A win tomorrow assures the Mets of at least a playoff in Philadelphia on Monday. If the Phillies lose again tomorrow, the Mets will win the division. (Wins by the Mets and Phillies, and a loss by San Diego, would involve the wild card, and the loser of the N.L. East playoff would play for the wild card on Tuesday.)

Tom Glavine will oppose Dontrelle Willis here tomorrow at 1:10 p.m. Jaime Moyer faces Jason Bergmann at 1:35 in South Philly.

Today, though, began unlike any since the middle of May: with the Mets in second-place. An anonymous Met placed a framed photograph of several players celebrating a walk-off win earlier this year atop a ledge by the stairs leading to the dugout from the clubhouse. On the bottom was written, “We Worked To [sic] Hard, Let’s Finish This,” with the suggestion, “Tap Me For Luck,” typed underneath.

After just one day, the Mets are back into a first-place tie with the division title in their sights, and history, if only temporarily, averted.

The Mets’ Meltdown Continues

2007-09-28T23:59:00.000-04:00

FLUSHING, N.Y. – One of the greatest collapses in baseball history came one step closer to fruition here tonight, as the Mets, despite a large crowd trying to will them to victory against a last-place team, fell to the lowly Florida Marlins, 7-4, at Shea Stadium.

It was the Mets’ fifth loss in five games on this homestand, all against second-division teams. With Philadelphia’s 6-0 win over Washington, the Phillies have now stormed back to take a one-game lead in the National League East with two games remaining.

“I’m embarrassed,” third baseman David Wright told the New York Times after the game. “I think it’s embarrassing. It’s pretty pathetic that we have the division in our grasp with seven home games, and we can’t find a way to win one of them. It’s a bad feeling. The fans deserve better. Ownership deserves better. The front office, [manager] Willie [Randolph] and the coaching staff deserves better.”

“I haven’t slept in two weeks. It’s not fun. It’s the worst I've ever felt with a baseball uniform on,” Paul Lo Duca told the Daily News. “I know there’s people over in a war and people dying, and I know it’s just a game. But professional-wise, for a game, this is as gut-wrenching as it can be.”

55,298 Mets fans at Shea Stadium tried to will the Amazins to victory, and it was equally gut-wrenching for the crowd. If the Mets had won just one of the first five games of this homestand, they would be tied with Philadelphia; just two wins out of five, and the Mets would still be in first place.

But that hasn’t happened, mainly because of poor pitching. Tonight, Oliver Pérez allowed six runs in only three-and-two-thirds innings. Two of those runs scored on back-to-back hit batsmen with the bases loaded in the third inning.

John Maine, winless in September, takes the Shea mound tomorrow afternoon. The Mets and Marlins play at 1:10 p.m., and a win could put some degree of pressure on the Phillies, who do not play until 3:55 p.m. for Fox television.

“There are two big games left, we go out there and win these next two, that’s a lot of pressure on Philadelphia,” Wright said. “We know what it’s like to be chased, and now, all of a sudden, the pressure kind of turns to them. We go out there and take care of business these next two days, we’re going to need some help, but it’s still not out of the realm of possibility.”

A Mets loss tomorrow, however, and Philadelphia can clinch the N.L. East tomorrow with a win and end one of the most stunning failures in the history of the game.

The Mets Are On the Brink of Collapse

2007-09-28T13:43:00.000-04:00

Having seen their seven-game lead in the National League East completely disappear in 15 days, the New York Mets, on cruise-control for the past four months, now find themselves tied with the second-place Phillies with only three games to play.

When the Wilpon family and Omar Minaya began building this squad three years ago, they said that they wanted to play meaningful games in September. This couldn’t be what they had in mind.

Over their past 14 games, the Mets have ten losses; in the same span, the Phils have won 11 games. It culminated last night as the Phillies defeated the Braves, 6-3, while the Mets were shut out in a make-up game with St. Louis, 3-0.

After the game, the Mets’ seventh consecutive home loss, as the press interviewed dejected players, manager Willie Randolph walked around the locker room, raising his voice so that all could hear him:

“We’re gonna win this thing!”

