Sam

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The morally bankrupt Texas Rangers

In Uncategorized on March 17, 2010 at 2:58 pm

The big story in baseball today is that Texas Rangers Manager Ron Washington tested positive for cocaine last year.  The bigger news, to me at least, is that the Rangers are standing by Washington and allowing him to keep his job. This is a reprehensible stance on the part of the Rangers management. 

Just a few days ago an American couple who worked at the US Embassy in Mexico were brutally gunned down as they returned home from a child’s birthday party.  Their own 1-year-old child, in the back seat of the car, was unhurt but there was a profoundly tragic image of a Mexican policeman holding the child as his colleagues went through the bullet riddled SUV. The violent mexican drug wars that the media have been reporting recently are the direct result of an insatiable US demand for Cocaine among other drugs. This is acknowledged by both the US and Mexican governments.   In a sense then it is recreational Cocaine users like Ron Washington who are indirectly responsible for the murder of the US diplomat and her husband. For they are the ones creating the demand.  Not only is it absurd to allow Washington to keep his job after he tested positive for Cocaine ( he is after all a manager and managers are not supposed to fail drug tests), but given the fact that the spate in drug related violence is happening on the Texas-Mexico border one would expect  the Rangers management would have terminated Washington’s contract immediately,  if  for no other reason than to send a message to their own community that they do not condone any activity that has led, even indirectly, to the deaths of thousands of innocent Mexican and American citizens since the drug wars began in 2006.  

A final thought on this post: I wonder what the Rangers’s first ever manager would say about all this were he still alive. That would be Ted Williams of course.

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Tiger Woods and the new morality in American sports.

In Uncategorized on March 16, 2010 at 2:45 pm

Well, it is no surprise that Tiger Woods has announced that he will participate in this years Masters.  In fact, Tiger’s break from golf was very disingenuous coming as it did in golf’s offseason; to this point Tiger has missed only 3 “minor” tournaments. I think we knew all along that he would be back for the Masters because it just seems like the, pre-packaged made for TV sports “comeback”  that we have come to expect from the major networks. It doesn’t matter that Tiger was absent not because of a torn fibula or rotator cuff but  because he had been caught cheating on his wife with a parade of busty bimbos and was too ashamed to appear in public.  And what will the reaction of the galleries  be ?  I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone at Augusta cheered Tiger just as Dodger fans cheered Manny Ramirez upon his return last year after a 50 game suspension for steroid use. The plain fact is that athletes nowadays are not held to very high standards. An athlete can do something disgraceful, such as Marion Jones, or act with complete hypocrisy, such as Tiger,  but as long as they have not lost their game people will cheer for them.  In all honesty, athletes have always been given a break. When incidents of supposed domestic violence in Willie Mays’s marriage were reported  in the San Francisco papers in 1961 no one really cared – according to James Hirsch in his new biography of Mays.  But there was nevertheless a moral code which, if transgressed, made it difficult for a player to continue to compete in the public arena.  A good example is Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich who in the mid 1970s swapped wives – and eventually their entire families – and were subsequently booed in every city they played in.  Both were out of baseball in a matter of a few years despite promising careers.  The Tiger Woods scandal has had all the sleazy headlines of the Kekich-Peterson affair and Tiger for his hypocrisy should hear thunderous and incessant jeers upon his return. But this will not happen. because people, as I said, just don’t care anymore.

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Willie Davis 1940-2010

In Uncategorized on March 10, 2010 at 11:54 am

Saw in this morning’s paper that Willie Davis passed away yesterday. Even though I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area a Giants fan, I always liked Willie Davis. Like my idol, Willie Mays, Davis played Centerfield and batted third in the Dodgers lineup. He was svelte and fleet as a gazelle but, unlike Mays, Davis did not generally hit for power.  I remember going to a Giants Dodgers game in 1970 and the memory of Davis’s performance that day is seared into my memory. He was 4-5 with 2 singles, a triple and a home run.  Maybe that is the day I became a Willie Davis fan.  He went on to hit .305 that year and the next year was selected to the NL All Star team, one of two all-star selctions in his career. Still there was something sad about Davis’s career as he never quite fulfilled the promise of his early years and, despite a solid career,  he is probably most rememberd by longtime Dodger fans for his fielding miscues in the 1966 World Series. Davis ended his career in Japan where he became a convert to Buddhism.  Maybe in Buddhism Davis found the tranquillity he was never able to find as a ballplayer. For someone who hangs on to his Willie Davis memory there is serenity in that thought.

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Ah, Spring is here….

