AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2006 > April
April 2006
Good sign for Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The Mets did what they needed to do Friday and Saturday, and the Braves did what they needed to do Sunday. The NL East wasn’t decided over the weekend and won’t be decided for months, but the Braves made the upward climb a bit easier by winning Game 3. Six games behind after a month’s work isn’t where they’d choose to be, but six back beats the heck out of eight.
Not that the Braves were all that up on their numbers. “If you’d have said we were three games out or 13 out, I’d have believed you,” Marcus Giles said. “I can’t remember the last time I opened a newspaper. It’s April. It’s not worth getting into yet.”
And that part is true, too. The Braves won a big April game Sunday, but there’s much doubt as to whether any April game can be construed as big. “Yes and no,” said Chris Reitsma, offering an exceedingly accurate non-appraisal.” The importance of today is that you don’t want to get swept on your field.”
Here he shrugged. “At the same time, April’s April. Today was our 23rd game or our 25th [actually the 24th]. But I think we did show today that we’re not going to roll over for them.”
The Mets are good. The Braves should be good, too. The Mets have too many big-time players to collapse, the Braves too much history. April isn’t the month where anything is decided. April is merely the time when the groundwork gets laid.
Toward that end, this series reinforced what we’d suspected. The Braves aren’t nearly the offensive colossus they seemed the first week of the season. They managed two runs in the weekend’s first two games. True, they mustered eight runs and 12 hits Sunday, but roughly half the hits were of the well-placed, as opposed to the roundly struck, variety.
Even Bobby Cox, who moans at length about the number of his team’s hard-hit balls that get caught, had no gripe this day. “Everything fell in,” he said. “I told Giles [robbed by Jose Reyes in the first inning and by David Wright in the fourth], ‘Start hitting it soft.’ “
Jeff Francoeur had four hits, the first two rather polite ones, but when your April has been as lousy as Francoeur’s you’ll take anything. And it is becoming increasingly clear that the Braves, who aren’t sure what they’re apt to get from Chipper Jones anymore, badly need Francoeur to hit. Andruw Jones can’t do everything himself.
“I need to get on a more even keel,” Francoeur said. “I need to start helping this team on a consistent basis.”
Should that happen, the Braves will give the Mets a royal run. As stout as the New Yorkers are, their starting pitching is substandard beyond Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine. (Steve Trachsel, Sunday’s starter, was awful, yielding 13 baserunners while recording 11 outs.) And no one knows if Martinez, who’s 34, and Glavine, who’s 40, will be able to click off 200 high-level innings the way they did as younger men.
The good news: The Braves’ starting pitching has settled down. The bad news: This team enters May with only four wins from its rotation. Kyle Davies was the winner Sunday but was hardly dominant, needing 101 pitches to complete five innings. But Francoeur kept driving in runs and the relievers, aided by you-know-who’s game-ending catch, did enough to hold the lead.
While no show of force, this victory did give the Braves reason to feel better about what’s ahead. Their starting pitcher outdid the opponent’s. Their bullpen held a lead. Their right fielder had one of those Francoeur-type games we’ve come to expect. There’s no reason to believe Sunday will be the last time we see such a display.
“April is done, and it’s been one of the toughest months with the travel and everything,” Reitsma said. “In May we start to roll.”
The NL East chase didn’t end here and won’t end when the teams convene again in Shea Stadium on Friday. On the contrary, this is all just beginning. And when will be able to say with absolute certainty that a game is actually big? “On Sept. 30,” said Cox, smiling.
Permalink | Comments (38) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Type A corner alters Falcons’ D
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Flowery Branch — If you take the stairs up to the second floor of offices at Falcons headquarters, you will find a picture of Ray Nitschke hanging on the general manager’s wall.
The same picture is hanging in the head coach’s office.
And the defensive coordinator’s office.
And the college scouting director’s office.
Didn’t check the cafeteria. But I’m assuming Rich McKay has been grazing at the Ray Nitschke Salad Bar this offseason.
“Arthur [Blank] sent all of us pictures of Nitschke in February,” McKay said Saturday. “We had a meeting after the season, and we felt that one problem we had was teams got more physical with us than we did with them. So this year our focus had to be the defensive side of the ball and bringing some players who had the physical attitude.”
The Falcons didn’t draft another Nitschke on Saturday. To the contrary, they took a smack-talking, head-slapping cornerback from Virginia Tech, Jimmy Williams, who reportedly already has put in an order for a $250,000, customized gold Lamborghini, according to a Hampton Roads newspaper. (Nitschke’s Lamborghini was green.)
But what they have done this offseason is reaffirm what a mess they were last year. They played 16 games, few of them particularly well. When they had passion, it was smothered by mistakes. When they were in position to make a play, they were soft and run over.
They didn’t remind anybody of Nitschke or the old Green Bay Packers, unless we’re talking about today — dead or in their 70s.
So McKay and his staff set out to fix the defense. He traded up 10 spots in the second round to take Williams, who with DeAngelo Hall gives the Falcons two strong and athletic bookend Hokies. (Jason Webster at the very least drops down the depth chart.) This follows the acquisitions of defensive end John Abraham and safeties Lawyer Milloy and Chris Crocker (and the excommunication of safety Bryan Scott).
The Falcons’ defense needed more than a few Botox injections. It needed a personality transplant.
Look around the NFC South. Carolina added wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson to start opposite Steve Smith, and drafted talented rusher DeAngelo Williams out of Memphis. The makeover of the New Orleans Saints includes Reggie Bush and Drew Brees. Tampa Bay strengthened its offensive line, drafting guard Davin Joseph.
The schedule this season also includes games vs. Dallas (Terrell Owens), Arizona (Edgerrin James and Matt Leinart), Detroit (whose offense is not being run by Mike Martz) and Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh (which drafted Ohio State receiver Santonio Holmes).
Shouldn’t there be some sort of consolation for having the league’s 26th-ranked defense against the run?
McKay says, “We got lucky.” He didn’t believe Williams would last as long as he did.
“We needed that big, physical corner, especially when you look in the division and see what you’re gonna have in New Orleans, and with what you already have in Carolina and Tampa. We have to be tough. We have to make it so that other teams don’t want to play against us.”
Williams was upset he wasn’t drafted earlier. He said he even started praying when he didn’t go in the first 12 picks, and left his hotel room in Hampton, Va., when he was still on the board after 22 selections.
But the fact that he dropped wasn’t a huge surprise. Some teams reportedly were turned off at some weight gain and his attitude at the combine (he didn’t participate in most drills). He also was ejected from the Gator Bowl game last year. Coach Frank Beamer also banned him from interviews the entire 2004 season for saying he was going to shut down USC’s Mike Williams.
But none of that fazed McKay — if anything, the draft-day decline kick-started Williams.
“I want to show the other 31 teams and the other eight defensive backs who went before me [they were wrong],” he said. “That’s motivation for me to prove why I was a unanimous All-American.”
That’s a motivated Falcon.
Game film from last year should motivate the rest.
Permalink | Comments (176) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Braves must grow up fast
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
There are no signs of anarchy, and none of those working in the home clubhouse at Turner Field on Saturday night were rushing to hide all of the sharp objects. Still, with the New York Mets just another victory shy of pushing the sinking Braves deeper into oblivion, Kyle Davies is among those a few decades younger than Julio Franco with something to prove.
Well, two things, really: Can Davies spend today doing anything close to his pitching gem of nine innings last week at Shea Stadium against the Mets, and will he show that the cuteness that was last year’s Baby Braves isn’t totally gone despite the ugliness that has become their evolution into the slumping toddlers?
After all, the dogwoods only recently stopped blooming, and the Braves already are seven games out.
“We’ve talked about having a little more fun out there, because it seems like whenever you get into a little rut like this, guys may be pressing a bit and trying to do too much,” said Davies, the Stockbridge native who was one of the five Braves rookies last season from the Atlanta area. “We just have to have fun, play loose out there and just relax. Those were the things that we did so great last year.”
This isn’t “last year” for the Braves in general and those younger Braves in particular. In general, the Braves can’t win, whether you’re talking about those toddlers or the old geezers.
The Mets’ 1-0 victory Saturday came as a result of the Braves’ ongoing inability to respond in the clutch at the plate. In contrast, the Mets are threatening to blow away the rest of the National League East with everything they’ve shown so far during their past two games: timely hitting, opportune pitching, wonderful defense and the ability to kick the fright out of their previous bogeyman from Atlanta.
Not that the Braves are panicking or anything. That doesn’t happen in a Bobby Cox clubhouse — not even with its overwhelming youth right now.
“The confidence that Bobby displays to everybody, it almost makes you feel like, ‘Everything’s fine. We’re going to get out of this.’ We’re going to hit the ball, and we’re going to score runs, and we’re going to pitch the ball well,” said outfielder Ryan Langerhans, another one of those toddlers whose bat has made the gradual transition from fire to ice. “You look around the clubhouse, and we have a great club, and it’s just a matter of time before all of that stuff starts clicking together.”
Thus the question: Will that stuff start clicking together? I mean, you can do all sorts of shockingly wonderful things in baseball, especially when you have more than a little talent and nobody expects much from you. See those Baby Braves, for instance, the 18 rookies who zipped out of nowhere last season to help a roster filled with battered and bruised veterans extend the franchise’s record streak to 14 consecutive division titles.
Now that the diapers are off, those Baby Braves aren’t sneaking up on folks anymore. You can tell as much since you need a microscope to see Jeff Francoeur’s batting average. If you didn’t know better, you’d think that Francoeur and the slew of his teammates barely over Georgia’s legal drinking age are starting to feel the major league pressure of everything. The need to continue the Braves’ streak of excellence. Pitchers adjusting to their swings, and hitters adjusting to their pitches. An April slump that is flirting with May.
The streaking Mets.
Speaking of which, courtesy of the Mets taking the first two games of this series, the Braves have lost six of seven, and they have their first five-game losing streak since Francoeur was starting his senior year at Parkview High School. That was August 2001, which means the tension was sort of high for Francoeur when he became the only member of last year’s Baby Braves in the starting lineup for this one.
“You know, it’s a nervous feeling, but it’s not fear. It’s exciting. There’s a difference. When you play in big games like last year during the playoffs, I was nervous and had butterflies, but it was good butterflies,” said Francoeur, relaxing in the home dugout before the game. As for during the game, he flied out twice, grounded out and struck out to seal the Mets’ victory.
Uh-oh.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Baseball life on the farm
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Rome — Not a person in the ballpark realized, or cared, that their team is owned by a corporation named Time Warner. And that a deal hangs fire that might transfer their local Braves to another corporation named Liberty Media, an exchange in which the Rome Braves figure little more than a drop in the ocean.
This is minor league baseball, Class A, a cog in a wheel. Rome plays in the South Atlantic League, which sprawls from Lakewood, N.J., to Columbus, Ga., detouring through Ohio and West Virginia on the way. It’s actually two leagues within a league, 16 teams playing in two divisions. This team plays the part of baby sitter, mother hen watching out over a brood. Some will make it to the Big Daddy Braves in Atlanta. Three seasons ago Jeff Francoeur, Brian McCann and Kyle Davies were Rome Braves. Most of the others are still trying to claw their way up the ladder.
State Mutual is a cozy little dell, built to major league specifications, a miniature of Turner Field, they tell you. Great place to relax a few hours. All the luxuries of the major leagues with only minor league hassle. Suites and catering and an elevator and unpretentious people. Barrel racing, a beach club and a home run hill, and I saw a man wearing a John Rocker jersey, 49.
It’s roomy, too, from home plate to the fences. Francoeur hit as many home runs in half a season with the Braves as he did all season here. The team is out of the United Nations, players from seven other countries, Australia to Canada. One of them is said to be the fastest player in the Braves organization. Five-foot-six Ovandy Suero has been clocked at 3.8 seconds from home to first. He got caught in a rundown this day, and after the ball had changed hands six times he still hadn’t been tagged. He stole 54 bases in 60 games at Danville last season, but you can’t steal your way to the big leagues.
The Braves were playing the Columbus Catfish. It was overcast and it drizzled a bit, but not enough to dampen spirits. Now, the reason for all this was the first pitch. It’s ceremonial stuff in baseball, somebody throwing out the first ball before a game. It’s an invitation for some politician or old-time player to come out and show his stuff. This time it was an old-time sportswriter, and my only aim was not to fall as short as Tommy Lasorda, nor be as wild as Dick Cheney. Lasorda was a pitcher, and his pitch didn’t travel more than 10 feet. Must have slipped. (Spitter, you think?)
I’d never done this before, and it’s not as easy as you think. Sixty feet six inches is a far piece standing out there with a baseball in hand and a catcher dimly in the distance. His name was Junior Guerra, from Venezuela, and he brilliantly fielded my breaking splitter about a foot in front of the plate.
After all, this was the first time I’d ever done such a thing, and I think my future is elsewhere.
All the important people signed the ball, especially the manager, Randy Ingle, who has the Braves out front by a mile in the Southern Division. This is Randy’s 15th season with the Braves, and he’s here because the guy before him, Rocket Wheeler, has a home near Myrtle Beach and preferred to stay close. Randy, being an obliging type, obliged him.
Now, the manager of the Catfish brings up another story. Travis Barbary came up through the Dodgers system, steeped in baseball, as he was. His grandfather was a minor league catcher named Red Barbary, subject of a chapter in the book, “Strange But True Baseball Stories.” Red had a way of needling his pitchers with stories of how he was once a star pitcher. So on the final day of the season he was given the ball and told to go pitch. He did. The game ran 22 innings, he went all the way and drove in the winning run, and in the process ruined his arm, and with it a promising career with the Washington Senators. He did get to bat one time in the big leagues. Travis carries on in the Barbary tradition.
So it was back to Frank Barron’s box, where the subject of the vagaries of thrown baseballs absorbed our throng. Does the curveball really curve, or is it an optical illusion? I defended the optical illusion theory. The R-Braves continued their drive to the pennant and I resumed my drive home. It had been a grand day.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Mets have a lot to prove
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
The Mets are full of themselves. Even before they sprinted from opening day to the vicinity of justifying their hype with a five-game lead in the National League East heading into Friday night’s game at Turner Field, they were talking big and bad. They were so cocky after the additions of standouts Billy Wagner, Carlos Delgado and Paul Lo Duca during the offseason that they decided to pair another song with their eternal “Meet the Mets.”
All you need to know is that the title of the new jingle commissioned by Mets honchos is “Our team, our time.”
We’ll see. The Mets haven’t been more than a creation of that powerful East Coast PR machine for the longest time. The reality is the Braves have a tendency to rattle the psyche of the Mets. To translate, this latest series between the two is more about the Mets than it is about the Braves. This is more about whether the guys from New York can stop reaching for their personal Big Apples (as in the ones along their throats) at the sight of a tomahawk across a baseball uniform.
At least on this particular night, the Mets played self-imposed shrink by taking a couple of deep breaths and blowing their Braves’ phobia away after doing enough on the mound, in the field and at the plate for a 5-2 victory. There was that manufactured run in the first, when a hit-and-run led to a sacrifice fly. There was a two-out triple that produced another run in the fourth. There also was that solo homer in the fifth that pushed the Mets to a 3-0 lead. You’d have thought that all of that would have been more than adequate for the Mets with the great Pedro Martinez spending inning after inning embarrassing the slumping Braves hitters even more.
Instead, Chipper Jones returned as a serial Mets killer with a two-run homer over the left-center field fence in the sixth. If you combine that with the great John Smoltz keeping the Braves within a short rally of a comeback with 10 strikeouts through his seven innings, there was plenty of time for the Mets to get spooked.
It didn’t happen after the Mets responded in the ninth with another manufactured run on a single, a stolen base, a sacrifice bunt and a sacrifice fly, then a solo homer. Then Wagner ignored a bases-loaded jam in the bottom of the ninth to throw smoke past the overmatched Todd Pratt for the save.
This was one game, though. The Mets have to conquer the Braves physically and mentally for another game and a slew of them after that to prove their time truly has come. Take it from the great Tom Glavine, the former pitching legend with the Braves who left after 16 seasons to spend the previous three with the Mets.
“My first year here, we probably didn’t have a good enough team to beat the Braves, but you hope you do,” said Glavine, rejuvenated at 40 with a 2.78 ERA entering Saturday night’s Game 2 of the series. “Last year, we still were a little more realistic about our chances of catching the Braves, but, there again, we knew that a lot of things had to go right in order for that to happen.”
Glavine paused to smile. After all, he was thinking about now. “Yeah, this year is a little bit different in that we feel that talent-wise, we have what it takes to win,” he said. “Now whether or not we do that, that’s a different story.”
So far, it’s been the same, old story for a Mets franchise that has contributed often to the Braves’ record streak of 14 consecutive trips to the playoffs. Since the Braves switched from the NL West to the NL East in 1995, the Mets have won the season series only twice, and the Mets haven’t done so in eight consecutive years.
Not only that, with much of the early season featuring the Mets streaking and the Braves reeking, the Mets still discovered ways to drop two of three games to the Braves last week at Shea Stadium. Then came this one that featured the Mets winning in the first of six games against the Braves over the next 10 games.
Is that the Fat Lady clearing her throat in Queens to sing down the stretch of this season, or just the sound of overconfident Mets fans? Yeah, well. I’m still betting against the Fat Lady.
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Darting the intangibles a draft specialty
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
It is NFL draft day, and there is a chance Falcons fans might become comatose waiting for their team’s first pick, which will take place sometime during dinner or, in T.J. Duckett’s case, midway through the third dessert.
But picking 47th really isn’t so bad, especially considering some of the gems this franchise has taken at Nos. 1 though 46. (Grab hold of something.) Aundray Bruce, Marcus Cotton, Shawn Collins, Steve Broussard, Bruce Pickens, Mike Pritchard, Tony Smith, Roger Harper, Devin Bush, Ron Davis, Michael Booker, Nathan Davis, Byron Hanspard, Reggie Kelly and Duckett (who went two picks before Javon Walker).
What the NFL doesn’t want you to know about this weekend is it’s a glorified game of darts. Personnel chiefs look at stats, game tape and combine results and confidently proclaim they have put together the perfect draft board.
It’s such a perfect science that none of the league’s 32 draft boards match.
Bart Starr, the MVP of the first two Super Bowls, lasted until the 17th round (200th overall).
Joe Montana, the greatest quarterback these eyes have ever seen, was taken with the last pick in the third round in 1979. Weak arm, they said. Then they watch him win four Super Bowls.
“I wasn’t very big and I didn’t have big numbers,” Montana said by phone. “I threw the ball 19 or 20 times a game at Notre Dame. Jack Thompson threw 40 or 50 times a game. It would take me three weeks to catch up to him. But it’s hard sometimes to see how competitive a guy is.”
Thompson was the third overall pick, 79 spots ahead of Montana. Turned out, he was Jeff George before Jeff George — a punt-pass-and-kick poster boy who couldn’t play.
Today, Montana has only a mild interest in the draft. He spends most of his time with his family and promotes a blood-pressure drug, Lotrel, doing media spots urging people to get their blood pressure down (He was diagnosed with high BP in 2002).
“They think they’ve got it figured out,” Montana said. “But if they had it figured out, why are they putting guys like Matt Leinart and Vince Young and Reggie Bush through the combine? If you look at first-round picks through the years, you’ll find just as many busts as great players. There’s so much emphasis on how big a guy or how fast he is, how much he can lift, what he does on this test or that test. But can the guy play the game? It’s a difficult thing to figure out.”
There is no perfect formula, Montana said. But there are things that generally should be ignored: like statistics.
“How do you compare a quarterback at a small college with someone like Matt Leinart, who’s been playing in an NFL style offense and with other great players?” Montana said. “Other quarterbacks may not have the protection he does. The important thing is, does the guy make plays at key times in the game? Defensively, are there guys who find a way to get to the ball? Whether it’s a bad week or no matter what the competition is, are they always making plays?”
Scouts missed on Montana because they overlooked his decision-making, his accuracy, his cool. This was a quarterback who, during a timeout just prior to a Super Bowl-winning touchdown drive against Cincinnati, turned to lineman Harris Barton in the huddle and said, “Isn’t that John Candy sitting up in the stands?”
They missed on Bart Starr for other reasons. “I didn’t have much of a resume,” said the former Alabama quarterback. “My first two years were good, but I was injured my junior year and in my senior year we had a coaching change and I didn’t play much.”
But while saying NFL teams generally get their picks right, he acknowledged the process is somewhat flawed.
“You can measure some things with tests,” he said. “But you can’t measure mental toughness and level of commitment. You can’t measure preparation or courage.”
So if some general manager says today, “We can’t believe that player was available at 79th,” don’t be fooled into thinking he knows something nobody else does. He just has a different set of darts.
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Different test for Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
You know me. I’m the guy who insists the Braves will be fine when everybody else is saying they’re finished. I said it in 2004 when they were under .500 on the Fourth of July, said it again last year when they trailed Washington by 5 1/2 games on July 3.
You’ll notice I’m not saying it now.
Yes, it’s ridiculously early. Yes, the Braves are beginning to get healthy and have already played almost 20 percent of their road games for the season. No, the Braves are never very good in April. I know all that. But I’m starting to believe these Mets are really good.
The chief reason the Braves have been able to execute their customary chase-downs is that, over the last dozen years, they haven’t fallen way behind a truly solid team operating at peak capacity. There’s a difference in trailing the 2001 Phillies, who were too young, or the 2005 Nationals, who weren’t all that skilled, or even the 2004 Marlins, who were coming off a World Series title but weren’t quite the same club, and in ceding ground to the 2006 Mets.
The Mets have a better lineup than the Braves, a better closer and a better top of the rotation. Not insignificantly, the Mets are no longer managed by the grating Bobby Valentine. Meanwhile, there’s growing suspicion the Braves aren’t quite the Braves.
Jorge Sosa, who couldn’t lose last summer, can’t win this spring. Jeff Francoeur, who lit the fuse that burned into a 14th consecutive division title, isn’t hitting his weight, let alone his stride. Chipper Jones can’t find a position he can play without hurting himself. Tim Hudson displays only sporadic traces of being a real No. 1 starter.
And let’s not forget the bullpen, which already has blown five saves. (No National League team has blown more.) Even so, one reliever — Oscar Villarreal — carries more victories than the entire rotation. This being baseball, pitching remains the greatest concern. In seasons past, we took it on faith that Leo Mazzone would get the most from his staff; we can’t yet assume the same of Roger McDowell.
I know, I know. You don’t win 14 division titles without weathering turbulence en route, and over time the Braves have proved themselves expert problem-solvers. But someday some team will set a snare from which even the Braves can’t extricate themselves. The 2005 Marlins might have been such a team had they not devoted their energies to hating Jack McKeon and his smelly cigars. The 2006 Mets might well be such a team.
For years, the Mets have been Charlie Brown — “This time I’m really going to kick that ball!” — to the Braves’ snickering Lucy. They’d assemble a roster with no thought for defense or cohesion and then collapse when things didn’t go their way. These Mets, as built by the savvy Omar Minaya, seem more grounded. No team with Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine and Carlos Delgado and Billy Wagner is apt to lack self-assurance. No team with this many proud and accomplished pros is going to cede the NL East to the Braves on history alone.
