AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > August > 09
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Aaron happy to be finished with it all
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
The biggest sigh of relief didn’t come from Barry Bonds after home run No. 756 flew deep into the San Francisco night, but from Hank Aaron, still exhaling over the joy of becoming just another retired guy in southwest Atlanta.
Unlike his neighbors, Aaron has 755 career home runs and a bronzed plaque in Cooperstown. He also has a revamped look on his life.
“I thought things were pretty normal for me at one point after going through what I did [while chasing Babe Ruth’s home run record during the early 1970s]. Then, all of a sudden, it crops up again with all these questions, and to be honest, I still don’t know how I managed to get thrown into this Bonds thing,” Aaron said on Thursday in an exclusive interview with the Journal-Constitution.
Just so you understand, Aaron didn’t want any part of this Bonds thing, because it reminded him of that Ruth thing, when he was an African-American player chasing the record of a white icon through a slew of death threats and hate mail.
Now, after 33 years as baseball’s all-time king of home runs, Aaron’s No. 755 is second to Bonds’ expanding record. Aaron couldn’t care less. As a result, this famously private man who nevertheless continues to reign on the throne in the hearts of many can return to the shadows.
That is, when Aaron isn’t dealing with his many projects involving youth, or becoming more active as a Braves executive, or exercising his 73-year-old body. “I try to work out every day, and I have this trainer here to help me try to keep this old body in shape,” said Aaron, chuckling, after his session at Turner Field. He gave another one of his contagious laughs, then added, “Oh, I feel tremendously relieved. I’m so glad this [Bonds’ record chase] is done with, and now I can just go my own way.”
Yes and no. Some things never will be the same for Aaron after he spent the past couple of years doing exactly the right thing: He said little or nothing about Bonds, the frequently surly star who is the poster child of baseball’s steroids era. Aaron also did exactly the right thing by staying with his vow of not becoming an unofficial member of the San Francisco Giants traveling team to see Bonds’ record-breaker.
Still, Aaron was ridiculed for remaining mostly invisible. Bonds even informed others — including commissioner Bud Selig, among Aaron’s closest pals, and myself — that he was upset that over the years Aaron never called him in general or visited him when the Giants came to Atlanta.
Through it all, Aaron discovered that several of his so-called friends were only acquaintances or worse.
“It really got to the point where a lot of people started wanting to give you advice about what you should do, and they didn’t know what the hell the situation was,” said Aaron, losing his post-755 calm for the moment. “I mean, these were people that you had been knowing for a long time, but they couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t getting involved in this thing.
“Then they would come forward and say things like, ‘Well, you need to do this. You need to do that.’ They wanted to give you all of this advice, and they didn’t know what was all involved in it, really.
“That’s the thing that really bothers you. Friends that you’ve had a long time are all of a sudden coming forth and telling you things like, ‘Well, I don’t understand why you aren’t making comments, or why aren’t you doing blah, blah, blah.’
“Well, you know what? You’re not supposed to understand any of it, because you’re not in it.”
Aaron paused, then he broke the silence with another one of his laughs. That’s opposed to what he did on Tuesday night when Bonds connected for the record-breaker in San Francisco.
What did Aaron do? “Well, first of all, I was asleep. It was 1 o’clock in the morning,” he said, chuckling. “Heck, I’m not going to sit up and watch a baseball game. It’s just like I wasn’t going to be able to travel all over the world to watch [Bonds break the record]. It wasn’t being disrespectful or anything. It’s just a matter of, hey, the body needed to go to sleep.”
As for Saturday night, when Bonds tied Aaron’s No. 755 in San Diego, Aaron was awake, but he was attending a function for his wife, Billye, who was being honored in Atlanta by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. This was after the Aarons spent a week in Puerto Rico, and not because they were trying to ignore Bonds’ chase. They annually join Japanese baseball legend Sadaharu Oh at something called the World Children’s Baseball Fair, which features more than 4,000 kids from around the planet with aspirations of becoming the next Aaron or Oh.
This isn’t to say Aaron ignored Bonds’ march to history. Last month, Selig asked Aaron to do one public statement regarding the matter. Not only did Aaron agree, but he stood before a film crew at Turner Field last month to tape a classy video message that was displayed on the big screen at AT&T Park after Bonds’ big blast.
The gesture delighted a visibly moved Bonds and others. Said Aaron, “I’ve gotten a lot of calls saying that was the right thing to do, and these were from people who know a little bit more about this situation than just the average person.”
