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July 2006
Need for better receivers is critical
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Flowery Branch — It says something about the Falcons that Brian Finneran became, over the past four seasons, their best wide receiver. Finneran is a good player and a fine fellow to be sure, but on how many of the NFL’s 31 other teams would he have been the go-to guy on third-and-8?
It says something about recent Falcons history that Finneran’s knee injury is being treated as a Major Blow. As Jim Mora said Monday, “It’s hard to underestimate what Finn did for us. A lot of his catches were significant catches, and now somebody [else] has to make those catches.”
And that’s the greater point. For the Falcons ever to throw the ball half as well as they run it, they must develop better receivers than Brian Finneran. This franchise has devoted a disproportionate allotment of resources — trading for Peerless Price, signing Dez White, burning first-round picks on Michael Jenkins and Roddy White in consecutive seasons — to upgrading the position, and to date the Falcons haven’t been able to improve on an undrafted free agent from Villanova.
That may have been about to change anyway, but with Finneran’s loss it has to change now. This was already being targeted as the season of arrival for Jenkins and Roddy White, but we’ve been expecting a No. 1 receiver to emerge since Michael Vick was a rookie, and nobody has. Price was a dud. Dez White left no imprint. Jenkins and Roddy White weren’t ready. As a result, every third-and-8 became the same old song: Look first to Alge Crumpler, and then throw it high for Finn.
“It’s going to be hard to replace [Finneran],” Vick said. “You just don’t find good receivers, natural receivers, possession receivers.”
The Falcons haven’t so far, but hopes remain high for Jenkins and Roddy White. Much has been made of their heightened rapport with Vick, who had clearly come to prefer Finneran among the wideouts he worked with professionally. “We’ve been working hard in the offseason,” Jenkins said. “With Finn being out, it gives us a chance to pick it up even more.”
More than an opportunity, bigger seasons from the two No. 1s have been rendered mandatory. Said Mora: “It has to accelerate things. … It puts the onus on younger guys to step up. It’s a lot more definitive that they have to make an immediate impact.”
It’s hard to know where the blame for the Falcons’ continuing inability to throw the ball downfield rests. On Greg Knapp for trying to plug Vick into an ill-suited scheme? On Vick for being inaccurate? On the receivers for their inability to get open? Whatever the cause, the effect has been apparent: The Falcons could run but they couldn’t throw. They had the NFL’s sixth-worst passing offense last season, and their most productive wideout — Finneran, who had 50 receptions — didn’t crack the league’s top 30 in catches.
A team with two first-round picks at one position shouldn’t be so limited. As Jenkins said, “People want to see first-round picks perform and perform well.” And Rich McKay, who oversaw the selection of both Jenkins and Roddy White, is considered a shrewd judge of personnel. Neither player has yet justified his lofty draft status. One or both has to make a great leap forward this fall.
“We’ve had time in the system, with the same quarterback,” Jenkins said. “There shouldn’t be any excuses.”
There can’t be. So long as Finneran was on the active roster, he gave the Falcons a safety net. No matter how underwhelming the latest imports might be, he’d make more than his share of plays and thereby lend the receiving corps a semblance of professionalism. He won’t work again until 2007, and in his absence somebody has to provide the catches Finneran would supply and the ones — the speed plays — he wasn’t capable of making.
Somebody has to act older and play bigger, maybe two or three somebodies. That safety net just got ripped away.
Permalink | Comments (61) | Post your comment | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Glavine happy to help stop Braves’ run
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
It has been 18 years since the New York Mets won a division title, a long and inglorious but occasionally amusing stretch that included Bobby Bonilla threatening a beat writer with the line, “I’ll show you the Bronx.”
The Mets came to Atlanta this weekend. It’s difficult to know whether they actually showed the Braves the Bronx, figuratively speaking, because the tour bus seemed half-empty by Friday. First the Braves lost 6-4. Then they lost 11-3. Then they showed up Sunday with a nervous twitch, dropped into a 7-0 hole and settled for a mild pounding, 10-6.
So completed New York’s first series sweep in Atlanta in 21 years.
Nice 1-5 homestand, guys.
If the Mets didn’t show them the Bronx, they at least showed them the end.
“You don’t expect to come in here ever and sweep these guys,” Tom Glavine said. “You don’t expect to turn around the [lack of] success in this building. We’ve been horrible up until this year.”
As long as we’re beating up on holy history, try this: The year New York last won the East Division, in 1988, also was Glavine’s first full season in the majors.
The Mets led the league in wins (100). Glavine led the league in losses (17).
“Things have come full circle, I guess,” said the ex-Brave. “The Braves obviously are not going to win forever. I’m not going to sit here and say they’re not going to win this year, but sooner or later they weren’t going to win their division.
“Obviously, I had a lot of fun being a part of it — and it’ll be all right being a part of a team that stops it.”
The former Brave didn’t get the decision Sunday. He lasted only four innings and remains stuck on 286 career wins. But otherwise, could this season possibly be sweeter? After three mostly miserable years in New York, his career is back on track. His current team has opened a fat division lead. His former team is keeled over in a dark alley.
This wasn’t the same Glavine who started the season 11-2 with a 3.33 ERA. He allowed six runs and 10 hits, and his manager, Willie Randolph, didn’t even allow him to come out for the fifth inning. Suddenly, Glavine has gone seven starts (0-2 with five no decisions) without a win, and his ERA has crept up to 3.97. But bottom line was he had a close-up view this weekend of his present and former teams’ turn in fortunes.
“It’s certainly a game I wanted to win,” he said. “I didn’t, but I’m glad we did.”
Glavine smiled when asked about his 7-17 record in 1988 (the Braves finished 54-106; the Mets 100-60). “Well, things have changed for me and the Mets,” he said. “Hard to believe how long ago that was.”
The 40-year-old is at a curious point in his career. For 2 1/2 seasons, his four-year, $42.5 million contract with the Mets looked like an albatross for the organization. But he re-invented himself after the All-Star break last season, stopped trying to live on the outside corner (and beyond) and had a 2.22 ERA in 15 starts. The Mets restructured his contract in the spring, lowering his salary this season but adding an option year in 2007 ($5.5 million if Glavine triggers it, $12 million if the Mets do, but each option with incentives that could escalate his pay to $14 million).
But it’s not a lock he’ll be back with them. He told MLB.com the other day that he balked at agreeing to the restructuring. “I want to be free,” he said. “I wanted the freedom to evaluate where I was and for my family to express their thoughts. That is important to me.”
Glavine still lives in Alpharetta. But the Braves wouldn’t seem to have a spot in their rotation or the space in the budget to bring him back. Then again, at this point, why not stay with the better team — in New York?
“Our whole focus is to try to win our series and make it difficult for anybody to catch us,” he said.
“Sweeps are hard to come by, but we’re of the mindset right now that we expect to win every series we play, and we’re surprised when we don’t.”
Kind of like the one here used to think.
Back in the day.
Permalink | Comments (49) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
Cox, Braves will never quit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
They won’t continue their miracle by reaching the playoffs for a 15th consecutive season. They won’t slip into October as one of those hideous wild cards. Even so, with the dominant color of the National League East finally turning from the navy blue of the Braves to the royal blue of the Mets, the most important “won’t” involving those around the home clubhouse at Turner Field is that they won’t quit.
They never quit.
They aren’t allowed to do so. “Most of this obviously comes from Bobby,” said Braves first baseman Adam LaRoche, referring to Bobby Cox, baseball’s all-time best manager for so many reasons. In fact, Cox is adding something else to his already dandy list of accomplishments, ranging from those slew of trips in row to the postseason with the Braves and the Toronto Blue Jays to his ability to perfect victory more often than not with different rosters.
Cox is adding his ability to make his players fight when there actually is nothing left to fight for. Well, not when it comes to after the regular season. “The mentality around here is that you should never lay down,” said LaRoche, in his third year in the major leagues, all with the Braves. “You don’t worry about how many games back you are, and you forget about how close the wild card is. Just go, play every inning. That’s the way Bobby has trained everybody, and coming here, you know his expectations.”
You can see Cox’s expectations, because he lives them through his ability to remain the same no matter what. He is intense in battle (just ask any umpire), and he is comforting afterward to anybody with a tomahawk across his chest, especially those who never give up. “The way I look at it is that you’ve got to give everything you have every day, and you can’t wait for one series to say that it’s crucial,” Cox said, pausing before increasing his voice a few decibels to make his ultimate point. “You’ve got to play with that mentality from game one. I mean, that’s how you get through 162. Every game is big, and that has been my attitude since I was 18 years old.”
This isn’t to say Cox’s Braves never lose. They’ve done so enough these days to sit within a winning streak or three from just mediocrity. On Saturday, for instance, courtesy of Tim Hudson’s ongoing evolution from All-Star pitcher to whatever he is now after getting clobbered in an 11-3 loss to the Mets, the Braves lost for the sixth time in 11 games.
Still, the Braves remain in their fantasy chase of playing near Halloween. After the Mets took a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning, the Braves scrambled for a run in the bottom of the inning on a sacrifice fly. Then, when the Mets scored again in the top of the second, the Braves rallied in the bottom half with a single, an error, sacrifice bunt and Marcus Giles’ two-run single.
“Oh, you know they’re going to play hard, and they play hard every single time they take the field,” said Carlos Beltran, after he homered twice and collected five RBIs to help push the Mets’ lead over the Braves in the division to a ridiculous 14 games. “All of those guys, I have a lot of respect for them, because [Jeff] Francoeur, Chipper Jones, Marcus Giles, Andruw Jones, they always come to the ballpark every time to win ballgames.” The thing is, the Braves only could take their hustle so far in this one, with Hudson looking more like a joker than an ace during another start. In contrast, the Mets’ Orlando Hernandez was whirling and hurling like the old El Duque to cool what was baseball’s most sizzling offense.
You could see the Braves’ effort, though, because they don’t quit, and they haven’t for the longest time. Not during their shockingly relentless run from worst to first to start this streak. Not when they once trailed San Francisco by 10 games in July, only to win 104 times to the Giants’ 103 for a division title. Not given their ability to survive horrific injuries for long stretches to David Justice, Andres Galarraga, John Smoltz, Javy Lopez, Mike Hampton and Chipper Jones. Not this year, when they refused to mail, fax or special delivery it in during their 6-21 disaster of June, along the way to this big series that really isn’t at Turner Field against the Mets.
Not with Cox across the way, cheering, prodding, demanding.
Permalink | Comments (60) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Braves losers in game, trade
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
This is the kind of trade the Braves shouldn’t be making. It’s the kind of trade that probably won’t help in the short run and could really hurt in the years ahead. It’s the kind of trade a smart organization, which this has long been, considers but leaves unmade.
Essentially the Braves swapped young infielders — Wilson Betemit goes, Willy Aybar arrives — for the purpose of hiring a set-up man. When you’re six games under .500 with 60 to play, where’s the percentage in giving up on Betemit, who’s further along than Aybar? Where’s the percentage in dealing away a guy who can play third and second base when your third baseman keeps getting hurt and your second baseman is having a lousy year?
As if on cue, Chipper Jones tweaked his oblique against the Mets on Friday, necessitating an in-game call to Betemit. Who, two hours later, was no longer on the team. The Braves had held out hope of getting reliever Scott Linebrink from San Diego for Betemit, but they settled for Danys Baez instead. Where’s the percentage in settling for anything? Isn’t the smarter move simply to let this season play out and not offload any more youngsters?
Lest we forget, the Braves traded Andy Marte, once the heir apparent at third base, for Edgar Renteria. Now Betemit, who turned 26 Friday, is gone. Aybar is 23. Were those three years and one eighth-inning pitcher worth the cost of giving up on a guy who seemed to be nearing a big-league breakthrough?
Friday was a lousy night all ends up. The Braves entered their series against the front-running Mets making their usual bold noises, and after an inning they led 4-2 and seemed to be driving Pedro Martinez, making his first start in a month, back to the disabled list. Then Horacio Ramirez spit out the lead, and Pedro, being Pedro, gave the Braves next to nothing, and when Billy Wagner notched the 27th out the Mets had stretched their lead to 13 games. Then the Reds beat Milwaukee, leaving the Braves 6-1/2 back in the wild-card race.
“I’m really proud of this game,” Martinez said. “I kept my team in the game, and we were able to bounce back and get a win out of it.”
The Braves got rather less. They had no hits after the third inning. Jones was gone after the fifth. They lost for the third time on the homestand that was supposed to bring them closer to the Mets/Reds but has to date had the opposite effect. And then they dealt Betemit.
There comes a time when a team must realize what it is. After 102 games, the Braves are a sub-.500 aggregation. They had their hot streak before and after the All-Star break, but that’s becoming more of a memory with each passing loss. They don’t need to be trading prospects in the faint hope of sneaking into the postseason. They need to be worrying about next season and the seasons beyond.
If another hot streak should arrive, take it as ridiculously good luck. Just don’t go making a slew of trades in the hope of making such a thing happen. And really, the deals for Baez and Bob Wickman have left the failing that would fuel such a run unaddressed. The Braves got where they are by having a bad bullpen, yes, but they’re apt to stay where they are because they don’t have enough starting pitching. Ramirez’s shoddy performance Friday — 10 outs recorded, 12 baserunners generated — underscored the point.
