Home > Furman Bisher > Archives > 2009 > January
January 2009
Bob Knight interested in UGA job
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you are one of those Bulldogs deeply distressed about the course of basketball at the University of Georgia, I have promising news for you. How would you like to have Bob Knight coaching your team?
This is the man who won 902 games, most in college history, then decided it was time to find life outside Lubbock, Texas. Nothing wrong with Lubbock, but when he went to Texas Tech about six years ago, it was like setting up shop in a desert, as college basketball goes. When he suddenly quit about a year ago, he thought he’d had enough. Georgia offers another kind of chance in a highly visible conference.
It can be done, but as you’d imagine, only if done his way. His way:
“He doesn’t want it to look as if he’s pursuing the job. He’d like to be offered it, and if offered, he’d take it,” said a mutual friend, who did not want to be named but was willing for this columnist to report Knight’s interest.
“He doesn’t want it to look as if he’s looking for work, but I can assure you that he’d like to have the job. It’s the idea of coaching a team in the Southeastern Conference that appeals to him. There are just so many things he could do for Georgia basketball. This would be his last stop, and he likes that.”
Knight, 68, left Texas Tech in the middle of the 2008 season, and the question arises — why? (“If I had hit 62 home runs, I’d thought I’d accomplished something,” he said when he broke Dean Smith’s victory record.)
“It occurred to him that he had done all he could there. His son, Patrick, his assistant, was ready and it was time for Patrick to take over and time for him to move on,” the friend said.
On the Jay Leno show, in his first interview after leaving Texas Tech, Knight said, “I thought I’d had enough.”
“Are we ever going to see you back on the floor?” Leno asked.
“Well, I don’t think you can never say never,” Knight replied.
Not until the Georgia job came open had he expressed any interest in a return to coaching, his friend said. When he arrived at Texas Tech, the Raiders had won only l4 games in the Big 12 the previous four years. In Knight’s time, they won 43.
Knight left Indiana on the toe of president Myles Brand’s shoe, a move heavily laden with controversy. Brand has since become president of the NCAA and only recently announced that he had been diagnosed with cancer. Oddly enough, Brand and Dr. Michael Adams, president of UGA, are close friends, whatever effect that relationship might have on the hiring of Knight.
The next move, whatever it might be, would be up to Damon Evans, the director of athletics.
• Photos: Bobby Knight’s career • Possible UGA coaching candidates
Permalink | Comments (341) | Post your comment | Categories: UGA/SEC
31 pitchers may not be enough for Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Roger was open for business, formerly known — you may recall — as Camp Leo. It’s a pitchers thing, and in most cases, purely voluntary. It takes place underground, that is, deep inside Turner Field in the cages. It’s intended to awaken those arms that have been sleeping through the winter, though in some cases, such as Tommy Hanson, a rookie you’ll be seeing and hearing more of, his arm is coming off a stirring preview in the Arizona fall league.
On the other hand, there’s Tim Hudson, another who brought his arm to Atlanta for one of those injury-imposed vacations. He was in house, but doing nothing more than long tossing. He won’t be back on duty until August, they say. It seems the Braves offer haven for sad-sack arms. (Whoever could forget the sickening case of Mike Hampton, who brought his soupbone here to recuperate at the cost of millions, then jumped ship?)
This is a function that got its original name from Leo Mazzone, and is basically a pitching coach’s operation. Then Mazzone left for Baltimore, and has lived to regret it. He now rises at dawn, drives to the WCNN radio studio and spends his mornings in one of those gab shows, during which he said one day, “If I had it to do over again [leave for Baltimore], I wouldn’t do it.”
Roger McDowell succeeded him, and thus the transfer of the camp title. McDowell spent 13 years pitching in the major leagues, all but one working out of the bullpen. As a player, he had a reputation for hijinks and comedy, though he has shown little of that side of himself here. Frankly, the pitchers he has had to work with have given him little time for levity. If there is no promise in quality this time around, at least there is in number. You can never have too many pitchers, they say.
