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June 2008
Braves vs. Jays evokes ‘92 Series
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Where were you? Has it slipped your mind? Have you been snoring away, Mr. Van Winkle?
It was only 16 years ago. “Only,” you say. Let’s see, Jair Jurrjens was 6 years old, Dustin McGowan was 10 at the time, just a pair of kids. Friday night they were the starters in the Skydome. Oops, even the name has been changed. Rogers Centre. A broadcasting powerhouse bought the rights and changed it, as if you could improve on Skydome. It’s a hotel with a built-in stadium, darnedest playroom you ever saw.
But, I was taking you back to 1992. That was an historical year in major league baseball, two teams crossing an international border to play a World Series for the first time. Major League Baseball made quite a production of it and regaled it with a publication titled “A Series for the World.” A bit of a stretch, perhaps, since crossing that border for years has been little more than crossing from Georgia into Florida. So the stage was set, the Braves would invade Canada to play the Blue Jays, the USA vs. Canada for the World Championship, as we ordain it.
Now the invasion takes place again, another coincidence brought to you by interleague scheduling. Here’s the weird part: The managers who managed the two teams in 1992 are managing the two teams today. Bobby Cox, of course, has never been away. Cito Gaston, well, that’s a different story. After he was fired, the Blue Jays invoked the “revolving door policy,” a half-dozen managers came and went. When John Gibbons was fired a few days ago, somebody said, “Hey, what about Cito Gaston? He was pretty good, wasn’t he?”
Good enough to win two World Series. So they brought him back, a good-natured, common-sense fellow who knew how to run a baseball club. What he has been doing since he was fired, I can’t say. He had no official listing in the baseball operation. In fact, about the only familiar name you find there is the team physician, Dr. Ron Taylor. He pitched 10 seasons in the major leagues, working on his medical degree in between and found a steady job in a familiar scene.
Cox does have some past history in Toronto, in between his tours with the Braves. (Strange, how these managers get fired and re-hired, isn’t it?) He managed the Blue Jays when they played in old Exhibition Park and made the playoffs one year before Ted Turner summoned him home.
It’s custom now, major league teams crossing international borders. We’ve even opened a season in Japan, nothing steady, just a hot date. The World Series of ‘92 opened peculiarly. The Braves faced the same starting pitcher they’d faced in the first game against Minnesota the year before, Jack Morris. This time, with Tom Glavine pitching, they beat him in old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, 3-1. All three runs came on one swing, a home run by Damon Berryhill, the catcher filling for the wounded Greg Olson. Perhaps giddiness took hold. For once, the Braves led in a World Series. It didn’t last long, The Blue Jays took a 3-1 lead and closed it out in six games against Charlie Leibrandt. Believe it or not, leading batsman in the Series was Deion Sanders.
Oh, how time flies. Seems only 16 years ago. Most of today’s players were kids. Chipper Jones hadn’t even reached town yet. Glavine and Smoltz are still around, but the curtain’s about to drop. Over in the corner of the two dugouts, though, there they stand, Bobby Cox and Cito Gaston. Back at it again.
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No rhyme or reason to playing AL teams
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Seattle Mariners came to town last week for the first time ever, and that goes all the way back to Old Hoss Radbourne and Cap Anson. And they may never be back again. Earlier, the Oakland Athletics had dropped in and stayed three days, out of the blue, which is to say that they plopped down right in the middle of some heavy business. The Braves were all tied up in some pressing business, with the Phillies on one side and the Mets on the other.
Maybe you were among those who went to Turner Field to thrill to the presence of Willie Bloomquist, Ichiro Suzuki, Yuniesky Betancourt and a box score of Mariners names all strangers to you. Swell stuff, though you and the Braves are considerably more concerned with those aliens in the more familiar cloth of your own territorial rivals. Bring them on, Howard and Utley, Wright and Delgado, all those wretches of evil intent in our own division, the day-by-day enemy.
Of course, it’s educational to see these occasional American Leaguers, but mainly, it’s an intrusion. The games count in the regular standings, but they’re nothing more than an injection of a spring exhibition schedule. First thing you’ll say, though, is, “Did you see the size of the attendance that came to see the Mariners play?” Twice over 40,000!
