Sports & The World@Large

Who are the adults in this mess?

2009-09-10T11:03:00.001-07:00

If Congressman Joe Wilson's ill-tempered and badly-timed rant last night did nothing else, it reinforced the idea that this country is headed over a cliff, driven by partisans by both sides of the aisle.

Wilson, who scrambled to apologize and save face, has drawn predictable scorn and outrage from Democrats and Republicans. But really now, people: How was his conduct last night any different than what we hear on a daily basis around this country?

From talk shows to cable news programs to town hall meetings, the concepts of civility, respect and tolerance have gone right out the window. No sooner had Wilson tried to extract his foot from his mouth than Congressman Barney Frank was going from show to show insulting the intelligence of Republicans. And on and on it goes.

The result? Our system of government is dragged through the mud, and no one seems capable or willing to turn off the garden hose and to end the supply of water that causes the mud in the first place.

We've become far more interested in taking score and pointing fingers than getting things done.

At this point, it really doesn't much matter who started the food fight that marks what passes for political discourse in the U.S. The questioning of Reagan's understanding of government became the attacks on Clinton's character, which gave way to hits on George W. Bush's intelligence, which bring us to where we are today, with a significant number of Americans openly challenging the authority of Obama to lead.

And the way things stand, whomever follows Obama, whether it's in 2013 or 2017, will take control of the government with a substantial bloc of Americans mocking his or her legitimacy as a leader.

My fear is that it will take the occurrence of something cataclysmic (and you can figure out what that is) before people on both sides realize they've gone too far.

The question is what person(s) command enough respect from liberals and conservatives to lead the nation through a dialogue where all of our significant differences are laid out on the table and hashed out, so that at the end, we can agree to disagree without going at each other's throats.

We desperately need some adults in the room before the kids throw so much food that the mess can't be cleaned up.

Usually, the drugs are better when you suffer a blackout

2009-09-08T13:01:00.001-07:00

Here's the script for this week's "Sports at Large," which, as always, airs live each Monday at 5:30 p.m. on WYPR, 88.1 FM in Baltimore. If you live outside the state of Maryland, you can catch the streaming broadcast of the show at WYPR.org.

By this time next week, the first week of the NFL season will be nearly complete.

By then, you'll probably have had your fill of those warm and fuzzy public service spots in which football players wander through the community, roughhousing with kids, all to remind us how much the NFL family gives to your family.

That family portrait gets marred when you peek inside the cameras to see what's really on the negative.

As the Sports Business Daily reported last week, as many as 12 of the 32 NFL teams are facing the prospect that some of their home games this season will not be televised.

That's because those teams may not be able to sell those games out in time to lift the league's television blackout.

Jim Steeg, the chief operating officer of the San Diego Chargers told USA Today that blackouts are likely there this season. Miami, Oakland and St. Louis may also see blackouts this year, while Cleveland and Kansas City have yet to sellout all their games for the coming season.

The issue is most acute in Detroit and Jacksonville, where a combination of the deep recession and bad play on the field may keep the fans away from the stadiums in droves.

The Lions, who lost all 16 games last year, may need divine intervention to beat last year's mark of five blackouts, while in Jacksonville, all eight Jaguars home games might be kept off local television.

Now, here's where that generosity of the NFL spirit should kick in. The league has for more than 30 years had a hard and fast rule that unless a game is sold out 72 hours before kickoff, it will not be shown on local television.

With thousands of fans not currently having the means to pay for pricey football seats, the NFL could relax the blackout rule in a variety of ways.

They could cut the deadline for sellout down to 48 or 24 hours. They could cut the percentage of tickets sold needed to waive the blackout to 75 or 80 percent, rather than a full 100.

Better yet, the league should have scrapped the entire blackout policy years ago. The NFL is the only sports organization, college or professional, that puts this kind of stipulation on when and how its fans can see games.

Imagine the goodwill the league would engender if Commissioner Roger Goodell said the blackout policy would go away for a year, if not for good?

Instead, a league spokesman told the Sports Business Daily that there is no consideration being given to changing blackout policy, that keeping the blackout is quote important to supporting the ability of the clubs to sell tickets and keeping our games attractive as television programming with large crowds unquote.

And that, my friends, is the real NFL family portrait. It may look like the Waltons are posing for the shot, but when the picture's developed, you find you're really looking at the Corleones.

Vick and his handlers

2009-08-18T03:50:00.001-07:00

What follows is the script to this week's Sports at Large, , which airs on WYPR (88.1 FM) in Baltimore each Monday at 5:30 p.m. and again each Tuesday during Maryland Morning at 9 a.m. The show can also be heard live through streaming audio at www.wypr.org.

Michael Vick's return to the National Football League essentially ensures that his will be the dominant storyline of the upcoming professional football season.

But for as much attention as Vick will draw, there are four men who will be under the microscope as much as Vick, for his conduct and success will be tied to them.

Two of them, Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and his coach, Andy Reid, are directly affected by what Vick does this year.

It was Reid who made the call to pursue Vick, then convinced Lurie to offer a one year contract, with an option year, to a player who has been out of football for two years.

Even with the extended period away, the decision to sign Vick makes enormous sense, from a football standpoint. He is only 29 years old, and is blessed with tremendous speed and a powerful throwing arm.

Of course, there was so much more to the choice to bring in Vick beyond his 40-yard dash time and his ability to throw a 70-yard pass.

Vick's crimes against dogs were heinous and reprehensible. At each of the Eagles' 16 games, there will be a heavy presence of protestors, not to mention fans, asking how such a depraved individual could ever be allowed back on the field.

With all due respect to them and to those who love and cherish pets, the Eagles did the right thing.

Michael Vick has met all the requirements of the criminal justice system, and has pledged to speak out against the horrors of dog fighting.

His celebrity and his story could make him an amazing living example against animal cruelty and he ought to get that chance.

That's where Roger Goodell and Tony Dungy come in.

Goodell, the NFL commissioner, signed off on Vick's return. He is entirely correct to ensure that Vick understands that playing football is a privilege not a right.

To that end, Goodell, who has placed a premium on good citizenship among the league's players, put a hold on Vick's comeback, giving him as much as six weeks of the regular season to prove that he gets it.

The commissioner smartly also enlisted the assistance of Dungy, the former Indianapolis Colts, to help Vick repair his character

There are no perfect people, and the NFL is increasingly becoming a home for miscreant behavior.

Indeed, on the day Vick signed with the Eagles, Goodell imposed a one-year suspension on Donte Stallworth, a Cleveland Browns receiver who pled guilty to a March DUI in which the car he was driving struck and killed a Miami man.

But Dungy's track record of mentoring and molding players is long and impressive. If anyone can show Michael Vick the straight and narrow, it's Tony Dungy.

To be sure, touchdowns and interceptions will tell one part of Michael Vick's redemption story.

But if you never hear the names of Andy Reid, Jeffrey Lurie, Roger Goodell and Tony Dungy again in the context of Michael Vick, you'll know the quarterback has made it all the way back.

One more thing: the league wasted no time authorizing the sale of Michael Vick jerseys in Eagle green.

Both Vick and the NFL should donate a portion of the profits of his jersey sales to a Philadelphia area animal rights concern. It may be one of the few good things Michael Vick has done in a long time.

Should Art get the call to the Hall?

2009-08-12T03:40:00.001-07:00

Here's the script from this week's Sports at Large, which airs each Monday at 5:30 p.m. on WYPR (88.1 FM) and again the next morning during the 9 a.m. hour. If you don't live in the Baltimore area, you can hear the show live on streaming audio at www.wypr.org.

You get the feeling that Rod Woodson was the kind of kid who would go around stirring up a nest of hornets, then would stand and dare the insects to sting him.

In his Hall of Fame enshrinement speech Saturday, Woodson, who anchored the defensive backfield at safety in the Ravens Super Bowl season, told the crowd that former owner Art Modell belonged with him in Canton.

That would be Canton, as in Ohio. That would be Canton, as in an hour south of Cleveland. And that would be Cleveland, the city where Modell once owned the Browns, before he moved them to Baltimore.

So, Woodson stood in front of a crowd of Ohio football fans and told them that the guy who ripped their hearts out of their chests deserved to be honored among the greatest figures in the history of the sport.

And when the predictable boos rained down on him, Woodson stood there and told the crowd they were wrong, that despite what their feelings told them, Art Modell was a football legend, and should be eternally recognized as such.

In a world of complexities, of nuance, of shades of gray, we come to sports for the simplicity they offer. The guys in our uniforms are heroes. The guys in the other uniforms are the villains.

The trouble comes when the roles change, when the saints become sinners.

That day, for football fans in Northeast Ohio, came in November, 1995, when Art Modell decided to pick up his team and move them east.

From that point forward, Modell became the Cleveland version of Cain, a man who couldn't go home because of one misdeed.

Of course, Modell didn't kill anyone. And unlike another son of Ohio, Pete Rose, Modell didn't commit an unpardonable sin against his sport. All Art Modell did was move his team.

Actually, Art Modell's record in the NFL is a remarkable one.

It was Modell nearly 50 years ago who approached his friend Wellington Mara, the owner of the New York Giants, and sold him on the idea of sharing television revenue among the league owners.

Without that, there would be no way that cities like Green Bay or New Orleans or Baltimore would be able to compete with New York and Chicago or New England for players. The rich in football would get richer the same way they do in baseball.

And without Modell, the longtime chairman of the NFL's television committee, there might not have been Monday Night Football, as he convinced ABC and advertisers to take a chance on a new concept.

But here's where that shading comes in. The Browns were highly successful when Modell moved them.

And for long suffering Baltimore fans who see Modell as a savior, remember he voted against granted Charm City an expansion team, then struck a quiet agreement on a private plane with former Governor Glendening for the same stadium deal he voted against.

On balance, Rod Woodson is right; Art Modell should be enshrined in Canton.

Putting him there, however, would stir up a mighty big hornet's nest, and the voters may wait until the ire of the hornets of Cleveland has died down, and Art Modell has left this mortal coil before they do what's right.

Erin’s plight

2009-07-28T03:34:00.001-07:00

Here's the script for this week's "Sports at Large," which airs each Monday at 5:30 p.m. and again on Tuesday mornings during "Maryland Morning" at 9 a.m. on WYPR, 88.1 FM in Baltimore. You can hear the station through streaming audio at www.wypr.org.

There are many unknowns left in the matter in which a reporter for ESPN named Erin Andrews was apparently filmed surreptitiously while she was in a hotel room, up to and including who did it.

What we do know is the perpetrator is subhuman and deserves to be punished to the limit that the law will allow for robbing Andrews of her privacy and taking away her sense of security.

But we would do a terrible disservice to Erin Andrews and every woman who makes a living in sports, in front or behind a camera, if we were to casually move on to the next topic when the person or persons who filmed Andrews is caught and put on trial.

For those who don't know her, Andrews is a 31-year-old woman who serves as a sideline reporter during ESPN and ABC telecasts.

Her contributions to a telecast typically consist of asking inane questions to a coach trying to rush off the field or the court at halftime of a game or tossing in trivial tidbits about one of the participants during a lull in the telecast.

That, in and of itself, doesn't make Andrews unusual among sideline reporters. Generally speaking, it's a superfluous position, no matter who does it, male or female.

The camera loves Erin Andrews, and many people, OK, men, love her for reasons that have little to do with her knowledge of a cover-two defense.

Chat rooms and blogs and Twitter postings serve as testament that sports fans, the overwhelming majority of them male, find Andrews irresistible.

And it's not just fans. There's a YouTube clip of the Tennessee men's basketball coach enthusiastically grabbing Andrews during an interview. And then there's former Orioles pitcher Rick Sutcliffe who practically leered at Andrews on air during an ESPN baseball telecast last year.

The only surprise for me in this story is that it didn't happen sooner. What I'm about to say will not come as news, but the American culture objectifies women.

Sports magnifies that objectification. Think not? Then ask yourself why former tennis player Anna Kournikova, who never came close to winning a major tournament, yet dominated endorsements and magazine covers.

ESPN has barred New York Post reporters from appearing on the channel because the newspaper ran still images from the video of Andrews that appeared online.

It's laudable that ESPN executives want to protect Andrews. Too bad they didn't take that approach a few years ago, when some of them bounced 50-something Lesley Visser from the Monday Night Football sidelines for a younger woman.

And what were they thinking this year, when they allowed an ESPN The Magazine writer to describe the size of basketball player Candace Parker's breasts in a story?

It's too late to give Erin Andrews her sense of security back. But that doesn't mean that we can't try to create a better climate for all the Erin Andrews to come.

A pointless gesture

2009-07-26T10:42:00.001-07:00

I am a man and I am a big fan of women's basketball.

There, I said it and I'm not going to waste space explaining my interest to knuckle-dragging troglodytes who think that barefoot and pregnant is as much as women should aspire to.

That said, I don't understand why the WNBA continues to try to throw itself at the feet of people who couldn't care less about its product.

I'm speaking specifically about the "dunk" that Chicago center Sylvia Fowles threw down at the end of the league's All-Star Game Saturday. The word dunk appears in quotes for two reasons. One, the other nine players on the floor cleared out to allow the 6-foot-6 Fowles to flush it through. Second, Fowles missed the first attempt with a running start, before hitting the second.

Simply put, the dunk is not a part of the women's game, and hasn't been since West Virginia's Georgeann Wells because the first collegian to do it more than 25 years ago. The primary reason is there aren't many women who can do it, but I'd like to believe that even if, say, one woman per roster in the pro or major college game could, they would use it sparingly because there are other more fundamental ways to score. Don't get me wrong; I appreciate a nasty tomahawk as much as the next person. But, if I go to an NBA or men's college game and I don't see a dunk, I don't feel cheated.

To the larger point, Fowles' dunk just feels like one more attempt to make those aforementioned troglodytes pay attention. And they won't. As a matter of fact, I can practically guarantee that the ones who host sports radio talk shows and the ones who listen will bust a gut laughing at Fowles and the rest of the league as early as drive time tomorrow if they aren't doing it already. And if the people who run the league could simply live with the fact that there is a part of the American sports fan populace who will never accept the legitimacy of women athletes and nurture those who do, things would be fine.

Instead, the WNBA, in large measure, continues to ignore the professional women, the African-Americans, the families with young children, the older fans and yes, the lesbians, who embrace it, in search of the Holy Grail, the young men who drool over Erin Andrews, who tune into SportsCenter for bombs, home runs and dunks, and think boxing is too subtle.

At some point, hopefully before it folds, the WNBA's leaders are going to have come to grips with the notion that their product is better than a lot of the people they're selling their souls to bring in.

DT+DUI = WNBA Trouble

2009-07-21T07:08:00.001-07:00

What follows is the script that aired on "Sports at Large," on WYPR, 88.1 FM in Baltimore. The program airs each Monday at 5:30 p.m. during "All Things Considered," and again during "Maryland Morning" Tuesday at 9 a.m. You can listen to the program through streaming audio at www.wypr.org.

