By A.J. Hayes

In current baseball vernacular, "wearing it" refers to owning up to a hellacious slump, a shoddy performance or bone-headed play sans lame excuse.

"I threw like ass... basically," former Giants pitcher Sidney Ponson so elegantly put it following a horrible game a few seasons ago. That's a fine example of "wearing it."

Blaming a shipment of "soft" bats for a home run drought -- as Oakland slugger Jack Cust did this spring -- is most assuredly not "wearing it."

In the late '70s, much-maligned former Giants shortstop/futility icon Johnnie LeMaster, AKA "Bones," AKA "Johnnie Disaster," took "wearing it" to a whole new level.

In one game vs. the Montreal Expos in 1979, LeMaster "wore it" - literally.

A prototypical good field/no hit shortstop during his best days at the park, the super slender LeMaster was enduring a prolonged stretch of through-the-wickets fielding/don't-even-bother-stepping-into-the-box hitting that had everyone from little kids to blue-haired ladies at Candlestick Park calling for his scraggly '70s-style mustache.

Razzing LeMaster had become the official second language of the frozen concrete bowl by the freeway.

So without informing the higher ups in the San Francisco front office, LeMaster had his name plate removed from the back of his No. 10 Giants jersey and replaced simply with a three letter word: "Boo."

"It really caught everyone off guard, in fact when I walked to the plate that night I could hear manager Joe Altobelli say, 'Why does John have "Bob" on the back of his uniform?'

"That stunt cost me a $500 fine, but it was worth every penny. It won over some of the media and the fans really got a kick out of it," said LeMaster who was honored by the Giants last weekend as part of the club's season long 50th San Francisco Anniversary celebration.

It was the Paintsville, Kentucky resident's first visit to San Francisco's downtown ballpark.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Boo-yah! Johnnie LeMaster returns" »

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Posted by SFBG at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

By A.J. Hayes

Somewhere, maybe in a moldy gym locker or a clandestine liquor cabinet, a brilliant game plan for big league success has sat untouched for more than a quarter century.

Were talking about "Billy Ball," the late Billy Martin's blueprint for righting the ship of moribund baseball franchises. It was last used in Oakland in the early 1980s.

The A's were the last team of dubious talent that Martin managed to meld into winners. He took an Oakland club that had lost 109 games in 1979 and led them to the American League Championship Series within two seasons with essentially the same personnel.

Martin may have been a kook of momentous proportions, a guy who drank and fought like a pirate - a real pirate, not the Pittsburgh variety. But he knew how to light a fire under a ball club and get it back on the winning track.

Billy took four major league clubs with losing records (Minnesota, Detroit, Texas and Oakland) and turned them instantly into winners. He also increased attendance by his presence alone - and what percentage of ticket sales do you think current A's manager Bob Geren and Giants skipper Bruce Bochy are responsible for?

Employing a ramped up style that resembled sand-lot ball (some would prefer the term "bush league") Martin led clubs would blitz opponents by using everything from double steals and hidden ball tricks to literally falling down on the job.

"My favorite was the 'first and third play," recalled Shooty Babitt, an infielder on Martin's 1981 Oakland club. "Billy loved to steal home. So if he had runners on first and third would have a guy like Wayne Gross, who was probably the least athletic guy on the club, take a good lead off first and then suddenly fall down. Right, away and the pitcher would throw to first base and the guy at third would walk right in. We thought he was crazy when he told us to do that, but lo and behold we scored a few runs by doing that."

Once a particular recipe for success has worked in professional sports - Bill Walsh's West Coast offense, for example - other teams desperate for a winner will run it into the ground. So why it is that no one has adopted Martin's strategies?

One word: fear.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Billy Ball, where have you gone?" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 02:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By A.J. Hayes

Carbon dioxide, deforestation, and nitrous oxide all shoulder their share of the blame for Global Warming. But what about Lee Elia?

Now, you won't find Elia's name mentioned in any Al Gore lecture. He's not a greedy corporate bigwig, an eco terrorist, or a clueless oil tanker captain - just a curmudgeonly baseball lifer.

But 25 years ago this week, during a highly unsuccessful two-season stint managing the Chicago Cubs, Elia emitted the most extreme, paint-peeling meltdowns in the history of sports.

When he was done blasting away at Cubs fans with an obscenity-laced rant that included a jaw-dropping 36 F-bombs over the first three minutes, Elia surely had released enough green house gasses to liquidate massive mountain glaciers and multiply the thermal expansion of upper ocean layers from Pacifica to Antarctica. .

