AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > October
October 2007
Time for Braves to get Griffey
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Let’s try this again. After all, we’ve typed these words before, but never have they made more sense. The Braves need a center fielder until their youngsters are ready, and veteran Ken Griffey Jr. loves Bobby Cox, the accomplished Braves manager, and Griffey’s Cincinnati Reds aren’t going anywhere soon.
Not only that, Griffey is baseball’s cheapest superstar with a highly workable contract. He also lives maybe a seven-minute drive from the Braves’ spring complex in Orlando, which would suit the homebody Griffey just fine.
The same would apply to a Griffey stint in a Braves uniform. He still cherishes his time as a youth in the 1980s when he often took batting practice for fun at old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium with the likes of Dale Murphy, Bob Horner and somebody named Ken Griffey Sr., a Braves player back then after his noted career with the Reds.
Get him. Well, the Braves should do so regarding the younger Griffey after they use some of the money they’ve saved from their Edgar Renteria trade to acquire a starting pitcher for a troubled rotation beyond John Smoltz and Tim Hudson. “The strategy from there would be for us to get a center fielder,” said Frank Wren on Wednesday, the sharp baseball man who will make a seamless transition into John Schuerholz’s role as Braves general manager.
Wren is strikingly more personable than his predecessor, but they are similar in that they prefer not to discuss names in these situations. Even so, we can use Wren’s philosophies to narrow the Braves’ best option in center during the post-Andruw Jones era to Griffey, the most legitimate slugger of his era with 593 career home runs and no hint of steroid issues.
For instance: Would Wren seek one of those dandy center fielders available through free agency such as a Torii Hunter?
“I would say that going strong in the free-agent market would be our least likely alternative,” Wren said. “I say that just because, with the young players we have coming (in the farm system), it just wouldn’t make sense to go sign somebody for four, five, six years when we have what we think are better players on the horizon. With that being said, the free-agent market probably doesn’t make as much sense as a trade. The trade market is probably the most likely way we’ll fill center field.”
We’re back to Griffey. While that A-Rod guy, for instance, wants nothing less than $30 million a year from somewhere, Griffey is slated to make $12 million next season in the last year of his Reds contract. Plus, if Griffey is traded, the Reds would be required to pay approximately half of that amount. There also is every indication that he would defer a chunk of that amount to help his new employers strengthen other areas of their team. Just like that, the Braves could have a Hall of Famer in waiting for virtually nothing.
The Braves could have such a player for two years, maybe three, to help them on the field and at the box office. Then they could plug in one of their slew of rising choices. They have Brent Lillibridge, their Class AAA player of the year. They have Brandon Jones, owner of a collective 100 RBIs last season for two different teams in the minors. They have Jordan Schafer, 21, recently named the player of the week in the Arizona Fall League, and he is the league’s youngest player. They also have Gorkys Hernandez, a speedster just acquired as part of that Renteria deal with the Detroit Tigers.
Again, Wren won’t discuss names, but would he grab an established veteran in this situation for the short term? “Sure. No question, no question,” Wren said. “Actually, that would be the ideal. In a perfect world, that would be the ideal.”
Just so you know, Wren grew up in southwestern Ohio cherishing the Big Red Machine.
His favorite player?
Ken Griffey Sr.
Permalink | Comments (249) | Categories: Terence Moore
Richt should know better
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Guess those little green men who sneaked into Jacksonville last Saturday for the Georgia-Florida football game and yanked the real Mark Richt away in their spaceship have returned him.
Welcome back, coach.
We forgive you.
Now don’t ever do that again - or anything close.
The real Mark Richt wrote a letter of apology to the SEC office this week for ordering his Georgia players to ignore the consequences and celebrate en masse on the field after they scored their first touchdown against the hated Gators.
Yes, I know. Richt mentioned that his players misunderstood his instructions, and that the celebration became more elaborate than he had planned. He said he wanted just those on the field to go nuts while jumping and screaming and clowning in the end zone, not the entire team. It’s just that such confusion happens when you deliberately tell folks who respect you to break the rules.
This shows that even a typically level-headed guy such as Richt can get so wrapped up in trying to beat somebody at all cost that you can lose your mind for the moment.
Contrary to popular belief, Georgia was going to hammer a flawed Florida team anyway. Too much Knowshon Moreno. In fact, without the penalties after that end-zone silliness (five in the first quarter, contributing to two Florida touchdowns), Georgia’s 42-30 blowout would have been worse.
And what better way to fire up your players than to keep reminding them all week that those hated Gators had won 15 of the previous 17, eight of nine and two in a row? Plus, Richt had Georgia legends Vince Dooley and D.J. Shockley deliver pep talks to the players during the week.
That’s motivation enough.
The long-term consequences for Richt regarding that celebration (making it difficult for his players in the future to determine when they should play within the rules or outside the rules, triggering copy cats across the country, giving the Gators more anger next year) don’t justify the short-term pleasure (finally beating Florida).
The real Mark Richt realized as much - you know, when he finally returned to earth.
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Lots of reasons to re-sign Glavine
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
After 14 consecutive playoff appearances, the Braves were distant observers of the postseason the past two years. Will they make it three in a row, or can changes in the offseason put them back in place to right the ship? Looking for answers, we put four questions to each of our sports columnists: Here, Jeff Schultz answers: Should the Braves re-sign Tom Glavine?
There are reasons for the Braves not to re-sign Tom Glavine. It’s just that none of them makes a lot of sense.
Reason: He’s not the pitcher he used to be. Response: He doesn’t have to be. In his past three seasons with the New York Mets, Glavine averaged 14 wins and 203 innings. As a No. 3 or 4 starter with the Braves, what would anything close to 14 wins and 203 innings mean to a thin rotation and a worn-out bullpen?
Reason: All he cares about is money. Response: He’ll make far less with the Braves (just guessing: $6 million-$7 million) than the $13 million he would’ve made with the Mets. He would’ve taken less last year if John Schuerholz had been quicker to pull the trigger.
Reason: He stuck it to the fans with his comments during the players’ strike in 1994. Response: Geez, get over it. He was a player rep. Those were collective bargaining talks. One player doesn’t set the agenda.
The fact is there’s no good reason for the Braves not to re-sign Glavine. He gives them needed depth, leadership and a sounding board for young pitchers. And they don’t even have to pay moving expenses.
Permalink | Comments (89) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
Soriano has the right stuff to close
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
After 14 consecutive playoff appearances, the Braves were distant observers of the postseason the past two years. Will they make it three in a row, or can changes in the offseason put them back in place to right the ship? Looking for answers, we put four questions to each of our sports columnists. Here, Terence Moore answers: Should the Braves rely on Rafael Soriano to be their closer?
What is there not to like about Rafael Soriano, the closest thing to John Smoltz as a potent Braves closer since, well, John Smoltz?
I’m still thinking.
Oh, that’s right. You had that fluke during the middle of last summer, when Soriano kept watching hitters slam his pitches toward the other side of the ozone. He allowed 16 earned runs and nine home runs during that 24-inning stretch.
You just have all of those other wonderful things about Soriano, though. For one, he throws hard. Preferably, you want your closer to make his pitches a blur to tiring hitters late in games, and Soriano does that along with something even more impressive: He throws hard, and he throws strikes.
Despite that little slump, Soriano finished last season with 70 strikeouts and just 15 walks during his 72 innings.
And did I mention the right-handed Soriano is as potent against left-handed hitters (.164) as he is against righties (.197)?
So here’s good news for the choppers and the chanters: Soriano will be the anti-Bob Wickman, both in girth and in productivity.
Permalink | Comments (30) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Save the $$: Francoeur to center
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
After 14 consecutive playoff appearances, the Braves were distant observers of the postseason the past two years. Will they make it three in a row, or can changes in the offseason put them back in place to right the ship? Looking for answers, we put four questions to each of our sports columnists: Here, Mark Bradley answers: What should the Braves do to shore the hole in center field?
I wouldn’t spend a dime to buy a new center fielder. I’d turn the incumbent right fielder into the new center fielder and spend those dimes on pitching. Jeff Francoeur can handle center. He played there at Parkview and in the low minors, and he’s more than good enough to get the Braves through their first post-Andruw season. And then, come 2009, Francoeur can reclaim right field and let Jordan Schafer, just named the No. 1 prospect in the Class A Carolina League by Baseball America, have center.
Torii Hunter is a free agent, but he’ll want at least what Jones was making ($14 million). Aaron Rowand is a free agent, but he’ll want something close to that. Mike Cameron is a free agent, but he finished 70th among the 75 men who qualified for the National League batting title - Andruw Jones finished 74th - and struck out 22 more times than Andruw.
So who would play right? Willie Harris doesn’t seem a long-term answer, but he might get the Braves through 2008. (And Matt Diaz deserves to play every day in left.) Or Kelly Johnson could move to right and let Martin Prado take a spin at second base.
The Braves have outfielders coming through the chain, and they can more than make do with the talent under contract. Pitching, alas, is another matter.
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Hampton on right track to return
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
After 14 consecutive playoff appearances, the Braves were distant observers of the postseason the past two years. Will they make it three in a row, or can changes in the offseason put them back in place to right the ship? Looking for answers, we put four questions to each of our sports columnists: Here, Furman Bisher answers: Should the Braves rely on Mike Hampton to be part of the rotation next season?
Since mid-August 2005, Mike Hampton hasn’t thrown a competitive pitch. He and the Braves have now come to a crossroads. Just when it appeared he was about to return to the form for which the club indebted itself, he broke down again during spring training at about the time he was scheduled to move into action, the matter of a muscle tearing loose from a bone in his arm. There went a potential 20-game winner, and as it turned out, what could have been the Braves’ season.
A similar sort of thing had happened a few seasons back to John Smoltz, and it was back to the surgical team. Smoltz has made a strong recovery, and that gives the Braves something to build on.
Hampton has gone through rehabilitation once more, and the report I get is that he has done everything the right way this time. He has been pitching off the mound recently and pacing himself. There will be no winter ball. I’m assured that this time Hampton will come back as productive as ever. It’s all conjecture until he steps on the mound and is tested under fire again, but the outlook is good. He has an itch for competition, and the conclusion here is that, yes, the Braves can count on Mike Hampton next season. The least you can say is, it’s about time, and he’s got a lot to deliver for the 15 million bucks he reportedly will be taking down.
Permalink | Comments (49) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Why let the Dawgs out?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN…
10: In keeping with Georgia sentencing guidelines, the SEC will make Mark Richt run stairs for nearly causing a riot last week.
9: Anybody want to fathom a guess on the over/under for DeAngelo Hall’s mute button short-circuiting?
8: Trading Edgar Renteria was the right move for the Braves for all of the obvious reasons (salary relief, making room for Yunel Escobar, the potential to fill other holes). But there’s something wrong with letting a consummate professional and a Gold Glover with solid production get away. The Braves haven’t done that since … well, dumping Andruw Jones.
7: I will give you that Tony Romo can compete with Tom Brady in the arm candy department (Carrie Underwood, Jessica Simpson, Sophia Bush) and without getting anyone pregnant. But how can the Dallas Cowboys giving him a contract (six years, $67 million) worth more than Brady’s. (six years, $60 million). Romo has never won a playoff game. Brady is 12-2 in the playoffs and has won three Super Bowls.
6: Michael Vick. (It’s too quiet. I figure that’s worth 50 blog comments).
5: Back to Richt. I get it, really. He wanted to fire up his players and DawgNation, which had been stomped on for most of the last 17 years. But before you use the end (a win) to justify the means, ask yourself this: What do you think would’ve happened if just one disturbed Florida player had thrown a punch while he was surrounded by 70 Bulldogs? And then what would you have thought of this stunt?
4: How funny would it be if nobody signed Barry Bonds?
3: I don’t get why Yankees fans are upset about Scott Boros/Alex Rodriguez announcing during the World Series that A-Rod was going to opt-out of his contract? Could there possibly be a better distraction to the Red Sox winning another championship?
2: If you’re a former or an aspiring NHL coach, do you want the Thrashers’ job right now, knowing general manager Don Waddell may be in trouble and ownership is in flux? Or would it be better to wait for offers after the season? And if you’re an Atlanta Spirit owner, do you want to commit a three-year deal (standard for a first coaching contract) to anybody right now? Logic says: Waddell keeps the job or gives it to assistant Brad McCrimmon.
1: Joe Girardi: Welcome to Hell.
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A-Rod to Boston wouldn’t work
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Denver — It’s customary for day-after stories to begin, “The champagne wasn’t even dry before so-and-so allowed himself to look forward to next season.” On Sunday night, the champagne hadn’t even been uncorked before speculation took wing.
A-Rod to the Bosox.
On its face, the notion has traction. Alex Rodriguez and his mouthpiece Scott Boras will want upwards of $30 million for one season’s work. The Red Sox, who paid $51 million just to negotiate with Daisuke Matsuzaka, are one of the few clubs that could consider such an outlay. Mike Lowell, the incumbent third baseman and the World Series MVP, is about to be a free agent himself.
Perfect fit, right?
Wrong. There’s no perfect fit for A-Rod.
He’s not surly like Barry Bonds, but somehow the totality of player and person hasn’t approached the sum of his stats. If A-Rod were to take up residence in the Sox clubhouse, the Sox would change, and not for the better. What stat geeks never grasp is that a major part of big-league baseball defies quantification. When grown men spend eight months together, the climate of a clubhouse absolutely matters.
In the closed circle of baseball, A-Rod is considered a phony. Yes, he has a nice smile, but so does Isiah Thomas, who’s the phony’s phony. Rodriguez puts up his numbers and collects his awards, but somehow a team never seems saddened when he leaves. So long as he’s around, the team cannot belong to the collective — it’s the property of A-Rod. (Indeed, Boras has floated the idea of Rodriguez becoming player-owner of the Cubs.)
A tiny example: Two summers ago, Jason Giambi hoisted two home runs off the Braves’ Tim Hudson in Yankee Stadium. After the first, a guy in the press box noticed that A-Rod, who was on deck, didn’t shake Giambi’s hand at home plate. He strode up the third-base line instead, his head down. So, when Giambi hit another, the guy made it a point to watch Rodriguez, who did the exact same thing. Is he a teammate or an independent contractor?
The Red Sox have absorbed the outsized personality of Pedro Martinez and the blathering of Curt Schilling and the ongoing saga of Manny being Manny, and they’ve won the World Series twice in four years. But A-Rod is insoluble. Put him among guys used to winning championships — Rodriguez, as we know, has never reached the Series and has been tepid in the playoffs — and the happy crew risks regressing to the old dysfunctional dynamic. (Famous line from the days of Carl Yastrzemski: “The Red Sox — 25 players, 25 cabs.”)
The belief here is that the Sox became champs in large measure because they didn’t get A-Rod before the 2004 season. The hated Yankees got him, and he became the flashpoint of the epic ALCS fold when he slapped the ball from Bronson Arroyo’s glove in Game 6. Boston famously overrode a 3-0 deficit to beat the Yankees, and a week later the Sox were champs for the first time since 1918.
It was fitting that Rodriguez didn’t show up here Sunday to receive the Hank Aaron Award. (He sent word of an unspecified previous commitment.) But then, as the Sox were closing out Colorado, A-Rod grabbed attention in absentia. During the game, the helpful Boras announced his client had opted out of his Yankees contract.
Immediately those who follow the sport began to imagine how much better the Sox might be with the game’s chief collector of statistics in their infield. Only they wouldn’t be better. They’d be worse. They’d go back to being one of those star-spangled aggregations that tripped over itself.
After 86 years of getting it wrong, the Red Sox are finally getting it right. The only way they can mess up is if they get greedy. And the astute Boston fans who had made the trek to Coors Field understood exactly what should be done, and what shouldn’t.
A half-hour after Game 4, they stood behind the third-base dugout and chanted, “Re-sign Lowell!”
And then this: “Don’t sign A-Rod!”
Permalink | Comments (42) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
When losing, talk not cheap
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Flowery Branch — This is slightly confusing. Despite feelings to the contrary in some quarters of the Falcons locker room, coach Bobby Petrino suggested on Monday after practice that he doesn’t walk around his players wearing invisible ear plugs. “Yeah, I have an open-door policy, which I made very clear to all of them,” said Petrino, sounding more than convincing.
Here’s what I know: If you ask the guy a question, he’ll always give you an answer. No wavering, direct eye contact, nothing left to the imagination.
Sounds like a slew of Falcons players don’t see the same thing, or Petrino isn’t communicating his willingness for dialogue to the masses, or something else is happening here.
Whatever it is, it isn’t healthy for a team tumbling at 1-6 with no bottom in sight. Not only that, a rising number of Falcons players are fearful about giving their opinion about “whatever it is.” Petrino may have an open door, but he also isn’t terribly amused when his players have an open mouth. For instance: To the dismay of the new regime, defensive lineman Rod Coleman revealed earlier this month that he had surgery to repair his broken knee cap. He hasn’t spoken to the media in the aftermath. Instead, he has told approaching reporters, “Y’all are going to get me in trouble.”
Even the normally loquacious DeAngelo Hall made the earth spin backward Monday by telling reporters that he’ll have nothing to say in the foreseeable future until after games.
Then again, Hall’s pocket already is $100,000 lighter after he shouted his viewpoint into Petrino’s face on the sideline.
Maybe “whatever it is” is that Petrino does have an open door, but he also has a dictatorship, and citizens are allowed to approach the leader at their own peril. Even before the Falcons’ free fall, there was private grumbling among players about the supposedly standoffish nature of their first-year boss from the college ranks. The grumbling leaped from the shadows after the Falcons’ loss at Tennessee when tight end Alge Crumpler said the new regime was phasing out the veterans. Then Hall fumed last week after popular and productive defensive lineman Grady Jackson was axed out of nowhere by the coaching staff.
As for the Crumpler explosion, Petrino said, “I’ve had a number of guys walk into my office since Alge early in the year, and I’ve had good discussions with them.”
As for the Hall explosion, punctuated by the defensive back saying that neither he nor his teammates knew about the Jackson move beyond media inquiries, Petrino said, “Well, you know, we did contact a number of the players to tell them. DeAngelo actually happened to get a new phone.”
Petrino smiled. In contrast, he was straight faced when discussing his personnel decisions in general. “I’m never going to tell the press why we released somebody, and I’m not going to stand up in front of the team and tell them why we released somebody,” Petrino said. “I don’t think that’s fair to the person that you release.”
What’s fair is, Petrino having that philosophy. Or any philosophy. Just as long as he communicates it, and that’s historically been the problem with college coaches trying to make the transition to the pros.
“The players have a transition to make in dealing with a guy who comes from college, and the coach has a transition of how to deal with guys at this level — guys in their 30s, late 20s who are grown, which means you don’t have to baby-sit them,” said Chris Crocker, the veteran safety. Then he echoed the thoughts of John Abraham, Michael Boley and other teammates surveyed Monday, saying, “I haven’t had a problem with Coach Petrino where I’ve had to schedule an appointment or stuff like that. I think losing sets the mood. It doesn’t feel good. Just winning, man. If we can just start a little streak here, a lot of these issues would go away.”
Yep.
Permalink | Comments (70) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Red Sox built to win for years
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Denver — When the Red Sox won in 2004, dour New Englanders shed tears of deliverance and raised toasts to absent friends who hadn’t lived to see the day. There was none of that hearts-and-flowers stuff this time. That championship was a catharsis 86 years in arriving; this was simply the cold-blooded triumph of baseball’s new colossus.
What the Yankees once were, what the Braves were once achingly close to being, the Sox are. They’re not just the best team in baseball but the best organization. They can spend whatever it takes, and what they can’t buy they draft. The Sox aren’t cuddly strivers, the American League version of the Chicago Cubs, anymore. They’re the gold standard. They’ll have a great chance to win it all next year and in 2011 as well.
Consider: Center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury, who had six hits in Games 3 and 4, wasn’t yet a professional in 2004. Second baseman Dustin Pedroia, who led off the Series with a home run, is likewise a rookie. Jon Lester, who won Game 4 Sunday night, and Jonathan Papelbon, who saved the final three games, are 23 and 26, respectively. Josh Beckett, who didn’t lose in October, and Daisuke Matsuzaka, who won Game 7 of the ALCS and Game 3 of the Series, are 27. And Clay Buchholz, the 23-year-old who worked a no-hitter in his second big-league start, didn’t even make the playoff roster.
About Lester: He was diagnosed with a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma 14 months ago and underwent four rounds of chemotherapy. It took him until July to work his way back to the big leagues. In one of those stories that seems preordained, he won the Series clincher in his first postseason start. Perhaps you were surprised. The Sox were not.
They’d seen him coming. They’d considered Lester the equal of Papelbon as a minor-leaguer. (The scarifying closer was a starter until he reached the majors.) Each held up his end in Game 4. Lester got the first 17 outs, Papelbon the last five. “I thought it was very appropriate [Lester] got the win,” said manager Terry Francona.
Some old-school baseball types — and most baseball types are old-school — don’t much care for the Red Sox operation, which is based on Bill James and his statistical tea leaves. (Indeed, the Sox employ the geeky James as a “senior baseball operations adviser.”) The famous Billy Beane operates on similar principles, with this difference: Boston can spend $143 million on its roster, while Oakland must make do with $100 million less.
Theo Epstein, the 33-year-old Boston GM, carries himself like a rock star, but he has already won as many world championships as John Schuerholz. And the Red Sox, unlike the Yankees, don’t buy everything they covet. Boston was thought to have been outsmarted in its pursuit of Alex Rodriguez in 2004, but the Yankees didn’t win a pennant with A-Rod, and the third baseman the Sox landed 21 months later — a ride-along in the trade with Florida for Beckett — was just named Series MVP.
Mike Lowell isn’t a superstar, but he fits the new Red Sox Way: He puts the ball in play and catches it when it’s hit. He’s a gamer who also overcome cancer. His contract is up this winter — Sox fans at Coors Field chanted “Re-sign Lowell!” as he accepted his Chevy — and Curt Schilling could also leave. But the Sox lost Pedro Martinez and Johnny Damon and Derek Lowe off their championship team of 2004, and they’ve since built something even better.
“When our organization added pitching, the Curse [of the Bambino] went away,” Francona said, and now it’s gone forever. It took 86 excruciating years for the Sox to reach the top but only three more to get back there. And we haven’t seen the last of them. They could win two or three more of these things in, if you’ll pardon the ex- pression, a New York minute.
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NASCAR doesn’t need teamwork
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
This was considered a good day for Carl Edwards. He finished second in a Nextel Cup race and he didn’t come close to decking a teammate.
I dunno. I kind of liked last week better.
It’s not that one NASCAR driver pushing another and feigning like he is going to throw a haymaker — as Edwards did with Roush teammate Matt Kenseth, live on TV (and now YouTube) — elevates the sport to new heights. But it’s honest. And Edwards feuding with a teammate, as lame as some might find it, qualifies as some needed honesty in NASCAR.
Has there ever been a sport filled with more conflicts of interests?
For all of its economic success, NASCAR is forever wearing blinders. There are owners with multiple teams. There are drivers from “competing” teams drawing paychecks from the same owner seeking the same championship.
Worst of all, there is Jeff Gordon, who, in addition to driving his own car for Hendrick Motorsports, is co-owner of the car driven by Jimmie Johnson, who trails Gordon by a slim nine points in the Cup standings going into the season’s final three races.
“Listen, it would be fun if we all had separate owners, separate teams, everything,” Edwards said Sunday, standing by his motorhome-away-from-home after a second-place finish behind Johnson in the Pep Boys Auto 500 moved him into fourth in the points standings. “That would be kind of neat. But our sport’s not as simple as others.
“Hey, if last week’s events have proven one thing, it’s that things are not always rosy between teammates. There’s good and bad to it. It’s not like it’s always an advantage.”
No. But the fact that it ever can be an advantage, or that there’s the perception of a conflict, is problematic. Teammates can run interference for each other. They can swap leads in races so both can accumulate bonus points in the standings. They share information.
Nothing against Gordon, who is an honest competitor and I’m sure wasn’t happy that he finished seventh, and not first, Sunday. But I get the feeling he would’ve been a lot more upset if somebody other than his buddy — and employee — won.
Johnson won. So Gordon made money. There is something seriously wrong with that.
“If those guys beat us and did positive things to win the race, I’ll go give them high fives,” Gordon said.
Most drivers will tell you they don’t have a problem with this incestuous relationship.
Johnson defended the situation again after his win, saying: “I think there’s more drama that we have two teammates racing each other for the championship. It’s not like, ‘OK, you go, now I’ll go.’ We go after it.
“There’s a lot of respect Jeff has for people he races against, including me. If it was Tony Stewart or Kurt Busch that Jeff was racing against, it wouldn’t be any different. We’re really bringing out the best in one another and being forced to step up our game.”
But that misses the point. Teammates often share information with each other about things like track conditions. True competitors don’t share information.
Know what? Sometimes, true competitors sometime feel like punching each other.
Can you imagine George Steinbrenner owning both the Yankees and Red Sox, and the teams sharing scouting reports — then claiming all is kosher while they compete for the pennant? Why would you provide information to another team that might help them win — effectively increasing your chance to lose? Because it’s good for the “team”?
When Edwards said NASCAR is “more complex than other sports,” what he’s really saying is this is about money. “It’s cheaper for someone to add a second team than start a new one,” he said.
Owners want to build the best teams with the best drivers to draw the most sponsorship dollars. Do you believe Hendrick wants Johnson to take a risk on a pass or put Gordon into the wall in the name of winning?
Earlier in the week, Gordon admitted: “When you are on the track going for a pass, and you know how hard you have to push it, you think of them as teammates because you know that [Hendrick] is going to be really mad and you’re going to get a call if you wreck one another.”
It wasn’t a left hook. But at least it was honest.
Permalink | Comments (27) | Categories: Jeff Schultz
Postseason baseball games too slow to keep interest
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Denver — I love postseason baseball — in theory. The reality is rather different. I don’t love nine-inning games that begin at 8:36 p.m. EDT and end 4 hours and 19 minutes later. Saturday night’s Game 3 had a lot of things to keep you interested — a big Red Sox surge, a big Colorado comeback, a clinching Boston countermove — but how many in the Eastern Time Zone (outside New England, that is) stayed up to watch?
The first World Series game I ever saw in person was Game 1 in 1972 at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium. The Oakland A’s beat the Reds 3-2. Gene Tenace hit home runs his first two times up. Vida Blue worked 2 1/3 innings in relief and earned the save. Jackie Robinson, who would die 10 days later, threw out the first ball. Time of that game: 2 hours and 18 minutes.
I ask myself: If I were 17 years old today, would I have the patience to watch — or, to use a more pejorative word, endure — postseason baseball? Would games that never run less than three hours and often run past midnight hold my interest the way the games did in my formative years?
My answer: No way.
USA Today ran a story last week on the glacial pace of October baseball, and it noted that, contrary to what many of us believe, the overlords of MLB and Fox TV don’t mind if games last until tomorrow. “Up to midnight with a close game,” consultant Neal Pilson was quoted as saying, “that makes network executives sleep well.”
Why? Because, according to USA Today, research indicates viewers often turn to baseball after watching prime-time shows, which end at 11 p.m. in the East. But let’s think about that: The target audience for baseball’s showcase event has become the audience that doesn’t really care much for baseball? Is that how far America’s former pastime has fallen?
