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Tuesday, April 4, 2006
Smoltz saves a smile for Grandma Beta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Los Angeles — Between the raindrops flooding Dodger Stadium, John Smoltz had only sunny thoughts.
He shrugged over the fact that he isn’t considered the pitching ace of the Braves’ staff anymore, and who cares whether he finishes “20-5 or 5-20?” He doesn’t. Instead, he showed that he gets it by remembering October in April and saying before easing into a chuckle, “I like my role right now, but at the end, it’s a whole different story.”
For Smoltz and the Braves, the only thing that matters is “at the end.”
At the end, Smoltz will return as The Man in the Braves’ quest for an elusive second world championship during their run of goodness that has spanned 14 consecutive trips to the playoffs. At the end, he will place more distance between himself and others as the owner of more victories and strikeouts than any pitcher in the history of the postseason. Mostly, at the end, he will ignore whatever he did in the regular season to continue as the pitching version of Reggie Jackson.
There is the meantime, though. Pending the frequency of those raindrops, Smoltz was scheduled to pitch his season debut on Tuesday against the Dodgers following the torching of new ace, Tim Hudson, on Monday. Whatever the case, Smoltz just wants to prove that he doesn’t have those storms rattling around his nearly 39-year-old head anymore.
“I’ll admit my biggest weakness, and I’m not afraid to tell you,” he said, leaning against a wall in the visitors’ clubhouse. “Things that bother me the most to this day are things that are so false, so untrue that there is nothing I can do about it, but they still keep talking about it.”
Things like that shirt business, when Smoltz supposedly burned himself on a road trip while trying to use his chest as an ironing board. “That used to drive my crazy, but so be it now,” said Smoltz, attributing his new ability to survive those internal downpours to opening the umbrella of his Christian growth. Well, that along with memories of a sour golf outing turned sweet and of Grandma Beta’s request.
Let’s start with that week in Tampa before spring training when Smoltz got a revelation while driving, chipping and putting at a friend’s tournament. To appreciate what comes next, you must understand that Smoltz likes to attack instead of react, and he struggled while entering the tournament’s last day. So much for the aggressive Smoltz. “I just decided that I was going to take only controlled risks. I was just going to see how good I could play for as long as I could play,” said Smoltz, who eventually managed “the perfect round, with no bogeys for the first time in my short golfing career.”
Afterward, while driving back home to Alpharetta, Smoltz kept thinking to himself: “I’ve always wanted to take that same [relaxed] approach in pitching, and I’ve tried everything, experiencing every pitch, every angle, but this is the last chance to control my beast from within and to be able to enjoy pitching again.”
No problem. For the first time in Smoltz’s 20 years in pro baseball, he said that he won’t spend every moment from spring through autumn operating at his highest gear. He’ll still terrorize hitters with his fastball more often than not, but he’ll do what he frequently did often with effectiveness in exhibition games, and that is become Tom Glavine, his old teammate and pal, who keeps hitters jittery with changeups. This also means that Smoltz’s days as a hurling maniac (229 2/3 innings pitched last season, despite yearly throbbing from his shoulder to his elbow) are over.
As for Grandma Beta, who lit candles and prayed whenever her grandson pitched, Smoltz said, “She was a full-blooded Italian, the greatest cook in the world, and I loved her to death. She used to say that I’d never smile or have fun when I was on the mound.”
Grandma Beta died last spring at 81 in Detroit, where most of Smoltz’s relatives reside. “Even though I’ve always been competitive, with the fierce look, she was right,” Smoltz said. “I made a promise to her that there would be some kind of smile every game.”
Chances are, Smoltz’s smile will be eternal if he does what he really wants to do, and that is place his fingerprints on a World Series trophy.
You know, “at the end.”
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Private tragedy on a public stage
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Augusta -– A son sits in a press conference talking about his dying father.
“He’s fighting,” Tiger Woods said Tuesday. That he would be so brief when asked about Earl Woods’ condition said all that needed to be said.
He’s fighting. He was a Green Beret -– of course he’s fighting. But the cancer that is spreading through his body keeps him in a bed in Cypress, California, while his son tries to win the Masters for a fifth time. Earl Woods fights because that’s what he has always done, because that’s what he has always taught his son.