A quarter century later, Elia's diatribe still ranks as the No. 1 outburst in the history of sports - eclipsing Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy (I'm a man! I'm 40!"); Indianapolis Colts coach Jim Mora (Playoffs?! Are you kidding?! Playoffs?!) and any number of profanity laced diatribes by former Dodgers skipper Tommy Lasorda.

The Legend of Elia rant has grown so much over the years, that every April 29, sports radio broadcasters from coast- to- coast gather for a moment to celebrate "Lee Elia Day" - popping multi-generational copies of the tirade into their Monrantz tape decks and laughing hysterically.

After dealing with mounds of monotone sports clichés on a daily basis, Elia's rant allows beleaguered sound bite gathers a moment to smile. Obviously, because of Elia's unrestrained profanity, only carefully edited versions of Elia's adult content diatribe have ever made it to the public airwaves.

Now, thanks to the internet of course, Elia's diatribe can be heard in all its profane glory.

The hapless Cubs were off to a typical dreary start to their '83, settling into last place in the National League East place after a 4-3 loss to the Dodgers at Wrigley Field that afternoon.

As the Cubs exited the field and the 9,391 fans in attendance filed out of the grand stand, a couple of jerks pelted Chicago's Keith Moreland and Larry Bowa with stadium trash.

"About 85 percent of the (f-ing) world is working," Elia growled into the microphone of Chicago radio man Les Grobstein, one of a half dozen reporters to witness the rant first hand. "The other 15 come out here."

He was far from finished.
Moments later, Elia's season-long slow burn escalated into an inferno. He lit not only into the debris flinging morons, but each and every Cubs fan that had ever skipped school or work to take in a mid-week day game at the "Friendly Confines."

Continue reading "SPORTS: The F-in' ballgame" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By A.J. Hayes

With his shaggy blue-black hair, boyish good looks and slight frame, the Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum looks as if he stepped out of an audition for American Idol. He could also pass as a record store clerk, a college student or a wine steward.

The point is, Lincecum (he's listed at 5-foot-11, 170 pounds, but appears to be smaller) looks as if he could do anything for a living except play major league baseball.

But not only does the Bellevue, Washington native draw a nice check every two weeks from the Giants, the 23-year-old has quickly become the ace of San Francisco's staff and arguably most exciting hurler to matriculate through the orange & black's farm system since John "The Count" Monetfusco back in 1975.

Some in the media have nicknamed Lincecum, "The Franchise." We prefer (with apologies to Rick James) "Super Freak."

How else would you describe an average-sized dude expelling hardballs as if there's a howitzer attached to his right side? Whether it's from the torque generated from his "windmill" delivery or just unexplainable natural ability, Lincecum (lin-suh-COME) brings his pitches with markedly abnormal velocity.

That power pitching led to 150 strikeouts in 2007 over just 90 innings - tops among all rookies. Two seasons after he was selected as the 10th overall selection in the 2006 amateur draft, Lincecum has already lapped every player selected ahead of him, including No. 1 pick Luke Hochevar of Kansas City, who was bombed last weekend in Oakland, a day after Lincecum tossed seven shutout frames in a 3-0 Giants win at St. Louis.

With the victory, Lincecum solidified his position as the Giants "stopper," i.e. the pitcher you turn when you absolutely need a win or to halt a losing streak.

Lincecum has become even more of a complete pitcher this season. In 2007, the righty authored a 7-5 record and 4.00 ERA with basically a dazzling fastball and an overhand curve. This season he's introduced a darting slider and criminal change-up to his repertoire.

All that makes the recent news that the Giants brain-trust is seriously contemplating a move to an unheard of six-man starting rotation all that more disheartening.

Continue reading "Sports: Tim Lincecum, super freak" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

BY A.J. Hayes

Less blah.

Enough already, we get it. Go ahead, put the cap back on the Sharpie, and step away from the bus.

That's right, you, the graffitist/frustrated Giants fan who's been going around town doctoring the Giants advertisements on the back of Muni coaches- making the ad copy that initially read: "All Out. All Season," say instead: "All Outs. All Season."

Very funny. Ha, ha. ha. Ho, ho, ho and a bottle of rum. Actually we'll need a bottle of rum to numb the pain if the Giants get pinned with one more ugly 7-0 shutout.