Over the past 30 years or so, since the advent of Title 9, women athletes have become more than just competitors to their young fans, boys and girls. They've become flat out heroes, to be idolized and emulated.

So, what happens when one of these idols stumbles and falls? To what degree does her image take a beating in the public square, and just as importantly, should she be permitted the same latitude as a male counterpart.

Three weeks ago, Diana Taurasi, a guard with the Phoenix Mercury of the WNBA, scored 22 points in a 93-81 home win over the Seattle Storm. After the game, Taurasi and friends went out to celebrate.

Phoenix police said Taurasi's vehicle was driving 20 miles an hour over the 35-mile-per-hour limit, and that an officer saw the car drift out of a traffic lane.

When Taurasi was stopped at 2:30 a.m., she was driven to a mobile DUI van, where she gave a blood sample. Her blood-alcohol level was a point-17, more than twice the Arizona limit of point-08.

She has pleaded not guilty to the DUI and speeding charges, and Taurasi faces a minimum of 30 days in jail and a maximum of six months if she's convicted. She is to face a hearing on Wednesday.

Even to those who are indifferent or hostile to women's basketball, the name Diana Taurasi is a known commodity.

She led the University of Connecticut to three NCAA championships, and has been a key cog on two Olympic gold medal winning squads.

Men who hate women's basketball have been known to confer on Taurasi the status that she plays like a guy, based on her athleticism and brashness.

And by the way, men, that's no compliment.

Diana Taurasi was a driving force of the Mercury's league championship squad two years ago and currently leads the WNBA in scoring.

She's so good that a former competitor once named one of her adopted twins in her honor. The child is a boy and she named it Taurasi.

At any rate, the WNBA's All-Star Game takes place this Saturday in Connecticut, and Taurasi would normally be expected to be a part of the festivities back in the place where she became a star.

But should she be? Can a league that so depends on the goodwill of its fan base have one of its leading stars on display under these circumstances?

Save for a one-game suspension for mouthing off to officials, Diana Taurasi has never been in trouble before. Under normal circumstances, that might get earn her a pass.

But Diana Taurasi could have killed one of the little girls who idolize her with her thoughtlessness, and she deserves some punishment.

The Mercury, with the WNBA's blessing, gave Taurasi a two game suspension. That's a decent first step, but Diana Taurasi should take the next one by sitting herself down and taking herself out of Saturday's contest.

After all, All-Stars and heroes, males and females, don't just exist on the playing field. Their best and most lasting work comes when the jersey is taken off. It's a lesson Diana Taurasi won't soon forget.

ADDENDUM: Since this script was written and recorded, Diana Taurasi was selected to the Western Conference All-Star squad yesterday.

Freakin’ sweet

2009-07-16T20:52:00.001-07:00

They tell you always to be careful when you're drinking so that your beverage doesn't end up choking you. That is useful and wise advice…provided, of course, you aren't startled by news you never expected to hear in mid-swallow.

That's precisely what happened in the midst of Thursday's announcement of the prime-time Emmy Award nominees. In went the coffee just at the moment that the Outstanding Comedy Series nominees, and in particular, Family Guy, were being revealed. Out went the coffee in a spit take worthy of Danny Thomas, father of Marlo and star of the sitcom, Make Room For Daddy.

Don't get me wrong. For years now, I've been telling people that Family Guy, the animated adventures of the Griffin family of Quahog, R.I., is the funniest, take no prisoners show on television. So, how the hell was I to believe that Emmy Award nominators, of all people, would actually listen? These are people, after all, who gave a nomination and then an Emmy to the late John Ritter for his seminal work as Jack Tripper on Three's Company.

But there was Family Guy, the first animated show to land a Best Comedy Series nomination in 48 years. Amazing stuff, this. Perhaps this portends a new, hipper day in the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Of course, this was the first step in the proverbial journey of a thousand miles, meaning the Academy ain't quite so hip yet. The nomination panel missed some good stuff along the way.

To wit:

*The wonderful Pushing Daisies deserved more than a Supporting Actress in a Comedy nomination for Kristen Chenowith as it pushes up daisies after it was cancelled by ABC.

*The Big Bang Theory should have joined Family Guy and How I Met Your Mother among the Comedy Series nominees. At least Jim Parsons, as the delightfully socially inhibited Sheldon, snared a Best Actor nomination.

*How in the name of all that is holy could Friday Night Lights be left out of the Outstanding Drama Series category? Again? And Connie Britton, who portrays Tami Taylor, turned in the most amazing single scene of work last season by an actress during an episode when she spoke frankly and honestly with her daughter about sex. And Kyle Chandler, as her husband, Coach Eric Taylor, was similarly brilliant in a scene where he spoke evenly, but firmly to the object of his daughter's lust, his starting quarterback. Yet, both were shut out of the acting categories.

*HBO's No.1 Ladies Detective Agency was apparently the only show on the pay channel not to get a major nomination, though CCH Pounder did snare a Guest Actress nod, and the show got a couple of minor nominations. The show, which stars singer Jill Scott, could use the attention a nomination and a win could provide.

*Tony Shaloub? William Shatner? Kyra Sedgwick? Charlie Sheen? Tina Fey? 30 Rock? Again? Really?

A big thumbs up for HBO's Generation Kill, which snagged 11 nominations. I know a very special person who slept a lot better Thursday night after that news came down. Way to go, K!

The air around McNair

2009-07-15T21:08:00.001-07:00

What follows is the script for this week's "Sports At Large,'' which airs each Monday at 5:30 p.m. and during "Maryland Morning" each Tuesday at 9 a.m. on WYPR 88.1 FM in Baltimore.

It's well more than a week since Steve McNair, a married man with four sons, and his girlfriend were found dead in a Nashville condominium, and frankly, I still don't have any concrete thought on what to make of it all.

I first heard about a strong-armed quarterback named Steve McNair in the early 1990's. Back then, he was "Air McNair,' leading Alcorn State out of the obscurity most historically black colleges and universities labor under.

In the process, he set passing records for Division 1-Double A for a season and a career that still stand.

Despite the grumblings of so-called experts who claimed that the football he played at Alcorn wasn't the same as the football played at major schools, McNair finished third in the 1994 Heisman Trophy voting.

Taken third overall in the 1995 NFL draft, McNair learned on the Houston Oilers bench for two years, but when the franchise relocated to Nashville in 1997, he became the starter.

From then on, McNair became a symbol of efficiency, toughness and cool. Time after time, he would take massive hits, only to get up from virtually all of them, dust himself off and make his way to the huddle for the next play.

Trailing the St. Louis Rams late in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl 34, McNair led the Tennessee Titans in a furious late game drive that ended one yard short of the goal line, seven points short of a tie.

McNair went on to share the league's Most Valuable Player trophy in 2003. When he came to Baltimore in 2006, McNair's best days were behind him, but he immediately gave the franchise credibility at quarterback, something the Ravens had never had to that point.

McNair retired after the 2007 season, and left football as one of only three quarterbacks to throw for 30,000 yards, while running for more than 3,500 yards in a career. The other two, Fran Tarkenton and Steve Young are enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and so should McNair someday.

In addition to all of his playing field exploits, McNair was a force in his community, whether it was Nashville or his native Mississippi, where he personally loaded and paid for trucks filled with relief supplies after Hurricane Katrina.

In a two-dimensional sense, Steve McNair was the kind of man whose jersey you'd be proud to wear or whose poster you'd want to your kid to have hanging on the wall.

It's that third dimension, the one with human frailties, the one that emerged with his death that gives me pause about how to review the Steve McNair movie that just ended.

While Steve McNair was competing in that Super Bowl in 2000, Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis was being charged with double homicide in connection with an incident outside an Atlanta nightclub.

Lewis' coach, Brian Billick famously told the media the next year that they weren't qualified to pass judgment on Ray Lewis.

Right at this moment, I feel similarly about my qualifications to stand in judgment of Steve McNair or anyone else for that matter.

How are your qualifications?

‘They Won’t Go When I Go’

2009-07-08T07:32:00.001-07:00

If you were one of the hundreds of millions around the globe watching Tuesday's memorial tribute to Michael Jackson, you heard Stevie Wonder deliver arguably the musical highlight of the day, first with a quick instrumental line of "I Can't Help It,' a song he wrote that Jackson covered on "Off The Wall." Then you heard Wonder sing "Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer," a haunting song that ranks among his very best, if not well known.

Finally, you heard another song, the title of which appears at the top of this blog entry. It's a track from his 1974 Grammy winning album, "Fulfillingness' First Finale," and it is a withering indictment of false prophets and misplaced spirituality. The album is my favorite of Wonder's, and "They Won't Go When I Go" is a brilliant piece among a masterwork.

Yet, I'm willing to bet that unless you are a Wonder devotee (which I certainly am), you didn't know that song (which is understandable). But the fact that none of the networks and the nation's leading newspaper bothered to note it, much less comment on its inclusion in the program, speaks to a particular pet peeve of mine, namely the utter disregard mainstream African-American popular culture receives in the broader media.

For all the sizable contributions that Black artists make to the broader culture, they are routinely ignored in mainstream publications and telecasts. Music and television and movies that are of great import to African-Americans are blithely dismissed by E!, and Entertainment Tonight and People and the like.

Need proof? Think of the number of times Tyler Perry movies have opened to sizable box office figures, if not the very top spot in weekend figures, yet reviews of his works often require magnifying glasses to find in major papers and magazines. If you live in a major American city, chances are a gospel-flavored musical will come to your town at some point. But don't hold your breath looking for profiles of the actors/singers in your town's mainstream press.

Heck, Entertainment Weekly, the bible of American popular culture, effectively dismissed Michael Jackson's entire body of work with The Jacksons after the group left Motown in their recent retrospective of his career. That means, for instance, "Triumph," a platinum selling album, the group's first album to chart No.1 on the R&B charts in nine years, went without comment. It was as if the magazine wasn't interested in anything Jackson did from his days as a little boy until "Thriller."

During Tuesday's telecast on ABC, Martin Bashir, whose fame is due largely to his 2003 interview with Jackson, dropped in the bombshell that Jackson alone sang the vocals on the Jackson Five's "I'll Be There," a fact that will no doubt come as a surprise to Jermaine Jackson, who shared the lead with Michael, not to mention the millions of people who have heard that song over the past 28 years. Yet, to my knowledge, Bashir hasn't been corrected. Ask yourself if a correspondent at a major television network could have made a similar gaffe about a Beatles or Bruce Springsteen song without drawing heavy fire.

Look, I don't expect the nation's Big Media to suddenly start quoting Stevie Wonder album tracks as a matter of course. But it would be nice to know that someone in Big Media knew where to find those cuts and what they mean when they are important.

Providing a full account

2009-07-07T20:05:00.001-07:00

It was frankly painful as a Black man to watch the Michael Jackson tribute service on the various broadcast networks and cable channels Tuesday and to see few people who looked like me who could explain what was happening and provide a framework beyond the historical.

Though the service was non-denominational, what America and the world essentially got Tuesday was a peek inside the Black church. They got to see how we worship and how we send our departed onto the next spiritual realm.

Yet, until ABC's Robin Roberts, one of network television's few prominent African-American faces, declared at the end of the telecast that we had been to church, we got no sense of that from the nearly three hour broadcast.

ABC was hardly the only offender; CBS dumped out of the telecast at 3:50 p.m., after Michael's daughter Paris offered a moving tribute to her daddy, but before the pastor could provide the closing prayer. What was the rush?

Even worse was the absence of context, which led to errors of omission and commission. ABC's Martin Bashir, who owes his meteoric rise to an extensive 2003 interview with Jackson, told Charles Gibson that he and Jackson had spoken extensively about the reporter's ability to play the signature bass line of "Billie Jean."

Just after the first musical number of the tribute, a duet of "I'll Be There," with Mariah Carey and Trey Lorenz, Bashir observed that while Carey and Lorenz had to split the lead, Jackson had done the song solo, a monstrous error that completed ignored Jermaine Jackson, who was sitting in the front row of the Staples Center.

Any casual observer, much less devoted fans, knew of the mistake, yet Bashir was never corrected. Ask yourself how quickly Gibson or Bashir would have backtracked if they had committed a similar error on a Bruce Springsteen or Paul McCartney song.

Why didn't anyone speak to the incongruity of Motown founder Berry Gordy declaring Jackson to be like a son, when he wouldn't let Michael and his brothers keep their name, the Jackson Five, when they left the label? For that matter, where was the person to ask why Gordy didn't let the boys write their own songs and play their own instruments while they were with Motown?

Perhaps anchors and producers who remembered that Michael Jackson didn't fall off the face of the earth between the time he was an adorable moppet and when "Thriller" shook the world by its collective collar, might have been able to tell a complete narrative.

I used to think that a conspicuous African-American presence on stories that involved or were centered in and around the Black community did more harm than good. Now, I'm not so sure. I just wish I got the feeling that more people who make those decisions gave a damn.

Broadmindedness under the rainbow

2009-07-01T07:37:00.001-07:00

In the midst of the observation of the 40^th anniversary of the Stonewall uprisings in New York, as well as the ongoing national discussion over same sex marriage and President Obama's seeming reluctance to champion issues of interest to gays comes an interesting storyline from, of all places, soap operas.

From Soap Central.com comes a story that actress Patricia Mauceri, who has been a member of the cast of One Life To Live for 14 years, was bounced last month because of her objection to how her character, Carlotta Vega, was to be portrayed.

Specifically, according to Soap Central, the longtime soap is planning to romantically pair two male characters in an upcoming storyline. Mauceri believed her character, who is Hispanic, would not endorse the pairing, though OLTL's writers are going to write her that way.

The piece goes on to say that Mauceri, who was recently seen in an episode of the new hit USA Network drama Royal Pains, had been dissatisfied with another OLTL storyline and that this new plot development was the last straw for both sides.

What makes this so fascinating is that soaps, though considered low on the television food chain, have traditionally been in the forefront of storylines that addressed controversial topics way before they were taken up in prime-time.

The soaps handled abortion, domestic violence, homosexuality and discrimination well in advance of anything seen at night. Indeed, it was OLTL that introduced a groundbreaking story in the late 1960's about a light-skinned Black woman who attempted to pass as White. The topic was so hot that, according to a history of the show, a station in Texas dropped the show for a time.

I've always found it amusing when actors are asked to comment on what they believe the characters they play would do or feel, as if the characters are real people. However, if the to-date anecdotal stories from California that majorities of Blacks and Hispanics voted to outlaw Prop 8 are accurate, Mauceri might be onto something.

On the surface, it would seem that Mauceri badly overplayed her hand, and got fired because of it. But that doesn't mean that we all shouldn't remember that true tolerance should be extended in all directions.

Fehr strikes out? Hardly

2009-06-30T10:51:00.001-07:00

Here's the script from this week's Sports At Large, heard each Monday at 5:30 p.m. and Tuesday mornings in the 9 a.m. hour on WYPR 88.1 FM in Baltimore.