This is a big weekend for the Braves, sure, but it’s bigger for the visitors. Counting the 1999 NLCS, the Mets have lost 54 of 74 games at Turner Field. If they’re indeed stout enough to end the great Braves’ run, this is where the proving must start.
For their part, the Braves simply need to get going. It’s not as if they’ve played their way out of anything or even into unfamiliar territory. Over the past 15 seasons, they’ve been in this same spot — five games behind after 21 played — twice before. They were in 2001, which stands as the last season they advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs, and they were in 1995, which ended with them winning the World Series.
You know me. I’ve seen way too much to dismiss the Braves’ chances. Were they 10 games back with 10 to play, I’d still think they could win. That said, I wouldn’t advise falling 10 games behind these Mets.
Permalink | Comments (51) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Bonds tops The Babe - then what?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Even by the bizarre standards of baseball — a sport that has, as we know, seen one World Series canceled and another thrown — a moment of staggering strangeness is at hand. Within the next fortnight, give or take, Barry Bonds will catch and pass Babe Ruth. Such milestones are, or at least should be, the essence of sports. But how do you celebrate a man generally considered to be a cheat?
What does baseball do? Ignore it? Damn the achievement with the faintest of praise? Does Bud Selig make it a point to be on hand for the historic homer(s)? And if he doesn’t, isn’t a point of an altogether different sort being made?
Baseball fell all over itself to trumpet Mark McGwire in 1998, and in the cold light of hindsight that epic home run chase seems a sham. The shadow of steroids has changed baseball forever, and even with MLB’s new testing and toughened talk there’s no blueprint on how to handle what McGwire did and what Bonds is about to do. Do you throw out their statistics on the strength of hearsay accounts? Is suspicion enough to override deeds done on the field of play?
And Bonds’ pursuit of Ruth could be only the unappealing appetizer. What if he zeroes in on Hank Aaron’s 755? What does baseball do then? What do we as observers do?
A guess: We’ll never know. A guess: Bonds will catch Ruth but not Aaron. A guess: Bonds will have a 30-homer season and will retire at its end, citing physical deterioration as the reason. And finally we’ll be able to cheer the man, if only for sparing us the agony of seeing him become the sport’s home run king.
Bonds is a bad guy, but sometimes even bad guys do the right thing. He knows full well that an assault on 755 would ratchet up scrutiny past the point where even he could stand the strain. Roger Maris’ hair fell out in September 1961. Barry Bonds, as we know, has no hair left to lose.
Permalink | Comments (57) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Bush flap shouldn’t be a surprise
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Let’s start by obliterating suggestions that Reggie Bush has somehow been damaged in recent days. He will still be the first pick in the NFL draft. He just signed a lucrative endorsement deal with adidas.
This follows Bush’s other deals with IceLink watches, Subway sandwiches and General Motors’ Hummer division - all of which were verified Wednesday when his mother was spotted wearing a new watch, while signaling for a left turn in her new Hummer, as she pulled into a Subway parking lot.
Reggie Bush is a great running back. He’s also an opportunist. You thought he was different? He is bolting campus just as investigators are arriving. I thought only coaches did that.
The day after a reporter knocked on the front door asking who paid for their house, Bush’s parents floored the gas pedal and left skidmarks in the driveway. Now the story is that they were leasing. Since when do renters etch their name in wet cement in the driveway, because I can’t ever recall a landlord asking me to do that?
We spend a lot of time shredding the givers - coaches, boosters and agents - for $1,000 handshakes, cars and houses. We don’t spend nearly enough time examining the takers. Because if Southern Cal somehow pays a price for something Reggie Bush did while the player escapes to the NFL without a mark, he’s no better than Jackie Sherrill or Lou Holtz, who made an art form of hop-scotching from one campus to another to elude personal blame.
Reggie Bush is not the exception. Reggie Bush is the rule.
“This case is just the tip of the iceberg,” agent Pat Dye Jr. said Wednesday. “It’s almost always done in cash so there’s no paper trail. It’s done with the players, the relatives and the friends. With the salaries as high as they are and the sleaze element that’s so prevalent in our business, I think it will always be there.”
Dye has long been one of the good guys in the industry. If he wasn’t surprised by the news that Bush’s parents had been living in a new home in San Diego, it’s only because he has witnessed so much regarding illegal financial inducements in his 19 years in the industry.
He laughed at that suggestion that Bush didn’t know his parents were living in a house owned by a man who sought to market the player.
“Do you not know where your parents are living?” Dye asked. “Do you not go home for Christmas or Thanksgiving? He didn’t know any background about the house?”
As to how often would-be representatives solicit business with similar payoffs, Dye couldn’t put a percentage on it, but said: “It’s pervasive in our industry. It usually comes in less subtle measures: direct cash payments. Theoretically, the player justifies it in his mind as a loan. The agent justifies it as a loan. In many cases, these things are not repaid because the player knows the agent won’t turn himself in. He’s not going to go to the school and say, ‘Your player owes me 25 grand.’
“I don’t have empirical data. But this is my 19th draft and I can tell you it’s as bad as it’s ever been. There’s a proliferation of runners [who solicit clients for agents] on campus. Typically, those are the bad guys while the agents keep their hands clean. My father told me years ago, for every guy they catch, there’s three or four to replace him.”
Dye personally has been “frustrated” by the way things have evolved. College athletes have increasingly gravitated toward relatively novice representatives who provide “instant gratification,” over those with proven long-term success.
“I’ve had clients come in and tell me what they were offered,” he said. “Sometimes it’s two or three years later, and they’ll say, ‘Yeah, I took the money. But I ended up making a good decision [and hired somebody else].’ “
Sounds like Bush.
The Los Angeles Times Wednesday reported new details, linking Bush’s family with a new sports marketing company, New Era Sports & Entertainment. Bush’s stepfather, LaMar Griffin, reportedly even visited a reservation of the Sycuan Indian tribe, with whom New Era attempted to forge a partnership.
Bush didn’t sign with New Era. But it hasn’t seemed to affect his marketability. He’s already a millionaire and he hasn’t even signed an NFL contract yet.
Meanwhile, USC squirms. If it’s found that Bush compromised his amateur status and the Trojans used an ineligible player, they’re cooked. But the guilty party will have been long gone.
Permalink | Comments (28) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Vince Young will be Steve Young
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
A number of folks are about to make a HUGE mistake on Saturday, and they are all of the folks who will have a chance to draft Vince Young only to grab somebody else.
I’ll excuse the Houston Texans. With the No. 1 pick, and with David Carr needing only an offensive line to become better than good, they have to draft Reggie Bush, the all-everything offensive player who can help them win and sell seats.
Nobody else has any legitimate excuse. Not the New Orleans Saints, or the Tennessee Titans, or the New York Jets, or the Green Bay Packers, or any of those other teams sitting in the draft’s top 10. You know, barring a trade.
Vince Young will be Steve Young. Maybe better. He’ll win championships. He just won one for the University of Texas this year, and he finished his college career winning 30 of 32 games.
If that isn’t enough, Young completed 62 percent of his passes, and he became the only player in NCAA Division I-A history to pass for 3,000 yards and rush for 1,000.
All of that other stuff (flawed throwing motion, reportedly low score on the NFL’s intelligence test) are for those who would chose a young Ryan Leaf over a young Terry Bradshaw.
Permalink | Comments (29) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Don’t give the Braves Liberty — please
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Let’s start with what the Braves don’t need as a new owner, and that is another symbol on the New York Stock Exchange instead of somebody that you actually can choke or hug depending on whether they keep flopping during the postseason.
In other words, Liberty Media Corp., get outta here. If this latest “thing” that wants to replace the Braves’ current “thing” called Time Warner wants something to give it a mighty tax break, may I suggest moving the home office to Bermuda?
Arthur Blank isn’t the best option, either, and you needn’t go further than the disaster that was Wayne Huizinga trying to run an NFL team and a baseball team in south Florida between doing stuff with his NHL team and Blockbuster Video. Now he’s just a Miami Dolphins guy. Blank needs to remain just a Falcons guy, especially since his team has to do whatever it takes this season to match reality with hype after jacking up ticket prices following last year’s underwhelming finish.
Those other locals who were in the mix to buy the Braves (real estate tycoon Ron Terwilliger and radio magnate Lew Dickey Jr.) reportedly aren’t key challengers anymore to this latest “thing” and Blank, which brings us to this: What the choppers and the chanters need to save their franchise is a miracle. They need a candidate in shiny armor to gallop out of nowhere on a white horse. Former Braves owner Ted Turner would do nicely, but he would prefer to make his dramatic entrance on a buffalo these days. Speaking of which, he’s more into bison now than baseball. So, given that, the Braves need their Arturo Moreno, the breath of fresh air in his fourth season with the Angels of Los Angeles, Anaheim, California or Whatever They Want To Be Called At This Moment.
In contrast to his faceless predecessor called The Walt Disney Company, Moreno mingles with the crowd, and he produces as many cheers around Angel Stadium as Vladimir Guerrero since he sliced ticket and concession prices. He also keeps his wallet open when it comes to acquiring whatever players his baseball people suggest are necessary. This is the same Moreno who wasn’t even mentioned as a possible Angels owner until five days before the deal was announced in April 2003. See what we’re hoping for?
Prior to Moreno, the Angels had their version of Liberty Media and Blank. There was a Boston group led by Frank McCourt, who later bought the Dodgers, and then there was a New York group led by Jimmy Nederlander, who gasped along with McCourt when Moreno dropped from the sky to get baseball’s approval to snatch the Angels away from Disney’s mostly indifference toward baseball. Soon after the Angels grabbed their 2002 World Series trophy, for instance, Disney already was looking to pull a partial Huizinga by getting rid off a baseball franchise that wasn’t as profitable as, say, selling Mickey Mouse ears or visually enhanced DVDs of “Animal House.” A full Huizinga would have involved Disney doing what Huizinga did after his Marlins won the 1997 World Series, and that is Huizinga shipped away nearly everything in the Florida clubhouse that could fetch a few pennies to add millions to his billions.
But back to corporations, baseballs and ruthlessness. In addition to the Angels, the Toronto Blue Jays also won a World Series (twice) under a corporation when they were owned by a Canadian brewery during the 1990s. Still, with “the bottom line” always more important to CEOs than “the pennant race,” corporations only win world championships by accident. Mostly, corporations don’t win world championships. All you need to know is that the Braves’ solo world championship during its current run to the playoffs of 14 consecutive seasons was in 1995. That was the year BEFORE Time Warner took over from Ted Turner.
Elsewhere, Fox hadn’t a clue of how to bring success to the Los Angeles Dodgers, only baseball’s most famous franchise not named the New York Yankees. It eventually sold the Dodgers to McCourt. As a result, Time Warner and The Tribune Company are the only corporations left with baseball franchises. The Tribune Company purchased the Chicago Cubs in 1981, and it’s a “thing” that cares more each season that Wrigley Field is stuffed every game (money, money, money) than that the team hasn’t reached the World Series since the end of World War II.
Just wondering: Does Arturo Moreno have a twin brother or sister?
Permalink | Comments (24) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Betemit’s playing more than a bit role
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
All those seasons there was the promise. From the time he was signed on his 16th birthday for a $40,000 bonus in 1996. The world was out there waiting, his new frontier. Then it was “from Braves Top Prospect” to trading bait, and while that may sound a bit harsh, John Schuerholz does say this:
“We never gave up on him, but I can’t say that we didn’t consider a trade.”
Thankfully, the Braves held onto Wilson Betemit, and at the end of the season a year ago, who was their leading hitter? Himself, average .305 in 115 games as a stand-in for the frail and wounded. And as far as regional notoriety was concerned, though, he might as well have been playing in the Union League. That’s often the fate of troops in waiting.
“I know I can play. I’m just filling in now, waiting for the right opportunity,” he said in the spring.
Opportunity has come his way again this season. Chipper Jones goes down. Betemit goes to third. Edgar Renteria goes down. Betemit goes to short. Any old time at any old place on the field, just call for Wilson. A rather Anglicized name for someone from the Dominican Republican. That’s his full name. “I’m just Wilson, that’s all,” he said.
“I’ve always had confidence in him,” the Braves chief said. “I saw him hit two home runs in a Futures game in Seattle. He always had a good swing, but he did have to fight through some injuries.”
Betemit arrived at Class AAA Richmond after three seasons that earned him Top Prospect rating, and there his star took a fall. He developed back problems. Then a ligament was torn in his right hand, and his batting average slipped from the .300s into the upper .200s. When he hit training camp in 2005, it was last call. Make it or hit the road. He had worn out his options, and that was in his favor, especially when Rafael Furcal and Jones had to sit out some early games. It was then the Braves realized the “top prospect” had arrived, a little behind schedule, but ready. He had had a good season in the Dominican winter league to build on, and wherever the Braves put him, he performed.
He is not one to grab attention, nor create a clubhouse stew. To the contrary, he is a gentle man, easy smile, the kind of attitude that curries favor with Bobby Cox. No manager could ask more than Betemit has given the Braves playing his waiting game.
“I know I can play, I want to play, and I don’t care where, but I know it takes patience. I’ve developed a lot of that since I’ve been here,” Betemit said.
Then came the performance on national television Sunday night in Washington. Martin Prado and Pete Orr on base, Betemit up to face the Nationals’ leading reliever, Gary Majewski. It was not a violent swing, but at liftoff the ball was headed out of town. The three-run homer won the game, and Terry Pendleton, the hitting coach, continued telling anyone who’d listen, “He’d be playing every day for a lot of teams in this league.”
Shortstop is his native position, but his best asset is that he can play anywhere, and will. Well, you can eliminate pitch and catch, but I’m just trying to make a point. The former “top prospect” has now become the real thing.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Betemit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
All those seasons there was the promise. From the time he was signed on his 16th birthday for a $40,000 bonus in 1996. The world was out there waiting, his new frontier. Then it was “from Braves Top Prospect” to trading bait, and while that may sound a bit harsh, John Schuerholz does say this:
“We never gave up on him, but I can’t say that we didn’t consider a trade.”
Thankfully, the Braves held onto Wilson Betemit, and at the end of the season a year ago, who was their leading hitter? Himself, average .305 in 115 games as a stand-in for the frail and wounded. And as far as regional notoriety was concerned, though, he might as well have been playing in the Union League. That’s often the fate of troops in waiting.
“I know I can play. I’m just filling in now, waiting for the right opportunity,” he said in the spring.
Opportunity has come his way again this season. Chipper Jones goes down. Betemit goes to third. Edgar Renteria goes down. Betemit goes to short. Any old time at any old place on the field, just call for Wilson. A rather Anglicized name for someone from the Dominican Republican. That’s his full name. “I’m just Wilson, that’s all,” he said.
“I’ve always had confidence in him,” the Braves chief said. “I saw him hit two home runs in a Futures game in Seattle. He always had a good swing, but he did have to fight through some injuries.”
Betemit arrived at Class AAA Richmond after three seasons that earned him Top Prospect rating, and there his star took a fall. He developed back problems. Then a ligament was torn in his right hand, and his batting average slipped from the .300s into the upper .200s. When he hit training camp in 2005, it was last call. Make it or hit the road. He had worn out his options, and that was in his favor, especially when Rafael Furcal and Jones had to sit out some early games. It was then the Braves realized the “top prospect” had arrived, a little behind schedule, but ready. He had had a good season in the Dominican winter league to build on, and wherever the Braves put him, he performed.
He is not one to grab attention, nor create a clubhouse stew. To the contrary, he is a gentle man, easy smile, the kind of attitude that curries favor with Bobby Cox. No manager could ask more than Betemit has given the Braves playing his waiting game.
“I know I can play, I want to play, and I don’t care where, but I know it takes patience. I’ve developed a lot of that since I’ve been here,” Betemit said.
Then came the performance on national television Sunday night in Washington. Martin Prado and Pete Orr on base, Betemit up to face the Nationals’ leading reliever, Gary Majewski. It was not a violent swing, but at liftoff the ball was headed out of town. The three-run homer won the game, and Terry Pendleton, the hitting coach, continued telling anyone who’d listen, “He’d be playing every day for a lot of teams in this league.”
Shortstop is his native position, but his best asset is that he can play anywhere, and will. Well, you can eliminate pitch and catch, but I’m just trying to make a point. The former “top prospect” has now become the real thing.
Permalink | | Categories: Braves / MLB
Vick’s legacy to Vince: Scrutiny
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Let’s say it’s April 2003. Let’s say Michael Vick is coming off his dauntless 2002 season and hasn’t yet become the unsure quarterback the West Coast offense has rendered him. Were that the case, would there be any disagreement about where Vince Young should be drafted? Wouldn’t there be only a rousing consensus?
Three years beyond those heady days when it seemed Vick would reconfigure if not revolutionize his sport, the growing belief is he needs to reconfigure himself to become a truly effective quarterback: He needs to run less, complete more passes, etc. Because Young’s skill set bears some similarity to Vick’s, the belief here is that the transcendent Texan is being hit with the sort of skepticism that has sprung up around the Falcons’ man.
Three years ago, every NFL team wanted a Vick. Today, the feeling in some sectors is that Vick isn’t as good as advertised and might well have topped out. And that disparaging sentiment surely contributes to the wild variances regarding Young’s potential.
Some mock drafts have him going No. 3 overall, while others have him lasting beyond the 10th pick. By rights he should be no worse than No. 2 depending on what you think of Reggie Bush, and if you’re of the mind that a guy who’ll touch the ball on every snap is more valuable than someone who’ll handle it 15 times a game, Young should be your No. 1 pick overall.
First off, Vince is not Vick. Young finished third among Division I-A quarterbacks in passing efficiency last season, completing 65.2 percent. (Jay Cutler, whom some myopic scouts prefer to Young, completed 59.1.) In three collegiate seasons, Young’s worst completion percentage (58.7 as a freshman) was only slightly less than Vick’s best (59.2, also as a freshman) as either a collegian or a professional.
There’s also an inherent difference in style. Vick’s greatest college game was against Florida State in the 2000 Sugar Bowl, and even on that luminous night he completed barely half of his passes. Young completed 30 of 40 against Southern Cal in the Rose Bowl, and his four touchdown runs were a function not of raw speed but of a defense spread thin due to the threat of the pass. Young is fast, but he isn’t as fast as Vick. Vick can throw, but he can’t throw like Young.
Which isn’t to say Vick can’t beat people with his passing. He can and has. (Remember the Miami game, where he made a conscious effort to operate only in dropback mode?) The reason Vick hasn’t progressed in Greg Knapp’s offense is that it isn’t suited for Vick, who has surely come to realize as much. Why should a player so dangerous with the ball in his hands be concerned with getting rid of the ball? Why should a guy who can throw it 70 yards be asked to author 7-yard dinks instead?
Two other issues need mentioning. Vick and Young are black, and even at this late date the watching world still isn’t sure what to make of black quarterbacks. Just last season we heard the bizarre contention – made by the president of the NAACP’s Philadelphia chapter – that Donovan McNabb had disappointed his constituency by becoming a pocket passer. Being an NFL starting quarterback is the most difficult job in pro sports, and if you’re black, it’s exponentially harder. But McNabb, the classiest man in the game, has handled it. Steve McNair has handled it. Vick has handled it. Young, who as the leader of the Longhorns was subjected to as much scrutiny as any professional, can handle it.
There’s also the matter of Young’s Wonderlic score – either 6 or 16 (of 50), depending on the source. But the IQ test isn’t necessarily an indication of future greatness. Brett Favre is believed to have scored a 22, the legendary Cade McNown a 28. (Vick is thought to have scored a 20.) As Sean Jones of Oakland’s personnel department told the Houston Chronicle: “I don’t care what [Young’s] Wonderlic score is. The only score I care about is 41-38.”
That was the score on the night Young became the greatest college player of the new millennium, the night he should have stamped himself as the man to draft come April 29. Instead, he has been nitpicked to death — is his throwing motion odder than, say, Philip Rivers? — and there’s a chance he’ll slide from the top five Saturday. But Vince Young isn’t Michael Vick, who for all his detractors has done enough to make three Pro Bowls.
When he’s not being overcoached, Vick is really good. Young has the capacity to be even better.
Permalink | Comments (54) | Categories: Mark Bradley
Falcons must trade Schaub
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Because it’s NFL draft week, you start with the premise that anything a general manager says is likely one percent truth and 99 percent meat-byproducts. That represents a significant dropoff from the other 51 weeks, when it’s two percent truth.
But let’s give Rich McKay the benefit of the doubt. When he’s asked, “Have you ever been offered a first-round draft pick for Matt Schaub?” and responds, “No, but I keep reading I have,” I’m going to assume he’s telling the truth.
Because if McKay actually had been offered a first-round pick for their unproven, backup quarterback and said no, the man should be declared psychologically unfit to drive a football team. Or a Big Wheel.
We have long had this fascination with backup quarterbacks. Scott Mitchell was never so popular than while he sat waiting behind Dan Marino.
Gary Hogeboom was going to be the next Roger Staubach, when it turned out he wasn’t even the next Danny White. Every backup is great until somebody says, “OK, now you’re in charge.” Then, of course, their backup becomes more popular.
It follows that here in Atlanta, where Michael Vick hasn’t won a Super Bowl, there is a small and disturbed following who believe Matt Schaub could do better. I’m assuming this is based on something other than the fact Schaub is 0-2 as a starter, which projects closer to Doug Johnson than Super Bowl.
This isn’t to suggest Schaub will not be a solid starter one day. But he is not there now. He may never be there. He is a pack of seeds. He may end up resembling the picture on the front, or he could turn into this fall’s weed patch.
Which is why the Falcons need to trade him.
Understand something: Barring a career-ending injury by Vick, Matt Schaub will never be the Falcons’ starting quarterback. Never. The Falcons have too much invested in Vick in salary, marketing and all things related to identity. That is not going to change.
To anybody who foresees the day when Schaub beats out Vick for the starting job: Stay off the Big Wheel.
Trade him. Trade him because you need to get better now. Trade him because the window of opportunity to win a Super Bowl is small, and the Falcons already have made significant moves this off-season to get there. They’ve added John Abraham and Lawyer Malloy to a defense that never had a chance to benefit from the injured Ed Hartwell last season. But they can do more.
Trade Schaub because the importance of a safety net behind Vick is overrated — because if Vick goes down, the Falcons are dead anyway.
“I understand that line of thinking,” McKay said. “I don’t agree with it, but I understand it. If Mike misses a game or two or three or four, those games are still important, in a year where we’re trying to get to the Super Bowl. We need somebody to step in.”
The Falcons parted with their first-round pick instead of Schaub in the three-way deal that brought Abraham from the New York Jets. This happened partly because owner Arthur Blank wanted to make certain McKay had exhausted all other avenues before parting with Schaub. Also, because McKay concluded there was no viable option for a new No. 2 quarterback. (Among the available bodies: Jamie Martin, Jay Fiedler, Ty Detmer.)
Problem is, if the Falcons win a Super Bowl this season, it won’t be because of Schaub. This follows scientific theory that there’s only one Tom Brady story every several decades. If the Falcons win a Super Bowl, it will be because they defended better, pass-blocked better and generally functioned better than a year ago. It will be because they plugged holes.