In Uncategorized on March 9, 2010 at 8:43 am

I see that A-Rod is in hot water again, this time for his association with a Canadian doctor who is suspected of providing HGH to US athletes.  Here we go again. Although some people in baseball- because of the implementation of more stringent drug testing – have declared the Steriod Era over, the use of performance enhancing drugs (funny but doesn’t PEDs  sound like PEZ ? ) like HGH will continue to destroy the National Pastime. There is still no test for HGH and I suspect that many ballplayers who used steroids have simply switched over to HGH.  In fact, I was watching the Chisox-Cubbies Cactus League game the other day and every guy in the White Sox lineup looked like Popeye, even diminutive Omar Vizquel.   In short, one just does not know anymore if what occurs on the field is legitimate or not.  The only way to restore integrity to the game would be to impose widespread mandatory drug testing and then to issue lifetime bans to repeat offenders.  If a player knew that his livelihood was on the line, I am sure he would think very hard about using a performance enhancing supplement.  But of course MLB will never take these steps. The Players Union would have nothing to do with it and the entire season ( and all the gate receipts) would be subject to a strike and cancellation.  So this season, once again, with every home run we will wonder  “was that legit?.” Sadly, the answer will be “probably not.”

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Michigan Football circa 2009

In Uncategorized on February 25, 2010 at 8:55 am


I was talking to an old college classmate today about Michigan football and both of us, Michigan grads, were lamenting the depths to which the program has fallen over the past several years.  Once an elite college football program with an impressive pedigree of NFL players, the Michigan football program nowadays is like and old, deacaying Sears Roebuck store, the smell of stale popcorn wafting through the racks of reduced clothing, bubble gum stains on the cracked linoleum flooring, broken escalators etc.   I  told my friend that the loss to Applachian State in 2007 was a mortal blow to the program and one not likely it would recover from anytime soon.  I said it was like Tiger Woods,  squeaky clean Stanford grad, family guy, an image manicured to perfection like the greens at Augusta, who was suddenly caught cavorting around with cheap cocktail waitresses, party girls and porn stars. Anyway, I liked the analogy of the Michigan football program with Tiger Woods. I think it will take years, maybe even a decade or two, for the program to overcome that loss to Appalachian State.  Tiger, on the other hand, might very well be done.

“Wild Card”

In Uncategorized on August 20, 2009 at 2:39 pm

It has been awhile since I have written anything.  In fact, I was toying with idea of never watching another baseball game after reading an article about Tony Kubek.  Kubek apparently became so disgusted with the rampant greed in baseball that he walked away from the game in 1994 during the players strike. He has not watched a game since. In fact, until his inauguration into the broadcasters wing of the Hall of Fame last month, and a visit to Cooperstown, Kubek had never even heard of Alex Rodriguez. Admirable in my book.

Then there was the Ortiz steroids story in early August.  It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it ? And of course Ortiz, showing up at a press conference in designer sunglasses, a diamond stud in his ear, blames his positive drug test on OTC supplements. All the while, Red Sox fans cheered on – oblivious to the outrage of it all. The Red Sox won the World Series in 2004* and 2007 * (BTW, those are asterisks)

Anyway, as the pennant races heat up in August I thought I would chime in on the term”wild card” a phrase that MLB has appropriated from the NFL. In fact, there are several terms from the NFL that MLB uses nowadays, the 2 most often repeated being “wild card” and “home-field advantage.” I always grimace when I hear these phrases during a baseball broadcast.  These are football terms and have no business in a baseball telecast ( if Tony Kubek watched baseball anymore I am sure he would agree).  MLB has undoubtedly decided to use part of the NFL lexicon because of the popularity of Professional Football in this country. Use of these terms is nothing more than an subliminal attempt to seduce football fans into watching baseball, a sport that is now lagging behind football and basketball in terms of popular appeal. Lamentably, “wild card” in baseball seems to have caught on.

I may join Tony Kubek yet.

Video replay in baseball

In Uncategorized on July 5, 2009 at 5:24 pm

A couple of nights ago there was a 10 minute delay in the Giants Astros game while the umpires reviewed a video tape replay of a Travis Ishikawa home run. Was it or wasn’t it ? Well it turns out it was (a home run, that is) and after 10 minutes standing at second base, Ishikawa was allowed to finish his home run trot. I could have done the dishes in all that time.