No guarantee comes with this bunch, but you might call them the United Nations staff, 24 on the 40-man roster, 31 altogether. They come from Panama, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Curacao, Dominican Republic, Australia, Japan, Colombia, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba and England. Not to overlook Walla Walla, Wash. And Marietta.
Never before have pitchers arrived in such number. And, yes, one from Japan. They finally decided to get into the Oriental swing, and that will create a kind of logistical headache they’ve never had before. When they signed Kenshin Kawakami, a 33-year-old native of Tokushima, the press conference was overwhelmed, not necessarily by Japanese press, but included an influx of Japanese businessmen as well. Any day he pitches, the press box will suddenly burst out in a flow of Japanese.
Sorry, we didn’t get a preview of Kawakami at Camp McDowell. That comes later. To make things simpler, he has said, “Just call me Kenshin.”
So there you are, 31 pitchers to indulge in, some who are merely passing through, and some fresh faces to look over, besides Hanson, who, by the way, is 6-feet-6; a wit named Boone Logan, who came in the Javier Vasquez deal; an authentic Irishman, Eric O’Flaherty (the one from Walla Walla), and other strangers who may be more than a name, Todd Redmond, Kris Medlen, Luis Valdez, and as I said, you can never have too many. Especially in a season when the World Baseball Championship has to be dealt with, both at home and abroad. Did I say you can’t have too many pitchers?
Permalink | Comments (22) | Post your comment | Categories: Braves/MLB
Pete Van Wieren will be impossible to replace
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A few days from now I get to crown Pete Van Wieren with an award the Atlanta Sports Council created in my name, and at the same time, honor Skip Caray in absentia. Let it be said from the outset, that it isn’t easy for me to write this without blushing. It’s a warm feeling to know that Gary Stokan, and his Council, feel safe enough to entrust that duty upon me, since I have no record in the stockade or with the Atlanta Police Department. No DUIs and all those other things that fester the lives of athletes, both professional and otherwise.
But, that’s not what I come before you today to talk about. It’s about Pete and Skip, but more about Pete since he is around to get the message. If you have ever lived in a small town and the closest you ever got to the metropolitan life was the radio, you get an idea of where I came from. My early acquaintance with major-league baseball was by the voices that came through that old Atwater Kent radio, with the speaker on top. Waite Hoyt came out of Cincinnati, some time delivering long soliloquies on baseball while the Reds sat out a rain delay. And Russ Hodges from Charlotte, delivering Washington Senators games as they came to him over a Western Union wire. (Ronald Reagan, then known as “Dutch,” did some of the same on Cubs games out of Des Moines, I’ve read. Never heard him. WHO had a weak signal in our parts.)
These were the kind of messengers I grew up with as I got to know major-league baseball and became addicted to the game. By the time I came upon Pete Van Wieren, I had been around myself and had seen some of the world and had come to know some of these idols of mine. Russ Hodges lived just down the street from me in Charlotte and would wave some times as he drove past on the way to his studio to do his thing. (Plink! Sound of a toy bat against a Coke bottle.) “It’s a double down the right-field line,” he’d say, reading from the Western Union ticker.
Pete was one of those who came into many a kid’s bedroom at night, almost stealthily delivering the Braves games across the South. Often, I was among his audience, nights I wasn’t at the ballpark myself, or when the Braves were on the road. On reason is, I’m a radio guy. Sometimes I try to watch the game on TV and get the voice by radio, but that’s a bummer. TV is about three seconds behind radio, and I already knew how the play came out. I turn off the TV. Who needs it?
I’ve got Van Wieren. I’ve said this several times before — never admitted it to Pete — that he has the perfect voice for baseball. He makes me feel that I’m right there beside him and he’s talking right in my ear. It’s a gentle voice. No whooping and yowling. It comes oozing through the speaker like honey out of a horn — and if that has the sound of exaggerated patronization, I apologize. But it’s true. There’s nobody smoother than Pete delivering the game from his seat to yours. But not any longer.