In order for them to do so, they will have to rebound from one of the worst stretches in their history, and it has affected all segments of the team. For most of the last two weeks, it has been the pitching—both starters and the bullpen—that have fallen to shambles. But, last night, they received seven quality innings from Pedro Martínez, yet the bats were tamed by Joel Piñeiro, who threw eight scoreless innings.

“We’re even with three left,” David Wright said after last night’s game. “So, there’s [sic] two choices: Roll over, and start making vacation plans, or battle like hell and win this thing. We still feel like this is our division, and nobody in here is going to quit. As far as I’m concerned, I want to play in the post-season, and every one in here wants to play in the post-season, and if we’re going to go down, we’re going down with a fight.”

They went down without a fight last night, but, tonight, they welcome the last-place Florida Marlins to Shea (the Phillies open a three-game series in South Philly with the surging Washington Nationals). The Mets handled the Marlins in Miami last weekend, winning three out of four—and they would have earned a four-game sweep if the bullpen could have held a three-run, ninth-inning lead in the first game of that series.

Of course, if they had won that game, they would still have a one-game lead.

“[Today] starts a new season, and we can’t get caught up in the hype of how bad things have gone for us,” closer Billy Wagner said. “We just need to think positive and believe in each other.”

The Shea crowd will be asked to believe, as well, in a team that is on the precipice of an historic collapse. The Mets have done very little to engender that kind of faith thus far this month.

N.F.L. Picks: Week Three

2007-09-23T10:30:00.000-04:00

Last week was so horrible, and, with baseball heating up, there’s no time, nor demand I’d imagine, for comments.

HOUSTON (+6.5) over Indianapolis
San Diego (-4) over GREEN BAY
KANSAS CITY (-1.5) over Minnesota
Detroit (+7) over PHILADELPHIA
NEW ENGLAND (-14) over Buffalo
N.Y. JETS (-3) over Miami
PITTSBURGH (-8) over San Francisco
BALTIMORE (+7.5) over Arizona
TAMPA BAY (-3) over St. Louis
DENVER (-3) over Jacksonville
Cincinnati (+3) over SEATTLE
Cleveland (+3) over OAKLAND
Carolina (-4) over ATLANTA
N.Y. Giants (+3.5) over WASHINGTON
CHICAGO (-3) over Dallas
Tennessee (+5.5) over NEW ORLEANS

Last week: 3-12-1. This season: 12-17-3 (41 percent).

N.F.L. Picks: Week Two

2007-09-14T16:09:00.000-04:00

Bobby Thompson’s home run in 1951 hasn’t been diminished by allegations that the ’51 Giants constructed an elaborate scheme to steal signs, so don’t expect the New England legacy to be affected.

Buffalo (+10) over PITTSBURGH – Even after that gut-wrenching loss on Sunday for the Bills.

Cincinnati (-6.5) over CLEVELAND – Moving the Brady Quinn over/under up to Week Three.

TENNESSEE (+7) over Indianapolis – One I will regret on Monday.

CAROLINA (-6.5) over Houston – The Panthers will do to Houston what Humberto could not.

ST. LOUIS (-3) over San Francisco – Ugh.

N.Y. GIANTS (-1) over Green Bay – I’ll be honest: part of me wants to see Jared Lorenzen start an N.F.L. game.

JACKSONVILLE (-10.5) over Atlanta – The animals take their revenge, one game at a time.

New Orleans (-3.5) over TAMPA BAY – I don’t think I can name a single player on the Bucs right now.

Minnesota (+3) over DETROIT – Fire Millen. Bench Ankiel.

MIAMI (+3.5) over Dallas – The Jimmy Johnson Bowl. The winner gets a vat of hair gel.

Seattle (-3) over ARIZONA – Umm…

N.Y. Jets (+10) over BALTIMORE – Seems like too many points.

DENVER (-10) over Oakland – Seems like too few points.

Kansas City (+12) over CHICAGO – Do you trust Rex Grossman with that big a spread?

San Diego (+3.5) over NEW ENGLAND – The ultimate Revenge Game.

PHILADELPHIA (-7) over Washington – The photo of Jon Jansen was pretty gruesome.

