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Tuesday, July 24, 2007
For Blank, a day tinged with sorrow
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Whatever anger Arthur Blank felt had been left behind closed doors. On display Tuesday was only sorrow. A proud and powerful man sat before the assembled media having been brought low by a quarterback who’d signed a contract worth $130 million but who allegedly still felt the need to bet $1,500 on a dog fight.
Arthur Blank bought the Falcons because he loves Atlanta and he loves sports and he loves the notion of sports serving to enhance the community. He came to work Tuesday — “work” in this case being his office at the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, his outlet for doing big-ticket good deeds — and was met by three animal-rights protesters. Think about that.
Think about an owner who has tried to be a friend and mentor to his players, an owner who now stands betrayed by the player he sought most to befriend and tutor. Think about this man of immense wealth feeling the need to apologize, four years after the fact, for the not-exactly-criminal act of pushing a broken-legged athlete around a football field in a wheelchair.
“A naive decision,” Blank called that 2003 photo op, and if there was an overarching message to Tuesday’s pained and protracted press briefing, that was it. Blank had put his trust, not to mention that $130 million, in Michael Vick, and now this mighty captain of industry had been made to feel like a seagoing naif.
“There was no reason to believe what came out in the indictment would be in the indictment,” Blank said. There was no reason, he said, because he “did not think it was my responsibility to ask Michael if he’s guilty or not guilty.” And then, asked about the Michael Vick cited 50-plus times in the indictment: “That’s not the Michael Vick I know. That’s not the person or the player I’ve known these last six years.”
If blissful ignorance isn’t the most desirable commodity in the business world, neither is it a federal crime. Maybe the Falcons should have grasped that Vick wasn’t as nice a guy as they’d hoped he’d be, but could anyone have guessed that not-so-nice would translate into the world’s most infamous dogfighting defendant? Said Blank, believably: “We had no indication, no signs, no whispers of this type of behavior … I didn’t know he owned any dogs.”
Almost pitifully, he felt moved to add: “Pet dogs.”
A rich man buys a football team because he thinks it’ll be fun, and six years later he finds himself being labeled an enabler of criminal conduct. Think about that. Think about a guy who saw the profit potential in ceiling fans now having every business decision of these six years thrown open to question. Of the choice to lavish that $130 million contract on Vick two days before Christmas 2004, Blank said: “I felt this talented young athlete needed to be a Falcon for life.”
Two years, seven months and two days later, there’s every indication that talented young athlete has played his last snap as a Falcon. Blank wanted to suspend Vick for four games, the maximum allowable under the collectable bargaining agreement, before the NFL moved Monday night to bar him from training camp. Should the league lift its moratorium, there’s a good chance the Falcons could swallow the salary-cap poison pill and cut him.
Think about that. Think about Arthur Blank, who prides himself on his business savvy, being confronted with the realization that he couldn’t have been more wrong about the most famous employee he has ever had. Think about the deflation and disillusionment the rich man must be experiencing today.
“Try to explain [the concept of dogfighting] to a little fellow who’s 10-years- old,” said Blank, speaking of his son, and there were long moments Tuesday when the billionaire looked and sounded 10 himself. He kept blinking and biting his lip. He appeared as if he wanted to cry. He’d given Michael Vick every chance, and Michael Vick has made this proud and powerful man seem like just another wide-eyed dupe.
Permalink | Comments (63) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Scully’s call on Aaron’s 715th irksome
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
You know — a term frequently used as punctutation by athletes who didn’t major in grammar — I’d never heard this thing until the other day, all these years since it was spoken in 1974. And no reason I should have, for I was at the Braves game that night, not listening to a broadcast from Los Angeles.
The Dodgers were in town, and Vin Scully was doing the game on his West Coast network. Henry Aaron had just hit his 715th home run, and old Atlanta Stadium was in hysterics, when Scully, putting his touch on the event, spoke into his microphone, “A black man is getting a standing ovation in the deep South for breaking the home run record of an all-time baseball idol.”
Beg pardon? I don’t know what I’d have thought at the moment, for I’d have been too swept up in the event. Aaron had passed Babe Ruth. The most unbreakable record in baseball had been broken in our own precinct. Hank Aaron had broken it, and he was getting a standing ovation, and why not, I should ask? And why should it not happen in the South?
My god, this was 1974. Yes, this was the South, but there was something about the way Scully said it that made your hackles rise. We’d thought we had that pretty well worked out, and we’d had all winter to get ready for it. Aaron had hit No. 713 off Jerry Reuss the September before, and No. 714 off Jack Billingham on opening day in Cincinnati. No. 715 couldn’t be far removed.