Sure did, and I was more than a little surprised. Our fans must have been hungry to get a glimpse of Ichiro, the Japanese import who sprays base hits around like an Asian version of Johnny Appleseed. He’s a threat to tie a record sacred to the major leagues, all the way back to Wee Willie Keeler, who managed more than 200 hits eight seasons in a row. And they called him a “rookie” when he came into Seattle. He was about as much a rookie as Andruw Jones is a rookie. Ichiro had played nine seasons in the Japan Pacific League, which is as major to that nation as the American and National are to us. It is demeaning to infer otherwise. Nevertheless, we lofty protectors of the faith anointed him “Rookie of the Year” after his first season with the Mariners.
But I drift. I’m about these American League injections into National League schedules. They come with no rhyme nor reason. I have no idea how it’s done. Apparently, somebody draws straws or throws darts, and thus you get your American League schedule fix. It’s not fair, and makes no pretense of being fair. This year, besides the A’s and Mariners at home, the Braves drew the Angels and Rangers on the road. Sometimes I wonder if the teams don’t find it difficult to take these games seriously, but more showcase stuff.
First, you have no idea what the draw may bring you. The Mariners should have been easy pickings. They had just fired their general manager, then their manager, all in the same week, and their record was the worst in the major leagues. Yet, 40,000 fans came out to see that matchup the first two nights. After a two-time dose of a lineup mostly of strangers and seeing Ichiro’s softball batting style, they’d had enough.
That’s about it, folks. As you so often do, some critics will blame this outburst on the age of the purveyor. I’ll have you know, I’m late getting to the fray. Guys the age of my sons have already beaten me to it. Somehow, none of it appears to be getting to Bud Selig, who you might recall is commissioner of this befuddled game.
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Tiger’s loss leaves big divot
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Every bone in Tiger Woods’ body must have been shaken when he went charging across the 18th green at Torrey Pines, shrieking like a banshee last Sunday, brandishing his putter as the ball slid sideways into the cup, in triumphant celebration. Of what? Tying Rocco Mediate, 158th ranked player in the world of professional golf.
Rocco Mediate, who began the 2007 season as an on-course commentator from Hawaii, walking the course with a broadcast pack on his hip. Rocco Mediate, who hadn’t won on the PGA Tour since the Greater Greensboro tournament in 2002. A kind of lovable sort of guy with a ready smile and no delusions of greatness, the kind of guy you might find running the Italian trattoria around the corner.
He has boundless admiration for the man who would beat him in the playoff round of the U.S. Open on Monday, and speaks of it. No shame to lose to “the greatest player there ever was,” was how Rocco put it. But, man, what an earth-shaker it would have been if it had gone the other way, and it did come as close as one more of Tiger’s pressure putts. Which dropped also.
The playoff was a riveting thing. Mediate would be only a sheep led to the slaughter, but to the contrary, the sheep played into the 18th hole with the lead, and there the result became inevitable. The 18th hole is a patsy for Woods, a par 5 that’s a par 4 for him. So when Mediate’s tee shot missed the fairway, he was cooked, and it was time again for him to play the role of the gracious loser. It’s one I’m sorry I had to miss, but there are times when family matters have to take priority.
Then what happened next should not have been such a stunner, but nevertheless, it was. Rocco would understand. He has had surgery after surgery and knows what it means to play hurt. One year, at the PGA Championship, a chair in which he was sitting collapsed and his head, shoulder and neck were injured. In fact, he missed the better part of three years to back problems, and began 2007 on a minor medical exemption, which is why he was walking around with a broadcast pack on his hip in Hawaii.
Woods played the Open in pain, no question. His whole body shudders from the pressure that he puts on his left knee when he launches a full drive. Most who follow the tour closely fully expected him to take another long break, then come back in time to finish off the FedEx folly and go into his cave for winter hibernation. Now he’s gone, like a pitcher having his arm remodeled. No guarantee comes with surgery, considering all the pressure he puts on the knee.