Ever since former President Reagan routed the air traffic controllers 28 years ago, labor unions in this country have been taking it on the collective chin.

If, in the best of economic times, one union after another has been forced to give things back to management, imagine what the auto workers had to surrender this year to keep Detroit afloat.

Among the sports players unions, hockey players gave back 25 percent of their salaries a couple of years ago. Basketball players have been operating under a salary cap for more than 20 years, and football's union is as weak as a newborn kitten.

Only one group, baseball players, have seen their lot improve over the years, and one of the driving forces behind that improvement announced his retirement last week.

Sometime before the beginning of the next season, Donald Fehr will step down as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, a post he has held since December, 1983.

Fehr will leave with a winning percentage that any pitcher, any manager, any franchise would kill for, as he will retire virtually undefeated in important showdowns with baseball management.

Fehr, who replaced the fired Ken Moffatt, the former air traffic controllers union chief, effectively won five collective bargaining negotiations with baseball owners during his tenure.

In addition, the union charged the owners with banding together to artificially depress free agent salaries in 1985, 86 and 87. The players won a $ 280-million settlement of a suit.

Perhaps the biggest mark of Fehr's dominance of the collective bargaining process: When he took over from founding executive director Marvin Miller, the average player salary was $289-thousand.

Last year, the average ballplayer took home a yearly salary of 2-point-9 million. Nice work if you can get it.

Now, beyond the fact that he was representing rich athletes, whom are hardly seen as warm and cuddly by the public, Fehr was imperious and single-minded in his focus toward improving conditions for the players.

Fehr's detractors say his desire to get the most favorable conditions for the players kept him from doing what was best for the game, namely authorizing a salary cap and permitting steroid testing before 2002.

Those criticisms are about 75 percent wrong. Baseball owners have historically restrained player movements as well as their pay.

A union leader who would allow management to cap salaries given the owners track record would be derelict in his duty.

The steroid charges stick to Fehr more thoroughly, but only to a point.

Yes, Fehr should have been more diligent about steroids as a health issue, but again, his first obligation was to protect his membership from the unreasonableness of management.

If Donald Fehr were a player, his career stats would give him an easy ticket to enshrinement in the Hall of Fame.

However, the record of his mentor, Marvin Miller, is even better than Fehr's and he isn't in Cooperstown yet.

As it is, Fehr will probably have to be satisfied with merely paving the way to the Hall. That's probably all he wanted in the first place.

The King is Dead; Long Live the King

2009-06-25T21:41:00.001-07:00

I guess it's only fair that I start by saying that Michael Jackson was "The King of Pop" only in marketing terms, or at least for me. I have always found Stevie Wonder a more gifted and inspiring musician, and Jackson's death won't turn me into a liar.

But, for as much as I love Stevie's music, I also know that he hasn't, to date, produced any moment so magical as that night in the spring of 1983 when Michael Jackson literally grabbed a nation by the throat and demanded that they watch and listen, as they were about to see and hear something the likes of which they would never see or hear again.

I was in my dorm at Maryland on that May night when the NBC special marking the 25^th anniversary of the creation of Motown aired. The usual soundtrack of Annapolis Hall was rock or metal, but on this night, the sound emerging out of every room was the R&B music that had marked my childhood.

There were the six Jackson boys – Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, Michael and Randy -- together for the first time in about six or seven years (thanks a lot Berry Gordy). They went through a medley of their hits, "I Want You Back," "ABC," and the haunting "I'll Be There."

Then, the other five left Michael alone on the stage. He talked for a moment about how much fun it was to do the old songs, but the time had come to do new stuff. That's when the unforgettable bass line of "Billie Jean" kicked in, and Annapolis Hall fell eerily silent, save for the unison of the song coming out of every room.

If all there was to the moment was the lip-syncing of the song, then that would have been amazing enough. But then Michael upped the ante by performing the moonwalk and popular music, heck, the American culture, would never be the same.

From there, a guy who had been a musical prodigy became arguably the world's most recognizable person, if not the most troubled.

I'd prefer, at least for a while, not to think about the eccentricities that marked Michael Jackson's last years, but rather dwell on the remarkable artistry he achieved. And, to be honest, I have never cared much for music videos. I think they've distorted the music industry, so while I appreciate the imagination of "Thriller" and "Beat It" and "Leave Me Alone," Michael's videos were never selling points for me.

Everyone has their favorite Michael Jackson song. I find it hard to limit to a couple, so I will quickly run through some of mine.

I have always loved the Jackson 5's covers of "Who's Loving You," and "Standing in the Shadows of Love," from their first album. Their version of "The Little Drummer Boy" from their Christmas album is gold, as is "Never Can Say Goodbye." And if you never thought you would hear soul and tenderness in a song about a rat, well you never heard "Ben."

The Jacksons' catalogue when they left Motown gets strangely overlooked, but "Blame It On The Boogie" and "Shake Your Body Down To The Ground" are brilliant dance pieces.

And if you have to get Michael Jackson work that you probably didn't already have, be sure and get "Triumph." It's the album with "Can You Feel It," "Lovely One," "Heartbreak Hotel,' and the suddenly ironic "Time Waits For No One."

There's one more song you ought to get. It's called "You Can't Win," and it's from the soundtrack of "The Wiz." The movie has been branded a flop, but it still resonates for many 30 years after the fact. Michael Jackson was introduced to Quincy Jones through this film, and all they did from there was collaborate on "Off The Wall," "Thriller," and "Bad." Nice productive friendship there, huh?

At any rate, "You Can't Win" is our introduction to Michael, the Scarecrow, and it is a rollicking tune that hints at the amazing work to come. The song opens with the lyric, "You can't win/You can't break even/And you can't get out of the game."

Alas, Michael Jackson got out of the game Thursday, having played it at a level few could ever aspire to. RIP.

Whither Brandon Marshall? Not in Baltimore, thank you.

2009-06-23T20:18:00.001-07:00

What follows is the script for this week's "Sports at Large," with the standard admonition that you can hear my dulcet tones deliver this Mondays at 5:30 and repeated Tuesdays during "Maryland Morning," on WYPR 88.1 FM in Maryland. If you live outside the state, you can catch the streaming audio at www.wypr.org.

The Ravens are scheduled to play Denver in November, but the Broncos can do the Baltimore football team and its fans a tremendous favor months before that game.

The Broncos will help the Ravens tremendously either by making their wide receiver Brandon Marshall happy or by trading him somewhere other than here.

Make no mistake, Brandon Marshall is a hell of a wide receiver. He has amassed more than 2,500 yards in the past two seasons, and has more than 100 catches in each of those two years.

For a Ravens franchise that has historically struggled to develop a top-flight pass catcher, Marshall, who is only 25, could give quarterback Joe Flacco a quality deep threat for years.

But make no mistake about this: Brandon Marshall, who wants a new contract, is a toothache of a person. He has more than earned his nickname of "The Beast,' just from his off-field behavior.

To wit, his name has come up in 13 incidents involving the police in the past five years. They include a DUI charge in October 2007 in connection with getting caught driving the wrong way down a Denver street after a game.

There was also an incident nine months before that where Marshall claimed his father tried to hit him with a car, while the father maintained that Marshall had fired a gun.

And there are reports of domestic violence allegations against Marshall. The reports are so numerous that ESPN devoted a full half-hour show to those charges three weeks ago.

Watching Marshall stammer his way through a defense of battering multiple women was cringe inducing.

We've long passed the point where we can realistically expect our athletes to be choir boys. If you can find a sports star that you feel comfortable with your child wearing his jersey in this day and age, consider yourself lucky.

But it is not too much to expect athletes or anyone else in the public eye to simply obey the law and to have respect for someone other than themselves.

Over the years, Charm City football fans have had to root for players who allegedly drove drunk, lied to police during a murder investigation and gone to jail on drug charges.

At some point, Ravens owner Steve Bischotti and general manager Ozzie Newsome ought to give the fans players that if they can't be proud of, they, at least, won't be embarrassed by.

A member of my family will be a Ravens cheerleader this year. She is understandably pleased with her accomplishment in making the squad and proud to wear the purple and black.

I can promise that if the Ravens get Marshall, I'll find something other than watching him or the team or my relative on Sunday afternoons this fall.

My relative is smart enough to not to have anything to do with the likes of Brandon Marshall. But that's not a guarantee that other well-intentioned area women won't get hurt.

That kind of assurance can only come from Bischotti and Newsome, who ought to declare unequivocally this beast in sheep's clothing won't get to prey on anyone in Baltimore.

When a simple ride home isn’t

2009-06-23T09:47:00.001-07:00

What I have found in my own life is that the things that disturb me the most, that cause me to lose the most sleep, that alter my outlook aren't what I consider the out-of-the-way things, like whether North Korea or Iran have nuclear weapons or if Jon or Kate are getting a divorce.

Frankly, until a few weeks ago, I had no idea who Jon or Kate or their eight were, and beyond a vague concern about what happens to putting eight kids into the spotlight without an apparent worry over the effect of said action, I really don't care about them or any reality show contestant.

No, the things that cause me the most worry are the things that disrupt life's normal pattern, the things that get in the way of A proceeding to B.

My cell phone rang off the hook yesterday afternoon as friends and family called to find out if my wife was a passenger on the Washington Metro Red line train that crashed into another in the middle of rush hour. Thankfully, she wasn't, but 48 hours before that, I had been on that very line, heading into the city to take in a basketball game with a friend. The story, sadly, is different for the families of those who expected that life would continue on the way it does every day, with their loved ones arriving home, no doubt, from a full day of work. I mourn for them and I hope they know that millions of us, in the Washington area and around the nation and the world, share, in some small way, in their pain and anguish.

The days of recriminations and finger-pointing about what went wrong on the Red line will come soon enough. For now, let's all pray that the disconsolate discover that Earth truly has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal, and that they and the rest of us return to whatever normalcy is as soon as is possible.

“Elections have consequences”

2009-06-18T20:12:00.001-07:00

The headline quote was uttered by our former president, George W. Bush, and provides living proof of what my father used to say, that a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while.

The aphorism, loosely translated, means that even the intellectually challenged stumble onto the truth every so often. Say what you want about our former president, but it's safe to say that no one would ever catch him running a Mensa meeting.

Yet, his statement about elections having consequences, spoken just after the 2004 election, is a valid one. It means that, following elections, the winners get to govern as they see fit.

You would think that after having been in power for 20 of the last 28 years, Republicans would understand that concept, but they seem to be operating under a premise that the events of last November didn't happen.

How else to explain their intractability on any number of issues, from health care to the budget to fixing the nation's fiscal mess? Playing the role of loyal opposition is one thing; Democrats have done that for most of the last 30 years. But Republicans have taken this to what feels like an unhealthy extreme, and to the contrary of what the American public wanted, as evidenced by their granting control of the Executive and Legislative branches last fall.

Take the Supreme Court, for instance. It was ludicrous for Republicans to think that Barack Obama, the first truly progressive president this nation has had since FDR, would use his first nomination to the highest court in the land to select someone from the right. Obama was always going to take someone who, if not a complete liberal, certainly was left of center, just as Bush 43 went rightward, in the same manner as his father, Bush 41, and Ronald Reagan, all tapped conservatives.

The Republicans, who now have placed seven of the nine current Supremes, have attacked Obama's nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, saying, among other things, that she will bring her personal feelings, life observations and experiences to the bench. Are they kidding? Of course she will. She wouldn't be human if she didn't. Are we really expected to believe that the majority – all conservatives -- didn't bring their views to Thursday's ruling that convicts don't have the right to obtain DNA to prove their innocence?

Those five justices (Chief Justice Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Thomas and Scalia) are there, in large part, because Presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush appointed them to represent a particular point of view that was expressed in the elections that selected them. And now, barring something unforeseen, the election of Barack Obama will have a consequence as well.

When a joke isn’t just a joke

2009-06-16T06:28:00.001-07:00

David Letterman's apology to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her daughters last night was the inevitable consequence of the flap that has ensued since he first told a joke last week. So much heat and noise had been expended and it threatened to distract what Letterman, a television icon in a way that Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel or Craig Ferguson could never be, had or would accomplish going forward. Already, there were comparisons to radio host Don Imus, and there's supposedly a protest planned today in front of the Ed Sullivan Theater, where Letterman tapes his show each day.

But should Letterman have apologized?

I've always believed that a person should always only say what they mean and feel, so as to attach the maximum value to their words. As I watched Letterman's apology last night, which followed a rather ham-handed attempt at an explanation last week, I thought I was watching a guy who truly meant what he said, but was also confused by how much of an issue this has become.

I'm not. In the current polarized political climate, where vultures on both sides of the aisle hover over the landscape waiting to pounce on whatever dead meat might be left in the desert, Letterman, who made sport of Palin during the campaign and since, was bound to be prey if/once he made a misstep. We've reached the point now when activist groups of all sides just move from topic to topic, subject to subject, hoping to pick up publicity and money off the backs from someone who has said or done something stupid.

To wit, you have the ridiculous specter of the National Organization for Women placing Letterman in its Hall of Shame for his initial joke as well as joking reference to Palin having a "slutty flight attendant look." That's right; NOW took the side of an avowed anti-choice political figure over a comic. I'll wait for a moment while you chew that one over.

As I said last week, the joke probably shouldn't have been told, but I am still waiting for Palin and NOW and all the other conservative commentators and the tea-baggers to heap the same scorn on Leno and O'Brien for telling essentially the same joke Letterman did during the presidential campaign. In fact, O'Brien, whom I actually like, is guilty of far worse, using the standard being applied to Letterman, for telling this joke:
"Sarah Palin is going to drop the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers hockey game. Then Palin will spend the rest of the game trying to keep the hockey players out of her daughter's penalty box."

The daughter O'Brien was referring to was an eight-year-old, who accompanied the governor to a Philadelphia Flyers game. The silent outrage for O'Brien is deafening.

One last thing: I have an apology to make. I apologize to myself for having a Hilton Honors frequent traveler's card. Embassy Suites, my favorite hotel chain and a part of the Hilton corporate family, announced Monday that they would pull advertising on CBS' website as a response to the calls they were getting over the Letterman flap. I didn't call them then, but I will call them today to tell them that I will be moving my points and my corporate loyalty to another brand, though I will miss that free Embassy Suites breakfast.

Lighten up, Sarah

2009-06-13T19:45:00.001-07:00

David Letterman's joke about Sarah Palin's daughter, whichever it was, has drawn fire from the Alaska governor and the right wing. It wasn't one of Dave's Top Ten jokes ever, but it certainly wasn't worth the kerfluffle that it kicked up.