It's been only a week, but we've seen enough. The Giants lineup is not working. What makes it scarier is that the 1985 Giants, the club that posted the worst record in San Francisco history - 62-100 - had a lineup (featuring Chili Davis, Jeffery Leonard, Bob Brenly) that was considerably better than the current team.

This year, Giants ads have promised a grittier club that hangs together win or lose.

And while, yes, the Giants have two potential pitching aces in Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum and a couple of exciting position players, including the daring and eminently watchable Eugenio Velez, will that be enough to keep an easily distracted fan base from hanging in there?

It won't do the Giants any good to work out any mid-season trades - who would they deal?

But it might not be a bad idea for the Giants to plant a scout in Hollywood.

That's where they might catch a glimpse of the banished Barry Bonds eating breakfast with Larry King or taking in a Tyler Perry movie premiere. Despite batting .276, with 28 homers and 66 RBI last season, no team wanted Bonds this spring.

Bonds is ready, willing and certainly able to play another season - and it should be with San Francisco. What better way for the club to celebrate its 50th Anniversary in San Francisco than by having one of the club's all-time greatest players knocking balls into the bay?

We say bring back San Francisco's favorite surly slugger.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Bring back Barry" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 05:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By A.J. Hayes

My name is Tony H. and I'm a fantasy baseball player.

There I said it.

Actually I haven't been an active participant in fantasy ball in more than a decade, but sometimes the urge to seek out "post-hype sleepers" and under-the-radar bargains in fantasy publications is so strong that I have to leave Barnes & Nobles immediately

Apparently, I will be a fantasy baseball player for life.

Evil?

It all started innocently enough back in 1993, when a co-worker introduced me to his in-house league. Figuring it was another way to put my absorption of all things baseball to use and earn some pocket cash at the same time, I showed up at the "draft" - held in a clandestine conference room on the Saturday morning before the start of the baseball season - with a rough idea of what I wanted my team to look like and three crisp twenties from the ATM.

I felt like a real big-league general manager at the draft, and the blueberry bagels weren't so bad either.

Being a Giants fan, my goal was to select as many San Francisco players as reasonably possible and then flesh out the rest of the squad with pre-inter-league play American Leaguers. That way, there would be no conflict of interest with my team and my team.

That first season I managed to land Barry Bonds to play the outfield and selected fellow -Giants Robby Thompson and Royce Clayton as my keystone combo. The rest of the squad was filled out with the likes of Joe Carter, Mo Vaughn, Lance Johnson and Paul O'Neill. I made one or two exceptions to my rule, selecting National League players such as catcher Joe Oliver, outfielder Bernard Gilkey and a couple of senior circuit pitchers including a youngish Curt Schilling and Steve Avery of the Braves.

When the season began I became ensconced in baseball like never before - raising in the early - pre-internet -- hours to scour the morning boxes and tabulate "my guys" total bases, their RBI output and stolen bases.

It made going to work a bit more fun, especially when I would pass one of my fellow fantasy players in the hall after Chuck Finley threw one of his league leading 13 complete games that season - that's a lot of extra points - or Tom Henke racked up another save.

But by mid-season, the fun turned into serious business. I blew a gasket when Felix Jose failed to live up to the hype with another 0-for-5 game and when Ben McDonald hit the skids after I inserted him back into my starting lineup.

The real life Giants meanwhile were having an amazing campaign in '93.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Fantasy baseball's dark side" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 06:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Everyone's getting rich off the NCAAs -- except the players

By A.J. Hayes

Played, not paid

Last week, Boston Red Sox players staged what had to be the most ludicrous wildcat strike in the history of labor relations. The entire Bosox team(sters) threatened not to board a plane bound for Japan for a series of games vs. the Oakland A's, unless club management, or major league baseball, or anyone else but the players themselves, forked over some serious cash.

Painting themselves as championing of the little guy, the Boston players said the trip was off unless each of the team's coaches, trainers and clubhouse personnel received the same $40,000 bonus that each of the players was to pocket for enduring the hardship of an all-expenses paid, first-class jaunt to Japan.

And they say politicians are out of touch with the average American wage earner.

To drive home their point, the players refused to take their positions for an exhibition game against the Toronto Blue Jays until the matter was settled, making paying fans sit on their hands for 90 minutes at Ft. Myers, Florida.

The world champs finally decided to play ball when MLB and the club agreed to split the cost of paying the support staff. Considering that the bloated Red Sox staff contained nearly 30 coaches, trainers and others last season, that figure came in somewhere in excess of $1 million.