Trade Schaub — plug a hole.
The Falcons need a starting cornerback because Jason Webster is central to every opponent’s game plan. They need a running back, because Warrick Dunn needs a breather, and the breather can’t come from the breathless (T.J. Duckett). They need a guard, a tackle, a center — anybody who can give Vick more than two seconds to think.
If Schaub can’t fetch a first-round pick, maybe he can be packaged with something or someone that can. Or maybe the Falcons could get a player in return — one who actually figures on playing.
Fixing the starting team should be a higher priority than keeping a backup, particularly when the backup hasn’t proven anything. The Falcons believe keeping Schaub gets them closer to a Super Bowl. Maybe they have it backward.
Permalink | Comments (282) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
LPGA stuck as niche sport
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
My first assignment at my first LPGA tournament —the year was 1984, the site Brookfield West in Roswell, the event the oddly named Potamkin Cadillac Classic — was to write about the new wave on tour. I interviewed four women who were seen as rising stars — Juli Inkster, Chris Johnson, Laurie Rinker and Lauri Peterson — and how they were about to transform the LPGA. Well, Inkster turned out to be a really splendid player and the other three less so, but here it is 22 years later and the talk around the circuit is …
The new wave of players about to transform the LPGA.
And I wish I could say I believe it. But I don’t really. I wish I could say I foresaw growth on an exponential scale for the tour I’ve always preferred to (editorial comment here) the snooty PGA, but I’ve covered too many women’s tournaments over too many years and seen too few fans and detected too little mainstream interest.
I wish it were different. I wish there was a way the LPGA could get big because people like watching women play golf against other women. I wish an LPGA golfer could become a household name without feeling the need to pose in a bathing suit. More than anything, I wish the LPGA could grow out of the niche it has occupied these last two decades.
There was a time in the late ’70s when, in the wake of Nancy Lopez’s advent, women’s golf seemed as big a deal as men’s, but the moment faded. And now, when the average fan is asked to recall a female player of a certain vintage, the first thought is of Jan Stephenson, who famously smiled for a calendar shot from a bathtub filled with golf balls, and not Pat Bradley, who won roughly twice as many events as Stephenson.
The LPGA’s latest swimsuit wearer is Natalie Gulbis, and she, as you’d guess, is tall and blond. What you might not know is that Gulbis is fifth on the money list and third in scoring average. You might not know that because — let’s face it — not that many guys care all that much about how Natalie Gulbis plays her sport. And that’s a shame.
Sherri Turner, 49, is in her 23rd year on tour. She has been around long enough to grasp that many of the concerns facing the LPGA in 1984, her rookie season, are the ones facing it today. (How to get bigger, how much skin to show, et cetera.) “I’ve kind of made it a point to keep my mouth shut,” she said Saturday after shooting a 9-under-par 63 at the oddly named Florida’s Natural Charity Championship. “But these are a lot of the same issues.”
Turner doesn’t begrudge Gulbis her swimsuit and her reality TV series. “If I looked like Natalie, I’d be doing the same thing,” she said. But here Turner touched on the bigger picture, which is that an LPGA player cannot hope to get famous simply by playing well on the tour. “The percentage of good young players is much larger [than in 1984], and especially with the Asian girls, it’s tough to separate themselves.”
Michelle Wie, who isn’t playing at Eagle’s Landing, has separated herself not by immersing herself in the LPGA but by flitting between women’s and men’s events. “I don’t like that,” Turner said. “I was a little leery when Annika [Sorenstam] did it, but she was at the top of her game and she did it once to learn from it. … I would like to see Michelle take a different route. I like the route [rookie] Morgan Pressel has taken.”
I wish I could envision a day when Morgan Pressel — or Michelle Wie, for that matter — was as big a star as Tiger Woods, but the cold truth is that even the transcendent Sorenstam remains known more for her two cut-missing rounds on the men’s tour in 2003 than for any of the 67 events she has won.
And if you care to argue with that, please note: Sorenstam goes into today’s final round with a chance to win her 68th tournament, but you won’t be able to watch her pursuit on TV. This event isn’t being televised. In a world where even college baseball and arena football gets aired, the sport graced by the most dominant athlete in North American sports couldn’t find a carrier this weekend. How shameful is that?
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Golf, Mark Bradley
Justice for the quiet man
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Now, let the howling cease. Those of us who have raised our voices from the cynics corner, lo, these many years that Larry Nelson has been passed over for the World Golf Hall of Fame may now move quietly forward. Best celebrate the belated judgement of the balloteers. No “it’s about time” chorus, and “how about the Ryder Cup captaincy?”
Leave it be, as he did at his announcement function, when he said, “There’s no way to compare the two, the Hall of Fame is so much greater.”
Be grateful that he has finally been verified, and that this might yet become a plank in his Ryder Cup platform. Ye gods, he was the leading American player in his first two competitions, unbeaten in nine matches, once taking down the vaunted Seve Ballesteros when the Spaniard was on his game.
Oh, well, there I go. Enough of it. Savor the glory and move ahead.
The story is an old one, told over and over again. Here was a guy home from wartime duty in Vietnam, an athlete of modest ability on the baseball field. Golf never got a grip on him until he was 21 years old, and if there ever was a self-made player, it was he. Coming out of that dungeon of a work place at the Lockheed plant in Marietta, he looked around for a place to reactivate his body. He’d noticed a Sam Snead Golf Center across the highway and began dropping in just to hit a few balls.
That’s how it started. Then the Ben Hogan book, “The Five Fundamentals of Golf,” about how the game should be played, and further guidance from Bert Seagraves, who gave him a job taking reservations and working behind the counter at the Pine Tree club. He was way behind. By the time they were his age, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods were already winning majors.
One morning, playing at Pine Tree, I noticed this smallish fellow in the distance working on the practice tee. He was still there when I made the turn. And still there when I finished the round. It was Larry, home from the mini-tour in Florida to work on his fractured game. He makes it sound as if it came easy (“I fell in love with it and got better every day”) but it was six years on the PGA Tour before he finally won, the Jackie Gleason Classic. The mild Nelson winning the flamboyant one’s tournament, as it were.
I don’t know that winning majors ever entered his mind, but at Oakmont in 1983 — name of the street on which he lived at Atlanta Country Club — he found himself in a shootout with Tom Watson, the defending champion. After an overnight rain delay, Nelson returned to the course, rolled in about a 60-foot putt for birdie on the 16th hole and completed the conquest. There was some seeming resentment that this mild-mannered Georgian with little hair cover should have taken down the champion. And that he should use this stage to speak of his faith. The barbs of some local media wounded him at what should have been the most joyful moment of his career.
He had already won one PGA Championship, driving in the morning rush hour from his home across town to Atlanta Athletic Club in 1981, and a second would follow in the searing heat of South Florida in 1987. Moving on into the now Champions Tour was the natural process, and winning came more frequently, 19 times, in 2000 the Player of the Year, and at the age of 58 it goes on.
The meek shall inherit the earth, it is written, but no meek ones served in the jungles of Vietnam, as did Sgt. Larry Gene Nelson — this is one for the quiet man, one who has has had to work like a field hand to earn what he got. He has served on the PGA Tour Policy Board, which speaks well of the respect in which he is held by his peers. He has been a popular figure in Japan, where he has designed courses and won four times, and with his PGA and Champions Tour victories, that adds up to a total of 33.
Not bad for a guy 5-feet-9, who didn’t get started until he was voting age, and then learned the game by reading a book. You know the hardest part of it all? He got the news three weeks ago and was sworn to secrecy until the announcement date.
“Having to sit on it all that time.”
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf
Falcons can’t ignore Bulldogs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
There are so many things the human brain can’t comprehend. I mean, why is there still war? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? What’s up with the yearly habit of the Falcons ignoring all of that football talent just 69 miles to the east of the Georgia Dome?
This is crazy. Lunacy. Absolutely ridiculous. Since 1966, when the Falcons took their first breath along the way to dying more than a few times, here are some of the Georgia Bulldogs who have barked their way to fame through Pro Bowls, Super Bowls and prominent NFL awards.
Jake Scott. Ray Donaldson. Kevin Butler. Champ Bailey. Terrell Davis. Bill Stanfill. Garrison Hearst. John Kasay. Mo Lewis. Bobby Walden. Clarence Kay. Richard Seymour. Rodney Hampton. Winford Hood. Guy McIntyre. Marcus Stroud. Len Hauss. Herschel Walker. Jermaine Wiggins. Patrick Pass. Kendrell Bell. Oh, and did I mention Hines Ward? All he did was become the most valuable player of this year’s Super Bowl after leading the Pittsburgh Steelers to a world championship.
None played for the Falcons, by the way, and it gets worse: The Falcons have drafted just five (that’s right, five) Georgia players ever, and they all were obscure — unless you’re among those with an Allan Leavitt throwback jersey.
Even worse, the last time the Falcons drafted a Georgia player was 1994, when they picked somebody named Mitch Davis in the fourth round. Even worse, since that Mitch Davis pick, 54 Bulldogs have been selected in the draft by teams not named the Falcons.
Terrell Davis evolved into an NFL MVP after he was a sixth-round pick by the Denver Broncos. McIntyre was a third-round pick by the San Francisco 49ers along the way to three Super Bowl rings. Ward wasn’t snatched by the Steelers until the third round, and he became the poster child for why the Falcons just don’t get it regarding Georgia players.
During the 1998 draft, the Falcons had a chance to pick Ward, who already was a Bulldog legend as a versatile wide receiver, running back and quarterback with a charismatic smile. He also was from nearby Forest Park. Instead, the Falcons took Miami’s Jammi German. While German hasn’t played for the Falcons in six years, he hasn’t played for anybody in five.
What makes this even more perplexing is that Falcons founder and owner Rankin Smith Sr. was such an ardent Georgia supporter that he had a building named in his honor on campus.
Vince Dooley chuckled over the phone from his office in Athens, before the Georgia icon said, “Sometimes these things just happen, and I’ve never been privy to (the Falcons’) draft. It’s the coaches, I guess, or whoever is in charge of that. But it’s interesting, and it’s worth a good study. There is no question that if you would have had a Herschel Walker playing for the Falcons, a lot of Georgia people would have certainly been there on Sunday who normally wouldn’t have come.”
Yep. Plus, Walker, along with those other Georgia players the Falcons ignored, would have kept this franchise from gasping so much. Added Dooley, “Of course, (the Falcons) also had Larry Munson (the eternal voice of the Bulldogs) as their announcer for a while.”
Enough of the past. The Falcons can alter their Georgia shortsightedness right now. It’s one thing to do what they did last week and bring D.J. Shockley to Flowery Branch for a workout. It’s another to put the Georgia quarterback star and prep standout at North Clayton on their roster.
Elsewhere, the Falcons need defensive backs. Lots of them, and few are more gifted than Greg Blue, Tim Jennings and DeMario Minter, all from Georgia, all heading for next week’s NFL draft. The same goes for Dennis Roland Jr. and Kedric Golston. They were efficient linemen for Georgia, and the Falcons need efficient linemen.
The Falcons also could use Max Jean-Gilles, but the Bulldogs’ offensive guard will be ancient history when Atlanta is on the clock for the first time with the 47th pick. In addition, since the Falcons already have Pro Bowl tight end Alge Crumpler, they don’t need Leonard Pope, Georgia’s other big stud in the draft. But the Falcons could use one of those other Bulldogs, or maybe several of them.
Oh, well. So much for dreaming the impossible dream. That is, unless the Falcons want to quit living this nightmare in red and black.
Permalink | Comments (103) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Ax Waddell? You must be kidding
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It’s no fun if a guy guarantees something and doesn’t get fired when the guarantee goes ker-plunk. But fun aside, let’s ask ourselves this: If the Thrashers’ many owners decided to can Don Waddell tomorrow, would the team be better or worse?
Answer: Worse.
Just because it didn’t quite happen for the Thrashers this season doesn’t mean it won’t happen soon. Here’s a club with a 52-goal scorer in Ilya Kovalchuk, a superb young goalie in Kari Lehtonen and a brilliant all-ice peformer in Marian Hossa. Here’s a team that might lose Peter Bondra to free agency and Scott Mellanby to retirement but that otherwise figures to return all its principals. Here’s a team that needed five goalies to get through the regular season — and this doesn’t count Pasi Nurminen, who was slotted as Lehtonen’s backup but was lost to a knee injury over the summer — and still came within two points of the playoffs.
This is, in sum, not a team that needs to be broken up. This is a team that, with a bit of tweaking, should contend not just for a playoff spot but for a division title (and maybe more) next season. You can fault Waddell for not building this team faster, but you can’t say he hasn’t built something pretty good.
To change direction now would be the height of silliness. This isn’t the time to retrench. This is the time to keep going. Everybody around the Thrashers feels they should have made the playoffs, but things don’t always happen on schedule. You have to see the bigger picture here. You have to understand that firing Wadell — which isn’t going to happen, by the way — and turning to another man’s vision would be the equivalent of what the Thrashers’ sibling franchise has done.
And which would you rather be at this moment: A team that fell two points short in its best season ever or a team that doubled its win total and still finished ahead of only two other NBA teams? Would you rather be the Thrashers or the Hawks?
Thought so.
Permalink | Comments (27) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Hudson shows he’s an anchor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
New York - Tim Hudson was good last season, but he was brought to Atlanta to be something more than that. Teams acquire good pitchers to be the No. 2 or 3 starter. But when that pitcher is given a contract extension worth up to $58 million, it’s clear that something more than good is expected.
On Tuesday, Tim Hudson was something more than good.
He started with five perfect innings. He allowed only one hit, walked one and struck out six in a complete game 2-1 win over the New York Mets. The fact the performance came in a mound battle with Tom Glavine, a centerpiece of past Braves’ rotations and suddenly a force again, merely added punctuation.
“He’s going to be the guy everybody looks to in the next four or five years to anchor the staff,” John Smoltz said. “If he’s going to get beat, that’s the kind of game I expect him to get beat in — a 2-1 game. What we saw in the first three games this year — I don’t think we’ll be seeing that again.”
After a good but not overwhelming first season with the Braves, one that included a month on the disabled list, Hudson hoped to settle in this season. But when the gate opened in Los Angeles, he was drilled for five runs in four innings on Opening Day. Through three starts, he had allowed 17 runs (15 earned), 23 hits and eight walks, lasting only 4, 4 and 6 2/3 innings.
His ERA entering Wednesday: 9.20. In terms of “anchoring a staff,” that’s not the definition the Braves were looking for.
“I wouldn’t say there’s been pressure,” Hudson said when asked about expectations following the trade that brought him from Oakland. “There’s just a period of adjustment. Any time you’re going to a new organization with new teammates in a new league, there are things to get used to. Last year was kind of a blur. We had a new baby to start the year. It was kind of a whirlwind. This year feels a lot more settled. It feels like it’s supposed to feel — except for the three [lousy] games to start the year.”
Hudson went 92-39 in six years with Oakland, but fell victim to the franchise’s economic downsizing (sounds better than saying the A’s decided to do things on the cheap). The Braves acquired him for three players in the winter, then gave him a contract extension worth at least $47 million over four years, or $58 million if an option is exercised in 2010.
At the time of the deal, the Braves’ plan for Hudson was clear. Smoltz was being moved back to the rotation from the bullpen but there was uncertainty how his arm would hold up. Hudson was the only sure thing the team had. Smoltz started 0-3, then went 12-2 with a 2.34 ERA in his next 20 starts, but wore down with injuries (neck, back, shoulder) in the final two months.
Hudson was merely … pretty good. A year ago Tuesday, he battled Roger Clemens and threw a four-hit shutout for nine innings, and the Braves won in 12, 1-0. He had consecutive complete game wins late in the season. But he also had a two-month stretch in which he had two wins in nine starts and went on the DL with a strained oblique. He finished the year 14-9 — good but not ace-of-staff-great.
That wasn’t the case the Mets. After the game, he credited pitching coaching Roger McDowell for helping correct some flaws in his delivery, and it showed. He retired 15 straight, until Ramon Castro singled in the sixth. The Mets had runners on second and third with one out, but Jose Reyes flied out, and left fielder Matt Diaz nailed Castro with a perfect throw to the plate. Hudson celebrated like it was game seven.
“I almost blew my leg out, jumping up,” Hudson joked. “I was raising [heck] from the plate to the dugout. When I sat down, I felt like I had just run a mile.”
The Mets finally got to Hudson in the ninth with a double and an RBI single. Manager Bobby Cox made a quick trip to the mound but Hudson assured him he was fine. Hudson then got Carlos Delgado on a fly to deep left and David Wright on a fielder’s choice.
“This one was fun for me personally, given the way the year started,” Hudson said.
He was better than Opening Day, but just what the Braves have expected.
Permalink | Comments (36) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
Kobe or LeBron?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
My pick for the NBA’s most valuable player? Tough one. LeBron James should win, but Kobe Bryant will.
All of that flashy scoring by Bryant will blind the senses of the voters. In addition to remembering that he’s just the third player in league history to average at least 35 points per game, they’ll remember his 81-point game, along with the slew of other times where he managed 50 or more.
But here’s my idea of the MVP of a given league: The guy whose winning team crashes the most when that guy is removed from the lineup.
That guy is James. Without him, the Cleveland Cavaliers return to their numerous years as the Cadavers.
Come to think of it, the Lakers without Bryant are dead, too. And he does something else that MVPs do, and that is he makes others around him better (see Kwame Brown, suddenly a force out of nowhere after years as a farce).
OK. I’ll go with Kobe.
Permalink | Comments (39) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Kobe or LeBron?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
My pick for the NBA’s most valuable player? Tough one. LeBron James should win, but Kobe Bryant will.
All of that flashy scoring by Bryant will blind the senses of the voters. In addition to remembering that he’s just the third player in league history to average at least 35 points per game, they’ll remember his 81-point game, along with the slew of other times where he managed 50 or more.
But here’s my idea of the MVP of a given league: The guy whose winning team crashes the most when that guy is removed from the lineup.
That guy is James. Without him, the Cleveland Cavaliers return to their numerous years as the Cadavers.
Come to think of it, the Lakers without Bryant are dead, too. And he does something else that MVPs do, and that is he makes others around him better (see Kwame Brown, suddenly a force out of nowhere after years as a farce).
OK. I’ll go with Kobe.
Permalink | | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
As always, Mets get the reality slap
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
New York — If there was one thing that we all learned about the Braves on Tuesday night, it’s that they’ve got spunk. I mean, here it is the dog days of April, the division race over — and yet the Braves managed to pull together for one magical night to slay the mighty New York Mets, who were 10-2, toppled several countries and ate Godzilla.
Oh, they’ll be talking about this for years.
The morning after the Mets’ resounding, dominating, dare I say overwhelming, 4-3 win over the Braves, a headline in Tuesday’s New York Post blared: “BRAVE NEW WORLD. Mets show Atlanta who’s boss.”
In the Daily News, the game story began: “Don’t worry Braves, there’s always the wild card.”
It’s a wonder anybody made it to game two of the series, what with parade traffic.
Then the Braves won, 7-1.
Keep hope alive.
Just so you know, I did the math. The Mets’ magic number to clinch the National League East over the Braves remains at 145.
“We better get to work,” Marcus Giles cracked.
“That’s New York,” Adam LaRoche said. “I’m sure by next week, the story will be, ‘Better luck next year.’ “
And this: “We’re a few games back in April. We’re not sweating.”
Yes, it’s April on all parts of the globe except Flushing, where it’s October.
Since they last won a World Series in 1986, there generally have been two absolutes about the New York Mets: 1) They’re supposed to be great; 2) They’re not. Only with that coupled entry can a franchise have such spectacular and amusing crashes.
The Mets have watched the Braves win the division all too often. I guess they figure if they have a five-game lead in April, best to milk it for all it’s worth. You would just think that after so much misery and Atlanta’s 14 straight division titles, spring celebrations would be, um, tempered.
“The commissioner tells me we get to play the entire schedule,” Bobby Cox said.
Really?
“Yeah. I talked to Bud today.”
Why does this happen? How is it that clear-thinking people — work with me here, for the sake of argument — can look at the Braves being 6-8 and declare them dead? In the NFL, they would be dead.
In baseball, they haven’t even gone once through the sock drawer yet.
The Braves are now 7-8. But mortal starts are not uncommon for them. They were 7-8 at this time a year ago. They were 33-32 in mid-June. They were 37-40 through June in 2004. They were 26-26 through May in 2001. If there weren’t 162 games, it would be a problem. There are. It isn’t.
The only difference this season is that the Mets actually have lived up to the hype. (Well, some of it.) Over the past two years, they have added Carlos Beltran, Pedro Martinez, Carlos Delgado, Paul Lo Duca and Billy Wagner. Some things, apparently, even the Mets can’t mess up.
But Tuesday was the inevitable reality slap. Andruw Jones hit two home runs. LaRoche hit another. The Braves, playing without Chipper Jones and Edgar Renteria, led 5-0 through three innings — and the Mets hadn’t even set their playoff rotation yet.
Kyle Davies threw a complete game. He allowed only three hits and struck out six. So it turns out that a Braves pitcher actually can throw a strike without Leo Mazzone. OK. So what’s next week’s premature panic attack going to be?
“It seems like the same story every year,” Giles said. “Slow April, hot summer and a disappointing postseason, to be honest with you. The point is there’s no need to worry. It’s just to give people something to write about. Don’t get me wrong — this division is not ours. But there’s definitely no need to panic right now.”
Or celebrate.
Tom Glavine, the former Brave, has seen this race from both sides. He has a little more perspective than Joe from Queens.
“It’s funny,” Glavine said when asked about the hype surrounding this series. “This organization obviously hasn’t had the success we’ve wanted to have. The Braves are the envy of everybody in baseball, except for maybe the Yankees. Any time you have the opportunity to be one up on the prohibitive favorite, people are gonna run with it. As players, we’re more mindful of how this plays out in October than where we are right now.”
Meanwhile, the Mets lost. They’re six games out of last.