Well, it turns out that Letterman wasn't the only late night type to crack wise about Palin's daughter. The most recent host of The Tonight Show, the seriously unfunny Jay Leno, told a similar joke last September, about Bristol Palin, then 17, unmarried and pregnant and John Edwards. And if one of the Huffington Post's readers is accurate, the new Tonight host, Conan O'Brien, told a variation of the joke Letterman told, about Palin's daughter needing to be protected from the Philadelphia Flyers. And, if memory serves, the daughter who accompanied Palin to the Flyers' game was seven, and even younger than Bristol or Willow, the daughter who came to New York with Palin last week.

To be clear, Letterman's joke was about New York Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez and the reference was to Bristol Palin, not 14-year-old Willow. And he probably shouldn't have told the joke, but if he's going to get heat for it, so should Leno and O'Brien.

That is, unless, there's a political agenda afoot, and we all know that's not possible.

Right?

Take the foul/Call the foul

2009-06-12T08:33:00.001-07:00

A few NBA Championship Series thoughts:

*OK, allowing for the tendency to overanalyze games and plays within a game, and also allowing for the axiom that hindsight is perfect sight by a damn site, how in the world do the Magic allow Derrick Fisher to get that open on the Lakers' final possession of regulation last night?

While Jameer Nelson gets the lion's share of heat for leaving Fisher alone, Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy must take some blame for electing not to foul with a three-point lead and 11 seconds to go.

Van Gundy's post game explanation, that there was too much time on the clock given how poorly his team was shooting free throws, is, to my mind, weak. Let's assume that Fisher or Trevor Ariza or Kobe Bryant, for that matter, hits one or two foul shots in that instance, leaving about six or seven seconds on the clock. If you're Van Gundy, you call time out and get your five best free throw shooters on the floor. If that means that Dwight Howard, who had just missed two, has to sit briefly, so be it. As former Jets coach Herm Edwards so famously noted once, "You play to win the game.' If Howard's ego gets momentarily bruised, you have two days to salve his psychic wounds, with a 2-2 series tie, rather than where the Magic are now, down 3-1.

Said Hedo Turkoglu afterwards: "We had it but just kind of slipped away because of our stupidness." You get no arguments here, and let's hope that the careers of both Nelson and Van Gundy aren't defined by one horribly stupid lapse on the biggest stage in basketball.

*Again, the Magic made this moot by their play down the stretch, but can someone explain to me how Bryant could plant an elbow into Nelson's jaw on the overtime play where Fisher hit another open three to give Los Angeles the lead and not get called for an offensive foul.

I despise the conspiracy theory shorthand that follows the NBA. I believe the league is on the up-and-up all the time, and I share David Stern's fury whenever he has to answer questions that never get posed to Bud Selig or Roger Goodell. But, by essential allowing Bryant and other stars to run roughshod without consequences, the NBA practically invites that kind of talk.

*I can't let this series end without expressing my disdain for the 2-3-2 format of this series. Actually, disdain is what I feel for beets. I really hate, hate, HATE that format that grants home court for the first and last two games to the team with the best record, with the middle three games going to the other team.

In every other series, the breakdown goes 2-2-1-1-1, with the team with home court advantage hosting the first two games, Game 5 and Game 7. In this scenario, the team with the advantage still has an advantage, but not so much of one that the other combatant can't overcome it, say, by splitting one of the first two games on the road, winning Games 3 and 4 at their place, then clinching the series at home in Game 6.

With the 2-3-2 set-up, the advantaged team need only win two of the first five games to ensure having the last two games at home. In order to clinch at home, the disadvantaged team must either win the series in five games (unlikely) or win twice in the other guy's place. That hardly seems like the best way to crown a champion.

The change was made in the 80's when CBS complained of having to move camera crews across country as many as four times in a seven game series rather than twice. It's time to go back to giving both teams a reasonable chance to win a title, though it may be too late for the Magic.

Great men

2009-06-11T04:01:00.001-07:00

The alarm rang, and, out of habit, I flipped on the television. There were the bubbly blondes, as always, providing the local weather (rain again) and traffic (accidents everywhere). From there, it was on to The Big Story, the aftermath of yesterday's shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and a look at the 88-year-old man accused of shooting a security guard to death.

I wondered for a moment what happens in the life of a person to carry the kind of hatred the alleged shooter supposedly has for people of color and Jews for so long. And then, I contrasted that with the approach of two men whose birthdays will be marked in the next two days.

A s it happens, my father, James Benjamin Kent, Sr. , was born on this day 89 years ago. I'll spare you all the details of his life, which ended August 27, 2006, except to say that he helped raised six productive and well-adjusted children (five with my mother and one with my stepmother). My father worked hard, was kind to his friends and neighbors and everyone he came across, and loved his God fiercely. He was also a World War II veteran who was awarded two Bronze Stars for meritorious service.

I also thought of former President George Herbert Walker Bush, who will be 85 tomorrow. The former President and I will never see eye-to-eye politically, but I admire his service to his country, both militarily and since he left the Oval Office. He, like my father, worked hard, raised a family and, from all appearances, has maintained a sunny disposition. Indeed, Mr. Bush intends to mark his 85^th birthday tomorrow by jumping out of a plane, to replicate his assignment as a paratrooper in World War II.

Older Americans come in for a hard time in our youth-obsessed society, and the events of yesterday probably won't help in the minds of many. But we all ought to be mindful of the sacrifices and contributions of the men who helped keep this country great and strong during and after World War II.

Men like James Benjamin Kent, Sr. and George Herbert Walker Bush.

One and done?

2009-06-09T19:39:00.001-07:00

What follows is the script for this week's "Sports@Large" essay which aired on WYPR (88.1 FM) in Baltimore. If you live in the Baltimore/Washington area, you can hear the show each Monday at 5:30 p.m. and on Tuesday during the Maryland Morning program which starts at 9 a.m. If you live outside the area, you can get the streaming audio at www.wypr.org

Is the right thing done for the wrong reasons still the right thing? For this week's answer, you'll need to speak to Steve Cohen.

Cohen, now in his second term representing the Ninth Congressional District of Tennessee in Washington, stood before his colleagues last Thursday and delivered a shot across the bow of the NBA.

Cohen called on the league to drop its 19-year-old age requirement for incoming players.

"It's something that you don't see in any other sport, baseball, golf, tennis, hockey, any other sport, and you don't see it in entertainment and you don't see it when young men and women choose to join the military and fight for their country."

Cohen wasted no time drafting a letter to Commissioner David Stern and to Billy Hunter, the head of the NBA's players union.

He urged them to take the age plank out of the next negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement.

In turn, Stern, who yields the floor of rhetorical flourish to no one, fired back, noting snarkily that the Constitutionally-mandated age requirement to be a Congressman is 25.

For Stern, the issue is not making the college game better, but making his players more mature.

Cohen is right, and his position is buttressed within the very league championship series that is underway.

Neither Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic nor Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers, the two best players in the series, spent a day in college.

Bryant was last year's Most Valuable Player, and his MVP successor, LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers, likewise, skipped college for the NBA.

The pro basketball landscape is indeed dotted with players who decided they wanted to ply their trade without going to college.

Stern undoubtedly thought he was helping the colleges when he pushed through the age requirement four years ago.

Instead, he created a class of one and done players who use colleges as a speed bump on the way to fame and fortune, assuming they wait the year for the money and the notoriety.

Take O.J. Mayo, for instance. There are accusations that the former Southern California guard took straight cash homey, namely $30,000 of it, from his college coach Tim Floyd to come to Los Angeles.

And then there's Derrick Rose. Before he was the NBA's Rookie of the Year, this year, he supposedly had a high school grade falsified and had someone else take his SAT just to get eligible to play in college.

Now, here's where things get interesting. Mayo was a rookie this season for the Memphis Grizzlies, while Rose led the Memphis Tigers men's college basketball team to last year's national title game.

And did we mention that the FedEx Forum, where Rose did play and where Mayo plays now just happens to be in the congressional district of…Steve Cohen?

There's little question the NBA's age restriction needs to be taken to a landfill. It's just too bad that opportunists like Steve Cohen have to be the drivers.

An opinion for bigotry

2009-06-05T09:43:00.001-07:00

Originally, I was going to a blog posting with a collections of quick hit thoughts off last night's first game of the NBA Championship Series, but an item in my former newspaper so jarred me when I read it that I had to say something.

Maryland's attorney general, Douglas Gansler, has issued an opinion that people who wear facial coverings for religious purposes can be required to remove them in order to get into courthouses around the state. In order to minimize potential problems, Gansler has suggested, but not required that male and female security officers be available at checkpoints and that a private area be set aside for those whose religion precludes them from removing those coverings in front of a member of the opposite sex.

Gansler, a Democrat from Montgomery County, one of the more liberal areas of the state, said recently that he would consider whether Maryland would recognize any gay marriages performed in other states, so his progressive bonafides appear to be intact.

So, why do this? Yes, Gansler was asked by a sheriff at one of the suburban Washington counties to issue an opinion, but why this opinion? Doesn't he understand that such an opinion only fans the flames of religious intolerance? We're having enough trouble in this country recognizing and understanding differences in people who don't look and act the way we think they should, or did I just imagine that a religious zealot blasted a doctor who performed abortions while the doctor was serving as an usher in his church the other day? Things like this only make tolerance more a dream than a realistic hope.

The funny thing is that this news breaks the day after Barack Obama's speech to an Egyptian audience about ways to bridge the gap between the United States and the Muslim world. Oh, and for the record, Doug Gansler was one of the first and most vocal Obama supporters two years ago. Guess he wasn't listening all that closely, huh?

Doing it championship style

2009-06-03T18:57:00.001-07:00

Let's get ready for the best two weeks in sports, the NBA's Championship Series, with a preview of the matchup between the Orlando Magic and the Los Angeles Lakers.

But first, let's look back at the recently vanquished, namely the Cleveland Cavaliers and Denver Nuggets.

*I really hope Cleveland GM Danny Ferry doesn't overreact to the Cavaliers' six game loss to Orlando in the Eastern Conference title series, and place undue heat on coach Mike Brown. Let's not forget that Brown was voted NBA Coach of the Year and directed Cleveland to the best regular season in franchise history, with a 66-16 mark.

It's not Brown's fault, necessarily, that he and the Cavs ran into the one team that they couldn't match up with. The Magic, who are long and rangy along the front line, have had Cleveland's number over the past couple of seasons, and with guards like Mo Williams and Daniel Gibson unable to provide reliable support for LeBron James, the Cavs were in deep trouble.

(By the way, James should have been fined at least $50,000 for skipping out on a postgame media session following Game 6. Agree or not, speaking with the press is a part of an athlete's job. Admittedly, it's not as important a task as training or playing, but it is the principal way the public hears from the players. The King is only following in the footsteps of Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and Allen Iverson, who routinely blew off All-Star media availabilities, and Commissioner David Stern missed a chance to nip this in the bud.)

*Denver coach George Karl says that he won't try to contain his team's emotions. Really, George? You're not going to suggest to your team that fourth quarter preening and taunting, not to mention pushing opponents in the back, and the ever popular jaw-jacking with referees might not be in the team's best interest?

Perhaps we have found our answer for why Karl has never won a title. The Nuggets are a talented bunch, but between J.R. Smith, Dahntay Jones, Kenyon Martin and Chris Andersen, it's a squad that frequently plays emotionally as if they're at some neighborhood park instead of in an NBA arena, with a chance at a title. Even my homeboy Carmelo Anthony has his moments of chuckleheadedness, though those instances are fewer, as his game and his maturity round out.

OK, on to the championship. I'm not a big fan of making a big deal out of regular season meetings. Yes, the Magic won two games over the Lakers this year, but point guard Jameer Nelson not only played in both games, but was the leading scorer in each contest. Nelson, who hurt his shoulder right around All-Star time, may be activated for the series, but it would be unrealistic to expect much, if anything, from Nelson.

The Lakers' Pau Gasol will have his hands full dealing with Orlando's Dwight Howard, the NBA's best interior player. Howard is stronger and faster than Gasol, and, in truth, is just a reliable 15-foot jump shot away from being absolutely illegal. But once you get past Howard, there's not much up front to like about the Magic, or at least not in this series. Andrew Bynum can spell Gasol, if Los Angeles elects to go small, and Lamar Odom and Trevor Ariza are more than capable of guarding Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu.

On the Orlando perimeter, the Magic's hand would be greatly strengthened if they had the Nelson from December. As it is, they'll have to rely on the always combustible Rafer Alston and rookie Courtney Lee. Not the most comforting thought heading into a showdown for the title, eh?

This, meanwhile, seems to be the round the Lakers left a wakeup call for. Having navigated through tough series with Houston and Denver, Los Angeles appears to be ready for just about anything Orlando can throw at them.

The Lakers have edges in just about every matchup, save for coaching (more on that in a bit) and they have Kobe Bryant, for whom the Magic have no answer. In the Eastern Conference championship, Orlando could choke the lane and dare LeBron James to beat them from the perimeter. With the exception of that miraculous three to end Game 2, the gamble paid off.

In this series, however, that stratagem won't work, for Bryant is simply too reliable a shooter not to try to double. And, for perhaps the first time since he forced Shaquille O'Neal out of town, Bryant believes that his teammates can hit big shots when called upon.

About that coaching thing: Stan Van Gundy belongs on the first line of NBA coaches, even if he does bear a remarkable resemblance to porn star Ron Jeremy. He is a fine tactician, and he has learned how to manage superstars, Howard and O'Neal's bleatings notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, Phil Jackson has always struck me as the sports version of the joke that former Texas Gov. Ann Richards told of former President George H.W. Bush, that he was born on third base and thought he had hit a triple.

Jackson's great luck has been to be around four great players (O'Neal, Bryant, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen) at the ascendancy of their skill and power, then to sit back and watch them run roughshod through the rest of the league. Granted, winning nine titles is no mean feat, but think of what Pat Riley or Gregg Popovich or Stan Van Gundy would have done with the same cast over the same period?

Still, Jackson seems to have the horses for this ride. Add that to the odious 2-3-2 series format advantage the championship round provides to the team with home court, and it's hard to envision the Magic winning the title this time.

Make it the Lakers in six.

“A Job Well Done”

2009-06-02T11:26:00.001-07:00

I've been away a few days, dealing with life issues. I'll get back to observations on our latest Supreme Court nominee, the California Supreme Court's ruling on Prop 8, and the NBA playoffs in the next few posts, but first, some thoughts about an amazing day and how fleeting and random life can be.

First, shoutouts to two very special people, my mother and her sister, who observed their birthdays on May 29. The remarkable thing is that my mom and my aunt, while born on the same day to the same parents, are not twins, but were born 16 years apart. What are the odds of that?

At any rate, beyond the mere accomplishment of adding another year to their total, I doubt that either of them will ever forget this birthday. That's because it happened to fall one day after their oldest surviving sister was laid to rest.

This was, by no means, my first funeral. In the course of my life, I've attended the services of my father, three grandparents, five aunts and uncles, a few cousins and countless other people that I knew and loved. I've dreaded every one of them, not necessarily because I fear death, but because I never know what to do or what to say. You want to be encouraging, but "I'm sorry for your loss,' and a hug feel remarkably inadequate when that time comes. I know that from personal experience when my dad died nearly three years ago. I appreciated the sentiments of everyone, but I wanted my father back.