Clearly the game has changed from the days of Gene Tenace and Vida Blue, to say nothing of Joe DiMaggio and Al Gionfriddo. The ability to take pitches has become, to many organizations, as great a skill as the ability to hit pitches. There were 339 pitches thrown in Game 3, and when you added all that to Fox’s 35-minute pregame show and its three-minute commercial breaks between half-innings, you wound up with the longest nine-inning game in World Series history.
And that’s too much for the casual viewer, too much for even the truly interested viewer. When the NFL saw its games running ever longer, it moved to have its 40-second clock start on the whistle that ends a play and to let the game clock restart after a player runs out of bounds (except in the last two minutes of the first half and the last five minutes of the second). The NFL, which has long been the gold standard for sports as a product, was smart enough to grasp that in a world where everything moves faster, it made no sense to go slower.
Baseball being baseball, it hasn’t gotten the memo. It hasn’t demanded that Fox start games earlier or cut pregame shows in half. It can’t do anything to keep batters from taking pitches, but it could do more to keep the games moving. It could preclude batters from stepping out and readjusting each article of clothing after every pitch. It could put pitchers on a pitch clock. (The idea has been floated in years past, but it needs to be more than floated now.)
The first World Series game I ever attended took 2 hours and 1 minute less than the one I witnessed here Saturday night. Think about that. I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I have to confess: If I hadn’t been getting paid, I wouldn’t have watched Game 3 to the end. Life’s too short. As Lenny Megliola of the Metro West Daily Post said when the official time of 4:19 was announced, “My first marriage didn’t last that long.”
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Rockies’ streak ended by ‘big boys’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Denver — It was fun while it lasted, but it’s over now. The Colorado Rockies, who forgot what it was to lose, have been rudely reminded. The only thing wrong with winning 21 of 22 games was that all 22 were played against National League opponents, and there is a difference.
The National League is known as the Senior Circuit, but in contemporary baseball it’s more akin to Class AAAA. The American League is where the big boys play, and the biggest boy on any block is the kid who, for 86 excruciating years, was Charlie Brown.
The Red Sox used to be the team that couldn’t win, but everything changed in October 2004. Boston clambered from a 3-0 hole to beat the imperial Yankees in the ALCS, and since then the Sox have graced two World Series and haven’t lost a game yet. They overwhelmed St. Louis in 2004, and now the cute little Rockies are in danger of being similarly swept.
All that time New Englanders were praying for deliverance, who knew it would arrive with such force?
Here’s how lopsided this Series has gotten: Rockies manager Clint Hurdle changed his lineup for Game 3, deploying as his center fielder the legendary Cory Sullivan. Who’s Cory Sullivan? He’s the guy who drove in 14 regular-season runs, who entered Game 3 with one postseason hit. He exited having gone 0-for-2.
Said Hurdle, speaking before the game: “I don’t believe you ever want to put a lineup up at this point in the season where the guys go, ‘What?’ ” This one, however, came close.
To be fair, a young Willie Mays could have patrolled center field Saturday night for all the difference it would have made. The Colorado starter, the regrettably named Josh Fogg, faced 19 batters. Twelve reached base. The Sox scored six runs in the third. The fourth and fifth runs stemmed from a single by Daisuke Matsuzaka, who hadn’t had a big-league hit since arriving from Japan. At the point in the 2007 World Series, the imported pitcher had as many RBI as the team that led the National League in hitting.
In their breathless September-into-October surge, it was often said the Rockies have almost an American League lineup. The Sox, as has been apparent for years, have the American League lineup — a batting order that will take pitches until the cows come home and often long thereafter, that will put the ball in play and more than occasionally over the fence. (Though it must be noted that the Sox have hit only one homer in the Series, that by Dustin Pedroia on the second pitch of Game 1.)
To their credit, the Rockies finally put up a fight. They scored twice in the sixth inning and in the seventh Matt Holliday launched a preposterous three-run homer. That pared the Colorado deficit to a run, and for a heady moment it seemed the team that won 21 of 22 was alive and well and swinging a hot stick.
But these Red Sox aren’t the 1996 Braves, who wasted a six-run lead in the pivotal Game 4 of that World Series, or the 2002 Giants, who squandered a five-run lead in Game 6. With the game back in question, the Sox promptly scored three runs in the eighth — the top-of-the-order rookies Jacoby Ellsbury and Pedroia had run-scoring doubles — and the big ballpark on Blake Street went silent again.
And now all that’s left is the clinching. It could come tonight, when Jon Lester, who has beaten back a cancer diagnosed 13 months ago, starts for Boston. If not then, the untouchable Josh Beckett awaits in Game 5.
It was a nice story, this rise of the Rockies, but it has been trumped by a much better team from a much better league. That’s the trouble with nice stories: They sometimes meet a not-so-nice end.
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From the start, this would be different
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Jacksonville — All these many years I have been watching Georgia-Florida football games, but never before have I come away feeling the need of a psychiatrist. It was the way it began, the way it reeled on into the twilight, one key play after another, until the point was reached when you felt secure that the 2-for-17 Bulldog depression was at an end.
Only twice in the past 17 games had the Bulldogs been able to win from the Gators in this Skirmish on the St. Johns. Then it was evident early that this would be no mere skirmish, this was all-out war. The dead giveaway came early, after Georgia scored the first touchdown, just minutes into the game. Florida had moved into Georgia territory, Tim Tebow conducting, when Asher Allen picked up a fumble and returned to Florida’s 39-yard line, and what was about to take place was like unwrapping a Christmas present.
The star of the evening shifted into gear with a modest 6-yard gain. It was the introduction of Knowshon Moreno, the redshirt freshman from New Jersey. Moreno right, Moreno left, Moreno up the middle and Moreno receiving. On a persistent drive to the 1-yard line, he reached out arm’s length, the ball like a trophy, for Georgia’s first touchdown. Then a surge of Bulldogs came from the sideline, the whole squad swarming Moreno and celebrating, no matter that yellow penalty flags filled the air. It cost the Bulldogs 22.5 yards, and gave the Gators such delicious field position that they scored an answering touchdown, and the duel was on.
It turns out, the usually mild-mannered Mark Richt had ordered the touchdown celebration, and as the game wore on, it was obvious, from that soldier-grim countenance on his face and the uncharacteristic gambles he ordered, that he had not come to Jacksonville Municipal Stadium to lose again. It was a case of Matthew Stafford doing his best Tim Tebow act, matching the celebrated Gator quarterback in every way. It was a kind of desperation, turning the ground game over to Moreno. For after injury to Thomas Brown and Kregg Lumpkin, he was the last running back left standing. He ran up a bank of 188 yards, scored three touchdowns and answered the call in every Bulldog emergency. When it was over, the final count of 42-30 blinking on the scoreboard, Richt found it fitting to give his star of the evening a big hug in the milling delirium on the field.
The Bulldogs stared trouble in the eye throughout the day-night hours, but never failed to have an answer. It was a give-and-take that had this crowd of 84,481 seething between agony and ecstasy. This was a Georgia team that had been blasted by Tennessee, lost a chess game to South Carolina and barely survived another Vanderbilt upset. On this evening by the river, the Bulldogs had the answers.
When Florida pulled within four points in the third quarter, and appeared to have regained its composure, the game turned into a tug of war. Then early in the fourth quarter, the Bulldogs emerged from a stretch of somnambulance with a jolting score. Stafford hit Mikey Henderson 53 yards away on the goal line and the score became 35-24. No lead was safe, though.
Tebow fired back, crashed in from 3 yards out, in a typical Tebow plunge. Now came the Bulldogs again, this time with what was probably the key play of the game, a 22-yard pass from Stafford to reliable Sean Bailey on third-and-12. On the Florida 48, the drive was revived and Georgia stretched its lead to what became the final score. And while the seating sections of Red reeled in happiness, the other half of the stadium reflected the blue hue of the Gators.
What Richt had done was carry through on a pledge, “that I was going to create enthusiasm whether they liked it not.” He had ordered the celebration after the first score and set the tone for the evening. “I wanted to make sure we left this game with our hearts on the field.”
The question is, how far will this go toward reviving the season that has had its sinking spells? Georgia hasn’t hit the field with such a show of defiance and made it last. This must be the signal that sets off the rush that gets the Bulldogs back in the race, surely not another false start.
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Dogs could have done without the foolishness
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Jacksonville — So much for discipline, poise and class. They could return as staples of Georgia’s football program under Mark Richt, but it’ll take a while. They vanished on Saturday at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, where the Bulldogs kept making fools of themselves early and often.
They were fools by choice. That’s the scary thing.
They were fools in victory. That’s the only thing that matters to most in the Bulldog Nation, especially since Georgia played out of its mind during the wildest game you’ll ever see to slay the Mighty Gators.
You can make a case that the Bulldogs had to be fools in this one if they wanted to end their phobia against Florida and if they wanted to keep their hopes of reaching the SEC championship game alive. What the Bulldogs were doing before in this highly overrated rivalry wasn’t working. I mean, it isn’t a rivalry when the other guy keeps knocking the red and black out of you.
So, with a 42-30 triumph in hand, the Bulldogs did a massive Lambeau Leap into the stands. They watched the normally subdued Richt take his highly expressive ways during the game into the aftermath with a passionate kiss of his wife, Katharyn, before 84,481 witnesses. The Bulldogs just went bonkers. After all, they’d lost 15 of 17, eight of nine and two straight to the Gators. Not because Georgia wasn’t as talented, but because Georgia wasn’t as tough.
That’s why the Bulldogs decided to become fools along the way to shocking Florida with a lot of running back Knowshon Moreno, the clutch play of quarterback Matthew Stafford and a defense that turned The Great Tim Tebow into only a good quarterback who spent much of the game scraping himself off the ground.
It’s just that you don’t have to become fools to do what you have to do to slay personal demons. Among the lowlights for what was one of the nation’s most composed teams under Richt, Georgia was penalized five times for personal fouls or unsportsmanlike stuff.
In the first quarter.
Once, two Georgia players were signaled for face-mask infractions on the same kickoff. There was Mohamed Massaquoi creating thousands of orange-and-blue boos after scoring a touchdown and doing his version of the Gator Chomp in the end zone. What triggered the silliness was Richt allowing his players to sprint from the sidelines moments into the game as if they’d never seen a touchdown before. That was when every one of the Bulldogs did their coach’s bidding by jumping and screaming and boogieing while smothering Moreno after he scored the game’s first points.
The Gators weren’t amused. The Bulldogs couldn’t care less, especially with their suddenly ruthless leader.
“Oh, Coach Richt told us during the week that, after we scored that first touchdown, you can have an excessive celebration,” said Georgia defensive end Marcus Howard, adding that Richt informed the team that he didn’t care about the 15-yard penalty that always comes from such an action. “That’s what everybody did [after Moreno’s touchdown]. They just ran out there and formed a big, old Dog Pile.”
Wonderful.
Apparently, when nobody was looking, a bunch of little green men descended from the cloudy north Florida sky to zap the real Mark Richt away in a spaceship.
Who was this Mark Richt?
This was the desperate Mark Richt, and he was coaching a desperate Georgia team, and you know what they say about desperate folks. They do all sorts of crazy things in an attempt to end their desperate ways.
Still, when contrasted with the Mark Richt of the previous six-plus seasons at Georgia, this was baffling, shocking, bizarre. Mostly, this was hypocritical. Just two weeks ago, when Georgia last played, a visibly peeved Richt threw a fit after a bunch of Bulldogs celebrated at midfield at Vanderbilt after the Bulldogs’ victory in the final seconds.
That was the real Mark Richt before the Bulldogs’ mission became to beat Florida no matter what. The thing is, an overly due Georgia bunch against the Gators could have done the same regardless, but we’ll never know.
The fools ruled.
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Playing ‘hardball’ no more at Coors
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Denver — The World Series was to resume Saturday night in the shadow of the humidor, and that in itself was pretty weird. The only previous collision between a device used for storing cigars and championship sports was when Red Auerbach was pulling one of his stogies out of storage to light up in celebration of another Celtic title.
The humidor here, for the uninitiated, is a walk-in closet just off the home clubhouse at Coors Field. It’s used to house baseballs, not cigars. It was built in 2002 out of desperation. The Colorado Rockies had simply grown weary of losing home games 13-12.
This was Clint Hurdle, the Rockies’ manager, speaking Friday of the humidor and its genesis: “Once they went through the scenario, it made perfect sense because I was like many people — I had no idea the balls were shrinking and getting harder. I was a hitting coach here, and some balls would get hit from time to time, and you’d go, ‘Oh, my. How did that happen?’ You would see the other teams hit, and you’d go, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that ball went out.’
“We kept attributing everything to the altitude, but through the astuteness of one of our employees in-house, the realization of the fact that balls are getting smaller, getting harder, they’re going farther — that adds to the complication of playing at altitude to start with. [Post-humidor] we could regulate that, just keep the balls regulation size.”
According to the Denver Post, the humidor was the brainchild of Coors Field electrician Tony Cowell, who’d come to work in dried-out leather boots after a hunting trip. From soggy shoes was a more uniform playing field created.
Hurdle again: “[It] has made the swing of home-road challenges much less. It’s given our pitchers, I think, a better foundation for confidence … The thing that was so challenging for so many years was you were never out of a game. That’s the way you felt. It’s not that you ever just turned it off and stopped playing, but every night, 81 times, [you’d be] six, seven runs down late and you’re thinking, ‘Hey, we can get this thing done.’ You’re continually grinding and grinding and grinding, and mentally it became very challenging and exhausting.”
But a little moisture-retention can go a long way. The humidor stores baseballs at 70 degrees and keeps them from hardening. The upshot: Home runs at Coors have dropped from 268 in 2001 to 185 this season. And the 2007 Rockies had a home ERA of 4.34, which was almost a match for their road ERA of 4.29. The place that pitching forgot is just another big-league ballpark, albeit a hitter-friendly one. (Credit much the Coors-generated offense now to the vastness of its outfield, which leads to a slew of doubles and cannot be remedied by a humidifier.)
Said Josh Fogg, who was to start Game 3 for Colorado: “When I was here a few years ago playing with the visiting team, the balls kind of felt like cue balls. If you play pool a lot, you [know how it feels when you] pick it up and it’s kind of slick and hard to get a good grip on it.”
In winning seven of their nine postseason games, the Rockies have pitched (3.33 ERA) better than they’ve hit (.229 batting average). Indeed, just giving their pitchers a chance is the reason they’re here. It used to be that nobody wanted to pitch in Colorado because nobody could pitch in Colorado, and that led the Rockies to overspend wildly for free agents ($172 million in one offseason for Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle, who together won 40 games for the franchise).
“Our pitching staff is dramatically improved over the staffs we’ve had here,” Hurdle said. Indeed, the Rockies led the National League in second-half ERA.
In baseball, it never changes. You can’t win if you can’t pitch. It took a humidor, installed for the modest price of $15,000, to change the course of a franchise.
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Tebow gets hype machine cranking
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
All hail Tim Tebow, the czar of mankind. Unless he’s needed to quell those wildfires in San Diego or to solve the national mortgage crisis, he’ll take a break from saving the universe to play quarterback today for the Mighty Gators.
So here’s the question: If Tebow graciously lowers himself to take part in this little football game at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium, will he walk across the nearby St. Johns River before or after he takes Florida against Georgia?
Here’s the bigger question: Do the Bulldogs actually believe The Great Tebow hype, which would trigger something like another Florida meltdown for Georgia by the end of the evening, or do they realize he pulls on his shoulder pads like everybody else?
“Well, when I think about hype, I think about a player that everybody makes a big deal of that isn’t very good,” said Georgia tight end Tripp Chandler. “I think [Tebow] has proved that to be wrong. I think he’s a great football player, and that’s why I think our team will have [its] hands full trying to contain him. He seems to make plays week in and week out. He’s fast. He’s strong. He’ll run you smack over.”
In essence, Chandler joins others by suggesting that Tebow is Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, Thor, Flash Gordon, The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man and Mighty Mouse. To hear Georgia coach Mark Richt tell it, Tebow is even more impressive than that combination — at least in a football sense. Said Richt, reflecting on his version of The Great Tebows over the past 20 years, “Michael Vick certainly was that guy.” Then Richt mentioned Vince Young for being “sort of freaky.” Finally, Richt said of his former pupil, Charlie Ward, “He also had some of that.”
Whatever “that” is for Tebow, it has scorched Florida opponents on the ground and through the air. His statistics are ridiculous this season, which is why we won’t bore you with the details. Just consider this: Tebow is sprinting toward the Heisman Trophy as a sophomore by leading his peers across the country in touchdown runs (10), passing efficiency and hype.
We’re back to that. Even so, Richt delivered encouraging news to the Bulldog Nation, not only about Georgia’s approach to Tebow, but to those 15 losses for the Bulldogs during their past 17 meetings with Florida. “Our motivation is to win the game whether or not a guy has an aura about him,” Richt said. “I don’t think we’re too concerned with that [aura], but he’s the key.”
Ask the Auburn Tigers, upset winners over Florida for the second consecutive year. They allowed Tebow to have his pretty numbers (completing 20 of 27 passes for 201 yards, rushing for 75 more and managing a passing touchdown and a running one), but they stifled his love affair with big plays. They also forced Tebow into an interception that led to a field goal in Auburn’s 20-17 victory that stopped the defending national champs’ 11-game winning streak.
The next week, LSU slid by Florida courtesy of a miracle pass at the end in Death Valley, but it proved again that even The Great Tebow is quite beatable. He’s also quite human. He damaged his non-throwing (right) shoulder during Florida’s victory last week at Kentucky. That’s why Georgia linebacker Marcus Washington said the Bulldogs will go after Tebow’s shoulder “to ding it up for him a little more.”
This doesn’t mean Washington views Tebow as more hype than reality. Or does it?
“I guess I can tell you a little bit more about that after the game,” said Washington, straight-faced, pausing before adding, “Of course, you’re always going to have a guy getting a little bit more hype than what he really deserves. So we’ll just go down there, and we’ll play, and we’ll actually get a chance to find out for sure.”
That is, if The Great Tebow has time to show up. You know, with his need to finish developing a cure for sneezing and all.
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Georgia must keep up its end of rivalry
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
St. Simons Island — Well, the circus hit town again. Christmas comes in October to the shopkeepers, the restaurants, the motels and, of course, the barkeeps around the marshes of Glynn. The shop windows along Frederica Road have developed a reddish glow. Just a while ago I heard the wail of a siren. You don’t hear sirens wail around here a lot.
They’re here. Georgia Bulldogs gathered along the state line to make the mad rush into Jacksonville on Saturday.
The two university presidents of Georgia and Florida joined in a personal campaign a while ago to dismiss the famous old, though unofficial, slogan, “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.” And Jacksonville for years has tried to live down its reputation for traffic snarls. One has been about as successful as the other. Time goes on. Little changes in this old football rivalry that has gone lopsided over the turn of the century.
In fact, it has developed such a Gator flavor that a columnist in Jacksonville, living dangerously, has decided that this series needs Georgia to win one. Publicly announced his out-and-out hope that Georgia wins this one. Just so all these Georgians might feel better about coming to Jacksonville every year. None of this home-and-home stuff, see.
You know, they did that once back in the mid-’90s, while the old Gator Bowl was being remodeled, one game in Athens, one in Gainesville. Nothing changed. Florida won on both sides of the border by a total score of 104-31. They went back to Jacksonville in 1996, and the stadium soon had a new name, Nextel or Alltel, or one -“tel” or another, and now it’s back to what it is really is, Jacksonville Municipal Stadium.
Tell you one thing, these Bulldogs are going to give Jacksonville as little business as need be. This has become a regular pilgrimage destination, come to St. Simons, Brunswick, St. Mary’s, once-upon-a-time Jekyll Island — now it’s in a state of parliamentary squabble — and a weekend becomes an extended vacation. They drive down to the game on Saturday and back that night, leaving as little to the Florida tax budget as possible. It’s a transfusion to the Glynn County economy.
“If it wasn’t for Georgia-Florida weekend, we’d be out of business,” Stan Robinson, manager of Brogen’s, a central gathering place for many a Bulldog on St. Simons. Its “Bulldogs” banners have been beckoning Georgia nomads all week. “It’s bigger than Fourth of July and Labor Day combined. This is what you’d call our ‘season.’ “
I’ve been to Army-Navy, when the two academies were of national rank. And I’ve been to the “Red River Shootout” between Texas and Oklahoma. Neither carries on with such an uproar, with such bitterness as Georgia-Florida. And neither is as much a part of the health of the commonwealth as Georgia-Florida is to its part of the South.
There is this caveat, however: Unless the Bulldogs begin picking up and shouldering their side of it all, chances are the intensity will wear away, and it takes two to make a rivalry.
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Boston off to a familiar start
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Denver — There was this team, see. It fell behind 3-1 in its LCS. It won its next five games by the collective score of 48-2. Maybe you remember. I’ve never been able to forget.
That team: The 1996 Braves.
That was the team I likened to the ‘27 Yankees after Game 2 of the World Series. (Contrary to popular belief, I did not write that the ‘96 Braves were better than that legendary crew. I only dangled the possibility.) I called the Braves the greatest team of the post-free agency era. I hailed them as the new dynasty, the new standard of baseball excellence. I gushed like Tom Cruise on Oprah’s couch.
And then the Braves let me down. They didn’t win another blessed game. They blew the Series and gave inadvertent birth to a rather different dynasty. (The Yankees would be champs four times in five years.)
Now there’s this other team, see. It fell behind 3-1 in its LCS. It won its next five games by the collective score of 45-7. It’s taking batting practice as I type. I’d like to say the Boston Red Sox will blow their 2-0 Series lead and make other premature pundits look as silly as I looked back when, but I really can’t see it.
The Red Sox look too good. (Then again, so did you-know-who.) The Colorado Rockies look outclassed. (Then again, so did the 1996 Yankees, who actually sacrificed with the second batter of Game 3 — Derek Jeter, of all people — because Joe Torre just wanted his team to get a lead.) This Series doesn’t figure to return to Boston. (Then again, the Braves figured to send off Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, which was to be razed over the winter, with a champagne party.)
Maybe I’m the only guy in the world who sees the parallel because I’m the only guy in the world who ever invoked the ‘27 Yankees and the ‘96 Braves in the same silly sentence. (But I should note that I’m sitting next to Paul Bodi, who was the AJC sports editor on site in Yankee Stadium in 1996 and who works for MLB.com now, and he just said, “I didn’t argue with you, did I? I think we were all on the same page at the time.”)
I asked Jason Varitek, the Sox captain who attended Georgia Tech from 1990 through 1994, if he recalled the ‘96 Series. (Eleven years later, I’m still looking for commiseration.) He said he didn’t. “I just remember being in Atlanta during the worst-to-first year [1991]. At the start of it, we were able to go down and sit by the dugout. When we got back from playing summer ball, we couldn’t even get in the stadium.”
If you’re looking for the reason the surging Sox won’t crash as abjectly as the ‘96 Braves, it’s this: The Sox are too smart to let it happen. They won’t waste a 6-0 lead. (The Braves did in the infamous Game 4.) They won’t be undone on their best reliever’s third-best pitch. (Jim Leyritz hit a Mark Wohlers slider.) They won’t get flustered and hang their heads if adversity arrives. (The ‘96 Braves were dead after Game 4, which technically only tied the Series.)
“We can’t look at all that,” said Varitek, speaking of precedents distant and recent. “We’ve got to think about what’s gotten this team to where we are.”
Who are the Sox? They’re a team that runs deep counts and puts the ball in play, that has dominant starting pitching and a lockdown bullpen, that plays deft defense and pays attention to detail. They don’t look that dominant on paper, but on the field they’re a colossus.
Then again, the 1996 Braves were riding as high as any team ever had. In the span of five days, it all fell to pieces. Baseball’s a funny old game. If the Rockies win tonight, maybe this Series changes the way that one did.
Me, I’d love to see it. Even if it’s deferred by more than a decade, misery can always use a little company.
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A special pitcher, yet again
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Boston — For as much as Curt Schilling has been labeled at various times in his career as pompous, egomaniacal, disingenuous, long-winded and just to the right of Goldwater — not quite going with the political flow in Massachusetts — universal adoration is seldom a problem in October.
Great athletes excel in the regular season. Special athletes are born in the playoffs.
The Braves have had John Smoltz, possibly the best postseason pitcher of all-time. Philadelphia, Arizona and Boston have had Schilling. But it’s with the Red Sox that his October legend has been cemented. That legend grew more Thursday night.
After a mediocre regular season in which he was plagued by tendinitis in his shoulder — Old Pitcher’s Disease — Schilling has again flashed brilliance in this postseason. He is three weeks short of his 41st birthday. But he squeezed a little more fall magic out of his aging and ailing body in Game 2 of the World Series, allowing Colorado one run and four hits in 5 1/3 innings, jump-starting the Red Sox to a 2-1 win over the Rockies.
The win lifted the Red Sox to a 2-0 Series lead. It elevated their starting pitcher another notch in history.
Schilling is now 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA in 19 postseason starts. He is 4-1 with a 2.06 ERA in seven World Series games. He is 3-0 in four starts in these playoffs (with one rough no decision in Game 2 of the ALCS).
Sorry. No bloody sock this time.
Manager Terry Francona watched Schilling help will the Red Sox to a title in 2004. He has learned to trust him, especially in October. Asked what separates Schilling from others, Francona responded: “His will to make sure the score ends up in our favor. I’ve been around him so long that I probably expect unfair things out of him. It’s a good feeling when he pitches.”
The Rockies drilled Schilling in June for six runs (five earned) and nine hits in five innings. But he was a different pitcher Thursday. “He got the ball where he wanted to, probably with more consistency,” Colorado manager Clint Hurdle said.
Boston fans may want to embrace Thursday’s game for a while. It may have been Schilling’s final start with the team. He took the mound at Fenway Park cognizant he doesn’t have a contract beyond this season. Red Sox management felt uneasy in the winter about his age and his health, and frankly, the way the season unfolded, their concerns were justified.
Schilling admitted on the eve of the game that the thought of this being his Fenway farewell was on his mind. But after the game, he said: “I guarantee everyone is sick of hearing me asked about that. I am. Whatever happens happens. We’re just trying to win two more games in the World Series. That makes it very easy not to think about.”
This would be Schilling’s third ring, two with Boston, which hadn’t won a Series in 86 years before his arrival in 2004. He went 21-6 that year. Then he made the regular season an afterthought.
You know the story. The ALCS. The Yankees. Game 6. The right ankle injury. The experimental medical procedure in which a tendon was sutured to a bone for stability. The bloody sock. The win. The comeback. The Sox, down 3-0 in the series, rally to dump the Yankees in seven. Then they sweep St. Louis in the Series. Euphoria.
Now, Schilling is near the end of his career, like a handful of other top pitchers in this era: Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson. For most of this season, there were doubts Schilling would be back with the Sox next season. Now you wonder.
He considered retiring after this season but announced in January that he would return in 2008. He asked Boston for a contract extension. Management’s response: We’ll get back to you. He went 9-8 and missed seven weeks with shoulder problems.
Then came October. He blanked the Angels in the divisional playoffs. Cleveland dented him for five runs in Game 2 of the ALCS, but he rebounded to win Game 6. The Sox rebounded to win the ALCS. Again.
Now the Series. Now this. It’s October. After a while, you expect this.