Betemit for Linebrink would have been a reach. What sub-.500 team deals a promising position player for a set-up man in the last days of July? Instead the Braves made an even worse trade. Baez isn’t as good as Linebrink, and Aybar doesn’t have Betemit’s pop.
In their desperation to keep their postseason streak alive, the Braves are acting like a franchise that hasn’t been to the playoffs in a generation, not one that has gone every year since 1990. For reasons utterly unknown, they’re acting as if this is a last chance.
If they keep giving away players like Wilson Betemit, it will be.
Permalink | Comments (162) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Maturing Vick gets another lesson
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
This is an undated photo of Falcons quarterback Michael Vick from the Web site MediaTakeOut.com. The site alleges that Vick is holding a marijuana blunt.
Flowery Branch — On the first day of training camp, the story is supposed to be about Michael Vick learning an offense. Instead, it’s about learning lessons. It’s about questions of his maturity and dedication and lifestyle.
Vick says he doesn’t want to look. But somebody shows him a picture from an Internet site that depicts him sitting in a car with a women the site claims is his girlfriend, while holding something in his left hand the site concludes is a marijuana joint.
“This ain’t the first time somebody had me on the Internet — that’s unbelievable man,” the Falcons quarterback said Thursday. “Y’all know me. Y’all know what I’m about. I ain’t never gonna do anything to put this team in jeopardy. This ain’t the first time somebody posted something on the Internet or lied on me. But I’m used to it and it’s something I’ve got to deal with it. I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
There was a story on one sleazy football website, ProFootballTalk.com, which carried a link to another sleazy celebrity site, MediaTakeout.com, which carried a story and a picture claiming to be taken from the MySpace page of Vick’s girlfriend. Welcome to the media food pyramid of 2006.
Vick says what is pictured is him holding a cigar, not “smoking a blunt” (as stated in a MediaTakeout headline). But there’s the picture. Doctored or not, “blunt” or not, Vick has to realize that there is a reason some people will believe one thing even if he says another.
He said Thursday, “The majority of things I did three or four years ago, I don’t even do now. I try to stay out of harm’s way. But it seems like even when I try to do the right thing, I do the wrong thing.”
Perception. Reality. In celebrity life, they’re intertwined, and Vick somewhat set himself up for this. Last year there was the woman who claimed he gave her a sexually transmitted disease. She sued in a high-profile case. Vick denied it. But he settled out of court, and long after he was publicly lampooned.
A friend in Vick’s traveling party was caught taking a Rolex watch from an airport security checkpoint at Hartsfield, and Vick found his name connected with the theft. There was more guilt by association when Vick’s brother, Marcus, seemingly did everything possible to soil the family name at Virginia Tech. You can even go back a few years when the Falcons’ season unraveled after Vick’s broken leg — and some critics of the quarterback wondered aloud whether he was taking a little too long to come back.
It may not seem fair. But it’s where we are. It all goes in Vick’s public folder. And when both he and his football team are coming off mediocre seasons, people are going to be less inclined to dismiss attacks.
“I do smoke cigars sometimes when I’m relaxing,” he said. “I do have a beer sometimes, just like everybody else does. But it’s not about everybody else. It’s about me.
“I try to be [careful]. But when I try to be careful and stay out of people’s way so nobody can talk bad about me, it always backfires. I can’t win for losing. I try to be in a good mood and do the right thing. But it seems like there’s always something there to bring Mike Vick down.”
It can’t be easy to be so young with so much money and power, but know that you can’t be seen drinking a beer because somebody will figure you belong in a 12-step program. But this is what Vick signed up for. He is the Falcons’ lifeline. If he implodes, off the field or on, they implode, off the field or on.
We have heard a lot about how Vick was more dedicated than ever this off-season. He worked out. He studied game tape. He was just around more. “I feel like it’s more of an obligation for me to help the team where we need to go,” he said. “I’m the face of the franchise. I have to put in extra effort. I have to be here a little more than everybody else.”
Conclusion: This seems to be a quarterback maturing. The entire Falcons roster stunk it up in last season’s finale, a 44-11 loss to Carolina. But a remarkably candid Vick threw himself on a grenade in a USA Today story Wednesday, saying, “I didn’t go out and give it my all, which was disrespectful to my teammates, disrespectful to my coaches, myself and my family. I’ll never do that again.”
He reiterated those remarks Thursday, but considers it part of his growth process. “It’s good some things I experienced last season,” he said. “It only made me stronger.”
The lessons won’t stop. Some will be easier to deal with than others.
Permalink | Comments (132) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Ugly baseball on pretty day
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Say this, it was a perfect day for baseball. The sun was bright. The blue sky was high. It was a fan kind of day, the kind of fan they give you at funeral homes. Everything about it took you back to spring training, the players brightly imaged against the grass-green background. Unfortunately, the Braves played like it.
Just another day at Lake Buena Vista, except it was July and the temperature at Turner Field was 92 degrees — at the coolest — and the Braves were 11-1/2 games out of first place in the NL East. It was no reflection on the Braves pitcher, little known to all of us. Jason Schiell was just doing his duty, answering an emergency among the starters. He’s a Georgian, born in Savannah, now living in Guyton, which makes him an almost neighbor of Macay McBride.
Schiell is average size, about six feet, 180 pounds, and wears his baseball trousers knicker-length, a compact fellow with a compact delivery. He has been around the block and this is his second tour with the Braves, coming after two seasons in drydock while his arm recovered from surgery. He was another one the Braves had located pitching in one of those independent leagues, the Somerset (Mass.) Patriots in the Atlantic League. His first performance in St. Louis had been adequate. Now he faced the Marlins, who are looking over the Braves’ shoulder.
If there had been no second inning, Schiell would have had a lovely day. His first inning was perfect, then Cody Ross, a crusty little guy who can hit — two homers the first night — singled, Josh Willingham singled him home and the most unlikely thing happened next. Matt Treanor, the backup catcher who hits a home run about every Leap Year, drove one into the left-field stands, scoring two runs, and neither the Braves nor their 34,498 guests knew it, but their day was over.
Oscar Villarreal was Schiell’s successor, and no worse fate could have befallen a reliever. Ross, the rascal, singled again. Jeremy Hermida, the lad from Wheeler High, singled behind him, and comedy hour was next. Treanor again, and this time he hit into what should have been a forceout, but Wilson Betemit — any way you pronounce it — bobbled it, Edgar Renteria and Marcus Giles got mixed up around second base, and frankly it wasn’t easy to see what happened next, but the bases were loaded, then the pitcher, Scott Olsen, dropped a blooper into center field, Dan Uggla doubled, and when the inning was over, the Fish had scored three more times.
It was a terrible way to turn a lovely day for baseball into a catastrophe. At this stage of the season, losing is no way to go, and this one was especially damaging. The Marlins left town just a half-game behind the Braves, who’d lost the series on their own grass, two games to one, and only a barrage of home runs had salvaged the game they won.
Funny thing, during intermissions a film of “bloopers” was flashed onto the monstrous screen above center field, car crashes, human calamity and that sort of stuff, which seemed rather awkward intermission fare, considering that the Braves were putting on a blooper show of their own.
There is a segment of the population that feasts on daytime baseball. Looks forward to a game under the sun. This was one of those days, miserably hot to expose oneself to the blistering sun, and what they got for it was a bumbling disappointment. The Braves have reached a point of the season at which defeat is not tolerable, if indeed, they do harbor any shred of a hope of making the playoffs. Next chapter, down to the nuts and bolts. The Mets are coming to town with a comfortable hold on first place in the NL East. It’s a little premature to be saying “this is it,” but say this: Losing becomes more disastrous with each passing day, and this was one of those days.
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Heckling the Hawks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The many helpful publicists at Atlanta Spirit LLC keep sending me e-mails about Marvin Williams and his MVP performance in the rookie league. Apparently they’re hoping I’ll change my ignorant mind and decide Williams was a great draft pick after all. Sorry, but I haven’t yet.
Williams lit up the rookie league, which may or may not mean something. (I once saw the illustrious Jonathan Bender light up a similar league at Life University. He’s now out of the NBA.) At roughly the same time, Chris Paul was auditioning for the U.S. national team and impressing the Hawks’ Joe Johnson so much that Johnson conceded choosing Williams over Paul was a mistake.
Paul and Johnson together would have put the Hawks near the playoffs last season, and I’m not sure the addition of Shelden Williams and Speedy Claxton and the subtraction of Al Harrington — and the presumed blossoming of M. Williams, lest we forget — will do as much next season.
About Claxton: The Hawks just paid $25 million to a free agent who was the backup to the guy they coulda/shoulda taken in the first place. (Paul, duh.) Somebody tell me again how this operation expects to be taken seriously.
Somebody? Anybody?
Permalink | Comments (59) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Blank still sets tone for Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
If it seems we haven’t heard quite as much from Arthur Blank as in past offseasons, there’s a reason. He’s comfortable with his franchise. He feels the Falcons are better grounded than at any time since he took ownership in February 2002. As training camp opens Thursday, he believes this team is primed to win big.
How big? Playoff big? Super Bowl big? “Both are possible,” Blank says. Then: “We have a sense of urgency to do better now. We’re ready to make that move.” And then: “Our offseason moves [trading draft picks for veterans John Abraham and Chris Crocker] aren’t indicative that we’re [building for some distant future].”
Upon buying the Falcons, Blank was upbeat and out front in his attempt to win over a disillusioned fan base. Today Blank sounds less giddy, more businesslike. He has known improbable seasons (2002 and 2004, each of which yielded playoff victories) and sobering ones (2003 and 2005). Of the latter two, last year was the worse.
“Michael [Vick] breaks his leg [in the 2003 preseason],” Blank says, “and we had the loss of a player and the impact of the loss of that player, and then we had the thing with Dan [Reeves, fired near the end of the ‘03 season], which was difficult. Last year was in many ways a lot more disappointing. On the surface, we had a difficult early schedule: Remember how people were saying, ‘If you come out of that 6-2, you’ll be in great shape’? We had some injuries, but I don’t think our injuries were any worse than a lot of teams. We just didn’t play well.”
From 6-2, the Falcons wound up 8-8. It was the first real tactical failure of the Blank regime. In short order the Falcons recalibrated, firing their quarterbacks coach and hiring a Pro Bowl defensive end and two new safeties. Blank also extended Jim Mora’s contract through the 2009 season, although it’s fair to say the owner’s feeling toward his chosen coach has undergone some modification.
Blank calls Mora’s documented tantrums “a little disappointing.” Asked if, as an owner, Blank had to harness his exasperation because the team and its fans didn’t need to see two guys throwing things, he says, “Jimmy wouldn’t think it’s a good idea to throw things, either. I love his emotion, his passion. But too much of a good thing is a problem sometimes. I do it [stay stoic] because I think that’s the way to be, not to counterbalance anything.” For the record, Blank says: “Jimmy’s maturing.”
In the early days of his regime, Blank was caught between having his people in place and making do with the Smiths’ holdovers. Today the Falcons are almost exclusively Blank’s slate, allowing him to be a bit less obtrusive. “I’m as [high-]profile as I need to be,” he says. And then: “We have Jim Mora and Rich McKay and Dick Sullivan and a terrific support staff. I’m very comfortable that they understand me and my value system.”
Is it as much fun owning the Falcons in 2006 as it was in the new-toy days of 2002? “Absolutely. I love this franchise. I love this city. I love being part of the Falcons. But the second half of last year was no fun.”
One thing Blank loves somewhat less — the venue he inherited. “We continue to discuss issues with the authorities at the Dome,” he says. Wouldn’t he ultimately like to build his own stadium? “That’s our hope. We’re committed to playing in the building through 2020, but I don’t think that will happen. I think [a new facility will be erected] well before 2020.”
Where? Alongside the Falcons’ training complex? “No, we’re not building at Flowery Branch,” says Blank, laughing. “I hope it will be where the Dome is now.”
And what of his pursuit of the Braves? “I think Time Warner has decided who it wants to go with,” he says, speaking of Liberty Media. “But TW has said if that doesn’t work out, they’ll be back to us. They know our number. They know where we live.”
Even in lower-profile mode, Arthur Blank isn’t hard to find. He’ll be stalking the sidelines in the fourth quarter. He’ll be the guy who isn’t throwing things.
Permalink | Comments (34) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
McKay the commish? No way.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Rich McKay isn’t going anywhere. He never was, at least when it came to the Falcons general manager leaving to become NFL commissioner.
It isn’t a done deal that Roger Goodell will be Paul Tagliabue’s replacement, but it’s pretty close. For two reasons: First, Goodell has been Tagliabue’s right-hand man forever and involved in every major decision involving the league during their years together; second, Tagliabue wants Goodell to be the man.
In other words, this won’t resemble 1960, when it took 23 ballots for the owners to elect somebody named Pete Rozelle. Neither will it take the seven months of infighting that occurred in 1989 before Tagliabue was picked over long-time NFL executive Jim Finks.
In early August, when the owners vote this time, Goodell will be the league’s pick, and McKay will remain the Falcons’ man.
In other words: Both sides will win.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
McKay the commish? No way.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Rich McKay isn’t going anywhere. He never was, at least when it came to the Falcons general manager leaving to become NFL commissioner.
It isn’t a done deal that Roger Goodell will be Paul Tagliabue’s replacement, but it’s pretty close. For two reasons: First, Goodell has been Tagliabue’s right-hand man forever and involved in every major decision involving the league during their years together; second, Tagliabue wants Goodell to be the man.