And between you and me, I still do.

I was surprised and honored when my cousin called Monday to ask if I would serve as a pallbearer for my aunt. I had done so as a teenager for my grandmother, but that was a million years ago. The function was the same, to be sure, but my understanding was different. Not deeper. Just different.

The day moved in slow motion, from the time I arrived at the church to the lining up with the other pallbearers to watching the family come in and pay their last respects to my aunt. The service moved along quickly and was done in just over an hour.

(A quick note on behalf of the church. Religion has taken a pretty bad beating recently, and, in many cases, for good reason. Far too many preachers, pastors and priests have laid out God's vindictive and vengeful side to a population that is desperately in need of hope and solace.

But if you had been sitting in the pews of the church where my aunt's funeral took place, you'd have heard two ministers present the side of God that I am familiar with, the side that offers comfort and peace to those who need it at the time they need it.

You'd have heard a female reverend remind a man who saw the love of his life, someone with whom he had shared nearly 60 years of good and bad, joy and sorrow, lying before him that death doesn't end love, but only changes it somewhat. You'd have heard a male pastor tell a grieving family that at the end of the journey contentment and serenity are coming, even if the rest of the world doesn't understand how you live the way you do.

To paraphrase Linus Van Pelt, that's what the church is all about, Charlie Brown.]

The ride to the cemetery felt longer than the actual service. Along the way, the procession went by the hospital center where my aunt and my mother had both worked, and my brother and sister and I shared memories of the place that had been such a part of our family's life for so long.

My aunt's body was taken to a veteran's cemetery and the interment service had to wait for another service to finish, which gave us time to get out of our cars and share reminiscences.

Finally, it was time. There was no graveside service; instead, we went into a little chapel on the grounds. The pastor said a few words, the funeral director spread sand on the casket in the shape of the cross, and we carried my aunt back out to the hearse. My uncle, who had been so strong, finally and understandably, broke down at the prospect of saying goodbye to the woman with whom he had shared 60 years of marriage.

Back at the church, the family and friends gathered to eat and talk and laugh. My mother, who became the oldest of three surviving siblings, told me later that she held her tears in check until she got home that night from the funeral. I hope that I can be that strong the next time I am called to be.

In the days since, I have thought a lot about the eulogy, where the pastor traced the stages of my aunt's life, from childhood to marriage to adulthood to motherhood. She pronounced that my aunt's life had been "a job well done."

Truer words were never spoken.

Building a winner

2009-06-02T03:47:00.001-07:00

What follows is the script for this week's "Sports @ Large" radio broadcast. The show airs each Monday at 5:30 p.m. on WYPR, 88.1 FM in Baltimore, with a re-air during the "Maryland Morning" program on Tuesdays at 9 a.m.

Three years ago, Brian Boles absorbed a 35-2 beating as coach of the St. Frances Academy baseball team.

At a lot of places, and with a lot of coaches, there are no comebacks from such humiliation. Some coaches either cut and run away from such a mess, or never get involved in the first place.

But for Boles, there was never a chance that he would leave until the job got done. And the job just had to get done at St. Frances.

Let's back up. Ten years ago, Brian Boles was a part of the first baseball team at St. Frances. In the beginning, that group of players was more a club squad than an actual varsity team, and they went five full seasons without winning a game.

But Boles was good enough to play college baseball, first at Chesapeake College, then at Elizabeth City State University, where he hit. 415 and led the team in homers as a junior.

A hip-pointer, and its aftermath, was enough to rob Boles of a post-collegiate playing career, but by then, the game was too deeply ensconced in his soul.

And as fate would have it, St. Frances needed someone to run the baseball team. Boles, by then, just 22, took the challenge.

With his father and brother alongside as assistants, Boles set about gathering together a collection of players for whom baseball was something more than just a springtime diversion.

And more importantly, he became a bridge between the game and African-American kids, two parties who have increasingly become estranged from each other.

The program showed slow, but steady improvement, though in Boles' first four years, the Panthers didn't achieve a winning record.

However, St. Frances did reach the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association's C Conference playoffs last year, but the team, in Boles' words tasted failure.

With all but two players returning, the Panthers set out this season to taste something different, namely success.

Each of the four St. Frances starting pitchers turned in an earned run average below 3, with junior Devan Hill leading the way with a 0.77 ERA.

Meanwhile, the Panther hitting attack jumped to life behind junior Chris Dixon, who drove in 40 runs in the short high school season and leadoff hitter Devante Brown.

Brown hit a cool .510 this season with 49 hits in 95 at-bats, while stealing 34 bases. Before you knew it, the Panthers had a 21-6 record.

That, of course, ensured another berth in the playoffs and eventually a trip to the C Conference championship game two weeks ago.

There, Hill scattered five hits and struck out eight, while shortstop Darrell "Boom" Anderson went 4-for-4 and scored two runs, as St. Frances captured the title with an 8-3 win over St. John's Catholic Prep of Frederick.

Brian Boles will never forget the bitter taste of that 33-run drubbing. But the great thing about sports in general and baseball in particular, is if you hang in long enough, something sweet comes along eventually to balance things out.

Of family ties, hats and corn pudding

2009-05-23T17:46:00.001-07:00

It's been a tradition in my family for more years than I can remember to gather at the home of my Aunt Henrietta and Uncle Preston for a Memorial Day weekend picnic following Family Day services at their church. Uncle Preston would stroll around the grounds making sure the tables and chairs were placed properly, while Aunt 'Rette,' as we called her, supervised the kitchen.

The food would usually be served around 3 or so; that is, after grace was said, sometimes by three people. We'd quickly line up for food, not because it was going to go quickly; to the contrary, it was always in plentiful supply. Rather, we got there fast because the food was so good. The highlight of every picnic was Aunt Rette's crab balls, rationed out one or two to a customer, and her corn pudding, which was exactly what it sounds like, kernels of corn in a sweet sauce. It was pointless to ask her for a recipe, as the formula, much like the one for my mom's rice pudding, was in Aunt Rette's head and it wasn't going to be pried out.

Aunt Rette was always stylish. Her dresses were immaculate and tasteful, but, most importantly, her hats (and she was never seen in church without a hat) were impeccable. If she didn't know, there would be a moment where she would size you up, but once she did, she always had a warm smile. I always made a point to plant a kiss on her cheek when I saw her.

My aunt Henrietta, who had been in poor health in recent years, passed away yesterday in Annapolis at a care facility, six days past her 85^th birthday. The family will gather again near Memorial Day, but it won't be the same. You can bet that the picnics in heaven just got the best corn pudding they've ever had.

Rest in peace, Aunt Rette.

True ‘American Idols’

2009-05-21T06:50:00.001-07:00

While my wife and I were driving home last night, the Spinners' "Mighty Love" came up on our XM radio (on the "Soul Town" or classic soul channel, to be precise) and for five minutes, we were in heaven.

For those who don't know the Spinners, a primer is in order: They are an amazing R&B group from just outside Detroit that has been together in one form or another for 59 years. They are one of the few groups or artists to have achieved greater stardom after leaving Motown, having split following a top 15 hit, "It's A Shame,' produced and co-written by a young Stevie Wonder.

From 1972 to 1977, the Spinners' body of work ("I'll Be Around," "How Could I Let You Get Away," "Could It Be I'm Falling In Love," "One of A Kind (Love Affair)," "Ghetto Child," "Mighty Love," "I'm Coming Home," "Love Don't Love Nobody," Then Came You," "Games People Play," and "The Rubberband Man," is as strong as any groups during that era, and ought to land them a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The point to this is that the Spinners were singers, real singers, guys who knew what to do with a lyric. Yes, Phillippe Wynne, who did most of the leads during the 70's, could go off on fabulous improvised tangents on a lot of songs, but he never had to resort to histrionics. Their music, under the direction of producer Thom Bell, was honest and subtle and brilliant.

Now, as another season of American Idol comes to a merciful end, ask yourself this: Who is the "singer" who has come through that process over the years that you can say is on a path to being enshrined in Cleveland?

And here's a follow-up: Thirty years from now, what song from an American Idol "singer" will be playing on "Soul Town," or a classic rock or "Lite 102" station of that era?

I humbly submit that while American Idol has made celebrities out of a blowsy washed-up former cheerleader, a bass player of little renown and a boorish Brit, it hasn't given us much music to remember.

NBA Eastern Conference preview

2009-05-20T08:40:00.001-07:00

Last night's first game of the NBA's Western Conference championships only confirmed for me the merit of playing and coaching the game with your head. The Nuggets appeared to have a collective brain freeze late in the game, symbolized by a bad inbounds play with about 30 seconds left.

Trevor Ariza stole Anthony Carter's pass and set up Kobe Bryant's free throws with 10 seconds left, allowing the Lakers to erase a seven-point deficit, come back and win.

(BTW, someone should tell Chauncey Billups that it's OK in that circumstance to set up in the backcourt to give Carter a better passing angle. Yeah, Carter's pass was bad, but Billups didn't help.)

The Eastern Conference championships, which open tonight in Cleveland, may come down to a strategic decision that besieged Orlando head coach Stan Van Gundy has to make.

The Cavaliers-Magic series has a chance to go six or seven games, in my view, if Van Gundy decides to have Rashard Lewis guard Cleveland center Zydrunas Ilgauskas rather than putting Defensive Player of the Year Dwight Howard on the Mighty Z.

What's the diff? OK, given Ilgauskas' predilection to shooting the longer range jumper, placing Howard on him will pull the Orlando man-child out of the middle, thereby freeing the center of the floor for LeBron James to drive to the basket virtually at will. In that way, James not only scores in the paint, but goes to the free throw line when he's fouled more often.

With Lewis, a shooting guard in a big man's body, on Big Z, Howard can stay in the paint and slough off Anderson Varejao to provide help and clog the lane, while giving James something to think about.

In the end, it may not matter much. Behind James, whom Shaquille O'Neal said the other day is playing like a cheat code on a video game, the Cavaliers are playing inspired ball and probably won't be stopped between now and the title.

The only question probably left is how long Orlando can extend the Cavaliers. Make it Cleveland in six.

And while we're speaking of Shaq, you gotta love the Big Aristotle showing up at Syracuse to learn how to be a broadcaster. Everyone knows that on the day he retires, O'Neal would become the most sought after former player in broadcasting circles, no questions asked. He would need nothing more than to show up for a perfunctory production meeting now and then, and do the games.

But the fact that he would take this course to learn the business, albeit in a week, speaks volumes.

Western Conference preview

2009-05-19T10:34:00.001-07:00

It occurs to me that the NBA's Western Conference championship series has the potential to be one of the most cerebral of postseason matchups in recent memory, but not for the reasons you might think.

The use of the word "cerebral," in this case, has little or nothing to do with the ability of the respective coaches, Denver's George Karl, or Phil Jackson of the Lakers, to draw up X's and O's. Frankly, I've never thought of either of them as possessing particularly sharp basketball minds.

(Indeed, in the case of Jackson, the most inexplicably celebrated coach perhaps in all of sports, I defer to Boston coach Doc Rivers, who wondered aloud once just how smart Jackson would have been if he had had to coach the then Vancouver Grizzlies, rather than four likely future Hall of Famers (Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant).

But as the Nuggets and Lakers prepare to party down, the mind games that will be played during this series may be as fascinating as what gets played on the floor.

The Nuggets will almost certainly try to get into the heads of the Lakers, especially their emotionally fragile frontcourt of Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. Don't think for a moment that Denver's Kenyon Martin, who is as physical a big man as there is in the league, won't test Gasol and/or Bynum right off the bat with some well –placed forearms, pushes and whatever else he can get away with. And Martin will spread the gospel of physicality to his disciples, Nene and reserve Chris Andersen, and urge them to baptize Bynum and Gasol as early and as often as possible.

Look, then, for Jackson, as early as the pre-game press conference before tonight's Game 1, to try to get the message across to anyone who will listen, but mainly the game officials, that the Nuggets are bad and always foul. Then, Karl will have to take up the banner for his players and on it will go, back and forth, back and forth.

And speaking of the mental game, here's something else to watch in this series: Kobe Bryant has four technical fouls during the playoffs, the most recent picked up in Game Six of the conference semifinals against Houston. Bryant is three away from a one-game suspension, and while you shouldn't expect him to get those three, you should expect the Nuggets to try to push his buttons.

All that said, the game should be decided on the floor, and right now, Denver is playing better basketball. Chauncey Billups, who should have been second in league MVP voting behind LeBron James rather than sixth, has given the Nuggets a quarterback the likes of which the Mile High City hasn't seen since John Elway retired. He settles down a collection of knuckleheads and makes Carmelo Anthony better. Meanwhile, the Lakers have looked largely disinterested, save for Games 5 and 7 in the Houston series, and have played as if a return to the Finals is a fait accompli.

The Nuggets have the offense, and most importantly, the defense to make that a fairy tale. Look for Denver to wrap up its first NBA Championship Series appearance in six games.

We'll have Eastern Conference thoughts tomorrow.

This week’s Sports @ Large

2009-05-19T06:33:00.001-07:00

With the resumption of the blog, we resume the custom of posting the script to this week's Sports @ Large. If you live in the Baltimore area, you can hear Sports @ Large each Monday at 5:30 p.m. or during "Maryland Morning" each Tuesday during the 9 a.m. hour on WYPR 88.1 FM. If you don't live in Baltimore (and why don't you?), check out the streaming audio at www.wypr.org

It didn't take long for social network users and newspaper copy editors to grasp the significance of Rachel Alexandra's win at Pimlico Saturday.

Before you knew it, there were Facebook messages posted about how the Preakness winner ran like a girl. Meanwhile, headlines in the Sunday paper made great reference to girl power.

Saturday was a remarkable day at Old Hilltop, and, by extension, in the world of horse racing, which saw a filly win the second leg of the sport's most important series, the Triple Crown, for the first time in 85 years.

But the events of Saturday offered only a one day pass from the dire problems that confront the sport of kings, and not even a full pass.

Perhaps you noticed the crowd of just under 78,000, the smallest Preakness crowd in 26 years, and more than 35,000 fewer people than the 2008 announced attendance.

You better believe that people in and around racing noticed. You could try to explain away Saturday's numbers behind the decision to bar outside alcohol from what has been an annual day of decadence and depravity.

Even so, you also have to note that the relatively sparse gathering wasn't the greatest advertisement for an industry that needs all the kind words it can get.

In many ways, horse racing, like newspapers, is a victim of the times.

People aren't reading papers the way they used to, and they aren't going to the track the way they did in the days when Ernest Hemingway and Rudyard Kipling waxed rhapsodic about the majestic beasts who ran and the lively jockeys who rode them.

And going 31 years now without a Triple Crown winner that the public can rally around has also helped to render racing irrelevant for many casual fans, which means most of us.