“He’s got an unbelievable will and, you know, hopefully, he’s passed a little bit of that on to me,” Tiger Woods said. “I think that’s kind of how I play, how I go about my –- I guess, my competitiveness on the golf course. It’s a will.”
A family’s private tragedy plays out on a public stage. This is the downside to celebrity. Most don’t handle it well. By now, we have all become aware that Tiger Woods is not like most.
The great ones have more than talent. The great ones can compartmentalize. Competitors put pressure on, sponsors mandate attention, a father gets cancer –- watch how quickly everyday talent suffers meltdown.
Woods has separated himself from others because that same tunnel vision that allows him to take over a tournament on the back nine Sunday enables him real life from golf –- and golf from real life –- when necessary.
He will tee off Thursday. That’s assuming a medical emergency with his father doesn’t require him to fly west. That fairly sums up his status Friday, and Saturday, and Sunday.
The course changes at Augusta National suddenly don’t seem so daunting, do they?
“When you’re away from the course,” he said, “obviously things are a little different. But when you’re at the course, you’re playing, you’re grinding. I have enough on my mind out there trying to place my shots and what angles I need to have. I’ve got enough in my head right now.”
Woods won the 1997 Masters title by 12 strokes at the age of 21. We haven’t taken our eyes off him since. He has 48 Tour victories. He has won 10 majors, including four Masters, and by now we all know his jacket size is a 42-long. His prize money last year ($10.6 million) was dwarfed only his off-bent-green endorsements ($25 million alone from Nike). He has become one of the most recognizable people in the world, awakened a sport’s TV ratings and expanded its diversity. Remarkably, given these times, he has done all this free of scandal.
To think. We all thought Earl Woods was exaggerating. Speaking at an awards banquet for his then 20-year-old son in December of 1996, he said of Tiger: “He will transcend this game and bring to the world a humanitarianism which has never been known before.”
A few months later, Woods won his first Masters. The father-son embrace on the 18th green became one of those indelible memories in sports. Woods’ strongest memory from nine years ago is that his father almost didn’t make it to Augusta as a result of complications following heart bypass surgery.
“This has always been a very emotional week for us as a family because my first year here as a professional because my dad –- actually, he was dead, and then somehow they revived him,” he said. “He wasn’t supposed to come here, but somehow he came here and he gave me a putting lesson. And I putted great.”
There will be no lessons this week, unless by way of a phone conversation. Earl Woods’ prostate cancer, believed to have been eradicated by radiation in 2004, has returned and spread into his back and behind his left eye. Tiger, in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., for the Tournament Players Championship, flew back to California on Tuesday night for a day, returned the eve of the tournament, then went back again after the TPC.
He was 4-over for the last two days and one over for the tournament. But he denies distractions were an issue.
“I’ve been dealing with this for years –- nothing’s changed,” Woods said. “Everyone who has had a family member –- you’re going to deal with it some time. Unfortunately, it’s our time right now.”
Permalink | Comments (40) | Categories: Golf, Jeff Schultz
The Tuesday Countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: Sixteen years after getting to Atlanta, I have just arrived in Augusta for my first Masters. It’s a golf course. What’s the big deal?
9: Oh, calm down. I know Augusta National has, like, history and stuff. But it’s early, it’s Tuesday, I’m in a house with five other AJC staff members and there’s a needlepoint of a horse above my bed. The good news is that I’m not going to get all sappy about the place and get stupid in the pro shop. (Early week AJC record: my editor dude, Chris Vivlamore, $245.)
8: Attention AJC accounting department: Chris Vivlamore told me to tell you he had a $245 lunch Tuesday.
7: I am not making this up. A press release in the Augusta National media room marked “NEWS BULLETIN NO. 1” reads as follows: “Our fairways are now being mowed at 3/8 inch, the second cut at 1 3/8 inch, the tees at 5/16 inch, the collars at 1/4 inch and the greens at 1/8 inch. All mowings are subject to weather conditions and growth.” Did I happen to mention it’s just a golf course?
6: One game, one syringe. So nice to see that baseball fans are warming to Barry Bonds’ home run chase.
5: One thing I don’t get about the Bonds’ fans who believe racism is at the root of the criticism: Isn’t the guy who holds the home run record, Henry Aaron, also African American? So why would racists attack Bonds to protect Aaron?