In other words, this won’t resemble 1960, when it took 23 ballots for the owners to elect somebody named Pete Rozelle. Neither will it take the seven months of infighting that occurred in 1989 before Tagliabue was picked over long-time NFL executive Jim Finks.
In early August, when the owners vote this time, Goodell will be the league’s pick, and McKay will remain the Falcons’ man.
In other words: Both sides will win.
Permalink | | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Turning back clock reveals ’80s-era hole
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
The Braves turned back the clock Tuesday with ” ’80s Mullet Night.”
Now, I’m not quite sure why anybody would actually embrace memories of the mullet. I have no fond recollections of the ‘do, even when I had the choice to grow one. But I guess somebody in marketing just joined the crowd and burned out on celebrating past division championships.
Besides, the Braves are trying to salvage something worthwhile after the All-Star break. That does seem so ’80s, doesn’t it?
So turn back the clock on this: After going 7-2 on a road trip to revive a spark of a flicker of a crack of faint light of hope, the Braves proceeded to remind us what this scramble is going to be like. To open a homestand they were terrorized by Cody Ross (solo home runs in his first two at-bats) and tamed by Anibal Sanchez (one run in seven innings). For what it’s worth, no team has ever been terrorized by a Cody and tamed by an Anibal and made the playoffs.
The Braves lost to Florida, 2-1, which means they’re 6-5 against a team that’s 41-46 against everybody else. Sure, that’ll get you in the playoffs.
This is the same team that hit .328 with 46 home runs and scored 150 runs in the first 18 games of July. So they return home with renewed hopes, and it’s back to bad-hair days.
“It’s a little disappointing,” said center fielder Ryan Langerhans, who was hardly to blame on this night with two spectacular catches as a replacement for the injured Andruw Jones. “The first game of any series is a big game, and you want to win and go from there. But I’m confident we’ll come back.”
The Braves have worked their way back into wild-card contention. The only problem with that is because they’re battling more than one team, it’s difficult to scoreboard watch. “I don’t know who to root for half the time,” manager Bobby Cox said. “If we get closer to the Mets, it would be easy.”
Good luck with that. There aren’t any teams between the Braves and New York — just the Grand Canyon.
After going 6-21 in June to fall 13 1/2 games behind the Mets, the Braves opened July by going 13-5. For their efforts, they reduced the Mets’ lead by only two whole games. Just imagine the first time you celebrated after knocking down all six milk bottles with one pitch, only to realize your reward was a choice between the whistle ring and the eraser.
They have dug a hole. For the division, it’s too big of a hole. Logic screams it, and the numbers support it. Some just refuse to accept it, or publicly admit it.
“We’re not chasing the wild card — we’re chasing the division title,” Andruw Jones said Tuesday. “That’s what we do, and if that doesn’t happen, then the wild card is cool. We don’t talk about it, but I hope everybody in here is thinking the same way. We have the talent to do it. It’s not impossible.”
The Mets started the night 59-41. If they played .590 baseball the rest of the way, they would finish 96-66. In that scenario, the Braves would have to go 50-14 to match that. A team that is five games under .500 would need to play .781 baseball the rest of the season.
No. Not impossible. Then, of course, there’s always world peace.
The Braves’ problem is that they have not left themselves any room for error. Their offense has been explosive to the point of ridiculous — 46 home runs? — but that didn’t figure to last, and they haven’t shown they have the pitching to overcome quiet nights like Tuesday.
And worse, they save the worst for Turner Field. They’re 21-24 at home, which is worse than their road mark (26-28). They’re also only 17-19 within the East Division.
Further, it doesn’t seem Atlanta is getting swept up in this wild-card chase (sorry, Andruw). The term “crowd noise” was a contradiction Tuesday. The talk is about football training camps opening, not catching Cincinnati.
Cox said he wasn’t surprised by the hot start this month. “Everyone feels we have a good team and we should be winning,” he said.
But at times, it seems they’re being pulled back toward the ’80s.
Permalink | Comments (29) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
The Tuesday Countdown
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: Just back from vacation, which included swims in two oceans and a tour of College of Charleston with my son. For those who have never been there, the college (founded in 1770) is actually older than the U.S. The highlight of the tour was being told that, in the old days, good students were rewarded by being allowed to stand on the roof to watch the pirate hangings.
9: Which, of course, leads me to wonder what students might see standing on other college roofs. Alabama? Tennessee? Feel free to blog your own cheap shot. I’m just waking up.
8: I see where John Schuerholz finally acquired a closer (Bob Wickman) to help the Braves’ bullpen. Well, that’s nice. Where was this trade a month ago? We’ve all been standing on roofs, watching the Chris Reitsma and Jorge Sosa hangings.
7: If you don’t believe Schuerholz waited too long, it’s only because you’re comparing him to Billy Knight, who should’ve moved Al Harrington several weeks ago. Or months ago.
6: Nice to see that Joe Johnson is saying what Knight won’t acknowledge — that passing on Chris Paul was a monumental goof. Johnson to our Sekou Smith: “Seriously, I told him [Paul] I don’t even want to think about it anymore, what we could’ve done together. Because he’s the truth. … It’s unbelievable how far ahead of his time he is as a player.”
5: Tiger Woods is crying for good reasons again.
4: Just wondering: If Rich McKay is not going to get the NFL commissioner” job — and reports are he won’t — why not just pull out and avoid the distraction as the Falcons open training camp?
3: Greg Knapp is under more pressure than Michael Vick. Why? Because Michael Vick is not in danger of losing his job, and Knapp is.
2: Terrell Owens truly is special. It’s not anybody who can claim to be misquoted in his own autobiography.
1: A few more arrests and suspensions and the Bengals won’t have to make any cuts in training camp. Must remind David Pollack of the olds days in Athens.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Course does not measure up
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
The Old Course, otherwise known as St. Andrews, has now been joined in a state of Open obsolescence by Royal Liverpool Golf Club, otherwise known as Hoylake, with a bow to Tiger Woods. Harsh, you say, though not just one person’s opinion, but a verdict firmly delivered in the 135th British Open just concluded. Any time a tournament player can win a championship using irons as his major driving weapon, that course does not measure up to what the Royal & Ancient stands for in its Open, considered by a great many as the world championship of golf.
Oh, no, the Old Course will always be included. It cannot be otherwise. St. Andrews is generally embraced as the world capital of golf. The R&A lives there, and as it stands now, has decreed that the Open will be played there every five years, so they might as well line up the claret jugs and engrave Woods’ name on them. The two very old courses are cousins in layout and challenge, and disturbingly out of touch with golf with its latter-day technology and equipment.
“Looking backward is no way to move forward,” Ron Whitten, Golf Digest’s architecture editor, wrote before play began at Hoylake. The acreage has been sneerlingly referred to “as Royal O.B.” by many of Hoylake’s detractors. So the question was, why was the Open returned the course after a 39-year absence?
The property is so confined that the practice ground had to be moved across a street to a municipal course. Much of the inner course was out of bounds, though I saw only one shot actually struck out of bounds, that by Adam Scott on the l8th hole Sunday. I’m sure there were more hit by lesser players, but they were never considered television fare. Curious to me will be the post-mortem reviews of the UK media, printed and verbalized.
This is not to take away from Tiger Woods’ play, only to emphasize his brilliance. His finishing round was a display of near perfection. He hit only one errant shot that led to a bogey, though his train of thought was interrupted several times by distractions from the gallery. His winning score of 270 was the lowest since he won at St. Andrews at 269 in 2000. It was a work of art, though he managed only a par on the par-5 18th hole, an amazing feat of total concentration. It was over long before it was over, though oft times Ian Baker-Finch beseeched the television audience not to go away. He shouldn’t have fretted. Who would have thought of tuning out to auto racing and a world’s strongest man contest?
Sergio Garcia was never better poised to have his run at Tiger. One stroke off the lead as they left the first tee, but by the turn the Spaniard was out of it. He had played the front nine in 29 on Saturday. Sunday his score was a fat 39. He was a much more exciting challenger as a 19-year-old when he went down to the wire with Woods in the PGA Championship at Medinah. He, Jim Furyk, Retief Goosen and Angel Cabrera all got off to dismal starts and were out of it early, and Goosen had been the pre-championship choice of several. Ernie Els lurked, and that’s about as close as he got. Only Chris DiMarco represented the American entourage with unfailing challenge, burdened as he was in grief for his late mother.
Phil Mickelson? If there was any game in him, it never surfaced. He stuck to a big club off most driving holes, was all over the course and missed as many putts as Delaware is wide. “The Americans played very poorly,” Peter Alliss said, and that pretty much summed it up for our side, DiMarco exempted.
Alliss also said that “they may be back here in six or seven years,” referring to the Open. That remains to be seen. It was amazing, if the estimate was accurate, that they were able to squeeze 150,000 spectators inside the boundaries. Safe to say, it was considerably more comfortable from where I sat.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Furman Bisher
All is right with Richt
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Last month a Florida fan stood in a ballroom at the Cobb Galleria Centre and asked Urban Meyer when the Gators might again play for the conference championship. It was a heartfelt question that used to arise whenever a Georgia coach addressed a Bulldog Club, a question that for the Red & Black has finally been rendered moot.
Georgia has played for the conference title three times in four seasons and has won it twice. The 2002 season was a long-sought breakthrough; last year was simply the re-affirmation. The program that couldn’t rise above Florida and Tennessee in the SEC East has risen above all its brethren in the nation’s toughest neighborhood.
You can make a case for LSU as Georgia’s co-equal, the Tigers having won two SEC titles and part of one national championship over the past five years. But LSU has changed coaches along the way, and consensus holds that Les (Fake Kick) Miles isn’t quite Nick (No Nonsense) Saban. Certainly Miles did himself no favors by taking what seemed to be the better team and losing to Georgia by 20 points in the Dome last December. And yes, Auburn took the best SEC team of the last decade and had that massive undefeated season in 2004, but that was one big year amid an array of slightly lesser ones.
Mark Richt, who’s nothing if not smooth, has built a program that runs as smoothly as a Rolls. (Ray Goff used to ride a tractor. Jim Donnan once drove a steamroller. You get the contrast.) Richt has won the SEC with David Greene and David Pollack and Brian VanGorder, and last year he won it without them. He’s without a No. 1 quarterback at the moment, but history suggests that when one emerges he’ll win big.
Nothing about Georgia bears the hint of a team on the decline. Recruiting moves from strength to strength. Last season stands as a reminder that the Bulldogs have grown stout enough to win big in any given year, not just once when the stars are aligned.
With the new season 6 1/2 weeks away, every other SEC program faces a bigger burden of proof. LSU has to prove Miles can do what Saban did. Auburn has to prove it can get past its latest tempest, the front-page-of-The-New-York-Times academic kerfuffle. Meyer has to prove his spread offense will work in a conference laden with speed. Steve Spurrier has to prove his stylized expertise isn’t site-specific. Alabama has to prove it can again beat Auburn. Tennessee has to prove it can again beat Vanderbilt.
And Georgia? It demonstrably has the right coach, and he seems to be recruiting the right players. This summer has been free of the ring-auctioning of 2003 and the arrests of last year. There’s a greater peace — “peace,” you should know, is about Richt’s favorite word — across Bulldog Nation than at any time since the middle year of Herschel, and there remains for Richt only one thing to prove: That the new king of the SEC can take his team to the national championship game.
Georgia has finished in the top 10 four years running, marking only the second time in school history that has happened. (Presumably, you know about the first.) Georgia has posted the sixth-best winning percentage in the land over Richt’s five seasons, and of the other teams heading that list — Texas, Miami, Southern Cal, Oklahoma, Boise State, Ohio State and LSU — only the Bulldogs and Boise didn’t grace a BCS title game over that span. Boise won’t get there. Georgia will.
For two decades Georgia fans gathered in their Bulldog Clubs and wondered if it could ever again be as sweet as when Herschel Walker stalked collegiate end zones. They’ve gotten their answer, and this new era of good feeling carries an extra benefit. Great as he was, Herschel eventually had to leave. Mark Richt gets to stay as long as he likes.
Permalink | Comments (113) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Valvano’s legacy is hope
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
The voice came crackling clear off the recorder. Bell-ringing, vibrant, full of vigor, though it would be stilled two months later. It was Jim Valvano accepting the Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award 13 years ago, already deep into his personal bout with cancer. In effect, he was setting the table for “The V Foundation.”
“Never give up,” he said. Booming. “Never, never give up!”
Well, Valvano didn’t but the vicious cancer took him anyway. Now, a few days ago, it was “Jimmy V Never Give Up Foundation Day” on this radio network, to which I had just casually tuned in. It was a flashback. The N.C. State basketball coach had flown to New Jersey to receive the Ashe Award, and his acceptance was more than a speech, it was a challenge, more powerful than Valvano could have ever imagined. The voice would have shattered chandeliers, brought tears to your eyes. He told the story of his first coaching job, freshman coach at Rutgers.
“Vince Lombardi was my hero. I was 21 and most of my players were 19, and I was sending them out charged up. I was sending them out to play for Rutgers, our first game, and I was adapting Coach Lombardi’s values to us. ‘When you go out there tonight, you are playing for faith, family and the Green Bay Packers,’ I said.” Oops! He laughed at his gaffe.
After his supplication he almost broke his arm trying to crash through a door that was supposed to be unlocked but wasn’t. Rutgers lost.