But the industry isn't doing a lot to help itself.

Take for instance, the decision of the New York Racing Association to pull the Belmont out of the television contract that had bound the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont to one network, NBC.

New York officials took the Belmont to ABC last year, and experience tells us that when you force viewers to search for something that they aren't usually interested in, they won't.

That is, unless, a horse is going for the Triple Crown, which, thanks to Rachel Alexandra's win over Kentucky Derby winner, Mine That Bird, won't happen this year.

Of course, there could be a decent curiosity factor if the two Triple Crown winners were to meet in next month's Belmont, but Rachel Alexandra's owners may very well follow logic and keep her out.

The theory there is that she lost steam near the end Saturday on the shortest of the Triple Crown tracks and might not have the stamina to complete the mile and a half in New York, the longest of the three races.

And let's not even talk about the specific problems with racing here, which will require nothing short of a miracle to resolve.

For now, let's put all that on the back burner and let the girl have her fun. She surely earned it.

Correcting a big mistake

2009-05-18T11:04:00.001-07:00

In another life, I was once a sports media critic for a once great metropolitan daily newspaper. Mind you, my criticisms didn't make the paper great, though I'd like to think they helped.

Oh, heck, the bottom line here is that I once used to write about sports television on a daily basis, and had a story like the one that came up today, that former Tampa Bay Bucs coach Jon Gruden is joining ESPN's Monday Night Football booth to replace Tony Kornheiser, come up when I was on the beat, I would have written at least one word about it.

And that word would have been "Hallelujah."

The words that would have followed would have been about how woefully miscast Kornheiser was on MNF. You can certainly understand what ESPN executives were trying to do in bringing a supposed "regular guy" into the mix along with a football expert and a play-by-play man. The trouble is that Kornheiser has never been a regular guy, nor has he wanted to be in any of his platforms.

Frankly, the lure of the former Washington Post sports/humor columnist has always been lost on me, in print and on television. His humor fell flat, and he never has displayed any sort of intellectual curiosity about the people he supposedly covered, assuming that he ever deigned to show up at events.

Here's where a little personal disclosure is in order: When he hosted a radio show in Washington in the 90's, Kornheiser took a vicious shot at me on the air after I criticized him in print for something he had done on the air. And to make matters worse, he called some of my former colleagues to gather personal information on me to use on the air in the attack.

So, am I saddened by today's developments? Not entirely. But I still think ESPN's move was made for the right reasons.

The happy warrior of jazz and hoops

2009-05-15T18:18:00.001-07:00

Those who look down at the genre of smooth jazz often deride it as "happy jazz" as if to say that it doesn't challenge the listener.

You can be sure that Wayman Tisdale, who died today at the age of 44, didn't take such an appellation as an insult. Tisdale, an accomplished bassist, did everything happy, from playing smooth jazz to playing power forward at Oklahoma and in the NBA.

Tisdale, the all-time leading scorer and rebounder in Sooner history and a three-time All-American, was a gifted offensive player, though he had the misfortune of playing professionally during the same era as Charles Barkley and Karl Malone, two more celebrated players at his position.

Still, in a 12-year NBA career, Tisdale averaged 15.3 points a game for his career that included stints in Indiana, Sacramento and Phoenix. He won a gold medal in 1984 as a member of the American Olympic team and selected to the College Basketball Hall of Fame last month.

Off the court, Tisdale released eight albums and hit No.1 on the contemporary jazz charts three years ago with his "Way Up!" After he was diagnosed with a cancerous cyst two years ago, Tisdale released "Rebound," to mark his battle with illness.

Tisdale was the definition of a happy warrior and his presence and genial nature will be supremely missed.

Quick rant: While it was completely consistent with his nature for Tisdale to give Blake Griffin permission to wear his previously retired No.23 jersey, someone at Oklahoma should have told Griffin the number was unavailable. Now that Tisdale is gone, that number should go back in the rafters in his honor never to be worn again.

Cautionary tale

2009-05-14T07:23:00.001-07:00

President Obama's reversal of an administration position regarding the release of photos of abused detainees ought to provide concrete proof to Americans on both sides of the aisle that it's folly to project either their fondest hopes or their worst nightmares onto this man or any elected official for that matter.

Perhaps because of the historic nature of Obama's election and because of the abject failure of the previous administration, people on the left of the political spectrum have ascribed all manner of miraculous talents and abilities to the new president. Meanwhile, conservatives have demonized Obama to a fare-thee-well, seeing him as the Antichrist come to life.

Neither is true, obviously, and Obama's flip-flop on allowing these photos to be seen is proof that he is a politician, no more and no less. His inclination is to do that which will cast his administration in the most favorable light for the largest bloc of the electorate.

To be sure, as someone who is left of center, I tend to agree with the overwhelming majority of Obama's agenda, and I wish those on the right would give him at least a minute to succeed or fail on his own merit. But, unlike a lot of my fellow liberals, I don't operate under any illusions about who Barack Obama is or what he's about.

Happy Birthday

2009-05-13T07:44:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday

So, anything happen while I was gone?

Yeah, I know; taking a seven month sabbatical from a blog isn't the smartest idea, especially when you're attempting to build a regular readership. My bad, and I'll address what I've been doing, for those who care, in a subsequent posting.

However, there's no better reason to pick up "Sports and the World @ Large" than to mark the 58^th birthday of an American icon, Steveland Hardaway Judkins or Steveland Hardaway Morris.

Regardless the name on his birth certificate, the name of the man he became, Stevie Wonder, is synonymous with the best traditions of service and principles, not to mention being the best damn popular musician this country has ever produced.

Listing Stevie's humanitarian accomplishments would take all day, and listing his contributions to the musical culture would go on for a week or more. The combination of the two makes him the most potent force for good in American popular culture.

And he's still musically relevant. My wife and I saw him last year on tour in Washington, and I was amazed not only at his staying power ( 2 ½ hours without an intermission) but also at how rich and full his voice is more than 45 years after he first burst on the scene as "Little Stevie Wonder."

Though I said listing his songs would take a lot of time, I do want to suggest that if you must own one of his tunes, and one only, it should be "As" (third song, fourth side of "Songs In The Key of Life"). It is a seven minute ode to the power of pure love, with a dazzling Herbie Hancock keyboard solo in the middle.

Brilliant.

Just like Stevie.

This week's Sports at Large script

2008-09-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

Here's the script from this week's Sports @ Large, which airs each Monday at 5:30 Eastern time on WYPR in Baltimore, with a re-air Tuesday morning during Maryland Morning. Please do enjoy!

The calendar says that we’ve officially turned the page from summer to autumn, and no one in the American sports culture should be happier to witness the passing of one season into another than Josh Howard.

Chances are, unless you’re a big fan of Atlantic Coast Conference basketball that you really don’t know Josh Howard, and right about now, that’s not such a bad thing…for Howard. In college, Howard was a first team All-America at Wake Forest. In 2003, he led the Demon Deacons to their first regular season title in 41 years, and Howard became the first player in nearly 30 years to be selected unanimously as Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year.

The 6-foot-5 forward was drafted by the Dallas Mavericks and by his second season, had moved into the starting lineup. Howard has become one of the most versatile players in the NBA. Last year, his fifth in the league, Howard posted career highs in scoring and rebounding and seemed on the short track to superstardom, or at least widespread adoration.

Then came this summer, when Howard couldn’t seem to get out of the way of his own two feet. That is, when he wasn’t planting one of them in his mouth. First, Howard had the temerity to decline an invitation to tryout for the United States Olympic team, saying he had other things to do this summer. In hindsight, Howard really should have gone to China.

If he had, Howard might not have been around to get arrested for drag racing and driving 94 miles an hour in a 55 miles an hour zone. That round of allegedly juvenile and potentially fatal behavior followed Howard’s decision to throw himself a birthday party in April. The problem with the timing of the party was that the Mavericks were in the middle of a playoff series, and had just lost the critical fourth game of said series.

Of course, Howard’s timing might have been explained by a comment he made earlier in the series, when he told a radio interviewer that he occasionally smokes marijuana, and that pot consumption among NBA players was, shall we say, high. If you want to tell tales on yourself, go ahead, but Howard had no business throwing his fellow players under the bus, even if there were munchies behind the tires.

Howard’s summer of self-destruction was capped last week, when a video of him slurring the Star Spangled Banner during a charity flag-football game surfaced on You Tube. Apparently unsolicited, Howard turned to a camera during the Allen Iverson sponsored event and proclaimed that he didn’t celebrate the National Anthem because quote I’m black unquote, as well as working in an insult of Barack Obama.

As a black man myself, I’m not sure precisely what to make of Josh Howard’s observations, except this: That anthem that he sneered at is the musical representation of the freedoms this country affords to its citizens. Among them are the rights to make millions of dollars playing a game, to behave boorishly to teammates and the public and to take a swipe at a song that salutes the free and the brave. Josh Howard may be one of those, but he certainly isn’t the other.

Inappropriate personnel moves

2008-09-23T19:34:00.000-07:00

One of my wife’s guilty television pleasures is a show called “Bridezillas” which airs on the WE channel. It’s a reality show that shines a light on one or more prospective brides in the days leading up to their wedding.

I happen to despise this show, not out of some misogynistic hatred of women or out of disrespect for the tension that many women feel as their wedding approaches, but more out of a profound dislike of shows that appear to reward anti-social behavior. The point is, that if WE ever looked for someone to host a “Bridezillas” marathon, I would be the wrong person because I don’t like the show.

As I was watching the end of the WNBA playoff game between Detroit and Indiana Tuesday night on ESPN2, I heard the play-by-play announcer toss back to the studio to Nancy Lieberman and to a man named Erik Kuselias. For those who haven’t had the misfortune of hearing Kuselias work, he has hosted a NASCAR show on ESPN television, but is best known for hosting a radio show called “The Sports Bash,” which aired in the afternoon on ESPN radio.

During the course of that show, Kuselias, who reportedly is an attorney, appealed to the lowest common denominator by pushing every emotional button he could, insulting teams, players and fans at every turn. On more than one occasion I heard Kuselias spew invective about the legitimacy of both the WNBA and women’s basketball in general. He didn’t quite go for the standard male talk show putdown of women’s basketball, the one that insinuates that the sport isn’t worth watching because all the players are lesbians, but he came damned close.

You can imagine, then, my shock and bewilderment, then, to see Kuselias sitting at a desk hosting a women’s basketball telecast. Now, it may be possible that Kuselias has had some kind of transformation and has either become a fan of the sport, or at least tolerant, but I doubt it. More likely, this was just a chance to sharpen his hosting skills and before a prime time audience.

Look, I don’t expect most men to like or even appreciate women’s basketball, and that’s fine; different strokes and all that. But I sure as shootin’ don’t expect ESPN to put a man who has publicly expressed a disdain for the sport on the air hosting it. It’s as incongruous as having someone who dislikes the NFL host a Sunday football pregame show, or me hosting a “Bridezillas” marathon.

Of fiancés and baby daddies

2008-09-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

I don’t know Oakland Tribune columnist Tammerlin Drummond and, frankly, had never heard of her before stumbling onto her writing on the Romenesko site at Poynter Online.
However, her piece in last Wednesday’s paper is one of the most cogent and spot-on pieces on the gulf between how blacks and whites are seen in this country, and why the election of the first black president will only further discussion about racism and discrimination, not end it.
There’s nothing to be gained from beating up on Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston. They deserve to live their lives and raise their baby outside the prying eyes of the public. But their story shines an important light on the attitudes of many Americans on the smaller issue of teen pregnancies and the broader concept of how people of different ethnicities live.

The troubled Vince Young

2008-09-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Here's the script for the latest Sports @ Large essay, which aired in the customary Monday at 5:30 p.m. on WYPR-FM in Baltimore.

In the American sports culture, there are few crimes as heinous as being sensitive to criticism. And for football players, who are masculinity personified in the American ethos, the inability to brush off boos and brickbats is, in the minds of many, grounds for turning in their guy membership card, the one that ascribes honor and machismo and valor to the holder.

Until the last offseason, Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young was fully vested in the Man’s Man Society. In college, he marched the Texas Longhorns down the field twice in the final minutes of the 2006 Rose Bowl against defending BCS champion Southern California.

Young scrambled into the end zone on each drive to give Texas what passes for a national title. He was propelled into the No.3 slot of the 2006 draft, to the Titans. In his rookie season, Young went to the Pro Bowl all-star game and was named Rookie of the Year. Last year, Young became only the 11th quarterback taken in one of the first two rounds over the past 25 seasons to lead his team to the playoffs.

However, Young has been anything but smooth in Nashville, throwing erratically at times, and proving to be occasionally injury-prone. Those are hardly crimes, but the resulting criticism from fans and the media threw Young for a loop. The quarterback reportedly considered retirement in the offseason, but ultimately decided to return.

Move ahead to last Sunday, in the Titans season opener against Jacksonville. Young threw two interceptions and was roundly booed by the home crowd, which apparently bothered him so that he initially declined to go back into the game. He eventually did, but sprained a ligament in his left knee which will keep him out of action for 2 to 4 weeks.

The next day, Young missed a scheduled MRI test on his knee, this after his mother, Felicia, was quoted in the local paper saying that her son was tired of the negativity and that he was quote hurting inside and out, end quote. The team apparently dispatched a psychologist to Young’s house.

Later that day, Titans coach Jeff Fisher, told that Young was in an emotional state and had left home without his cell phone, but with an unarmed gun, called authorities. The police sent an unmarked SWAT unit out and put crisis negotiators on call, only to find that Young had gone to a friend’s house to watch Monday Night Football.

By Thursday, Young had declared that he just needed a day and a half to get through a rough patch and to learn how to deal with adversity, saying, quote, When it happens again, I’ll know how to handle it. I just want everyone in the world to know I am fine, unquote.

Does Vince Young need to do a little growing up? Sure, but then, so do we who are sports fans. We need to advance past hero worship of people in uniforms and start seeing athletes as mere flesh and blood humans. Humans, who laugh in triumph, but occasionally mourn, and, yes, cry in failure. After all, the measure of a person is not how they expend their feelings, but what they do once the emotion of the moment clears.

Tribute to the Bear

2008-09-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

Here's the script for this week's Sports@Large, which, as always, can be heard live each Monday at 5:30 Eastern on WYPR-FM in Baltimore, or through the station's website.

A few months ago, Barack Obama gave a campaign speech at a rally to nearly 20,000 students at the University of Maryland’s Comcast Center. On that winter day, Obama paid tribute to the history made by the school’s former national championship women’s basketball team.

Meanwhile, most of the attendees at the rally likely had little sense of the real history made by Obama in becoming the first black man to win the presidential nomination of a major American political party.

But 42 years before, long before any of those students were even born, history of another sort was made across campus in another basketball arena, Cole Field House. There, in the 1966 NCAA men’s basketball championship game, a team of five African American starters was fielded and won the title against a team of all white players, as Texas Western beat mighty Kentucky.

