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Friday, February 9, 2007
Spring in the air, peace in the bullpen
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
For the first time since 1991, the Braves are going into spring training like a ship going into dry dock. And there appears to be more truth than fiction in that analogy, considering the bustling scene at the underside of Turner Field. Bats and chests and training room apparatus stacked in mountainous piles waiting to be loaded for their trip to Lake Buena Vista, Disney World, Kissimmee or whatever address that place will be going by this spring. But that’s merely housekeeping, central damage control will be dealing with people.
“I could see we had trouble in the bullpen when the ‘05 season ended,” Bobby Cox was saying. “We tried everything but couldn’t get it fixed.”
It was a season that came to a convoluted end, a college rookie pitching against the overbearing Roger Clemens in the fourth game of the division series, on into the fifth hour and 18th inning. It would have been over after nine, and here we come to the missing ingredient that has bedeviled the Braves lately. One after one, Cox had danced from one closer to another, beginning with the ill-fated Dan Kolb. By the 9th inning of the fourth game in Houston, he had grown comfortable with Kyle Farnsworth, until Farnsworth threw a four-run pitch to Lance Bergman with two out. Nine innings later Joey Devine threw a pitch that Chris Burke hit into the stands and it was over. The Braves haven’t recovered since.
Now, I don’t care how you look at baseball, what your vintage, and how much you may long for a good ol’ nine-inning pitcher, it’s as old-fashioned as an Edsel. Sure, I love to see a guy pitch a complete game. “CG” is my favorite statistic. But face it, it’s as out of style as spats. If you don’t believe it, ask John Schuerholz.
Sad to see LaRoche go
To show you what I mean, Schuerholz traded Adam LaRoche, who was just moving into stardom, home run and RBI man, to Pittsburgh for Mike Gonzalez, who pitched 54 innings last season. Fifty-four games, 54 innings, 24 saves, which means he saved the homestead. Gonzalez heals an open wound in Atlanta. LaRoche becomes the big Pirate in Pittsburgh, and the Pirates already have Jason Bay and Freddy Sanchez, the league-leading hitter. It was crushing to see LaRoche take his sweet swing to Three Rivers, but that’s how it shakes out.
Scott Thorman is a tough competitor, not the fielder that LaRoche is, but he brings a different attitude to the game. LaRoche is milder mannered, unemotional. Cox and Schuerholz feel that Thorman is right on the threshold of filling in at about the pace LaRoche set two seasons ago.
“He has the same kind of power as LaRoche,” Schuerholz said. “He hit 20 home runs last year between Richmond and here, and he only played a few games here.”
“So you might have an all-Canadian side of the infield then,” it was suggested. Thorman is from Cambridge, Ontario, Pete Orr from Newmarket, Ontario.
“Pete Orr is going to get every chance to be our second baseman,” he said, but he’ll be a longshot behind Martin Prado and Willy Aybar, more the utility type, I’d suppose.
Get the story of the guy who might have had the job, had he and the Braves exercised patience. He was in the ballpark the other day, taking his swings with old teammates. Mark DeRosa and the Braves split two years ago and the one-time Penn quarterback found health, wealth and happiness in Texas, with emphasis on wealth. He was sort of on call for the Rangers.
“I never knew where I was going to play, but Buck Showalter always found a place for me,” DeRosa said. “I knew I was going to be playing.”
What DeRosa did was hit over .300 most of the season, with a few home runs sprinkled in, and after it was over, he found himself a high-level commodity. He brought $13 million on the open market, and next season he’ll be playing second base for the Cubs. “I’ll probably play other positions, too,” he said, “but right now I’m on second.”
That’s how this vexing game plays out now. Heroes don’t stay in the same place long. Not a lot of Chipper Joneses and John Smoltzes around. More Roger Clemenses and J.D. Drewses, who sometimes make you feel ashamed the way these mercenaries toy with the game. But that wasn’t what I started out to say. I just wanted to say that I’m making peace with life in the bullpen, and closers, and set-up men, and all that bozo-ism. I don’t promise that it’s permanent.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
65 bids out of 336 is out of date
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
There are still four weeks of games between Georgia Tech and “Selection Sunday.” It’s not a bubble team, if for no other reason than the fact the bubble hasn’t formed yet.
But it wasn’t lost on coach Paul Hewitt Friday that Villanova over Georgetown, which punctuates everybody’s “Greatest Sports Upsets,” lists, could not take place in this season’s tournament.
Why?
“Villanova doesn’t get in the tournament today,” Hewitt said.
Step back, please. We need room for the soapbox.
March Madness in Atlanta:
Check out the AJC’s Final Four pageHewitt believes it’s time to expand the NCAA tournament field. It’s understandable if some might believe the timing of this might be tied to the Jackets’ immediate roller-coaster past and uncertain future, but that’s really not the case.
“I said it last year — and we weren’t anywhere in sight,” he said. “We weren’t even on the board.”
This isn’t another campaign to double the tournament field to 128, which too many coaches grasping for job security believed was a wonderful concept after George Mason reached the Final Four. Hewitt’s plea is far more realistic and based on simple math. It came up Friday when I asked him if the Jackets’ problems this season related to defense and consistency aren’t merely endemic of college basketball’s general malady: early NBA defections have made for too much youth.
“I think it’s more indicative of the parity in the game,” he said. “Ever since the 1992 [Olympic] Dream Team, basketball has become one of the most popular sports in the world. We have two players from Senegal. Connecticut has a center from Tanzania. There are players everywhere now. Yes, we’re suffering from ills of youth. But it’s why I think the tournament needs to be expanded. People will say it’s just another coach crying for another spot. But in 1985 when the tournament was expanded to 64, there were like 285 teams in Division I. Now we have [336] teams, and only 65 go.