Which brings us to this: Will Aaron call or meet with Bonds at some point for whatever reason? “Eventually, if I happen to see him somewhere, I’d probably say something to him,” Aaron said. “To be honest, I’m as happy for him as anybody.”
Then Aaron gave his most contagious laugh yet, before saying, “Hey, you know, 33 years with the home run record, that was long enough for me.”
Permalink | Comments (36) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Cink takes positives from ‘01 missed putt
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Tulsa, Okla. — Some guys survive a crash like Stewart Cink’s and they resign from the planet. They clam up. They sulk. “What would be the point of that, except to look like a jerk?” he said. “I don’t mind talking about it.”
You see, it has been six years. He missed a putt and lost the U.S. Open, and this was the first time he’d been back to the Southern Hills Country Club, this time for the PGA Championship. To show how little history bothered him, he was staying in the same house the man who beat him had rented that year.
To show you further the kind of stand-up guy he is, “I’m not going to ever say, forget it, we’re not talking about it,” he said. And so he talked about it, the Open of 2001, when he and Retief Goosen left the 18th green in ruins on Sunday afternoon. As it turned out, the putt that Cink missed didn’t mean anything until Goosen followed him and missed his. “Just a tiny putt,” Cink said of his, “no longer than this,” and he held his hands about 2 feet apart. Double bogey.
“Then all of a sudden everybody sort of went, hey, that means that Cink’s putt would have got him in a playoff.” Then Cink’s missed putt looked bigger than Mount Rushmore, and he still had a chance if Goosen had missed his final 3-footer. That put him in a playoff with Mark Brooks, which he won yawning, and Cink was left with a what-might-have-been.
So, here he was back at Southern Hills and the locusts were in flight. But, as he said, “considering it was the focal point of the golf universe at the moment,” what could you expect? People are curious about visiting the scene of old calamities.
“What that did show me, though, was that I can win a major. That’s what I take from that,” he said.
Since that time, Cink’s game has picked up some steam and he has gained stature points along the way. Won a couple of tournaments and picked up the pieces for the American team in a calamitous Ryder Cup match last year. This is about a man who, as a kid, didn’t have much interest in golf. “That was about the time I was fighting my dad for control of the television. I wanted to watch cartoons.”
He had one of his choice moments last year at the World Golf Championships in Akron. In a playoff with Tiger Woods, he carried the great one four holes before losing. Just one of those occasions when Cink failed to call up his killer’s instinct.
He had another flirtation with the gods at this year’s British Open at Carnoustie. He made a “snip at the lead,” as he put it, on Sunday afternoon and finished tied for sixth.
“It was good experience because I had never played well in the Open. To go over there where I had been 20-over par in ‘99 meant a lot to me,” he said. “But there’s no comparison between that place and this, just because of the temperatures, if nothing else. I wore my rain suit three days and it wasn’t raining all that time. It was cold.”
So this is more his kind of temperature, the kind that can broil a steak on the hood of a car. The greens have been made more kindly, but you don’t see much difference on 9 and 18. In fact, Cink bogeyed 18 this time, which would have put him in the playoff in the ‘01 Open. He came around in good order Thursday, a day when some strange scores hit the board.
The shock of it all was that John Daly made a rush and held the lead for a while. Angel Cabrera had a 10 on the sixth hole, a par-3. Corey Pavin had six bogeys in a row. A club pro from San Jose had seven. Phil Mickelson was off to a characteristic stutter start. But, if you’re looking for consistency, try Cink. On an average day, his score would have been even par, but the way the PGA of America set up old Southern Hills, his 72 was 2 over, but close.
Permalink | | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf
Chipper swats away Mets, N.Y. media
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
New York — Chipper Jones awoke to flaming tabloid headlines Thursday, like “CHIPPER’S A-BOMB” and “A’ROID SHOCKER,” which wouldn’t have been so bad if they had been paired with stories like, “I CLONED MYSELF AT BREAKFAST” and “ELVIS TAUGHT ME HOW TO HIT A CURVE.”
Then at least there would be some comedic value.
But a day after having his comments about his friend, Alex Rodriguez, infected by the New York media and spun into an attack, Jones wasn’t laughing.
Well, maybe just a little, at the end.