The architect of that piece of sports sociology, Texas Western coach Don Haskins, died Sunday at the age of 78. Haskins’ accomplishment was noted in a book and subsequent film, Glory Road, but even so, his deed, and that of his players, hasn’t been feted in the way perhaps its should.

Before that championship run, segregation, even in gyms and athletic fields on campuses of institutions of higher learning, was still sanctioned. For years, schools, mostly in the South, declined to recruit black athletes. Alabama football coach Paul Bear Bryant and Kentucky men’s basketball coach Adolph Rupp each kept their teams devoid of African Americans, and Rupp did so proudly.

Even after Haskins guided the Miners past the team known as Rupp’s runts, the barriers of discrimination stayed in place at many schools. The Atlantic Coast Conference, where Maryland plays, would not have black men playing basketball in the league for a few years after that, and the conference would not even get an African-American coach until the mid 1980’s, when Baltimore’s Bob Wade coached Maryland.

For his part, Haskins claimed at the time of the 1966 game and for decades afterwards, that he was not trying to make history with his lineup, but, rather, was starting the five players that he believed gave him the best chance to win. In a perfect world, you’d want the best players to receive the opportunities to play and to win, but that’s not always the case.

In all, Haskins would spend 38 seasons at the school, which subsequently would be renamed Texas-El Paso. He would go on to win seven Western Athletic Conference championships, while taking 14 teams to the NCAA tournament and seven clubs to the National Invitational Tournament. Haskins’ career record was 719-353, and he would eventually be enshrined at the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

There are two groups of people who make history. There are those, like Barack Obama, who set out to do so with bold strokes and sweeping deeds. And then there are those, like Don Haskins, who influence the annals of time quietly and effectively, simply by doing the right thing at the right time and in the right place.

The GOP's pregnant pause

2008-09-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

Let me preface everything that appears here with the following caveat: I am not a parent, nor have I ever been. I hope to be someday, but until that great day occurs, I don't know what it's like to wake up at 3 a.m. with a fussy baby, or watch that child take his/her first steps or watch them catch the bus that first day for school or score that first goal or struggle over a term paper or march down the aisle at graduation.
All that said, I find it a little surprising that the national media/punditry, in its zeal to get all up into the business of Sarah Palin and her daughter, Bristol, over the 17-year-old girl's pregnancy, has failed to ask what, to me, is a pertinent question:
Namely, why didn't Sarah Palin turn John McCain's invitation to run as his vice president to spare her daughter precisely this kind of scrutiny?
Look, it's not the place of me or anyone else to question how the Palins live their lives. As the uncle of a woman who gave birth to twins while she was in high school, I have some feel for what is happening in that house, and one shouldn't wish that kind of emotional torment on anyone else, regardless of what side of the political aisle you sit on.
But, if you believe, as I do, that a parent's No.1 responsibility is to protect their children from harm, wouldn't it make sense that said parent would do their best to shield their child from the kind of media scrutiny Bristol Palin is going to have to endure in the name of her mother's political ambition?
No one would suggest that Sarah Palin should have to resign as Alaska's governor because her daughter made a mistake that millions of American teenagers make on a regular basis. But Sarah Palin could have limited the attention Bristol Palin will have to suffer to a couple of whispers around Juneau, Anchorage and Fairbanks, rather than compounding that chatter exponentially to the entire nation.
For the protection of her daughter, Sarah Palin should have just said thanks, but no thanks to John McCain.

Back again

2008-09-02T05:50:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long break. Between illness and life, it was tough to find the time to squeeze off a few thoughts here recently. I'll try to do better, including at least another posting today.
Here's my radio essay, which aired yesterday on Baltimore's WYPR-FM.

While a lot of the sports world’s attention zeroed in last week on the trials of a nine-year-old Connecticut boy to be allowed to pitch in a youth baseball league, something far more troubling was going on under the radar guns that measure the speed of little Jericho Scott’s fastball.

A major sports organization, the Ladies Professional Golf Association, has instituted a policy that turns the concept of multi-culturalism and tolerance on its very ear.

Effective next year, the LPGA will require its current players to speak English. Players who have been on the tour for two years will be suspended if they fail an oral evaluation of their English skills, while new players must adhere to the policy immediately.

Libba Galloway, an assistant LPGA commissioner, explained to the Associated Press that the new policy will assist players in their quote professional development unquote, that, quote We want to help our athletes as best we can succeed off the golf course as well as on it, unquote.

That will likely come as news to the 121 international players from 26 countries on the LPGA tour, who essentially were handed the following message: Speak good English or go home. And, you can save the indignant e-mails about my incorrect grammar. The previous sentence was for ironic effect.

And when you get right down to it, what the LPGA is doing is quite ironic. They’re telling a group of athletes, particularly the 45 or so players from South Korea who have come to have an important role on the tour, that their abilities and talents aren’t enough to succeed here.

Here’s the kicker, though. According to Golfweek magazine, which broke the story, the LPGA will not have a standard test, but rather will identify players to be evaluated through staff observations. Supposedly, players who already appear to be proficient in English won’t have to be evaluated.

Say what you want about baseball commissioner Bud Selig (and God knows, it has been said), but even he wouldn’t be so foolish as to take a tiptoe through the kind of garden of xenophobic tulips that the LPGA is planting. The agents of players of Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan and Japanese origins would set Olympic records racing to courthouses to file class action suits if baseball tried the kind of stunt the LPGA is doing.

Frankly, the LPGA’s kind of thinking is antithetical to the way things really work in the good ole US of A these days. Look, all of us in the course of our everyday living encounter a person or persons who have come to this country to make a home and to find their dream. They may serve our food, clean our buildings or our clothes, or provide medical care to our children. Some of them even hit home runs or sink three-pointers.

However it happens, they have become essential pieces of the American mosaic. These LPGA players are part of that patchwork too, and should be evaluated on their abilities to strike holes-in-one, not rhetorical flourishes.

Just give him the damn Emmy now

2008-08-22T18:42:00.000-07:00

Hope you caught the Friday night prime-time telecast of the Olympics, particularly the first hour interview of U.S. men's volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon.
McCutcheon, whose mother- and father-in-law were attacked in Beijing just before the Olympics began, sat down for an extended chat with NBC's Bob Costas just after the network showed the fifth set of the U.S. win over Russia in the semifinals.
Costas deftly moved McCutcheon from analyzing how the Americans have reached the gold medal match to discussing the circumstances surrounding the attack. In almost anyone else's hands, the interview would have been maudlin and tear-filled. In the hands of Costas, the most revered sports commentator of our generation, it was pure magic.

Doing the right thing

2008-08-22T12:03:00.000-07:00

Three cheers for the Connecticut women's basketball program and for coach Geno Auriemma for granting prized freshman Elena Delle Donne a complete release from the scholarship, per her request.
There was a condition attached that she can only play basketball at Delaware this year, and while she should be able to go and play where ever she wants, the condition seems reasonable since it does place her back at home, where she apparently wanted to go.
She's already been accepted at Newark for this year. It really does seem that on this rare occasion, someone did right by a college athlete.

Signing your life away

2008-08-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

Elena Delle Donne's decision to leave Connecticut provides yet another example of how the college recruiting process is heavily weighted against the kids and almost entirely favors the schools.
Delle Donne, a 6-foot-5 forward from Wilmington, Del., was the nation's top girls basketball recruit this past year, and signed a national letter of intent to attend Connecticut for the coming fall. At Storrs, Delle Donne was expected to join Maya Moore and Renee Montgomery and be the final piece to the Huskies' national championship puzzle hopes.
The problem was that Delle Donne, who took a break from basketball while she was at Ursuline Academy, apparently changed her mind about wanting to attend/play at Connecticut. It's shouldn't have been a big deal. Teenagers change their minds all the time, and Delle Donne has every right to attend the school where she'll be the most comfortable.
End of story, right? Well, not so much. You see, because Delle Donne signed a letter of intent, Connecticut still has a hold on her future, or at least her basketball playing future. By NCAA rule, she must sit out a year if she decides to play basketball at another Division I school. It's not the greatest rule in the world, particularly when you consider that coaches can flit from campus to campus without restriction, but it's not the worst.
No, the worst rule is the one that could cost Delle Donne a year of eligibility. You see, Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma has not released her from her scholarship, and unless he does, she'll have to forfeit one of her four years of eligibility. That is, if she wants to transfer to play basketball at a school that honors the letter of intent, which pretty much covers all of Division I and II, where scholarships are offered.
This isn't to portray Auriemma as a bad guy, per se. He's just following the rules, and, more than likely, he wants to make sure that Delle Donne doesn't abscond to a school that he will play in the next four years, where she could come back to hurt him. It's just that the rules, as they're set up, don't give kids the freedom they need at the time of their lives when they need it most, the years when they make decisions that will impact their futures, like where they'll go to school.

The current Sports@Large

2008-08-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

Here's the script from my radio essay, which aired yesterday afternoon and again this morning. If you'd like to hear these essays live, be sure to tune into WYPR-FM 88.1 each Monday afternoon at 5:30 p.m. or during Maryland Morning Tuesdays at 9 a.m. If you live outside the Baltimore area, you can listen to WYPR via streaming audio.

If what you hear over the next few minutes offends you or at least your sensibilities as a Baltimoreans, well, I apologize in advance. And if these few hundred words seem like the predictable reaction to the overreaction, then again I’m sorry. But someone in this city, this area, this country, heck, this planet needs to say this, so I might as well be the one. And here it comes:

Michael Phelps is not the greatest Olympian of all time. Not by a long shot.

Don’t get me wrong, folks. The 23-year-old from Rodgers Forge wrote one heck of a narrative over a magical nine days in the pool in Beijing. Add the eight gold medals from the Water Cube, with seven of them coming in world record time, to the six golds and two bronzes he collected in Athens four years ago, and you have a pretty amazing athlete.

And, even more astonishingly, Phelps has gone about the business of wiping Mark Spitz off the first line of the Olympic swimming record books with unfailing good grace and humor. He has never gone diva and has answered every question from all comers. And it’s a testament to the reservoir of goodwill that Phelps has built up that, in these times, when any accomplishment out of the norm, much less of a superhuman nature, there is no hint that what he has done has come in any other way than the right way. No shortcuts whatsoever.

But hero worship, not to mention the desires of a television network, a local station, and a newspaper to bring more customers into the tent, can’t rewrite history, and to call Michael Phelps the greatest Olympian would be doing just that, rewriting history.

Let’s start with the concept that as great as Phelps was in Beijing, his was not a solitary effort, as he was a member of three relay teams, with Jason Lezak literally snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in the 4 by 100 meter freestyle.

Then, there’s this: Perhaps the world’s most accomplished Olympics journalist, Philip Hersh of the Chicago Tribune and formerly of the Baltimore Evening Sun, has said that Phelps is, at best, the sixth best Olympic athlete, behind such icons as Carl Lewis, who won nine gold medals, including four in the 1984 games and four straight in the long jump, and Finnish track star Paavo Nurmi, who also won nine golds in three Olympics at distances from 1,500 to 10,000 meters in the early 20th century. Hersh’s opinion is shared by Olympic historian David Wallechinsky, and I would add the name of Eric Heiden, who won five gold medals in the 1980 Winter Olympics, capturing races at five different lengths, from sprint to distance.

But the best reason not to send Michael Phelps to Mount Olympus quite yet is that he has only been a force in two Olympics, though he was on the 2000 team in Sydney. The waters he churned in Beijing have barely stopped roiling and we’re ready to proclaim god status upon him. It’s understandable to want to do it. The past is no longer prologue, but mere annoyance, words on a page. Let’s let Michael Phelps write a few more pages in the Olympic history book in London in four years before we rename the entire library after him.

Back after a (long) break

2008-08-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the gap in posts. Life got in the way. Specifically, my wife and I had visitors, and between the cleaning for the visit and the actual visit itself, not to mention working on another project, well, I got a little way laid. I'll try not to let it happen again.
There's been far too many Olympic goings-on to cover in one omnibus posting, except to say that, as a Baltimore resident, if I hear one more word about a certain swimmer, I will take hostages. (Actually, that certain swimmer and the excruciating hype is the subject of my most recent radio essay, the script of which will be posted tomorrow morning.)
One of the things that I have been paying attention to from Beijing is the United States women's basketball team's play. While the men have labeled themselves "the redeem" team, the women haven't had to carry such a moniker because they've had nothing to redeem themselves for.
The American women are carrying a gaudy 30 game Olympic win streak, dating back to the bronze medal game in Barcelona in 1992. They haven't lost since, from pool play in Atlanta, Sydney, Athens and now in China, as well as the various medal rounds. It's a streak that would certainly draw attention if not for:
(A) Michael Phelps
(B) The men's basketball team
(C) The pixie gymnasts
(D) The bikinied beach volleyballers
(E) Flat out sexism
But I digress. A player who might likely find herself on the 2016 squad, Elena Delle Donne, the nation's most highly sought after freshman recruit, made a momentous decision that, were she a man, would have been all over ESPN and the papers over the weekend. Instead, Delle Donne's choice not to enroll at Connecticut, the consensus preseason No.1 team, has hardly been noticed.
Delle Donne, a 6-5 wing player with remarkable perimeter skill, has apparently had a love-hate relationship with basketball for some time, taking time off from the sport during her high school days, then withdrawing from Connecticut this summer.
Four years under relentless scrutiny and unreal expectations at Storrs might very well have harmed the kid. Instead, she has decided to enroll at Delaware, the closest Division I school to her Wilmington home. You have to hope she finds some peace and regains her love of the sport, even if she doesn't play for a national title.
BTW, quiet as it's kept, Lisa Leslie has been keeping an Olympic diary, the latest entry of which is here.

The public's right to know?

2008-08-07T10:39:00.000-07:00

Sixteen years ago, I was took part in a Knight Center seminar on the business of sports at the University of Maryland's campus. One of the seminar's participants was tennis great Arthur Ashe, and he came to speak to us about what he found so appealling about Proposition 48, the controversial piece of NCAA legislation that largely tied admittance to college athletes to their performance on standardized tests.
Let me say parenthetically that I consider Arthur Ashe one of the great and heroic figures in modern athletics, but he and I couldn't have disagreed more on the topic, and I let him know both things afterwards. We had a spirited debate that would have gone on for longer than the 15 or so minutes it went on, except he had to leave to catch a flight.
In the process of leaving, Arthur dropped a bottle of medication. After he left, he called back to inquire if it had been found. It was, and the bottle was eventually returned. We learned a few months later during a press conference that he was an AIDS sufferer. Ashe was forced to call that press conference because a reporter had discovered his condition and was preparing to go public.
Now, it's possible that the medication Ashe left behind in that Maryland classroom was a part of the cocktail of drugs that many AIDS patients take each day, and to think, he left it in a room populated with journalists. I felt at the time of the press conference and still believe now that Arthur Ashe's medical condition was no one's business and if I had found the bottle, I would have returned it with no questions asked.
I say all that to wonder about the ethicacy of the quiet smear campaign that is going on about the possibility of former vice presidential candidate and two-time presidential aspirant John Edwards being the father of the baby of one of his campaign aides.
While I have some interest in the topic, strictly for its gossip value, I just don't see where this is anyone's concern, outside the people involved. Edwards is no longer a presidential candidate, and, as far as we know, is not under consideration to be Barack Obama's running mate.
Sorry, but having "former United States senator, former presidential candidate and former vice presidential candidate" serves as the welcome mat to protrude into a man's life, not to mention prying into the life of the mother, the life of the child and those of Edwards' wife, Elizabeth and their children.
But what do I know?