Permalink | | Categories: Braves / MLB
Bulldogs could use a good excuse
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Before unveiling this week’s Stunning Money Back Guaranteed Willie Martinez-Crafted Georgia-Florida Upset And Booze-Free Experience — how many lies can you spot in that sentence? — we have a small business update for you:
A group of enterprising students in Oklahoma have started “The Excused Absence Network.” For $25 you can buy an official-looking note to get out of school or work or, I suppose, annual meetings and potential humiliating experiences with your conference rival.
These notes can be made to look like they came from a doctor or lawyer or jury summons, and I would assume are discounted if bought in bulk. Say, for a roster of 90.
“Millions of Americans work dead-end jobs, and sometimes they just need a day off,” co-founder John Liddell said. “People are going to lie anyway.”
Which leads me to this week’s Georgia-Florida game.
Florida has no chance.
OK. I’m lying. But I’ve got this really cool note that states: “I hereby crown Willie Martinez as the supreme being of all defensive coordinators, with an easy grace, impish grin and Patton-like forethought. Signed, The Wizard.”
Really, I’m sure Georgia has played defense at some point. But I’m only 48 years old and I just can’t remember back that far.
The Dogs can score on Florida. Won’t matter. Their defense can’t stop a ping-pong ball, let alone a team averaging more than 40 points per game. Tim Tebow has a passer rating of 177.5, which, in layman’s terms, means chicks dig him.
The line says Florida by 9. I’m assuming you’re used to this by now.
The Gators have won 15 of the past 17 meetings. Feel a cold coming on?
Florida. Again. But take the Dogs and 9.
Pros and Cons
Falcons: Bobby Petrino took advantage of the bye week to make another move, cutting general manager Rich McKay. Petrino declined to comment on the move beyond a brief statement, which was the same statement he released for the Grady Jackson release, which was: “This is a football decision.” On a related note, McKay attended a race for geldings at Santa Anita.
Lunch at Patriots: New England has won seven games by an average score of 40-17. Some wise guy noted this week that the last time Tom Brady faced Washington, he threw three interceptions and the Patriots lost. Yes, well, should this game also take place in an alternate universe, then I guess there’s something to worry about. Otherwise: Pats cover 16.
Texans at Chargers: An aside to Schaub-aholics: In the last five games, your boy has two touchdowns, four interceptions, seven fumbles and 10 sacks. So, at least the Falcons have that going for them. Displaced Bolts cover.
Colts at Panthers: Carolina coach John Fox won’t say whether David Carr or Vinny Testaverde is starting. Like it matters. Punt the 6 1/2, Colts cover.
Dolphins-Giants (Lon-don): Zach Thomas got a concussion in a car accident and will not play. Now, if the rest of the Dolphins can get hit on the head and wake up as somebody else, then they’ve got a shot. Otherwise, they’re toast. Oh-and-16 still alive! Giants cover 9 1/2.
Packers at Broncos: Brett Favre threw eight TD passes in the first four games, but one in two since. For the record, I really don’t care about him personally. But he’s killing my Fantasy League team. Broncos cover 3.
Semi-Pros
Mortal at Tennessee: Steve Spurrier lost to Vanderbilt. His offense didn’t score a touchdown for the first time in 19 games. He can’t even look at himself in the mirror. OK, that one I made up. South Carolina’s getting three in Knoxville. Won’t even need ‘em. Upset watch: Roosters over Vowels.
Old Ms. at Auburn: I realize Al Borges has this great rep as an offensive coordinator. But did you know that other than the New Mexico State game, Auburn has scored only one third-quarter touchdown, after coaches generally make halftime adjustments? Fortunately, when you’re playing against the worst defense in the conference, you don’t need to adjust. You just need to breathe. Tigers cover the 17.
Missy State at Kentucky: There have been 566 points scored in Kentucky’s eight games this season (nearly 71 per game). I’m not sure how that factors into bowl projections, but safe to say Rich Brooks’ days as a defensive coordinator are over. Onward: ‘Cats cover 13 1/2.
Duke at FSU: The Blue Devils are 0-4 in conference but figure this is the most winnable game on the schedule. Seriously: Flawed State is 1-3 (4-3) and the next four weeks read: Boston College, Virginia Tech, Maryland, Florida. Lose to Duke and Bobby Bowden might just want to forget that whole I’ll-outlast-JoePa thing. ‘Noles win but take Duke and 17.
Almost perfect
Last week: 7-3 straight up, 6-3-1 against the line.
Bottom line: 50-32 straight up, 37-40-5 against the line.
W.P. Bookclub: Buy three selections and win a copy of DeAngelo Hall’s autobiography, “Never An Unspoken Thought.”
Permalink | Comments (127) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Falcons becoming Petrino’s team
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
This much seems clear: The head coach plans to be here for the long haul, and he’s consolidating his power with every week. No longer the team Michael Vick left or the team Rich McKay assembled, this is becoming Bobby Petrino’s team.
The Falcons cut Grady Jackson for no compelling reason other than to show there are no indispensables on a 1-6 club, least of all a 34-year-old tackle who weighs upwards of 350 pounds. On cue, DeAngelo Hall ripped Petrino, same as Alge Crumpler had ripped him earlier. “They can cut me, too,” Hall harrumphed, and if I were him I wouldn’t give anybody any ideas. I get the feeling Petrino isn’t a man to cross. I also get the feeling he’s the man who matters most in Flowery Branch.
When was the last time McKay was quoted on anything? When have we seen or heard so little from the usually out-front (and player-friendly) Arthur Blank? There seems a concerted effort that management speak with one voice, and that voice is now the head coach’s.
Petrino doesn’t care about being anyone’s pal. He’s here to coach football. If certain Falcons can’t handle that, they need to go work somewhere else. More from Hall: “It’s kind of hard for other guys to play 100 percent … knowing that everybody’s not on board, from the front office on down.”
And that’s the point: The belief here is that Petrino essentially is the front office. Would McKay have handed Ovie Mughelli the fattest contract awarded a fullback had Petrino not demanded it? Would the Falcons have signed Byron Leftwich without a push from Petrino?
The belief here is that Hall and his fellow dissidents will be playing elsewhere next season. And Petrino won’t be coaching at Auburn or at LSU or at any other rumored bail-out destination; he’ll be coaching the Falcons, and they’ll be more to his liking.
Permalink | Comments (266) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Red Sox get used to role of favorite
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Boston — Three years ago, they wondered if they would ever win another World Series. Now, it seems like they can’t do anything do anything wrong. They have made the unlikely evolution from a 86-year losers to lovable self-proclaimed “idiots” to postseason bullies.
The Boston Red Sox came into this World Series as heavy favorites over the Colorado Rockies. It’s a tag Boston manager Terry Francona didn’t want to hear about the past few days, if only because he learned first-hand in 2004 about improbable postseason results.
But after one game, has any World Series looked like more of a slam dunk?
The Red Sox won 13-1.
At last count.
“I don’t think I paid any attention [to projections] before, and I probably won’t now,” Francona said after the game.
Hard to believe, but Boston trailed Cleveland 3-1 in the ALCS. Since then, the Red Sox have won four straight by a combined score of 43-6. There comes a point when you expect this. They opened the Series by validating all of the mismatch projections that Francona and some of his players have tried to smother.
“I don’t care about the perception,” he said the other day. “Just to make this really clear, if I were betting on it, I would care. I’m not.”
Certainly seems like it would’ve been a safe investment. Boston just destroyed a Colorado team that had won 10 straight and 21 out of 22.
“It can change in a heartbeat,” Kevin Youkilis said.
Yes. Assuming the Rockies still have one.
Every player in the Sox lineup reached base at least once. All but one scored. All but one drove in a run. It was a well-balanced assault.
Josh Beckett, the starting pitcher, did something that hadn’t been done in a World Series game since Sandy Koufax in 1963: He struck out the first four batters. He allowed one run in seven innings and struck out nine, and this postseason now reads like a Koufax Hall of Fame induction speech: 4-0 with a 1.20 earned run average, 35 strikeouts, two walks.
This counts as only one game. The Rockies can keep telling themselves that. But right now Boston’s not looking real beatable. Or even touchable.
One team is a centerpiece, the other background noise. The Red Sox have the stars and the glitz. Their payroll ($143 million) nearly triples that of the Rockies ($54.4 million). The starting pitching seems laughingly tilted: Beckett, Curt Schilling and Daisuke Matsuzaka vs. Jeff Francis, Ubaldo Jimenez, Josh Fogg (or: Who, What, Where).
Game 1 pitching summary: Perception equaled reality.
Three of the first four Boston batters hit, then scored. Francis lasted only four innings, and then was carried back to the clubhouse by medics. He allowed six runs on 10 hits. He threw 103 pitches, which isn’t easy to do in only four innings.
It was 3-0 after the first, 6-1 after the fourth and 13-1 after the fifth (a seven-run inning that included three straight bases-loaded walks).
The Boston Globe broke down how the teams matched up in Wednesday’s newspaper. The Rockies were given the advantage in four of 10 categories. But two of those were “intangibles” and “karma.” I’m guessing karma didn’t make the trip.
“One of the strengths of this team is our confidence hasn’t been shaken by the results of a game,” said manager Clint Hurdle. But the Rockies will have to be twisted steel to not be shaken by this.
Maybe it was the layoff. The Rockies swept Philadelphia and Arizona in the first two rounds of the playoffs. They were off for eight days. Maybe they liked it so much that they decided to stretch it to nine.
The Rockies had claimed they were loose, thanks to playing a couple of “simulated” games. Those games must have been played on Xbox.
Relative to the Red Sox, most consider the Rockies are nameless, faceless and so far hopeless. Is that unfair? Possibly. But Colorado looked overmatched from the outset.
And the Red Sox? They looked like favorites.
It’s a new suit. But they wear it well.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
Dogs need to quit making excuses
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Athens — Stop it.
Just stop it.
No more yapping about the neutral site in Jacksonville that isn’t. Yeah, the Gators had an edge with bye weeks before all of those other Georgia games, but get over it. Sure the Bulldogs suffered key injuries to a D.J. Shockley here and a Kregg Lumpkin there that left them bruised against Florida, but Georgia still had other gifted folks. Who cares that, as some raspy voice of doom would say, “Lady Luck” wasn’t with the Bulldogs in many of those losses to the Gators?
The SEC standings don’t care, and neither should you.
Two victories against the Gators in 17 meetings? That’s absurd, not only for Georgia, but for any program with thoughts of reaching the elite of college football, and thus the problem for the Bulldogs: Despite their six-year run of goodness under Mark Richt before this season, they’ve just been an elite wannabe.
You can’t become the real thing without a national championship in recent years, and you also can’t do so when you keep losing to a team perpetually among the nation’s elite from the same division of your conference.
So, yeah, I hear Kelin Johnson, for instance, speaking with passion about this often wrongheaded obsession in the Bulldog Nation with Florida. “I know people who have their whole week messed up when we lose [to the Gators],” said Johnson, Georgia’s senior strong safety. “It’s like those people can’t even function when they get up in the morning. Some of them drink themselves to sleep because we lost. It’s a shame. It’s funny. You can take it however you want.”
This is how Georgia coaches and players should take it: They should man-up. They should get the job done on Saturday at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium. Mostly, they should forget about all of that irrelevant stuff (locale, injuries, demons) surrounding the Florida game.
No way, the Gators have been that much more talented than the Bulldogs during Florida’s years of dominance that are becoming decades. In fact, the Bulldogs usually have been more talented than the Gators. “I agree,” said Barry Every, an administrative assistant in Georgia’s football department before joining Rivals.com this year as a national recruiting expert. “I’ve always joked that maybe Vince Dooley sold his soul to the devil. In my heart, during the seven years prior to this one when I was working at Georgia, only once was Florida definitely, without a doubt, the better team. That was Coach Richt’s first year.”
That was 2001, when David Greene was a redshirt freshman at quarterback with a slow bunch of Bulldogs facing a speedy Florida team during Steve Spurrier’s last year in Gainesville. Richt’s only victory over the Gators was a 31-24 triumph three years ago. So what’s the Bulldogs’ problem? “I just think they [freeze] up during that game,” said Every, telling the truth.
Whether Georgia players and coaches wish to admit it or not, visions of Gators always are rattling around their heads. It has turned them into a psychological mess at the sight of orange and blue. That said, Richt told reporters earlier this week that he doesn’t discuss that 15-out-of-17 thing with his players, but you just knew he had his fingers crossed while uttering those words. He even suggested as much later during a private moment.
“The bottom line is, I just don’t want to discuss what I say to the guys. You know what I mean?” said Richt, easing into a smile in a hallway at Stegeman Coliseum. “Yeah, I’ve talked to them, but I’ll be vague with the media about it.”
Still, inquiring minds want to know, which is why we asked Georgia quarterback Matthew Stafford about the theme of his coach’s Gipper speech. Actually, it was more of a classroom lecture. “I can’t remember it all, except how the games have kind of gone in spurts, with Georgia dominating for a while and then Florida,” Stafford said. “Coach Richt just talked to us about trying to take back the streak and to start winning against these guys.”
Yeah. Like now. Without all of the excuses and alibis.
Permalink | Comments (205) | Categories: Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Falcons should have kept Jackson
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
To paraphrase an AJC colleague of mine, this cutting of nose tackle Grady Jackson by the Falcons was Bobby Petrino’s version of yanking his scholarship away.
Now Jackson is free to transfer to Michigan, Ole Miss, Ball State or wherever else he chooses.
I guess.
Here’s what I know: At 1-6, and with Petrino as a rookie NFL head coach after a stint at the University of Louisville, it’s officially panic time around Flowery Branch.
According to those in Jackson’s camp, they were told by the Falcons decision-makers that Jackson was playing selfishly in the Falcons’ new defensive scheme and that he was disruptive in the locker room.
Whatever. I’d take him.
The man was using all of his 350, 380, 500-something pounds to have a productive season after doing the same last season for the Falcons. He also was among the few veterans in the locker room not blasting Petrino either loudly or softly in public.
“Hate is nowhere around,” said Jackson after I asked him about his relationship with Petrino.
Well, that was earlier this month, when Jackson still had that scholarship. Guess his old teammates will be asked to rise before dawn to run the steps of the Georgia Dome after their next loss.
Permalink | Comments (65) | Categories: Quick Hit
TV dragging World Series into irrelevancy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
This is ridiculous. It’s time the corn has been shucked and the pumpkins harvested, and the first frost is just around the corner. And the first World Series pitch hasn’t been delivered.
World Series, mind you. The jewel of our national pastime, but losing ground. When you stack up the game’s most glorious event behind two weeks of preliminaries, and you finally get around to it, the edge is worn off. The glow has faded. We’re dragging it along behind us like an afterthought.
The way it has been bedraggled, the World Series is beginning to look like a second cousin. We’ve had years when the team that won the World Series didn’t even win the pennant. Take this year, for instance.
Now, the first inclination is to blame Bud Selig. He’s the commissioner, you know. He was just standing there when some club owners decided Fay Vincent was getting too oatsy in the job. He resigned after getting a no-confidence vote. Then “Hey, you” over there was called in and said, “You’re the commissioner.”
He was just a commonplace one-time car salesman who owned the Milwaukee Brewers, but a harmless little guy who wouldn’t stir up the waters. He has been wearing the title a good while, and hasn’t done much damage, for in real life, the so-called commissioner is television.
The guys who push the buttons and schedule the shows and report to guys who sit around board rooms. You find Bud Selig somewhere down there in the middle of the pile smiling nicely and being harmless.
So baseball jumps when television says jump. The regular season ended Sept. 30, and for the most of three weeks since the two leagues have been working their way toward the World Series.
But first, Colorado had to take care of some overtime duty. You see, this is the third stage of the Rockies’ postseason. They had to play San Diego for the wild-card ticket, and that game ran on into extra innings, and ended when a Rockies baserunner scored the tie-breaking run, though it was obvious that he never touched home plate.
Then they had to play Philadelphia in the divisional playoffs, and won. Then they had to play Arizona for the league championship, and won. They just forgot how to lose, and here they are playing in the World Series, though they got here on a disputed play at home plate against San Diego.
Silliest thing is, after barely crashing the party, the Rockies have been sitting around nine days waiting for the American League to come up with a champion.
You see, the reason for that is television. The networks schedule games to fit in between the nut-house shows they book. It’s a game that has to take its place in line with television fare that wouldn’t pass kindergarten inspection.
This time television stretched it out to the very limit. Now, on the 24th of October, when both teams should have uniforms and equipment stowed, and spring training on their minds, the Rockies and Red Sox are just beginning to have it out in the World Series. Ridiculous.
Presumably, they’ll be through by Thanksgiving, allowing for Denver’s fractious weather. One day it can be 75 degrees and next day comes a blizzard. Not that Boston doesn’t spend a good part of its winters shoveling. Me, I’m pulling for snow. (You know, of course, that Cleveland got snowed out on opening day and had to move the series to Milwaukee under cover.)
With no thought to the younger generation - and a lot of us oldsters - television doesn’t vary from its bad manners. I never saw the last out of any of the first two series. It’s rare when kids have baseball heroes any more. They have to turn the lights out before the game is over. Thanks to you, Mr. Commissioner, and Mr. Push-button Television exec.
In addition to snow, I’m going for the Rockies. I’m a Helton, Holliday, Hawpe, Atkins and Tulowitzki guy, and especially Tulowitzki. Remember, he was the rookie who turned an unassisted triple play against the Braves.
Another thing, these were the guys who voted a full player’s share to the family of Mike Coolbaugh. Coolbaugh was the coach at the Tulsa farm club who was struck and killed by a line drive. He’d been with the team for only three weeks, and the Rockies barely knew of him. That’s what I call heart, and I like guys with heart.
As for the Red Sox, I’m getting pretty tired of Big Papi and Ramirez and his floor-mop hairdo, and oh, so tired of seeing Terry Francona spit the evening away. Somebody send him a spittoon.
Permalink | Comments (44) | Categories: Furman Bisher
Long layoff will hurt Rockies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Only baseball, the silliest of sports, could have taken the hottest team in the history of down-the-stretch baseball and given it eight days to cool off. Nobody else has been able to slow the Colorado Rockies, but Bud Selig and his schedulers have managed.
The Rockies will play Game 1 of the World Series Wednesday in Fenway Park. They last played on Oct. 15. They last lost on Sept. 28. The last thing a surging club needs is a week off, but baseball was weary of its crowning event starting and ending on weekends and thereby being forced to share a stage with college and pro football. So Bud and his minions added more off-days to the postseason, and what has baseball gotten?
A showcase event that, if it doesn’t end in a sweep, will share a city with the NFL. The Broncos, long Denver’s favored team, are scheduled to play host to the Green Bay Packers at Invesco Field on Monday night. Game 5 is set for Coors Field, 3 1/2 miles away.
But we shouldn’t be too hard on baseball for not seeing the Rockies coming. On Sept. 15, Colorado was 4 1/2 games behind the San Diego Padres in the wild-card race and only one game ahead of the Braves. It won 13 of its final 14 regular-season games to force a one-game playoff with San Diego. Down 8-6 in the 13th inning against Trevor Hoffman, the Rockies scored three runs - actually only two, given that Matt Holliday never touched home plate with either his hand or his chinny-chin-chin - to buy postseason passage. Once in, the Rockies have proved invincible.
Since it started playing in 1993, Colorado has been the baseball equivalent of arena football. The Rockies had finished above .500 only four times and had qualified for the playoffs but once - they lost to the Braves 3-1 in the 1995 Division Series - and had proved beyond all doubt that baseball without pitching isn’t baseball. In 2002 the frazzled Rockies installed a walk-in humidor at Coors Field to keep baseballs from hardening at altitude and thereby traveling farther than they should.
Until then, nothing had worked. After the 2000 season the Rockies spent $172 million on free agents Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle - recognize those names? - and those two were a collective 40-51 with Colorado. These Rockies, believe it or not, had the National League’s best ERA the second half of the season.
And now the man who overspent for free agents is being hailed as the smartest general manager east of Billy Beane. With no real alternatives, Dan O’Dowd chose to go homegrown, and the Rockies’ system has yielded hitters (Holliday, Garrett Atkins, Brad Hawpe, Troy Tulowitzki) and even pitchers (Jeff Francis, Ubaldo Jimenez, Manny Corpas). Meet the new Rox, organizational model.
The Rockies have reached the World Series with a payroll of $54 million. Their opponent has invested nearly three times that. Just as Colorado has re-invented itself, so have the Red Sox. Once the team that couldn’t win no matter what, Boston has become the club that expects to win no matter what and will spend whatever it takes.
The Red Sox trailed Cleveland 3-1 in the ALCS but outscored the Indians 30-5 over the final three games. (It was reminiscent of the 1996 NLCS, when the Braves faced a similar deficit and outscored St. Louis 32-1 thereafter.) Boston broke the much-ballyhooed Curse of the Bambino by overthrowing the Yankees and winning the World Series in 2004, and now the Sox see championships as manifest destiny.
Game 7 against Cleveland: Shortstop Julio Lugo, hugely unloved by Red Sox Nation, drops Kenny Lofton’s pop with Boston holding a one-run lead in the seventh inning. In olden days this would become the moment of undoing, the Bucky Dent/Bill Buckner moment. Instead the Sox are spared when coach Joel Skinner inexplicably holds Lofton at third base. See, times do change.
Don’t look for the Rockies to succumb meekly, but don’t look for them to keep winning. The eight-day hiatus will have a massive effect. The Rockies have enough hitters - almost an American League lineup, to invoke the highest form of praise - to make the Sox work, but Boston has two World Series MVPs (Josh Beckett and Curt Schilling) in its rotation. There’s your difference. Sox in six.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Falcons’ present, future ruined
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN
10: I suddenly find myself strangely attracted to Marie Osmond.
9: I didn’t watch “Dancing With The Stars” Monday night, and if I did I wouldn’t admit. But I did see video of my Marie fainting (you can find it here: http://www.tmz.com/tmzmainvideo?titleid=1266416895) and it got me thinking: Why not: “Passing Out With The Stars”? There are more than enough candidates in Hollywood and the sports world to fill episodes, just in the NFL alone, and ESPN and MTV can fight it out for TV rights.
8: Oh, I’m sorry. Were you in a hurry to talk Falcons football?
7: So. if you’re the Falcons, do you think about going to Roger Goodell and saying, “Look, we surrender. Take our gate receipts for the rest of the year. Take our TV revenue. Forget the next eight games. Leave us with what little dignity we have left.” Because while it can’t possibly get any worse, we’ve said that seven times and it keeps getting worse.
6: Now the Falcons are even killing next season. Here’s why: The decision to start Byron Leftwich at quarterback was less about trying to salvage this season than it was about previewing next year. The thinking: Even if the Falcons draft a quarterback, that rookie was not going to step straight into the lineup. The Falcons need a veteran QB and Leftwich was/is the most likely candidate. Now you’ve blown several weeks of him working in Bobby Petrino’s offense.
5: Then again, I guess that assumes Bobby Petrino’s offense will be here next season.
4: The Don Waddell-coached Thrashers went from in inaugural 5-3 win over New York to a 6-2 loss to Tampa Bay, during which they were outshot, 17-2, in the first period. I guess the system needs tweaking.
3: I’m leaving for Boston tonight for the World Series. I promise to return with a full scouting report and answer to the question that we never figured had to be answered: Can the Braves be as good as the Rockies?
2: One day, I hope to be like Joe Torre and feel insulted by a $5 million contract offer.
- If Paul Byrd was taking HGH when he was with the Braves, how come he stunk?
Permalink | Comments (45) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Timetable for Hawks begins to accelerate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
There has been so much positive written and said about the Hawks of late that it’s almost easy to forget the team hasn’t played a real game yet — and, yes, you would be correct in assuming that one might have something to do with the other.
For as even coach Mike Woodson pointed out Monday night: “It’s just exhibition season. We played pretty well in the exhibition season last year, too.”
Seems to me the other Philips Arena tenant also flew through the preseason. That meant so much for Thrashers coach Bob Hartley that he lost his job last week.
Hartley’s firing did not go unnoticed by Woodson. There is a kinship among coaches, particularly when they are friends, particularly when they have offices and locker rooms across the hall from each other, particularly when they share the same bosses.
If Hartley leads a hockey team to its first playoff berth and a division title, and then loses his job six games into the following season, what does that say for the job security of a basketball coach who is 69-177 in three seasons?
“I thought he did an excellent job last year,” Woodson said of Hartley before the Hawks’ final home exhibition Monday night against Washington. “You hate to see things like that happen to any coach on any level.”
Did Woodson hear of Hartley’s fate and suddenly think, “0-6 and I am toast”?
“Hey, the bottom line is you’ve got to win — I understand the dynamics of it,” he said. “This is a year where we’ve got to win as well. I can’t look in the mirror, or look over my shoulder, and worry about something like that. I feel for what happened to Bob, because I don’t wish that on any coach. But it happened. What are you gonna do?”
Billy Knight once fired Terry Stotts, whose biggest problem was being an innocent bystander while the general manager gutted the team for salary cap purposes. Don Waddell fired Hartley at least in part because he thought the coach had lost the team’s core group of veterans. Built-in was an assumption that said core group of veterans, which was put together by the GM, is not deeply flawed to begin with — both as players and, appearances now suggest, as leaders. But Hartley goes.
If sheer effort defined a coach’s success, Woodson would be NBA Coach of the Year. Personnel issues in three seasons have caused him to go through far more Tylenol than wins.
But by year four, there needs to be a playoff race to go with that effort. He knows that. Hartley’s firing just hammered that home.
“We all work for the same ownership group and we all wish each other the best,” Woodson said. “This is all about trying to bring a sports town back on its feet. I took this job to get this team in the playoffs, get our fan base back and give them something to really cheer about. That’s what this is all about at the end of the day.”
It’s early — so early that technically it’s not even early yet. You have to pass the start line first. But Al Horford looks like an NBA-ready player, Josh Smith has taken a leap in maturity, Acie Law IV looks viable as a point guard. Joe Johnson, we know about.
There are times when players talk about playoff aspirations but it’s an empty confidence. “Sometimes that can just be talk,” said guard Anthony Johnson, a link to the Hawks’ last playoff team in 1999. “But the actions of a lot of guys around here have us on that path. That said, you still have to go out and play the games.”
He added, “I’m sure a lot of people in the organization will be watching us closely. It’s going to be important for us to get off to a great start.”
Woodson believes last year’s team (30-52) was submarined by injuries. Rotating lineups led to a lack of chemistry, something he has tried to build in the preseason. “It’s nice to see how we’ve come together,” he said. “We’ve grown as a basketball team.”
For another 10 days, it’s all good. But there’s an empty office in Philips Arena that serves as a reminder how much this really counts.
Permalink | Comments (18) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
A brief ray of light, then Leftwich hurt
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
New Orleans — The metaphor for the Falcons’ season was a sullen-faced Byron Leftwich using crutches to ease into a back room of the Superdome on Sunday. He wore a boot on his right leg nearly the size of the gap between where his team is now and where it has to go just to become decent.
This was indecent. We’re talking about the Falcons’ plunge to 1-6 after their winnable game against the New Orleans Saints evolved into a 22-16 loss. Mostly, with Leftwich owning a damaged right ankle that could be worse than that, we’re talking about the continuation of the Falcons’ wretched quarterback situation, and much of it was self-inflicted.