Twenty years ago, when Bobby Dodd went to N.C. State to present the Dodd Coach of the Year Award to Dick Sheridan, Valvano came by unannounced for a visit with the Georgia Tech coach at his hotel. They had never met. Valvano wanted to know this man, and in the couple of hours that ensued both came to know each other. It was a riveting exchange of two great men who would never meet again. It should have been recorded, but alas, there was no recorder in the room.
There have been few like Valvano. A sports writer’s friend. He arose at dawn one time in Atlanta to be interviewed over breakfast, still in his pajama top. If there was anything he wasn’t, it was dull. If you’ll recall the picture of him flying down the court to swoop in on his players after they had upset the greatly favored Houston Cougars and won the NCAA championship in Albuquerque, that was the Valvano you want in memory. Vibrant. Full of life.
The V Foundation is still very much alive. A fund-raising golf tournament is played around the country. Play in it and you get a shirt with “Jimmy V Foundation” across the chest. I have one. I’m proud of it. I’m proud of another thing, a coincidence. I’m proud that when he was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 1995, my name was included in his class, along with Bill Dooley, Ted Brown and John Lucas. Jim’s brother Bob, now a broadcaster in Louisville, stood in for him.
Jim had plans. “I don’t know how much time I have left,” he said during his acceptance speech, “but I plan to be back here next year and present the Arthur Ashe award to the next recipient.”
Sadly, he didn’t make it. It turned out he had only two months left, but he left his indelible mark, “The V Foundation,” later created in his honor by friends and admirers who refuse to give up.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC
Courts, not Selig, must rule on Bonds
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Here’s a quick lesson in Logic 101: If Barry Bonds told the truth that he didn’t “knowingly” use steroids, then why wouldn’t Greg Anderson, his former trainer and boyhood friend, just appear before a grand jury and verify the claims of the San Francisco Giants slugger?
Well, uh, hmmm. Anderson already has chosen the slammer over testifying, and his attorney, Mark Geragos, told USA Today regarding future requests by the feds to speak to his client, “They obviously need Greg, but he’s not talking.”
They obviously know why Anderson isn’t talking, which is why they obviously will continue to pursue an indictment of Bonds for perjury, tax evasion or both until they get what they want. With or without Anderson, they’ll succeed (see Al Capone and Pete Rose), but here’s a reminder to the overly giddy regarding Bonds’ self-inflicted mess: An indictment isn’t a conviction.
Are you listening, Allan H. “Bud” Selig, baseball’s commissioner?
In other words, Selig would be as wrongheaded to suspend Bonds after an indictment as former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn was 26 years ago when he tried to boot Ferguson Jenkins out of the game after his arrest for possession of cocaine, marijuana and hashish.
An indictment means that a group of jurors believes a person may have committed a crime. An indictment means that a person could be found innocent in a subsequent trial, and that you could look rather silly after, say, suspending that person from baseball early in the process. Mostly, an indictment means that, if you’re Selig, and if you’re wondering what to do with Bonds, you don’t swing for the fences. You bunt, which means you allow the judicial system to drive justice home.
Neither income-tax evasion nor perjury violates baseball’s Basic Agreement. So, if Bonds is indicted, and if Selig suspends him anyway, baseball would do so because Bonds isn’t the most pleasant guy ever to wear a uniform, and because the Commissioner’s Office wants to use any means necessary to keep “755” and “Hank Aaron” linked together as the game’s magic pair for home runs. Barring injury or jail time, Bonds is on a steady pace to surpass Aaron, and Aaron is among Selig’s closest friends. Thus a trio of understandable reasons why Selig would suspend Bonds, but they wouldn’t be advisable ones.
The Players Association would fight such a suspension faster than one of Bonds’ shots to McCovey Cove. Just as Selig said there is a precedent for suspending Bonds (the Jenkins case), there is a precedent for an arbitrator telling the commissioner to stifle (the Jenkins case). Two weeks after Kuhn issued his punishment to Jenkins, a future Hall of Fame pitcher, an arbitrator overturned the suspension.
Kuhn blew it. Well, that time. Contrary to popular belief, he was one of the two most underrated commissioners in sports history. During his tenure from 1969 through 1984, attendance tripled. He presided over the game’s first massive television contracts. He also showed the guts of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis to ban the likes of Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle for casino involvement and to issue the unprecedented suspensions of drug abusers. Through it all, Kuhn kept mentioning the “best interest of baseball” clause that has existed for all of the game’s commissioners. He just went too far with Jenkins.
Now Selig could become Kuhn in a couple of ways. As for the good, Selig is the other most underrated commissioner in sports history. Under his watch, baseball has smashed all-time attendance records. He was proved correct after forcing the game’s traditionalists to institute interleague play, wild cards for the playoffs, realignment and home-field advantage at the World Series for the winning league of the All-Star Game. As for the bad, Selig could become Kuhn by going beyond his authority to make a point.
If Selig does suspend Bonds after an indictment, for instance, the big picture of his point would be this: Baseball wants to flaunt the fact that it really cares about its image. Plus, since Bonds is about as popular outside of Northern California as a bowl of resin bags for breakfast, baseball is going to play to the crowd by telling Bonds to get lost, even though baseball knows an arbitrator will rule otherwise.
The thing is, Selig still has time to get this Bonds situation right. All the commissioner has to do is nothing while the courts do everything.
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Deal for closer a little late
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
I still don’t think they can get there — Bob Wickman is one pitcher, not the needed three or four — but the Braves now believe they can. They doubted a month ago, maybe even a week ago, but after a deluge of offense and the acquisition of a real closer the old swagger will come gushing back. I still don’t think these are the Braves of old, but you can bet the Braves will act as if they are until/unless they’re eliminated.
That’s no small consideration. The last three division titles were in large measure products of that conspicuous self-assurance. The other teams in the NL East didn’t know how to win, and the Braves were certain they did. They can’t win their division this time — the Mets are too good and too far ahead — but they’ve given themselves a chance to make the postseason. When a team is 13 games under .500 on the morning of July 2, that’s a chance it didn’t figure to have.
Asked if he’d have traded for Wickman were the Braves 10 games back in the wild-card standings as opposed to 4 1/2, John Schuerholz tried not to answer but essentially did. The front office had been waiting to see if it should be selling off players, and the gains made this last fortnight arrived as a signal to buy. “Even if you’re 10 games back, you need a closer,” Schuerholz said, neglecting to note that the Braves wouldn’t have been 10 games back if they’d had a closer.
The Braves held preliminary discussions with Wickman over the winter, but he chose to re-up with Cleveland for one season at $5 million. How might this season have looked had the Braves offered, say, $12 million over two seasons? But they tried to finesse it, saving their money and praying Chris Reitsma could graduate to being a ninth-inning man, and when that didn’t happen they had no chance. It’s a credit to this manager and these hitters that they didn’t pack it in back in June. Sure, pros are paid to perform no matter what the standings say, but how many last-place teams actually hold out a smidgen of hope?
There can, however, be no lasting hope with a bad bullpen. The Braves have won 11 of 14, but only three of the victories featured a save. “We’ve characterized our bullpen as a work in progress,” Schuerholz said, though the “progress” part has been open to debate. Then he dared to liken Wickman to Fred McGriff, saying that McGriff’s arrival in July 1993 enabled the other Braves to hit in their natural positions and suggesting that Wickman-as-closer will do the same for this relief corps. Schuerholz again: “It’s no longer a work in progress.”
Let’s not hand the Braves the keys to Postseason 2006 just yet. They still have to climb over seven teams, at least four of which — Cincinnati, Arizona, Houston and L.A. — have reason to suspect they’re just as worthy. And Wickman pitching a scoreless ninth will have little value if Jorge Sosa or Ken Ray can’t work a tidy eighth. And Wickman, effective as he has been, isn’t Mariano Rivera.
Wickman doesn’t strike people out. (He has just 17 K’s in 28 innings.) He hasn’t had his best year. (His ERA is 4.18, and opponents are hitting .271 against him — both numbers markedly up over last season.) He has worked only four postseason innings and has spent the bulk of his career with teams that contended for nothing. Sometimes it’s different closing for a team that expects to win. Ask Dan Kolb.
That said, Wickman was the best closer available, and Schuerholz got him for Max Ramirez, who was never apt to be any better than third-best catcher in the organization. It was a move that had to be made if the Braves are to sustain a serious run, and Schuerholz made it. But before anyone gets too giddy, here’s one last sobering notion: Had the same GM bought the same pitcher over the winter, the Braves wouldn’t have nearly so many teams to catch.
Permalink | Comments (111) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Smoltz is the closer Braves need
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Imagine this conversation. (It’s easy if you try.)
John Schuerholz: “I heard your widely publicized request for veteran help loud and clear, and I’m pleased to inform you that the Braves have found the absolute best available closer.”
John Smoltz: “That’s great news. Who is he?”
John Schuerholz: “A guy named John Smoltz. You report to the bullpen tonight.”
It is a source of some amusement that the pitcher who’s lobbying for relief help is himself the greatest reliever in franchise history. I know, I know: Smoltz is also the best starting pitcher the Braves have at the moment, but the whole twisted sequence of events — the failure of Dan Kolb, the inability of Chris Reitsma to close games (both last season and this), the premature promotion of Joey Devine, the doomed-from-the-start experiment with the flaky Kyle Farnswoth — that led to the collapse of this bullpen was set in motion by Smoltz’s oft-expressed desire to work every fifth day.
As for finding a real closer at this late date with the limited resources he has to trade: If Schuerholz can do that, he’s a better GM than I think he is, and I think he’s the best.
As for the Braves revisiting their Smoltz-as-starter scenario: I continue to believe that could happen over the winter. (Assuming Mike Hampton’s rehabilitation goes well, assuming Kyle Davies gets healthy and shows he can get people out, assuming Chuck James isn’t a one-month wonder, assuming Tim Hudson ever gets it going and keeps it going.) If the rotation can somehow be stabilized — a huge if, granted — I continue to believe Smoltz would be of greater value as a reliever.
Permalink | Comments (75) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Quick Hit
Pitching will be Braves’ downfall
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
No question, it’s been a nice little run for the Braves in July. Guided by the sparks from Chipper Jones’ suddenly blazing Louisville Slugger, they’ve left the darkness of their 6-21 June to slug their way back into the light of the living. They’ve done so in nearly unprecedented ways.
Thus the Braves’ problem: This won’t continue.
This can’t continue. As a result, the Braves won’t take the National League wild card, not with as many as eight other teams in contention, including the six that were ahead of them entering Wednesday’s action. They also won’t take a division title for a 15th consecutive season, not with a slew of pitching issues that haven’t melted from the summer sun or their sizzling bats. What really is thwarting any chance of a Braves comeback in the NL East is that the New York Mets finally have it right both physically and mentally.
I mean, it’s not like this is 1993 or something. For one, that was a fluke, when the Braves did the ridiculous by roaring from 10 games behind the San Francisco Giants on July 22 to finish with 104 victories to the Giants’ 103 for a division title. There were no wild cards back then. You won the division, or you were out, and those Braves had enough of everything to make losing not an option.
For another, those Braves were just better than these Braves.
We’re talking much better.
“In 1993, we had a lot of answers, and we just needed to play better. Whereas this team, if you really look at them, they have a lot of questions,” said David Justice, the Braves’ last true leader, who joined Fred McGriff and Ron Gant back then to give those Braves a trio with 100 or more RBIs. Justice spoke over the phone from New York, where he now is a television announcer for Yankees games. This is his fourth year in retirement after 14 seasons in the major leagues that included prolific stints with the Cleveland Indians, Oakland A’s and New York Yankees.
Even so, Justice’s opening eight years with the Braves always will sit the deepest inside his heart. “You know, people say that they couldn’t have imagined the Braves going to the playoffs this many times, but, yeah, I could have. And I also could have imagined me on every one of those teams doing it,” said Justice, still shocked by the Braves’ foolish trade of Marquis Grissom and himself after the 1996 season. “Maybe I was being naive, but with all of that talent we had, I thought they’d keep that team together and that we’d all play at least 10 years together.”
Now those Braves, who in 1995 provided the only world championship during this run, have evolved into these Braves, with Justice adding, “They’ve had, what, three or four closers already this year? Tim Hudson has been up and down, so they really have just one starter (John Smoltz) that you can guarantee a win. We knew we had the personnel to overcome in the second half and play unbelievable baseball. We had a bullpen that was steady, and we had a pitching staff that was solid.”
Uh, yes. In addition to Cy Maddux, Cy Glavine and Cy Smoltz, those Braves had Steve Avery, all winners of 15 or more games. Mike Stanton also was the closer for an adequate bullpen, which is in contrast to whatever these Braves have now among relievers. Despite the bullpen’s recent surge toward decency, it remains a string of disasters waiting to happen.
Worse, the Braves likely can’t fix their bullpen mess this season. With 21 of baseball’s 30 teams still having at least a medium shot at a playoff berth, and with many of those teams joining the Braves in a search for relief help in an already weak market, well, this isn’t good news for the choppers and the chanters.
You also have the ugliness that is Hudson, supposedly the ace of the Braves’ worst group of starters since their bad old days of the 1980s. He has been allowing about two field goals per game, but he has been lucky that his teammates have been scoring more than a touchdown per game.