So long, Hiram

2008-08-06T19:10:00.000-07:00

I am an inveterate reader of album liner notes (which is another reason to decry the demise of the CD and its packaging. But I digress.). I love discovering the names of keyboard players and guitarists and singers on the music I love. Reading the credits to Stevie's "Fulfillingness First Finale' is how I knew that Michael Sembello was a talented guitarist before he became a "Maniac.' Seeing Patti Austin's name all over Quincy Jones' "The Dude" made me go back and discover the career of one of the purest voices I've ever heard.
All of this serves as prelude as an elegy to one of the greatest guitarists I've ever heard, Hiram Bullock, who died July 31 in New York at the age of 52. The cause of Hiram's death is still unknown, but he was battling cancer of the mouth.
Though part of my affinity for Hiram was the fact that he was a Baltimore guy, having grown up here and having attended the prestigious Peabody Conservatory, I was also drawn to his virtuosity on the lead guitar. He worked with such luminaries as Billy Joel, Al Jarreau, Paul Simon, Barbra Streisand, Sting and Steely Dan, though I was initially introduced to his work when he was the original guitarist in "The World's Most Dangerous Band" on "Late Night with David Letterman" from 1982-84. He left the band amid reports of drug usage and struck out on his own.
His solo albums, especially, "From All Sides,' "Give It What U Got,' and "Way Kool" are masterpieces, and his collaborations with saxophonist David Sanborn on his own albums and on David's pieces are nothing short of brilliant. We'll miss his musicianship and showmanship, but mostly we'll miss his enthusiasm.
Rest in piece, Hiram

A change in our way of life

2008-08-06T07:05:00.002-07:00

If you're of a certain age, say 30-50, shopping malls and the big department stores that anchor them have always been a part of your life. Having lived in Southern Maryland for the first 20-some years of my life, I distinctly recall when Landover Mall, which sits hard on the Capital Beltway, opened in the early 1970's. For a kid my age and with my curiosity, Landover Mall was a wonderland, with big stores, like Sears, Hecht's, Garfinkles and Woodward and Lothrop, on each end, and seemingly a million little stores in between.
Eventually, Garfinkles and Woodies (as Woodward and Lothrop was affectionately known in the Washington area) folded, Hecht's eventually became part of the Macy's chain, leaving Sears as the only major tenant. The rest of the mall, which is a really long walk from FedEx Field, closed, and the Redskins supposedly wanted to buy the property to raze it for parking. Remarkably, Sears stayed open, and still operates to this day, alone in a mall that no longer exists.
Landover Mall, like a ton of malls across the country, has become a victim to radical changes in our culture. The indoor shopping mall, once a staple of suburban American life, has morphed into the "town center" concept, where shops and stores are arranged to look like a little village of commerce.
I say all that to mourn the imminent departure of Boscov's from the Baltimore area. The Pennsylvania-based, family owned chain came here a couple of years ago, ironically, to fill the holes left when Macy's took over Hecht's. Boscov's, where you can get terrific fudge, among other things, will close locally within the next month, save for one store in the far western suburbs. The closing will put 400 people out of work, and may put another nail in the coffin of at least two local malls.
Ah, commerce.

ENOUGH, ALREADY

2008-08-06T06:19:00.000-07:00

In one of the earlier posts, I told you about my antipathy about what the NFL has become in this culture, namely a black hole that sucks light and gravity and anything else into its maw.
Well, nothing encapsulates that feeling more than the unbelievable coverage afforded to Brett Favre's retirement/unretirement. The proverbial visitor from another planet would wonder just what circus world he/she had landed on having watched the ridiculous level of attention paid to whether a 38-year-old man who appears to have commitment issues is going to play football.
(Here's my two cents on this: Having gone through this "will he/won't he" nonsense for a few years now, and even more so in the last five months according to Fox's Jay Glazer, the Packers are entirely correct to want to cut their ties with Favre. They have Aaron Rodgers, whom they drafted a few years ago, and have no idea what he can do. At some point, they have to take him out for a test drive before he leaves, Favre is gone and they have nothing to show for it all.)
But, my sweet Lord, is anyone, ANYONE really worth this kind of attention? And the joke of it all is that you have media types decrying the ridiculousness of the situation? Hello? Who asked for moment to moment updates on the status of his flight from Mississippi to Wisconsin, not to mention live shots from the landing and a minute by minute rundown of what Favre ate on the plane as well as a full recap of how he disposed of it?
OK, the last part is a little facetious, but you get the point. For the media to be talking about how silly the Favre Farce is is a little like a kid offing his parents, then throwing himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan. This kind of breathless, no sense of perspective coverage has got to stop or at least slow, or else the media will be seen as a collection of Chicken Littles all too willing to proclaim that the sky is falling, when what you're getting is a little drizzle.
BTW, a very big shoutout of thanks to the folks over at the Women's Hoops Blog for noting my departure. If you love women's basketball, there's no better clearinghouse to get the news you need with spot-on commentary than their site. Give it a look, if you haven't already.

Artificial sweetening

2008-08-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

ESPN's penchant for wretched excess has become far too easy a target for sports fans, and to be fair and honest, a number of the sins that are laid at the feet of the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports would be the province of any media outlet in a similar situation.
But ESPN's breathless coverage of the so-called July 31 baseball trading deadline revealed a bit of an agenda that doesn't serve anyone well.
Let me let you in on a little secret: There is no such thing as a trading deadline in baseball. I know, because I've looked it up. Trades go on all the time in baseball, though the ease or difficulty of making deals changes depending on dates. But you never, or should I say, hardly heard that piece of nuance from Bristol last week.
That's because it's easier to make up an artificial deadline, and do breathless minute-to-minute commentary than to explain a subtlety, which really isn't so subtle. Until July 31, teams can trade players without complications. After that date, a player has to clear waivers in order to be dealt, which makes trades trickier, but certainly possible.
As of Friday, all 30 Major League clubs placed, or tried to place, their entire rosters on waivers to make trades if they need to. If, for instance, Joba Chamberlain is unable to go the rest of the year, you can be sure that the Yankees will make a trade for a starter, no matter what it takes. Of course, in that scenario, one could and should expect the Red Sox or Rays to try to block said trade by putting in a waiver claim on the player being traded to New York. Usually, the team trying to deal with the Yankees would have to pull that player back or deal him to the team that made the claim.
Sounds complicated? Well, it kind of is, but it still makes the point that last Thursday might have been a plateau period, not a hard deadline. The next supposed deadline comes at the end of August, when players have to be on a team's roster to be eligible to play for that team in the postseason. Even with that said, a player can be traded in September. It's happened. I've seen it happen.
This whole thing may seem like nitpicking, but those of us who write and report on sports owe it to the public to deliver the goods with as little subterfuge and agenda as possible. ESPN missed badly on that last Thursday.

This week's Sports@Large

2008-08-05T03:54:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned, I do a radio essay that airs each Monday afternoon at 5:30 p.m. on WYPR-FM, 88.1 in Baltimore, with a re-air in the 9 a.m. hour on Tuesdays. Here's the script from the current Sports@Large:

The road to a college education rarely runs smooth, and for some goes a bit bumpier than for most. What is supposed to be a four-year journey through the halls of higher learning sometimes goes as far a ground as that three hour tour that Gilligan and the Skipper led the castaways on, and with a lot less comedy.

Take Christian Abate, for instance. When he graduated from St. John Neumann High in South Philadelphia in 1997, Abate had dreams, dreams that he would teach kids. In order to make those dreams a reality, Abate had to get a college degree, so he enrolled at Temple, a fine university in his hometown.

Alas, dreams need funding, and Abate’s funds ran short, so he had to drop out of Temple, though he continued to work as a busboy at Saloon, an Italian restaurant on South Seventh Street in the city. Every so often, though, a dream gets a boost from the most unlikely of places. In Christian Abate’s case, he got an assist from a fairy godfather, albeit one who is 6-foot-5 and weighs around 300 pounds.

One of Saloon’s regular customers is NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, and in the course of his visits, Barkley struck up a relationship with Abate. During a meal last summer, Barkley asked Abate if the teaching world was treating him well, only to find that Abate had not gone back to Temple because he couldn’t get the proper level of financial aid. So, Barkley arranged to leave Abate a rather sizable tip, namely, to pay his tuition, but only gave him until the end of the meal to make up his mind over whether to accept the offer or not. It didn’t take that long for Abate to say yes.

Few athletes, current or former, inspire the kind of reaction that Barkley does. In his playing days, the man known as the Round Mound of Rebound used his gifts to the max to make himself an updated version of former Baltimore Bullet Wes Unseld, only Barkley could jump and score. There aren’t many players for whom it can accurately be said that he or she left every single ounce of effort of themselves on the field or court every time. Charles Barkley is one of them.

But for all his wonderful basketball abilities, Barkley can be crude, rude and boorish. There’s the spitting on a spectator, the throwing of a bar patron through a glass door, the punching in the chest of an Angolan opponent during the 1992 Olympics, the proclivity to say whatever comes to his mind with little, if any filter, not to mention little if any concern for whom those words might hurt. And there’s the indiscriminate gambling, which only recently stopped.

Yes, the rap sheet on Sir Charles is long, but it should also be noted that Barkley has given separate million dollar gifts to his high school in Leeds, Alabama, to a poor high school in Birmingham and to Auburn University, the school he attended before he was drafted by the 76ers in 1984. It should also be noted that Barkley didn’t finish Auburn, leaving school a year early for the NBA. It seems that Charles Barkley has made the biggest assist of his life, and Christian Abate is the recipient.

Rules of the road

2008-08-04T06:13:00.000-07:00

This is the last of the introductory postings, and it deals with how and what you'll see in this space.
You should know first that I am a huge basketball fan, a big baseball fan and am mildly interested in football (for reasons that will be delved into a little later on).
Now, included in that love of basketball is a deep appreciation for women's basketball. I've covered 14 women's Final Fours, a ton of ACC tournaments and hundreds of college and girls games. Besides the fact that I met my sweet wife at a game five years ago, I enjoy the game and the people who play it. If you can't respect that fact with your posts, then don't bother.
I love popular culture, and I can assure you that there will be regular posts about television shows I'm watching, music I'm listening to or movies I've seen. And I am quite political. I vote left of center. If those things are a problem for you, then move on to the next blog.
Oh, about football. As a kid, I loved football. On most fall afternoons, I would go out in my front yard and run around, pretending to be Sonny Jurgensen or Billy Kilmer or Larry Brown or Johnny Unitas (remember where I grew up). I would collect team and player stamps from the local Sunoco station and fill a book with players I knew and players I had never heard of. I distinctly remember watching the Miami Dolphins beat the Kansas City Chiefs in overtime on Christmas Day 1971 in a playoff game. Football was great.
But at some point, football became all-encompassing, as in unavoidable. Once the season starts, between the colleges and the NFL, there are games every night, and when the season is over, football talk continues to overshadow everything in its path. It's like, how can I miss it when it just won't go away?
Worse yet, the NFL has grown increasingly arrogant, running roughshod over everything in its path, from players to fans. The league's ole to the side when the Colts left Baltimore in 1984, while throwing its corporate body in the way of the Eagles when Leonard Tose wanted to move to Phoenix was galling enough. The owners' attempt to try to pass off Gus the lovable mechanic down the street and his like as replacement players in 1987 was the next step.
The final straw was former commissioner Paul Tagliabue's comment in 1995 to Baltimore television reporter Scott Garceau after Baltimore's expansion effort was rebuffed. When Garceau asked Tagliabue what the people of Maryland should do with the money that had been set aside for a stadium for a new stadium, the smug, self-righteous prig said Marylanders could build a museum. Three years later, they did, named Ravens Stadium, for the team that moved here from Cleveland, leaving Tags to wipe the smirk and the egg off his face.
All of this is not to say that there won't be some football posts; there will be. But I do take pride in being one of the few straight male Americans who doesn't automatically kneel at the altar of the great god football.

How we got here.

2008-08-03T20:01:00.000-07:00

OK, so if you're reading this, and especially if you've read my profile, you're no doubt wondering why isn't a guy with my credentials working? I wish I knew.
Actually, I do know why, and while I don't necessarily want to dwell on it publicly, suffice it to say that the fact that I walked away from a 23-year reporting career and a 27-year association with a newspaper has a lot to do with the actions of bad men, some of whom do business at a tower at a great Midwestern city and others in a six-story building in a mid-Atlantic city.
Listen, the newspaper business is changing fundamentally and daily, and those who practice the craft have to adapt to get ahead of those changes. I get that, and I fully well understand that the newspaper that lands on many front lawns today may be a thing of the past in the not-too-distant future.
But what is happening at many of these newspapers, my former one included, is much less about change and more about greed and ambition. My career at my former newspaper ended in equal parts because of the greed of people who run the parent company and the naked, unbridled ambition of those who run the newspaper.
Don't worry. As I said before, I have little interest in publicly flogging people that I worked for. It serves no real purpose, and it's a lot like trying to dress a pig in a tuxedo. It only gets everyone messy and it pisses the pig off.
I had a great run, and while I think I still have things to say, I could move on to the next working phase of my life with just one regret: that I never got to cover the Olympics. But in the grand scheme, leaving a career with one regret is not a bad way to go, eh?

A quick introduction

2008-08-02T17:40:00.000-07:00

So, welcome to this brand new venture, an opportunity to share thoughts and feelings that won't always be conventional, but hopefully will always be interesting.
There'll be more about me in future postings, but, for now, I'll tell you that until yesterday, I was a writer for the Baltimore Sun. I spent the first four years of my career bouncing between the Metro and features departments, before I landed in sports in October of 1989, until I took a buyout yesterday.
I did a blog for the newspaper on local high school sports, and while I'll touch on some big picture events related to high schools, I'll be posting here as regularly as possible on just about everything in sports and the world at large, hence the title.
By the way, the blog title is a variation on a weekly radio essay show that I host on WYPR, Baltimore's NPR affiliate. As best I can, I will try to post the audio of each week's essay, or, barring that, the script of that week's show.
That's it for now. Look for more later, and thanks for dropping by!

Saving the space

2008-07-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

Check back here in about three weeks for the first entry. See you soon!