In case you’re among the few who suddenly haven’t heard of something called PETA, here’s a quick review of the Falcons’ last eight months: They turned backup Matt Schaub into an starter by shipping him to the Houston Texans. They acquired Joey Harrington to back up No. 7, even though Harrington was a two-time loser as an NFL starter with a career record of 23-43. They joined the rest of the world in watching No. 7 fall into dogfighting infamy.
Then, despite Leftwich’s reputation as the anti-Brett Favre when it comes to staying healthy, they acquired Leftwich anyway.
That said, there was Leftwich, looking strong, inspired and even mobile against the Saints during his first start since joining the Falcons four weeks ago. Once, in the second quarter, he ignored the charging and snarling Saints to step forward, avoid danger and deliver a perfect 23-yard pass to Laurent Robinson. On the next play, Leftwich drilled Michael Jenkins for another nice strike of 19 yards.
There also was that pretty throw of 20 yards from Leftwich to Jenkins on another drive, and Leftwich zipping a low pass into the end zone that only a sliding Roddy White could grab for a touchdown. There was even that moment when the normally slow-footed Leftwich rambled 7 yards to help set up one of Morten Andersen’s three field goals.
Never mind that Leftwich’s goofy throwing motion nearly contributed to bad things when he got popped by New Orleans defenders on a couple of passes. This was quickly becoming his coming-out party with the Falcons, but then Will Smith turned out the lights on Leftwich during the third quarter. That’s when Smith used every ounce of his 282 pounds to slam Leftwich into the artificial surface. Before then, Leftwich had completed 15 of 23 passes for 145 yards and a touchdown. Before then, the Falcons had a splendid chance of overcoming a 14-13 deficit to their dreaded rivals.
Before then, Leftwich was a long way from having another ankle injury end his flirtation with giving the Falcons a rare burst this season of efficient play at quarterback along the way to victory.
“Right now, I’ll just say I’ll know more tomorrow,” said Leftwich, delivering the status of his damaged leg in nearly a whisper. Just this summer, he was discarded near the end of training camp in Jacksonville as the statue and (ahem) injury-prone starter of the Jaguars.
Nobody wanted Leftwich until the Falcons came along. He was a bust in relief against the Tennessee Titans about two losses ago for his new team, but then came hope. Here was Leftwich looking rejuvenated, with the Falcons trailing just 14-13 at the time of Smith’s mighty charge across the line of scrimmage, and with Leftwich shaking his head in despair later. “I just don’t know. I really just don’t know,” Leftwich said, his voice becoming softer with each word. “It’s really, really frustrating out there right now, man.”
That’s when Leftwich put one crutch in front of the other and left for the exit. He added, while dropping his head to the floor, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t do this, y’all.”
He tried, though. For the rapidly sinking Falcons, that’s all you can ask from players these days.
Permalink | Comments (97) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Consistency lacking at Tech
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
At noon Saturday, the immediate future winked rather invitingly. Georgia Tech had five games to play — four at home, the fifth at Duke. Once past Army, the Jackets would have 11 days to prep for Virginia Tech. A season that not so long ago looked really bad was actually looking pretty good.
By 1 p.m. Saturday, we were reminded that, where Tech is concerned, nothing ever looks good for long. Tashard Choice was carted to the locker room after hurting his right knee. There was no further word on how badly Choice is hurt, but knee injuries tend not to be fixed by tape and Tylenol.
And here Tech was yet again, back on its perennial precipice. True, the Jackets gathered themselves and beat Army by 24 points, but Army isn’t to be confused with Virginia Tech or Georgia or even North Carolina. What worked Saturday after Choice’s departure might not work at all if he’s indisposed. Rule of thumb: When you’re basically a one-man gang, it’s never cheery to see that one man on a gurney.
“I’m assuming it’s going to be OK,” said quarterback Taylor Bennett, but that seemed quite an assumption. And then: “It’d be good if we do [get Choice back], but if we don’t, I think we’ll be all right.”
Six Jackets rushed for more than 20 yards against Army. (Choice was one — he had 24 yards.) Backup tailbacks Rashaun Grant, Jonathan Dwyer and Jamaal Evans ran to great effect, but Bennett had it wrong when he said, “The running backs behind [Choice] are just as good.”
They aren’t. Choice leads the ACC in rushing for a reason: He’s special. He’s the best back Tech has had since Robert Lavette, whose last season as an undergrad was 1984. Choice is fast and tough and inspirational, and we’ve already seen how the Jackets sagged — three losses in four games — after he tweaked his hamstring against Boston College. He was himself again against Miami, and we noted the results (204 yards on 37 carries in a must-win game).
A week ago, Tech looked to have discovered how truly reliant it was on Choice. That bit of self-knowledge seems positively ominous now. Bennett’s passing didn’t scare any opponent even with the threat of a big-time back behind him. Will the same Bennett make the throws that will undo Virginia Tech if Choice isn’t available? Or will the Jackets’ best hope be to punt and play defense?
This is Chan Gailey’s sixth season here, and he’s still looking for his first smooth ride. From losing leading rusher Tony Hollings against BYU in 2002 to the mass flunkouts of 2003 to the tempest-tossed tenure of Reggie Ball, nothing has been easy, and it’s looking more and more like nothing ever will.
If Gailey hasn’t yet had a losing season, neither has he won over enough of his constituency to feel truly secure. Indeed, CBS Sports.com floated the notion Friday that Gailey already knows he’s going to be fired at season’s end. This was vehemently and convincingly denied by Gailey and by AD Dan Radakovich, and the “report” seemed thin on its face. Fired? What if the Jackets finish 9-3 and beat Virginia Tech and Georgia en route?
But that’s the thing about Gailey and Tech. Nothing yet suggests that this coach and this program are capable of sustained excellence. The Jackets move in fits and starts, have for more than five years. Just when you think they’re on the brink of a breakthrough, they step in a pothole. Or their best player wrenches his knee. Or something. Always something.
Permalink | Comments (67) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Army valiant in defeat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
This would have been a kind of homecoming for Bobby Ross. Here he coached, and here he won a national championship, and here he won bowl games and coaching awards. But it would not have been to his taste, for on this lovely autumn Saturday afternoon, his Army team would have been the entree on Georgia Tech’s Homecoming Day menu.
That’s the way it is with homecoming games. Opponents are scheduled with happiness in mind, and the old grads don’t find happiness in defeat. You get the message when you realize that Georgia Tech hasn’t lost a homecoming game since 1995. Something to be said for “scientific” scheduling. There’s nothing so warm and cozy in the NFL as homecoming day, and that’s where Ross put the cap on his coaching career with a date in the Super Bowl.
“I’d like to have come back with Army,” he’d said, speaking of the Georgia Tech game. He had resigned suddenly last winter, with this epitaph: “I ran out of gas. It was time to step aside.”
He had come out of comfortable retirement, a tax-paying resident of Lexington, Va., to coach the Army team because his wife told him, “You owe it to your country.”
Yeah, but how many dismal Saturdays do you owe your country? How much defeat can one man swallow, a man with a career swathed in championships? Never able to beat Navy, and that’s Army’s Armageddon. Trying to survive on an average of three-win seasons is starvation for the soul. He went on a recruiting trip after the season last year, then came home to face the hard truth: He was 71 years old, he was tired, the fire was burning low. He called Stan Brock for lunch and told him he’d come to the end of his run.
Brock had played for Ross in San Diego for part of his 13 years as a tackle in the NFL, and rejoined him on his staff at West Point. When Ross made it known to Academy officials he was retiring, there was no dawdling. Brock was handed the job, and there was nothing lost in the transition. Not that this was figured into the decision, but Brock had been well-steeled in defeat. He was one of the New Orleans Saints in some of their dreariest days.
For a half, the cadets were well into this game at Bobby Dodd Stadium, “and that’s how we have to play,” Brock said. “We have to play our best at all times, and I felt like we did it for 30 minutes.”
But that was it. What happened in the second half was that difference in speed took over. Seems the military schools, and especially Army, attract the big and strong and the defiant, but speed isn’t one of West Point’s virtues. There was suspense on the Georgia Tech side after Tashard Choice was retired and wheeled away to the locker room, but not to fret. Rashaun Grant came on like a whirlwind, and his 119 yards filled in well for the ACC’s leading running back.
“He’s quicker” [maybe quicker than Choice] “he’s got a little burst … and he’s got good cutback moves,” Chan Gailey said.
So the Yellow Jackets turned it into a homecoming picnic in the second half. Taylor Bennett settled down to some extent, but he was still wild and often overshot his targets.
Now, as one who grew up digesting Army teams by radio, and adapting to heroes before they became known as “Black Knights,” it is painful to see our future generals go down in defeat. No more Davises or Blanchards or Dawkinses or Carpenters, no All-Americans, no Heisman Awardees. The tracks left by the late Red Blaik have been washed away with time. It’s probable that we have seen the last of the great teams that came thundering out of the Hudson Valley, spreading fear among those teams that dared schedule them. So sad that it even put out the fire in Bobby Ross’ belly.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC
Forgive Wren if he’s not worried
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
He was 21 years old and a rising prospect. One night, driving home from a doubleheader, he became ill. Nausea, headaches, stiff neck. He lost 27 pounds over the next three weeks. Doctors thought he had meningitis. Two years later he learned that he had a tumor in the third ventricle of his brain.
He was 23 years old and still hoping for a baseball career. Surgery saved his life but left him with double vision. He wore an eye patch during rehab but coached rookies, often switching the patch from one eye to the other, as if some confused pirate. Eventually the double vision subsided. He tried to play again, but the reactions were gone and so, strangely, was the fun.
Frank Wren was 39 years old. Now he wore a suit. He had coached and scouted and sold program ads and negotiated contracts. He had done fine work for the Montreal Expos and Florida Marlins — a rising prospect again. The Baltimore Orioles hired him as general manager.
Now he was in a car on the way to the news conference, and team officials are telling him what to say when he is asked about owner Peter Angelos. Misery followed. He was fired one year into a three-year contract.
Now 49, Frank Wren has been asked to replace John Schuerholz as Braves general manager.
Funny. That challenge suddenly doesn’t seem too intimidating.
“It’s all given me great perspective,” Wren said the other day, sitting in his Turner Field office. “The Lord blessed me, just by getting me through the tumor. It changed my perspective on life. I feel blessed every day. The way I look at it, if not for the tumor ending my playing career, I might never have left being on the field and I wouldn’t be the general manager of the Braves today.”
This is like his second first chance at the top job. Baltimore almost doesn’t count. Angelos, a trial lawyer by day and windbag owner by night, made his life miserable in 1999. He interfered in trades, signings and day-to-day life. Wren tried to rebuild the organization, but Angelos ranted on. Even the firing turned into a clown act, with the Orioles putting out a bizarrely detailed news release that distorted an incident from during the season when the team charter left without Cal Ripken Jr., claiming it was because of Wren’s “unreasonable, authoritarian manner.”
There are a lot of ways to describe Wren’s manner. Unreasonable, authoritarian — not so much. He is easygoing and far less formal than Schuerholz. But the Orioles’ situation wore on him.
“It was difficult from day one,” he said. “But by the end of the year we were able to make some trades for players who are part of their foundation. Their two best players [Brian Roberts and pitcher Erik Bedard] are players we acquired. It was a learning experience.”
A short one. His tenure here will be longer. He ran the Braves’ organizational meetings a few weeks back — and that was two days before Schuerholz told him of his promotion. He just returned this past week from executive meetings.
“A plan is in place,” he said of fixing the Braves. And now he calmly awaits the frenzy of winter.
“This feels seamless, because for the last eight years with John, I always had a voice. I always felt like I was a partner.”
If not for the tumor, he would’ve kept playing and speculates he could’ve had a career as a utility player. He should’ve known early that wasn’t his path. While in the Montreal organization, he spent a week teaching signs, and the ropes, to a top prospect named Terry Francona. Yes, that one.
The Expos asked him to help coach rookies, then to run a farm team. He didn’t think he would want a front-office job, but it turned out he liked dealing with people. Unreasonable, authoritarian — right.
The Braves are coming off two non-playoff seasons. But Wren said the pressure wouldn’t be any greater if they were still winning divisions.
“I thought about that a lot in eight years: What would I want if I take over?” he said. “You want to win every year, so I wish we were still winning. But we’re still regarded as one of the top organizations in baseball.”
The Braves need more starting pitching. The bullpen needs to be rebuilt again. Andruw Jones is gone. Bobby Cox could be one and done. So many issues.
But Wren isn’t fazed. He has been waiting for this, for so long, through so much. “It’s all been part of a plan,” he said.
Permalink | Comments (26) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
Uncompromising stance suits Evans
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
It’s one thing for Georgia athletics director Damon Evans to stay with his convictions, follow the guidelines of his new academic policy and suspend three key members of the Bulldogs’ rising basketball team for a total of 30 games after they blatantly slam-dunked his rules.
Nobody cares about Georgia basketball.
You know where I’m going. What if the violators of Evans’ policy were Matthew Stafford, Knowshon Moreno and Sean Bailey — the key members of Georgia’s All Mighty Football Team? Would the same folks around Bulldog Nation whom Evans said have been supportive of his 10-month-old policy continue to applaud between shrugs, or would they seek to feed Evans limb by limb to a snarling Uga VI?
“It might cause more of a commotion [if it were football players]. I can’t say for sure,” said Evans, in his fourth year as Georgia’s athletics director. “But at the end of the day, it’s what I believe in. It’s what we believe in. And I want to say this: It doesn’t matter who the young man or the young woman is, because that’s been, I guess, a lot of the issue in intercollegiate athletics. Everybody has always said, ‘Yeah, do this to the kids who don’t play, but don’t hold the stars accountable.’ We’re holding everybody accountable.”
Such a noble response, but Evans just moved closer to Uga VI’s food bowl. Not that Evans cares. Which is why Vince Dooley’s tough-minded successor should be the person to beat for athletics director of the year. He also should rank among the candidates for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, king of the western hemisphere and whatever else you can give somebody for such a courageous act.
How courageous? Evans knows Uga VI’s teeth are pretty sharp, but he still implemented maybe the stiffest policy ever for an NCAA institution (well, at least one with big-time athletics) regarding student-athletes who skip classes and academic appointments. Among other things at Georgia, three unexcused missed classes will get you suspended for 10 percent of the season in your sport. Each absence after that will get you an additional 10 percent suspension.
Now consider Bulldog Nation joins the rest of its SEC brethren by caring more about whether Johnny knows an X from and O than whether he can conjugate a verb.
This is the same Georgia whose fan base turned the name “Jan Kemp” into a four-letter word forever around Athens after she exposed the Bulldogs’ plantation system for football players during the middle 1980s. This is the same Georgia that became a national punch line after former Bulldogs basketball assistant Jim Harrick Jr. taught his infamous class on Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball (“How many points does a 3-point basket account for in a basketball game?”).
This also is the same Georgia whose president, Michael Adams, embarrassed himself last year by saying he would allow the enrollment of some student-athletes who didn’t meet the admission standards of the university, because, “We still have to compete in the [SEC].”
Adams is Evans’ boss, by the way. So what has Adams said about Evans’ policy that surely will affect Georgia’s ability to “compete” in the conference on occasion?
“After I enacted the policy, I informed our president what we were doing, and he has been very, very supportive, and our board members also have been supportive,” said Evans, before addressing his questioner for a moment. “You say this is a courageous thing I’m doing, but it’s really just the right thing I’m doing. My thing is to always look forward and do what’s most appropriate. At the end of the day, I’m trying to send a strong message to our student-athletes, first and foremost, about the importance of academics. And I hope the alumni, the fans and the people who support this institution can appreciate the stance that we’re taking.”
That’s questionable. Many in the Bulldog Nation want Johnny to be able to read. It’s just that they’re referring to defenses.
Permalink | Comments (40) | Categories: Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
Saints should bury Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
In what must be pure coincidence, given the timing of this week’s Embalming Bowl between the 1-5 Falcons and the 1-4 Saints, officials from the University of Illinois anthropology department said they are missing several body parts.
Of particular concern is the disappearance of a skull, prompting Steve Leigh, the head of the department, to comment: “It is very difficult to get such materials. If people insist on stealing them, we will run out.”
The Falcons wouldn’t offer any explanation Thursday, but acknowledged they are suddenly bumping up against the salary cap and issued a new quarterback depth chart that reads: Byron Leftwich-Joey Harrington-Abby Normal, according to the team’s chief of scouting, Igor “What Hump?” McKay.
Leftwich will make his first start for the Falcons on Sunday in New Orleans. For his protection, he wasn’t introduced to his offensive line, nor was he granted visitation rights to see Harrington, who has been sacked 21 times in the seven minutes that the Falcons’ offense has actually held the ball this season.
The Saints believe they have finally turned a corner after starting the year with four losses.
I’m not sure what the Falcons believe. But coach Bobby Petrino said Wednesday he is confident Leftwich is the answer. He then said he would meet the team in New Orleans and left to begin looking at property in Baton Rouge.
The Saints are favored by nine points.
Or is that working organs?
The long walk through the graveyard continues. The nine is covered. Falcons drilled.
Keggers
• Army at Georgia Tech: In the past four weeks, Tech has lost to Virginia, beaten Clemson, lost to Maryland and won at Miami. And lineman Darryl Richard said with a straight face: “I think we are definitely becoming more consistent.” All-righty then. Should be an easy win this week. But do “Tech” and “Should” ever intersect? Jackets win. But not by 24.
• Tennessee at Alabama: I’m sure when Alabama gave Nick Saban $4 million a year and a house on one of them newfangled paved roads, the last thing it expected was a three-point escape at Mississippi. On a related note, the replay official who overturned that long Rebels’ pass play last week now goes by “Governor.” Tide wins a pick ‘em.
• Canes and (Un)Ables: Miami-Florida State used to decide national championships. Now it decides who goes to Boise. Next, on ESPN, The Ocho: Noles win. But take the Windbags and 5 1/2.
• Upside Bowl: Kentucky is coming off a win over LSU, which beat Florida, which dumped Tennessee, which lost to Cal, which lost to Oregon State, which lost to Cincinnati, which nobody even realized had a football team, which leads me back to Kentucky. So take that Bear Bryant! Now who’s got the last laugh! Meanwhile, back on earth: Gators cover 6 1/2.
• Auburn at LSU: Auburn’s Josh Thompson said this week of the Baton Rouge experience: “People are mooning you, people are throwing water at you, throwing bottles at you, beating on the buses.” And that’s in the nice restaurants. So what kind of mood do you think they’re in after losing to Kentucky? The 10 1/2 is so covered.
• Vanderbilt at South Carolina: Steve Spurrier was wondering how he could win recruiting battles with Mark Richt. Turns out all he has to do is compare tapes from the Vandy games. Roosters win (but take the Commodores and 13).
NFL Smallpack
• Godzilla at Miami: New England has won games by 24, 24, 31, 21, 17 and 20. Tom Brady has a touchdown-to-interception ratio of 21-to-2, which, I imagine, is slightly better than his ratio in sexual roulette. So how do you feel about giving up 16 1/2 in a road game? Yeah. Thought so. Pats cover.
• Ravens at Bills: Buffalo’s defense is allowing 421.4 yards per game, which ranks behind the Bengals, the Falcons and France. Ravens cover 3.
• Colts at Jaguars: The last time these teams met, Jacksonville ran for 375 yards and won 44-17, which clearly devastated Peyton Manning because the Colts are 11-1 since, including a Super Bowl. Some are projecting upset. Let me know when you figure out why. Indy covers a skinny 3.
TREADING WATER
• Last week: 5-4 straight up; 3-6 against the line.
• (Pro/Re) gress report: 43-29 straight up; 31-37-4 against the line.
• Weekend Predictions Book Club: Buy any three selections and win a copy of “Hawks’ Secrets to Being Atlanta’s Best Sports Hope.” Chapter 1: “Don’t play a game. The end.”
Permalink | Comments (45) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Damage caused by Vick sets team back for years
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Flowery Branch — We’re only beginning to see the scope of the damage. Six games into their first post-Vick season, the Falcons have turned to a quarterback who wasn’t on their (or anybody’s) roster 32 days ago. They’re trying anything and everything, and they’re learning that nothing much works.
The best estimates as to how far Michael Vick set back this franchise start at three years — mercifully, this counts as one — and ratchet upward. This season is gone, and next year shouldn’t be much better. (Even if the Falcons draft Andre’ Woodson or Matt Ryan, could you risk ruining a rookie behind this offensive line?) That gets us to 2009, by which time the team might be ready to give the young quarterback a chance, but how many young quarterbacks effect an immediate upgrade?
And then it’s 2010 and Vick will probably be playing again — for some other team, we should stipulate — and the one he destroyed figures to be in rebuilding mode still. That’s the bill for believing in a man who wasn’t what he seemed. That’s a grim tale, and it doesn’t stand to get any brighter anytime soon.
Byron Leftwich is the new quarterback, tapped to replace the uninspiring Joey Harrington. The best that can be said of Leftwich is that he might be the difference between 2-14 and 4-12. He’s not the long-term answer. (If he were, he’d still be a Jaguar.) He’s just another guy trying to man the position left vacant by Vick, another guy who’ll remind us that, wishful thoughts to the contrary, this franchise really did revolve around the man who’s gone.
The Falcons have won 43 games (counting playoffs) over the last five-plus seasons. Vick was the quarterback in 39 of those. The combined record of non-Vick starting quarterbacks since 2001 is 4-17. You can say he wasn’t a classic passer and you’d be correct, and you can say he wasn’t a good person and you’ll have a signed felony plea to support your claim, but you cannot make the argument that he didn’t offer the Falcons their best shot at winning.
He broke his leg in the 2003 preseason and the Falcons made brave noises about not being a one-man team. Then they went out and disproved the point. (That team finished 5-11, three of the victories coming after Vick returned.) This bunch talked the same talk in camp, but six games have been played and five have been lost and reality has arrived like a falling anvil.
Vick gave the Falcons a fighting chance every week. Without him, they’re hoping against hope. Their quarterbacks have been sacked 22 times in six weeks. How many negative plays might Vick have turned into 15-yard gains? How many drives could he have sustained via singular improvisation? How good would he have been under Bobby Petrino?
Truth to tell, Harrington wasn’t as bad as had been feared. He threw only four interceptions and completed 63.1 percent of his passes. He just couldn’t get his team into the end zone. The plan now is for Leftwich to throw deeper balls. “That’s what he does best,” Petrino said Thursday, and then he offered this chilling caveat: “We have to make sure of our protection. That’s the key to throwing deep.”
This isn’t to say the Leftwich switch is a mistake. When you’re 1-5 and can’t score, there’s no use fighting the obvious. Harrington isn’t a playmaker. Leftwich is more of one, and he’s also a more upbeat personality, which can’t hurt in this season of gloom. “I think the guys know my résumé,” Leftwich said. “I don’t know what it was like before I got here, but there’s a lot of energy in this room.”
We have, alas, heard that before. We’ll hear it again, next year and the next, and with each forlorn hope we’ll come closer to grasping the full depth of this despair. Michael Vick has hurt the Falcons more than one player has hurt any franchise in any sport, and it’s a hurt that will keep on hurting.
Permalink | Comments (149) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Hartley lost team, job last spring
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Bob Hartley’s failure wasn’t a six-game blip. It dated back to last season, which was never all it should have been. Yes, the Thrashers made the playoffs for the first time, but in what was billed as their breakthrough season they won only two more games than they had in 2005-2006, when they were unbelievably unlucky to have been undone by mass injuries to their goalies.
Even with their rolling start last season — they were 12-3-3 on Nov. 8, 2006 — the Thrashers might well have missed the playoffs if not for Don Waddell’s deadline deals for Keith Tkachuk and Alexei Zhitnik. The Thrashers wound up scoring only one more goal than they yielded and actually won one fewer game than second-place Tampa Bay, and that’s how close the breakthrough came to being a total bust.
Hartley is a hard nose. He can be tough on rookies and, according to Waddell, he wasn’t “getting the most … out of our veterans.” (Who’s that leave as his core audience? Second-year men?) Hartley had been here since January 2003. Even with one season lost to the lockout, that remains a long time without much to show for it. (Yes, we can say the same of Waddell, but that’s a separate issue.) And Hartley’s conduct during the brief series against the Rangers seemed awfully panicky for a man who has won a Stanley Cup.
In hindsight, Hartley lost more last spring than a four-game series. He lost his team. When you come off an advertised breakthrough by taking zero points from your first six games and by getting outscored 27-9 to boot, there’s more wrong than a shaky defense pairing. There’s a blatant disconnect between coach and player. Hockey, as we know, is a sport where sheer effort carries disproportionate weight, and you don’t get outscored by an average of three goals by giving maximum effort.
This isn’t to say Waddell has been perfect, or even pretty good. He hasn’t found a first-rate defenseman in nine years of trying, and his prized draftees — Ilya Kovalchuk and Kari Lehtonen — look less special the older they get. But firing the GM would have had no immediate effect on the team itself, and this franchise can’t afford to spend the next 76 games wallowing in self-pity.
For the sake of those 76 games, a change had to be made. That change had to be the coach.
Permalink | Comments (41) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Most hopeless Falcons team I’ve seen
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
I’ve been watching the Falcons play football since the first kickoff — which the kicker fanned, by the way. (That should have told us something.) I’ve seen good Falcons, and I’ve seen bad, and the latter has outnumbered the former by a bunch, and some have laid an egg as big as Stone Mountain.
I remember the day Dave Hampton reached 1,000 yards rushing in a season. Then, danged if he didn’t get thrown for a big loss and finish short of 1,000 yards.
I remember the day Claude Humphrey, kingpin of the “Gritz Blitz,” walked in, said he’d had enough and went home to Memphis in the middle of the season.
I remember when Steve Bartkowski “crashed” two weekends in a row, and Leeman Bennett said, “He’ll never take another snap for me.” And he didn’t. Before the day was out, Bennett found himself sandbagged by the two guys he thought were allies and was fired. “I thought we were in this together,” he said, with a sadness in his voice.
Then there was the time Pat Peppler, the general manager, complained about Marion Campbell so much to Rankin Smith that Rankin said, “If you think you can do any better, you take over,” and handed him the key to the executive toilet. Peppler did, and he didn’t, and he was soon gone.
Norm Van Brocklin and some of his disgruntled Falcons were having such a hassle that one day I suggested to Rankin, “Why don’t you tell the Dutchman you’d like to have a private meeting with the team and maybe you can smooth it over.”
Unfortunately, he took my advice — after a few martinis — and almost set off a locker-room free-for-all.
There have been some good times, like the trip to the Super Bowl, but they even found a way to muck that one up. I refer you to Eugene Robinson here. Then the coach who got them there gets fired, and on it goes.
The regime of Arthur Blank was “swooshing” right along, looking slick as a casino boss. The Falcons had even beaten Green Bay at Lambeau Field. Then they had their capital chance at the big banana two years later but lost to the Eagles in Philadelphia, and it has been downhill ever since.
What I’m getting around to here is, I’ve seen a few good times and a boatload of bad times in the years since the Falcons opened the door for business in 1966. They played nine games before they finally won one. Their drafts were like pitching darts with the lights out. In the early years, one of the younger Smiths had his own personal pick and drafted John Wayne, though it never passed the board. The first year they drafted a sportswriter, who became one only after he’d failed to pass the physical.