Somewhere it is written that man cannot live by offense alone. Sooner than later, when the Braves’ hitters become Clark Kents again, the Braves’ pitchers will be exposed as Lois Lanes again. And the Braves will start sinking faster than a speeding bullet in the standings again.
Permalink | Comments (106) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Pity the Auburn professor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Professor James Gundlach?
Professor Jan Kemp?
They are kindred souls. While Kemp exposed the University of Georgia during the 1980s as a fraud when it came to the “student-athlete,” Gundlach is doing the same at Auburn University.
Not only that: when Kemp began discussing the academic truth about Georgia and athletics, she was called a kook (among other things) by Bulldog supporters.
Word already is circulating around Auburn that Gundlach squealed because he was angry that he didn’t get to head his sociology department.
That means the name-calling and the blatant lies directed at Gundlach by the Tiger Nation are just beginning.
Permalink | Comments (41) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
British Open course not as it was in 1967
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
No matter the elegance the name implies, Royal Liverpool Golf Club, where the 135th British Open will be played this week, will be like fitting a lumberjack’s foot into a chorus girl’s slipper. For obviously more righteous purposes, the venue is known as Hoylake and has been for all the 11 times the Open has been contested there. That’s right — 11 of the 135 times, but not since 1967, when the winner was the Argentine sportsman, Roberto de Vicenzo.
Thereafter, Hoylake fell into the same state of rejection as the Merion Golf Club over here. Too small, too cramped for an Open. Frankly, both are still too cramped and tight, and yet, the U.S. Golf Association just this year followed the R&A’s lead and restored Merion to our Open rotation. The sadness is that advanced equipment and technology have neutered them, and several other British Open venues.
Hoylake is a vintage classic. Some distinguished champions have been serenaded there: Peter Thomson, Walter Hagen and, the crowning moment, when Bobby Jones won there in 1930 on his way to the Grand Slam.
But this is not the same golf course, nor is it the same one I played a few years back. Holes have been switched. The 16th, a par 5, becomes the 18th, the 17th, once the closing hole, now becomes the first, the first becomes the third and the original 18th becomes the second, if you’re still with me.
Not that all of this means anything to most of us, but somehow or another they have managed to elasticize the course to a length of 7,258 yards, about the same as St. Andrews. Which, I might say, might have fallen into the category of the obsolete were it not considered the Bethlehem of the game. It’s Tiger Woods’ own private pitch-and-putt course. Tee it up, go through the motions and hand him the jug.
So, Hoylake is not any more vulnerable than most Open venues, other than Carnoustie, measuring 7,361 yards, but set up so in ‘99 as to cause much anguish and gnashing of teeth among the contestants, and borne out by the winning score — 6 over par.
Carnoustie — to which the Open returns next year — played to a par of 71. The readjusted Hoylake will play to par 72, same as St. Andrews. When de Vicenzo won there in ‘67, no more than 30,000 spectators had to be accomodated. Last year at St. Andrews the number of spectators was estimated at 250,000.
How on earth do they squeeze any such number into Royal Liverpool with one two-lane road and a rail station, as I recall it?
And check this in your memory bank – to get into the British Open all one has to do is stop at a ticket kiosk and plunk down the price.
No one is turned away.
The players’ problem will be keeping the ball on the golf course. Ron Whitten, Golf Digest’s noted course critic, is so put out by the choice of Hoylake that he has dubbed it “Royal O.B.,” for out-of-bounds. Slight room for error.
It is possible in one situation to drive the ball in the center of the course and be O.B. It ordinarily is the members’ practice range, but the club has acquired 10 acres on a nearby municipal course for practice at the Open, so the former practice ground is now O.B., most probably occupied by the tented village.
Royal Liverpool is bordered by rows of brick cottages on three sides and the River Dee, on its way into the Irish Sea, on the other. It measures out to 184 acres, which would be a tight fit for a course alone on one of these meandering American real estate projects.
There are four par 3s, all 200 yards or less; four par 5s, including two of the three finishing holes, two par 4s under 400 yards, but a much tighter par 72 than St. Andrews.
This has the bearing of a course that favors the shorter but straighter shooter. The player who can hit his tee shots where he aims it, and putts well on that side of the pond. The betting class, as usual, goes for the boomers, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, though the only time the favorite has won in 10 years has been Woods, always at St. Andrews.
Could this be another Ben Curtis or Todd Hamilton year?
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf
Falcons good enough for playoff bounce
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
If the Falcons weren’t quite as good as they looked in 2004, they weren’t as feeble as they appeared the last half of last season. A lot of informed folks are using that 2-6 finish as cause to dismiss the Falcons’ chances in 2006. This team, which convenes next week for training camp, should not be dismissed. This should be a playoff team.
What happened over those eight deflating games was that some cocky players and their cocky coach couldn’t right themselves after the first sustained reversal of the Mora era. What happened was that the gusher of football luck inherent in the run to the NFC championship went bust overnight. What happened was that the roster’s deepest flaws - inexperience at receiver and along the defensive front, ineptitude at safety - were laid bare at the worst possible time.
And that was all it took for a team that was 6-2 and positioned to be the NFC’s No. 1 or 2 seed to finish a seedy-seeming 8-8. The second and seventh games of the slide had a cruel symmetry to them: Both were against Tampa Bay; both saw the Falcons waste late leads because their safeties couldn’t tackle Cadillac Williams; both were lost in overtime. The first Buc loss came as a punch to the gut; the second arrived with a shrug of resignation. Remember? The Falcons recovered a fumble on the opening kickoff of OT … and Todd Peterson’s 28-yard field goal was blocked not because of a missed assignment but because a low kick found the arm of the one Buc who jumped highest.
Says Rich McKay, the GM: “When that happens, you’re not meant to win.”
But that was last year, and NFL predictions assign too much value to last year. McKay again: “Since free agency came along, the ability to pick games [over the offseason] is almost non-existent.” Teams now have the chance to reconfigure themselves in a hurry, and the Falcons eradicated two failings by landing John Abraham, the Pro Bowl defensive end, and two new safeties in Lawyer Milloy and Chris Crocker. This team should again be able to stop the run, and that’s a very big deal.
These being the Falcons, every discussion must eventually turn to Michael Vick, who wasn’t very effective last season because his knee hurt or because his many critics hurt his feelings or because Greg Knapp is a raging dolt. Vick will be better this season because he’ll have learned from his latest set of tribulations and because Michael Jenkins and Roddy White are no longer so green. “They’re in a lot better position to help,” McKay says. “When Michael got nicked [in Week 4 against Minnesota], all he had [among wideouts] were young guys.”
And surely Jim Mora took something from the disintegration of last season. He was the NFL’s bright young thing in 2004, but by October of ‘05 his self-assurance had grown to outsized proportions. His dismissal of the careers of Mike Kenn and Jeff Van Note - how good could they have been if they never knew consecutive winning seasons? - was the height of chutzpah, and it was only fitting that Jimbo himself failed to stack winning seasons back to back.
Mora has to prove he can handle failure, but he seems smart enough to figure it out. If Knapp and Vick are indeed working at cross-purposes, Mora must intervene on the side of the quarterback. (Completion percentage doesn’t matter. Winning percentage does.) If the team is going through turbulence, a coach prone to tantrums isn’t going to calm any nerves. But to assume the snippy Mora of last season is the Mora we’ll see this autumn is to fall into the trap of memory. Says McKay: “The longer I’m in this, the more I realize that every year is unique unto itself.”
This time a year ago, Mike Holmgren was thought to be on his way out in Seattle, where the 2004 Seahawks had lost eight of their last 14 games. Today Holmgren and his men are coming off a Super Bowl. The 2006 Falcons might not bounce quite that high, but they’re due a bounce.
Tech-Irish series has ugly past
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Come Sept. 2, Notre Dame will play its latest holy war in football. Such is always the mind-set for those whenever the Fighting Irish enter their world, particularly south of the Mason-Dixon line. This time, the folks from Touchdown Jesus will travel to Bobby Dodd Stadium in a game as big as the one in 1978.
Hopefully, for the sake of everybody, it won’t be as nasty.
Or smelly. Among other things, the Notre Dame contingent was pounded back then by a combination of dead fish and whiskey bottles before, during and after what eventually was an Irish rout of the Yellow Jackets. So, with the Tech Nation already losing its mind for its home opener by selling out the place in a flash to see a pretty good bunch of Jackets against a consensus top 3 team that has all of those legends and ghosts, you wonder if Tech officials are concerned that Jackets fans might disgrace themselves again.
“The safety of players in any game is always something that you think about and you make arrangements for as you go through the planning for your football season with your game management people,” said Dan Radakovich, in his first year as Tech’s athletics director. “My goodness, that other game happened 28 years ago, so I think that some of the people who may have been involved with [the trash throwing] may be running corporations at this point in time.”
Maybe, but this is for sure: At that point in time, all of those folks should have gone from the stands to the slammer for their ugliness on Nov. 18, 1978, the next-to-the-last time that the Irish had the audacity to come to town.
For some perspective, consider the chat I had this week with an old acquaintance who recalled more than a few explosive trips in high school to battle foes around his native Monongahela, Pa., a hard-scrabble steel town. Not only that, throughout his 15 NFL seasons along the way to four world championships and legendary comebacks, his San Francisco 49ers weren’t exactly the people’s choice, stretching from the Black Hole in Oakland to the intimidating rocking and rolling of old Mile High Stadium to the creatures who often populate the stands in the Meadowlands.
“Even so, I still have to say that Georgia Tech game was it. I mean, that was the worst thing that I ever experienced at a football game,” said Joe Montana, the Hall of Fame quarterback, over the phone from his home in the wine country of northern California. That’s opposed to bourbon country, which provided some of the stuff that once filled the bottles that were hurled at Notre Dame players back then.
The sky over the stadium was filled with even more debris than clouds when it became apparent in the fourth quarter that Notre Dame would smash Tech’s chances of extending its longest winning streak since its Bobby Dodd days from seven to whatever. “They also were a little upset, because they thought we had poured it on the year before [69-14]. Then, when we got down there, they had the same feeling, I guess,” said Montana, whose Irish had a taste (and a smell) of things to come heading to the stadium. “We were driving in on the bus, and they were throwing fish and all kinds of stuff at us. Then we got into the game and it got worse.”
For one, Notre Dame’s bench was within howling (and throwing) distance of Tech’s student body. “You were right there, and at one point, it looked like a rum bottle smashed on the helmet of the guy standing right in front of me,” Montana said. “They were throwing batteries, champagne bottles, everything. It was so crazy that after [former Notre Dame coach Dan] Devine said, ‘We’re outta here,’ they put us on the same sideline as Georgia Tech.”
All Radakovich knows is that, since his arrival in April from LSU, Tech associate athletics director Bobby Robinson has met intermittently with his staff to discuss security matters for the Notre Dame game and beyond. “Certainly their planning will kick into high gear around the beginning of August,” said Radakovich, an expert on crazy environments after watching LSU fans drink themselves silly all day before stumbling into Death Valley to scream themselves hoarse all night.
Said Radakovich, “After Auburn and LSU in 2003, when we clinched a spot in the SEC championship game, some of the students and fans attempted to remove the goalposts. There was a decision that was made that it shouldn’t occur, and we had our security force there, and they held the goalposts, and from that point on, no one has ever gotten on the field.”
That’s encouraging. Just in case, maybe Tech should ban those arriving for the Notre Dame game with scales falling from their pockets.
Permalink | Comments (103) | Categories: Tech / ACC, Terence Moore
Wild-card thinking could hurt Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The Braves came off the All-Star break thinking they have a realistic chance to win the wild card, and in professional sports it’s almost always better to win than to lose. A playoff berth for this substandard team would count among the exceptions.
Over the last 15 seasons, the Braves have fallen into the trap that snares all winning teams: They have lost the knack of seeing themselves as they really are. They didn’t come north from spring training thinking, “You know, we’re a substandard team with no leadoff man and no first baseman and a wretched bullpen.” They thought this instead: “We’re the Braves and we always win our division, and because we’re the Braves we’ll win again.”
Good as they’ve been, the Braves haven’t been quite as good lately. Over the seven full seasons from 1992 through 2000 — ‘94 and ‘95 were shortened due to the strike — the Braves averaged 100 wins. Over the last five seasons they’ve averaged 95. They’ve won one playoff series since the 22-year-old Andruw Jones drew the bases-loaded walk off Kenny Rogers in 1999.
Yes, much of this has to do with Time Warner’s payroll limitations. Remember those giddy days in the late ’90s when the Braves and Yankees matched one another dollar for dollar? Well, the Yankees’ outlay climbed above $200 million last year; the Braves’ is now less than half that. It isn’t always true that you get what you pay for — the Yankees, remember, haven’t won any of the last five World Series — but being able to spend is the difference between having a real closer and hoping (against hope) Chris Reitsma pans out.
The Braves’ master plan has been reduced to praying Bobby Cox thinks of something. He did in 2003, when he didn’t have a real No. 1 starter, and in 2004, when he didn’t have much of a team at all, and again last year, when he had a slew of rookies. But this time even he couldn’t override an absolute dearth of capable relievers, and it’s a credit to his managerial acumen that this team reached the break only nine games under .500.
A 7-3 homestand put the Braves within mathematical reach of the wild card — they’re now 5 1/2 back — but it’s hard to imagine any scenario in which these Braves could finish ahead of the Astros or the Dodgers over 162 games. OK, you’re saying, but these are the Braves, and they’ve become experts at flouting logical scenarios. And that, folks, is the point.