That’s the depressing part of it. Pete has retired. Now, that doesn’t mean he won’t be heard again. Remember how many times Ernie Johnson retired? And we still get a blip of him now and then. Officially, though, Pete is off the air. There may be some as good down the line, but none better, and none whose style rests better on my ears. It’s my honor to do him honor, such as it is. Bon voyage, old friend.
Permalink | Comments (57) | Post your comment | Categories: Braves/MLB
Whisenhunt showed poise from his days at Tech
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Now the National Football League championship moves into the penultimate stage. And no, the Falcons are not in it, dismissed by the Arizona Cardinals, a team usually at leisure this time of year. Naturally, interest in the game between these Cardinals and the Philadelphia Eagles is not exactly a-boil in these parts because a sports fan is one whose interest is gauged by one factor: Does he have a dog in the fight, so to speak?
Naturally, Atlantans resent the Cardinals because they eliminated their Falcons, who had come to be beloved in our midst. So who cares how the Cardinals and Eagles make out in this fowl fight? If they were real birds of the feather, an eagle would always be a serious over-match for a cardinal. But let’s not be too swift to declare tepid interest, for as time has played out, our precinct does indeed have a “dog in the fight,” or in this case, a bird.
Ken Whisenhunt is in his second season coaching the Cardinals, which at first glance appeared to just what it was — a job in a desert. The Cardinals, when they resided in Chicago, haven’t reached such a peak in the NFL since the late ’40s. They beat Philadelphia — ah, yes, the Eagles — 28-21 in old Comiskey Park and became 1947 NFL champions, behind the skilled performance of a $100,000 rookie out of Georgia, Charley Trippi, who scored two touchdowns, one on a 75-yard punt return. The next season they lost the championship to the Eagles in Philadelphia 7-0 and have never had a whiff of such a lofty state until this moment.
Our interest in this crucial moment is heightened — or should be — by the fact that “our dog in the fight” is home-bred and trained. Ken Whisenhunt was born in Atlanta in 1962. True, he spent his growing-up years in Augusta, but he was back in Atlanta not long afterward. Bill Curry was the new coach at Georgia Tech, and he was attracted to any athlete who had a pulse and was breathing. Those were dismal times at Tech, and wouldn’t improve right away, by which time Whisenhunt was part of it.
“There was a kind of calmness about him that impressed you,” Curry said, “made him seem older than he was. It didn’t take much recruiting because he had been injured and missed most of the season and other coaches had lost interest.”
In his first two seasons here, Tech won just two games — but did tie Notre Dame, then No. l — in that historic game his freshman year, with Whisenhunt at quarterback. He became a tight end, and with John Dewberry at quarterback, finally beat Georgia his senior year. Then came four seasons with the Falcons, all losers and a merry-go-round of coaches. He played his last with Washington, then kind of dropped off into the obscurity that befalls assistants, then emerged as the coach directing the offense when Pittsburgh beat Seattle in the Super Bowl. You could feel then that the die was cast — he would soon be somebody’s head coach, and so it was that he wound up in Arizona.
There were those who had anticipated a better fit, for wherever the Cardinals had landed, they inevitably bedded down with defeat. Whisenhunt never wavered, through tragedy and the vagaries of adjusting to a new employ on strange ground. He is married to the daughter of the late John O’Neill (and Lucia), a former associate athletics director at Georgia Tech who died suddenly shortly after Whisenhunt was hired. There is that calmness about him, a sort of John Wayne-ish bearing, and a kind of comportment quite fitting on the Arizona desert. Something about him seems to build a wall against deterring influences.