4: Babe Ruth is white. Aaron went through hell when he passed Ruth. Is it the contention of Bonds’ defenders that this is about passing Ruth and not approaching Aaron?
3: The Tuesday Countdown’s over-under on Bonds’ home run total this season: 10.
2: Maybe the owners of the Atlanta Spirit should start booking weddings and Bar Mitzvahs in Philips Arena in April, May and June. Playoff conflicts clearly aren’t an issue.
1: Is this when somebody guarantees the Thrashers don’t make the playoffs?
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Donovan’s reborn outlook gives birth to title
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Indianapolis — When first he reached the NCAA championship game, Billy Donovan was 34 and figured he could out-recruit the world. That method took him so far — nearly all the way, but not quite — and then it began to fray. Not every high school All-American wants to pass the ball or guard somebody. Not every great recruiting class evolves into a great team.
Six years later, an older and wiser Billy Donovan returned to the RCA Dome on the first Monday night in April, and this time he left with the title. This time he and his Florida Gators donned the mantle that had been set aside for them back in 2000 — the nation’s next great program, as overseen by the nation’s next great coach.
Ben Howland is a terrific tactician who has taught UCLA to play barbed-wire defense, but his Bruins couldn’t do to Florida as they had done to Memphis and LSU. Donovan’s men were too swift, too clever, too willing to share. Recent bands of Gators cared very much who got the points, but these Gators care only that Florida scores. These young Gators, to borrow from Longfellow’s “Hiawatha,” are “learned in all the lore of old men/In all youthful sports and pastimes.”
The first Florida hoop came off a big-to-big feed, Joakim Noah finding Al Horford. In the first half the Gators made 12 baskets, nine as a function of assists — six of them by Noah, Horford and small forward Corey Brewer. When a front line has more assists than the entire other team, you’re watching a team too resourceful to be frightened by Ben Howland or Howlin’ Wolf. You’re watching a team that Knows How To Play.
“We told the team this game would come down to the things we talk about every day,” Donovan said. “Unselfishness, teamwork, making the extra pass and being able to defend.”
The Gators needed 10 minutes and 6 seconds to score more points than either Memphis or LSU had managed against UCLA in entire first halves. By then it was 25-15 and the 2006 NCAA title had been decided. The Bruins couldn’t stop Florida. Neither could they score on Florida. Noah blocked six shots, Horford two. Brewer had three steals.
This was a full-blown rout in the way NCAA finals are seldom full-blown routs. (Of the Gators’ 14 second-half baskets, nine — nine! — were dunks.) There was a time when Florida didn’t defend and didn’t run hard all the time, but those days died when the older and more heralded Gators — David Lee, Matt Walsh and especially Anthony Roberson — left Gainesville and cleared space for the new wave.
Just like that, a program was reborn. So, too, was Billy Donovan.
He’s 40 now, and no longer does he seem a bright little boy wearing a grown man’s suit. He took his knocks for the conspicuous underachievement of the past five years, and rather than stick with a failing formula he found a new one. He hired Larry Shyatt, once Clemson’s head coach, to lend a touch of eminence to the Florida staff, and together he and Shyatt have found ways to turn raw talent into superbly rounded players.
It helped that three of the new Gators — Noah, Horford and Taurean Green — came from athletic families. It helped that they grasped early in life that winning championships beats the heck out of merely scoring points. It helped that they arrived in Gainesville not as McDonald’s All-Americans — only Brewer carries that portfolio — but as under-the-radar types not averse to hard work.
The Gators stormed through an NCAA tournament as forcefully as any team since two-deep-at-every-position Kentucky in 1996. They had only one down-to-the-wire game, the regional semifinal against Georgetown, and once beyond the Hoyas they were unassailable. They cast aside Villanova’s guards and George Mason’s mojo and UCLA’s D. They were the best team in this field by some distance.
What we’ve witnessed these past three weeks is a program and a team and a coach coming of age. Six years ago, the collegiate world was supposed to be at Billy Donovan’s expensively shod feet. It took longer than anticipated, but he has fulfilled that destiny. And the new monarch of college basketball isn’t a boy king but a man in full.
Permalink | Comments (28) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