Meanwhile, most sports fans across the nation - even those who know the clubs are traveling to Japan - could hardly give a damn about a few early season baseball games in Tokyo. When Boston and Oakland are done, they'll still have 160 more games to go.

Most sports fans across the nation are glued to their televisions watching athletes pour out their hearts and sweat in another sport - and receive not a penny. In fact, the players will be lucky to come away with a free t-shirt. It'll probably be a 50/50 blend too.

In case you don't own a television or haven't picked up a newspaper in the past couple of weeks, we're were in the midst of the NCAA basketball tournament, aka March Madness, aka the Big Cash Cow in Tube socks.

Every one remotely tied to the NCAAs, from the universities to CBS to the sports bars and the zillions of amateur bettors toting their cherished "brackets" will be racking in the dough this month.

Everyone is getting rich except for the one making it all possible - the players.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Real March Madne$$" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By A.J. Hayes

He hasn't made a basket catch since the early 1970s. He's not the best at remembering names. And his pride-and-joy godson has decamped the scene for good. But at age 76, is still the San Francisco Giants MVP - Most Valuable Personality.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Willie A(Mays)ing" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Giants suck. So do the A's. But it could be a fun season.

By A.J. Hayes

How’s this for sunny spring time forecast: for the first time since the mid-1980s, both the Giants and A’s will enter the major league season without a sliver of a hope of contending for a playoff slot.

Sad face?

In fact, it will take a minor miracle for both clubs to finish higher than last place.

But that doesn’t mean that the 2008 baseball campaign has to be a snooze-fest. There’s something appealing about a losing baseball team. Football and basketball are just unwatchable when they’re performed shabbily, but bad baseball can be a hoot.

The train-wreck 1962 expansion New York Mets who went 40-120 turned the bumbling Marv Throneberry and Choo Choo Coleman into flannel uniformed folk heroes. The Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox (until their recent World Series success) built up the most loyal fan bases in the game with their lovable losers flying in the wind like a prop-plane banner.

49ers fans, on the other hand, would just as soon forget this past splotchy season.

It’s something about the daily intimacy of baseball and the fact they the players have traditionally resembled normal humans – discounting the steroids era – that allows us to empathize. Baseball players are not covered up with helmets and pads, so we see the embarrassment when they bobble a pop-up the same way we might drop a jar of bread-and-butter pickles on our foot.

But baseball fans are not suckers, and not every lousy club is in a position to be celebrated.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Winning at losing" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 09:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By A.J. Hayes

It's been said every star athlete secretly wants to be a rock star, and vice versa. Unfortunately, some sports icons also want to be actors. And if you've seen late Raiders lineman John Matuszak's performance in "Caveman" or Shaquille O'Neal's in "Kazaam," you know why the Oscar is not named after former Cubs pitcher Oscar Zamora, or ex-Cleveland Indian Oscar Gamble (though he did sport an award-winning Afro), or even basketball Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson.

Rappin' genie with attitude!

For every believable performance (NBA star Ray Allen in "He Got Game") there are a dozen "star turns" that should convince every sports figure that they should stay between the white lines -- and not read any scripts.

In honor of the recent (and rather boring) Academy Awards, here's a random look at the worst performances by an athlete that made it to the silver screen.

Continue reading "And the worst sports Oscar goes to ..." »

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Posted by Marke B. at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By A.J. Hayes

Turn on cable television or AM radio any afternoon and you might be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the sports and political news programming. Whether it’s ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption or Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, it seems as if everyone is yelling with the fervor and conviction of a roided-up high school P.E. teacher.

Some political shows (Hardball) have sports inspired names and another (Countdown) is hosted by Keith Olbermann, who cut his broadcasting teeth inventing new catch phrases to describe home runs and field goals.

So considering that politics and sports are both populated by the same types of egomaniacs, we’ve decided to wed the three top remaining Presidential candidates with the Bay Area sports figures that best fits their persona.

McCain behind the straight talk?

John McCain and Don Nelson. Both the Warriors head coach and leading Republican nominee have seen great victories in their day, and have both have suffered their share of humility in their given professions. Though Nelson is one of the NBA’s all-time winning coaches, he’s never captured a NBA title and each coaching stop he’s has made has ended ignominiously, with invariably lawsuits flying after his departure.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Scoring votes -- the faceoff" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

By A.J. Hayes

Host Allen Ludden and regular panelist Larry Hovis, of Hogan Heroes fame, may have passed on ages ago, but look for the Liar’s Club

to make a big return to television on Wednesday.