He’ll need it this week, for the Eagles are tough as a bunch of longshoremen, and just as ill-mannered. “A pain to play against,” Whisenhunt said, and he should know. “I’ve has been directing offenses at Jim Johnson’s defenses for a long time.” On Thanksgiving Day, the Eagles ran up 48 points to the Cardinals’ 20. It’s not so much Donovan McNabb as it is the Eagles’ blitzes that Kurt Warner and his crew must engage. So, if you’re looking for a team upon which to feast your favor this weekend, I can’t recommend them personally. I would say they are the most civil, but beside that, they have a coach who was born and trained among us, and who has the look of a western kind of folk you’d prefer to have on your side in a gunfight.
Permalink | Comments (24) | Post your comment | Categories: Tech/ACC
Braves need to spend, or else
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It comes as no shock or revelation to any of us that the Braves’ is a troubled house, and it didn’t begin with Frank Wren. He is the man in the cross hairs because he bears the title of general manager, bestowed upon him by John Schuerholz, who merely assumed the title of president and moved down the hall — if he moved at all.
It was Schuerholz who gave us three years of a useless Mike Hampton, who made the trade for Mark Teixeira that cost the club five young prospects, then was traded away for a minor leaguer and Casey Kotchman, now the first baseman.
This not to assume the role of apologist for Wren, but it does lead into the rage that has consumed us since learning that John Smoltz has been allowed to slip away to the Red Sox.
The Braves were left with egg of their face when the story broke Wednesday night that Smoltz was taking leave for Beantown. It was a shock to even those who know him best. Chipper Jones was outraged, the proper term, I think. The town was in mourning, that part of it that wasn’t taking the whip to Wren, labeled “penny-pinching” in a headline.
Not taken into consideration is that investing in Smoltz as a productive pitcher in 2009 was a business risk. He had missed the better part of two seasons in the ’90s after Tommy John surgery. Then the old soupbone went again last season after 28 innings — for which the Braves paid him $14 million. Back to the surgeon’s table again, for repairs on an arm now 41 years old.
I had imagined that on his return, the Braves might have made him an offer of $8 million, with conditions. After all, they’d squandered around $40 million on Hampton, the ingrate who had taken flight after the season. Instead, the Braves low-balled him, so Smoltz and his agent felt, about which Terry McGuirk, the club president, had this to say:
“We wanted to make sure he would be able to pitch, and that wouldn’t be until sometime in May. We felt we made a pretty good offer, and in the long run, if all turned out well, he could have had a prosperous season. We had to know if he could pitch or not. It really revolved around what he was going to be paid for not pitching, should it turn out that way. And we already had another pitcher [Tim Hudson] on the sideline until late in the season.”
In effect, Smoltz would have been in line to earn $10 million, had he pitched like the Smoltz of old. Two and a half million guaranteed wasn’t enough, so he and his agent went shopping. It’s free enterprise at work, but the Braves felt as if they had been left holding the bag.
And, let it be said here, that it was not a Wren decision, it was a decision by committee, including McGuirk, Schuerholz, Wren, and, Bobby Cox. Yes, Cox, too. This was sort of a replay of Tom Glavine’s hike to the Mets, when Schuerholz said one thing about an offer he said he had made and Glavine said another. This leads me to say that Braves management sometimes likes to feel that to be a Brave should be considered a blessing. You might say it was at one time, but that time has expired.
It’s a different world now, one in which the Braves are short on experience, as McGuirk pointed out. “We haven’t been active in the free agent market for years. We are now in position to bolster this team, but we have to do it judiciously. It’s a new twist for us.”
It’s not my privilege to be out of sorts with either party. It’s not my money, but it isn’t easy to understand why the Braves’ high command couldn’t have made Smoltz an offer that he didn’t consider “insulting.” Look at the Phillies and how they dealt with Jamie Moyer, 46 years old and a 16-game winner last season. Forty-six and still going — but no surgical risk.
These aren’t Ted Turner days. That’s when Braves were spoiled and Atlanta looked like paradise. Headquarters are now in Denver. They’re media folk. They’re apprentices in the baseball business. I have no inkling of how much they know of the John Smoltz trauma.
