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February 2009
Diaz keeps on hitting with Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Throughout the off-season, into the first breath of spring, Matt Diaz was sort of like little Jack Horner, sitting in a corner. The 2008 season had been a virtual wipe-out for him. He had been the left-fielder at the start, and it went without notice that he had the Braves’ highest career batting average (.320). Then came the stop in Milwaukee late in May and the crash into the wall in left-field foul territory, and there his season took a harsh, bruising turn.
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Never has golf needed someone as much as Tiger
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The earth can start turning again. Gentlemen, start your drivers. Warm up your irons. Tim Finchem can exhale at last. Charlie Axel Woods’ father is coming back to work again.
Using the trade name of Tiger, he sent this invigorating message: “I’m now ready to play again.”
Doing his best to put a mask on his joy, Commissioner Finchem said, “We are pleased that Tiger is returning and look forward to watching him compete next week.” Or any week, for that matter.
Never has a performer in any game been so sorely missed. Some of the Tour tournaments looked as if they were being played to a gallery of weeping pines and stoic oaks. No roping off the spectators. No spectators. In some sports, the game might have been called off on account of inclement attendance. Think of how those players had to feel, Paul Goydos, John Mellinger, Charlie (nice name) Hoffman, Richard S. Johnson, all those guys who showed up to go to work in the morning and found out nobody cared. Things got so bad that when a kid named Dustin Johnson was leading after three rounds at Pebble Beach, they sent everybody home.
(Well, actually, it was the Crosby weather. Rained like the devil, the wind blew flags out of the pin, and the seagulls were flying in reverse.)
Now those vacant spaces along the fairway will be filled again. Break out the ropes, even in some place in Arizona named Marana. They’ll be playing the Accenture World Match Play Championship there next week. This has not been one of Tiger’s hottest events. He has won it three times, but in other years he has lost to otherwise unacclaimed players with names like Peter O’Malley, Chad Campbell, Nick O’Hern (twice) and last year, Aaron Baddeley was a short putt from putting him away. But blew it. Then Tiger came back and blew Stewart Cink off the course in the championship match.
Balancing the budget is not an object with Tiger and his brood. He leads the world in on-course earnings, $93 millions and change. Winning is. Any tournament he plays and doesn’t win is a tournament squandered. To lose to him has become a popular way to go. You’ve never see a more ebullient loser than Rocco Mediate after the Open at Torrey Pines last year,
That was Tiger’s last fling, gallantly stumping around the course like a wounded warrior. Eight months have passed and the body and spirit are revved up to hit the trenches again. And, as the PGA Tour goes, not a moment too soon. The Fed Ex Cup has not had the curative effect Finchem had in mind, especially after the embarrassment of the Tour Championship at East Lake last year. Sponsors are dropping out in unceremonious style. Alvin Stanford and Bobby Ginn, whose names were on tournaments on three tours, are up to their clavicles in legal entanglement. Buick and Chrysler, two long-running sponsors, are now pawns of Congress. Things are in a cussed mess.
Welcome back, Tiger! Not a moment too soon.
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Why does Georgia need ‘help’ to find basketball coach?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Could it possibly be that when Joel Eaves hired Vince Dooley to coach football at Georgia, he went through a “search firm?” Of course not.
Could it be that when Vince Dooley hired Mark Richt to coach football at Georgia he went through a “search” firm? Of course not.
Then, pray tell, why is it that the present Director of Athletics at Georgia, Damon Evans, has employed Parker Executive Search of Atlanta, at a fee of $75,000 (plus expenses) to “conduct a search” for a basketball coach? Does Evans’ title, Director of Athletics, not indicate that he, indeed, is well versed in the field in which he serves the university?
I have no idea how a search firm operates, but I will say that if I hired a person to be head of a department of athletics I would expect him to have more contacts than a “search firm,” whose title includes the term “executive.” Georgia already has an executive, and that executive is Damon Evans, head of the department of athletics, and as such, a specialist in his field.
Now, having said all that, let’s get down to business. I am, in no way, campaigning for Bob Knight to be the basketball coach at Georgia. I happened to run across a tip that he was available, and that if offered the job, he would like to have it. Far as I was concerned, sounded like a heck of an idea to me, to have the man who had won more games as a Division I college coach than any other male.
That set off some kind of firestorm, in which I chose not to participate. I must be honest and say that 95 percent of the respondents informed our blogging department that they agreed, and when would Evans, et al., get on with it?
Far as I’m concerned, it would seem to me that Bob Knight wouldn’t require the services of a “search firm.” Heaven knows, Knight’s career has been under microscopic observation since the day he checked in as coach at West Point, then at Indiana, then at Texas Tech. He became far more public than your average politician, every rage he has pitched, every chair he has tossed throughout the 902 games he has won, and every scowl he has scowled. Evans needs no search firm to run him through all that, this firm that has “a strong reputation for the amount of detail they put into the process, how they develop their searches … their background checks.”
Good for ol’ Parker. But you mean that this firm is more attuned to college athletics than the Director of Athletics at Georgia? Georgia is not looking for an executive, Georgia is in need of a coach. Frankly, it’s my guess that Evans is fearful of dealing with Bob Knight, though he would be Knight’s boss. This possibility has been hanging around for several days and all that has come out of Athens is stony silence.