Oh, what times they were. The Smiths clung onto their toy longer than the average shelf life under such conditions. With Blank there came fresh hope, and it crested at one time, then hit the chute. However could you have imagined an NFL team being sacked by a quarterback so concerned with fighting dogs that they blocked out his vision of a Super Bowl?
What I’m getting around to is, including all those seasons, all the few high-highs and numerous low-lows, I’ll have to say this is the most hopeless season of the Falcons I can remember. Any game they win the rest of this stretch might come under serious scrutiny. They appear to be headed directly into an imperfect storm. The offensive line can’t block. The defensive backfield can’t break up a pass. The field-goal kicker has heart, but his leg doesn’t know it. The coach has fire in his eyes, but it isn’t spreading. The quarterback, poor fellow, hasn’t been able to get a pass away before the cascade strikes, and if he should, somebody drops it.
This is a disaster developing at a gallop. Is there no way out? Another quarterback is not the answer, unless he’s suicidal. If anybody has a secret answer, it’s time to step forward. But don’t dare be talked into suiting up, unless you have a taste for the ecstasy of defeat.
Permalink | Comments (93) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Furman Bisher
Waddell should be gone instead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Four years ago, Don Waddell sat behind his desk, pointed at the wall separating his office and Bob Hartley’s, and said, “My future’s in that room.”
I’m not sure what changed. But on Wednesday, a coach who has won a Stanley Cup and led a struggling franchise to its only playoff berth and a division title lost his job, while the general manager who has been here for over nine years, seven-plus seasons and no playoff wins is preparing to hire his third coach.
Don Waddell stays.
Bob Hartley goes.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Don Waddell, the general manager who has drafted 28 defensemen but has only two to show for it on the Thrashers’ roster, stays.
Bob Hartley, who has been trying to shuffle semi-comatose bodies in hopes that defective ingredients can somehow be made into a better soup, goes.
Hartley will get another job. But how does Waddell get another chance?
The Thrashers fired the wrong guy.
At the very least, Waddell should’ve stood up Wednesday and declared, “You know what? I really botched this off-season. Maybe Todd White isn’t a No. 1 center. So I resign.”
Instead, he said this: “I think we’re a better team when we started the season this year than we were last year.”
Everybody waited for the punch line.
The Thrashers figured to lose several pieces off of last year’s playoff team, which was swept in four games by the New York Rangers (tonight’s opponent — kismet!) What few imagined was that the Thrashers would come back so thin, with arguably the league’s worst depth chart at center, a thin and erratic group of defensemen, and no playmaker for Ilya Kovalchuk.
Some people have made way too much of a perceived feud between Hartley and Kovalchuk. The fact is, Kovalchuk told Waddell in the off-season that he’s fine with the coach. He just wanted a center. I dunno. Maybe Waddell misunderstood Kovalchuk, and thought Todd White was Russian for Peter Forsberg.
This is what Kovalchuk said Wednesday about Hartley: “He’s a straight-up guy. Whenever there was something wrong, he always said it to my face, and that’s what I like about him. … I just [told him], ‘Thank you.’ He really teach me a lot of good things, and I think he makes me a better player.”
Everybody else in the Thrashers’ locker room should be so stand up. There are two things this team needs: better players and more mirrors, because they just got a good coach and an even better man fired.
Waddell took heat for mortgaging the future with pre-deadline deals last year. He shouldn’t. Those deals got the Thrashers into the playoffs. But blame Waddell for the holes that existed before the trades, and the holes that remained unfilled after the season.
Player development has been dreadful. There is little to show for nine drafts and 82 players. Of the 28 defensemen drafted, the only two here are Garnet Exelby (eighth round, 1999; blind squirrel, meet acorn) and Tobias Enstrom (eighth round, 2003; just got here).
Michael Gearon, one of the owners, talked about the franchise’s incremental progress. But it doesn’t compare to Minnesota and Nashville. Tampa Bay won a Stanley Cup. Carolina, a transplant, was torn apart and built into a Cup team.
Beyond Kovalchuk, what do the Thrashers have to build around? Goalie Kari Lehtonen is talented but seemingly more fragile by the hour. Marian Hossa will be a free agent. (Good luck convincing him to stay.) Everybody else is either 1) young and unproven; 2) old and sliding; 3) just not that good.
But does Waddell regret any of his off-season decisions?
“We’re only six games into the year,” he said. “It’s way too early to start judging whether a player will be a valuable member of your team or not.”
Oh. So why is six games not too early to decide the fate of a coach?
“It’s how we lost games,” Waddell said.
Is Hartley blameless? No. This is the worst start in franchise history. This team obviously has underachieved. Some players didn’t like Hartley. Some probably were worn down by his message. But doesn’t that say something about the players and personalities that Waddell has assembled?
Bobby Holik said he “sensed a problem toward the end of last year. I told that to Don in our after-season meetings. The last third of the season and in the playoffs, we were not getting better.”
When Holik was asked if the problem was Hartley or the players, he said, “I guess the next few weeks will answer that.”
Gearon would not address Waddell’s job security beyond saying, “From our perspective, it’s important we see progress.”
It’s nice that there’s a standard. It would be nicer if everybody were held to it.
Permalink | Comments (154) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Rockies proved ‘93 Braves choked
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Upon further review, I was absolutely right about the Braves’ 1993 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies during the National League Championship Series.
It was a choke.
Remember? That physically challenged (OK, fat) and strikingly inferior Phillies team managed to reach the World Series in six games over a Braves bunch that had won two consecutive pennants and 104 games during that regular season to the 97 games of those Phillies.
To hear the Braves tell it, they just had nothing left for the Phillies, because they was so exhausted from spending the second half of the season chasing the San Francisco Giants in the NL West. As late as early August, the Braves trailed the Giants by nine games, but the Braves spurted to the division title after going 55-19 down the stretch.
Hmmmm.
Been following the Colorado Rockies lately?
The Rockies could do nothing less than win 13 of their last 14 games in September after facing elimination from a postseason berth three times during that stretch. After that, they needed to beat the San Diego Padres in a one-game playoff to make the postseason as a wild card.
The Rockies did. They were so (ahem) exhausted in the aftermath that they swept the Philadelphia Phillies in the division series, and then they swept the Arizona Diamondbacks in the NLCS.
Now the exhausted Rockies are in the World Series after winning 21 of their last 22 games.
So much for that exhaustion theory about the 1993 Braves.
Permalink | Comments (144) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Ideal time for Hawks to take off
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Nature abhors a vacuum, and our pro sports scene is approaching vacuum status. “The Falcons used to be the team with Michael Vick, but he’s gone and they’re struggling,” Josh Smith says. “The Braves haven’t made the playoffs the last two years, and the Thrashers are off to a slow start.”
That leaves Smith’s team, and we’ve been conditioned to laugh hard and long whenever that forlorn franchise is mentioned. We should stop laughing. The Hawks are now our best hope.
Yes, the Hawks.
Yes, really.
The marketplace is wide open, and the Hawks finally seem to have something worth buying. “No question about it,” says Dominique Wilkins, who’s the club’s vice president and who was, 22 years ago, part of a team that rose up and made Atlanta take notice. “This is a prime opportunity for us.”
For the first time this century, a warm little buzz has attached itself to the franchise that has endured a long nuclear winter. The Hawks are seen as having had, miracle of miracles, a very good draft. There’s a growing belief that the process of rebuilding, which has moved at a glacial pace, is nearing its blessed end.
“I do think this is a playoff team, barring injuries,” Wilkins says, and the Hawks, as we know too well, haven’t reached the postseason since 1999. “People say the [NBA] East has improved, and it has, but we’re one of the teams that has gotten better.”
Practice games aren’t usually worth mentioning, but in the current climate — Braves falling short, Thrashers falling flat, Falcons falling apart — it must be noted that the Hawks won their first three exhibitions. Wilkins again: “We like the situation we’re in. This is a different team, a different atmosphere.”
This isn’t to say the masses have embraced the Hawks already or will anytime soon. This, remember, is Atlanta. Stan Kasten, once the president of every local pro team save the Falcons, used to say that Atlantans needed about a year to catch on even after a team starts to win. Indeed, that’s what happened with the 1985-86 Hawks.
They weren’t expected to do anything, but they arrayed three draftees — Spud Webb, John Battle and, yes, Jon Koncak — alongside young players like Wilkins and Doc Rivers and Randy Wittman and Kevin Willis and Cliff Levingston and Antoine Carr, and by New Year’s the Hawks were above .500 and getting stronger. They finished 50-32 and made the playoffs and beat Detroit in Round 1, but attendance didn’t exactly spike. Only three regular-season home games (two against the Celtics, one against the Lakers) sold out. On April 10, 1986, Wilkins scored 57 points before an audience of 9,902 at the 16,000-seat Omni.
But, come 1987 and 1988 and 1989, the Hawks were the biggest game in town. (It helped that the Braves and Falcons were moribund.) “People weren’t quite used to it [at first],” Wilkins says. “But I remember arriving at the airport during that Boston series [in 1988], and there being thousands of people to meet us. People really tripped to us. Atlanta’s always been like that — if you get their respect, they will support you.”
Josh Smith, the burgeoning power forward, is a lifelong Atlantan. He doesn’t recall the 1985-86 season for a basic logistical reason: “I was just coming into this world.” He can, however, sense a difference in the way people are regarding his team. “I go to different malls,” he says, “and it’s like people are waiting for us to explode. … This town is waiting for a team to explode, and I believe we can do it.”
If nothing else, the Hawks have at least ceased being a tired punch line. There’s an air of expectation, as opposed to a cloud of abject dread, ringing the team that has over the past eight seasons finished an aggregate 220 games under .500. Says Smith, smiling: “I’d be happy if everybody is just talking about the Hawks in a positive light.”
Everybody isn’t. Not yet. But a few folks are, and there’s a chance that number will expand over the next six months. There’s a chance the club nobody has been willing to claim will soon be the people’s choice.
Permalink | Comments (54) | Categories: Hawks / NBA, Mark Bradley
Rockies dedicate play to Coobaugh
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
The Colorado Rockies haven’t been playing just for the World Series, but also for Amanda, Joey and Jake. Amanda, Joey and Jake are the family of Mike Coolbaugh. The late Mike Coolbaugh. It was a tragedy that weeks later still gnaws at the insides of any of us who has a love for baseball.
Here was a guy who had clawed his way through the minor leagues, a “family man,” a term so often wasted on some dupes. Mike Coolbaugh had a nightly prayer relationship with Joey and Jake. But baseball hadn’t been good to him. In 17 seasons, only twice had he even had a teasing relationship with a major-league team. Between “a cup of coffee” with the Brewers and the Cardinals, his major-league career consisted of 82 times at bat and two home runs.
Finally, it was over, and he went home to San Antonio in resignation last year. He was preparing himself for a career in business, but his heart wasn’t in it, the story goes. Then one day the phone rang. The Tulsa Drillers, a Rockies farm club, was offering him a job as hitting coach. He would replace Orlando Merced, an old major-leaguer who had taken his leave in mid-season. Mike said nothing to Mandy until the job was his.
“He didn’t want to jinx things,” S.L. Price wrote in Sports Illustrated. “It felt like we were always being jinxed,” Mandy said. If she only had known what was ahead.
Only July 4, Mike reported to the Drillers. Eighteen games later he was standing in the coach’s box at first base in Little Rock, where the Drillers were playing the Travelers.
You and I and thousands of us who have watched baseball being played, pregame practice, infielders aiming throws at first base, batters rapping line drives about the field. And heard some player cry, “Look out!” Then going about what they were doing, never giving thought that serious injury might have been inches away.
One reason Mike answered the Drillers’ call, Joey and Jake, five and three years old, liked going to the ball park and seeing their dad in a baseball uniform. Being in San Antonio and dad in Tulsa, there wasn’t a lot of chances for that, but there were pictures, and they could visit, and that was enough. At least they could have a few swings with him in the backyard when he was home.
It was the ninth inning that day. The Drillers had a runner on first and a 28-year-old utilityman, Tino Sanchez, a left-handed hitter, at bat. Mike was busy, concentrating on the baserunner and his lead. According to reports, Mike told him, “If you’re going from first to third, you’ve got to be sure,” and those were his last words. Sanchez pulled an inside pitch and it traveled like an arrow straight at Mike, struck him behind the left ear, and in the words of an attending doctor, he was dead by the time he hit the ground. It was a freak. An inch either way or the other, the doctor said, and he’d still be alive.
Now, I’ve read that the only other time a baseball player has been killed in a professional game was in 1920, when a pitch from Carl Mays struck Ray Chapman, Cleveland Indians shortstop, in the head and injured him fatally. But I was reminded of a story, when I was a kid, on the front page of the Greensboro Daily News of shortstop Jake Batterton taking a pitch to the skull in a Piedmont League game, and that the pitch killed him. Several years later, in the Georgia-Alabama League, a pitch by Jack Clifton struck a batter named Otis Johnson in the head, killed him and a serious hostility broke out between the neighboring towns of Dothan and Headland.
But this was now and a different time. News travels faster and in graphic form. You see a small line crawl across the bottom of “SportsCenter” one afternoon, and a tragedy such as this strikes at the hearts of people who’d never heard of Mike Coolbaugh. Two small boys and a pregnant mother are thrust into the public eye, and players who never met or saw them respond with admirable generosity. The Rockies opened their hearts as if this was one of their own.
Mike had been one of them, if only for 18 days. Joey and Jake were invited to throw out the first pitch at one of the playoff games. When the Rockies convened, as major-league teams do, to vote on how the postseason money should be split, they included the Coolbaughs in a touching way. They voted Amanda and Joey and Jake Coolbaugh a full share, just like a player. They’ve made the World Series now. I’m pulling for them to go all the way, and if they do, it could amount to about $120,000 for the Coolbaugh family Mike left behind. You have to break out the tissue for a story like that.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Falcons may be better off losing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN:
10: OK. So I realize the Falcons haven’t even gotten to their bye week yet (one more loss). But is it too early to start thinking about draft position? Just asking, because, like, I polled the 20,000 empty seats in the Georgia Dome last night and they voted 19,997 to 3 for a faceplant.
9: The Birdies have 10 games left. None are obvious wins. Most are obvious losses. So two questions: 1) Do you think they’ll win another game? 2) Do you want them to win another game? Every loss turns the team into a bigger punching bag. Every loss also puts the team in a better draft position. In theory, that’s good. Of course, in theory, you don’t draft Jimmy Williams. Or Roddy White, Or Michael Jenkins Or …
8: The problem isn’t just that Michael Vick’s football career may be over. The problem is he’s running out of career options. Leadership seminars: dead. Veterinarian: dead. Rental car agent: dead. Wine bar proprietor: dead.
7: Now Wachovia’s suing Vick for being in default of a $1.3 million loan for his package store and the adjoining “Tasting Room” restaurant in East Point, which I’ve never visited but I hear they’re doing wonderful things with the Moonlight Road chardonnay. Wachovia also claims Vick is overdrawn on two checking accounts for $34,680.85, which doesn’t make a $312 deficit in my checkbook look so bad.
6: Hey Mike, if you’ve got space in the wine cellar, T.I. is looking for a storage facility.
5: The biggest positive about John Schuerholz stepping down as general manager? Tom Glavine now says he’ll pitch for the Braves for $60,000.
4: So what happened to all of those misguided Braves’ fans who believed Leo Mazzone was some guru? He went to Baltimore, which had no pitching, and he got fired after two years, because it still had no pitching. The Orioles’ ERA this year: 5.16, which ranked 29th out of 30 clubs. In 2006, it was 5.35, also 29th out of 30. Now you know why nobody on the Braves, from general manager down to spike-cleaner, wept when he left.
3: Actual news: Bill Belichick’s hoodie sweatshirt is outselling Tom Brady’s jersey. Comment: Who knew? Bill Belichick - fashion plate. Hey, when he’s dumping Bridget Moynahan for Gisele Bundchen, get back to me.
2: Bob Hartley is taking a lot of heat for the Thrashers’ 0-5 start. He deserves some. But if the problems are widespread, as so adeptly pointed out by my pal Craig Custance today, shouldn’t the target be pointed upstairs? Bad soup. Bad ingredients. Bad choices, Don.
1: The Braves missed the playoffs again. The Falcons are 1-5. The Thrashers are 0-5. Your greatest nightmare is here: We’re looking forward to the Hawks’ season.
Permalink | Comments (133) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Falcons’ flaws fully exposed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
There were two objectives for the Falcons in this one. First, with much of the free world watching (at least the portion that gets ESPN), they didn’t want to get embarrassed on Monday Night Football. Second, with a flimsy group of peers in the NFC South, they actually had thoughts of resurrecting themselves from the dead in the division by winning the game.
Let’s just say the Georgia Dome was filled with more boos than bodies after the New York Giants exposed the Falcons as one of the NFL’s most dreadful teams.
Actually, the Falcons exposed themselves.
The receivers dropped six passes, including two by Alge Crumpler, who boldly announced after blasting his rookie NFL head coach last week that he was re-dedicating himself as a team leader. The defense was gashed by so many gigantic plays through the air that you would have thought this Manning named Eli was that other one named Peyton. Speaking of quarterbacks, the Falcons still don’t have one. Among other woes, Joey Harrington contributed to several of the Giants’ four sacks through indecisiveness.
One more thing: That fancy offense that Bobby Petrino was supposed to bring from college to the pros has produced one offensive touchdown in the last 10 quarters. This is the same Petrino who isn’t the people’s choice around the Falcons’ locker room for that and other reasons.
So, courtesy of a mostly self-inflicted beating of 31-10 at the hands of the Giants, Atlanta is 1-5 in the standings and counting.
Now what?
“We’ve said enough. It’s time for us to play, man,” said Crumpler, forcing a chuckle in a locker room that had a death-row feel — you know, right before somebody flips the switch. “Regardless of what’s going on with our feelings, we’ve just gotta cut it loose. It ain’t about one or two people. It’s about us. We spent the whole week trying to cut some of the tension and just trying to be positive. Just playing for each other.”
Some of that worked on the game’s opening drive, with the Falcons suggesting that they actually had a clue of how to control pass-rushing monsters Osi Umenyiora and Michael Strahan. It involved the employment of quick throws. So quick that those monsters didn’t have time to sink their fangs into the Falcons’ backup offensive tackles across the way.
The drive began at the Falcons’ 30-yard line and ended with Morten Andersen’s 47-yard field goal for a 3-0 lead and hope for the home team.
That hope was extended to the Falcons’ defense, with Rod Coleman and John Abraham doing much of the heavy lifting to make the Giants’ first drive quick and forgettable. Well, that was until the Falcons’ Demorrio Williams made it long and memorable by running into the punter. Just like that, Manning kept finding a variety of receivers in wide-open spaces, and that hope kept vanishing along the Giants’ easy path to the end zone.
The Giants used the same scenario on their next possession. And their next one. In fact, they sort of figured out early and often that the Falcons’ secondary had no concept on how to keep the Giants’ big three of Plaxico Burress, Amani Toomer and Jeremy Shockey from catching Manning’s tosses with little resistance.
For the longest time, the Falcons’ biggest hope was represented by Jerious Norwood, owner of dramatically frantic legs that aren’t used frequently enough. Every game, there is talk from the Falcons’ coaching staff about using Norwood more. Every game, it only happens in spurts. None of those spurts was more impressive than when Norwood kept changing gears in the first quarter on his 67-yard sprint for a touchdown.
You’d have thought the Falcons would have featured the Norwood Offense after that.
You’d have thought.
Then again, you’d also have thought the Falcons would have been inspired in the third quarter on DeAngelo Hall’s interception return of 33 yards. Moments later, with Harrington scrambling to keep his limbs in tact, and with another receiver dropping a pass, and with the crowd hissing, the Falcons were punting. That was the only thing they perfected for the night.
Well, that and the art of looking absolutely dysfunctional.
Permalink | Comments (213) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Brooking consistent through ups and downs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
You’re Keith Brooking, and you’re as proud as they come as an NFL player. Despite a season or three to the contrary, your team is evolving into The Great Pumpkin again before Halloween, and you’ve seen this horror movie throughout your decade with the Falcons.
Seriously, now. How in the name of Jessie Tuggle do you keep from screaming? And do you ever think of peeking between your fingers to see as little of these Falcons nightmares in progress as possible?
“Man, I’ve been through a lot in this game,” said Brooking, telling the truth with wide eyes at his Flowery Branch locker. He’ll take his middle linebacker spot tonight at the Georgia Dome with another 1-4 team sprinting toward oblivion. Large factions of the locker room dislike the rookie NFL head coach. The old starting quarterback is heading to prison for dogfighting, the new one has a career record as a starter in the league of 24-47, and the backup is strikingly underwhelming.
If that isn’t enough, the offensive line is dreadful and injured, which means the pass-rushing goblins of the New York Giants are on the verge of embarrassing the home team on Monday Night Football.
Guess what, though? As was the case during those other seasons of woe for the Falcons, Brooking has remained Brooking. This time, he is prospering after a slow start. He also isn’t the best linebacker on the team anymore, but only because the streaking Michael Boley is flirting with becoming the best linebacker in the league. Still, Brooking is operating in the vicinity of that Georgia Tech standout via East Coweta High who led the Falcons in tackles for six straight years and ended last season just shy of the Pro Bowl for a sixth consecutive time.
The point is, since Brooking is continuing his habit of not giving up no matter what, his teammates should spend the rest of the season following his example.
No matter what.
“The one thing that I know, and that I have strong convictions about, and that I believe with all of my heart, is that your mind-set, your beliefs and your work ethic never changes,” said Brooking, unintentionally doing a Tuggle imitation, both vocally and physically. Just like Brooking, Tuggle was a perennial all-everything linebacker who played for a bunch of lousy Atlanta teams before retiring after the 2000 season. And, just like Brooking, Tuggle always discovered ways to speak of his overall NFL despair without throwing his teammates under the Falcons’ downward-chugging train.
Added Brooking, “I’ve just had so many scenarios take place throughout the course of my career with the Falcons. Injuries. [Significant] guys going down. Three-, four-, five-game losing streaks. But I’ve also had a lot of success here.”
Well, not a lot, but we understand Brooking’s point. He spent his rookie season with the Falcons in 1998 when they made their only trip to the Super Bowl. It’s just that the following season, bruising runner Jamal Anderson was lost for the year after he damaged his knee during the second game, and the Falcons dropped to 5-11 when they lost six of their opening seven games.
In 2002, the Falcons managed their Miracle at Green Bay, where they became the first team to beat the Packers at Lambeau Field in the playoffs. It’s just that Michael Vick broke one of his miracle legs during an exhibition game that following season to trigger another 5-11 finish for the Falcons.
Then, in 2004, the Falcons reached the NFC championship game, but they’ve fluctuated between mediocre and awful ever since.
Brooking sighed. Not out of indifference over his plight with a franchise that never has had back-to-back winning seasons, but out of frustration. “I mean, you face it, and you approach it with the same mentality,” Brooking said. “The old cliché is that you not only have to know how to deal with failure and disappointment, but you also have to know how to deal with success, and you do it the same way. You do it with consistency.”
The Falcons are into consistency, but only when it comes to resembling a mess more often than not.
Permalink | Comments (65) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Not a win as much as an escape
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Nashville - There is an upside to mediocrity.
When Southern Cal, Oklahoma and LSU get dropped by perennial conference punching bags, and Michigan falls to an obscurity down from the mountains, people gasp.
When Georgia struggles with Vanderbilt, it’s barely worth a double take anymore.
If you still wondered what this team is and what this season has become, it was on display Saturday. The Bulldogs won. They defeated Vanderbilt. By a field goal. As time ran out.
Traditionalists will cover their eyes. But a football team that has been dropping parts on the highway celebrated like it had just qualified for the BCS title game.
After Brandon Coutu kicked a 37-yard field goal to secure a 20-17 win, several Georgia players ran to the middle of the field and jumped up and down on the star and “V” in the middle of the field.
If this was any other SEC campus, home fans might have taken it as a sign of disrespect. But, like, it’s still Vanderbilt.
“We didn’t mean it as disrespect,” said safety Kelin Johnson. “People don’t know what we go through with our coaches, our fans and at home. And we got crushed last week. We’re just excited to win.”
That happens after you get waxed 35-14 in Tennessee. That happens when you drop to 2-2 in the conference, and extend an illogical SEC East losing streak to six games. How close they came to losing again Saturday. How close they came to losing in consecutive seasons to Vanderbilt - for the first time since the ’50s.
We keep being told how young this team is. The problem is it looks younger every week. How young will they be by Florida week?
The Dogs led 7-0 early and then fizzled. Vanderbilt scored the next 17 points. The Dogs scrambled in the second half to tie it. But Vandy was seemingly driving to the winning score in the final minutes, until running back Cassen Jackson-Garrison fumbled at the Georgia 7 with 2:43 left. The Bulldogs then drove 73 yards in 10 plays before Coutu’s game-winning kick.
It wasn’t a win. It was an escape. But Georgia doesn’t have the luxury of grading wins any more. It just counts them.
“We got a little bit embarrassed last week,” quarterback Matthew Stafford said. “This time we found a way to win. We’re not going to be perfect every week. That’s the way it’s going to be this year.”
Georgia dropped hints at the outset that this would be easy. It drove the ball effectively on its first two possessions. The first drive resulted in a missed field goal (Coutu hitting the left upright on a 49-yard attempt). The second resulted in a touchdown, a 32-yard pass from Stafford to Sean Bailey, two plays after a Vanderbilt fumble. It was only 7-0. It seemed like more.
Then again, after Georgia’s win over Alabama it seemed this team had turned the corner, not preparing to walk into a lamp post.
Vanderbilt scored three times (two touchdowns and a field goal) on its next four possessions. The last two plays of the Commodores’ first TD drive were a 39-yard run on an end-around and a 15-yard run on a reverse. Both plays have been around for decades, but Georgia’s defense reacted like Vandy was practicing nuclear physics.
Georgia’s offense, meanwhile, went nappy time. The Dogs failed to score on their next four possessions in the first half and went three-and-out twice. After completing five of his first eight attempts for 98 yards and a touchdown, Stafford went 4-for-13 for 32 yards.
Imagine that: The Dogs were being punked by the Commodores’ defense.
But they awoke just enough to pull even. Down 17-7, they drove to a touchdown on their first possession of the second half, and Coutu kicked a 31-yard field goal with 6:12 left to tie it.
“Everybody thinks, ‘Oh, it’s Vanderbilt. They’re an easy win.’ But there’s no such thing as an easy game any more. Vanderbilt’s a good team.”
That might be true. But when a team makes every opponent look good, it says something. And when a last-second win over Vanderbilt causes a midfield dance, it really says something.
Permalink | Comments (190) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, UGA / SEC
Tech must be Pro-Choice to win
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Miami — Winning didn’t lift Georgia Tech back among the nation’s elite, not that it has been there lately for long. What winning did was keep Tech from falling below .500 after seven games for the first time under this coach. What winning did was buy Chan Gailey time to right what has gone wrong with his latest curious team.
A loss here and the Jackets would have been 3-4, and their run of bowl appearances — since they can’t brag about beating Georgia or winning the ACC, the postseason streak has become their chief calling card — would have been in real jeopardy. A loss here and Gailey, never the people’s choice, would have begun to feel the big heat. A loss here …
Enough. Tech didn’t lose. It looked flimsy for a half and formidable when it mattered. It stopped outsmarting itself, and that was enough to beat an indifferent Miami team and maybe rescue what has been an indifferent season.