He crushed a three-run homer, which sailed a cartoon-like 470 feet off the right-field scoreboard, to ignite the Braves’ 7-6 win over the Mets. He now has a career-high 38 home runs against New York, with 118 RBIs and a .331 average. He has hit 19 homers in Shea Stadium, more than any venue outside of Atlanta.
If the Braves could just figure out a way to fly insult-hurling New York fans and mutant tabloid headline writers to other cities, they would rarely lose a road game.
“Well, if you had to listen to what I listen to going back to the dugout,” Jones said, “you’d be pretty motivated to make left turns [on the basepaths].”
For some reason, he has thrived in this toilet of a stadium and the appropriately named surroundings of Flushing. As pitcher Tim Hudson joked, “They hate him here for a reason. It’s like an ongoing joke for us when we come to New York. You know their fans are going to be crazy, and Chipper’s going to drive in six or eight in a series.
“I’m sure he’s probably going to tear up when they blow this place up.”
But Jones has had it with the city’s tabloids. Before Wednesday’s game he was asked by an Associated Press writer about the Yankees’ Rodriguez and the potential for steroids allegations by Jose Canseco in an upcoming book. Jones said he didn’t believe A-Rod took performance-enhancing drugs but suspected that he would be dogged by questions by the media, just like every power hitter in this era, including himself.
Match, meet gasoline. The tabloids exploded. Then it was Jones’ turn.
In amusing pre- and post-game scenes, Jones refused to talk to New York media members, actually shooing packs away from his locker, saying, “Beat it!” It was like watching a human flyswatter.
Then he held private media sessions with Atlanta writers. (I have to admit, it was a nice change, being so loved.)
Jones referred to the New York media as “the pot-stirrers.” He said he was bothered when one “weasel” asked him after Wednesday’s game to clarify comments about Rodriguez.
“But what more do you expect from people who follow high-profile guys around with camera phones so they can get them in trouble,” Jones said.
He said he plans to phone Rodriguez, whom he has known since high school days, to make certain their friendship wasn’t damaged. But he added: “I think he’s pretty familiar with how sensationalistic this journalism is up here.”
The unwanted attention didn’t hurt Jones’ swing, it fueled it. He went 6-for-13 in the series with four extra-base hits and five RBIs. The swings continued afterward. He emerged from the shower to see a horde of New York media members waiting at his locker. “You’re going to be waiting a long time,” he said. “You started the crap yesterday.”
Later, to the Atlanta media, Jones said: “You take an article in which I was actually defending A-Rod and turn it into me slapping him in the face. … I was implicating myself. What if I hit 500 home runs and I’m catching Mickey Mantle and Eddie Murray? I’m going to have to go through the same stuff.”
But nothing threw Jones off his game — not the fans, not the headlines, not the team bus that took 90 minutes to make the usual half-hour drive from Manhattan. Most Braves took the early bus. Jones and Hudson opted for the later one. Problem: The driver got caught in city traffic after mistakenly circling the hotel and didn’t reach Shea until an hour before the game.
Suffice to say, Jones was a little irritated by the time he walked into the clubhouse. Then he merely did what he always does here: He made news.
Permalink | Comments (123) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
There’s something about these Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It’s August. Two-a-days aren’t over. The exhibitions haven’t started. The Falcons haven’t yet lost a game of any kind. So maybe it’s not noteworthy that the mood in Flowery Branch is decidedly upbeat. Then again …
In the time I’ve been watching the Falcons — that dates back to 1984, for anyone who cares — there have been summers when it was clear any optimism was artificial. (It was likewise clear last fall, when Jim Mora was giving his “Fight on” briefings and nobody in his locker room seemed to be listening.) I have to say I’ve been impressed with the way these players have taken to Bobby Petrino. He’s not their buddy, but they seem to believe he’s an awfully good coach.
And that seems rather essential, given the reversals these Falcons have already sustained. (Michael Vick gone. Lots of veterans hurt.) At such moments, a team can look only to its coach. If the team decides the man in charge doesn’t know what he’s doing, then that team has no chance. I don’t see that happening here.
This team has a chance. Not a great one, probably not even a good one, but a chance. The 2007 Falcons figure to play hard if not always well, but the belief here is that they’ll look like a fairly resourceful team. I still think 5-11 sounds about right, but the occasional optimist in me notes that it’s possible to go a heartening 7-9.
The Falcons did just that in 1997, their first season under a new coach. The next year they played in the Super Bowl.
Permalink | Comments (63) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Quick Hit