Terry McGuirk is their boss on the scene. Frank Wren is their baseball office manager, and the impression has been that since Liberty Media became owners, the Braves had money to burn. OK, fellows, burn some of it before Turner Field becomes the scene of a revolution.
Permalink | Comments (100) | Post your comment | Categories: Braves/MLB
Year-end sports statement shows mostly gains
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Look, you can knock the year we just finished if you choose to. As an investor, I do. As a member of the local sports society, I don’t. Bear with me.
Yeah, the Braves were sickening, started bad and became a lost cause. It just isn’t sound business to open a season counting on two pitchers in their 40s, both with damaged arms, and another who hasn’t thrown an official pitch in three seasons. (And far as I’m concerned, good riddance, Mike Hampton, mainly a drag on the payroll.)
Then there was the Mark Teixeira charade. Traded five good prospects to get him, then traded him away for a young first baseman and an unknown soldier. The one bright spot was Chipper Jones, who led the league in hitting — though able to take the field only 128 times.
And frankly, the spring doesn’t look much better this year.
Ah, but let’s look at the brighter side, and it begins with the Georgia basketball team. If there ever has been a more unlikely champion of the Southeastern Conference, the floor is open for nominations. Those Bulldogs stand as a testimonial to Dennis Felton, who keeps his house in order. It was a freshman lad who threw up the key basket during the tournament run, which I heard straining my ears on a car radio in a dark parking lot.
The Hawks, well, they were just tuning up when they carried the Celtics to the limit in the NBA playoffs. I’m not sure how Mike Woodson and Billy Knight got along, but Mike seems to be doing very well without the discarded general manager.
Now we really hit the high note — the Falcons, new and improved, as they say in those commercials. A new general manager, new coach, new quarterback, new running game and a cagey day at the draft. From the day Thomas Dimitroff hit this town, the Falcons began working their way out of their doldrums. Mike Smith followed, then the draft, in which Dimitroff paid heed to his own judgment and chose Matt Ryan, a fresh graduate of Boston College, now offensive rookie of the NFL season. Michael Turner was cleverly claimed as a free agent, and he gave the running game some clout.
Smith did the rest. For a man who had never been a head coach, he showed an unusual propensity for finding the right player for the right job. Rarely ever will you see such an uncanny turnaround in an NFL team, a just reward for Arthur Blank, whose ownership had been beset by some unfortunate judgments. Picking winners after the game has been played is easy, but as this is written, the Falcons and Cardinals haven’t yet taken the field. I take the privilege of being a “homer.”
Then there was the improbable turn of fate at Georgia Tech. Paul Johnson came aboard with his uncanny offense that worked magically until New Year’s Eve in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. This Tech team had been beaten before, but never so thoroughly as by LSU. The North Carolina game was a calamity. This one was worse. As the woman convicted of murdering her husband said, “Well, nobody’s perfect.”
Mark Richt began the season on top of the heap of at Georgia, No. 1 before the season began, fell from that lofty perch the first week and never made it back. The Bulldogs recovered in the Capital One Bowl, but got little credit in the press for beating Michigan State. More accounts dealt with two players who might, or might not, turn pro afterward. Matthew Stafford and Knowshon Moreno, in case you missed it.
Bill Curry returned to coaching and faces the monumental charge of establishing a football program at Georgia State, from the ground up.
Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards won NASCAR’s two races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, and in Busch’s case, it was the start of one of the hottest streaks of the year.
Golf took its licks in the area. AT&T pulled out of Sugarloaf, and there was no replacement. The Tour Championship made its annual return to East Lake, but the air had already been let out of its balloon. Though Camilo Villegas won it, the FedEx prize had already been nailed down by Vijay Singh.
This is just sort of skimming the cream off the top, and with that I depart, wishing for you a new and improved 2009.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Post your comment | Categories: Braves/MLB, Falcons/NFL, Hawks/NBA, Tech/ACC, UGA/SEC
Services »