Permalink | Comments (64) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
lack of defense was Thrashers’ demise
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wendy Parker
Sunrise, Fla. — The Thrashers were one period short of making Tuesday the biggest night in their existence. Instead it became just another final game — an overtime loss, not that it mattered — in another failed season, and the adjective, while cruel, is nonetheless apt. “As a team, we said before the season that if we didn’t make the playoffs it would be a failure,” said Scott Mellanby, the captain. “We still feel that way.” This team expected to make the playoffs. Its general manager guaranteed it would make the playoffs. Instead this becomes the most gifted aggregation that won’t be chasing the Stanley Cup. “This has been the toughest year,” general manager Don Waddell said. “There was so much pressure. This is tough to swallow.” It is. But missing the playoffs shouldn’t be seen as cause for the guarantor to be canned and his blueprint wadded up. Much of what Waddell envisioned the Thrashers being has come to fruition. They can score with anybody. (“We built this as an offensive team,” he said, telling no lies.) Some tweaking, however, seems in order. Put simply, the Thrashers have overcommitted to offense. Of their half-dozen best players, only one — Niclas Havelid — is a defenseman. “We have to think about committing more resources to the back end,” said Waddell, and spending big money on a big-ticket defensemen is something this franchise hasn’t yet done. For the Thrashers to become a bona fide Cup contender, that needs to happen ASAP. A more imposing backline would make it easier on those nights the No. 1 goalie cannot go. It would have been nice if Kari Lehtonen had played 58 games, as opposed to 38, but the Thrashers sometimes seemed unwilling to modulate their style to accommodate Lehtonen’s understudies. Some nights — Monday in Washington, for example — it’s necessary to nurse a one-goal lead through the final 20 minutes, to rely on those old-time hockey virtues of checking and defending. Instead the game got wild, as happened in Pittsburgh back in October (a 4-0 lead became a 7-5 defeat) and in Los Angeles in January (a come-from-ahead 8-6 loss). When you miss the playoffs by the skinniest of margins, you wind up fixating on squandered points. As Waddell noted, “We can win games 5-4 and 6-5,” but the trouble with high-scoring games is that weird things can happen at the end. The Thrashers need to take their lead from Archie Bell and (ahem) tighten up. Apparently assuming their offensive prowess would bail them out, they developed a penchant for falling behind — they trailed in the second period of Games 79, 80 and 81 — even as they were making their playoff surge. What this team must grasp is that inherent scoring skill will work just as well in a 3-2 game as in a 6-5 careen-a-thon. Internally the Thrashers believe that, had Lehtonen not gotten hurt, they’d have been one of the East’s top seeds, and perhaps they would. But the cold truth is that this team still coulda/shoulda made the playoffs. It had the talent. Sorry to say, it didn’t quite have the mesh. “When we had everybody healthy, we could run with anybody,” Waddell said, and maybe that was this team’s undoing. Maybe it focused overmuch on skating and scoring, occasionally misplacing its attention to detail. Over a 6 1/2-month regular season, that small failing wound up being the difference between adjourning after the 82nd game and flying north to open a first-round series Friday night. To their credit, the Thrashers gave it a go at the end. Said Waddell, pride in his voice: “We’ve been playing Game 7s the last three weeks.” But next season there will be no distinction in merely coming close. Next season the Thrashers cannot fall a game short or a point short. Next season they have to play their way into May. Toward that end, did the GM have any guarantees for 2007? “Don’t get me started with that one,” said Waddell, the pain of one broken promise still too new and too raw.
Permalink | |
Lack of defense was Thrashers’ demise
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Sunrise, Fla. — The Thrashers were one period short of making Tuesday the biggest night in their existence. Instead it became just another final game — an overtime loss, not that it mattered — in another failed season, and the adjective, while cruel, is nonetheless apt.
“As a team, we said before the season that if we didn’t make the playoffs it would be a failure,” said Scott Mellanby, the captain. “We still feel that way.”
This team expected to make the playoffs. Its general manager guaranteed it would make the playoffs. Instead this becomes the most gifted aggregation that won’t be chasing the Stanley Cup.
“This has been the toughest year,” general manager Don Waddell said. “There was so much pressure. This is tough to swallow.”
It is. But missing the playoffs shouldn’t be seen as cause for the guarantor to be canned and his blueprint wadded up. Much of what Waddell envisioned the Thrashers being has come to fruition. They can score with anybody. (“We built this as an offensive team,” he said, telling no lies.) Some tweaking, however, seems in order. Put simply, the Thrashers have overcommitted to offense.
Of their half-dozen best players, only one — Niclas Havelid — is a defenseman. “We have to think about committing more resources to the back end,” said Waddell, and spending big money on a big-ticket defensemen is something this franchise hasn’t yet done. For the Thrashers to become a bona fide Cup contender, that needs to happen ASAP.
A more imposing backline would make it easier on those nights the No. 1 goalie cannot go. It would have been nice if Kari Lehtonen had played 58 games, as opposed to 38, but the Thrashers sometimes seemed unwilling to modulate their style to accommodate Lehtonen’s understudies. Some nights — Monday in Washington, for example — it’s necessary to nurse a one-goal lead through the final 20 minutes, to rely on those old-time hockey virtues of checking and defending.
Instead the game got wild, as happened in Pittsburgh back in October (a 4-0 lead became a 7-5 defeat) and in Los Angeles in January (a come-from-ahead 8-6 loss). When you miss the playoffs by the skinniest of margins, you wind up fixating on squandered points. As Waddell noted, “We can win games 5-4 and 6-5,” but the trouble with high-scoring games is that weird things can happen at the end.
The Thrashers need to take their lead from Archie Bell and (ahem) tighten up. Apparently assuming their offensive prowess would bail them out, they developed a penchant for falling behind — they trailed in the second period of Games 79, 80 and 81 — even as they were making their playoff surge. What this team must grasp is that inherent scoring skill will work just as well in a 3-2 game as in a 6-5 careen-a-thon.
Internally the Thrashers believe that, had Lehtonen not gotten hurt, they’d have been one of the East’s top seeds, and perhaps they would. But the cold truth is that this team still coulda/shoulda made the playoffs. It had the talent. Sorry to say, it didn’t quite have the mesh.
“When we had everybody healthy, we could run with anybody,” Waddell said, and maybe that was this team’s undoing. Maybe it focused overmuch on skating and scoring, occasionally misplacing its attention to detail. Over a 6 1/2-month regular season, that small failing wound up being the difference between adjourning after the 82nd game and flying north to open a first-round series Friday night.
To their credit, the Thrashers gave it a go at the end. Said Waddell, pride in his voice: “We’ve been playing Game 7s the last three weeks.”
But next season there will be no distinction in merely coming close. Next season the Thrashers cannot fall a game short or a point short. Next season they have to play their way into May.
Toward that end, did the GM have any guarantees for 2007?
“Don’t get me started with that one,” said Waddell, the pain of one broken promise still too new and too raw.
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Thrashers / NHL
Hawks improvement seen, plans not
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
They’re better. They’re exciting, too, with more athleticism than they’ve had since their days of ‘Nique, Doc and Spud. They also flashed another hint of what could happen often inside Philips Arena when a packed house lost its mind Tuesday night after Tyronn Lue shot from the vicinity of South Beach to nail the game-winner against the Miami Heat in the final seconds.
Even so, the Hawks still aren’t good, and nobody knows all of the plan to change that sooner than later. Not the owners. Not the coaching staff. Certainly not the players, the media or the few who bother to attend Hawks home games, mostly when folks named O’Neal, Wade and Payton (theoretically) are in town.
Presumably general manager Billy Knight knows where the Hawks go from here, but he prefers not to say much worth printing about the direction of a franchise that improved enough on the court this season to rise from the worst team in the league to only the third- or fourth-worst.
This means that despite the maturation of the two Joshes, rookie Marvin Williams and Joe Johnson’s ascent to stardom in his first venture as The Man, the Hawks still have a ways to go. They began the season needing a point guard and a big man, especially after the shocking death of Jason Collier on Oct. 15, and they still need a point guard and a big man.
Whether Knight agrees or not is another matter. He did acknowledge before what was the Hawks’ last home game before their finale Wednesday in Cleveland that they do have to get bigger. As for a point guard, well, Knight shrugged. “I’m just not the type of guy who talks about stuff, because I think that’s counterproductive,” said Knight, who later watched Lue’s bomb send the Hawks to a 103-100 victory that actually was a fraud.
Coach Pat Riley was attending to family business in upstate New York. Plus, they placed Shaquille O’Neal, Dwyane Wade and Gary Payton on the inactive list before the game.
That said, Jason Williams, Payton’s backup, is a little more accomplished at point guard than Royal Ivey, the Hawks’ starter who gives way to Lue. “Everybody says that we need a point guard,” said Knight, pausing and smiling before adding in a hurry, “But it’s still debatable whether I agree with them or not. We’ll see how that goes. Certainly I like some of the players that we have to play that position. Is John Stockton coming out of retirement? Is Magic Johnson coming back?”
No, but the Portland Trail Blazers spent much of the season with a bunch of point guards. So did the Denver Nuggets. You would think that the Hawks could have worked a deal to get somebody from somewhere to complement Johnson in the backcourt. Instead, Knight said that he prefers not to make such a huge transaction during the season (although he did do so with Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Antoine Walker and Theo Ratliff during his previous two full years as Hawks’ GM, but who’s counting?). Not only that, the New Orleans Hornets have the Rookie of the Year and perennial star at point guard (Chris Paul) that the Hawks ignored in last year’s draft to obtain forward Marvin Williams.
We’re back to the plan again. The invisible one. Still, Knight said the plan is clear. It’s just that he says the details will stay in the deepest part of his brain. “If you chart out our team the way we do internally, month by month or by breaking it up by segments, it’s on an upswing,” said Knight, who paused again before hinting of the truth: When his plan comes to light, it better have the Hawks out of the darkness.
“Guess what? I know that my job is on the line. I understand that. That’s the nature of this business,” Knight said. “Nobody needs to remind me. I’ve been around the world and back, and I’ve made it back. I’ve been fired a lot, but not that many times. If it doesn’t work, it’s on me.”
Yep.
Permalink | Comments (31) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Terence Moore
Tip for Braves: Aim for wild card
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH: And this from the Baseball Hall of Fame, on scheduling a teleconference interview with the winner of the Ford Frick Award: “Only if recipient is living.” (Otherwise, it might be difficult establishing connection.)
• Hint to the Braves: Forget the Division Championship this season. Go for the wild card. Those National League teams seem to have better postseason luck.
• Strange that Gary Sheffield has been able to avoid headline association with the steroids scandal. Remember he had said at the time he joined the Braves: “I spent this winter working out with Barry Bonds and his trainers.” All the way from Tampa to the West Coast to work out? Nobody blinked.
• How about this? A NASCAR driver doing a radio commercial for seed. Not speed, but seed. Grass seed.
• Naturally, Leo Mazzone’s name often comes up when Braves pitching hits a doldrum. But look at this: Jason Marquis fails here, but becomes a big-game winner in St. Louis. Bruce Chen never got off the mark here, but has since won 27 games, 13 last year with the Orioles. Now, Mazzone gets a second chance with him in Baltimore. Stand by for later developments.
• One of the advertising game’s biggest hoaxes: “Consolidate your debts.” Yeah, but how do you make them go away?
• I guess Reggie Sanders just couldn’t stand the monotony. After seven seasons with seven different teams, he did an encore with the Cardinals last season, then hit the road again. But he didn’t leave Missouri. He only went west to Kansas City, where he’s leading the Royals in RBIs.
• When the Braves needed help last season, all they had to do was put in a call to Richmond or Mississippi, and every farmhand they called filled the need. A bit different this year. To fill out the bullpen, they picked a guy off the scrap heap, Ken Ray, then crossed the International Dateline for another, Peter Moylan, the pharmaceutical salesman from Australia.
• How genuinely refreshing to see an athlete, Aaron Baddeley in this case, proudly exhibit his faith, as he did at the Easter Sunday services, then go out and win the tournament at Hilton Head.
• Weird doings, that after 56 years at the AJC, I still get calls from solicitors asking if I’d like to subscribe to the paper.
You mean they didn’t know?
• Checking through the LPGA Press Guide I find six Kims, three Lees, two Kangs, a Jang, a Yang, a Han and a Lim, but only one Smith —a name Jackie Gallagher acquired by marriage.
• For the first time in its history, the National Football Foundation has an actual football player as its president. Ron Johnson, the former Michigan running back, succeeds Jon Hanson.
• When Ed Dyas played fullback at Auburn, he was also linebacker, punter, kicked field goals and extra points. “It wasn’t a case of sitting around waiting to go in, you were always on the field.” A few days ago, Dr. Ed Dyas, now a surgeon in Mobile, was awarded the National Foundation’s lifetime achievement award.
• Some jokester circulated an offer of a round of golf at Augusta National, on the condition of abstaining from sex for a year. He reported 31 per cent of the female respondents accepted. No report on the males. Just treading water, I guess.
• Name of a member of the PGA of America’s board of directors: Tim Shank.
• Putters get too much blame and too much credit. No putter ever missed a putt, only the hands upon it and the head behind it. • Milo Hamilton is a road warrior no more. From now on, he only does the Astros games at home. “Fifty-five years of planes, trains and buses is enough.”
• Breaking fast from the gate in the race for National League MVP: David Wright of the Mets.
• Fact of the Week: Takes 3,000 cows to supply the leather needed to manufacture footballs for the NFL for a season. … Selah.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
The Tuesday Countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
(On a train somewhere between Washington D.C. and New York, which is not to be confused with being on the shuttle between Neptune and Pluto, which I assume is where Mike Dunham was last night.)
10: Trains rock. But we just left Union Station in D.C. and I just realized my seat is facing backward. So if I suddenly start to feel queasy, there’s a chance The Tuesday Countdown might not make it to No. 1.
9: OK, Panic Button Pushers. If Leo Mazzone is such a miracle worker and his departure from the Braves is the primary reason Atlanta’s starters imploded to start the season, why do the Baltimore Orioles have a staff ERA of 4.82? Plug in, will ya?
8: Anybody for the over-under on the first NHL or NBA playoff game in Philips Arena? I don’t mean the year. I just mean: Before or after the Messiah?
7: The Thrashers buried themselves with a slow start this season and then a seven-game losing streak, mandating a miracle finish for a playoff run. That said, the elimination game Monday night falls on Mike Dunham.
6: We’re talking major mush head here. I mean, on the Damian Rhodes’ scale of major mush heads. It’s one thing for a goalie to have a bad night, as Dunham obviously did in the 6-4 loss to Washington. But to basically not accept any blame after the game or say something to the effect of, “I need to make a big save” or “I let my team down,” was inexcusable. Instead, Dunham — who was pulled after two weak goals, then re-inserted only because Michael Garnett strained his groin — blamed “funny bounces” He added: “It was just one of those nights. The puck kept finding a way to go in.”
5: The puck kept finding a way to go in? Wait, isn’t that where the goalie comes in?
4: Everybody always wants somebody fired. (Forget Dunham. He was on a one-year contract and won’t be back.) The usual candidates are the general manager or the coach. GM Don Waddell has never made the playoffs in six seasons. That alone should create heat. But a case could made that Waddell did his job before this season: 1) He acquired Marian Hossa after Dany Heatley blindsided the organization with a trade request; 2) He signed Bobby Holik, who was the team’s best player down the stretch after returning from an injury; 3) He picked up Niclas Havelid, who was the team’s best defenseman; 4) When goalie Pasi Nurminen suffered a career-ending knee injury just before training camp, Waddell signed a fairly solid former starter to back up Kari Lehtonen. Oh wait, that was Dunham. Never mind.
3: Coach Bob Hartley kept the Thrashers from falling apart during a blur of goalie injuries. But this was an erratic team all season and that’s a reflection of the coach. So who should get the most blame? Kari Lehtonen. Had he reported to camp in better condition, he might not have suffered a groin injury that led to him missing 35 starts. Yes, Lehtonen got the Thrashers back into the race. But he took them out of it to begin with.
2: There is indecision and then there is absurdity. Brett Favre has crossed the line. It has been four months since Favre has played a game. Are we really to believe he needs another week or month because he just can’t make up his mind about retirement?
1: More likely: Favre wants out of Green Bay to play one final season with a potential Super Bowl contender. He wants to force the Packers’ hand because he doesn’t want to look like the bad guy to fans. I never thought I would cite Mark Chumura as a source, but he probably was right when he called Favre “selfish.”
Permalink | Comments (18) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Buck, not puck, stops here
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Washington, D.C. — Kari Lehtonen, the No. 1 goalie, was back in Atlanta injured. Mike Dunham, the backup, should have been back in Atlanta, doing anything but whatever it was he was trying to do Monday. Michael Garnett, the backup to the backup, came in, suffered a groin strain, then left.
I’m sorry. But isn’t this where we came in?
“I can’t tell you how sick and tired I am about those groin injuries to goalies,” Bob Hartley said, although he sort of just did.
Funny (or not). But while the Thrashers’ playoff hopes were extinguished far deeper into the season than years past, the script pretty much has the same ending: Nobody can stop a puck, which tends to be a deciding factor in this sport.
The Thrashers lost to one of the league’s dregs, the Washington Capitals, 6-4. Five of those goals came against Dunham. It says something that Atlanta’s net seemed far better protected when empty. Hartley pulled him with 3:13 left for an extra attacker. Neither team scored. But it speaks to Hartley’s self-control that he only yanked Dunham when his first inclination probably was to stone him.
It came down to goaltending. It always comes down to goaltending, which is why for six seasons now, this team has failed to make the playoffs.
Change defensemen, forwards, coaches — it never matters in the NHL until a team can find a franchise goalie and keep him upright. The Thrashers think they have their franchise goalie in Lehtonen. But after tonight’s finale in Florida, he will have missed 41 starts with injuries. That’s half the season.
This game was a microcosm of the season, which isn’t what you want, given the Thrashers have been the league’s most maddening erratic team.
They lost Lehtonen one period into the season opener with a groin injury. They started 10-16-3 in a year when 10-16-3 figured only to be a history lesson, as in, “Remember a few years ago, when this team stunk?”
But 10-16-3 was followed by 13-2-3. Before the celebrating got out of hand, 13-2-3 was followed by a seven-game losing streak. Before the seven-game losing streak turned into a dirge, the Thrashers went 18-7-1.
They aren’t a hockey team — they’re a hallucinogen.
They didn’t stabilize in game No. 81. They touched emotional every peak and valley in the first four minutes.
Bobby Holik, the team’s best player since coming back from an injury after the Olympic break, scored just 11 seconds into the game. But Dunham imploded. He failed to cover a rebound and the Capitals’ Brooks Laich tied it when he poked it into the air over the sprawled goalie’s outstretched glove at 3:52. Just 23 seconds later, Washington took the lead when Dunham let a weak shot from Matt Pettinger get past him. Hartley pulled him.
Suddenly, the Thrashers’ playoff chances were in the hands of a rookie, Garnett, who the week before was in the minors. Garnett allowed one goal, then suffered a groin strain and was replaced before the second period by Dunham, who must have been in a wonderful frame of mind. The Thrashers rallied to take a 4-3 lead, but Dunham allowed three goals on 10 shots to open the third period.
Afterward, rather than simply saying he was awful, he blamed “just funny bounces.” Funny. Hah-hah. Was this any way to run a playoff drive?
“We get off to a good start, then suddenly down by a goal,” Holik said. “We tie it up and come back to take the lead, then suddenly we’re down again. That’s not how you play to get into the playoffs. That says it all. You don’t play like that. It’s unacceptable. You won’t get anywhere in this league giving up leads. We don’t have to look any farther than that first period.”
The Thrashers play their season finale tonight, having already set franchise records for wins, points and goals. But it won’t be nearly enough because they gave up six goals Monday night and 273 this season, give or take a touchdown.
Asked about the Thrashers’ goaltending afterward, Holik, ever the team guy said, “Absolutely no pointing fingers.” He didn’t have to point. It was pretty obvious.
Permalink | Comments (48) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Heartbeat gets stronger
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
One goal came from a rookie who says he fired a “no-look shot.” Another came from a veteran who missed the puck with his stick, but fortunately had his skate there as a backup. Two other goals came from a defenseman who is of no relation to Bobby Orr.
These are times when you don’t try to make sense of anything.
You just go with it.
The Thrashers won again. They didn’t look great doing it. They barely beat a Boston team that ended its season with 11 straight road losses and won two of its final 14 games. They were sloppy.
But art went out the window a long time ago. At this point, a team doesn’t care how it gets to the finish line: Glide. Stumble. Follow Monty Python’s Ministry of Funny Walks. Just get there.
A 4-3 win over Boston on Saturday meant there was still hope in catching Tampa Bay for the final playoff spot in the NHL’s Eastern Conference, and hope had an increasingly strong heartbeat.
The Thrashers’ playoff chances now stand at “62 1/2 percent.” That, according to the renowned mathematician Don Waddell. It was a guess. But then, so are BCS rankings. So go with it.
Two weeks ago, the Thrashers lost a game at Tampa Bay 4-3 to fall seven points behind the Lightning. Rookie Jim Slater was a minus-2 that night and decided to take drastic grooming measures. He buzzed his hair.
“We had 10 games left, and everybody was like, ‘We have to go on a 10-0 run,’ ” Slater said. “So I buzzed the head to see what it would do.”
Weird things started to happen — both to the team and Slater’s facial hair. His attempts at growing a beard had always failed in the past.
“The beard always grew in patches,” he said. “But after I buzzed the hair, the beard just started growing. Now the guys are calling me Abe Lincoln or Leprechaun. The beard just fell into place.”
The beard and the season, the second belatedly. After Slater’s follicle metamorphosis, the Thrashers beat Carolina. They are 6-1-1 since. Make that 8-1-1 and Slater may get a clipper endorsement.
The 23-year-old has been one of the team’s best players of late, playing wing on its most effective line (with Scott Mellanby and Bobby Holik). Slater had a goal and an assist Saturday. He tied the game, 2-2, in the first when he skated in on a two-on-one and fired a shot between the pads of goalie Tim Thomas. Only it really wasn’t that clear-cut. Slater initially focused on a camera attached to the back of the net.
“The camera was staring me right in the face on the 5-hole [between goalie Tim Thomas’s leg pads],” he said. “Then I looked down. It was one of those great, no-look shots. Put the head down and rip it.”
With the Thrashers trailing the Bruins again, 3-2 in the third, Slater set up Mellanby on another two-on-one. Mellanby couldn’t get his stick on the puck, but it ricocheted off his skate into the net for the tying goal.
Three minutes later, defenseman Andy Sutton scored his second goal of the game to give the Thrashers their first lead. It was Sutton’s second two-goal game in three games. We’re talking about somebody who has never scored more than eight in a season.
But this is what this season has become. The Thrashers went into the Olympic break a .500 team with a recent seven-game losing streak. They are 15-6-1 since. They officially broke the franchise record for “must-win” games long ago.
“I don’t know how we continue to get this done, night after night,” Holik said. “We’re making mistakes and we’re getting away with it, but … whew.”
As is tradition for the final home game of the regular season, the Thrashers gave away their jerseys to selected fans after the game.
Two weeks ago, nobody figured that they might need them back.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Even the governor takes in the Steeplechase
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Kingston — For 40 years horses had been jumping brush fences in the interest of improving speech around Atlanta, and rarely did this pastoral scene attract the interest of our governors. This time, it did. This time the governor even came, he spoke, and Sonny Perdue presented the winner’s trophy to a fellow who was in a state of sweaty exhiliration, he so unexpectedly found himself in the winner’s nook.
“We really thought we were over our head,” Carl Gessler Jr. said. His six-year-old jumper named Quem se Atreve — consult your Portuguese translator — had taken the lead in this two-mile Atlanta Steeplechase feature and stubbornly refused to give it up. “He had just broken his maiden at Camden two weeks ago, and we had tried jumping after he was such a failure on the flat track,” Gessler continued, his face a-glow with flecks of perspiration.
The Georgia Cup is a Grade II race, sponsored by Coca-Cola, in this world of the hurdling horse, a refuge for thoroughbreds who don’t run fast enough. That was the case of Quem se Atreve, who at one time was one of the most promising three-year-olds in Brazil. Gessler, a Huntsville, Ala., businessman who grew up amid the fragrance of the barn area at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas, commissioned his purchase along with some other thoroughbreds through Ken McPeek, the trainer who won the biggest Belmont upset in history with another Brazilian import, Sarava, four years ago.