Somewhere along the line the Braves have to start viewing themselves not as the division winners they’ve been since 1991 but as what they’ve become — a team that needed a big homestand to pull within nine games of .500. They’re no longer equipped with All-Stars at every position, no longer the owners of a rotation featuring three or four No. 1 starters. They’re a substandard team without a leadoff man, a first baseman, a closer and a true ace. (Tim Hudson’s record as a Brave is 20-17.)
They have as many weaknesses as strengths. They don’t need to be propping up this rickety roster with a deadline deal that will cost prospects; they need to be making deals with an eye toward shoring up a future that, for all the gifted rookies who delivered a division championship in 2005, isn’t anything near a certainty.
The Braves stopped being what we’d come to consider the Braves the first three months of the 2006 season, but in truth they haven’t been those Braves for more than three years. They’ve been getting by, mixing and matching, winning not because they had the most talent but because nobody else in the NL East could figure out how winning worked. The Mets finally got it right, and the Mets aren’t going to be bad again anytime soon.
In a weird way, an improbable wild-card run would be long-term counterproductive. If the Braves could make the playoffs with this middling crew, it would only deepen their conviction that they can win no matter what kind of team they run out there. They need to disabuse themselves of that notion posthaste. They need to stop making do. They need to start getting good again.
Permalink | Comments (125) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Rebirth depends on pitching
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
If baseball has a drug problem, it follows that the Braves appear to be functioning on hallucinogens. They lost nine of 12 in April. Then they won 15 of 20. Then they lost 20 of 23. So we all buried them. Then a hand lunged out of the gravesite before the All-Star break. In the bleachers, rocking horse people ate marshmallow pies.
Friday night, the season resumes. But it’s going to take more than a cup of French roast to soothe this hangover.
“We’re still breathing,” said Bobby Cox.
Ah, the man with kaleidoscope eyes.
The Braves are 40-49, which means they would need to finish 48-25 just to equal their worst record in the past 14 seasons (88-74 in 2001). The odds of either catching the New York Mets for first place in the National League East or passing eight other teams in the wild-card race are sufficiently mind-numbing.
Sobriety screams: It ain’t happening.
Logic screams: There’s only a single hope — starting pitching.
Forget the lineup. If that changes, it’s only because John Schuerholz deals second baseman Marcus Giles before the deadline. But that likely would be more for an arm than an infielder. And given the cricket noises emanating from the executive suite, there’s no reason to think a significant deal is coming
Forget the bullpen. Yes, things have settled down a little. But, unlike starting rotations, the relief corps sets up from back to front. The Braves entered spring training without an obvious closer, and all they’ve done since then is eliminate candidates. One night, it will be Jorge Sosa. The next, Ken Ray. Most nights, Timothy Leary. As long as the ninth inning is unsettled, so are the ones preceding it. It will not be fixed this season.
All faint, weak and malnourished hopes come back to starting pitching. Five- or six-inning outings won’t do it. They need seven or eight innings from John Smoltz and Tim Hudson and whoever can stand up straight that night. They need complete games. Or they’re dead. Officially.
It starts Fridday night. It starts with Hudson. Two years ago, they acquired him with the expectation that he would be their anchor for several seasons. But that hasn’t happened. Hudson has been mostly unspectacular, and recently not even very good. He went 14-9 with a 3.52 earned run average last season. This year he is 6-8 with a 4.56 ERA. That’s not a staff anchor — just an anchor.
“I try not to think about negative things,” Hudson said Thursday at Turner Field as he prepared to leave for the Braves’ trip. “I’m trying to pull as many positives out of the first half as I can. That’s the only way to get out of a rut and get your confidence going.”
He went eight innings in his last start and left with a 7-2 lead. The bullpen blew that up (Hudson was charged with four earned runs in a no-decision). But it was a leap forward from his previous four starts (all losses, 19 earned runs, 30 hits, 14 walks in 21 2/3 innings).
“The last start was good for me, and hopefully it’ll help us get a fresh start in the second half,” he said. “Obviously, the first game back is always important. We can’t worry about the races now, whether it’s the division or the wild card. We just need to start winning games.”
Smoltz has been strong. Horacio Ramirez can’t stay healthy. John Thomson is erratic, even when he is healthy. Chuck James has been solid but is young, and therefore an unknown. This doesn’t set up well for second-half fantasy.
“We’re not used to this,” Cox said. “The game’s the same, but it’s just different, knowing you’re 13 games out.”
Cox spent the All-Star break on his farm in Adairsville, “Mowing pastures and cleaning barns,” he said. “It was fun.”
Cox’s reality doesn’t always jibe with others. But that’s probably a good thing in this case.
Permalink | Comments (50) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
Captivating World Cup woos U.S. fans
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH: Never has a World Cup so engrossed this country as the one just ended in Germany, and at the end, soccer had gained favor over here in gulps. No complaints about the dearth of scoring, rather a new understanding of offenses and defensive play. We began to get into the deliberateness and flow of play. Scheduling was right on the money for television. The U.S. team crashed early, but was never missed. American audiences just signed on with another team of choice and cheered on. Ratings will show that soccer was the hit of the weekend, and the game should have gained millions of new fans it never had before. … And whatever will become of Zinedine Zidane, who slumped off in disgrace? …
“I will be heavyweight champion of the world again.” Evander Holyfield said it at his induction into the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame. “They said I was too young at first. Now they say I am too old. I’ve been in training and getting ready to fight again.” …
“I’m trying so hard to make the Ryder Cup team, I’m getting in my own way.” Davis Love III said it at the U.S. Open. He ranked ninth on the list at the time. He has slipped to 11th since. …
“Oh, about 100,000, I guess,” Ben Curtis said, when asked about the size of the crowd around his finish the year he won the British Open. “Here today (as he won the Booz-Allen two weeks ago), probably 100.” …
Paul Harvey’s switch from WGST 640 AM to WYAY 106.7 FM on the dial has created a new country music fan at our house. Thank you, Rhubarb Jones. …
Who holds the record for fewest home runs by a major league player with more than 3,000 at-bats? Duane Kuiper, who hit one, that in 1977 at Cleveland. He has made up for it watching Barry Bonds hit ‘em by the bushel as he broadcasts Giants games. …
And would you say that Jason Giambi seems to be getting more mileage out of his enhancers than Bonds? …
Phil Mickelson’s finish at the U.S. Open sort of represents the investment status of two of the sponsors whose names he wears on his body. Ford Motor Co., whose trademark is on his shirt, lurks around $7 a share, and BearingPoint, prominent on his cap, is around $8. …
Have you ever seen such a change in a sports figure as Nick Faldo? He was a guy of few words, if any at all, a big stiff as a player. Now he has become a virtual comedian as a television commentator and in commercials. …
Don’t you know that President Ford is just overwhelmed to receive the Dick Enberg Award. Wonder how that stacks up against a Nobel Prize? …
Only two pitchers with losing records are in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Rollie Fingers and Bruce Sutter. Both closers of sorts, though Fingers had a few starts. Sutter never started, so naturally he didn’t have a complete game. Doesn’t that tell you something? …
After all these diligent years of campaigning Dale Murphy for the Hall, 71-year-old Ed Tyree of Virginia Beach, Va., has retired his cudgel. “Perhaps he may not ever be selected for the Hall of Fame, but we all know there are more important things in life than Cooperstown,” Mr. Tyree concludes. …
Must be something in the salt air. Before he retired from basketball coaching at College of Charleston, John Kresse pulled a “Cremins.” Left CofC for Davidson, but after 24 hours went home to Charleston, just as Bobby Cremins had done before him, between Georgia Tech and South Carolina. …
Five additional college bowl games next season? Where in heaven’s name can they come up with 10 teams willing to embarrass themselves to be known as “bowl teams”? …
You gotta be kidding me: Paintball, poker, dominoes and hot-dog eating contests on television? Quick, where’s the bi-carb? …
Selah.
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Peachtree becomes too professional
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
OK, let’s try again. Maybe I didn’t go about it in good form the first time. That was a few years back and Julia Emmons took the hide off my back. Now she’s retiring and maybe her farewell shot will be only a light volley.
This time I’ve gone to The Man, he who started it all, Dr. Tim Singleton, now somewhat retired and living in Dahlonega. The Peachtree Road Race was his creation, not just to bring out the recreational runner, though all were invited to come along.
“There were,” he said, “in my own mind, some 200 hard-core runners around the South who had no event to participate in, collegiate and high school runners. There were no prizes offered. A little later we did give some of the elite runners expense money. That’s all that was allowed under AAU rules. Another year the first five finishers got little black and white TVs.
“When I began sending out notices and mentioned 10,000 meters, a lot of them scratched their heads and wanted to know how long that was. There were runners from Ireland and New Zealand in college here and some of them were among the early winners. They came running from all around the South, college kids and dedicated runners who’d had no place to go. I can’t recall when official prize money came out, but that changed it all.”
Fifty-five thousand entrants pay $28 apiece for their official runner’s number, and that’s a bunch of money, so the Atlanta Track Club, graduated to the official status of sponsor, has the money to spare. That’s not the point. What prize money has done is turn the Peachtree into two races — the professionals and the serious recreational class. Now, that leaves out the bulk of the 55,000, who are out there just to be there and run for a T-shirt. Fun people. Take a poll of the whole field and no more than 2 percent, if that many, could tell you who won.
That brings up this thought — was this a big story in the Nairobi newspaper Wednesday morning? Was there a headline screaming, “Lel Wins Peachtree Road Race”? Or in Amsterdam, proclaiming the victory of Lornah Kiplagat? Truth is, most of these participants live in the United States and their profession is running.
Another of Singleton’s strokes toward the aggrandizing of the Peachtree was when he approached Jim Kennedy of The Journal and Constitution. “I was leaving for Texas and we needed the papers’ backing, and he came through. The AJC has been the focal sponsor ever since, mainly, I guess, because he believed in the recreational theme. That really pumped some air into it,” Singleton said.
As a matter of fact, he added that the newspapers’ sponsorship actually saved the race and kept the Atlanta Track Club afloat. The AJC actually copyrighted the Peachtree Road Race name.
“Let me tell you how much it meant. After one of the first races, I hand-walked the results into the newspaper office myself and handed them to some fellow at a desk. He took a look and said, ‘Thanks,’ and as I walked out, I saw him throw it in a wastebasket,” Singleton said.
Foreign runners have professionalized an otherwise amateur event. Twelve of the first 20 finishers from Kenya? I don’t care if they’re from New Zealand, Ireland or Iceland. Is this what the Peachtree Road Race was meant to be, or should it be renamed the Kenyan Klassic?
Singleton was on the scene again, but riding this time. “I had to have some surgery done on an old knee injury,” he said. “Not many show up for the awards ceremony. They’re out there enjoying being with their own crowd, celebrating their run.”
Maybe there is no way to turn back. Maybe two separate races is an answer. Maybe removing the purse money is a bit stringent, but there must be some way to make this race on the Fourth of July a celebration of America. In at least one case, it became a celebration of life. It was a few years back and a back-of-the-pack runner from Alabama stood alone drying out. I knew him only by the number on his shirt.
“You came over from Alabama to run in this? Why?”
“To live,” he said. “I was ready to commit suicide when I heard about this race. So I drove over and started running and began to feel like living again.”
No, his name wasn’t Forrest Gump.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Furman Bisher
The Spirit boys are out of their leagues
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
The reason nobody has written a book, titled, “How to win in professional sports,” is there is no one absolute formula.
You can win with good players and an average coach. You can win with average players and a good coach.
You can win if the roster is healthy. You can win even if the roster has dangling limbs being held together with duct tape for just one more playoff series.
Players can win if they like each other. Or they can win even if they look across the locker room and think, “Dirtbag.”
You can win with a private owner. You can win with a corporate owner.
You just can’t win with a dumb owner.
Which brings us to the Hawks and the Thrashers. Their ownership group calls itself, “Atlanta Spirit.” The thinking was, it’ll look better on letterhead than, “Nice But Clueless, LLC.”
In the latest chapter of sports’ most dumbfounding, confounding and often amusing ownership group, a Maryland judge has ruled the Hawks and Thrashers can’t “initiate the purchase, sale, trade or negotiation” of any player for longer than a year, as long as the group remains fractured and paralyzed in court.
As limitations go, that’s not necessarily the worst directive you can give a general manager. There’s always, “You’re fired.”
It’s July. It’ll be three months before the Hawks and Thrashers play another game. But if this boat takes on any more water, somebody’s going to be spitting out a flounder.
“The good thing for the Thrashers is that we’ve already signed a lot of players, so this isn’t an immediate issue in front of us right now,” Thrashers general manager Don Waddell said. “But hopefully it will get worked out in a short time. If it doesn’t, it could have an affect on us on decisions down the road. If I get a call from a GM and he says, ‘I’ve got a player to trade,’ my first question now is, ‘How many years are left on his contract?’ If he says three, I have to say, ‘Don’t call me back.’ “
Ownership is trying to calm its dwindling fan base. As soon as this Steve Belkin mess is behind them, they say, things will be great.
I’m sorry. Exactly what are we basing this optimism on?
Too many people are painting this as a Good vs. Evil thing (with Belkin the one emanating brimstone). But if Belkin is the bad guy, it doesn’t mean the other guys are visionaries. And if the two sides were battling to make the playoffs, my money would not be on the team that keeps getting hammered in court.
