Steve Williams taking the low road; Odds and ends

Tweet

A couple of weeks ago in a column for Golfchannel.com I suggested that the title of the book Steve Williams was proposing to write should be, “Somebody Had to Carry the Bag.” I have now revised the title. The book should be called, “The Low Road ALWAYS Taken.”

Let’s give old Stevie some credit. He did the impossible: Turned Tiger Woods into a semi-sympathetic figure for at least a couple of days. Some people have said he should have turned down CBS’s request for a post-round interview after his new man, Adam Scott, cruised to an impressive four-stroke victory at The WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

I had no problem with CBS asking to talk to him or in Williams talking. He was clearly part of the story: His split with Woods had been much talked about (mostly by Williams) since it happened and the fact that his new player won in the first week he was officially his full time caddie while Woods was struggling along to a 37th place finish in his first week back since May, was clearly a story.

Now, I’ve been around Williams enough to know he’s not stupid. Obnoxious, yes. Arrogant beyond belief, yes. Rude…You get the picture. But stupid? No. And he’s talked to the media enough in recent years that the notion that he was overwhelmed by it all doesn’t play. He said what he wanted to say; what he had planned to say. Let’s remember he repeated the whole thing a few minutes later behind the green talking to the rest of the media.

His message was clear: F--- you Tiger. Look, everyone gets upset about being fired and you can certainly make the case that Woods had no actual cause to fire Williams. He’s clearly a very good caddie and if Woods was going to fire him it should have been years ago when he was breaking cameras and screaming profanities at fans and publicly abusing Phil Mickelson.

He didn’t. This was a change made for change sake because Woods is struggling and perhaps because the relationship between the two men had cooled since Woods’ fall from grace almost two years ago. Williams had a right to feel wronged….Except for this: Caddies are like baseball managers. Ninety-nine percent of the time they are hired to be fired. Bruce Edwards with Tom Watson was an exception and so is Jim Mackay with Mickelson. There are a few others, but not many.

Williams knows that. He also knows that working for Woods made him rich beyond his wildest dreams even if the ending was graceless—whether it happened in person as Woods claims or by phone as Williams claims. When David Feherty practically fell on top of himself trying to ask a question in a way that would set Williams up to say something nice about Woods while taking his own post-victory bow, Williams wanted no part of it.

He talked about this being the greatest win of his career and the greatest week of his career. The 13 majors with Woods never happened. Then he went into a long diatribe about what a great front-runner HE was. My God, how many shots exactly did he hit on Sunday? Was Scott even there?

As Jim Nantz said when it was over, “wow.” Exactly—wow. In a moment of triumph, Steve Williams left no doubt about just who he is for millions to witness.

Oh, one more note on Stevie’s week. On Wednesday he was told by a PGA Tour official that he would need to abandon his habit of yanking off his caddie bib on the 18th green. He’d been doing it for years to show off the corporate logo he’s paid to wear by an oil company. Because The Tour didn’t want to mess with Tiger, he was allowed to do it in spite of complaints from sponsors—who want THEIR logo on TV in return for the $8 million they pony up annually—and from other caddies who had to follow the rule that says the bibs stay on until you are in the scoring area.

Gracious as ever, Stevie growled something about the fact that, “the sponsors have never done anything for ME.” Really? Does he think the huge purses that he got a cut of from all of Tiger’s winnings the last 12 years came from the heavens or from those sponsors? When that was pointed out to him, he whined about how uncomfortable the bibs were. Only then did he agree to keep his on—because if he didn’t, his new boss would get fined and that probably wasn’t the best way to start a new job.

I reported this on Golf Channel on both Thursday and Friday. Apparently Nick Faldo, who WORKS for Golf Channel some of the time doesn’t watch the network very much and neither do his researchers at CBS because when Faldo saw Stevie still wearing the bib on Sunday afternoon he said, “Well, it used to be Steve’s tradition to take off his bib on the 18th green. Maybe he’s starting a new tradition.”

Yeah, that’s it, he’s starting a new tradition.

******

Some odds and ends on different subjects:

Jose Reyes must really be hurt this time. Usually the Mets announce that he is ‘day-to-day,’ when he gets hurt and then put him on the DL two weeks later. This time he went straight to the DL. All kidding aside: Terry Collins deserves some manager-of-the-year consideration given the way he has held this team together with David Wright and Reyes and now Daniel Murphy (who was having an excellent year) hurt for long stretches; the trades of Francisco Rodriguez and Carlos Beltran and Johan Santana not throwing a single pitch…

Gordon Gee of Ohio State is one of the 50 NCAA Presidents invited to the ‘summit,’ on big-time college athletics called by the NCAA. Isn’t that a little bit like asking Gee’s former coach Jim Tressel to chair a committee on transparency when dealing with a difficult situation?...