So the human eruption came. People danced, cried out in delight, jumped and did wild things. A couple of young fellows leaped from the stands and joined up with Aaron around second base, then disappeared into the billowing crowd. (One of them is a lawyer in Atlanta today.) Neither of them had the color of Aaron’s skin on their mind, nor did any of us in that pit of glorious insanity.
Scully wasn’t sitting in a studio in Los Angeles. He was there in the middle of it in Atlanta Stadium, and it’s not as if he’d never been South before. His wife is a Southerner, from the county seat of my hometown. If this had been in the Bronx would he have announced, “A Harlemite is getting a standing ovation in New York City!”
Nah, they don’t pick cotton in New York, draw well water, milk the cow, or perform other such agricultural chores. I can tell you I have. I’ve done it all. It makes you sweat, but it doesn’t make you any different, no matter what your color. No doubt, Aaron had absorbed a ton of junk from the stands who had more than Ruth’s record on their mind.
I didn’t like seeing Ruth’s record go, but I liked the idea of it settling on Atlanta, and had taken on the project of collaborating with Aaron on his life story. Beyond that, times had been hard on Aaron. He had gone through divorce, split from his family, his ears burning with the bellowing of dissenters, and the frequent target of every kind of nut case on the planet.
“I’ll tell you this much,” he said once at the height of his pursuit, “this kind of abuse isn’t going to stop me. The more they push me, the more I want the record. All I want is to be treated like a human being.”
There’s a certain authenticity in Aaron’s home-run production not found in Bonds’. Aaron’s were evenly distributed over the years; eight times he hit 40 or more, 47 his highest. Bonds never reached the 40s until his eighth season in the majors, then it was eight seasons later that he erupted into the soaring number of 73. Never close before, never close since. Aaron led the league in a column more important to his team, runs batted in, four times, 2,297 the record for a career.
All these years have passed and Aaron finds himself firmly seated at a similar popularity level as Babe Ruth when his record was under assault, though for reasons of differing nature. It’s not the home runs as much as it is the genuine respect for the man. The Babe had his record in his own time. The Hammer has the record for all time, as most of us see it. Don’t know how Vin Scully will address it if and when it happens that Barry Bonds passes the record, no more than I can imagine whatever brought him to to say what he said when it happened in Atlanta in 1974.
I do know it’s keeping a lot of us up past our bedtime while the Braves carry the fight to the West Coast.
Permalink | | Categories: Furman Bisher
Tomlinson could’ve been ours
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN
10: The Tuesday Countdown would like to thank Roger Goodell for allowing us to report to training camp, even if blogging is considered detrimental to journalism.
9: Kimberly Bell, Barry Bonds’ former mistress, is posing for Playboy. I’m guessing nobody is going to make a fuss if she’s artificially enhanced.
8: Soooo … maybe now’s not a good time to re-evaluate that whole Vick-for-LaDainian Tomlinson-Drew Brees-Tim Dwight trade.
7: Let’s get to what’s really important. Joey Harrington may be the first quarterback in history to go from backup to starter but not climb in Fantasy League rankings.
6: So I mentioned the other day (in a real column) that the Falcons probably wouldn’t be any good this season even with Vick, given the team’s other issues. Not that this qualifies as absolute proof, but consider these odds on Bodog.com. To wager on the Falcons MISSING the playoffs, you have to give 2-9 odds (bet $9 to win $2) if Vick is on the team and 1-7 (only slightly worse) if he’s not on the team. If, you feel daring, it’s 20-1 that he’ll never play another NFL game.
5: His legal issues notwithstanding, Vick figures to still have an opportunity to resuscitate his career. But he could go down as one of the most pathetic figures in the history of professional sports, given how he drop-kicked his package of talent, magnetism and power.
4: Just guessing: Goodell will try to stretch his “just stay away” from training camp edict to Vick for as long as possible, at least until such time as the union protests - and when is the last time the NFLPA protested anything?
3: Wouldn’t it just be easier if they just put a model’s runway on the soccer field and let David and Victoria Beckham walk back and forth for a couple of hours? I mean, what’s the point of an MLS game?
2: If Tim Donaghy officiated any Hawks games last season, I’m assuming he didn’t take the underdog and the points.
1: Despite Vick’s absence in Flowery Branch, PETA announced it will continue to protest, at least until such time as the league bans the use of the word “pigskin” and Grady Jackson becomes a vegetarian.
Permalink | Comments (168) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
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