I want to have a beer with some members of Atlanta Spirit. I just don’t want them giving me directions to the pub.
They’re all nice guys. I’m sure they’ve done something right in their professional lives because they have all this money (or used to). But for the life of me I can’t figure out how they got this far in life, given the number of missteps they’ve taken in this venture.
They formed a bad partnership. They retained bad attorneys. They have made bad assumptions about their teams, their employees and certainly about each other. If you think it has been Everybody vs. Belkin on all issues ranging from management to players, you’re deluded.
As owners go, do you look at Atlanta Spirit and think, “The Rooney Family”? Or “The Addams Family”?
Individually, maybe members of the Atlanta Spirit would be great owners. Collectively, they’re out of their leagues. The sum is LESS than the parts.
Don’t worry, they say. The Thrashers’ roster is set, they say. Goalie Kari Lehtonen is unsigned but it’s believed he can be given a multi-year deal because talks had been initiated before the judge’s ruling. The same holds true with the Hawks’ impending signing of Speedy Claxton. And, well, that Al Harrington mess: It’ll work itself out, they say. Trust us.
Try this, Sunshine Boys: About a year ago, Dany Heatley asked the Thrashers for a trade. Waddell moved him to Ottawa for Marian Hossa, who had just signed a three-year contract. Today, that deal wouldn’t be possible.
That was in the summer. What happens during playoff drives (hoped for) before the trading deadline?
Even if the non-Belkins somehow prevail in this matter, they’ve done little to make you feel good about things. It was only in court records that we learned they quietly added a year to Waddell’s contract. The deal had a year left. He’s still looking to make the playoffs. How do you suppose that went over in Billy Knight’s office? And if it’s something to celebrate, why keep it a secret?
There are a lot of ways to win. This isn’t one of them.
Permalink | Comments (41) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Francoeur presses to impress
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
It could be worse. Jeff Francoeur could be Bob Hamelin, the extra-large first baseman who zipped out of nowhere for the Kansas City Royals to do nice things before vanishing in a flash. He also could be Pat Listach, Gerald Young, Wally Bunker, Mark Fidrych and a slew of others who have plaques in the Joe Charboneau Hall of Fame for hype over substance.
But, no, Francoeur isn’t destined for such infamy. He isn’t on the road to Cooperstown, either, not with his free-swinging ways that have contributed to an on-base percentage so low that you need a microscope to find it. He was absolutely torrid with his Louisville Slugger for the longest time as a rookie. Now he is spending his sophomore year going from cold to hot to medium to wherever.
Wherever is a scary place when you’re a significant player on a team reeking during its search for a 15th consecutive division title. Francoeur has decent numbers (.258 average, 15 home runs and 60 RBIs after Thursday night’s 8-7, 10-inning win over the Cincinnati Reds at Turner Field), but not the blistering ones that could turn wherever into a happy place.
That’s why Friday, the first anniversary of Francoeur bursting into a Braves uniform as “The Natural,” according to a Sports Illustrated cover last August, he has become “The Bust,” according to that same magazine last week.
According to common sense, Francoeur is “The Work in Progress” as a gifted athlete from Lilburn seeking to smooth out a bunch of rough edges, both physically and mentally. Some guy named Pete Rose told me last summer that this might happen to Francoeur. Just like Rose, Cincinnati’s favorite son during his playing days with the Reds, Francoeur is obsessed with prospering before his hometown fans. Take, for instance, his rocket single to left field Thursday night in the bottom of the 10th for his third game-winning hit of the season at Turner Field.
Then again, Francoeur hasn’t a choice to provide such heroics. You needn’t go further than the outrageously lofty expectations that the choppers and the chanters had for the old Parkview High star after he flashed signs last summer of staying perfect forever. So, when he flirted with mediocrity earlier this year, those cheers became the ugliest of jeers.
“It’s tough. I can’t lie about that, but at the same time, I’d rather be in this situation than a lot of other situations,” said Francoeur, 22, who remained the Braves’ Wally Cleaver through it all. “It’s special to be able to play in your hometown and in front of your people that you grew up with. It couldn’t be anything more than I ever wanted. People are there at games because they want you to do well. So I try so hard at home, because you don’t want to disappoint anybody.”
Which brings us to the three Grand Canyons that separate Francoeur’s offensive numbers at Turner Field and elsewhere. Prior to Thursday night, he was hitting .304 at home and a ridiculous .216 on the road. He also finished last season with a tremendous gap between the two settings (.304 to .240). And the solution?
Concentration. That’s been as foreign to Francoeur as a base on balls, especially when Hank Aaron Drive isn’t near.
“When I was at Yankee Stadium [last month], I had a good series because I was so locked in, and I could see where you can take your game to the next level if you just lock in all the time,” Francoeur said. “At home, that’s something I tend to do, and sometimes I get on the road, I lose that a little bit. … My second half of the year, I want my road average to be right there with my home average. That’s my No. 1 goal for me, personally.”
Well, that and continuing with the mind-set on the field of his father’s all-time favorite player: Rose. Although Dave Francoeur grew up in Massachusetts worshiping the Red Sox, he marveled at Rose’s love affair with hustle and doing whatever it took to thrill his Cincinnati faithful.
In other words, the younger Francoeur hadn’t a choice but to became a Rose disciple. Since Jeff was just 2 years old when Rose retired as a player, he followed Rose’s career through video clips and publications. “He only knew one way to play, and that was all-out, which is why my favorite play ever was when he ran the catcher [Ray Fosse] over during that All-Star Game,” Francoeur, who did something almost as daring, said earlier this season.
Francoeur needed major facial surgery two years ago after his eye was damaged by an errant pitch in a minor-league game at Myrtle Beach. Still, on his first day back, he slid into second base with his nose leading the way.
Like Rose used to do. This is the same Rose who is baseball’s all-time hits king and who ended his sophomore season with only a .269 average. This also is the same Rose who finished that year with fewer home runs (four) and RBIs (34) than Francoeur has with less than a week to go until the All-Star break. So relax already.
Permalink | Comments (90) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Walker’s death shakes a proud clique
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Whenever Georgia Tech baseball coach Danny Hall and I speak for more than a few moments, the old days live. The conversation returns to our stay in Hepburn Hall, a three-story, Georgian style dormitory at Miami (Ohio) University, where the future gave us no promises but wonderful dreams, and our youth was synonymous with invincibility.
Illinois football coach Ron Zook was one of us. So was former Braves pitcher Charlie Leibrandt, along with Randy Ayers, who coached at Ohio State and for the Philadelphia 76ers. Then you had Sherman Smith, the assistant head coach for the Tennessee Titans in his 12th year after a nice playing career in the NFL. You also had Bill Doran, a former All-Star second baseman for the Houston Astros, and Rob Carpenter, a former Pro Bowl runner for the New York Giants. Carpenter’s son, Bobby, was picked in the first-round of this year’s NFL draft by the Dallas Cowboys after starring at Ohio State.
There was Randy Walker, too, the only football coach ever to lead Northwestern to three bowl games. He ranked with Ohio State’s Jim Tressel and Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz as the best in the Big Ten at their profession, but nobody surpassed Walker in terms of character and enthusiasm. Walker’s funeral is Thursday in Evanston, Ill., after he died last week of a massive heart attack. He was 52. Hall is 51. I’m 50, and I’m still in shock. The same goes for Hall, especially since Walker’s trim frame and easy smiles made him look much younger than his years.
“I was running on my treadmill in my basement, and I had ESPN on the television and saw the news, and I just about got sick,” said Hall, who, along with me, saw Walker, Smith, Carpenter and Zook play on those Miami (Ohio) football teams during the 1970s that were ranked 15th, 10th and 12th in consecutive years by the Associated Press. That’s because the Redskins (now the RedHawks) defeated Florida, Georgia and South Carolina in bowl games after each of those seasons to go 32-1-1. Walker was the superlative fullback, who could run, block, pass and inspire.
To have the ability to inspire is a good thing, especially if you’re Walker, and you’re destined to coach. It’s just that such an attribute is a bad thing if you become so obsessed with trying to help others succeed that your insides resemble a football pumped with too much air from self-inflicted pressure.
“Randy always was very competitive, and if you’re competitive, sometimes you can get stressed out,” said Hall, an acquaintance of Tech football coach Chan Gailey who watched his intensity evolve into a heart attack last year. Gailey’s predecessor, the highly combustible George O’Leary, suffered one two years before that after he took the Central Florida job. “You watch these situations take place, and it all becomes a reality check for yourself,” said Hall, entering his 14th year at Tech as one of the nation’s most successful college baseball coaches. “You just hope you’re eating the right things and doing the right things to take care of yourself.”
So far, so great for Hall, a consistently pleasant soul, who also makes you believe that time is standing still through his ability to remain fit. Unlike Walker and others, though, Hall keeps his explosiveness (both outwardly and inwardly) to a minimum. Which is some trick. Not only is Miami (Ohio) noted as the Mother of Fraternities, the birthplace of the McGuffey Reader and the school of President Benjamin Harrison, but as the Cradle of Coaches.
The majority of those coaches were a clogged artery waiting to happen. Woody Hayes. Bo Schembechler. Bill Mallory. Paul Brown. Ara Parseghian. I mean, Earl “Red” Blaik, who left Miami (Ohio) to build those Army powerhouses in the mid-20th century, was the first coach ever to view “off days” as satanic. He worked before sunrise until beyond midnight in search of eternal victory, and he established the bar for his Miami (Ohio) successors.
Just wondering: Did the old alma mater ever teach you guys to relax? “Oh, you know. I don’t think so,” said Hall, laughing. “You probably just watched how the people reacted that coached you and some of that is going to rub off on you. Even the guy I played for in college (Bud Middaugh), he was the Bobby Knight of college baseball.”Hall laughed again. So did I. It kept us from thinking about lost innocence lying in a coffin, and crying.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Tech / ACC, Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Point guard raises Hawks’ chances
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Guess what? The Hawks have a chance next season to be decent. With the signing of Speedy Claxton, they finally have a point guard. And I know: He isn’t Steve Nash. But he isn’t Royal Ivey either.
The youth will be a season older and wiser, led by the two Joshes (Childress and Smith), along with Marvin Williams. Plus, Joe Johnson already is better than good. Then you have draft pick Shelden Williams with the skills to give Zaza Pachulia help in the post right now.
A few more moves and … Well, let’s just say the Hawks aren’t brutal anymore.
The problem is that their ownership situation still is.
Permalink | Comments (107) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Peachtree pulls Atlanta together
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
What became Atlanta grew from a railroad village known as Terminus, and sometimes it still seems we don’t so much live here as we’ve simply stopped off. We come to this place to work, and when the workday is done we head for our respective far-flung suburbs, and sometimes our big city seems a mere waystation. New York and Chicago and even L.A. have identifiable thumbprints, but occasionally even longtime residents are heard to wonder: What exactly is Atlanta?
In case you’re ever asked, you don’t really need to say anything. You have only to point to one day, one street, one harmonic convergence. You have only to show someone the Peachtree Road Race. As much as any one thing can signify a populace so vast and diverse, the Peachtree does.
“There’s not another sporting event like it,” said the famous Atlantan Bill Curry on Tuesday. He was standing outside the ritzy Park Place apartments, where he lives somewhat cheek-by-jowl with the even more famous Elton John. Curry, who played in the Super Bowl and coached in a Sugar Bowl, was helping tend his grandchildren while his daughter Kristin ran the race. And Curry’s observation, while true, isn’t quite the whole truth.
The Peachtree Road Race is a contest, yes, but it is something far greater. It’s a celebration of a national holiday, a confluence of demographics, a clangor of happy sounds. The genius of the Peachtree administrators was to make their creation more than just a road race, to offer entrée to those who’d prefer to walk, to fill the one street for which Atlanta is known worldwide with 55,000 bodies of various types on the Fourth of July.
Were the Peachtree merely a competition, there would be no room for the corner-cutters who cover only part of the 6.2 miles but claim the T-shirt as their just reward. Seen Tuesday: A man with an entry number in the 50,000s — technically his group wouldn’t start for another half-hour — walking alongside a group of obviously dedicated runners bearing numbers in the 100s. If the Peachtree didn’t have such a good-humored feel, you’d call such a thing cheating, but the idea for all but a handful of entrants isn’t to win the race; it’s simply to take part in the one ritual that makes Atlanta Atlanta.
At the Cathedral of St. Philip, Rev. Sam Candler was dispensing holy water from a silver bowl to the runners and walkers, shouting “Blessings to you!” (Being a full-service church, the Cathedral also offered holy water through a sprayer.) Said Rev. Candler, who has performed this merry rite for seven years: “There’s such a glorious conglomeration of people, every color and kind. The way we figure it, when we bless these people we’ve truly blessed America.”
There aren’t many times when we, being an aggregation of transplants, can actually say we feel like Atlantans, but along those 6.2 miles of that signature street on the Fourth of the July it’s impossible to feel like anything but. The Peachtree brings out the great and small, the swift and the ponderous, and throws them together in a splash of sweat and a swirl of flag-waving. Every July 4th, we’re treated to the essence of Atlanta on joyous display. It is, not to get all corny, a beautiful thing.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Other
How to save baseball and enjoy the Fourth
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
On this most American of all American holidays, let me address the most American of all American games. Title this “Things Baseball Needs to Do to Become the National Pastime It Was Intended to Be,” as seen by one grizzled observer:
Eliminate the Designated Hitter, an accursed contamination of the game introduced by the American League. This recommendation, of course, is not original. My projection is that if such a measure were put to a national vote, the DH would be dead-headed.