“We ran him in a flat race and he came in last, with Edgar Prado riding. We put him in another. Same result. We tried nothing but high-level jockeys, and he still never showed anything,” Gessler said. He had only raced on the flats, and failed miserably, and he was puzzled. What next? “Maybe he wants to jump over something,” McPeak told Gessler. So they gave him the chance, called Jack Fisher, a friend who trains jumpers, and Quem se Atreve went back to school again. Now he has won two races in a row, both worth $45,000 of $75,000 purses, and Gessler, who operates at Sarah Lyn Stable, was so excited he didn’t know how much he’d won. Two entries shared the most attention — Mixed Up, trained by the leading trainer in steeplechase, Jonathan Sheppard, and winner of an undercard event here last year, and Mauritania, a 9-year-old campaigner. Mixed Up finished second by half a length, but Mauritania was out of the money. Quem se Atreve seemingly had directed his career onto another course, exciting to all his connections, Jack Fisher, his Irish jockey Paddy Young, and all the Gesslers.
It was another grand day in this elbow of the Etowah River, sunny with a freshening wind. Big band music blaring out over the acreage, followed by the skirling of bagpipes. The governor’s helicopter was late arriving, but he joined in the festivities with gubernatorial zeal.
It is a sadness that this happens only once a year in our territory. It is major in the hearts of horse lovers, but actually this is just another stop on the second-level circuit of the National Steeplechase Association, which opened in South Florida in early March. The tour continued on into South Carolina, now Georgia and next week in Kentucky. Several leading jumpers tested the hedges in Camden and Aiken, then headed on to Keeneland to ready up for the $150,000 Royal Chase next week, bypassing Atlanta. The total purse here, in this 41st meeting, was $165,000 for six races.
But so much for the fiscal details of a glowing day devoted to an ancient sport and to Atlanta Speech School. This broadland of meadow and grassy hillside is some 75 miles north of Atlanta, totally involved in its own wilderness, but some 20,000 spirited sportspeople annually find their way here for the good air, the picnicking and the sight, uncommon around our state, of horses leaping gleefully over hedges. There were three spills, but no injuries.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Furman Bisher
Thrashers follow charming script
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Such a charming little story: A team that has never made the playoffs can, with a little help, make the playoffs on the final night of its sixth season. A franchise looking to plant its flag atop the Atlanta skyline is positioned for one of those breathless finishes that, almost 15 years ago, enabled another Atlanta team to captivate a city.
With three games to go, the Thrashers are knocking on the door. Can the hockey gods fail to grant entrance?
“If we get in, I don’t know that you could ever write a better script,” said Don Waddell, the general manager since inception. “A franchise that has gone through the death of a player [Dan Snyder] and an ownership transfer and five goalies [this season], and we’ve still got a chance.”
They do. They have to win their last three games. (The first comes today against Boston at Philips Arena; the final two are on the road Monday and Tuesday.) If the Thrashers claim the maximum six points, they’ll make the playoffs if Tampa Bay — the reigning Stanley Cup holder — loses once in regulation. A week ago, you wouldn’t have thought the Lightening was in danger, but it has lost its last three games.
“I’d put our chances at 50 percent,” said Waddell, speaking Friday afternoon. “If Tampa Bay loses tonight, our chances go up by 10 or 15 percent.” And the Lightning lost in a shootout.
Because the struggle for the East’s last playoff spot hasn’t been just an A or B thing — New Jersey and Montreal were also in the mix until buying themselves clearance — everyone associated with the Thrashers has monitored multiple results these last six weeks.
It got so agonizing that Waddell had to bring himself to stop formulating scenarios. He has since resumed the procedure, and he was watching Sunday when Tampa Bay lost to Florida, a game that changed the face of the chase.
“That gave us a lift,” he said. “I’m not saying the result Tuesday [the Thrashers beat the Lightning 6-2] would have been different, but if Tampa Bay would have won Sunday, they could have clinched against us. That would have made it tougher.”
As happens in every frenzied stretch run in every sport, the Thrashers have had their share of palpitations. Ilya Kovalchuk scored his 50th goal with 4.3 seconds remaining to force overtime in Tampa last week and gain his team a precious point. On March 23, the Thrashers surged from 4-1 down to beat New Jersey in overtime. Of their nine wins last month, three came in OT, three more in shootouts. Yeah, they’ve lived on the edge.
And that’s the point: They live still. An operation that hasn’t grown beyond its niche in a trendy marketplace suddenly has a shot at getting really big really fast. “This [late run] is not only big for the franchise, it’s big for the year,” said Waddell, and here’s what he means: Should the Thrashers make the playoffs, they’ll arrive not as an awed No. 8 seed but as a certifiably Hot Team. Such is the nature of the NHL playoffs that being hot matters way more than being favored: The seventh-seeded Mighty Ducks weren’t eliminated until Game 7 of the 2003 Cup finals.
“If we get in,” Waddell said, “we’d go in on a six-game winning streak, thinking we can beat anybody we play.”
Sure, much has to happen first. But which is the better story: Tampa Bay creeping in to defend its title or the upstart Thrashers storming the gates? Which was the better story back in 1991 — the imperial Dodgers winning the NL West yet again or the Braves going worst-to-first?
“We’re playing our last home game of the year, and we’re still alive,” Waddell said. “Did I think we’d be in the position [when the season began]? No, I thought we’d be in the playoffs by now. But this is where we are, and I think we’ve got a good chance of winning our three games.”
Beyond that, it’s in the lap of the hockey gods. The Thrashers are praying those deities don’t have hearts of ice.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Thrashers / NHL
Braves missing Mazzone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
The silence was deafening among many of the Braves pitchers when Leo Mazzone left after last season as their coach. It was disgusting.
When they did speak, the words weren’t warm and cuddly. Some mentioned his stubbornness. Others said he was intimidating. Gruff. A little volcano with a tomahawk across its chest.
In other words, Mazzone was exactly what they needed. The same goes for any pitching staff that wants to win and dominate. “I heard that I was being compared to Bobby Knight, and I thought to myself, ‘Well, heck, the last I looked he’s going into the Hall of Fame.’ That actually was one of the best compliments I could have gotten,” said Mazzone, 57, laughing over the phone Thursday from Tampa, where his Baltimore Orioles were preparing to face the Devil Rays.
Mazzone with the Orioles? That still doesn’t sound right. You can blame his departure after 14 years of evolving into the greatest pitching coach ever on his best friend managing the Orioles and a yearly salary of $500,000. That’s double what he got from the organization that he still respects, and it’s more loot than anybody gets among his peers.
The drive also is easier for an elderly couple from Westernport, Md., to Camden Yards as opposed to Turner Field. “Dad’s 83 and Mom’s 79, and they came down for the weekend series against Boston,” said Mazzone of Tony and Maxine, proud of a son who already has at least the bill of his cap in Cooperstown. “(Maryland) is my home state, and (Orioles manager) Sam Perlozzo’s father and my father coached against each other when we were kids. So there are a lot of connections. When you add the other part [money, money, money], it was a no-brainer.”
Yeah, well. He’s right.
Unfortunately.
Nothing against Roger McDowell, Mazzone’s affable replacement who has the knowledge and the personality to become good, but the Braves had somebody who already was great. Under Mazzone, the Braves spent 12 years finishing first or second in the majors in team ERA. Now, with the horrific struggles of ace Tim Hudson and the rest of a staff that entered Thursday night’s game at Turner Field against the Philadelphia Phillies allowing more than a touchdown (6.63 ERA) per game, only the Kansas City Royals and the Devil Rays had worse team ERAs.
It’s early, though. The Braves have too many gifted arms to keep from holding teams to around a field goal by the end of May. They also have Bobby Cox, baseball’s best manager ever and a noted pitching guru. Even so, contrary to those who attribute Mazzone’s success to Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, historians will cite Mazzone as a primary catalyst behind the Braves’ run of 14 consecutive trips to the playoffs and those pitchers becoming Cy Maddux, Cy Glavine and Cy Smoltz.
Only Smoltz remains from the Big Three, and even his numbers after two starts (15 hits, nine earned runs in 12 innings) are un-Leo like.
“Well,” Mazzone said, pausing, before chuckling. He was reflecting on an Orioles’ pitching staff that entered Thursday’s action with more walks (57) than anybody. “I tell you what. I’ve got all that I can handle right here,” Mazzone added. “I mean, (Wednesday night) we had a ball game where we had a young kid named Daniel Cabrera, and listen to this line score: Five innings, three hits, one run, nine walks and 10 strikeouts and 110 pitches.”
Mazzone sighed, admitting that he has two teams of the heart. While the Orioles are managed by his favorite pal in life, the Braves are managed by the guy that Mazzone ranked as a father figure during his 15 years as his pitching coach.
“I always look up on the scoreboard for ‘Atlanta,’ and, of course, you always think about Bobby (Cox), and you think about Smoltzie, and you think about (bullpen coach) Bobby Dews, and you just root like heck for them,” Mazzone said, before returning only part of his mind to the Orioles. “On a couple of balls this year, I’m thinking to myself, ‘Well, there’s an out,’ and then it’s like, ‘Uh-oh. It got through.’ When you watch the game being played, and you don’t have Rafael Furcal at shortstop or Andruw Jones in center, it’s a little different there.”
Almost as different as not having somebody rocking next to Cox and keeping those touchdowns away.
Permalink | Comments (116) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
I think…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Some days I think I like the “I think” format for Quick Hits. Other days I think I don’t. This is one of the days I think I do. So here, I think, goes:
I think the Braves will win another division title.
I think they’ll need different relievers to do it, though.
I think the Thrashers will make the playoffs by two points.
I think the Hawks will miss the playoffs by two hundred or so points.
I think Matthew Stafford will be starting by October.
I think Jeff Francoeur will be hitting by October.
I think the worst thing about every Opening Night is the traffic after the game. (And I mean looonnnggg after the game.)
I think the Hawks should make a public declaration that they will not draft anyone taller than 6-foot-4 or shorter than 6-10.
I think Marcus Williams (point guard, UConn) or LaMarcus Aldridge (center, Texas) would do nicely.
I think Roger McDowell is a nice guy in a tough spot.
I think N.C. State is having an awfully hard time finding a coach for a school that has two NCAA championships to its name.
I think this Final Four was the worst I’ve ever seen, and what made it even more deflating was that the tournament to that point had been the absolute best.
I think baseball should forget about playing up Barry Bonds’ assault on the home run record and promote the real achievement — Bobby Cox’s climb up the all-time ejection charts. (He’s closing in on Leo Durocher, who’s No. 2 behind the leader John McGraw.) I think grouchiness of an historic nature needs to be trumpeted to the heavens.
I think the thing that makes Cox the grouchiest isn’t balls and strikes but sitting in postgame traffic. To wit: He needed more than 2 1/2 hours to get from the park to his Adairsville farm after Monday’s game.
I think it’s a wonder he didn’t eject himself from his own truck.
Permalink | Comments (26) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
The Natural gets a whiff of adversity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
An instructive thing happened Monday night. For the first time in his ridiculously charmed young life, the boy king heard the royal raspberry. And Jeff Francoeur reacted not as a seasoned pro who has learned to take the bad with the good but as the 22-year-old he is.
Talking about the experience two days later, he uses all manner of euphemism. “It was interesting,” he says. And: “It was different.” And: “It was kind of funny.” But over the course of a prolonged discussion it’s clear the concept of being booed in his home park has left the Braves’ golden child more hurt and miffed than amused.
“It surprised me a little bit,” he says. And then: “What have you done for me lately?” Mouthing the cliché, he smiles — not the familiar Francoeur 200-watt grin but a chastened version. Every pro athlete gets booed at some point, but the first boo stings like no other ever will.
Here’s what happened to Francoeur. With an aim toward throwing out the fleet Jimmy Rollins at third base, he whiffed on Aaron Rowand’s single to right-center, the upshot being that Rollins scored and Rowand advanced to third. And more than a few Turner Field patrons took the error as cause to lambaste the same player who was so extravagantly lauded last summer.
The boos weren’t deafening, but they were loud enough to resonate in the right fielder’s reddened ears. “It’s a humbling thing,” Francoeur says, and here his choice of words is utterly apt. Even with baseball being the most humbling of sports, he went 22 years without really knowing what it is to be humbled. “From Little League to high school to the minors to the major leagues, I’ve never had a period when I’ve struggled like this.”
So what do you do when you’ve known only success and you find yourself 2-for-33 (.061) after eight games? “It’s been a tough start,” Francoeur says, “but the good Lord has instilled in me a work ethic. I’m coming in at 12:30 and working on things.”
Without prompting, he anticipates the next question. “But I’m not overdoing it, either,” he says. “Just making sure I’m covering the bases.”
He has also sought counsel from everyone in a position to offer it. From John Smoltz, who knows how rookie success ratchets up expectations past the point of practicality. From Andruw Jones, who overrode a tepid April to hit 51 homers last season. From former Brave J.D. Drew, who opened last season 0-for-25 but wound up hitting .317.
“I’ve learned that a baseball season is 162 games,” Francoeur says. And then: “We’re not one-twentieth done. This is just a small little glitch.” And then: “Sometimes I forget I’m 22 — I’ve got a lot to learn.”
He says he feels comfortable at the plate. He says he was satisfied with Monday’s 0-for-4, results notwithstanding. “Except for a slider inside on my last at-bat, I didn’t swing at any bad pitches.”
Because he’s Jeff Francoeur, local hero since he was a Parkview sophomore and a Sports Illustrated cover boy his second month in the majors, he’ll never sneak up on anybody. He knows he has been outrageously fortunate. “Not saying I’ve never had to work at it,” he says, “but sometimes things have come easy. But in the major leagues you have to make adjustments.”
And now the good news: Francoeur is gifted enough and clever enough to adjust to most anything. Failure is new for him, but he won’t fail forever. Back to Drew: “He was being booed at home [Dodger Stadium] last year, but he said he just tried to take it day by day and watch the numbers go up.”
Finally Jeff Francoeur flashes the staple smile, nothing rueful in this one. “We play Houston on Oct. 1 at 1 p.m.,” he says. “At 4:30 that day, I think everything will be right where it needs to be.”
And the boos of April 10? He’ll remember them always, but he has already taken to putting them in context. “When he had that slump [0-for-32 in 2004], they booed Derek Jeter in New York. That’s a perfect example. They love Jeter to death in New York.”
Permalink | Comments (56) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Fond memories of Atlanta’s first Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
To be perfectly straight with you, you had to be here to know the feeling. Atlanta was in the major leagues. The Braves had divorced Milwaukee and taken up housekeeping with us. The divorce had been ugly. Lawyers and judges jawing back and forth, all depending on whose court you were in. The good guys had won and the Braves were ours.
The manager, Bobby Bragan, as Southern as black-eyed peas, tells his own particular story, with tongue in cheek. “I told them in Milwaukee that I was leaving, and I got a biggest ovation I ever got.” He paused for effect. “But I’m taking the team with me.”
Sure enough, here they were, on the night of April 12, 1966, playing Pittsburgh after all the ceremonials that accompany such a coming-out. Old Atlanta Stadium — Fulton County hadn’t anted up yet — was rocking with 50,671 patrons intoxicated with pride. The Braves lost, 3-2, when Willie Stargell delivered a bomb into the rightfield stands. Seems I remember it carried to the upper deck, but a lot of memories get garbled after years of recycling.
Well, would you believe, the next night only 12,721 people showed up. Wait a minute! You got yourself in the major leagues and you stay away because you lost the first game? Oh boy, was that a precursor of things to come, you know, the playoff games that didn’t sell out. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This April 12th, Atlanta celebrated the Braves of ‘66. They had been summoned for a curtain call 40 years later, some who hadn’t seen one another since that season. Not all could be here. Joe Torre and Felipe Alou had previous commitments. They were managing their own teams. Henry Aaron, for some reason, had decided something else was more pressing. Mack Jones and Gary Geiger have passed on. There was much back-slapping, and that old standby, “Man, you’re looking good,” and a lot of gray hair and few paunches. What you don’t do at a reunion, you never risk a look of surprise, for you may get one back. It’s all in the eyes of the beholder.
Charlie Vaughn was probably the youngest, he’s now 58, and you wonder who’s Charlie Vaughn. Well, as a 19-year-old he had the look of a rare gem, a lefthander with a level head and great stuff. Whitlow Wyatt, the pitching coach, fell in love with him. But, alas, the old soupbone — that’s a 1960’s term for pitching arm — went South on him. Charlie went back to Brownsville, Texas, got into the hardware business and there he still lives. Mike de la Hoz, another enterprising type, left and went to college, got a degree in finance and has operated his own company in Miami for years.
Now, back to ‘66. It was different in those days. Cloninger went the 13-inning distance that night. Horrors! No set-up man, followed by another, then a closer and the bullpen parade we’re used to today. Did Tony’s arm fall off? He won his next start, pitched 258 innings, and at bat, hit two grand slam home runs in a game against the Giants. He and Ken Johnson both pitched 11 complete games.
Denver Lemaster pitched ten and one of them was the game of the year. Bobby Bragan had just been fired, not his first time, and it was Billy Hitchcock’s first day on the job. LeMaster was matched against Sandy Koufax, and the crowd came out for this one, largest of the season. It was 1-1 when the rain came, and after midnight when play resumed, upon which Eddie Mathews hit a Koufax pitch into the stands in the bottom of the ninth and Lemaster won the battle of the lefthanders.
There were other things that weren’t the same. Paychecks, for instance. Bragan was paid $20,000 to manage the team. Players had roommates on the road. The press guide was four inches by nine, and an eighth of an inch thick. You could carry it in your vest pocket. Players didn’t mind spending time with sports writers, and sometimes we picked up the check. But none of us made a lot of money, so we didn’t have that social barrier.
This April 12 was a great day, first at lunch in the 755 Club, then later at the game when the first Atlanta Braves took their bows and renewed some old, if distant, acquaintances. It was a coming together of eras, from Bobby to Bobby. Bragan to Cox. They didn’t win the pennant, but many of them were still there when the Braves won their first division championship four years later. So you might say they set a standard. You can’t take this away from them: They will always be Atlanta’s first Braves.
Permalink | Comments (28) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Peerless’ new deal is priceless
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
This Peerless Price thing is, is … well, I was going to say that it is bizarre, but I really want to say that it is hilarious.
Go ahead. Laugh with me, because this is a hoot. I mean, the wide receiver with only one standout year on his resume was cut by two different teams last year within a five-month period, and he just signed a contract with the Buffalo Bills for four years.
That’s right – FOUR years.
Oh, and the contract is worth more than $10 million.
That’s right – $10 million.
If that isn’t enough, these are the same Bills who drafted Price originally in 1999 and shipped him away (at his request) to Atlanta where he was a $37-million bust for two years through August 2005.
So Price hooked on with the Dallas Cowboys soon after he was cut by the Falcons, and then he was cut by the Cowboys, and now he is …
I’m in stitches.
Permalink | Comments (82) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
The Price is right?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
This Peerless Price thing is, is … well, I was going to say that it is bizarre, but I really want to say that it is hilarious.
Go ahead. Laugh with me, because this is a hoot. I mean, the wide receiver with only one standout year on his resume was cut by two different teams last year within a five-month period, and he just signed a contract with the Buffalo Bills for four years.
That’s right – FOUR years.
Oh, and the contract is worth more than $10 million.
That’s right – $10 million.
If that isn’t enough, these are the same Bills who drafted Price originally in 1999 and shipped him away (at his request) to Atlanta where he was a $37 million bust for two years through August 2005.
So Price hooked on with the Dallas Cowboys soon after he was cut by the Falcons, and then he was cut by the Cowboys, and now he is …
I’m in stitches.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Lombardi trophy is won in April
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Free agents in the NFL? Too risky. For every Reggie White, you’re likely to get five Peerless Price clones times a Gus Frerotte and a Monte Beisel. Not only that, few teams ever have traded their way to a world championship. If you wish to play in February someday, as in the Super Bowl, it’s about April right now, as in the draft, as in the Falcons had better continue flashing signs that they finally have a clue when they’re on the clock.
So I’m happy to report that Falcons general manager Rich McKay was studying film of prospective draftees Tuesday in Flowery Branch when I called.
“The core of your team is always going to come from the draft, because free agency is an expensive venture and is mainly used to complement your team and is not used to build your team,” said McKay, who has turned such words into results. He did so in Tampa Bay when he used the likes of Warren Sapp and Derrick Brooks to build the Buccaneers into a perennial contender that went all the way. Plus, since McKay began running a Falcons franchise two drafts ago that was noted for picking tight ends — you know, just because — and relatives to Bozo The Clown, they’ve kept the circus music away during the NFL’s two most famous days in New York.
Twelve of McKay’s picks for the Falcons have played significantly during the past two seasons. In other words, those other moves for the Falcons are mostly for show. McKay disagreed, of course, saying of his four key acquisitions in the offseason, “I expect all of them to help us significantly, because they come at positions where last year we didn’t get the performances that we needed.”
That’s true. But here’s the rest of the story as I see it. As for the good, the Falcons recognized that they were absolutely brutal in the secondary and that they had some ugliness along the offensive and defensive lines.
They responded through the combination of (uh-oh) free agency and trades to acquire Lawyer Milloy and Chris Crocker for those safety positions, John Abraham to play right defensive end and Wayne Gandy to protect a scrambling Michael Vick at left tackle. Just by lining up and breathing, they are better for the Falcons than their predecessors.
As for the bad, how much time do you have? Courtesy of nearly 33-year-old legs, Milloy left his highly productive years with the Patriots when he departed New England after the 2002 season for Buffalo. Then there is Crocker, who likely is better than Keion Carpenter and Bryan Scott, the Falcons’ starters on a squad that was a quarterback’s best friend. Still, if Cleveland Browns coach Romeo Crennel, a defensive wiz, didn’t wish to keep Crocker around to improve one of the league’s worst defenses, you have to wonder if Chris Crocker has a tendency to resemble Betty Crocker.
You also have Wayne Gandy, a stud for the Pittsburgh Steelers. That was back during the dark ages when Milloy was a stud for the Patriots. The New Orleans Saints couldn’t wait to move their fading 12-year veteran and his 315 pounds. The thing is, given the significant number of times that defensive ends used previous Falcons left tackle Kevin Shaffer as an open door toward smacking Vick to the ground, Gandy is an improvement. If nothing else, Gandy has 25 more pounds than Shaffer for a defender to battle his way through.
Finally, Abraham is the certified pass rusher that the Falcons need. In six NFL seasons, he has 53 1/2 sacks, including 10 1/2 last season. The problem? Just like Brady Smith, the Falcons’ previous right defensive end, Abraham has accumulated more than few bumps and bruises. He has missed large chunks of games courtesy of everything from a sports hernia to a damaged knee.
The Falcons are 17 days from what matters the most, though. They won’t have their No. 1 pick (traded to acquire Abraham), but they’ll have six other ones, starting with the 47th in the second round. “We just feel like those guys (Milloy, Crocker, Abraham and Gandy) can help us a lot and help us a lot this year,” McKay said, before adding quickly, “But, typically the guys who are going to help you win year in and year out, those guys come through the draft.”