So the tour weeps. In another era the absence of no one player would have had such impact. In Palmer and Nicklaus’ time there were such marquee names as Trevino, Watson, Player, Casper, Floyd, Faldo and Norman. Today there’s a lineup of pretenders, no logical challengers, as witness top dog Mickelson on the course in the town he lives and loves. Els, Furyk, Stricker, Howell, Cink, Scott — forget it. There’s probably no player with more gallery appeal than the rube from the Florida Panhandle, Boo Weekley. But he’s just as liable to pick up his gear and go fishing as he is to show up at a golf tournament. There’s now room at the top. To step up and become immortal. Any candidates?
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Loyalty just another unplayable lie in golf
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Shanks for the memories, with apology to Bob Hope, a man who knew well such errant shots. And to Tim Finchem, who dumped the last shovel of dirt on the grave of the old Atlanta/Georgia-Pacific/BellSouth/AT&T Golf Classic. Sneer, if you choose, but in the city that’s the South’s capital of the game, where the PGA Tour has chosen to play the annual climactic event of its season, there can be no room for a tournament that has thrived and played a major charitable hand in this region for more than 40 years?
Have they forgotten? This is where the Tour came to inaugurate its Tournament Players Championship (1974; Jack Nicklaus won it). This is where it came to play its Tour Championship, now expanded into the FedEx Cup finale, though it does seem the Cup isn’t having an easy time replacing earnings as the popular thermometer of the Tour. With the write-off of the AT&T Classic, can the departure of the Tour Championship be far behind? At such a time of the year, it is still trying to find a comfort zone between the closing baseball races and the kickoff of college and NFL seasons.
The Classic politely stood aside for the Players, then again for the U.S. Open, played at Atlanta Athletic Club in 1976, then obediently moved from Atlanta Country Club to TPC Sugarloaf in 1997. No question, they were running out of parking space in the Cobb County location. Nonetheless, it was Sugarloaf or nothing, for Finchem was mending fences with Greg Norman, who’d sowed the first seed of a series of world championships, and was shot down before he could get organized. Norman got the design contract for Sugarloaf and the plump fee that went with it. After the friendly ACC, Sugarloaf was one tough course to play, and for spectators to walk, and parking was no more convenient than at the original home course. And Norman is no fan of the course with his name stamped on it, he has said when he’s asked.
But the commissioner is in an autocratic situation, and what he is doing is rearranging some of the tour furniture. He has unloaded The International, unique in its Stableford scoring system, and replaced it with the AT&T National in Washington, Tiger Woods hosting. (Could you blame him?) Now with the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach and AT&T Classic, the phone company had a full house. You-know-who had to give. Tiger never really pitched in at Sugarloaf with any great effort. He played the BellSouth there once, won it and never came back. Bad timing, the week before the Masters, bad grass, bad weather and all that irritates a tour player. Happens nearly everywhere, to every tournament, but this was one with an “X” across its chest.
So, shanks for the memories. It began without a parent, just Atlanta Classic, until Georgia-Pacific pitched in. It did develop some international flavor to go with its Australian designer. A New Zealander, Bob Charles, won the first one and a check for $23,000, which would have placed him about 40th this year. A Japanese golfer, Ryuji Imada, won the last and just under a million bucks. A rather astonished Paul Stankowski, who had won on the Nationwide Tour the week before, was the last champion at ACC, in a playoff, and suddenly realizing that he’d just won a place in the Masters asked in his muddled state, “How do you get to Augusta?”
Another Nicklaus had his moment among the gods at Sugarloaf. In a weekend of wretched weather, Gary, No. 3 son, played his way into a tie with Phil Mickelson in 2000. The playoff lasted one hole. On Monday morning, Nicklaus found a bunker, Mickelson found the green, won the hole and the championship. Gary never even came close again, anywhere.
So the inevitable has come to pass. The game moves forward in another direction. The Seniors (Champions) have been here before and moved on. Should this amalgamation come off, hopefully their stay won’t be cut short this time.
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An unexpected result at Belmont
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sometimes I think I know horse racing. Never have I been so sure that we had finally had a Triple Crown winner in the Belmont Stakes. This was Big Brown’s day. His year. He would join Secretariat in immortality. There was no fail in him. Maybe I felt that strong about Majestic Prince, but that was so long ago, who could remember? That was 1969. But even Majestic Prince came closer than Big Brown. Never has such an odds-on favorite ever finished last in such a monumental race.