Last week: 9-5-2 (64 percent).

N.F.L. Picks: Week One

2007-09-08T11:06:00.000-04:00

Last year, I managed to squeak out a better than .500 record on my weekly football selections, so let’s begin the new season.

As always, these are strictly for entertainment purposes only.

(Home team in CAPS)

HOUSTON (-3) over Kansas City – Sounds right.

BUFFALO (+3) over Denver – Remember a few years ago when Buffalo shut out the Patriots, who would go onto win the Super Bowl later that year, in the first game of the season? Me neither.

Pittsburgh (-4.5) over CLEVELAND – Over/under on Brady Quinn’s first start: Week Six.

Tennessee (+7) over JACKSONVILLE – Whither Byron Leftwich?

ST. LOUIS (-1) over Carolina – Why not?

GREEN BAY (+3) over Philadelphia – Year Three of the Brett Favre retirement tour.

Atlanta (+3) over MINNESOTA – [Insert Ron Mexico joke here].

WASHINGTON (-3) over Miami – Did you hear that Joe Gibbs is back?

N.Y. JETS (+6.5) over New England – Eric Mangini lost some weight—hopefully not from his Mangenius brain.

SEATTLE (-5.5) over Tampa Bay – Sure.

Chicago (+6) over SAN DIEGO – Riding the Sex Cannon.

Detroit (+2.5) over OAKLAND – Take the points.

N.Y. Giants (+6) over DALLAS – Ugh.

CINCINNATI (-2.5) over Baltimore – The Bengals give 2.5 points, but Chad Johnson gives $10,000 in fines.

SAN FRANCISCO (-3) over Arizona – Mike Nolan’s suit is worth at least a touchdown.

This week: 1-0. Last season: 128-121-6.

As Vick Pleads, Ignore the Pleading for Sympathy

2007-08-26T11:45:00.000-04:00

When Michael Vick enters a guilty plea tomorrow in Richmond, Va., to bankrolling and running a dog-fighting operation, he will be giving up 12-to-18 months of his life to serve in a federal penitentiary. He ought to be giving up more.

Sure, he surrenders the handsome salary the Atlanta Falcons paid him to be their starting quarterback—and more, as, according to reports, the Falcons are seeking up to $22 million from Vick’s signing bonus. But, if one reads the original indictment or the summary of facts to which Vick agreed, his crimes are more heinous and cruel than most people are willing to accept.

[Disclosure: Your humble diarist is best described, for the purposes of this discussion, as “a dog person.” His family has owned two dogs. He loves all dogs. And when he sees the videos of dog-fighting on “Outside the Lines,” or HBO’s “Real Sports,” he cringes until he is able to change the channel, which he does with speed and dexterity.]

In that summary of facts, to which Vick—identified within also as “Ookie”—is expected to attest tomorrow before a federal judge, prosecutors construct a timeline of the conspiracy Vick bankrolled. Its most disgusting paragraph is:

In or about April 2007, PEACE [Purnell Peace], PHILLIPS [Quanis Phillips], and VICK and two others “rolled” or “tested” additional “Bad Newz Kennels” dogs by putting the dogs through fighting sessions… to determine which animals were good fighters. PEACE, PHILLIPS, and VICK agreed to the killing of approximately 6-8 dogs that did not perform well at “testing” sessions… and all of these dogs were killed by various methods, including hanging and drowning. VICK agrees and stipulates that these dogs all died as a result of the collective efforts of PEACE, PHILLIPS, and VICK.

That Vick was personally involved in the slaughter of dogs was a sticking point for the government, and it is likely they would not have accepted a guilty plea without that concession. It creates the most vivid image of the fact pattern, but one cannot forget that the fights themselves are vile and atrocious.

Likewise, Vick is able to assert that, despite bankrolling the operation and fronting the money for wagers on the dog-fights, he received none of the winnings, which were instead split amongst Vick’s co-defendants. This would be laughable if it was not inexplicably attached to such brutality.

Because, if this is about gambling rather than animal cruelty, then it could be considered a violation of numerous anti-gambling clauses in Vick’s contract. The reality is that this is about both gambling and animal cruelty, and, fortunately, N.F.L. commissioner Roger Goddell isn’t falling for Vick’s semantics.