Yeah, he gets it.
Permalink | Comments (52) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Pitching staff digs itself out of first-week hole
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Spring being the hot time for baseball books — La Russa’s last year, steroids this year — we can only imagine the publishing proposals the season’s first week have generated. Working titles surely include: “From Haughty To Has-Been: How I Let My Pitching Coach Leave Without Even A Counteroffer And Now My Whole Operation Is Circling The Drain,” by John Schuerholz, erstwhile genius.
“So Who’s Overbearing And Overrated Now?” by Leo Mazzone, the aforementioned pitching coach. And finally: “Can I Have A Second Shot At That First Impression? Please?” by Roger McDowell, harried successor.
The Braves opened the home half of their six-month regular season Monday night bearing the most incongruous number the sport has seen since Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs. The team that has pitched better than any other over the past 15 seasons arrived at Turner Field with the worst ERA — pause for effect — in all of baseball.
And this wasn’t a case of one bad inning fluffing up an otherwise attractive number. This was a case of a week’s worth of bad innings. Braves pitchers yielded 109 baserunners in the first seven games. No starter posted a win on the West Coast. The bullpen nearly blew the road trip’s first game and did blow the last.
In sum, it wasn’t the week the man who replaced the game’s most renowned pitching coach had planned as an opening statement. To his credit, McDowell reported to work Monday saying he’d given his status no thought whatsoever. “It’s not something I concern myself with. I’m concerned with, from the standpoint of this pitching staff, getting the starters to pitch deep into games.”
McDowell wants what Mazzone wanted, what every pitching coach since the beginning of time has wanted — starters eating innings, starters giving their team a chance to win. Again to his credit, McDowell looked on his pitchers’ California crash for what it was. “An unfortunate start,” he said. “Things go in cycles, and we’re struggling a little bit from a staff standpoint in making some pitches. … It could have been worse than 3-4.”
Well, yeah. The Braves scored enough runs in Week 1 to win seven games in most any other week, and their offensive largess prevented a halting start from becoming an utter wipeout. But now for the good news: That was one week, merely the first of 26. Said McDowell, almost smiling: “I have an understanding about the length of a season.”
Already he reports heartening signs. “[John] Smoltz going seven innings Sunday was a huge positive. Kyle Davies going five innings [Friday] was a huge positive. Tim Hudson threw two bad pitches and got behind, but somewhere down the line those pitches will get popped up. … You have to like the track record of our starters.”
Monday marked another advance. John Thomson, who wasn’t in the rotation until Horacio Ramirez hurt himself, worked five nearly scoreless, if not exactly tidy, innings. The bullpen wasted one two-run lead but held another. The staff ERA dropped from 7.58 to 6.85, which means the Braves are no longer the most pliant team in the bigs.
“Kind of like you’d script it out,” McDowell said afterward. “It doesn’t always work that way, but this was like …”
He searched for the words. He found them. “A normal baseball game,” he said.
More than anything, the standard-issue home opener offered no indication that Week 1 was anything but an ugly blip. And even though first impressions can be powerful, it should be noted that the new pitching coach didn’t form his opinion of this staff in one rainy week on the Left Coast. He formed his in spring training, and this is what he thought: “That everyone was where he needed to be. And I still think that.”
So spoke Roger McDowell, presumably including himself in that mix.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Plenty of greatness to go around in this Masters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Augusta — Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods virtually jump-started their careers in golf winning the Masters. Palmer was 28 when he won his first, Nicklaus 23 and Woods 21. Phil Mickelson was 33 when he won his first, but now that he has put two together, would it be presumptuous to suggest that we have a new era in bloom at Augusta National?
It was another one of those Sundays in which Saturday’s unfinished business had to be taken care of first, carryover from the third round made necessary because of another one of those infernal rainouts. Mickelson began the fourth round about 2:52 in the afternoon, a stroke in the lead over Fred Couples. As much as the televisors attempted to make the two of them sound like old playmates, Freddie is 11 years old than Phil, but say this for them: They did stroll around the course chit-chatting between shots like two Rotarians playing for the cigars.
Mickelson was never out of the lead, threatened a time or two, but never out. As for Couples, he effectively eliminated himself when he had to use three putts to get down from about 5 feet on the 14th green. As always, though, there was the figure of Tiger Woods lurking, and at times even hovering over the scene. You see, it is to be presumed that until all the players have been accounted for and all the scores have been toted up, no field is safe from a potential Tiger surge. You win four times here, the very mention of your name can be considered a threat.
Woods was the beneficiary of what would seem to have been a severe mismatch. He was paired with Tim Clark, a wisp of a South African who uses one of those putters about as tall as he is, an educational guest of the United States who schooled at N.C. State. Woods is a bomber who regularly hits the ball on an (official) average of 302.9 yards last year. Clark’s average was 283, but settled into a 276-yard slump this year. Each had played the first 54 holes in 214 strokes, in a tie in fourth place. Clark would be spending his afternoon an average of 40-50 yards in Woods’ rear-view mirror.
Clark, 30, five years on the PGA Tour, never flinched. He had had one such pressure experience when he was in contention in the PGA Championship the year Shaun Micheel won at Rochester. As he said of Tiger, “He was always 40 or 50 yards out in front of me, but I kept hitting the ball the way I always do.”
In the end, Clark settled snuggly in second place behind Mickelson, and he did it his own way: He blasted out of a bunker into the cup on the 18th hole, finished at 283, two strokes back of the champion, and he and his little slingshot game had beaten the cannonade of the No. 1 player in the world.
But, of course, so had Mickelson, for the second time. It had been a virtual crusade of his, taking dead aim on the Masters. He had taken a long winter’s respite and played in the those events aimed at delivering him to the trophy ceremony on the green of Augusta National as the sun set Sunday. He tuned up on the West Coast, worked his way through selected events in Florida, then turned up the jets in the BellSouth, which he won for the third time.
Then came the migration to Augusta. He had played a few practice rounds after hearing horror stories about course renovations. Then he turned in rounds of 70, 72, 70, and on this balmy Sunday afternoon capped it all off with a 69, that should have been a 68. He got careless coming home, missed the green at 18 and it cost him a bogey, and the highest winning score since Mike Weir’s score of 281 in 2003.
It was an impressive day of concentrated work, for he never took a step backward, until the finishing hole. He had, with this accomplishment, reached the peak of his career, a third major to go with the Masters two years ago and the PGA Championship at Baltusrol.
Woods came home in 70 strokes, clustered in a tie with four others, Chad Campbell, Retief Goosen, Jose Marie Olazabal and Couples.
There had been a strong Spanish surge at one time during the afternoon, when Miguel Angel Jimenez rode into contention in tandem with Olazabal. Senor Jimenez wears a bushy ponytail, and it was feared, that had he won, all members of Augusta National would be obligated to wear similar headdress in tribute. Mickelson spared them.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf
Mickelson now golf’s other major force
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Augusta — This wasn’t a win. It was an elevation.
This wasn’t two years ago, when Phil Mickelson won a Masters, and it seemed more like a glorious exorcism of 42 previous majors. It wasn’t even last August in Baltusrol, when he won the PGA Championship. That qualified as mere reaffirmation of being one of the game’s elite players.
This makes three majors in three years and two jewels in a row. You win three majors in three years and two consecutively, there’s only one guy who can be compared with you — the same one who wrapped you in a green jacket Sunday.
“He did everything he needed to do to win,” Tiger Woods said Sunday.
And this, on his own game: “I’m probably going to go snap this putter in about eight pieces.”
Woods crumbles on the greens and bogeys three holes in the final round. Mickelson makes nothing but pars and birdies in 28 of his last 29 holes, until the 72nd hole when he had a three-shot lead and it didn’t really matter.
Who switched coats?
“The stress-free walk up 18 was incredible,” Mickelson said.
In 2004, he needed a birdie on 18 to avoid a playoff with Ernie Els. Last year, he needed a birdie on 18 to break a tie with Thomas Bjorn and Steve Elkington at the PGA.
So now he’s not just winning. He’s taking the drama out of it.
He ripped through the BellSouth Classic the week before, opening with a 63 and then making it look easy. He didn’t quite replicate those numbers in Augusta. He just looked a lot more at home than he used to. You come to these lengthened fairways and glass-like, rolling greens and shoot 70-72-70-69 — while others implode — then you have proved that you belong. You have separated yourself.
“The monkey is off his back around here,” said Jose Maria Olazabal, among those who tried to make a Sunday run at the leader. “He’s playing more relaxed than if he hadn’t won before.”
Mickelson used to be the one who wilted. From 1999 to 2002, he seemed to be channeling Greg Norman. Two seconds in the U.S. Open. Another second in the PGA. Three thirds at Augusta National. Place, show or forget it.
That all changed in 2004. Mickelson says the transformation began before the season when he changed his tournament preparation and began playing “a more controlled game.” But the affirmation came with the win in the Masters.
Now he doesn’t wilt. They wilt around him.
Playing partner Fred Couples was only one shot back through 10. Then he missed a 3-foot putt to bogey No. 11 and three-putted No. 14 to drop three shots back. Bye-bye, Freddy.
Olazabal went on a tear with birdies on 13 and 14 and an eagle on 15 to go to 5 under, one behind Mickelson. But he bogeyed 16, Mickelson birdied 13, and the space never closed.
Rocco Mediate was within three of the lead until self-immolation on the 12th, taking a 10. Miguel Angel Jimenez was tied for the lead, then fell back. Tim Clark got to within two shots, then faded. “I’m sure I’m the last guy he was worrying about out there,” he said.
There were others. It was like kids taking turns jumping for the cookie jar on the top shelf, then descending empty-handed.
Woods has made his mark on Sundays in majors. He was window dressing in this one. He drove the ball fine most of the day but was mortal on the greens. Twice he missed potential eagle putts of 10 feet (Nos. 13 and 15).
When the day was over, Woods held the traditional green jacket for Mickelson, the year after Mickelson had done the same for Woods. You might want to get use to this exchange. Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer won 10 Masters between them. This makes six for Woods (four) and Mickelson (two).
“Well, I don’t want to really trade next year,” Mickelson said, laughing. “I certainly enjoyed having the jacket put on me rather than being the one who put the jacket on someone else.
“This gives me an incredible feeling of accomplishment.”
First he goes 0-for-42. Then he win three majors in a span of nine.
“Sound better, huh?” he said.
Sounds better. Looks better. Fits right.
Mickelson doesn’t stand alone. But there’s only one who stands with him.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Golf, Jeff Schultz
Weather planning sub-par
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Augusta — Rain interrupted the Masters Tournament for the fifth straight year Saturday. Even Augusta National can’t control these and other acts of God, which at least partly explains why Moses was given the Ten Commandments but never a green jacket.
But couldn’t things have been handled just a little bit better Saturday?
Rain had been in Saturday’s forecast for days. Unlike many forecasts, this one didn’t implode. By the time the last golfer had finished his second round Friday, it was a foregone conclusion that the next 18 holes were going to be wet, with the possibility of scattered thunderstorms all day. (The AJC found this tidbit important enough that we ran it in the sports section, and normally spring football takes up the entire news hole.)
But Masters officials didn’t adjust.
They didn’t start the field early.
They didn’t split the field and start half on the back nine.
They looked at the same weather map as everybody else. And did nothing.
Jim Furyk teed off first at 10:40 a.m. Too late. When lightning came and the sirens went off and play was halted just after 1 p.m. for nearly 4 1/2 hours because of lightning, 20 of 47 golfers had not yet make it to the first tee.
The day’s final pairing, Chad Campbell and Rocco Mediate, were not expected to get more than two holes in before nightfall. That would mean each would have to play 34 holes today. Older golfers (like Ben Crenshaw and Fred Couples) and others with lingering ailments (like Mediate and his problematic back) could struggle with long afternoons. Good luck with that.
Crenshaw stood on the covered porch of the clubhouse during the rain delay. This year’s Masters has represented an implausible return to the leaderboard and is one of the feel-good stories of the season. He made the cut and was 1-under through two rounds.
Crenshaw actually tried to downplay the effects of a long day for him. But when asked later if the tournament could have been better served if officials had altered the scheduled, he said: “Probably so. Nobody likes to go through something like this. I don’t know if they expected this to happen or not, or if there was a chance this could’ve been prevented. It’s all conjecture. But I wish we could’ve avoided this difficulty.”
A tournament spokesman quoted Will Nicholson, chairman of the competition committee, as saying they were aware that rain was a possibility. But he admitted officials were caught off guard by a 3 1/2 hours of lightning, which forced the stoppage of play.
Given the circumstances, wouldn’t it have been better to err to the side of caution? More golfers would have been able to get more rounds in, which would have been more fair for everybody.
The irony is that the Masters has been flexible in this area in the past. Twice in the last four years, the start of play for Sunday’s final round was moved up an hour. The weather turned out to be fine and play finished early. But nobody is ever going to complain about that.
That wasn’t the case last August in the PGA Championship at Baltusrol. Despite a forecast for heavy rain, lightning and wind, tournament officials did not move up the start of Sunday’s round — even after being urged to do so by Phil Mickelson. Play was suspended for the final group on the 14th green. Had play began an estimated 90 minutes earlier, they would not have had to finish the tournament on Monday.
There is still a chance a Monday finish can be avoided here. But it would be a better Sunday with the scramble.
“They don’t mess around and make a lot of mistakes around here,” Mediate said. “Maybe they didn’t see this coming.”
Maybe they should have.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Golf, Jeff Schultz
A lovable long shot
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Augusta — The last time Ben Crenshaw won a tournament it was the Masters in 1995. Now, deliver me from being a cynical old crock, but if Gentle Ben should win the Masters this year, it might be the biggest upset since the Boston Braves beat the Philadelphia Athletics in 1914, or when Upset, the horse, beat Man o’ War in 1919.
You see, Crenshaw is in red letters here. He made the cut for the first time since 1997. He’s the talk of all the old school golf blokes lingering around the grand old oak tree on the clubhouse lawn. “Can you imagine,” one of them said, “what a story it would be if Ben Crenshaw should win this Masters? There’s been nothing bigger in sports since, uh, since, uh…”
“Since Jack Fleck beat Ben Hogan and won the U.S. Open?” added a fellow good at applying finishing touches for groping historians.
Crenshaw had won his first Masters in 1984, and that one was memorable for a reason of weather, just as afflicted as this one. A storm struck Friday afternoon, a fierce storm that virtually wiped out some of the holes along Rae’s Creek, and yet, they were able to resume on Saturday and continue on schedule. As I remember, before he picked up and left the course after the warning siren, he persisted in putting out and sank about a 40-footer.
But, enough of the weather. We turn here to the course of Ben’s game since that highly-charged Sunday in 1995, when he birdied the 16th and 17th holes, made his par on the 18th and broke down in a flood of tears. It was the week in which he had been a pallbearer in the funeral of his old coach, Harvey Penick, and it all was just too much for him. And there’s the picture of his kindly caddie, Carl Jackson, leaning over, consoling him.
As fate would have it, not to coin a phrase, Jackson is on his bag again this year, for about the umpeenth time. And here they are, the old tried and true team, 1-under par while the rain pounds away after two gloriously sunny Richmond County days. To give you a fix on just where Crenshaw stood heading into the third round:
He was tied with Tiger Woods, defending champion.
He was tied with Retief Goosen, twice U.S. Open champion.
He was tied with Billy Mayfair, Padraig Harrington of Ireland, Nick O’Hern of Australia — who once beat Woods in World Match Play. I mean, this is a five-star level.
Ben has been kind of shy and publicly unimpressed by it all. He already has a green jacket and he’s hardly preparing for another outfitting, but, as he said, “I suppose I still have some game left.” On the other hand, he said something earlier with less optimism.
“I’ve had my time here,” he’s said, speaking of his championships. And, “I’ve had six not-so-good years around here.”
Ben hasn’t been spending a lot of time in winner’s circles since he transferred to the Champions Tour. “I’ve had a wonderful time playing there. We have a great time out there.”
A great time and a lot of old friends, but frankly, Ben’s game has about fallen off the board. He hasn’t won a tournament and his highest rank in his four years has been 58th. Then he shows up at his favorite golf course in the whole wide world, playing with Trevor Immelman of South Africa and Clay Ogden, the Public Links Champion — he beat the celebrated Michelle Wie on the way — and he breaks par.
He makes the cut. He plays the weekend. He’s in the red. He is beloved. The truth is, he’s a longer shot than a horse named One-Eyed Sam running in the Kentucky Derby. But don’t be selling Ben Crenshaw short when heart and soul and Augusta National are in the mix. Forgive me, though, Ben, much as I love you, I won’t be getting any money down.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf
Playing in the rain
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ronnie Ramos
It’s raning on and off here, but there’s no lightning so play started shortly before 11 a.m.
Leaders don’t tee off until 2 p.m. and the weather is supposed to be worse by then.
The good news? It’s supposed sunny and cool on Sunday.
Permalink | |
Els carries baggage
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Augusta — Two years ago, Phil Mickelson dropped an 18-foot putt at the 18th hole in Augusta and became airborne, thereby ensuring two athletic feats most presumed forever comatose: a majors win and any semblance of elevation.
After the leap, it’s believed he landed on Ernie Els.
Els was on the putting green and seemingly headed for a playoff in 2004 when Mickelson de-collared himself. In 12 previous Masters, Els has finished second twice and in the top 10 six times.
A man has only so much room on the shelf for participation trophies.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen with Ernie this weekend because I don’t know if he’s thinking about the past or not,” said Andrew “Chubby” Chandler, Els’ agent. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t given it a thought. He might just feel proud about his career as he looks back.”
Albeit, a career with a hole. Els hardly is the only guy missing a green jacket, and he has won three majors. It just seems like while things break right at the U.S. Open (two wins), things break down in Augusta.
He started Friday’s second round 1-under, and birdied three of the first eight holes. But on the par-4 10th hole, traditionally one of the toughest at Augusta, Els pulled his tee shot, bounced it off a tree, and finished with a double-bogey.
He shot a 71 for the second day in a row. At 2-under, he is within striking range of the lead. Again.
“I’ve got a chance, you know?” Els said, smiling.
“I haven’t quite been in the lead here, yet, through two rounds but I think I’m going to be in pretty good shape. I’ve got to try and sneak something into the 60s over the weekend and see what happens. At least I know I won’t have to try and shoot 65 to win [given the difficulty of the course and generally high scores].”
Els joked earlier in the week that he had “no problem with the No. 13,” a reference to this being his 13th Masters. “I’ve done almost everything but win. I’ve been close. You just keep going.”
But there are other issues. He won three PGA tournaments and finished second among the money leaders in 2004. But he hasn’t won a Tour event in 18 months. He played in only 11 last year, the result of a torn left ACL while on vacation with his family in the Mediterranean. A week after the British Open, Els was in an inner tube being pulled by a boat when his “freakish” injury occurred.
Something about risk-taking during the golf-season also hit home.
“We all have things we do off the course, and what happened to me was just kind of freakish,” he said. “But you think about that after it happened. You feel like a bit of a [fool]. You shouldn’t have done it. … Obviously I’ll probably think about it more before I do things like that during the golfing season.”
He says the knee is fine. But he’s also popping anti-inflammatory pills this week as a precaution, particularly given the walks at hilly Augusta National. A seventh-place finish at Doral and an eighth at the TPC two weeks ago gave him reason to believe he could compete at the Masters.
“I think he had a bit of anxiety before [about the injury],” Chandler said. “But you can’t expect to come back to where you were right away. He enjoyed the fact he had five months off with his family [after the surgery].
“It’s almost like part one of his career has finished and part two has started. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.”
Els was in the same grouping with Mickelson in the first two rounds. Both are at 2-under, meaning they could be paired again Sunday. If Mickelson wins again, Els might want to take a step back.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Golf, Jeff Schultz
Good goodbye for Coody
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Augusta — Last year it was Jack Nicklaus (65) playing it out on the ninth green, the world breathlessly awaiting the benediction to his career in the Masters. The year before, it had been Arnold Palmer (74), shooting 84-84 and out, a farewell with tears.
Now, it was Charles Coody, modest — “I’m no hall of fame player,” sly humor, good nature, just a good ol’ Texas country boy. He would be playing his 112th and last round on these hallowed grounds. He’d played a round to forget on Thursday, an 89, bottom of the leaderboard, so he wouldn’t be attracting a crushing crowd, wanting his round hole-by-hole. Good ol’ Charlie, a few quiet moments together, a slap on the back, and see ya.
Then the scores came up on the big leaderboard at the 18th hole. “Leaders Thru 17: Purdy 4, Jobe 4, Coody 19,” all numbers in green, meaning over par.
Wait a minute! Coody plus-19? Wasn’t he plus-17 the day before, and wouldn’t that mean he had a round of 74 going? Sure enough, the 68-year-old was leading the two young guys from the PGA Tour by two strokes. Just to make sure, he looked at his final putt a long time from several angles, then carefully rolled it in, downhill from 15 feet. He’d finished with 74, two strokes over Ted Purdy and Brandt Jobe, not to mention better than both Palmer’s and Nicklaus’ last rounds.
“I was 1-under par through 15, and I was thinking even par, but I made a couple of bad swings,” he said. “I still left a few out there.”
He came out of the scorer’s cabin, and instead of having a nice little head-to-head, Charles Coody of Abilene was swarmed. They were there from England, Ireland, Canada, not to mention West Palm Beach and Dallas. They leaned heavily against the restraining rope, their tape recorders extended like hungry little birds waiting to be fed. Suddenly, everybody wanted a piece of him. They had satisfied their urge temporarily, talking first with the son and caddie, Kyle, who was feeling pretty good about his old man.
“He played great,” Kyle said. “It was a great day for both of us,” and all the Coodys.
Charlie had been at this a long time, and golf has always been a business for him, with an occasional injection of glory. Like the year he won the Masters and earned his right to Green Jacket status. That would have been 1971, when he birdied the 15th and 16th holes and beat Nicklaus and Johnny Miller, “two yellow-haired kids,” by two strokes. The purse was $25,000. For the last 36 holes, he gets $5,000, the going rate for champions indulging in their last run to glory.
But golf, the business. “The first tournament I played, I finished 16th and won $640. I thought I’d struck gold. I’d just been married, and to pay bills, I’d borrowed $500 from my mother. My wife had borrowed $700 from her mother, so we were $1,200 in debt before we even cut the cake.”
So this would be the end of the line. “It’s definite. It’s time to go,” he said. “It’s good to finish with a good round, but I’d already made up my mind last Sunday. If I kept playing, 160 would have been a good score. It’s beyond my length now. There are about eight par 5s out there for me. My handicap here would be about 7 or 8.”
Back home in Abilene, he has his own course, the Diamondback Golf Club. “There, I’d probably be scratch.”
It’s over for him in the Masters, by his own choice, though he’ll probably be back to play in the Par-3 Contest and a few rounds with Kyle. He’ll always have the closing to dwell on when he wants to lie back and mellow out. The crowd around the semicircle 18th green had seemed to be rather small. Then Charles Coody sank that last putt, and suddenly the sound cascaded into a roar, something to be sealed away in memory. The 74.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf
Legends back up Bonds
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
San Francisco — The greeting was warm, even though my words on the big guy with the even bigger smile that I was approaching on Thursday in the San Francisco Giants clubhouse have been chilly. “I’ve followed what you’ve written, and if I were on the other side, I’d be more supportive of you,” said Barry Bonds, softly, referring to my frequently stated belief that neither he nor the others involved with baseball’s steroid mess is a Hank Aaron clone in character.