The use of replay in baseball is going to ruin the game. It is only a matter of time before cameras replace umpires. I mean you can already see this coming with “pitch tracker”  or ” K-Zone”  devices  that plot the strike zone for the TV audience so that broadcasters and fans can determine if a called strike was really a strike. Pitch tracker is so much more accurate than the flesh and blood home plate ump that it is a wonder MLB has not already made home plate umpires redundant.  My prediction  is that this will happen soon.

Of course this would be unfortunate and very much against the tradition of the game, where umpires have been a very necessary and beloved object of scorn. Can you imagine going to the ballpark and not being able to boo an ump for a blown call  ?  That is part of the fun of going. When a manager argues with an umpire it makes for some very colorful on the field theatre.  That is why we remember guys like Billy Martin and Earl Weaver. Baseball without umpires would be like Leave it to Beaver without Eddie Haskell.

It will be a sad day when the game is called by machines.  But under the rubric of progress that day will certainly come.  They might even say  ” can you believe that they used to have a guy standing behind the plate calling balls and strikes…”

Geez..Mrs. Cleaver…

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Not feeling so patriotic today

In Pet Peeves, Satire, Traditions, Trivia and Nostalgia, Uncategorized on July 4, 2009 at 12:43 pm

Wasn’t planning on writing anything today. It is after all The Fourth of July. But then I tuned into Fox’s Game of the Week ( Dodgers-Padres) and found that their coverage of Manny Ramirez’s return to the Dodgers lineup warranted an entry.

It is as if Fox and MLB were celebrating Ramirez’s return. There was Manny all primped up in a pre-game press conference saying how nice it was to be back. No mention anywhere about why Manny had been out of the lineup. When Manny came up for his first at bat, Dick Stockton and Eric Karros fawned on him – again no mention really of why he had not been in the lineup for two months.  I could read the lips of one girl in the stands who was yelling “come on Manny,”  perhaps unaware that Manny had been suspended 50 games for drug use ( it being more likely that she knew but just didn’t care). When Manny hit a HR Stockton’s, call betrayed nothing but unbridled  joy while Karros added how incredible it was that Manny can return to the lineup and be back in top form so quickly.  All the while the fans cheered ( even though this game was being played in San Diego) adding to this sick feeding frenzy.

You wonder what kind of message this sends to people, particularly to young kids or to players at the lower levels of professional baseball who are trying to crack ( no pun intended, Manny ) a major league lineup ? The message I think it sends is that, hey, it is OK to cheat.  If you are good enough people don’t really care how you get there and they will still cheer for you. This is America.

A final irony. As were all the players on the field today, Manny wore a patch commeratiing the 70th anniversary of Lou Gehrigs famous Fourth of July speech at Yankee Stadium. This juxtapositon of class and no class was so funny that I could not help but chuckle before getting up to turn off the TV. I had had enough.

Happy 4th of July.

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Red baseball caps ?

In Pet Peeves, Satire, Traditions, Uncategorized on July 3, 2009 at 9:45 pm

There is nothing I love more than plopping down on the couch on Friday evening and watching a ballgame. After dinner tonight I turned on Giants-Astros game, Lowenbrau in hand ( a beer actually brewed in Germany, not one that  says “Imported” and is, in fact, brewed in Canada.  Read the labels carefully and you will see what I mean ) and just about had a cardiac when the Giants took the field wearing red caps !  So confused was I that it took me a few batters to figure out that the Giants were wearing these hats in observance of the 4th of July ( even though today is not the 4th of July but the 3rd, obviously what threw me off  in the first place)

Even my wife was confused when she walked into the room and glanced at the TV screen. Seeing the red hats, she asked me ” weren’t you watching the Giants game ?” I replied that I was and that the Giants were wearing red hats in observance of Independence Day, to which she shook her head and walked away.

The Giants franchise dates back to the 1880s and the teams have always worn either blue and orange ( occasionally in Mel Ott’s day) or black and orange from the early 1950s.  In short, the Giants have no business in red ! In fact, the only teams that should wear red caps are the Reds, the Phillies, the Cards and maybe a couple of other teams.

When I switched over to ESPN during a commerical I saw that other teams were wearing the  caps as well.  Giants Broadcaster Duane Kuiper mentioned that teams were wearing the red caps this weekend as a show of support for the Armed Forces.  But I suspect this is nothing more than marketing behind a veil of patriotism.  The cap is one more product – among a dizzying array of cheap memorabilia, tacky replica jerseys and chatchkis- that MLB can market to a growing fan base  ignorant about the history of the game. Sure enough when I went to the MLB website this morning, there they were, the “Stars and Stripes Perfomance on the field hats.”  If you want one it will only cost you $ 36.99.

Because this is America.

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