“Your actions in funding the betting and your association with illegal gambling both violate the terms of your N.F.L. player contract and expose you to corrupting influences in derogation of one of the most fundamental responsibilities of an N.F.L. player,” he wrote in a letter to Vick Friday afternoon. Goddell has suspended Vick indefinitely.

Playing in the N.F.L. is neither a right, nor is it a privilege. A man can play in the N.F.L. if it is mutually beneficial to the league, its franchises, and the player himself. Considering the number of dog owners who buy tickets and merchandise, it is difficult to imagine that the N.F.L. would be well-served to have Vick as one of its employees.

Esteemed theorists like Deion Sanders, Clinton Portis, and Stephon Marbury each have made statements vaguely supporting Vick before quickly back-pedaling. But others have sought to compare Vick's crimes with those of Pac-Man Jones or Leonard Little. Such relativism is guided by the principle that values humans more than dogs. To some extent, that's true, but dogs hold a special place in society across many cultures. Watching man's-best-friend get mauled for kicks is anathema to most Americans.

So it is likely that Michael Vick has played his last N.F.L. game. He is a talented quarterback whose athleticism the game may never see again. But these actions are more than errors in judgment; they reveal a vile brutality and blood-lust that, after serving his time in federal prison, ought to disqualify him from getting his old job back.

Minaya and His Team Are at a Crossroads

2007-08-13T22:07:00.000-04:00

This time last year, the Mets had their sights set exclusively on October. This season their eyes remain glued to the rear-view mirror, where they can surely see the Braves and Phillies closing on them in the hunt for the N.L. East flag.

The Mets entered a six-game home-stand last week on the high of a successful road trip in Milwaukee and Chicago, but left Flushing yesterday after a 2-4 campaign that reduced their tenuous lead in the division to three games over Atlanta.

The Amazins have played four series with the Braves, and, in each of them, they have split the first two games but then lost all four rubber games—by a total of six runs. This past Thursday, Carlos Delgado’s bid to tie the game in the ninth inning was brought back from beyond the fence by Atlanta left fielder Willie Harris.

Losing the first two to the Marlins before recovering to avoid the sweep yesterday dug the Mets even deeper into a real, three-team, race for the division crown. This reality forces general manager Omar Minaya—who spent last August acquiring the pieces he felt would help the Mets advance in the postseason—to consider that, in order to stave off their challengers, the Mets may need to make some personnel decisions.

The first area of concern is the starting rotation. Oliver Peréz and John Maine, after blisteringly fast starts, have struggled somewhat since the All-Star break. Orlando Hernández and Tom Glavine have been good, but the fifth starter spot remains a huge question. The Mets could wait for Pedro Martínez, who is completing a rehab assignment in Florida (the results of which have been mixed thus far), while continuing to use Brian Lawrence for now, or they could attempt to require a veteran starter.

José Contreras has cleared waivers from the White Sox, and El Duque attempted to convince Minaya to make a deal for his fellow Cuban ex-pat. The Padres designated David Wells for assignment last week. Both have struggled this season, but both bring a wealth of experience, along with a shared familiarity with Mets manager Willie Randolph from his time in the Bronx.

In right-field, Randolph and the Mets need to replace Shawn Green from the lineup, particularly against left-handed pitching. Since returning from his first visit to the disabled list in his career on June 11, spanning 191 at-bats, Green has driven in 10 runs and is hitting .236 with a .274 on-base percentage, according to the fine folks at MetsBlog. In that time, he has hit .153 against left-handed pitchers.

Lastings Milledge, meanwhile, is batting .319 with 18 runs batted in, including a .370 average with runners in scoring position, and a.414 average against lefties. With Carlos Beltrán and Moises Alou back in the starting lineup, and Endy Chávez set to return by month’s end, Shawn Green is the most likely player to find his playing time reduced come September. Alou and Beltrán provide power; Chávez and Milledge provide speed and energy. Green provides neither.