Someone asked recently why more of my books aren’t on tape. Good question: All my kids books are available on tape in their entirety. I am blessed to work with great people at Knopf. The non-fiction books, especially the more recent ones, are hit and miss largely because the people I’ve dealt with at Hachette Audio seem to be more interested in saving a few dollars on production costs than in putting out a quality product. To be honest, I stopped dealing with them about six books ago because it wasn’t worth the effort…

Finally: A belated Happy Birthday to my pal Jackson Diehl, who is the Deputy Editor of The Washington Post’s editorial page. Even though we last agreed political in, I think, 1979, we’ve been friends forever, dating to our days working in The Post’s Prince George’s County bureau in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Most important, Jackson is aging up and I fully expect to see him swim the 200 fly at next spring’s short course nationals…

Tiger Woods and the leveraging of ‘access’; Blog comment helps change upcoming book title

It was 42 years ago today that man landed on the moon. I am—for both better and worse—old enough to remember the day vividly. I remember Walter Cronkite wiping his brow and saying, ‘man on the moon,’ in disbelief and I remember my father saying we would tell our children and grandchildren about this someday. I’ve told my kids about it on a number of occasions. They look at me and say something like, ‘okay fine, can you leave us alone now so we can go back online.’

C’est la vie.

Of course three months after Neill Armstrong took those historic first steps, the Mets won the World Series. Now THAT was impressive. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Tom Seaver, Cleon Jones, Tommie Agee—they are all historic figures to me.

Where have you gone Rod Gasper, I turn my lonely eyes to you.

Okay, so that was a bunch of meaningless drivel to start the day but the moon landing and the Mets first World Series title (of two as all Mets fans know) remain seminal events in my life.

So was covering my first British Open—which was at Royal St. George’s in 1985. Look, no one is ever going to mistake the place for St. Andrews or Muirfield but if you didn’t enjoy Darren Clarke’s victory on Sunday then you probably shouldn’t be wasting your time watching golf.

If you’re reading this you no doubt know Clarke’s backstory and the genuine tragedy he’s dealt with. Plus, he’s just a decent guy, someone who is about as close to normal as the multi-millionaires who play the game at its highest levels can be. I know all the Tiger lovers don’t want to hear this but I think golf is heading into an era that will truly be fun.

You can love Tiger Woods as much as you want or you can be like me and not like him but recognize his brilliance. Either way, it is impossible to attach the word fun to his 15 years of dominance. Yes, you can say it was FUN to watch him pull off impossible shots but there certainly wasn’t any fun in the man. He loved to win, he loved to make money but the only thing that was fun to him was winning trophies and cashing checks. It was part of his greatness.

The newer stars aren’t going to be as good as Woods was at his best. Not even close. There’s only one player in history who belongs in the same sentence with Woods and that’s Jack Nicklaus.

That said, Woods held his sport hostage—and to some degree still does—for 15 years. It wasn’t that he won so much it was that everything had to be HIS way. Remember those bogus night matches he played in as part of his Disney contract a few years ago? Technically, those events were run by The PGA Tour. When Steve Williams showed up wearing shorts one year—this was before caddies were allowed to wear shorts on tour—a tour official told Woods that Williams had to put on long pants.

Woods told him in no uncertain terms that not only would Williams wear shorts but if Tim Finchem didn’t like it he might just go play in Europe the following year.

Forget the fact that the Tour should have allowed caddies to wear shorts years ago—heck, they should let players wear shorts if they want to—or that Woods was right to stand up for his caddie in that situation. The point is this: The instant Woods threatened to go to Europe, even in a brief moment of anger, the Tour backed down faster than I can eat an order of McDonald’s french fries.

Woods bullied the media constantly. Some TV announcers were allowed to interview him, others were not. At different times he boycotted Peter Kostis and Jimmy Roberts. Their networks dutifully sent someone else to talk to Woods. People were constantly telling me that they let Woods dictate terms of interviews or backed off when his people got angry about something because, ‘we don’t want to lose our access to him.’

WHAT ACCESS? To get him to stop long enough to say nothing? Seriously, think about this for a second: When was the last time Tiger Woods said something that was really interesting. I’m not talking about announcing he’s playing or not playing a tournament or admitting he cheated on his wife—which everyone knew by the time he talked about it anyway. I’m talking about saying something that gave you some insight into him, into his game, into his view of the world.

Never happened. Not because he wasn’t capable, he’s more than capable but because Tiger Woods never gives away anything. That’s the way his father taught him and he learned his lessons well.

Anyway, this isn’t meant to be another anti-Tiger diatribe. I’m really criticizing all the people who simply took it from him—including Finchem—all those years. That said, in a sense they had no choice. He was that good and that powerful.

And, for the record, for those of you who think I criticize Woods because he wouldn’t talk to me for a book or one-on-one at some point, I swear to God that has nothing to do with it. I just don’t like the way he treats people. And, for the record, the ONE time I asked him to sit down and talk one-on-one he said yes. If you want details, well, read my next book. (Hey, I feel like an ESPN guy now: “After the break, we’ll tell you the real reason Tiger Woods and John Feinstein don’t get along.” Only problem is there is no real reason but the story about the one-on-one is kind of interesting).