You probably know about Aaron, baseball’s king of home runs, with only 47 more than Bonds’ 708. You probably don’t know that the rugged exterior that Bonds often shows is a fraud. As was the case with me before the Giants’ 6-4 victory in their home opener over the Braves — without much help from the man of the moment this time — Bonds just wants to be loved. He really does, and to show as much, he nodded toward a little office across the way that featured two of his favorite people on earth.
They also happen to rank among the game’s all-time greats. Not only that, they both starred for the Giants, and they both answer to “Willie,” as in Mays and McCovey. Said Bonds, with a twinge of emotion, “Since my dad (former Giants standout Bobby Bonds) died (two years ago), they’ve been very supportive of me, and they’re always here. Especially Willie Mays. It’s just great to know that they both are around for me to talk to whenever I need their advice on something.”
With hearing and sight problems taking over his nearly 76-year-old body, Mays preferred to sit in a chair inside that office and not discuss the controversies or anything else surrounding his godson. “Not this time,” Mays said, politely, nodding across the way toward McCovey, 68, another crumbling icon with knees so bad that he needs a pair of walking canes to move through life. There is nothing wrong with McCovey’s mouth, though. He had much to say about the ugliness surrounding Bonds since he broke Mark McGwire’s record for most home runs during a season in 2001, and that was along Bonds’ way to entering this year just six shy of Ruth’s 714 and in hot pursuit of Aaron’s mark.
“You guys don’t even know the half of what Barry is going through,” said McCovey, shaking his head, glancing at a spot on the floor. “You saw what Hank Aaron went through (while chasing Babe Ruth’s record), so you can imagine what Barry is going through.”
Translated: Hate mail. Lots of it, and from the sea of derogatory signs hoisted toward Bonds in normally docile San Diego during the Giants’ first road trip of the season (“Cheaters never prosper,” “Mr. Asterisk,” Greatest hitter/cheater ever”), somebody hurled a plastic syringe without the needle his way. “I don’t know why people want to hear other people say it, but you know what’s going on, and everybody knows it, because people aren’t dumb,” said McCovey, suggesting that Bonds is getting bashed for racial reasons.
This is the same McCovey who grew up in the segregated South. In fact, he is a native of Mobile, Ala., Aaron’s hometown. “I got a lot of what Barry is getting now. For whatever reason, I got a lot of that stuff near the end of my career (in the late 1970s). As for Barry, it’s obvious that things aren’t the way that they should be in 2006.”
Definitely not, but only if you’re referring to Bonds’ existence away from AT&T Park, whose 42,795 inhabitants on this afternoon couldn’t get enough of their hero who was raised in nearby San Mateo. He acknowledged the roar from the stuffed house with a toothy grin and a slow tip of the cap when he trotted onto the field with his teammates during pre-game introductions. Moments later, he did the same after he received a loud and lengthy standing ovation from fans along the left-field area. So it only figured that folks almost went hoarse from yelling during each of Bonds’ four trips to the plate.
He was intentionally walked twice with boos flying everywhere, and then he grounded out weakly to first before striking out. Still, they cheered. Afterward, with half of the free world gathered in the vicinity of his locker, Bonds refused to speak. Said a Giants spokesperson, “He doesn’t want to talk to you guys today.”
Actually, that wasn’t true. He did talk at least once, and I was a witness.
Permalink | Comments (178) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Rocky road for Rocco
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Augusta — If shouts of, “Way to go, Rocco! You’re on TV!” seemed like atypical background noise for a Masters Thursday, well, it’s not like Rocco Mediate was exuding confidence either at the start of the day. Or any day.
The late George Burns joked he began every morning by reading the obituaries. The punch line: “And if I’m not in there, then I have breakfast.”
Mediate begins every morning wondering if he’ll be able to step out of bed. The punch line: If his back doesn’t lock up, he’ll take at least momentary hold of a major.
A year ago, he followed a blur of back problems and flab issues by taking the first-round lead in the U.S. Open. A sixth-place finish secured a spot in this year’s Masters. That’s fortunate, because nothing he has done since was going to get him through the front gates Thursday.
He is winless since 2002. He has failed to even make the cut in four out of six tournaments this year. But he is becoming somewhat of a majors specialist. In Mediate’s first major since the Open, he fired a career-best 4-under-68 at Augusta National to rank second on the leaderboard.
From Mediate, dipped in sarcasm: “Oh yeah, I’m a big majors player. I scare the crap out of everybody. Like, ‘Oh no! He’s coming again!’ “
Hey, he’s upright again. Always a good start. In 1994, he had surgery for a ruptured disk and needed a special medical extension to return in 1996. He dropped about 60 pounds from a high of 260. (“I was big boned.”) He won a few events, but the back issues returned.
He tried chiropractors, acupuncture — everything short of incense and Yanni.
It got so bad one day in March 2004 that his back locked up while alone at home in Naples. After his first round at the Open, he recalled, “I have a trophy case in the house, but to take the pressure off, I kind of placed myself on the thing and no one was home for 3 hours. I was stuck, couldn’t move. Then I remember having to crawl up the stairs to bed.”
He took up Pilates, lost a few more pounds and improved. He now stretches every morning. “I wonder every morning,” he said. “I wake up and go, ‘OK, I’m good right now.’ It’s just how it is. I’ve come to those terms. I know, once it goes, it goes.
“If I would’ve lost my game because I lost my game, it would’ve been a different story. But I never lost my ability. My body was just saying, ‘You can’t do this any more.’ That’s why I was always very upbeat about playing golf.”
He stood upright in the minority Thursday. He didn’t bogey. “I would’ve taken 18 straights pars,” he said.
As it was, he hit par the first 10 holes, then birdied 11, 13, 14 and 15. “I made about a 10-, 15-footer on 11. You’re not supposed to do that. I actually kind of apologized to that hole as I left.”
As Mediate’s score dropped, more fans predictably started following him. Others probably just wondered what he was doing in the tournament. “I’d tell them to just look at last year’s U.S. Open and shut up,” he joked. “But you know, I wouldn’t blame them. I haven’t been playing a lot of golf. But it’s all been body related. Otherwise, I probably would’ve killed myself by now.”
He looked comfortable at Augusta, despite all of the course changes, and can’t understand the complaints from his fraternity members. “It’s their tournament, and if you don’t want to abide by what they do, then don’t come,” he said.
“The golf course may beat me. But I won’t let it beat me before I play.”
Now if he can just carry that aggressiveness into poker. Mediate played in the World Series of Poker last year. He finished about 600th. Or, as he prefers to put it, “I was in the top 10 percent of 6,000 [entries].”
He has become close friends with professional poker player and 2004 champion Greg “Fossilman” Raymer, who was in the gallery Thursday. Raymer tutors Mediate in poker. Mediate reciprocates in golf.
“I think he’s helped me more than I’ve helped him,” said Mediate.
When asked if a Masters upset would mean he wouldn’t have to play as much poker, Mediate said, “Actually, it would mean I could play more.”
And poker players get to sit.
Permalink | | Categories: Golf, Jeff Schultz
Spectators have harder course
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Augusta — I have just returned from visiting the scenes of the alleged crimes against tradition at Augusta National. I have followed the routings outlined for spectators, those worshipful creatures who would sacrifice an offspring for a week of Masters watching. And I am asking you this:
What the hell are the players complaining about?
Have they tried to walk this course following the spectator routing? They have it easy. They can stroll inside the ropes. Let ‘em try it outside the ropes, lugging a chair, a supply of water, field glasses, sandwiches and other stuff mama piles on him. And no caddie, understand. Then check their blood pressure.
You’ve read, I’m sure, of all the changes made on the fourth, the seventh and the 11th holes, not to mention the first and 15th. To pilfer a line from the old “Oklahoma” show, “They’ve gone about as fur as they can go.” As the lay of the course goes. You’d much rather play the course than have to walk it, following the course the poor, belabored spectator has to toil.
Once upon a time, there was a gathering ground just below the clubhouse, behind what was then the first tee. Spectators milled about, meeting and greeting, then watched the players tee off, then went on meeting and greeting, moving to and from the ninth and 18th greens. Not any more. There is no longer passageway between the first tee and the practice green. To get from the clubhouse to the golf course, you circle the practice green or move down the first fairway. Crosswalks have been closed, but at least the Eisenhower tree has been allowed to continue to use its space.
You’ve read, or heard, of Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer blistering the changes in golf magazines. Well, what they said wasn’t really as ferocious as the headlines, but what they meant was, the course they see now is the gracious old course wearing a gorilla mask. Nicklaus, however, has already softened the blow. “I think they’re trying to do the right thing,” he said.
OK, you have to understand Jack. He’s a member now. He comes to interviews dressed in his green jacket. And, being a course designer of world-wide stature, he confesses that even he is confused. Golf architecture, where goest thou?
That’s for other people to thresh out. What I’m rumbling about here at Augusta National is what they’ve taken away from spectators. Take the 11th hole, for instance. I don’t care if they’ve put the tee in the CBS compound and create unplayable angles; if you’re a spectator you wouldn’t be able to see it anyway. They’ve planted a black forest between you and the fairway, maybe 60-70 feet wide. You don’t catch an uncluttered view of the player until he comes out of the woods at the foot of the hill.
Now, the fourth hole, that’s OK by me. It’s just long, but to do that, they had to gobble up more spectator space. Most of the players I watched hit irons or one of those unisex clubs. There was a bunch of bogeys, including Tiger Woods’, and only three birdies on my watch.
The seventh hole, all that need be said here is that Gene Sarazen once said, “That is the best golf hole on the course, what a golf hole should be. You have to hit two perfect shots, 3-iron or wood off the tee, then an approach that gives you a putting chance.”
They ignored him. They’ve stretched it out, but that’s not it. Once again spectator space and access have been shrunk, and sometimes you get trapped in one of these vacuums and you don’t get out until every player you’ve been chasing disappears. And sometimes, you can’t get there from here.
That’s it. You know that I’m coming to you from the choir of the aged. (And let me say this about Amen Corner: Every small-town church I’ve ever been too had an “amen corner,” where the husbands gathered while the mamas sat with the kids, and the husbands gave the pastor a loud, “A-men!”)
I guess that’s enough dyspepsia for one day.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf
Barkley comes full circle
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Seeing Charles Barkley at the Hall of Fame announcement brought reminded me of the Sunday in January 1982 when I called Mel Pulliam, then Auburn’s basketball publicist, seeking to line up the standard opponent feature. (Auburn was coming to Rupp Arena to play Kentucky, which I covered for the Lexington Leader.)
The Tigers had a player named Darrell Lockhart, whom I didn’t really want to make my subject for a rather personal reason — I hated his baggy uniform shorts. (Little did I know what was coming a decade later.) I mentioned a shooting guard as a possible interviewee, and Pulliam said he wasn’t a terribly effusive conversationalist. So then I said, “What about this freshman who had a big game last week?”
The next day I had a phone interview with the freshman. Two days after that he rolled into Rupp — an accurate adjective, given that he was rather portly back then — and dumped 25 points and 17 rebounds on Kentucky’s Melvin Turpin, who said after the game, “The kid shocked the heck out of me.” To this day, I take credit — not one bit of it deserved — for discovering the kid, whose name was (and still is) Charles Wade Barkley.
Barkley and Kentucky developed an intriguing relationship — he loved playing against the highly rated Wildcats — and I was privileged to bear witness. I was there the night in 1983 that Auburn finally won in Rupp. I was there a month later when, at the rematch in Auburn, Barkley lasted two possessions before being thrown out of the game by referee Paul Galvan for slapping Charles Hurt in the back of the head. (Hurt had, it should be noted, shoved Barkley into the press table — indeed, almost into David Housel’s lap — on a fast break.)
And I was there in the Indianapolis airport in April 1984 when he declared his intention to leave Auburn after his junior season for the NBA. See, he made this declaration to me and nobody else. I’d gone to Bloomington to cover the Olympic trials for the AJC, the paper for which I’d been working all of six weeks, and had driven like mad up the road to Indy to try and catch a few of the departing players for comment before they flew home.
I found Barkley and Chuck Person in the terminal and walked with them to their gate. (You could do such a thing in those innocent times.) Person had a basketball he’d had signed by the other players in camp, and Barkley, naturally, took to dribbling it across the tiles. At the security checkpoint, he told the guards: “You better check him [meaning Person] closely — he’s from Alabama.”
At the gate, Barkley introduced me to Sam Perkins, who was already famous, and Karl Malone, then a little-known from Louisiana Tech. (“Oh, you’re the Mailman,” I remember saying, and I remember him seeming a tad surprised that I knew his nickname.) And then the Atlanta-bound plane flew off and I checked into the Hyatt and wrote a story that actually broke some news, and I remember Gary Caruso, the AJC sports editor who never seemed impressed by anything, almost sounding impressed over the phone.
Charles Barkley has, as we know, gone on to great fame as a player and greater fame as an ex-player, but I’ve never stopped thinking of him as the guy who dribbled the ball loudly in the airport and who then, as every head turned to see what the racket was, threw the ball to his buddy Person. And who, feigning innocence, shouted at Person: “Sonny boy, don’t be dribbling that ball in the AIRPORT!”
That was in Indy. Twenty-two years later, the Hall of Fame announcement was likewise in Indy. Full circle, I’d say.
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Tests should be tough
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Augusta — It has been clear for some time now that, regardless of subject matter, every Hootie Johnson press conference pretty much comes down to this: “I’m Hootie, and you’re not.”
Allow women members at Augusta National? Sure. When the time is right, and we run out of things to cook and clean.
Exorcise pimento cheese sandwiches from the grounds? Over my clogged arteries.
Ensure players’ happiness at the Masters? May we recommend the back nine at Mountasia?
Understand, there’s a tradition with the Augusta chairman being obstinate. It dates back to co-founder Clifford Roberts once saying, “As long as I’m alive, golfers will be white and caddies will be black.” (It’s believed there are now more than zero and fewer than several African-American members. This can’t be confirmed because the media guide isn’t out yet.)
In matters of diversity, Hootie and Augusta National remain behind the curve. But therein lies the difference between that and this current backlash over the club’s decision to Botox its golf course.
In this matter, Hootie’s right.
Golfers whine too much.
The greens are too fast.
The greens are too slow.
It’s hot. It’s cold. It’s windy.
SSSSSSHH! I’m playing here! (Things you want to see: Vijay Singh trying to putt in Shea Stadium.) Who put that bunker there?
Who planted those trees?
I can’t hit it over that lake!
My tummy hurts.
Players, former and current, have grumbled over course changes at Augusta National. Gee, we’re really sorry, guys. Is this getting to be a little too much like … work?
“I didn’t know that a tough golf course was supposed to be a lot of fun,” Johnson said Wednesday.
Asked if critics are wrong and he’s right, Johnson responded: “That’s a loaded question.” And he laughed, in that am-I-supposed-to-care-what-anybody-else-thinks kind of laugh.
The first tee will be moved back 15 to 20 yards. Trees were added on the left of the fairway. The fourth tee will be moved back 30 to 35 yards. The seventh, 35 to 40.
There are more changes. But you get the picture. It’s Augusta National meets Nip/Tuck. In this case, it’s not about women embracing advances in plastics as much as old men responding to advances in club technology.
This creates a problem at the Masters because the tournament is all about tradition (thereby explaining the lifespan of the pimento cheese sandwich). Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, who have won 10 Masters between them, criticized the makeover in a Golf Digest article.
“I love the place, just love everything that happens there,” Palmer said. “But now I’m not so sure. It has changed dramatically from the course I knew 50 years ago.”
Said Nicklaus: “I think they’ve ruined it from a tournament standpoint.”
Nicklaus was a little more diplomatic Wednesday. He said Augusta National’s “intentions are correct” but reiterated ways the plan was flawed.
Ernie Els said the Masters used to be “the easiest” among the four majors. “Now it’s almost certain to be the hardest.”
Tiger Woods said, “Not necessarily,” when asked if he agreed with the changes, and said something about the fourth hole losing its “cool” quotient. But recognizing that public moaning wasn’t going to sway Johnson, Woods was somewhat guarded.
“I think Hootie would probably say we’re going to have a private conversation,” he said when asked what he would say if Johnson solicited his opinion. “I’m going to leave it at that. I want to be invited back.”
Advantage, Hootie.
Charles Howell III isn’t merely one of the few who has praised the changes, he’s one of the few who gets it.
“I always love it when going to the first tee somebody says ‘Hey, go have fun today,’ ” Howell said. “That’s like saying, ‘Go shoot 62.’ Well, I’m trying. The golf course is a grind. That’s what it should be. It’s a major. It’s the Masters. That’s the way Bobby Jones would have wanted it. I don’t think he would have wanted to see guys strolling around out here, laughing and smiling and having a big time.”
Thank you.
If course changes aren’t enough, Augusta National also is considering mandating using a specific ball at the Masters. It’s their club. It’s their tournament.
“They’re entitled to their opinion,” Johnson said of critics. In doing so, he confirmed Augusta National hasn’t prohibited free speech at the Masters. Yet.
Permalink | Comments (20) | Categories: Golf, Jeff Schultz
Bonds makes Dodger blue
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Los Angeles — When Tommy Lasorda waddles toward you with his famous tongue flapping, you listen.
And then you listen, and then you listen some more.
This time, the baseball icon who bleeds only that special kind of blue rushed across a dining room at Dodger Stadium after spotting a columnist from Atlanta that he has known for three decades. With the columnist set to make that 400-mile trip to the north today for the San Francisco Giants’ home opener against the Braves, the baseball icon had more than a few things to say about that guy who is getting a little attention these days.
Some guy named Barry Bonds, among the slew of this generation’s artificially inflated sluggers. “Oh, gosh. When you stop and think what these guys have done and what this stuff has done for them, it’s amazing, and if you’re a pitcher, you have to be upset,” said Lasorda, trying to keep his 79-year-old head from exploding while sliding next to the columnist. Then, with arms flailing and voice rising, Lasorda added, “People say to me, ‘Well, they still have to hit the ball.’ No doubt about that, but those flyballs that were on the warning track are now flying into the seats, and that’s the difference. It’s just not right.”
Nobody is slamming integrity out of the ballpark more often than Bonds. Not only did he admit to using steroids unknowingly according to leaked grand jury testimony, but there is a recently published book that details his love affair with performance-enhancing drugs through government documents and other sources.
The only thing that Braves rookie pitching coach Roger McDowell knows is that, juiced or not, Bonds can knock a baseball pretty far. That means McDowell must devise a way during the Braves’ four games at AT&T Park to keep Bonds from dialing long distance with his jumbo biceps that appeared out of nowhere. “Yeah, the wheels are turning for me a little bit, and although Barry doesn’t have very many weaknesses, the model that I always use is to have a pitcher stay with his strength,” said McDowell, inheriting a staff that traditionally does well against Bonds.
Even so, no pitchers have contributed more to Bonds’ home-run total than current Brave John Smoltz and former Brave Greg Maddux. They’ve relinquished eight homers apiece to Bonds, which goes to show you that not even a pair of Hall of Famers can overcome these knuckleheads.
So this wasn’t surprising: Entering the Giants’ game Wednesday night in San Diego, Bonds was just seven home runs shy of surpassing Babe Ruth’s legendary 714 and 48 from shattering Hank Aaron’s record of 755. The thought of it all was enough to keep Lasorda’s arms flailing, voice rising and face turning from Dodger Blue to Cincinnati Red.
“I mean, here’s a guy, Hank Aaron, who exemplified what it meant to be a truly great athlete, and he set his record in an honest and a sincere way and a hard way, and the other guy did it with (power) enhancing drugs,” said Lasorda, his eyes bulging at this point. He remembered watching as a coach for the Dodgers at old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium on April 8, 1974 when Aaron ripped a shot over the left-center-field fence to make 715 more significant in baseball history than 714.
“No, Hank can’t be too happy with this, and he’s a good friend of mine, and I think the world of him,” Lasorda continued, still livid. “We know records are made to be broken, and Hank doesn’t have a problem with somebody breaking his record, but, by golly, you have to do it legitimately. These guys are producing phony records with a bunch of phony numbers.”
Yes, they are. As a result, commissioner Bud Selig formed a group last week led by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell to investigate baseball’s steroid mess. Lasorda shook his head, saying, “Believe me, this is going to bring out a LOT of names, and that’s good. No. 2, we’re going to find out a lot of things that we always had in our minds but didn’t know for sure, and that’s also good.” As commissioner Tommy Lasorda, what would you do to those guilty of using steroids? With eyebrows raised, he said, “What would I do? Whatever they achieved after (they took steroids) would not be counted.” He added emphatically and loudly, “They’re cheaters.”
Permalink | Comments (36) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Pick a park, any park…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Los Angeles – This happens every time I make that winding, scenic drive into the depth of Chavez Ravine and find this jewel of a ballpark called Dodger Stadium.
It’s the best. Not only has it been meticulously kept after 44 years, with those palm trees in the distance and that sign that says, “Think blue” on the hill behind the left-field bleachers, but you can feel history. Sandy Koufax. Don Drysdale. Walter Alston. Maury Wills.
Nah. I’m sticking with Wrigley Field, which is ivy-covered heaven on earth. Can’t get much better when it comes to mystique than that entire area on Chicago’s north side. Speaking of mystique, I love few things more in sports than visiting Yankee Stadium, home of those pinstriped ghosts.
Actually, I have to go with the absolutely stunning place that I’ll see with the Braves on Thursday, which is AT&T Park along the scenic shores of San Francisco Bay.
The thing is that Camden Yards is so magical in Baltimore that you get the feeling that it has been sitting near that warehouse for 104 years instead of just 14 years.
You know what?
They’re all great.
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
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
Braves can still see blue skies ahead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Los Angeles — Way beyond the left-field bleachers at Dodger Stadium, there are letters the size of Tommy Lasorda’s old belly spread across the pretty hill on this side of the San Gabriel Mountains. The letters refer to the cherished home team, but they also could have something to do with the Braves when it comes to the epitome of dominance in the National League:
“Think Blue.” More specifically, think navy blue, as in the Braves and as in the NL’s dynasty of the present, instead of royal blue, as in the Dodgers and as in the NL’s dynasty of the past.
You also can think about a 15th consecutive division title for the Braves, and not only because the present survived the past on Monday during the soggy opener for both teams. Until somebody else wins the NL East, you have to figure that the Braves will do so forever. They also showed enough during their 11-10 victory to give the choppers and chanters hope of nice things to come.
That is, if you ignore the inability of Tim Hudson to coast with a seven-run lead as the new John Smoltz, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine as the Braves’ pitching ace. Hudson didn’t survive the fifth inning, with two wild pitches mixed among six hits and three walks along the way. Worse, the Braves’ bullpen was as wretched as advertised. It nearly blew an 11-5 lead. Most of Hudson’s six (yes, six, and this was just opening day) successors were quite hittable and forgettable. Even so, their teammates did enough before and after those meltdowns on the mound to keep alive the Braves’ chances of going 162-0.