Neither Evans nor President Michael Adams has uttered any kind of response. It struck me as a jolly good move to hire this exceptional coach who virtually threw himself on their laps. It’s probably a somnambulant issue by now, but it has been fun.
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Sorry trail of A-Rod’s apology
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So how do you think New York is handling all this ruckus about Alex Rodriguez? You wouldn’t be surprised if I told you Gotham is roiling.
An examination of the great city’s sports sections reveals that A-Rod gets little cuddling, beginning with his contention that he tested positive because of some “tainted dietary substance.”
“Tough pill to swallow,” allows the Daily News, which launched columnist Mike Lupica to lay the wood to him.
“He is no better than Barry Bonds or any other drug cheat,” Lupica writes. “We’re supposed to buy this?” he continues with a blast of cynicism.
One of the conditions that A-Rod demanded in the deal he made with ESPN was that Peter Gammons be the interviewer, a veteran sports writer turned broadcaster. “Gammons came off like a defense attorney questioning his own client,” another Daily News columnist wrote.
The Daily News also throws a cloak of suspicion on the players’ union. “Orza Hardly Looking Clean” is the headline on a story indicating that Gene Orza, backup to Donald Fehr, the union leader, had an uncommon relationship with A-Rod and perhaps had tipped him off.
A Newsday columnist, Anthony Rieber, under a headline “Shooting Holes in A-Rod’s Apology,” wrote that the Yankee “did a great job of fooling the eternally naive.”
The Times, on the other hand, was typically Time-sy. It played the story rather straight-up, though George Vecsey, a veteran columnist, did write that “the apology by Rodriguez sounded trite.”
Meanwhile, there was another voice to be heard from in Texas, where A-Rod had come into his $250 million contract. Tom Hicks, Rangers owner, then a raw newcomer to baseball, said, “I feel deceived by Alex. Why should I believe that he didn’t start [using drugs] before he came to the Texas Rangers,.”
A-Rod did issue this apology: “I’m sorry for my fans in Texas. I’m sorry, just sorry.” Also, it would appear, sorry that he got caught, especially after denying in an interview on another network a while ago that he had used steroids of any kind.
Where does that put Major League Baseball? Where does that put Bud Selig, the $17.5 million-a-year commissioner? I’ll say this: That it leaves Henry Aaron right where he belongs — on top of the heap, the Home Run King of all time, unsullied in every way.
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From home run hero to 75-year-old good citizen, Henry remains classy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
His 75th birthday has come and gone and I still call him Henry. After all, that is his name, and it bears a fitting touch of distinction. “Hank.” OK, fine in the clubhouse, at home, with the gang, but when I get serious, it’s Henry to me, as it was when we worked on his book in his twilight days as a Brave.
On the cover of “Aaron,” it is written “The Autobiography of the Greatest Home Run Hitter of the Modern Era.” It could have, and should have, read “any era.” I don’t think you could ever have known a more normal, down-to-earth athlete than Henry Aaron. More than just an athlete, an immortal athlete, “wonderful, clear-minded, responsible, intelligent, patient, human being” in the words of that former minor-league outfielder Mario Cuomo. That’s right, Cuomo was an outfielder on the Brunswick farm team of the Pirates in the 1950s, before launching his political career.
Few people, if any, could attract such a cast as did Henry’s 75th the other night, including a former president, the most expensive sports commissioner on the planet and Ted Turner, who became his employer after Aaron’s playing days were done. The winner on this occasion was the foundation Henry and Billye Aaron have founded called “Chasing the Dream Foundation,” and it should be recorded that Major League Baseball came through with a contribution of $2.5 million, hopefully some of it out of Commissioner Bud Selig’s enormous salary. (Only three players make more, you see.)
You get to know a fellow pretty well when you become his writing “ghost.” Some reviewers were quite impressed, and one, Library Journal, wrote “An, honest, thrilling and frequently poignant story by an unusual man who has broken color lines and home run records.”
On the way to his 75th anniversary, one particular trait has stood out in the assault on his home-run record. While the names of McGuire, Bonds, Sosa, Canseco and other would-be challengers have swirled around in the public mind, Aaron has risen above it all. In the opinion of baseball purists he remains the home-run king, and shall continue to prevail. His reluctance to become engaged on the subject is a reflection of his character. The public determines the winner, not the combatants.
The beauty of Aaron’s performance was not the home runs, but the swing. “I don’t go up there swinging for the fence every time,” he once said. “I like the feel of a home run. You can almost tell when the ball leaves the bat, but I just swing to meet the ball.”
That was, until the Braves moved to Atlanta. Fans began expecting home runs of him. Then as he moved nearer Babe Ruth’s number of 714, he admitted that he did go to bat often swinging for the long ball. He hit his first home run as a Brave off Vic Raschi of the Cardinals, and his record-breaker, of course, off Al Downing of the Dodgers, and his last 22 were hit in the American League. There is no more impressive collection of offensive records in the major leagues than Aaron’s, from at-bats to home runs.
So much for home runs and the glitter of Aaron, the athlete. Here’s to Aaron, the good citizen.
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