First, I didn’t like his post position. Big Brown likes the outside, not the pole. You may have noticed, he had to take up twice before he found clearance on the turn. Then you said, “OK, that’s all he needs. Open space. Desormeaux could set his pace. This is just where they want to be.” Then, nothing happened. Big Brown began to look like a tourist in town. It was like reading a novel in which the hero gets killed. He just sat there, and you couldn’t believe what you were seeing.
I didn’t feel sorry for Rich Dutrow, his trainer. He has made so few admirers through Big Brown’s big run that it wasn’t easy to like the horse. But horses can’t choose their friends.
Maybe Dutrow thought Big Brown could win on three legs. Or maybe he really believed that the crack in his hoof was no more than the average guy’s hangnail. You have to believe, though, that this was Dutrow’s big play, and he had no intention of passing on it just because Big Brown had an aching hoof. What all this does is take away whatever glory Da’ Tara might have reaped in such a glorious scene.
Earlier in the day I’d seen Alan Garcia, the jockey, win a race on one of Nick Zito’s horses, and I’d thought, “What if this turns out to be an indicator of what’s to come later?” Had no idea such a crashing disaster might happen. He had done it before with Birdstone, Mary Lou Whitney’s horse that crashed Funny Cide’s party, but to take down Big Brown with a horse with a slash in his name? A total four-legged stranger?
I’ve seen upsets before, but this was even bigger than the upset that the horse named Upset dumped on us. I’m still going to have to sleep on it.
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John Smoltz’s career path will end at Hall of Fame
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s 514 miles from Glens Falls, N.Y., to Richmond. John Smoltz dragged out the trip to 14 hours in 1987. He was in no hurry. He was trying to sort things out, not easy for a 20-year-old who had just been traded by his hometown team, Detroit Tigers, to the Atlanta Braves. And for a grumpy old pitcher twice his age. John’s mind was in a tornadic whirl.
“I was crushed. Devastated. I’d been traded away by the only major-league team I’d ever expected to play for. I looked at it as a rejection,” Smoltz said. “I wasn’t good enough. They were unloading me. All sorts of thoughts were running through my mind.”
What Smoltz didn’t know was that Bobby Cox had had a scout named John Hegman tracking him for days. Cox was still general manager, and the Braves needed a young pitcher with a future, not Doyle Alexander, 36, and in the twilight of his career. Cox himself had taken a look at young Smoltz. It was no quick decision. The Tigers needed a pitcher to finish off their pennant run. Worked out well. Alexander won nine times, the Tigers won their division, but alas, lost in the playoffs. For the Braves, though, it was like striking a gusher.
On his way to Richmond, Smoltz was still churning the positives and the negatives in his mind. “I had time for a lot of self-examination. Had I failed? Wasn’t I good enough? I’d been told so many times you can’t do this, you can’t do that. Was this another time?
“The closer I got to Richmond, the better I began to feel. Then I saw the new ball park [the one the Braves are abandoning now], and it looked big league to me, a big change from the old park in Glens Falls. My outlook improved right away.”
There was no full-time pitching coach at Richmond, so Smoltz was “mainly on my own,” as he put it, “changing from one delivery to another.” Then Leo Mazzone came in and said, “Just throw naturally and we’ll start from there.”
He ripened into a winner in his second season at Richmond, 10-and-5 and a call-up to the Braves, and from that time since he has been an express running the main line. That is, allowing for all those physical interventions. From 1999 to 2002 his record looks like one train wreck after another. All told, including his recent appointment in surgery, he has been on the Braves’ disabled list nine times, but still he toils on and looks ahead. Sadly, his last appearance at Turner Field resulted in a horrid statistic that has come to be known as BS (blown save).
Without any fear of stretching truth, I’d say that the deal made for Smoltz has been the most productive in the modern history of the Braves. He has won 210 games, saved 154, struck out over 3,000 batters, and won 15 times in postseason play, not to mention having driven in 60 runs with his bat. All of this puts him on the front burner for a seat in the Hall of Fame, and seldom is his name mentioned without the signature introductory “Hall of Famer” John Smoltz. There is a tendency to become too careless with such crowning glory. In Smoltz’s case, there are negatives: He has had only one 20-win season. The “save” category is not one that impresses all balloteers. Surely if Bruce Sutter can be elected, John Smoltz should be a walk-in, no matter if he never delivers another pitch.