Behind the plate, the Mets face the opposite problem, as Paul Lo Duca was placed on the 15-day disabled list Saturday night with a hamstring injury, and Ramón Castro left yesterday’s game with back pain. Mike DiFelice barely made it to Shea from AAA New Orleans in time to take the field, and he is a notoriously poor offensive player.

Any course of action depends on the condition of Castro’s back. If he can play nearly every day over the course of Lo Duca’s two-week absence, Minaya should stand pat. If not, he may want to explore other options, which have to include former Met Mike Piazza, who has recently cleared waivers from Oakland.

The Mets’ most significant quandary, however, lies in their bullpen, particularly after the bullpen blew back-to-back games against Florida. At the non-waiver deadline, Minaya chose to stand pat and not trade the Mets’ best prospects for Eric Gagné or Octavio Dotel (incidentally, Gagné has been terrible for Boston, and Dotel quickly found himself on the D.L. in Atlanta).

Jorge Sosa has been a revelation since moving from the rotation, and he quickly finds himself replacing the struggling Guillermo Mota in a set-up role. The Mets could use one more arm to supplement the enigmatic Aaron Heilman and the relatively unproven Pedro Feliciano in front of Billy Wagner, but the time in which to find one may have elapsed, even if turning down a chance to acquire Gagné was the correct decision.

It would surprise your humble diarist if Minaya doesn’t make a move, if only to breathe some life into a team that appears, at times, listless. The Mets are quickly realizing that this isn’t last year, when they spent August preparing for October. This year, August is about just getting to October.

Amid Controversy, Bonds Passes Aaron

2007-08-08T07:27:00.000-04:00

When asked if he wanted to make a statement about Barry Bonds, baseball’s all-time home-run king, Henry Aaron, said recently, “I am making a comment by not making a comment.” So Hammerin’ Hank was not in attendance last night when Barry Bonds slugged the 756th home run of his career, shattering Aaron’s record of 755.

Bud Selig was present for the tying home run, 755, though his reaction to that blast was tepid, to say the least. He stood up from his seat and placed his hands in his pockets, resigned to the fact that Barry Bonds had tied Aaron for his sport’s, nay all sports’, most hallowed record.

The man who swatted that fateful pitch smiled wryly as the ball cleared the fence. He is a baseball pariah, an American untouchable. Suspected of steroid use and likely to be indicted for perjury before a federal grand jury, Bonds is cast as an anti-hero to San Francisco Giants fans and a villain to most others.

Bonds, like Aaron, is black, but that doesn’t mean that there does not exist a racial component to the controversy surrounding this record. Aaron, while far from a push-over, was deferential, to both convention and his fans. Bonds, throughout his career, had nothing short of contempt for both.

At the time when Bonds is accused of steroid use—and, after reading Game of Shadows, one can have no doubt with regard to his steroid use—Major League Baseball did not test for steroids. Prescription drug abuse, however, was, and is, a crime, and Bonds lied to a federal grand jury about his use of illegal steroids.

And so he is not widely celebrated as Aaron was. In fact, the entire scene over the past few weeks was nothing short of surreal.

When he slugged 755, he hit it off Clay Hensley, who was once suspended for steroid use. Not only did Selig stand there like he was waiting at a bus stop, amongst the fans, his reception was, generously, 60 percent negative, with many of them holding placards with asterisks on them.

For 756, however, the cheer at AT&T Park was unambiguous. From the moment Bonds swatted the ball towards center field, and through the ten-minute ceremony that disrupted the game against Washington, the home crowd cheered their anti-hero thoroughly. It saved Bonds, and baseball, the embarrassment of having the breaking of the record booed on video for posterity.

Aaron did appear in a videotaped message on the scoreboard, and it was a classy gesture of his part. But, in the months that have led to this moment, his disdain was difficult to hide.

And now Bonds now finds himself on top of the sports world, though, clearly, if Aaron climbed the mountain, Bonds took a helicopter ride for a portion of the trip. But how long a portion? How many more home runs did he hit because of his steroid use? Five a season over the past nine years? Perhaps ten a year?

These are the questions that surround this record. Bonds has achieved, but he has not inspired like Aaron.

This is a commemoration of an event, not a celebration. It ought to be observed, but not cheered like it was in San Francisco.