The Braves’ ripped three home runs, including a pair of three-run shots by Adam LaRoche and Andruw Jones. Plus, Edgar Renteria had a successful debut as the Braves’ shortstop. He was smooth in the field on challenging grounders to his left and right, and he contributed at the plate with two hits and two RBI. Good thing, because his predecessor, Rafael Furcal, was going nuts for the Dodgers (on base five times, including three hits).
Anyway, with the Braves brass somewhere praying that their team won’t have to slug their way into October this time, let’s move to the big picture of NL history, where the Dodgers are the Braves, and the Braves are the Dodgers. In addition to both teams having the same predominant color on their uniforms, they both are noted for developing their own players. They both are noted for longevity when it comes to their team executives and managers. They both are noted for having everybody throughout their organizations function in a distinctive and professional way.
There are a couple of mighty differences, though. First, the Dodgers were noted for all of those things during most of the five decades prior to 1991. Not coincidently, that’s exactly when the Braves went from brutal for much of their Atlanta existence after leaving Milwaukee to the start of 14 consecutive trips to the playoffs. Then there is that other difference, nearly as significant as the first. Braves hitting coach Terry Pendleton squinted on Monday in the visitors’ clubhouse, before saying, “How many championships did they win during those years? Do you know?”
Yeah. A bunch. We’re talking about 1955, 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981 and 1988. That’s opposed to the Braves’ managing their only world championship during their current run 11 years ago. So this game was just another brick in the foundation toward where the Braves need to be in search of becoming more than just a postseason tease.
“I like the Braves’ attitude, and that attitude comes from the mystique of Bobby Cox and what he learned when he was in the Dodger organization for a number of years,” said Don Newcombe, the former pitching great for the Dodgers, referring to Cox’s minor-league days in the early 1960s. By then, Newcombe had finished starring for the Dodgers from the late 1940s through 1950s, with the likes of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Duke Snider. “We had the attitude, and that’s the most important thing you have to have in anything in life.”
This time, the Braves had the attitude and the luck (how else can you explain surviving bad pitching?). Near the end, with the sky leaking big drops on the 56,000 gathered, the Dodger Stadium organist played the old Carpenters hit called “Rainy days and Mondays (Always Get Me Down).” Such only was true if you were wearing royal instead of navy blue.
Permalink | Comments (25) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
It’s Mickelson’s course, in any kind of weather
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Deed him the property. Why not? He owns it. If any golfer ever owned a golf course, Phil Mickelson owns Sugarloaf. He took unofficial possession over the weekend on his way to the Masters, and if this had been anything but golf, Sugarloaf would have been left looking like a war had been fought out here in the suburbs.
Let’s see, Lefty has played the BellSouth nine times, he has won three, he has banked $2,987,416. Oh, pish tush, just call it $3 million. Why quibble over a few bucks? No other nomad of the PGA Tour is even within shouting range after 38 years of this tournament.
Not all of his winning has been under the most soothing conditions, or without some overtime, until this. He won his first in 2000 but had to stay over a day to play off one hole against Gary Nicklaus, and one hole was all that was required. (It was the one and only time Nicklaus ever came close to winning a tour event.) Last year, same thing. A layover until Monday to get in 54 holes — again — and another playoff, this time with four other guys. What followed was one train wreck after another. Two of the four in the water on 18, but most disastrous of all, Jose Maria Olazabal missed two short putts that would have won it all before Mickelson closed it out and headed for Augusta to defend his title.
Weather threats have been the plague of the BellSouth, and in this farewell to the April Fool’s weekend, this battered event took it in the chops again. While Mickelson was floating home like a leaf in the wind, the weather idiot struck again as he approached the 15th tee. A thunderstorm struck with 18 players still in play, a sort of a farewell slug. One pocket of foul weather showed on the television screen, and it hovered directly over Sugarloaf. The devil was thumbing his nose.
Mickelson may have been 12 shots ahead of Jonathan Byrd and Olazabal, but the finish still had to be written.
He bogeyed the 15th, a reasonably mild par-4, but Byrd, Olazabal, J.J. Henry and Retief Goosen were just being carried along in his draft, a good view of a smashing show. Throughout the week we were hearing such terms as “dialed in” and “in a zone,” neither of which can be found in Webster’s, but truth to be, Lefty was riding the crest of his game. When he sank the eagle putt and walked off the 18th green, 63-65-67-65—260, 13 strokes in the lead, he had smashed every record in the BellSouth book, and a Mickelson family crunch took place, three kids, mom and dad in one big huddle. Great, but was his game peaking ahead of schedule? At Sawgrass he had spoken of elevating it to the level he wanted it two weeks hence, meaning at Augusta.
“I hope to do some more of the same,” he said. “I did last year at Phoenix [which he won] and in the AT&T [Pebble Beach to you and me, which he won the following week.] I wasn’t trying to win by such a score, but it does mean a lot to me to have your score reflect the way you play.”
This being the last time the BellSouth plays appetizer to the main course in Augusta, let it be said that it is not a tearful parting.
This slot on the PGA Tour calendar now falls to the Shell Houston Open next year. May the weather be with it. Meanwhile, The Players Championship and BellSouth move in tandem to May under the new schedule.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf
Bruins-Gators a worthy matchup for title
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Indianapolis — Last year’s championship game was a climax — No. 2 North Carolina against No. 1 Illinois. We can only hope this year’s won’t be an anticlimax. Saturday’s set of semifinals delivered a rude comedown from the giddiness of the regionals, and now we can only ask: Is there life after Big Baby and George Mason?
Probably. The NCAA championship game is rarely a dud. (Over the last decade, only Connecticut’s dismissal of Georgia Tech in 2004 could be considered a snooze.) UCLA is the most famous acronym in all of basketball; Florida has played better than any team in this tournament. It’s not No. 1 vs. No. 2 — the Bruins entered the NCAA ranked No. 7, the Gators No. 11 — but it’s still the last waltz in another Big Dance. So TiVo “24” tonight and watch this as it unfolds.
Pedigrees: UCLA has won 11 NCAA championships. Florida has won none. UCLA has lost only once in the title game — to Louisville in 1980. Florida has lost in its only championship appearance — to Michigan State in 2000.
In recent years, UCLA has been seen as a mighty program gone to seed. Since John Wooden retired in 1975 — his final game yielded his 10th title, naturally — the Bruins have gone through eight coaches. The chronological list: Gene Bartow, Gary Cunningham, Larry Brown, Larry Farmer, Walt Hazzard, Jim Harrick, Steve Lavin and Ben Howland. Bartow and Brown took UCLA to the Final Four, but only Harrick, of whom you’ve heard, could win a national championship.
Since its run to the 2000 Final Four, Florida has been seen as a program that had topped out. Over the next five seasons, the Gators didn’t even survive Round 2 of the NCAA tournament, losing to a lesser seed every time. The chronological list: No. 11 Temple in 2001, No. 12 Creighton in 2002, No. 7 Michigan State in 2003, No. 12 Manhattan in 2004, No. 5 Villanova in 2005.
What changed for UCLA: UCLA hired Howland away from Pittsburgh in 2003, and he has brought a brand of raw toughness to Westwood that the high-gloss Bruins — their campus sits between the famous L.A. thoroughfares Wilshire Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard — have never had. In beating Memphis and LSU, they’ve yielded a total of 90 points. UCLA has won its last 12 games, holding opponents to an average of 53.9 points during the streak.
Said Jordan Farmar, the UCLA point guard: “Our defense is always a total team effort. It’s five guys with the same goal, really helping each other out at all times. … [Florida] does a great job of getting second-shot opportunities. We have to limit them as much as possible. That’s just being tough and physical and getting down there and banging with them.”
What changed for Florida: In 2004, Donovan hired Larry Shyatt, who’d been fired as Clemson’s head coach in 2003 and who began to work with Florida’s defense. (To that point, it wasn’t clear that Florida played defense.) The Gators also benefited from addition by subtraction: Anthony Roberson and Matt Walsh, two me-first scorers, declared for the NBA draft after last season — neither was drafted, which tells you something — and a younger and more modestly hyped crew of Gators has bonded in a way the Gators hadn’t bonded since Lon Kruger was coaching them.
Donovan on his new approach: “If you have a great player who has a great level of unselfishness and work ethic, he’s going to overachieve and go beyond where he thought he could go. If you have a guy who’s talented but who’s totally into himself, who never had to be unselfish a day in his life, it’s really hard to change that mentality.”
Local vibes for UCLA: They’re all good. The sainted John Wooden, who’s 95, is from Martinsville, Ind. He played at Purdue and was a three-time All-American. He coached at South Bend Central High School and at Indiana State University (reaching the 1948 NAIA final).
Local vibes for Florida: Not so hot. The only other time the Gators played for a title was in the RCA Dome. They lost.
International influence (UCLA): Freshman Luc Richard Mbah a Moute is an actual prince in his village in Cameroon. His father, Camille Moute a Bidias, is the chief of Bia Messe, which is on the outskirts of Yaounde. Mbah a Moute left Cameroon in 2003 and enrolled at Montverde Academy in Florida.
Howland remembers seeing Mbah a Moute for the first time: “It’s July, no air conditioning, about 10 coaches there. It’s brutal — 110 degrees, 115 minimum with a humidity level of 100 percent. I’m wanting water after water out of the machine, and he is absolutely playing like you can’t believe.”
International influence (Florida): Sophomore Joakim Noah is the son of tennis champion Yannick Noah, who’s of French and Cameroonian descent, and Cecilia Rohde, who was the 1978 Miss Sweden and finished among the top five in the Miss Universe pageant.
The Jamaican-born Patrick Ewing, a friend of Yannick Noah’s, presented Joakim with his first basketball. Joakim Noah is a Bob Marley fan who believes his long hair “gives me strength and power. Yeah, it does. So don’t cut it.” Why not? “I can’t tell you that kind of information.”
Worst mispronunciation of an exotic name: Joakim Noah: “If somebody says ‘Yokum,’ I’m going to turn around. I know you’re talking about me.”
His name is actually pronounced JOE-kim. And keep this in mind: “Don’t call me ‘Joe.’ “
Actual pronunciation of an exotic name: Luc Richard Mbah a Moute: It’s LUKE Ree-SHARD um-BAH-a-MOO-teh.
Reason to root for Florida (if you’re a Georgia fan): Having the Gators crowned the champions of college basketball might influence Florida boosters and school administrators to put more money into this sport and thereby de-emphasize football, which would in turn make the Bulldogs’ annual October sojourn to Jacksonville somewhat more palatable.
Reason to root for Florida (if you’re a Kentucky fan or an Indiana fan or a North Carolina fan or a Duke fan): Another NCAA title would put UCLA even further ahead of the schools next in line in the category of total titles. (Kentucky has seven, Indiana five, North Carolina four, Duke three.)
Reason to root for UCLA: The Bruins’ uniforms are now and have always been the prettiest in college basketball.
McDonald’s All-Americans: UCLA has three on its roster (Farmar, Arron Afflalo and Cedric Bozeman). Florida, which seemingly used to sign nothing but McDonald’s guys, has only one (Corey Brewer).
John Brady’s take: His LSU Tigers lost twice to Florida and to UCLA on Saturday. His assessment: “Florida will have a few more weapons to score than we do. Florida can shoot the perimeter ball a little bit better than my team. [The Gators] may spread them a little bit more and make it difficult to concentrate on one perimeter player as they did with Darrel Mitchell. But I’m sure [UCLA] faced other teams that have multiple scorers, and I’m sure Ben Howland will have a plan on how to guard Florida.”
Troubling sign for Florida: The Gators’ path to the final has been fairly soft, seeding-wise: Of their five opponents, three were seeded 11th or higher. Contrast that track with UCLA’s, which beat a No. 3 in Gonzaga, a No. 1 in Memphis and a No. 4 in LSU.
Troubling sign for UCLA: The Bruins have scored a total of 42 points in the second halves of their last two games. Contrast that with the 44 second-half points they posted against Gonzaga, which blew a nine-point lead with 3:13 remaining.
What will happen: UCLA will guard hard, but the Gators have too many scorers for even the best defense to defuse. Undersized George Mason did a nice job against Noah and Al Horford underneath — the two big Gators scored only seven baskets between them — but Lee Humphrey and Brewer and Taurean Green torched the Patriots from the perimeter. Green is the key. He has only 11 turnovers in the NCAA tournament, and he scored 19 points against Villanova’s many fierce guards. The guess is that he’ll hold up against Farmar and Afflalo. Look for Green’s team to win 63-60.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Mason’s magical journey splinters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Indianapolis — You knew the moment was coming. You knew, but you didn’t care to admit it. You wanted to see George Mason play for the national championship because a George Mason has never played for a national championship. But in that cold-blooded corner of your mind where pragmatism trumps fantasy, you knew there was a reason no George Mason had made it even this far.
The George Masons of the world have nice players.
The Floridas inhabit a rather different world.
Final score: Florida 73, GMU 58.
The Patriots led 2-0 and never again. Florida would give them hope and then snatch it back. They were close enough at halftime to believe they could do again what they’d done this last fortnight, but a minute into the second half Florida’s lead was 11 points and you were reduced to hoping this didn’t become an abject embarrassment for the plucky underdog.
And it didn’t. This never became Michigan State over Penn (a 34-point landslide in the 1979 Final Four) or even Kansas over Marquette (33 in 2003). This was just a case of a dream dying at the hands of a gifted and merciless opponent. “What they’ve done has been great for college basketball,” said Billy Donovan, the Florida coach who was himself the darling of the 1987 tournament as a Providence guard. “[But] whether it said ‘George Mason’ or ‘Cinderella’ on their jerseys, we had to go out and play.”
George Mason had managed to take down three of the nation’s proudest programs — Michigan State, North Carolina, Connecticut — in this NCAA tournament, and in each of those games the Patriots had overridden a talent gap. That seemed to suggest that all things were possible, but reality ultimately said: “Well, not all things.” Florida was quicker to offensive rebounds and much, much better from the perimeter, and that was your ballgame.
But never let it be said that this was an ordinary ballgame. The RCA Dome was charged in a way that Final Fours never are. The Mason pep band kept blaring its new theme — “Livin’ On A Prayer,” by Bon Jovi — and every neutral in the massive house sang along. It sounded like this:
“Oh-oh, we’re halfway there!” at turned-up-to-11-rock-concert volume. And then, louder still: “LIVIN’ ON A PRAYER!!!”
It felt so ridiculously good, this George Mason saga, that it was bound to feel lousy when it ended. Removed from the game in the final minute, forward Will Thomas covered his head with a white towel. Jai Lewis, the undersized center, wept beneath a purple one. They’d gone as far as they could, further than they ever should have, and now it was over.
“This is history,” said guard Lamar Butler. “We’re living it right now. Whenever people talk about the Final Four, they’ve got to talk about us being here. What we’ve done has changed the face of college basketball.”
Maybe it did. Certainly it changed the face of this tournament. Said Jim Larranaga, Mason’s coach: “Our guys showed you don’t have to have 7-footers on your roster or be the biggest and strongest to have a great basketball team… . I’m especially proud to represent, if we do, all those mid-majors who aspire to get here.”
And there’s your difference. Mid-majors aspire to reach the Final Four. Majors aim to win it. Florida will have that chance Monday night against UCLA, but it won’t be the Gators (or the Bruins) we remember most about this NCAA. Said Tony Skinn, the tough Mason guard: “I think we’ve done something tremendous for college basketball.”
And when the run was done, Lamar Butler wanted one last memento. On Friday he’d tried to take his name card from the mass interview room. Not yet, he was told. “When the tournament is over,” the moderator said.
On Saturday he asked again. Permission granted. Flashing a thin smile of resignation, Lamar Butler took his name card and exited stage right.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Russian leads way in Russian Roulette
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
They set themselves up for this. Some teams win games early and leave themselves margin for error. The Thrashers couldn’t do that. They had to start slow, then climb back, then lose seven straight, then rise again, then bump their head.
They’ve left themselves a pinhole.
“It’s fun to play games like this when everything is on the line,” Ilya Kovalchuk said.
Fun? OK. I always thought that saying was meant for playoff games. But if one guy believes it’s fun to navigate the NHL’s version of Russian Roulette — well, it figured to be the Russian. Kovalchuk scored twice in the Thrashers’ 5-2 win over Carolina Saturday at Philips Arena.
They live. To die another day?
“You play, you coach and you can even tell that the players are looking at the out-of-town scoreboard,” coach Bob Hartley said. “You see Montreal winning. It’s tough. You know if you lose, then you lose ground. You win and you stay there. But you just have to keep winning games and hope some teams start to get in trouble. If we keep playing like we did tonight, we have a chance of being there. But we definitely need help.”
They did this to themselves. They endured that ridiculous blur of goalie injuries, found life, then took one step off the balcony. I’m not sure how many teams have made the playoffs despite a seven-game losing streak. But I’m guessing not many.
In the NHL, a team can lose a game three different ways (regulation, overtime, shootout) and still gain points in two of them. The Thrashers whiffed in seven straight.
That will hurt you.
Like a barbell falling from the top shelf will hurt you.
The Thrashers have set a franchise record for wins (36), and it’s not nearly enough. They dumped Carolina, one of the league’s best teams, for the third time this season. They would pose a threat to any opponent in the playoffs — and yet the odds are they’ll never get to an 83rd game.
“It’s weird,” said Marc Savard, who scored the game’s first goal on a penalty shot. “We seem to play our best against the best teams. We’ve done well against the Ottawas and the Carolinas. We have a good hockey team, but we know we have to win every game.
“It’s sort of like poker now. We just have to keep putting all of our chips in the middle. We’re all in.”
When the Thrashers rallied to defeat New Jersey, 6-5, on March 23, they maintained a hold on the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. As temporary triumphs go, it was like thinking you had the winning lottery ticket after only the first number was called.
They lost a game at Long Island. They had four days off while three other teams — Montreal, New Jersey and Tampa Bay — kept winning. They lost another game at Tampa Bay. For a franchise that has seen far worst things than two straight losses, this set a new standard on the misery index.
How does a team go from one up to seven down in a week?
And with the backdrop of a playoff guarantee, no less.
A chasm separates eighth and ninth place in the East. The Thrashers were seven points out with 10 games remaining entering the night. That basically meant that if they went 8-2, at least one of three teams ahead of them (New Jersey, Tampa Bay, Montreal) could go no better than 4-5 for the Thrashers to claim the final berth.
(Let’s keep tie scenarios out of this for now. There are too many wins and prayers between today and tie scenarios.)
So now they’re five behind the Lightning and still seven behind the Devils and Canadiens.
Having fun yet?
“That’s why we’re here,” Kovalchuk said.
One game, they implode. The next minute, they show uncommon resolve. They lost center Bobby Holik less than three minutes into the game for a check that look tame to most clear-thinking humans but was deemed by a referee as worthy of a boarding major and a game misconduct. Carolina’s Bret Hedican was seriously injured on the play — so injured that he returned to the ice eight minutes later.
“I can lay down, too,” Holik scoffed.
The Thrashers are not prone yet. But their position would seem to be closer to that than fun.
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Sarazen’s shot the benchmark
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
When considering (1) memorable, (2) great or (3) significant — take your choice — shots made on the back nine in the Masters over the years, by unanimous decision there is only one starting place — the l5th hole on the Sunday round in 1935. Gene Sarazen stood pondering his second shot, 220 yards to the green with a pond in between, feeling he needed a 3-wood for the distance, but favoring a 4-wood for elevation.
He chose the latter, and the rest, as they say, is history. The Squire holed the shot for a double-eagle, tied Craig Wood for the lead, then won a 36-hole playoff on Monday, for which he was rewarded with an extra $50. It was this shot, it is generally agreed, that established the Masters around the world, a tournament Sarazen had not played the year before. He had committed to an exhibition tour of South America with his friend, Joe Kirkwood, who furnished transportation, flying his own plane.
There have been dozens of eagles at Augusta National since, but no double-eagles. I came close to seeing one a few years ago, when Fred Couples’ second shot on the par-5 eighth hole lazily rolled to within a few inches of the cup. For an eagle, a player receives two crystal goblets — Jack Nicklaus must have won enough to fill a basement. For his double-eagle, Sarazen won a crystal bowl — and a trail of glory that followed him around the world.
“When I played an exhibition in China later on, they introduced me as ‘Chief Double Eagle.’ They thought I was an Indian,” Sarazen said.
The thought of settling on a collection of eye-popping shots on the back nine is mind-boggling. Some I saw first-hand, some I saw on television, and some I didn’t see at all. Live and in person I saw Doug Ford blast out of a bunker into cup for a birdie on the 18th hole in 1957. Eventually, he would win the green jacket by three strokes over Sam Snead, who led after the third round, but who was only playing the front nine as Ford finished.
There were other such shots of significance in determining the champion, some more spectacular than others. In 1988, Sandy Lyle blasted a 7-iron out of a fairway bunker onto the 18th green and sank the putt that sank Mark Calcavecchia by a stroke. Just the year before, Larry Mize had chipped in from 140 feet off the 11th green for a birdie that beat Greg Norman in a playoff.
There were other shots of significance made in a series that determined the champion. In 1959, Art Wall birdied five of the last six holes, passed 12 players, including Arnold Palmer, and closed out the field. (Subsequently, he became the only champion who never defended his title. A knee infection prevented him playing in 1960, but he served The Atlanta Journal as our on-the-course correspondent — for the sum of $250.)
Who could forget Jack Nicklaus’ long-distance putt on the 16th green in 1975, and his rare show of jubilation, thrusting his putter into the air, on his way to winning by a stroke over Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller? Then 11 years later he would become the most popular champion of them all, aged 46, son Jack II on the bag, featuring a series beginning with a spectacular eagle on 15, followed by birdie-birdie on 16 and 17 for a back nine of 30. He wasn’t through yet, though. He had to wait out Greg Norman and Tom Kite, both of whom missed tying putts on the 18th green.
Then there was Fred Couples’ tee shot that clung perilously to the grassy bank at No. 12 on his way to winning in 1992.
But not all definitive shots on the back nine were winners. Go back to 1985, when Curtis Strange had it in his bag coming into the perilous 13th hole, though he had opened the tournament with a round of 80. Lay up, or go for it? He went for it and unhappily found the little brook that borders the green. While he pondered his plight, the official assigned to the match walked into view. He could have given Curtis some sound advice, founded on personal experience. His name was Billy Joe Patton.
In 1954, Patton had reached the 13th hole leading Sam Snead and Ben Hogan, and in position to become the first amateur champion of the Masters. He went for it, found water, leading to a double bogey, followed it with a bogey at the 15th and missed the playoff by a stroke. Strange would subsequently bogey 13, 15 and 18 and drop into a tie for second behind Bernhard Langer, who was winning his first.
Tiger Woods shall not be ignored, but we settle here on a championship he won by a whisker, not by a mile, which he did in 1997. When he chipped in from off the 16th green last year and the ball took a curious route before dropping in the hole, it was a shot on which he modestly accepted luck as his partner. It turned out to be quite essential to winning, for he then bogeyed 17 and 18, then had to survive a playoff with Chris DiMarco.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf
Services »