Scratch interleague play, which is nothing more than exhibition games woven into the schedule, matches usually made for gate, television and geographical rivalries, otherwise how often do you see Kansas City playing the Mets, or Seattle playing Pittsburgh? Only way it can ever be fair is when each team in both leagues is matched against each team in the other, and that’s 29 games. How do you work that into the regular schedule? That’s their problem. They (whoever “they” are) thought it up, work it out.
Get tough with an anti-drug policy that tells the Players Union to get lost. Why should the violaters be included in making the rules? They’re hired hands who became grossly empowered when Marvin Miller came along.
Ditch the so-called World Baseball Classic. It digs a hole in spring training for teams trying to prepare for the major league season. If it’s a missionary project aimed at spreading the game around the globe, start down where it counts, at the grass-roots. This is not soccer. There aren’t enough countries playing baseball on the same level to have a World Cup.
Take a lesson from a past mistake, restore the game to the Olympics, but for non-pro players only.
On the college side, replace those bats that go “ping” when struck against a baseball. Back to wood, where the sound is solid baseball.
Ditch that creation from hell, the “closer.” I don’t know where the notion came from that one-inning pitchers are a part of real baseball. It cheapens the game and robs it of one of its stalwart figures, the complete game pitcher. Notice what a news item it is when a pitcher goes nine innings? And why should the ninth inning be any more important than the first, or second, or any other? I know, it’s “playing by the book.” Well, death to the author.
The Pitching Coach — no recommendation here, just asking a question. Do they really make good pitchers out of ordinary ones, or are they just good salesmen? Did Lefty Grove have a pitching coach? Walter Johnson, Dizzy Dean, Allie Reynolds, Bob Feller, any of those guys? And would a pitching coach have made any of them better? Look at Bruce Chen, 13-game winner at Baltimore last season before Leo Mazzone arrived, 0-6 this season. What’s the manager for?
Just something to chew on this Independence Day. Go jump in the lake, catch a greased pig, roast your wieners, do your barbecue, go to the parade and don’t miss the fireworks. You used to have a doubleheader to go to. They don’t do doubleheaders any more, bad for the box office. Otherwise, have a jolly Fourth of July, and express your appreciation for this country of ours and be thankful you have a vote. Exercise it!
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Don’t count Holyfield out
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Since Evander Holyfield hasn’t a problem with trying to fight until a couple of years after the sun drops from the sky, neither should you. His Hairness has it right by saying, “Only in America.” Remember, too, that Tuesday is the Fourth of July, which commemorates our inalienable right to get punched in the face as often as somebody is willing to pay us.
So leave Holyfield alone in his pursuit of becoming the only five-time heavyweight champion. He has 43-year-old legs after dropping three straight and going 2-5-1 in his last eight bouts, but he has a decent chance to shock the world.
You know, again. This time, Holyfield is ignoring the chorus of “What in the name of Sugar Ray Robinson is he doing?” by preparing to climb between the ropes in August for the first time in two years. In case you haven’t noticed, he is a living Rocky, and he has stuck and moved his way through doubters to rise from an Atlanta ghetto to a Fairburn mansion.
“They didn’t think I was going to make the Olympic team, and they didn’t think I was going to beat Dwight Muhammad Qwai,” Holyfield told me, easing into an impressive roll call. This was after he announced that he’ll resume his career in Dallas against Jeremy Bates, or is that Bill (Herschel Walker) Bates or Norman (“Psycho”) Bates?
Anyway, Holyfield added, “They didn’t think I would beat Buster Douglas. They didn’t think I would come back and beat Michael Moorer. They didn’t think I would beat [Mike] Tyson. And I know good and well, me, being a five-time heavyweight champion of the world, they don’t believe that either.”
Here’s what I believe: Holyfield isn’t saying all of this because he is living in La-La Land after getting smacked around during his last fight by the forgettable Larry Donald. Most heavyweights these days are forgettable, which is the first of two reasons why Holyfield’s comeback makes sense. Lennox Lewis was the closest thing to the undisputed champion, but he retired. Vitali Klitschko was the next-closest thing to Lewis, but he also retired. Now the division is cluttered with the likes of Samuel Peter, Calvin Brock, Lamon Brewster and Nicolay Valuev among the top 10 contenders.
Holyfield isn’t worse than those guys, and I hear you. The forgettable Larry Donald is one of those guys. The same goes for James Toney and Chris Byrd, Holyfield’s opponents before Donald. But when Holyfield lost those fights, he suffered from several ailments. Leg and neck cramps. Bad back. A surgically repaired shoulder that he continued to ignore, although doctors told him to rest for two years.
Which brings me to the second reason not to dismiss Holyfield’s dream: Relatively speaking, he’s healthy. “Since I don’t like pulling out of fights, I kept going during those three straight losses, even though I was hurting, but this is the best I’ve felt since 1993,” Holyfield said. In contrast, Don Turner, his former trainer, attributed the boxer’s aches and pains to age. So did Jim Thomas, Holyfield’s former lawyer, and Holyfield said boldly that he ousted them for their disbelief.
There also were the New York State Athletic Commission folks who kept Holyfield from fighting in the United States with a suspension for “poor performance” against Donald. After Holyfield protested, he passed a series of medical tests. The suspension was changed from medical to administrative, and he was allowed to fight anywhere but the state of New York.
Thus the Texas fight.
“As bad as it was for [the New York commissioners] to do what they did, it was a blessing,” Holyfield said. “It allowed a lot of fights not to come off, but I kept training as if I was going to fight anyway. During that time, everything [legs, neck, back, shoulder] got back right. Now people will see a rejuvenation, and you’ll hear them say, ‘How in the world could his career jump back up to this high level?’ “
Even if the current Holyfield is more the Rocky of Clubber Lang than the one of Ivan Drago, the bottom line doesn’t change. Added Holyfield, with “Stars and Stripes Forever” rattling around my subconscious, “All successful people, at some point, they had somebody call them crazy, but that’s what makes our country such a great country. If they call you crazy, they still can’t stop you from trying.”
Actually, they can, but it would be unpatriotic.
Permalink | Comments (24) | Categories: Terence Moore
Mazzone like a buddha in orange
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Leo Mazzone was back in town and you wouldn’t have believed the scene. Cameras, mikes, tape recorders, flashes, pads and pens for those less advanced, like a swarm around the departed Braves pitching coach, poised in the visitors dugout like a buddha in orange. Nothing like it since the Beatles press conference in the old stadium in 1965.
Well, maybe not that much of a stretch. But strong.
And yeah, in the visitors dugout. “I had to come in through the visitors parking lot. I never knew where it was before. I didn’t know which entrance to take to get to the visitors clubhouse. You think I don’t feel awkward sitting here?”
Awkward, maybe, but it wasn’t coming through. Mazzone is a showman. He may have felt awkward as a Baltimore Oriole, but he’s a resident of Atlanta. This will be home out of season. “Georgia is my home now. This is where I should be living and we’re building here,” he said, though he didn’t say where, or clarify “we.” It’s OK, we welcome all taxpayers.
Nobody gets more credit when things are going well and the earned run average is low, and nobody takes more guff than a pitching coach. Here is Mazzone, who never threw a pitch above the minor leagues as a player and becomes the pitching coach rage for the Braves, elevated to such a commodity that the Orioles are willing to pay him $500,000, twice his salary here, to coach their pitchers.
There was another consideration. The Orioles manager is a quite gentlemanly man named Sam Perlozzo, who played in exactly a dozen major league games. Sam and Leo grew up together in western Maryland, played kids’ ball with and against each other, each coached by his own father. May be “closest friends,” as advertised, but that’s sometimes exaggerated by circumstances. Now, here’s Mazzone, who never made more than $900 a month in the minor leagues elevated to star status coaching pitchers during those 14 seasons of Braves championships. Rocking in the dugout, on camera.
He was caught in a mild rocking motion Friday night, but there wasn’t much to rock about. He was caught later ripping off his cap and rubbing his baldness in disgust. Marcus Giles had just struck a two-base hit that won the game for the Braves, 5-3.
In his first full season as Braves pitching coach, the team ERA was 3.49. Of course, he was dealing with a hot hand of Smoltz, Glavine, Avery, et al. This season in Baltimore, the Orioles’ ERA stands at 5.15, but of course, he’s dealing with Kris Benson, (not to be sneezed at), then drops off. For awhile there, another starter was Chen, Bruce Chen, and that brings up an interesting coincidence.
Chen was one of the Braves’ promising prospects when Mazzone was here, sure to have a hot hand in the season of ‘99. It never worked out, he was traded, and is now with his eighth team. But last season Chen won 13 games as a starter. This season he is 0-6, and has been exiled to the bullpen.
Mazzone now gets a reprieve with a second former Brave, Russ Ortiz, cut loose by Arizona, obligated to him for a king’s ransom in salary. He was a study in curiosity as he went to the mound for the Orioles Saturday night against a team for which he once won 21 games. Leo’s mission: re-charge Ortiz’s battery and help him find his way back.
A pitching coach can sometimes be a combination of snake oil salesman, coddler, tough guy, instructor, taunter and cheerleader. Mazzone is all of those, sometimes harsh, crusty, foul-mouthed and on occasion, patient. It’s his decision only on which of his moods to address to which pitcher. If that suggests psychologist, he would hardly fit that category.
He is quite honest, when asked to define his success as a coach of pitchers when he was with the Braves.
“Well, I’d say Maddux, Smoltz, Glavine and all those Cy Young winners we had,” he said, in one of his rare moments of self-effacement.
Surrounded by a cadre of news pursuers, he looked around Turner Field and spoke cheerfully. “I never realized what a beautiful place this is,” and as he said it, his eyes were scanning that string of division championship flags above the left field bleachers. “But, there’s a right time for everything,” and this was his time to go. I can’t say that Oriole orange does much for him as a color.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Hoping Cremins finds old spark
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
I hope this works out. I really do. Contrary to popular belief, I’ve never held a personal animus against Bobby Cremins, and I took no glee in seeing him exit Georgia Tech on such a somber note. But I believed then that Cremins’ best days as a coach were behind him, and I wonder if, six years later, anything has changed.
The College of Charleston is a mid-major school with big-time aspirations for its basketball program. It just fired Tom Herrion, who won 68 percent of his games and who didn’t have a losing season. It is planning to build a new 5,000-seat arena, and it still believes the advances made under John Kresse, who reached the NCAA tournament four times in the ’90s before retiring in 2002, were no aberration.
Lest we forget, one of Kresse’s signature victories came in 1993 against Cremins and Tech. Only six days earlier, those same Jackets had upset No. 1 Duke. That, sad to say, was the story in miniature of Cremins’ last decade at Tech: He’d win big games, yes, but he’d lose too many little ones. (Remember Southern in the NCAA tournament? Remember Mount St. Mary’s on a layup off an inbounds pass? Remember Hofstra in Madison Square Garden?)
Cremins did one of the greatest building jobs in the history of college basketball, lifting Tech from the bottom of the ACC — the Jackets were 1-27 in conference games the two seasons before he arrived — to the penthouse of the nation’s most prestigious league. He turned a dead program into a national force by dint of personality. He made everybody like him, and he made a slew of big-name recruits — Price, Dalrymple, Ferrell, Hammonds, Scott, Anderson — want to play for him. Those first giddy years he had workaholic assistants Perry Clark and George Felton alongside, and Cremins managed to outwork both.
That’s the part that worries me. Cremins, who hasn’t coached since 2000, turns 59 on the Fourth of July. Will a man of that age put in the 18-hour days a younger Cremins did? Will he spend half his time on airplanes, chasing down talent? Will he be able to lure enough gifted players to a Southern Conference outpost? And if he can’t, will he be able to win with ordinary resources?
That was always my gripe with Cremins — great recruiter, substandard tactician. I saw too many games where the Jackets lost not because they were outmanned but because they were outflanked. Cremins was the best thing ever to happen to Tech basketball, but at the end of his run — the Jackets missed the NCAA tournament in six of his final seven seasons after making it every year from 1985 through 1993 — he was clearly out of ideas. It was time to go, and he knew it. Being a nice guy, he did Dave Braine the favor of not making the AD fire him.
Charleston offers a new start, but its circumstances are unusually unsettled. After firing Herrion, the Cougars hired Gregg Marshall, a former Kresse assistant who has done well at Winthrop, but Marshall changed his mind — pulled a Cremins, South Carolina fans would say — one day after being introduced. Then Buzz Peterson, whose name has been linked to every position except secretary of the treasury, interviewed for the C of C job but withdrew his name almost immediately.
Finally the Cougars turned to Cremins, and on the surface he seems a nice enough fit. He has lived in Hilton Head since leaving Tech, and he’s the biggest name Charleston could possibly have landed. But will the name carry the weight it did two decades ago, when every school in the land — Kentucky included — had Cremins No. 1 on its wish list? Can he do as Lefty Driesell did at Georgia State and call back the years with one last feel-good run?
I hope so. Those last years at Tech were no fun for anybody, and no coach of such charm and eminence deserved to depart with the barest of whimpers. I hope Bobby Cremins makes C of C basketball the talk of Charleston, same as he did in this city way back when.
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
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