This time the star will be none other than ace pitcher Roger Clemens, and his audience will be members of Congress and baseball fans desperately seeking closure to the steroids era.

Like a Clemens strikeout pitch, expect the untruthfulness to come fast and furious.

Despite being sworn to tell the truth, Clemens will do anything to get around the accusations that he used performance-enhancing drugs to take his baseball career to a higher level at an age when pitchers have traditionally moved to mop-up roles.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Pants on fire" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By AJ Hayes

We don't make it a habit of rooting for New York teams, but the Giants' improbable upset of New England on Sunday night was fantastic. Not only did it result in one of the best games in Super Bowl history, but it managed to wipe some of the smugness off the face of Patriots coach Bill Belichick. A sore loser and a cheat, Belichick is one of the more odorous fellows in sports today.

It also ended the talk once and for all that Tom Brady is the equal of Joe Montana. Brady may be a nice guy and a swell quarterback, but Montana saved the Super Bowl for his brightest moments, not his stumbles.

On to more important matters: Super Bowl commercials. (You can view them all here.)

Our personal favorite was the stylish Doritos ad in which a suave vermin hunter lays out half a cheesy chip on a mouse trap and sits back and waits, munching on the rest of the bag. Suddenly the wall explodes and a huge costumed rat appears, pummeling the tuxedoed hunter with a right/left combination. We laughed, even though the ad's been around for a while, it turns out.

Now for the least funny spots.

Salesgenie. It's not clear what a Salesgenie is or does, but its animated ad mocking Indian accents makes us want to stay clear of it.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Super Bowl upsets, ads cause nausea" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 02:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By A.J. Hayes

Thomas Wolfe may have been exaggerating when he wrote "You Can't Go Home Again." But in the case of basketball player Chris Webber that phrase should be taken as gospel.

Chris Webber, earlier

Especially when it comes to a possible return to the Warriors, Webber's initial NBA club. When Webber forced his way off the Warriors in the fall of 1994, he just didn't leave the franchise and team's dedicated fan base in the lurch. He dumped a gallon of gasoline on the shag carpet and lit a match.

But here we are more than a dozen years later and there is serious talk of a Warriors and Webber reunion. But before the Warriors make that move we implore Golden State to take Amy Winehouse's advice and say "No, No, No."

The current Warriors, with Baron Davis and Stephen Jackson leading a "shoot-and-ask-questions-later" barrage are currently the most entertaining and only winning pro sports team in Northern California. But today's W's still have a ways to go in matching the excitement level generated by the Warriors clubs of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Led by fish-tie-wearing Coach Don Nelson in his first tenure as Warriors coach, those Warriors reinvented NBA basketball in the Bay Area. Led by Timmy Hardaway, Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin (AKA Run-TMC), those Warriors clubs put on awesome scoring displays every time they took the hardwood, selling out the Coliseum Arena on a nightly basis and winning a couple of league scoring titles in the process.

Warrior's fans ate it up like popcorn, or more accurately free pizza, which they won every time Golden State scored 120 or points in a game, which was frequently.

Despite a high entertainment value, the Warriors of those days lacked the presence of a great big man to move them deep into the playoffs. But that all changed in 1993 when the Warriors managed to draft Webber, the collegiate superstar who led Michigan to the NCAA championship game in '93.

Continue reading "SPORTS: The return of C-Web is a bad idea" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

And why isn’t he speaking up against golf’s racism?

By A.J. Hayes

Tiger's not talking

For a sport that demands precious silence from its gallery , why is it that pro golf’s shot callers behave like a boisterous drunks every time they are faced with the fact that the sport just might be a tad lacking in racial tolerance within its infrastructure?

The latest racially charged calamity to soil the sport began about two weeks ago when an obscure Golf Channel announcer named Kelly Tilghman proclaimed that the only hope young golfers have in beating the great Tiger Woods was “lynch him in an alley.”

While it was a bizarre statement to make – who uses the term “lynch” so casually in regards to an African-American? – most people, including Woods himself, gave Tilgman the benefit of the doubt that didn’t make the statement with race in mind.

After she apologized she was given a two week suspension.

Then last week, Golfweek magazine joined Tilgman in the sand trap when it ran a picture of a noose on its cover to illustrate a story about the Tilgman. The cover line read: “Caught in a Noose: Tilghman slips up, and Golf Channel can’t wriggle free.”