“I was thinking about all of that,” said linebacker Philip Wheeler, meaning the game at hand and its possible ramifications. And then: “There was nothing we could do about [losing at Maryland last week] until we played the next game. This was a big steppingstone.”
Perhaps it was. With Tech, it’s tough to know anything for sure. But this much was clear Saturday: The Jackets are good only when Tashard Choice gets the ball, and in this second half he got it 24 times.
The first half was one of those head-smackers. The Jackets had thrown 21 passes and had run the ball 17 times. The rationale for this incongruity was that Miami had the ACC’s second-worst pass-efficiency defense, but the reality was that the Jackets, who own the league’s second-worst passing offense, were staring at a 7-0 deficit because they’d played to their weakness.
“No question, sometimes you [overanalyze],” said John Bond, the offensive coordinator. “You think about what should look good and what could look good, but with the game on the line you’d better do what you do best.”
Just in time, Tech wised up. Choice, who’d rushed 13 times in the first half, carried on the first two snaps of the third quarter. And then, on the fourth, he ducked into the line and ducked out, and 54 yards later the game and maybe a season had turned.
“When it works, it works,” quarterback Taylor Bennett said. “If we can run the ball, run the ball. There’s no reason to pass if you can run.”
Tech hasn’t been the team it was supposed to be because it lacks the playmakers it was thought to have. It does, however, have a running back of surpassing skill. There’s no reason to get clever when Option A is a new Mercedes and Option B a rusted-out Pinto. Just run the doggone ball. Run it until somebody stops you. Run it even if they do.
Gailey said he whispered nothing in Bond’s ear at halftime: “They [his offensive coaches] saw what needed to be done.” If those coaches have a lick of collective sense, what was done in this second half is what should be done every half of every week.
Tech isn’t going to beat anyone of consequence on Bennett’s arm. Only Choice, who finished with 204 yards on 37 rushes, affords such a chance. There’s no reason the Jackets can’t gather themselves and win four or five more games and buy a trip to a better postseason game than the two that scouted this one — reps of the Emerald and Champs Sports bowls were on hand — if they remember how they beat Miami.
“Every week [the games] get bigger,” said Gailey, who was unusually festive afterward. (Feeling a reprieve, was he?) “The farther you go, the bigger they get.”
By winning here, the Jackets have given themselves a chance to play big games down the road. By winning here, this team has set the template for all its tomorrows. Can the frilly stuff. Be pro-Choice.
Permalink | Comments (47) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Schuerholz is far from done
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Frankly (no play on words here), I don’t see what all the fuss is about. So Frank Wren has the same office with a new title on the door. So Terry McGuirk donates one of his titles to John Schuerholz. Schuerholz then becomes the president the Braves haven’t had since Stan Kasten was here. Instead of transferring, Schuerholz gains power, and instead of the end of an era, it’s the beginning of another one with a four-year contract.
How’s that for putting a spin on non-retirement?
This is known in the business world as a game of musical chairs. In the long run, nothing changes. Frank Wren continues doing what he has been doing, only now he doesn’t have to check with Schuerholz first. Or so it would seem.
Schuerholz has been saddled with a two-horse title all these years, executive vice president and general manager. Put all the titles you want to on a guy, it doesn’t change his daily chores. What he will now be doing that he hasn’t been doing, none of us knows. Nobody seems to know. Just so long as it doesn’t inflict any discomfort on Bobby Cox, that’s mainly what concerns most of us.
Terry McGuirk says that Wren will continue to report to Schuerholz. He says Schuerholz will continue to be his “right-hand man” in all aspects of the baseball business. So, anything new there? Then why all the big, black headlines on page one, as if the world has tilted another quarter-inch? Schuerholz isn’t leaving the building, and more important, Cox remains the solid face of the Braves.
So there is no ending of an era. Eras end when some executive announces that he’s checking out “to spend more time with his family,” or travel the world, or something that hasn’t occurred to him yet. There is nothing more restless than an executive with time on his hands. There is no retirement on Schuerholz’s agenda. He only moves into a position of added power. He expects to be consulted. Don’t all presidents? He expects to be in a power situation. What we all would like to have seen these past 17 years is a few more World Series pennants to go with all those division pennants.
You don’t give Schuerholz all the credit for the cast of players the Braves have put on the field; you give him credit for hiring the guys who mined the playing ore the Braves have given Cox to manage. The scouts who found Jeff Francoeur, who found Brian McCann; the guy who turned Greg McMichael from “non-roster invitee” into one of the Braves’ best relief pitchers; the guy who made the perilous trade of Doyle Alexander for John Smoltz, and others long since woven into the historical fabric of this team. Most of all, don’t ever, ever lose track of what Paul Snyder has meant to this organization.
And by no means, don’t let those guys who gave us Albie Lopez and Russ Ortiz and Dan Kolb and Bob Wickman and a cast of losers off the hook. That doesn’t look good on any man’s dossier.
As it stands, seems that little has changed in the makeup of the Braves. A few titles have been shifted or re-created, the ownership is the same — and when do we begin to feel the presence of Liberty Media, and in what manner? — and are we to expect a surge of prosperity with all this inner-office activity? That’s what fans are looking for. Titles don’t impress the ticket-holder. Standings do. These autumns are mighty dreary sitting outside the action, while out in the wild, wild West they’re having all the fun. Think it over.
Permalink | Comments (32) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Tomlin’s OK for NFL, but …
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Given the report card released this week by the Black Coaches Association — including the “F” assigned to the arrogant bosses at Georgia Southern for the second consecutive year, universities are continuing their hiring process from the 19th century when it comes to football coaches.
Sorry if you’re into optimism, but most of these universities aren’t likely to reach at least the 20th century in this regard anytime soon.
Not that they care.
Georgia Southern athletics director Sam Baker told the AJC this week that his university refused to cooperate with the BCA, because the letter the organization sent asking his university to describe its search process for a new football coach was “pretty threatening.”
To quote some of that “pretty threatening” letter: “We hope Georgia Southern University will be committed to reflecting diversity and inclusion.” And, “We trust this letter will open a direct line of communication for further dialogue relevant to serious candidates.” And, “We offer the capability to advertise this or any athletic-related opening via the BCA Web site.” And, “We appreciate and respect your commitment to diversity and inclusion in intercollegiate athletics.”
Threatening? Yeah, just like this is encouraging: Only seven of the 119 coaches at the Division I-A level are African-Americans. Worse, the BCA spent last year giving the name of an African-American candidate to three universities that would have been a perfect fit. Just one of those universities bothered to contact that African-American candidate who wasn’t hired, of course.
Well, not by a university. That African-American candidate eventually became only the third head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers since 1969. His name is Mike Tomlin, a charismatic 35-year-old with a decade worth of success at the college and pro level, and whose Steelers are surging at 4-1.
Yet Tomlin wasn’t good enough for a university.
Any university.
When it comes to this historically blatant exclusion of African-Americans from college football jobs, there are several schools of thought. You have mine, and then you have a popular thought represented by Paul Hewitt, the deep-thinking Georgia Tech basketball coach who also is the BCA president.
Here’s my thought: Power. It’s about a slew of non-minorities refusing to relinquish any of the power they’ve had forever. In their minds, they might lose all of that power forever. Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, the late NFL analyst, spoke for many two decades ago, while giving his reason for the lack of African-Americans as coaches and decision-makers in sports. “There’s not going to be anything left for the white people,” Snyder said. “I mean, the players are all black.”
As for one of Hewitt’s explanations for it all, fear.
“It’s the fear of the unknown,” Hewitt said. “There are people in different areas of the country, for whatever reason, who don’t think that a black man can do the job. If they sat down and talked to them, they might say, ‘You know what? We might have something here.’ “
Exhibit A: Hewitt, beginning his eighth season with the Yellow Jackets after former Tech athletics director Dave Braine took a chance on some guy from someplace called Siena College. There have been five postseason trips for Hewitt’s Jackets, including a spot in the championship game of the Final Four.
In fact, heading into this season, the 326 basketball teams at the NCAA Division I level have an all-time high of 76 African-American coaches. Not long ago, college basketball was as woeful regarding African-American coaches as college football.
What happened? “You know, he doesn’t like to hear this, but it’s John Thompson,” said Hewitt, referring to the former Georgetown icon, whose Hoyas came just a sloppy pass away from a national championship over North Carolina in 1982. “I think athletics directors and schools saw that, with John making the Final Four, and by giving black coaches a chance, schools could start bringing in talent, and you have to have talent to win. You can draw a timeline from back then to today.”
So maybe there is room for optimism here. Then again, maybe all of those universities just lost Tomlin’s resume.
Permalink | | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Tech / ACC, Terence Moore
Schuerholz conducts an epic run of excellence
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
John Schuerholz is easier to admire than to like. He’s not exactly a walking testimonial for humility. He uses grandiloquent phrases that no man should employ in public. (On Thursday he actually said, “I can’t wait to help make this grand organization more grand.”) He’s the kind of guy you’d like to see fail just because it’d be funny.
But John Schuerholz didn’t fail. In 17 years as the Atlanta Braves’ general manager, John Schuerholz succeeded beyond all rational expectation, beyond even his wildest flights of self-assurance. The epic run of excellence would never have begun had Schuerholz not arrived from Kansas City and whipped this bumbling operation into shape.
It’s a lost footnote in this city’s sports history, but the 1991 Braves — a team coming off another last-place finish, a team that hadn’t broken .500 since 1983 — sold out their home opener. (With typical Braves’ luck, it was postponed due to rain.) The sellout didn’t happen because the Braves added a marquee player. It happened because the populace responded to a series of print ads featuring the new GM in his soon-to-be-famous suspenders, the subtext being: Amateur hour is over.
As if on cue, the team overseen by the pro’s pro soared from worst to first. It won its division that year and every year until 2005. You can argue that the young pitching assembled by Bobby Cox would eventually have found its way to the top, but it’s just as likely that without Schuerholz’s deft hires that first offseason — Terry Pendleton, Sid Bream, Rafael Belliard — that young pitching would have buckled under the weight or more and more losing.
“It was an almost instantaneous road-to-Damascus conversion,” said Terry McGuirk, who was here when Stan Kasten hired Schuerholz and is here still. “John made rapid-fire decisions: ‘You’ve got left-handed pitching, so you’re going to need somebody to catch the ball on the left side of the infield,’ and we signed Pendleton and Belliard. He said, ‘The field needs to be better,’ and [groundskeeper] Ed Mangan came here. It was staccato decision-making.”
Not all of Schuerholz’s choices came up trumps — Albie Lopez, anyone? — but his strike rate over the fullness of time was ridiculously high. “I’ve done what I’ve done most of my adult life,” he said Thursday. And then, being John Schuerholz, he couldn’t resist adding: “Sometimes well.”
The Braves took great glee in noting that early-in-the-day reports of Schuerholz’s retirement were not just premature but incorrect. He’ll stay with the team. He’ll be the president. Asked repeatedly what being president will entail, nobody could say for sure. “Terry and I will continue to flesh it out,” Schuerholz said. “I will be Terry’s No. 1 man.”
Schuerholz’s presidential term runs through 2011, which sounds sort of like a guy getting a golden parachute while still getting to pilot the company jet. If that’s indeed the case, you wonder how this move strengthens the Braves.
Frank Wren, lately the heir apparent and now the full-fledged GM, has sat at Schuerholz’s right hand for eight years and what McGuirk called “2,000 lunches.” (A thousand of those were surely taken at Goldberg’s, Schuerholz’s favorite spot.) Wren averred that he and his mentor “are amazingly alike in a lot of ways,” but they differ in this significant regard: Schuerholz built an empire; Wren arrived later and helped sustain one.
Said Schuerholz, by way of a semi-valedictory address: “To know where the organization was when I came on board and to see not just the commissioner but others in the industry call us the gold standard … I couldn’t be more proud.”
In Schuerholz’s case, pride didn’t goeth before a fall. The Braves finally stopped finishing first, but they rebuilt so seamlessly — a favorite Schuerholz word — and delayed the inevitable for so long that you began to wonder if not finishing first was inevitable after all. Yes, Cox deserves equal credit for the maintenance of the record streak, but Schuerholz was its architect.
And with the architect no longer doing his blueprints, the Braves stand diminished. Frank Wren might be the second-best baseball man alive, but the absolute best just moved upstairs. That’s the Braves’ loss, and it’s also ours.
Permalink | Comments (52) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Don’t bet on Falcons, long Harrington tenure
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
You had to know the Falcons would have some really big announcement this week because they were preparing for Monday Night Football, which is their first appearance on national television this year, unless you count Michael Vick’s plea deal, though most don’t relate the two because, like, it was hard to get a seat for Michael Vick’s plea deal and this one you can pretty much walk in off the street. Get there early and you can play quarterback. Stay late and maybe ESPN will have another Town Hall Meeting. (No! My eyes, my eyes!)
Bobby Petrino (still an Atlanta resident!) named Joey Harrington the starter for the big game against the New York Giants, saying Harrington “gives us our best chance to succeed.”
This affords Harrington job security for somewhere between one possession and four quarters, depending on his success rate and/or how long Petrino wants to look bad (generally has an over/under of seven seconds).
And then? Any takers?
Byron Leftwich: “I’m ready! I had 12 snaps this week! My arm feels great! Watch … uh … fore!!!”
Chris Redman: “Can I interest you in a homeowner’s policy? Maybe life? We’re doing some great things with …”
Chris Chandler: “Do you have an HMO? Last week I fell and …”
Bobby Hebert: “Broke a nail?”
Chris Chandler: “Diane!”
Michael Vick: “Are you still here?”
Arthur Blank: “Are you still here?”
Vick: “Hey, Mr. Owner man! Sorry, left my checkbook in my car.”
Blank: “Actually, Michael, that would be my car.”
Harrington: “Alge? Marco? Polo?”
The Falcons are 9-19 (.321) all-time on Monday nights. Also, they just lost two offensive linemen. Also, there’s everything else.
Feeling comfy? Don’t worry. It’s only cable.
Giants cover 3 1/2.
Old school
(Early Fall Blowout: Buy three and get a copy of Marion Jones’ autobiography, “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, You’re lying, I’ll sue, Character Assassin! OK, I did it. Forgive me? Kiss Kiss.”)
Honey Bees: Two years ago, after a week of brush fires, Tech and Chan Gailey upset then No. 3 Miami in the Orange Bowl. The gloating lasted about 12 seconds (a Tech record). Then came losses to Georgia and Utah. Now the Yeller Jackets are 1-3 since a 2-0 start. Tech logic says upset. But I’ve been burned too often by schizos. If I go down, I go down with dignity. Canes cover 2 1/2.
Trembling Chihuahuas: Was that Willie Martinez I saw after the game last week in Knoxville? Because all I saw was a guy looking catatonic in a folding chair, and I’m sure I heard somebody say, “Go to the light, Willie.” This week, it’s Vanderbilt. A sure thing. Hah! Even Vandy’s not candy anymore. But Georgia covers 7.
LSU at Kentucky: Rich Brooks missed his window at 5-0 to ask for another extension. The only question now is what’s left after consecutive games against South Carolina (loss), LSU and Florida. Organ-donor cards to the first 10,000 at the Mississippi State game. Tigers cover 9 1/2.
Auburn at Arkansas: Arkansas is 3-2, which isn’t so bad until you consider the wins are over Troy, North Texas and UT Chattanooga, which doesn’t bode well for Florida International in two weeks, which means what in real life exactly? Take Auburn in a straight upset (and the gift 3).
Alabama at Mississippi: Nick Saban said this week, “We won’t win any games this year [just] because we’re Alabama.” Isn’t that a fireable offense? Tide covers 6 1/2.
A Meat And Two
Game of the Week: New England and Dallas are both 5-0. Take a picture because it’s the only time they’ll ever have something in common. Best news out of Dallas this week was Terrell Owens leaving a note on his locker, reading: “Due to the magnitude of this week’s game and high volume of questions for the Original 81 about the other 81 [Randy Moss], I will be taking all questions immediately following Sunday’s game.” Problem is, everybody will be by the other 81’s locker. Pats cover 41/2.
Carolina at Arizona: The Panthers just signed Vinny Testaverde. There’s now an opening on the Sunshine Boys team for shuffleboard Saturday. Interested parties should contact Hugh McElhenny, at least until the Panthers need a running back. Cards cover 4.
New Orleans at Seattle: The NCAA has stepped up its investigation into whether Reggie Bush received $280,000 in benefits at USC. I maintain hope that he’ll be forced to reimburse those of us who took him in a Fantasy League draft. Seahawks cover 6 1/2.
ALMOST PERFECT
(work with me)
Last week: 6-5 straight up, 5-6 against the line.
Season totals: Not so hot, not so living.
Specifics: 38-25 straight up, 28-31-4 against the line.
I feel it turning: Or is that the wings I just ate?
Permalink | Comments (46) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Define ‘young’ for us, Alge
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Alge Crumpler is a really good player but a really bad analyst. His claim that Bobby Petrino cares more about developing younger players than winning was silly on its face and ludicrous on further review. First of all, what NFL coach ever puts winning second to anything? (Quoth Petrino, when asked five weeks ago if the Falcons’ many woes indeed gave him a pass on this season: “If you don’t win, you might not be here next year.”) Even more to the point …
Exactly what young players did Crumpler mean?
The Falcons’ leading rusher is Warrick Dunn, who’s 32. The leading receiver is Roddy White, who’s in his third season and who had darn well better be showing something by now. (The second-leading receiver is, ahem, Alge Crumpler. And Joe Horn, who’s 35 and who has nothing left, is still listed as a starter.)
The team’s leading scorer is Morten Andersen, who’s older than Petrino. The starting quarterback is Joey Harrington, who’s 28. The backup quarterback is Byron Leftwich, who’s 27. If not those two, who would be old enough to satisfy Crumpler — Y.A. Tittle?
Until Renardo Foster was promoted after Wayne Gandy was lost and Trey Lewis stepped in after both Rod Coleman and Jonathan Babineaux were hurt, the Falcons had precisely two rookie starters — Jamaal Anderson on defense and Justin Blalock on offense. Given that they were the team’s top picks in the April draft and also the two players gained via the Matt Schaub trade, you’d hope they’d be capable of playing right away. But two rookie linemen, or even three or four, wouldn’t seem to constitute a youth movement, would it?
(Heck, my biggest problem with Petrino is that Dunn has more than twice as many carries as Jerious Norwood, who’s 24.)
Is it possible Crumpler is miffed because he hasn’t caught as many deep balls this season, thereby damaging his Pro Bowl campaign, and that rookie tight end Martrez Milner had the audacity to catch as many passes (two) as Crumpler did against the Titans? And if that was indeed his gripe, why should we take this criticism any more seriously than we did Keyshawn Johnson’s just-give-met-the-damn-ball rants? Should Petrino be pilloried for not designing his offense around a tight end with a bad knee?
The wonder isn’t that the Falcons have won only once. The wonder is that they’ve had a realistic chance to win in the fourth quarter every week with a team that hasn’t had its best offensive player (Michael Vick) and its best defensive player (Coleman) for a snap. Crump the Grump mightn’t be able to see it, but there’s some real coaching going on. (And the offense Crumpler found so lacking in conceptual nuance had, if you’ll recall, looked rather spiffy against Carolina and Houston.)
The Carolina game was lost largely because DeAngelo Hall put himself ahead of the common good, and now Crumpler’s bizarre comments have made a bad situation worse. He told the AJC on Wednesday he regretted saying what he said, but that admission came three days too late.
His name’s Alge, but he came across as All-Me.
Permalink | Comments (105) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
Petrino can win players with W’s
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Flowery Branch — Despite many around the locker room wishing to choke Bobby Petrino rather than hug him, maybe all isn’t lost for the Falcons this year.
OK, my bad. It’s just that the NFC South is evolving into the NFC Sorry, and then you have this other matter to consider: During the 87 years of the National Football League, it’s never been about whether or not you like your head coach.
Paul Brown wasn’t warm and cuddly. Norm Van Brocklin scorched more than a few egos with his sizzling tongue. Then you had Henry Jordan’s quote for the ages about Vince Lombardi: “He treats us all the same — like dogs.”
From Bill Walsh and his self-projected aura of superiority to the grumpy Bill Parcells to however you describe Tom Coughlin, not exactly a Mister Rogers clone, it has been more about whether you respect your NFL head coach. Whether enough Falcons players respect Petrino is the question. Nobody knows the answer, and that’s the problem for a 1-4 team searching to solve a slew of issues before the New York Giants come to town on Monday night.
For instance: The Falcons’ offensive line already was significantly flawed, but due to injuries, they’ll face the Giants’ monster defensive ends of Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora with two undrafted tackles. The Falcons also have no running game, and they barely have a kicking game. Plus, they have Michael Vick and his dogfighting mess to blame for an underwhelming quarterback situation that only gets worse.
This Petrino thing is the most potentially damaging thing for the Falcons, though. Such was the case before and after their 20-13 disaster on Sunday in Nashville against the Tennessee Titans. In fact, nothing changed on the Petrino love/hate/indifferent meter on Wednesday after a survey of the Falcons’ locker room. This was despite the fact that Petrino’s detractors and shruggers had time to adjust their opinions after a two-day break from practice.
“I mean, [Petrino] hasn’t given me no reason not to like him,” said Falcons defensive tackle Grady Jackson, choosing to ignore Petrino leaving his impressive stint at the University of Louisville after last season for an ugly start with the Falcons that has featured baffling coaching decisions and sniping from veterans.
Jackson isn’t among them, by the way. Added Jackson, in his 11th NFL season overall and second with the Falcons, “Me and him haven’t talked much, but we’ve talked sometime. Hate is nowhere around, and it’s just that he’s like [Steve] Spurrier and all them guys from college. They just got to get adjusted to it.”
That’s the problem. Such adjustments for college guys turned pros often don’t come before they are shoved out the NFL door, or they vanish on their own.
Sounds like a lot of Falcons players are going to have to hold their noses and do the adjusting to Petrino if they wish to salvage this season.
After all, NFL players often have done so before.
“A lot of times, I don’t think it’s a matter of players disliking a coach. It’s just change. You don’t care for changing,” said Falcons defensive end John Abraham, in his eighth NFL season, who joined the New York Jets in 2000 after the forgettable Al Groh replaced Parcells.
Then Abraham watched Herm Edwards follow Groh. Even during Abraham’s two seasons with the Falcons, he has gone from players-friendly Jim Mora to no-nonsense Petrino. “I think it’s just that when you’re not winning, you tend to find things you don’t like, and it happens everywhere around the league,” Abraham said. “If we were winning, and if everything went right like it should have in so many games, you wouldn’t have anybody saying anything about these things.”
The Falcons aren’t winning, and everything isn’t going right, and folks are saying these things, and Petrino isn’t showing signs of becoming Lombardi anytime soon.
Permalink | Comments (56) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Don’t cry for Joe Torre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Since Joe Torre is nearly going, going, gone after 12 years as manager of the New York Yankees, it’s time for some perspective. No question, he is the 21st century version of Miller Huggins, Joseph McCarthy and Casey Stengel, but that’s about it.
Simply put, Torre ranks among the greatest managers ever for the Yankees, but he doesn’t rank among the greatest managers ever, period.
Not even close.
Remember his stint in Atlanta?
Torre was an underachiever with the the Braves of Dale Murphy and Bob Horner. There was that needless roller-coaster ride to a division title in 1982 during Torre’s first season with the team. Then his Braves couldn’t close the deal the following year, and then they began their steady and lengthy slide toward mediocrity the year after that.
As Ted Turner later admitted, he never should have fired Torre’s predecessor.
Some guy named Bobby Cox.
Anyway, Torre wasn’t exactly a celebrated manager before he arrived with the Braves (the New York Mets), and the same goes for after he left (the St. Louis Cardinals). Then as soon as he took over the loaded Yankees in 1996, they won the world championship - well, with much help from Jim Leyritz and the Braves providing the greatest choke in the history of the World Series.
Torre grabbed three more world championships after that with the Yankees by ignoring the George Steinbrenner rants and allowing his overwhelmingly talented bunch to do their thing unmolested.
Which means Torre was the right man with the right team at the right time.
That’s all.
Permalink | Comments (103) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Torre and boss get time to dine
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Joe Torre was the perfect fit for the Yankees. They’d never been managed by one of their own, a native of New York City, before. Players’ manager. Every guy loved him. None of that Billy Martin rancor in his clubhouse. Joe got the rowdyism out of his system when he was young. In Atlanta, matter of fact, the Braves used to keep a ready fund on hand at the police station to cover his action.
No matter he’d been fired three times before. The Mets, right there in Flushing, first, then the Braves, then the Cardinals. Three strikes and most managers are out, but not so fast for Joe. He was feeling sort of out of it when I ran into him once in Toronto. He was traveling with the Angels, working in the broadcast booth. He was in his sixth season, and the phone hadn’t rung. Then one day George Steinbrenner called. After a string that included a Bucky, Buck and Stump, he wanted a manager with a name and social graces that looked right in pinstripes — and knew how to order in an upscale restaurant.
That was one of the things that got Torre in the soup with Ted Turner. Joe was a winner, one division championship, then two seasons in second place, which shouldn’t get a manager fired, but did. Ted thought he was spending too much on the phone lining up postgame dining.
No trouble in New York. Joe Torre was born there, knew how to move with the elegant, and knew how to win there. He was, then, the perfect fit, except for one thing: He was giving Steinbrenner too much free time in October. Made it to the playoffs the past three seasons, but the buck stopped there. I grant you, the Yankees team he has been fielding has such un-Yankee names: Mientkiewicz, Henn, Karstens, Hughes, Chamberlain, even one of the many Cabreras, a Taiwanese pitcher and a Japanese outfielder. Not only that, but in the closing days they had Wilson Betemit, the vagabond Braves infielder, playing first base. There’s just something mighty un-Yankee about that cast.
But they were still Yankees, One of those sports publications published staff predictions last week, and not only did most pick the Yankees to win the pennant, but half of them picked them to win the World Series. So did Steinbrenner, and a story got out that if they didn’t, Joe Torre would be looking for work. Sounds like George. He’d had all the free October time that he could stomach. It occurred to me, though, that the trouble might not be with Joe, but with Brian Cashman. Cashman has been a Yankees employee since he was 19 years old. Started off a “mail room” guy, as they say, and rose to the “board room.”
He has been general manager as of 1998, and at first it was swell. Now the pinstripes are hung in the lockers too early. But it was Torre that Steinbrenner served notice on. “Win the playoffs, or be gone,” it was said he said.
It was Cashman who signed Johnny Damon, who has a pitiably weak arm. And split first-base duty between Doug M. and Jason Giambi, confessed drug-user. The left side of the infield was weighed down with salary imbalance, but it was strange the relationship that existed between Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. A huge cash outlay that produced an early autumn.
Funny thing, a sports pub came out the other day offering “New York Yankee Stein Collection,” your favorite Yankee on your beer mug, “enhanced with platinum accents, Satisfaction Guaranteed.” You can get the Jeter Stein for $39.95, and you are advised to “respond promptly.” The timing couldn’t have been worse. There was no Torre mug in the collection.
Torre may go any day, or he may not go at all. He didn’t win a gold star with his pitcher-handling against Cleveland, but frankly, it wouldn’t have made much difference what moves he might have made. George might keep that in mind, and so should Brian. No ship ever sails well manned by an unharmonious crew. And as for the Yankees from where I sit, good riddance. Enjoy your fall.