Whether he will or not is pure speculation. His poor tattered arm has been explored and stitched and re-stitched and reconstructed so many times it’s amazing it’s still attached. Throughout it all, the most amazing thing is that John has gone from starter to reliever and returned to starter and was ready to return to relieving again when the bell tolled this time. I shall quote from a man who should know, Dennis Eckersley, who said that going from starter to reliever, that’s one thing. But then going back to starting after relieving and checking in with three winning seasons,
“Outrageous.”
This time, the clock is ticking.
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Will Belmont be too much for Big Brown?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thirty years is a long gap between Triple Crown champions, but that is about to come to an end if Big Brown has not led us astray in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. We know he is very big, and we know he is very brown, and we know he comes equipped with overdrive. But 18 thoroughbreds before Big Brown have won the Derby and Preakness in previous years and found a mile and a half too much for them. The Belmont is a marathon to American-breds. It is that last quarter-mile that has done in some of our four-legged headliners among others, Northern Dancer, Spectacular Bid, Alysheba and Carry Back. My mission here is to weed out the five most memorable victims of this test of speed and stamina that some of equine authority call the only true measure of a horse in American racing. Thus, we set forth:
• No. 1: It’s not that the Belmont of 2002 was that much of an upset. War Emblem himself was an upsetter in the Kentucky Derby. After winning the Illinois Derby, he had been bought by one of the Arab sheiks, then won the Derby and Preakness. The quality of the upset was in the longshot that ran War Emblem into the ground at Belmont, (he finished 8th), an import from Brazil named Sarava, who returned the biggest payoff in Belmont history, $140 for a $2 win ticket. Such an astonishing charge failed to do much for his breeding status. Sarava now stands for $3,000 at a farm in Florida.
• No. 2: Majestic Prince takes us back a long way, to 1969, when he was the early rage. He was hugely impressive, and Bill Hartack in the saddle created even more of an aura about him. Impressive winner in the Derby and Preakness, there was no way he could lose the Belmont, but Hartack found a way. The irrascible jockey gave Majestic Prince a bad ride from gate to wire, wiser judges than I discerned, as well as misjudging the challenger and winner, Arts and Letters, quite well-bred himself. Hartack finished off his life just last year, serving as a race track steward.
• No. 3: Three years out of four I went against the chalk in the Belmont and won. Shame I wasn’t a big roller. When Silver Charm reached the Belmont 1997, his connections were following him like a circus. Owner Bob Lewis, the Californian beer distributor, chartered a plane to fly his guests to New York, and each morning a string of limos lined up outside the Garden City Hotel to accommodate those guests. Bob Baffert was the perfect trainer for such a situation, flamboyant, verbose and about as shy as a political candidate. Touch Gold caught Silver Charm at the wire, and Victory Gallop did the same to Real Quiet, also Baffert-trained, in the Belmont the next year.
• No. 4: Ah, one of my all-time favorites here, but also a victim. No thoroughbred had ever come from so far under such second-class conditions and achieved so much. Canonero II had won the Derby as one dropped in the betting field, reserved in those times for horses considered having no chance. Then he not only won the Preakness, but this $1,200 colt set the event record. Belmont, I’d suppose, was too much for a thoroughbred who had been trained in Venezuela like a plow horse. He finished fourth in 1971 to Pass Catcher, who wasn’t too shabby a fellow himself, but Canonero II finally ran out of gas and fought off and injury to finish fourth.
• No. 5: There was a lot off the wall about Funny Cide, a gelding, and no gelding had won the Kentucky Derby since Clyde Van Dusen in 1929. Owned and vociferously followed by a collection of friends from northern New York, who traveled to the races in a school bus. Trained by Barclay Tagg, a rather dour fellow new to bright lights. After winning the Preakness in 2003, what was to stop him? Only Empire Maker, who now stands for $100,000 a pop in Kentucky. Funny Cide? He roams somewhere in a pasture with no social appointments on his calendar. (PS: I would like to enter a word here about Charismatic, who barely squeezed into the Derby field in 1999, then won the Preakness, then broke down as he hit the wire third at Belmont. He now stands at stud in Japan.)
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