Of course anyone who isn’t submersed in the world of golf 24 hours a day would know how blatantly offensive such imagery is. Eventually the real world caught up with the magazine and a change was made in their editorial hierarchy.

This fiasco is just the latest racially charged episode to hit golf. If it isn’t the controversy over golf course that holds the Masters Tournament that forbids women from being members, to the racially insensitive remarks about Woods made by golfer Fuzzy Zoeller, golf has a real problem with race.

Compounding the problem is, it never seems to learn from its mistakes.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Where’s Tiger Woods?" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If MLB is serious about contraction, Oakland could lose its team

By A.J. Hayes

Several seasons ago, before performance-enhancing drugs started dominating baseball's off-the-field news, an equally troubling situation was starting to take hold in the perpetually hand-wringing sport - contraction.

In 2001, back when team owners claim they had no clue about baseball's growing steroids problem, Commissioner Bud Selig floated his scheme to eliminate two major league clubs - his choices at the time were Montreal and Minnesota - to help stave off baseball revenue problems.

For any number of reasons, the contraction plan fizzled and has rarely been heard from since.

But now in 2008 don't be surprised if talk returns to putting one or more of the game's 30 clubs on the chopping block - if for no other reason than to divert talk from exactly what pharmaceutical products were injected into Roger Clemens' buttocks.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Are the A's history?" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

By A.J. Hayes

After hurling fastballs, screwballs, and more than his fair share of bean balls at major league hitters over the last 25 baseball seasons, an impassioned Roger Clemens had no trouble knocking 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace’s lollipop questions out of the park Sunday night.

Roger Clemens: Speaking freely?

“Its hogwash,” Clemens said in response to how a former associate could have fingered him as a steroids user in the Mitchell Report. "Twenty-four, 25 years, Mike. You'd think I'd get an inch of respect. An inch."

To that, Wallace gave an approving nod.

You may have been watching the 60 Minutes broadcast asking yourself, ‘why does Clemens get to play paddy cake with old’ prune face, while Barry Bonds is an unlucky verdict away from pounding license plates?’

Easy: public relations. Clemens cares what people think about him and his baseball record. While Bonds could give a rat’s ass what fans and especially the media thinks about him.

Continue reading "SPORTS: Clemens vs. Bonds in the public arena" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith battled for the Super Bowl at Dolphin Stadium, but black coaches are still very much in the minority

By A.J. Hayes

If you’re a major college football institution, tis’ the season to get filthy rich.

Over the next week, millions of American football fans will be glued to their sofas and easy chairs watching an endless string of bowl games, and the schools will rake in the cash.

In between the beer and razor blade commercials, fans will comment on the exciting play, marvel at the colorful pageantry and debate who really is No. 1 in the nation.

But how many of these viewers will realize that while a great percentage of the amateur athletes competing in these cash cow contests are black, each head coach to a man will be white.

Apparently not too many. If there were, these football factories would at least be working to fix the discrepancy. Right now they appear to care not one bit.

According to the Black Coach’s Association, African-Americans currently comprise 50.8 of football players at the 124 Division I universities. But the number of black head coaches at this school is a pitiful five: Buffalo’s Turner Gill, Washington’s Tyrone Willingham, Kansas State’s Ron Prince, and Miami’s Randy Shannon.

The diversity figures at secondary athletic division schools aren’t any better. Just seven of the 119 division 1-A, non-historically black schools, have minority coaches. Four of the 122 Division 1-AA football coaches are black.

And its not like these schools are playing coy, even with pressure applied by the Black Coaches Assoction, two colleges, Ole Miss and Texas A & M recently didn’t even bother to search out black candidates for lip service interviews before giving the high paying slots to Mike Sherman and Houston Nutt, respectively. .

This isn’t just a problem in the Deep South where deep- pocketed alumni call the shots. At the start of the current football season the Pac 10 had two black coaches Tyrone Willingham at Washington and Karl Durrell at UCLA, by the end of the season that total was halved when durrell was dumped despite producing a winning season.

Some have suggested that black athletes boycott the schools that refuse to give minority coaches a fair shake. That would certainly get the point home, buy in the end that would only penalize the athletes. Universities especially state run school must institute a criterion that schools getting public funding consider and hire a diverse range of candidates – including those who mirror the makeup of their sport.

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Posted by Tim Redmond at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)