Permalink | Comments (41) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Lackluster start starts with lack of effort
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
The good thing about losing the first two games of an NHL season is you’re still open to dream, “Hey, we can get hot. We can win the next 80!” And, of course, that would be a franchise record.
The bad thing about losing the first two games of an NHL season is you’re still open to ponder, “Who’s got two weeks from Saturday in the first-win pool?”
The Thrashers have played only 2.4 percent of their schedule. A bigger issue than the actual losses is that they have looked so bad in the two games, alternately spacey or lethargic, that you wonder if there’s something going on. I mean, other than the obvious, like, “Center, ugh.”
“It’s kind of like, ‘Where did our game go?’ ” coach Bob Hartley said Tuesday. “We had a great preseason. Guys were healthy. There are no excuses. But the beauty of this game is you’re working with human beings, and sometimes it’s funny how human beings react. It would easy if you were working with PlayStation. Then you could just change a chip, and everything is fine to go.”
Sticking with that analogy, here’s where we are:
Opponents: PS-3.
Thrashers: Pong.
They claim to have all of this speed. But they are getting beat to the puck. Logic says they should be as motivated as anybody, trying to build momentum off a playoff season. But they are getting outworked. They had the same time in training camp as everybody else. But they’re out of position.
Special teams figured to improve. Haven’t yet. The team is 1-for-8 on the power play and has killed 10 of 13 shorthanded situations (76.9 percent). Both rank in the league’s lower third. Tampa Bay also scored a shorthanded goal Saturday.
It’s early. But so far, this is Radio Nowhere. Is there anybody alive out there? (Assist from a Devils fan.)
When a team stumbles out of the chute like this, it opens such an ugly pool of possibilities. Maybe there are issues with the pieces. Or maybe the message from the coach is being lost. Or maybe the message is wrong.
Or maybe the Thrashers are also upset at Bobby Petrino.
Bobby Holik described the team’s play as “pathetic.” (Tact has never been his strong suit.) Asked if there are any problems relating to message or communication between players or coaches, Holik said: “That’s a fair question. But after two and a half percent of our games — and I know you don’t want to wait for 10 percent of the games because then it could be too late — it’s a little too early for deep analysis.”
General manager Don Waddell is watching. It can be argued others are watching him. But from Waddell’s perspective: “I don’t like how we’ve lost.”
He’s comforted by the play of rookies Bryan Little and Tobias Enstrom, as well as Kari Lehtonen and Ilya Kovalchuk. But there’s a flip side to that.
“Not to start naming names, but it’s the rest of them,” Waddell said. “We need the guys we’re going to count on all year, and who we counted on last year, to be better.
“Is it the end of the world? Certainly not. But we don’t want to dig ourselves too big of a hole here. If we’re still saying the same things after 15 games, or even 10 games, then it would become a big concern of mine.”
The goal early is survival. Tonight they’re probably going to have to play Ottawa without Marian Hossa (first career groin injury). Then come games at Buffalo, against New Jersey, at Philadelphia and against the New York Rangers. And then: seven straight on the road.
Does 0-2 suddenly look a little bigger? If this doesn’t get fixed, things could get ugly in a hurry.
It helps the Thrashers that there probably won’t be a dominant team in the Southeast Division. But it hurts them that just about every team in the Eastern Conference seems to be a playoff contender, even if because so many are bunched in mediocrity.
Answers?
“We’re searching,” Hartley said.
Wednesday night is game three. But there are only four teams left that haven’t won a game. That’s one potential pool you don’t want any part of.
Permalink | Comments (59) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Throwing punchlines at Holyfield
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
The Tuesday Countdown:
10: Bobby Petrino put out another fire Monday. Great. Only 11 weeks of fires to go.
9: Went to Philips Arena Friday and saw the Thrashers lose their opener. Went to Knoxville Saturday and saw the Bulldogs lose to the Vols. Went to Nashville Sunday and saw the Falcons lose to the Titans. Thinking of going to Las Vegas to lease my services as “The Cooler.”
8: Wonder if that would improve my chances with Maria Bello? I mean, if she falls for a schlep like “Bernie Lootz” …
7: Hate to step on the musical blogging toes of our Notorious DOB (Dave O’Brien), but: Rented a car for the trip that had satellite radio. Found station 10, “E Street Radio,” which for any Springsteen fan is nirvana. Also drove off I-75 when they played a bootleg of an old Bruce concert in some small New Jersey club, during which he said, “This is something new,” and he proceeded to play a still-raw version of “Jungleland.” Soooo much better than “Rocky Top.”
6: No Yankees, no Mets, no Dodgers, no Cubs, no Phillies, no Angels and certainly no Braves. If you think baseball and network executives are depressed now, what happens when the World Series ends up being Indians-Diamondbacks?
5: More evidence it’s not all about payroll: The Yankees had a majors-leading payroll of $190 million. Actually, the Red Sox are the only team among the top 22 payolls to make it to baseball’s final four. Cleveland ranked 23rd in payroll, Colorado 25th, Arizona 26th.
4: There’s a rumor going around that Evander Holyfield is fighting for a title this weekend. Naaaaaaah.
3: Really, I wish Holyfield no ill-will. But it speaks to the insignificance of this “WBO” title fight when nobody can name the champion (Sultan Ibragimov), the fight is being held in Moscow, the starting time in the Eastern time zone will be 1 p.m. on a college football Saturday, pay-per-view receipts will be few and his financial guarantee is even less. Does this sound like a heavyweight title fight?
2: As much as Joey Harrington probably will never win over a segment of the Falcons’ fanbase, Petrino made the right call in not making a change at starter yet. But if Byron Leftwich doesn’t get a significant share of snaps with the No. 1 offense in practice this weeks, sit in the first 10 rows at your own risk.
1: Nike announced it will not try to recoup millions in endorsement fees from disgraced gold medalist Marion Jones. But the Falcons have asked her for $22 million.
Permalink | Comments (36) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Petrino’s in over his head
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Flowery Branch — Even by Falcons standards, this is bad.
Jerry Glanville’s circus had its messy stretches. So did the June Jones era, punctuated by the lovely Jeff George yelling and spitting unprintable things into the coach’s face on the sidelines.
This is worse.
This is Marion Campbell or Dan Henning bad.
No, this is even worse. This is the veteran players suggesting they wouldn’t mind dangling their NFL rookie head coach over the side of the Georgia Dome by his toes. This is that head coach doing the ridiculous in Sunday’s 20-13 loss in Nashville by going for a toss sweep on first-and-goal at the 1-yard line of Tennessee and watching his team spend that play and the next three out of the end zone.
This is that head coach spending the Tennessee game pulling his starting quarterback down the stretch and replacing him with the No. 3 quarterback. (Just so you know, we’re talking about a No. 3 quarterback who hadn’t taken a snap from the starting center during his three weeks since signing with the team. And, if that No. 3 quarterback was that significant, why wasn’t he listed as the No. 2 quarterback?).
This also is that head coach who did the highly questionable when he hired a lifetime college assistant to lead the transition of shaky offensive linemen from a cut-blocking unit to a drive-blocking unit.
Mostly, with the Falcons’ latest freefall at 1-4 and counting, this is owner Arthur Blank and general manager Rich McKay showing that they really weren’t smarter than everybody else when they ignored history before the season and hired a college coach anyway. Yeah, Jimmy Johnson won Super Bowls, but he also had Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith. Let’s just say the Falcons’ Bobby Petrino is moving rapidly toward Butch Davis, Lou Holtz, Dennis Erickson, Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier territory.
Not good. Then again, Petrino does have his positive attributes as an NFL boss. None is more impressive than his straight-forward nature. On Monday, for instance, when questioned about the implosion of the Falcons with no end in sight, he said Joey Harrington and his 23-47 record as a career NFL starter remains his guy (as in the Falcons really haven’t a quarterback controversy in Petrino’s mind). He also said he spoke with disgruntled tight end Alge Crumpler earlier in the day to clear the air (as in Petrino realizes his locker room is nearly as dysfunctional as his power spread offense).
Petrino also showed his decisiveness and wisdom when he slammed DeAngelo Hall with a $100,000 fine and a benching after the cornerback’s verbal meltdown contributed to a loss against Carolina.
It’s just that everything else shows that Petrino is another overmatched college guy passing through.
Petrino disagrees, of course. This is despite the griping throughout his roster that spans from Crumpler claiming the new regime is phasing out veterans to Petrino’s strange habit for an NFL head coach of having his team run through a full practice on the day before games. “Yeah, we have confidence in what we’re doing,” said Petrino, without the hint of doubt, suggesting the ugliness around him is fleeting given his splendid four years in charge at the University of Louisville.
Actually, the Falcons’ ugliness is stationary for a historically troubled franchise that will spend the next few weeks, months and years wallowing in the shadows of Michael Vick and his dogfighting mess. Petrino has no control over that.
Even so, Petrino has much to say about what happens on the field and in the locker room for the Falcons, and here’s the bottom line: Brutal, with the streaking New York Giants and their sack-happy bunch coming to town Monday night, and with the Falcons’ future looking bleaker beyond that, and with no NCAA recruiting trips available for Petrino to help the situation.
Permalink | Comments (174) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Losing trust, Crumpler sees phase-out of veterans
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Nashville — They changed the quarterback and lost anyway. They changed the quarterback, had an opponent try to hand them two scoring drives in the final minutes and still did a faceplant.
They changed the quarterback and the problems didn’t go away. The problems turned into Mount Vesuvius. If you believed a locker room meltdown might come late in a losing season, you were wrong. The Falcons didn’t even make it to the bye week.
“I’ve never been in a game where we had that many opportunities — and a miracle, with a [botched] punt — and we still couldn’t score,” tight end Alge Crumpler said. “When we cross the 50, we’re the worst offense in the National Football League.
“We’re trying to trust them. They keep telling us, ‘Trust us, trust us.’ We’ve been trying to trust them the whole time.”
The “we” would be the players. The “they” would be the coaches.
This is Week 5. When you’re hearing “we” and “they” on the same team, it’s not a good sign. More likely, it’s just over.
Crumpler, one of the team’s leaders, was among several players to vent after Sunday’s 20-13 loss to Tennessee. He effectively questioned Bobby Petrino’s play-calling. He suggested an “agenda” that is minimizing the roles of veterans in the offense, while increasing the roles of younger players to prepare them for the future.
Do you still believe that Byron Leftwich replacing Joey Harrington is going to change much?
“If [the defense is playing] a cover-two and we’ve got Michael Jenkins running down the middle of the field, or myself running down the middle of the field, why aren’t we getting opportunities to make plays?” Crumpler said. “That’s what I’ve been doing my whole career. But I haven’t caught the ball one time since this regime has been here, in practice or anything. So I’m scratching my head. I’m trusting, OK? I’m trusting. But 1-4 makes you think about a lot of things.”
First, Petrino lost DeAngelo Hall. Now he’s lost the room.
Tennessee tried to hand the Falcons this game. They committed five turnovers. Four of the Falcons’ last five possessions started at the Titans’ 42, 45, 21 and 19. The results: interception, missed field goal, interception, fourth-down sack.
Vince Young threw an interception at the Titans’ 21 with 4:15 left. Then Leftwich threw one back. Punter Craig Hentrich was buried by Demorrio Williams at the 21 with 2:24 remaining. An 18-yard run by Warrick Dunn moved the ball to the 1.
Then Petrino, the offensive wizard, got too cute. He had Leftwich attempt to execute a pitch to the right to Dunn. Don’t offensive wizards like to ram the ball up the middle — with four tries to get one yard?
Petrino defended the call, saying, “We had it blocked.”
Didn’t matter. The Titans’ Albert Haynesworth broke through to grab Leftwich, altering the pitch. Dunn never really got it, then fell on the fumble at the 9. The possession ended with a sack at the 12.
“Johnny Stockton,” Crumpler said when asked about the missed opportunities. “Great passer, great assist man. But we were missing layups.”
And then he blew.
“It’s weird. This is a young guys’ game we’re playing now. It’s been taken out of our hands. … It’s just been taken out of the veterans’ hands. When we get into situations, we’re not being given opportunities.”
Why? “Figure it out.”
Asked again if his role in the offense needs to be bigger, Crumpler responded: “Offense? There’s never been a time I’ve asked for the football since I’ve been in this organization.”
But?
“It just seems like the agenda that we have offensively is preparing the guys that we have in this locker room for the future. I’m not saying the coach isn’t trying to win the game. But there just seems to be too much going on.”
The offense is a mess, with any quarterback. Until the last five minutes of the first half, the Falcons’ only first down was the result of a successful fake punt.
Fullback Ovie Mughelli, signed as a free agent but seldom utilized, called this “a bad dream.”
Warrick Dunn defended Harrington, saying he has been hurt by poor pass protection. He also put the onus on the offensive line for the team’s poor running game, adding the running game’s failures “is not because Warrick Dunn is too old.”
Harrington got it right when he said, “There’s no individual story here.” One quarterback replacing another can’t fix everything. And the mountain just blew.
Permalink | Comments (535) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Gordon’s smart all the time
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Talladega, Ala. — Maybe you wonder why some folks hate Jeff Gordon. Besides the part about him being ridiculously rich and oppressively handsome — he used to be married to Miss Winston, now he’s wed to a former model — there’s also this: He’s a great driver in the way too many of his NASCAR brethren aren’t. He’s bold when he has to be, and he’s smart all the time.
Jeff Gordon led only the last of the 188 laps run here Sunday. He won a rather important race without racing until the very end. He bided his time until there was no time left to bide, and then he made one of those Gordon-type moves — a hard jerk to the right coming off the final turn — and just like that the UAW-Ford 500 had an improbable winner and the Chase for the Nextel Cup had a new leader.
“It was the hardest race I’ve ever had to be in,” Gordon said. “We were just running half-throttle at the back.” He laughed. “We were getting amazing fuel mileage.” And then, a bit later: “I’ve never yawned in a race car, but I yawned today.”
To recap: Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, his Hendrick Motortsports teammate and the Chase leader until lap No. 188, allowed an uncertain day to play itself out. This was the first restrictor-plate race staged with the newfangled Car of Tomorrow, and nobody knew what havoc the collision of the much-disliked vehicle and the much-dreaded track would spawn. (Sure enough, an 11-car pileup on the 146th lap culled the field.) Sometimes, see, discretion is the better part of racin’.
“It wasn’t fun,” Gordon said of his strategy. “It went beyond patience. … But I knew it was the smart thing to do.”
And who was near the front, making his usual grandstand charge? Dale Earnhardt Jr., who hasn’t won a race this year and won’t win another until he joins Gordon and Johnson in the Hendrick stable next year. Earnhardt is, as you doubtless know, the people’s choice everywhere, but at this track he’s as popular as Big Papi in Boston. You don’t have to watch a Talladega race to know when Junior has taken the lead: You only have to listen to the crowd.
But Earnhardt was gone 52 laps from the finish, having blown yet another engine. “I love leading laps [he led 31, or 30 more than Gordon],” Earnhardt told reporters, “and [his fans] like that, too. I’d look in the stands as I’d go by and they’d be cheering. I get excited about that. I just try to keep it up front as much as I can because that’s what they come to see — at least my fans do.”
Gordon, by way of pointed contrast, is more interested in winning championships. (He has four, or four more than Earnhardt Jr.) He’s essentially the anti-Junior, and the response to his victories at Earnhardt’s “home” track is always illuminating. The Junior legions get really excited when their man makes his bid, and then they throw beer cans and make obscene gestures toward Gordon when he wins.
It happened here in April, when Gordon won his 77th race to pass Earnhardt’s dad on the all-time victories list. (The Intimidator’s backers couldn’t stand Gordon, either, because he refused to be intimidated.) The signature victory was greeted with a shower of garbage. On Sunday Gordon made his last-lap move and won this meticulously plotted race, and then he made another move: He did the traditional winner’s smoky burnout smack in front of Junior’s enraged fans, and this time only one beer can flew.
“I’m a little disappointed [that there was only one projectile loosed],” Gordon said, kidding. “They might be throwing Mountain Dew [Junior’s new sponsor] next year. … But I’m OK with them throwing things, as long it’s when we’re doing the burnout and we’re winning.”
Permalink | Comments (11) | Categories: Auto Racing, Mark Bradley
Bad Bulldogs show up
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Knoxville — Barely into October and Georgia already has slipped into that darkest of corners in the SEC. It is doomed in the conference and wondering if it can avoid that annual dilemma for borderline bowl teams: What’s better — Shreveport or bupkis?
They drill Oklahoma State.
They lose to South Carolina at home.
They thump Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
They make Tennessee look like a BCS wrecking ball.
Congratulations, Georgia. We dub thee, “Georgia Tech.”
“It’s not that surprising to see Tennessee’s D-line handle our guys like that,” coach Mark Richt said Saturday.
That should go over well in the Bulldog Nation. Look what you have to look forward to.
The Bulldogs lost to Tennessee 35-14 Saturday. This is a defense that gave up 104 points to Cal and Florida, was scraping conference bottom in scoring defense (37.5) and total defense (439 yards) and allowed 178 yards rushing to … Arkansas State?
They were dreadful on offense. They were dreadful on defense. And special teams — not so hot. In the Sun Belt, they call that balance. In the SEC, they call it Vanderbilt.
Destroy. Crumble. Inspire. Implode.
Halfway into the schedule and they’ve turned into a psychologist’s final exam.
“Youth,” offensive coordinator Mike Bobo said when asked about the Dogs’ extreme highs and lows we’ve already witnessed. “This game was a little different than the one in Alabama. We were able to come out and score on the first drive there. Here we went three-and-out and then they scored. Then they scored again, and we did not react very well to the environment.
“We got outplayed and outcoached. We didn’t put ourselves in position to make plays, and when we did we didn’t make them.”
The Volunteers kissed their checkerboard end zones four times in their first five possessions. After 28-0, they slowed the pace, presumably for fear a tuba player would hyperventilate from excessive renditions of “Rocky Top.”
Watching from the sideline, receiver Mikey Henderson recalled: “The first thing I was thinking was, I hope they don’t put up 51 like they did last year.”
The Volunteers rolled a 37-point second half last year in Athens and won 51-33. There was no such drama Saturday.
If Georgia isn’t officially dead in the SEC, it needs at least an unlikely sweep of Florida, Auburn, Kentucky and Vanderbilt. Even that guarantees nothing.
It can be done. There have been similar awakenings. There was that whole Dr. Frankenstein thing.
How does this happen?
The Dogs had won three straight since the South Carolina loss. If they weren’t great, they at least looked well north of catastrophic. They were getting better. They were winning. Now it turns out this whole season may evolve into a wrestling match between multiple personalities.
The Bulldogs’ greatest feat Saturday might have been giving Phil Fulmer job security.
It isn’t 1998 any more in Knoxville. The Volunteers haven’t won an SEC title in nine years. The locals have long since stopped paying attention to those career winning-percentage statistics that the school’s PR machine keeps churning out and pointing to others. Like: Before Saturday, the Vols were 2-8 in the past 10 games against ranked teams, 7-16 against LSU, Florida, Auburn and Georgia.
This game may have added years to Fulmer’s longevity. We can’t be certain what it did to Richt, at least not without X-rays.
The Volunteers drove the ball 81 yards on 12 plays for a touchdown on their first drive. They punted on their second drive. Embrace the highlight, Georgia fans. Tennessee scored touchdowns on its next three possessions, including a 56-yard pass from wide receiver Lucas Taylor to LaMarcus Coker.
Richt had won three straight in Knoxville. Torch that sucker. Georgia didn’t look at home Saturday. It didn’t look to be on earth.
Last year’s collapse to Tennessee started the Dogs’ downward spiral. They lost to Vanderbilt the following week and dropped four out of five.
Next week? At Vanderbilt.
Maybe they win. Maybe they spiral. Maybe it doesn’t matter because a nice couch awaits them in Shreveport.
Permalink | Comments (218) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, UGA / SEC
Jackets sink closer to mediocrity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
College Park, Md. — Now that Georgia Tech is flirting with mediocrity again in football, the choice is yours. That said, the wrong way to look at the Yellow Jackets’ 28-26 loss on Saturday at Byrd Stadium is to say they were maybe six feet away from inside the right upright in the west end zone of a comeback victory.
The right way to look at what I just typed is to say why were they even in that situation against an inferior Maryland bunch?
“Basically, we didn’t execute the way we should have at the beginning,” Tech defensive end Darrell Robertson said of their ridiculous 21-3 deficit early in the second quarter. “We came out sluggish and we just didn’t play the way we’re capable of playing.”
No, the Jackets didn’t. In other words, something is terribly wrong here. They have too much talent to own a 3-3 record overall and 1-3 in the ACC, especially when you analyze their three losses. There was that Boston College beating on national television, when they showed their No. 15 ranking was a fraud after resembling not-ready-for-prime-time players. They dropped yet another game in Charlottesville to so-so Virginia. Then there was their disaster against Maryland, which is not to be confused with Clemson, which was ranked No. 13 when the Jackets used much of that talent for an upset two games ago.
But back to the Maryland game and why Tech is sitting among the leaders when it comes to the nation’s most underachieving teams. In sum, the Jackets were clueless during the first half. They also were listless. Courtesy of Taylor Bennett’s errant passes and sloppiness overall by others, the offense was a mess, and the usually potent defense kept allowing the Terrapins large chunks of yardage at the worst of times.
Then came the second half, when Bennett did his Tom Brady imitation, and Demaryius Thomas became Randy Moss, and the defense evoked memories of the ‘85 Bears. Before long, with the suddenly aggressive Jackets playing as they should have all along, they just missed overcoming themselves when Travis Bell’s kick sailed just wide right from 52 yards inside the final minute.
This is becoming a pattern for the Jackets, by the way. They often lack fire at the start of games before turning into an inferno later.
What’s up with that, and why can’t the Jackets stay on autopilot more often than not?
“If I knew what was going on, I’d do something about it,” said Tech coach Chan Gailey, clearly frustrated in the aftermath, with his sixth Tech team edging closer to having their bowl named Emerald than, say, Orange at the end of the season. “You know, it’s the same thing we’ve done in years past. It’s the same routine. It’s the same everything.”
Sounds as if it’s time for a different routine and a different “everything” for the Jackets. For instance: Whatever bottom-string quarterback Kyle Manley told Bennett at halftime against Maryland needs to be pounded into the first-string guy before, during and after games. “I can’t tell you [what he said], but he set me straight,” said Bennett, suggesting that he used Manley’s scolding to throw for nearly twice as many yards in the second half (202) as he did in the first (107).
As for Tech’s rejuvenated defense that stopped making Chris Turner resemble more than just the backup that he is for Maryland, well, that’s a little different.
There were no pep talks. No chairs thrown across the locker room.
“I mean, there wasn’t any need for a lot of talking,” said Robertson, among the few highly motivated Jackets from the beginning with a fumble return of 32 yards for a touchdown just before halftime. “We all knew that we just had to come back out and play, so that’s what we had to do.”
Now the Jackets have to keep doing those things from the start.
That’s the problem.
Permalink | Comments (81) | Categories: Tech / ACC, Terence Moore
Keep Renteria, find young arms
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
OK, you’re the general manager. The Braves had a season that darn near defies description. They waffled. They came back, then took a snooze, then turned up the volume again. They still darn near made the playoffs, and could have with another high-powered starter or two. And even an average Andruw Jones kind of season.
He’s gone now. You could see that one coming. Oblivious to his starvation batting average, he had said that this time he would take no discounted deal just to stay in Atlanta. Not that he was exactly a Wal-Mart kind of bargain at $13.5 million. How generous of him. Marked down? Discounted? He could cover center field like a one-man platoon, but at his wage he was a luxury too rich to afford.
This may test his bulldogged agent, Steve Boras, who doesn’t get nearly enough doors slammed in his face. The price tag on Andruw is $20 million. This time Boras has reached his extreme. John Schuerholz can see far more value in $20 million worth of starting pitching. He can find any number of .220 hitters who can chase down fly balls for far less. Maybe this season was just a blip on Andruw’s radar screen, but at no time during the season did he give any extended promise of breaking out of it.
Jeff Francoeur could handle the job. He has the arm that Jones doesn’t have, and he has the range for it. But, he is so perfect for right field, the powerful arm, plus range to cover some of center field as well. Well, a bit of a stretch, I guess. There’s a kid named Jordan Schafer down at Myrtle Beach who gets high grades — and who is known by some as Grady Sizemore-like — but the last time the Braves found a center fielder capable of making the leap from Class A to the major leagues was Brett Butler in the early 1980s. Rafael Furcal later made the graduation at shortstop, which brings up a matter of another nature.
There’s nothing uplifting about the thought of Edgar Renteria in some other team’s cloth. He has given the Braves two years of solid joy at shortstop, but here’s the deal: If the Braves are looking for a place to readjust the payroll, they could deal Renteria and go with the younger and more agile Cuban, Yunel Escobar, for a bundle less. A cruel thought, but baseball is a game that breaks hearts.
Pitching is the soul of the Braves’ complexities. John Smoltz and Tim Hudson, yeah. Where do you go from there? Tom Glavine, indeed, may not be the answer, not that he’s even on the Braves’ want list, while in truth, he may not be the answer anywhere. Schuerholz does not speak of such matters, carefully avoiding any hint of tampering. Tom has already turned down a $13 million option to stay with the Mets, so what could the expectation be to be a Brave again, a $5 million cut? Hardly. Because Glavine has a residence in the area makes him no more likely to land here, though it is a nice, cozy thought. You know the weary old line: “To spend more time with the family.” You begin with John Smoltz and Tim Hudson, and finally, at last, after two seasons of not throwing an official pitch, Mike Hampton should be, must be, ready by this time. He owes them.
So, instead of working the free-agency market, retreading with aging, leathery arms, is there not the possibility of transferring one of those young, vibrant riflemen from the bullpen to starting? Just asking. Chuck James appears better suited for short-term duty, so swap him for Soriano, Acosta, Ascanio or Devine, who, for the most part, are merely names at this stage. One thing for sure, leave Peter Moylan just as he is, the best thing that happened to Braves pitching this year.
First base, as we all know, is in the smooth and powerful hands of Mark Teixeira for a year. Then comes the hellish matter of dealing with him on a future contract. Hellish, because he, too, is a client of the bovine of agents, Boras. Having a Georgia Tech connection will have no softening effect in the dealing, you may be assured. Is there no escaping this wretched genius Boras?
Permalink | Comments (65) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
Not a banner night for Thrashers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
If we can conclude anything about the Thrashers’ season opener Friday night, it’s this:
Banner nights. So overrated.
Banners can’t skate, can’t score and can’t check. It’s possible banners can struggle clearing the puck out of the defensive zone and take minor penalties because, like, the Thrashers certainly excelled in those areas Friday.
Game one: Washington 3, Thrashers 1.
They were hoping to build momentum off winning a division title. Instead, they reminded everybody what went wrong in the playoffs.
“The crowd was here, everybody expected great things from us,” Slava Kozlov said. “Unfortunately, we were a little bit sloppy in our own zone and it cost us a couple of goals. We tried to push it. We got one goal. But it was tough to come back.”
There are 81 games left. The only thing the Thrashers did was eliminate any chance of going undefeated. The bigger issue is the way they played. A team shouldn’t go through training camp and the preseason, then open the year at home with such a dud.