“It’s too simplistic to say, ‘You’re too young. You’re not ready yet.’ Yeah, there is some of that. But I remember when teams could lose three or four guys off a team and it wouldn’t matter. Duke has five McDonald’s All-Americans. Fifteen years ago, a team with five McDonald’s All-Americans could figure out a way to win.”
In 2001, the NCAA added a 65th tournament team and introduced the “play-in” game. Hewitt believes there should be “at least” three play-in teams added, increasing the field to 68. Adding seven teams would create four play-in games.
“Right now we’re short-changing the players,” he said. “Who are we running the tournament for — the deserving teams or the spectators? Just don’t tell me the best [34] at-large teams are getting in, because they’re not. My concern is that the selection is becoming more of a subjective thing instead of an objective thing.”
Hewitt said reference college football, where “50 percent of the players have a chance to go to a bowl game, and maybe get a nice jacket, a watch or a ring.” (The math: 119 Division I football schools, 32 bowl games, 64 teams.)
The NCAA has discussed expanding the field. The only certainty: It’s not happening this March. That leaves the Jackets (15-8) in limbo. They’ve won two straight since a four-game losing streak and Sunday play Connecticut, a general national power suffering similar issues. This game is more about the big picture than whatever evolves in the ACC.
Hewitt feels better about things after wins over Clemson and North Carolina State. But can he be certain there won’t be another backslide?
“No,” he said. “But I can say I feel a lot better about where we are as a program than in the last two years. A whole lot.”
He has attempted to refocus (euphemism) his players in several ways: He has made them wash practice jerseys. He removed their names from the jerseys and lockers, and forced them to carry the water bottles and basketballs to the gym. Also, he yelled. A lot.
“My honesty gets the best of me sometimes, and I might dampen their spirits at times,” he said. “But I’m going to tell you how it is. I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”
The idea now is to make a run that pretty much takes it out of the selection committee’s hands. Because when 65 out of 336 make it, sometimes things don’t add up.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Final Four, Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
Hope Dome doesn’t play rename game
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Good news for those of us who believe the lights in Wrigley Field are straight from Satan. The same goes for no jump balls after the opening tipoff in college basketball, and all of those NFL rules that don’t allow defenders to breathe in the vicinity of quarterbacks.
The Georgia Dome will always be called the Georgia Dome.
Uh, won’t it?
“I don’t know. I mean, in New York they’re talking about places up there being branded for $20 million a year. That’s a lot of money, and that certainly makes you think about what the possibilities might be,” said Khalil Johnson, the chief operating officer of the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, which runs the Georgia Dome. His reference was to what the corporate heads at CitiGroup will give the New York Mets for naming rights when their new ballpark opens in 2009.
Just call it the natural extension of greediness among pro teams and collegiate athletics departments.
For instance: While the Philadelphia Phillies were scheduled to get $95 million over the next 25 years after agreeing to call their place “Citizens Bank Park,” the Washington Redskins were scheduled to get $7.6 million per season for the next 27 years for agreeing to name their stadium after the FedEx folks. For $20 million over 25 years, University of Maryland officials will call the floor of Byrd Stadium “Chevy Chase Bank Field.” The Nets will move from New Jersey to Brooklyn. When they arrive, they’ll have the words “Barclays PLC” throughout their new arena in exchange for $300 million to $400 million over 20 years.
On and on we could go, right to The Flats on North Avenue.
That’s where Georgia Tech officials say they wish to close a $3 million gap between forecasted revenues and expenses. They say they wish to do so by selling the naming rights to their basketball arena. It already was Alexander Memorial Coliseum at McDonald’s Center under an old deal. Now the Jackets’ home, which was named in 1956 after former coach and athletics director William Alexander, can be called something else by the highest bidder.
Guess the Tech pep band is in its last days of playing “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” at home games.
But back to one of our last hopes for simple elegance when it comes to names in sports — “the Georgia Dome,” its moniker since its inception in 1992. “Long term, things can change, but I think that, as a public facility, which the Georgia Dome is, there definitely is some value that the citizens associate with the name ‘Georgia Dome,’ and the citizens feel kind of good when they know where the game is being played,” said Johnson, a Georgia Dome official from the start. “In contrast, it’s hard for people to tell where the Mozilla game is being played.”
Plus, the Mozilla game can become something else overnight. It happens. A lot.
Candlestick Park has gone from 3Com Park to San Francisco Stadium at Candlestick Point to Monster Park. If that isn’t enough, it’s slated to become Candlestick Park again in 2008. Joe Robbie Stadium changed to Pro Player Stadium before becoming Dolphin Stadium. Once, the Tennessee Titans played at Adelphia Coliseum. Then Adelphia Communications went bankrupt, and then it became The Coliseum. It’s now called Louisiana-Pacific Coliseum when it isn’t called LP Coliseum or Whatever It’s Called These Days.
Worse, the new Boston arena that replaced the legendary Garden has changed names 34 times in its 14 years.
“What does it say to the local fans when you change the name of your building as quickly as you change the cap on your head?” Johnson said. “We’re governed by a board, so our board would have to agree to a change in the name. And the elected leadership to the state of Georgia would certainly have to agree.”
So the process isn’t easy? Said Johnson quickly, “No, it is not.”
Good.
Permalink | Comments (20) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Tech / ACC, Terence Moore