The roster has been reshaped with undersized but speedy players. But the team looked merely undersized and overmatched. Speed was supposed to create a better forecheck, a better breakout, more offensive pressure.
There was none of that against Washington.
“I don’t think we had two shifts of a sustained forecheck,” Bobby Holik said.
“We took too many penalties,” Kozlov said, “because they kept beating us one-one-one in the corners.”
Even goalie Kari Lehtonen wondered what was going on early, as his teammates struggled to get the puck from the Capitals and clear the defensive zone. It led to early breakdowns, penalties — Washington had seven power plays, scoring on one — and a 2-0 lead.
“There are times when I try to get guys going,” Lehtonen said. “I think we were not all there when they got the two goals. After that we started playing. But that’s not the way we’re supposed to do it. Everybody should get upset, and I’m sure everybody is upset.”
Openers generally have not been kind to the Thrashers. This makes three straight losses, and six of eight overall (four of five in Philips Arena).
The organization’s hope was that Friday would be different. Never before had the team been coming off a playoff season. Never before had there been a pre-game video tribute, toasting the previous year’s successes. Never before had their been a banner raising.
Down, 2-0? Yeah, that’s happened.
The Thrashers’ only goal was scored by rookie Bryan Little, who flipped home a rebound at 14:54 of the second period. They then killed off a two-man disadvantage for 1:45 and appeared to be gaining momentum. But they failed to convert a power play early in the third, and the Capitals increased the lead to 3-1 when Viktor Kozlov tipped Mike Green’s point shot by Lehtonen at 5:27.
It was difficult enough for the Thrashers to score one goal. Three wasn’t going to happen.
You looked for positive signs. None came from Todd White. Signed in free agency as the new No. 1 center, White looked like a No. 3. Or 4. He fanned on a pass on the power play to end a scoring threat; lost control of the puck and failed to get off a shot with an open net; passed up an open shot in the slot, then passing behind Ilya Kovalchuk; and lost the puck on a rush down the right wing. And all that in the first two periods.
“We weren’t as sharp as we’d like to be, and emotions and all of that stuff — it’s no excuse,” Holik said. “We’re professionals. We gave them the lead in the first period and couldn’t come back.”
Tonight the Thrashers are in Tampa. No banner, no home crowd, just a road game. Can’t be any worse.
Permalink | Comments (26) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Dogs can’t graduate, can beat Vols
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Before unveiling this week’s absolute financial locks — not to be confused with going 7-15-1 against the spread the past two weeks, which I like to view as an abbreviated but horrible scare, sort of like Newt Gingrich in the White House — we have this update from the fascinating world of Georgia education:
Man, are we dumm.
Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution in 1788, but fell to 19th in the rankings a week later when somebody noticed we spelled Constitution with three “o’s” and a “k.”
This of course set the tone for low SAT scores, Prof. Jim Harrick Jr. and this week’s big news: Georgia ranks last in the SEC in football graduation rates. Tech is last in the ACC. But that’s not too surprising considering I think Dave Braine once said the school mandates that all left tackles must be able to split an atom by their sophomore year, sometimes blindfolded. Otherwise, no diploma for you!
But this was crushing news for the Bulldogs. They graduated only 41 percent of their players from 1997 to 2000, far behind Vanderbilt (91), Florida (72) and even Alabama (49), although there seems to be some debate as to whether Alabama ever actually ratified the Constitution.
Georgia fans will not blame Mark Richt. He didn’t get here until 2001 and, besides, like, he’s winning. The Dogs are 3-0 since losing to South Carolina.
Their next opponent, Tennessee, allowed 104 points and some major organs in losses to California and Florida. That has put a strain on coach Phil Fulmer, who at least is standing firm at 52 percent (graduation rates and body fat).
Maybe I’ve lived here too long, but am I reading this wrong: Tennessee by 2? Follow the smart money. Dogs win (but take the gift points).
Study Hall
(Yeah, right)
Sybil at Maryland: The Jackets lost to Virginia, then beat up Clemson, which I think is sort of like conquering Germany but falling to Luxembourg. Tech’s offense ranks first in rushing, last in passing, which I guess means Taylor Bennett throws for three touchdowns. Duh. Tech covers 3.
Florida at LSU: The Gators warmed up for their biggest game of the year by struggling with Mississippi, losing to Auburn and seeing defensive captain Tony Joiner get arrested for allegedly breaking into an impound lot to reclaim his girlfriend’s car. That makes eight arrests in nine months. Wonder if they’re stealing test scores? LSU wins, but take Florida and 9.
Vanderbilt at Auburn: There’s an Internet rumor that Bobby Petrino may be headed for Auburn after the Falcons’ season. Now, come on, of all the farfetched scenarios, do you really think school officials and Bobby Lowder would go behind Tommy Tuberville’s back, fly to a secret location and meet with Petrino, who … wait, let me start over. Tigers cover 7 1/2.
Houston at Alabama: Nick Saban has lost two straight. The last ‘Bama coach to do that got fired. Hey, just saying. Houston lost to East Carolina? Check! Tide covers 10 1/2. • Virginia Tech at Clemson: Since getting whacked by LSU (48-7), the Hokies have won three straight over Ohio, William and Mary and North Carolina, which would matter if that wasn’t the new standard in Blacksburg. The Tigers rebound well from humiliations: the 5 1/2 is covered.
Pros and Ex-Cons
Falcons at Titans: In the past two games, Joey Harrington has completed 74 percent of his passes for 584 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions, so captivating Falcons fans that he was booed last week and all anybody wants to know is who’s going to win the Michael Vick arbitration hearing. Must feel good to get on the road. Titans win. But take the Falcons and 8 1/2.
Panthers at Saints: Things are so bad in Carolina that the team held a players-only meeting. I had a meeting once. Still couldn’t play football. Saints finally win one and cover three.
Browns at Patriots: Does Cleveland get an appearance fee for this, you know, like FIU at Penn State? Meet the exception to the NFL two-touchdown rule: The 16 is covered.
Chargers at Broncos: Philip Rivers has nine turnovers. The Chargers rank 26th in total offense. So much for Norv Turner’s strengths. Denver covers 1 1/2.
Bucs at Colts: Tampa has lost Carnell Williams, which means there’s a pretty good chance Jeff Garcia is going to start looking a lot more like a third option (or Jeff Garcia). Indy covers 10.
Permalink | Comments (112) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
Thrashers must build on last year’s success
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Winning a division title, making the playoffs and avoiding indictments puts the Thrashers in exclusive company these days for an Atlanta sports franchise. Some would settle for just one of the three.
But as the franchise opens its eighth season tonight, the high-water mark of last year — which went from postseason to postmortem in roughly seven minutes — has given way to familiar themes.
The coach’s future is uncertain. The general manager is catching heat. Ownership is forever in flux. The team is thin at center and on defense. The team’s three biggest stars — Kari Lehtonen, Marian Hossa and Ilya Kovalchuk — all have significant issues, regarding contract, maturity or stability.
These are supposed to be the good times, right?
“It’s not surprising,” Bobby Holik, the team’s new captain, said of the perceptions. “Nobody will pay attention to us until we play well. We’re tucked here into north Georgia. People in Canada or big markets are not going to talk about us. The bottom line is, we haven’t done anything worthy for them to talk about us.”
The regular season opens with Washington tonight and closes April 5. Somewhere in between, the franchise’s future may be defined.
If the Thrashers miss the playoffs, last season will be viewed as an aberration, a housecleaning is possible and, given this city’s bandwagon tendencies, hockey’s future here might circle the drain. Make the playoffs — and make a dent this time — and there’s hope.
You remember hope, don’t you? It passed through town, just before Game 1 against the New York Rangers. Some teams lose playoff games, then patch holes. But after the Thrashers suffered a four-game sweep by one of the league’s mid-level teams, you wondered if the walls or foundation needed replacing.
Coach Bob Hartley has had time to think about this. Yes, the team needed more speed, more youth. Yes, Kovalchuk needed a new center. But many of the team’s problems flowed from the head.
“I’d say we were mentally tired at the end,” Hartley said. “I’m not ready to say we were mentally weak.”
There’s a very fine line there.
The Thrashers are suspect at center, even with the signing of Todd White. They are undersized, even in a redefined league that emphasizes speed. But every team in the salary-cap era has holes. How the Thrashers function will be less because of size and skill than it will be their craniums. Losing exposes issues.
“As soon as we lost that first game [to the Rangers], I could feel that we froze,” Hartley said. “It’s not a matter of being mentally weak or mentally strong, it’s being mentally ready, and it’s tough to be ready when you don’t know what to expect. I really felt when Kari bobbled that puck [in Game 1] and they scored that [clinching] goal, the players became like steel rods on the bench.”
Lehtonen carried the Thrashers for part of the season. But he struggled in the playoffs with “one so-so game and one awful game,” he said. He admits it took a while to let go in the offseason.
Nobody has ever questioned Lehtonen’s talent, but his resiliency is another matter. He’s come to expect the skeptics. “Two years ago it was: I don’t have any experience at this level,” he said. “A year later it was: I’m always hurt. Now everybody is questioning whether I can do well under pressure.”
Hossa is the team’s best all-around player. But he floundered in the postseason and is in a contract year. The fact he hasn’t re-signed is some indication he wants to take a temperature of this team. Don’t we all.
Kovalchuk is the team’s most dynamic scorer. He was one of the few who played with passion in the playoffs, even if still prone to occasional meltdowns. But if White can’t keep up as his new feeder, all bets are off.
The roster has four rookies, including one, Brett Sterling, on Kovalchuk’s line. The added speed should help the penalty killing. Having Alexei Zhitnik for a full season should help the power play.
What does it mean?
As Holik said of the playoffs last year, “What we learned is we weren’t ready.”
There’s no official clock. But time might be running out.
Permalink | Comments (47) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Thrashers / NHL
Gailey must learn to delegate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Head coaches in football should deal with the big picture. They should leave the little pictures to the supposedly competent folks around them called assistants.
That’s my preference. No gray area. Just make this a black and white separation. There is so much to worry about in the macro at the top of an NFL or college program that too much emphasis on the micro can make you goofy along the way to losses and the unemployment line.
Even so, you have this blurriness involving Chan Gailey, in the second year of his transformation at Georgia Tech from accomplished play-caller in the pro and college game to whatever he is now.
Technically, Gailey isn’t calling plays anymore, and, technically, he isn’t a meddler.
Technically.
According to John Bond, in his first season as offensive coordinator and successor to Patrick Nix as a post-Gailey play-caller for the Yellow Jackets, “Oh, Coach [Gailey] is involved now, as far as the game plan is concerned, and he’s in there quite a bit, and he certainly has opinions and all those types of things. But as far as calling the plays in the games, that’s my job. That’s me.”
Well, yes, but Gailey isn’t exactly Mark Richt. Just like Gailey, Richt earned accolades as a play-caller, but only at Florida State before arriving at Georgia seven years ago as play-caller, offensive coordinator and head coach. Just like Gailey, Richt decided to become only a big-picture guy when he anointed Mike Bobo as The Man of the Bulldogs’ offense near the end of last season.
Unlike Gailey, Richt isn’t heavily involved in Georgia’s game plan during the week, and unlike Gailey, Richt says little (if anything) to his designated play-caller during games.
Richt does have veto power on plays, but he never uses it.
What about Gailey? “You know what? I can’t think of a time this year that he has vetoed a call,” said Bond, easing into a smile. “He’s really great on game days. He’ll tell you, ‘Last time on second-and-such-and-such, they did this.’ But as far as vetoing a call during the game, if you’re the head coach, you bet that he absolutely has that power.”
Gailey has power, period. He is the boss. If you combine that with his acknowledgment this week that he still has a deep-rooted love affair with play-calling, you have why he ordered Bond to stay conservative during Tech’s 13-3 upset of Clemson on Saturday. The Jackets’ defense was suffocating, which is why Gailey told Bond such a thing. It’s just that Bond should be allowed to reach those conclusions on his own.
There also was the Notre Dame game, when Tech ripped the pitiful Fighting Irish in the season opener on the road. Gailey told Bond in the second half to stick with the running game. Again, Gailey is the boss, but Bond is a competent employee, with an offensive resume that spans from Lou Holtz at Arkansas to high-scoring Illinois State teams to Northern Illinois’ rise on the potent feet of Garrett Wolfe.
Although Gailey strongly praises Bond’s work, the boss is quietly becoming more micro than macro again with a Tech offense that flourishes on the ground but ranks last in the ACC in passing yards per game and passing efficiency.
“You lose the feel of the game from the [press box, where Bond sits], because I’ve been there,” said Gailey, who has spent 16 years coaching in the pros and 17 in college. “From the sidelines, you’ve got a feel of the game, and who’s controlling the line of scrimmage, and sometimes, you lose that perspective from the box. So I’ll say to John, ‘Hey, let’s pound them for a while.’ Or, ‘Let’s think about the next series.’ “
Then Gailey added, “Every now and then, he’ll say, ‘What do you think?’ So I give him my opinion.”
If Bond keeps asking the straight-shooting Gailey his opinion during games, he’ll keep giving it. That’s fine. This isn’t: In the complex world of today’s big-time football programs, the worst thing is to have a head coach calling plays.
The second-worst thing is to have a head coach sort of calling plays.
Permalink | Comments (44) | Categories: Tech / ACC, Terence Moore
Flawed division favors Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
In case you haven’t noticed, the NFC South is so dysfunctional right now that even the significantly flawed Falcons could …
Dare we say it?
Should we even think it?
Let’s start at the top with a 3-1 Tampa Bay bunch that just lost star runner Cadillac Williams and key offensive tackle Luke Petitgout for the year. The Buccaneers also are depending on 137-year-old Jeff Garcia at quarterback and a totally revamped defense.
Then there are the 2-2 Carolina Panthers with an aching Jake Dehlomme (again) and their Jekyll & Hyde personality.
Finally, not only did the 0-3 New Orleans Saints lose Deuce McAllister for the season, but they are suggesting that their NFC championship run last year was a fluke.
So here are the 1-3 Falcons, with both games left to play against Tampa Bay and New Orleans and another one against Carolina. That means the Falcons have a decent chance of sliding back into the division picture, but only if their offensive line continues to show it finally has a clue. And if the new Joey Harrington doesn’t become the old Joey Harrington.
And if the running game doesn’t remain stagnant.
And if the receivers continue to show they really aren’t shaky.
And if the defense finally stops the run with consistency, and if the defense finally stops the pass with consistency.
And if the otherwise potent John Abraham as a pass rusher doesn’t get hurt again.
And if the Falcons win more times than they lose regarding those division games.
And if they completely get over that No. 7 hangover.
And if the cow jumps over the moon.
Permalink | Comments (85) | Categories: Quick Hit, Terence Moore
Braves make big mistake letting Andruw go
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Bad move.
Terrible move.
Actually, this is an atrocious move for the Braves, because manager Bobby Cox had it right for eternity when he said of Andruw Jones, who ranks 1a, 1b or 1c among baseball’s center fielders for the ages, “He has RBIs in his glove.”
It didn’t matter that Jones often looked ridiculous for long stretches after swinging and missing at pitches in search of reaching the farthest dark hole. Who cared that his batting average spent two seasons going south instead of north? No, he wasn’t much in the clutch this year, and yes, his agent is Scott Boras, the bogeyman for teams wishing to sign one of Boras’ clients below the amount of the national debt.
And, yes, the Braves can ease some of the post-Jones trauma with the signing of free agent Torii Hunter, the former center fielder and slugger for the Minnesota Twins. He also has a magic glove, and even though he can’t slug with Jones, he is more consistent at the plate with his ability to sustain hitting streaks.
That said, with the new folks at Liberty Media claiming they are willing to increase the payroll, the Braves’ Designated Geniuses should have discovered ways to acquire much-needed starting pitching while keeping Jones. In fact, Jones was part of the solution regarding that starting pitching. He is the hidden reason the Braves produced Cy Glavine, Cy Smoltz and Cy Maddux, along with all of those consecutive years of team ERAs that ranked first or second in baseball. He caught everything. He threw out everybody. He made the spectacular routine. He did so through an 11th year with the Braves that will produce a 10th Gold Glove, but management will shove Jones out the door by allowing him to become a free agent while yawning.
Well, mostly yawning. As a lifetime Braves player who contributed heavily to the franchise’s record 14 consecutive division titles, Braves officials will continue to say nice things about Jones as they wave good-bye. Still, the bottom line remains: He’s gone, and he’s only 30, and history comes to mind. Not in a good way, especially if the baseball gods wish to spank the Braves for their short-sightedness.
Consider 1966. That was the first year Frank Robinson played for the Baltimore Orioles, and it was the first year of David Justice’s life.
Let’s start with Robinson, the undisputed star of the Cincinnati Reds for nearly a decade. He was traded to the Orioles for nothing worth mentioning before that 1966 season, because Reds owner Bill DeWitt said Robinson was “an old 30.” All that a creaky Robinson did in his first season with the Orioles was take the American League’s Triple Crown Award, lead them to their first world championship and grab World Series MVP honors. He eventually pushed the Orioles to three more pennants and another world championship (over the Reds), and then trotted to Cooperstown from there.
As for Justice, the batting hero of the Atlanta Braves’ only world championship in 1995, he suffered a shoulder injury early during that next season, and then he was dealt to the Cleveland Indians before the following year for nothing worth mentioning.
He was …
That’s right, 30.
Justice immediately slugged the Indians to their second World Series in three years. He later joined the New York Yankees, where he became the MVP of the AL championship series before helping to lead the pinstripe bunch to another world championship. When he ended his career with a playoff trip with the Oakland A’s, he had reached the playoffs six times after his trade from the Braves. He also retired as the all-time postseason leader in games played, at bats, extra-base hits, runs, hits, total bases, walks and RBIs.
This isn’t to say Jones will become Robinson or even Justice during his post-Braves career.
This is to say why even take the chance?
Permalink | Comments (172) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Falcons’ new No. 1 trumps ex-backup
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Commenting for this blog will open on Wednesday morning:
Fate, as it turns out, does indeed have a sense of humor, acidic though it may be. Here they were, two quarterbacks in the crosshairs. Matt Schaub, traded away last March for two draft choices; and Joey Harrington, hired to fill the hole Michael Vick left in the Falcons’ scheme of things. It was pure irony.
All those seasons Schaub had spent patiently waiting for the chance that was never going to come. He was 26 years old, going on 27, which was Vick’s age. How long could a fellow be expected to suffer in silence? Then out of the blue came the trade. He was now offensive foreman in his own shop. Then within a month, all hell broke loose, catastrophe in Surry County, Va., and you know the rest of that diabolical mess.
Just before all this splashed across the board, this elderly columnist had written a theme suggesting that the Falcons had traded the wrong quarterback to Houston. Should have been Vick. It was done with tongue inserted into cheek, well aware that such a trade would never have been possible, with all the contractual baggage Vick represented. And said so. “Preposterous,” was the word I used.
Had nothing to do with any inkling I’d had, or any nightmare. Mostly concern about all the red flags flying over Vick’s head, an accumulation of them in his time here. He was even giving VapoRub a bad name. Owner Arthur Blank was too heavily invested to have any exit available. Besides, how was he to have even any underground knowledge of Vick’s absorption with fighting dogs. (Just for safety sake, considering our nervous newspaper, I should insert “alleged.”)
I didn’t get much mileage out of it, beyond the sniping from those sports orators, but what else did I expect? Five months later, word merchants are still barking about it in our precinct. That’s OK, a hazard of the trade. Just delirious that I could be of such interest.
Then by pure coincidence, what should happen? The Texans came calling on Sunday afternoon at the Georgia Dome.
Schaub vs. Harrington in a pass-off. As it turned out, our guy got the best of their guy. (No cheering in the press box, please.) Harrington was the winning pitcher, and it should have been two in a row had it not been for the tantrums of DeAngelo Hall in the Carolina game. Against the Texans, Hall was a perfect gamesman, sat out his penalty in the first quarter, then was noticeable mainly by his inactivity the rest of the way. The stats sheet showed he had one tackle.
Harrington, meanwhile, was having his day — 23 completions out of 29 passes for 223 yards and two touchdowns. Good day’s work even for Brett Favre. That gave him a rating of 121.7 for the day, whatever that means. I never have been able to fathom that rating thing.
Schaub wasn’t having a bad day, but in all fairness, he was operating without his three leading receivers and his main man running the ball, Ahman Green. (And let me say this about Ron Dayne, the backup: There is no trace of a Heisman Award winner in him.) Schaub has the stronger arm, no question. He has a cannon, and he did launch one pass that covered 45 yards. But if you believe in ratings, he fell 20 points short of the Duck from Oregon.
Best part of it all was getting to see Bobby Petrino get on the winning side, after all the troubles he has seen. Caught up in a maelstrom of bad news and controversy, a balm to his tortured psyche. “We needed that,” he said. But, “I’d rather get more touchdowns than so many field goals.”
He held the game ball Blank had presented him, and he looked somewhat like a little boy who’d just won his high school game. He isn’t a big fellow, but you don’t measure a coach’s efficiency by size. Don’t forget, two times at Carroll College, in Montana, he was the NAIA All-American quarterback, and you don’t do that being nice and easy.
Well, it’s over. The Falcons have met Schaub, and the Falcons have won, and maybe that settles that. Our guy Harrington has the Falcons even with the Bears and ahead of the Chargers. Pretty good for a guy picked up on the fly.
Permalink | | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Furman Bisher
Glavine’s still got game
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN…
10: Say this for Tom Glavine: When he ends a relationship, he takes a statistical wrecking a ball to that sucker.
9: Tommy G’s final two starts with the Braves came in the 2002 playoffs: He lost both, allowing 13 earned runs on 17 hits and seven walks in 7 2/3 innings (ERA: 15.26). Glavine’s final three starts with the New York Mets: 0-2, 17 earned runs (including four home runs) on 25 hits in 10 1/3 innings (ERA: 14.81). So much for the goal of leaving them wanting more.
8: OK, that said, yes, Glavine would still be an asset to the Braves. Putting aside all of the warm-and-fuzziness of Glavine retiring as a Brave, we’re not about an objective of him being a staff ace. Given what we all saw this season, is there really a belief that he’s not good enough to be a No. 3 or possibly 4 starter in this rotation for one season? He threw 200 1/3 innings this season. His arm was dead at the end. But 200 1/3 innings would’ve ranked third on the Braves’ staff, right behind John Smoltz (205 2/3), and way ahead of Chuck James (161 1/3). What would that have meant for the rotation? And the bullpen? And playoff chances?
7: Do agents and defense attorneys hang together at Starbucks the day God hands out a conscience? I mean, how does Leigh Steinberg, Ricky Williams’ agent, say, “Ricky is extremely excited about the prospect of playing in the NFL again,” without his head exploding? Ricky Williams hasn’t been excited about playing since the last time his baggie was empty and he searched between the couch cushions for stray seeds.
6: I sat with my daughter the other day, drinking “Smart Water” while watching “The Hills.” The water never had a shot.
5: The NHL has trouble getting attention in the United States. So the league decided to open the season in London. Well. That makes sense. I figured between the loss of an ESPN contract and post-lockout fallout that the NHL couldn’t fall further off the radar, but Gary Bettman met the challenge. Raise your hand if you realized two NHL games already have been played.
4: Back to the Braves: I understand the need to improve the pitching. But does anybody realize the team actually finished third in the National League in team earned run average (4.11) but only 11th in fielding?
3: How important is team ERA? If this season proves anything, it’s that there’s no automatic formula. Chicago finished second and Arizona fourth in team ERA. But Colorado was eighth and Philadelphia 13th. Batting average? Colorado was first, Arizona 16th. Defense? Colorado was first, Arizona eighth. Now, if a GM can build a team that goes .500 most of the year and then 14-1 down the stretch, you’ve got a chance.
2: Kobe Bryant showed up for the first day of Lakers’ training camp and said his off-season comments criticizing management and demanding a trade “were misconstrued.” Bryant never specified which of his comments on the 27 ESPN shows he went on “were misconstrued,” but I’m sure he’ll get around to it.
1: Coming next week: Kobe Bryant on “The Hills.”
Permalink | Comments (55) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
Glavine is not the answer
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
In a purely professional capacity, he’s my all-time favorite athlete. I was sorry when he left and happy when he won No. 300. It’s always a pleasure to see him wherever and whenever. That said …
I wouldn’t bring back Tom Glavine.
Not just because the worst start of his Hall of Fame career will live in infamy as the final act of the worst collapse the grand old game of baseball has ever known. I wouldn’t bring him back because he’ll be 42 on Opening Day 2008, and the Braves have enough — more than enough — aging starting pitchers. John Smoltz is 40. Mike Hampton, who barely qualifies as a pitcher anymore, is 35.
The Braves shouldn’t try to reassemble the glorious rotation of old. They need to build a new rotation. Smoltz and Tim Hudson are great places to begin, but the reason this team, which statistically was good enough everywhere but in starting pitching, didn’t reach October was because everything began and ended with those two.
Some Braves made the case last week for Glavine as the missing No. 3 starter. But is Glavine even a No. 3 anymore? He was 13-8 with a 4.45 ERA this season. (Chuck James, who spent the year proving he isn’t a No. 3 starter, was 11-10 with a 4.24 ERA.) The more Glavine worked, the worse he got: He didn’t win any of his last three starts, and he yielded 17 earned runs over his final 10 1/3 innings.
And the symmetry of Sunday’s loss cannot be missed. It marked the first time since 1993 that two teams entered their 162nd game in a first-place tie without either having clinched a wild card. On Oct. 3, 1993, Glavine outpitched David Nied (remember him?) and the Braves beat Colorado 5-3 and won their most improbable division title when the Dodgers finished off the Giants three hours later.
That was the Glavine we all knew and admired, a matchless combination of guile and guts.
The Glavine of Sunday in Queens was something less. He faced nine batters. He retired one. He left with his dying team dead, left after hitting Dontrelle Willis with the bases loaded to make it 5-0.
He plunked the opposing pitcher with a change-up, the pitch Glavine discovered while fooling around in the outfield in the spring at West Palm Beach long ago, the pitch that will carry him to Cooperstown.
And that’s the greater point: Always a finesse pitcher, Glavine is less precise now than he was when he left for the Mets. (And one of the reasons the Braves let him leave is that he’d had a bad second half in 2002, capped by two playoff losses against San Francisco.) His ERA this season was his second-worst of the past 19 years. He worked almost the same number of innings as in 2006 but registered 42 fewer strikeouts.
It’s thought that Glavine, who can buy himself out of his Mets contract, would accept $10 million to return to the Braves next year. The Braves need to take a longer view. They need younger arms, power arms. They need guys who’ll be starting here after Smoltz and Hampton are gone.
They need a Nate Robertson (who had a bad year for Detroit but who still has gobs of potential), a Joe Blanton (who was mentioned in trade talks before the deadline and who won 14 games for the A’s), even a Shaun Marcum (who’s 26 and who won 12 games for Toronto but who’s facing minor knee surgery).
The Braves don’t need a one-year rental. They need to make a trade and invest in the long term. (Just because John Schuerholz and Bobby Cox are nearing the end doesn’t mean the franchise will fold once they’re gone.)
There was a time when any rotation would have been fortified by the addition of Tom Glavine. That time, sad to say, is past. He’s not what he was. He’s not what the Braves lack. He’d be more of what they already have.
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