A few other notes today on random topics. First—foremost—THANK YOU to the poster who sarcastically pointed out that the title of my new book was the same as titles used in the past by (among others) Spike Lee and Christine Brennan. Bad title searching on my part because I never knew. I could live with sharing a title with Spike Lee. At least he’s brilliant. Christine Brennan, not so much. So, since there was still time to change the title, it’s been changed. The new title is: “One on One: Behind The Scenes With The Greats of The Game.” There are also a number of non-greats in the book but what the heck. So, thanks for the tip. I was clueless.

To the Golf Channel poster who responded to my tongue-in-cheek column saying that the key to Tiger’s comeback would be hiring Chubby Chandler (some apparently missed the humor) by pointing out that I’m not exactly thin: Ya think? Thanks for pointing it out. As if I don’t look in the mirror every morning and moan out loud. But I HAVE lost six pounds this summer. Only about 25 more to go. Finally swimming regularly again. Not fast, but regularly.

Questions on this month in sports: NBA, horse racing, UCONN, tennis and the Mets

Most days when I write I present answers—which readers are free to agree or disagree with. Today, I present questions, which readers are free to answer or not answer.

Question 1: Do you care about The NBA playoffs? The ratings would seem to indicate that a lot of you do. Certainly having The Miami Heat playing the role of villains is helping a good deal along with the emergence of genuine young superstars like Derrick Rose and Kevin Durant. The saga of Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd and The Mavericks is also worthy of attention. And, when I have watched on occasion, the quality of the games has been better than in recent memory.

That said, I still have trouble really caring. I certainly don’t care about The Heat—although like a lot of people LeBron James can’t lose enough to make me happy. I recognize his brilliance, he’s an absolute physical freak, but I simply can’t put The Decision behind me even though I don’t live in Cleveland. I think he took the easy way out and I have trouble respecting that.

There’s also the issue of when the games are played. Afternoon games have basically ceased to exist and the way these series are being dragged out makes me crazy. The way the first three games of Bulls-Heat was scheduled I was beginning to wonder if David Stern had a secret plan to replace the NFL by playing once a week. Three games in eight days? Someone said that James might be a free agent again before this spring’s playoffs are over.

The late night thing, I realize, is just my problem. On school mornings I have to be up at 6 to get my son out of bed and on the road. There’s just no way I can stay up until the end of a 9 o’clock game. Plus, they’re often not 9 o’clock games. The other night I checked in on Bulls-Heat before I went to bed and the first QUARTER was just ending at 10 o’clock. Who is in charge here, Bud Selig?

Question 2: Are you like me in that you don’t care that much about horse racing but you’d love to see a Triple Crown winner?

My knowledge of horse-racing is slightly better than my knowledge of fashion. I can name most Kentucky Derby winners of the last 40 years and a lot of Preakness and Belmont winners too. I almost always watch The Triple Crown races although I skip the two hours of pre-race features. Put ‘em in the gate and run.

I know there have been star horses in recent years and that a lot of people take The Breeders Stakes very seriously. But like the golf fan who only watches Tiger Woods—and thus isn’t really a golf fan—I am more a Triple Crown fan and I’d like to see a horse accomplish it again sometime soon. I DO remember The Affirmed-Alydar classics of 33 years ago. Who thought then that no one would win another Triple Crown for 33 years? Heck, weren’t there three in six years (Secretariat ’73; Seattle Slew ’77) at that point? Yes. But if you go back and check—which I did—it had been 25 years since Citation accomplished the feat when Secretariat did it in 1973.

Think how iconic those horses all became. Horse-racing needs an icon.

Question 3: Did anyone notice that Connecticut was just stripped of two basketball scholarships for failing to meet NCAA minimum academic standards?

Who would have thought that U-Conn would end up as the symbol of all that is wrong with the NCAA? As I’ve said before I like Jim Calhoun a lot personally. I think he’s a great coach and the rebuilding job he did when he took over U-Conn in the 1980s is one of the greatest of all time. But where is the line drawn? U-Conn admitted to major recruiting violations and the NCAA slapped their wrist so damn hard that they were still wincing collectively while collecting the national championship trophy. Now the school has failed to meet academic minimums set so low by the NCAA it is almost impossible not to meet them. Any Connecticut fans out there wondering what is going on? Of course not—they just had a parade.

That’s the rule in college athletics: win a national title and you can do anything you want to. Go 5-22 the way Brad Greenberg did at Radford this past season and get nailed by the NCAA for about as minor a violation as you can imagine (taking an ineligible player on the road to WATCH games during Thanksgiving and Christmas rather than leave him home alone on campus) and you get fired.

Question 4: If The French Open is being played in Paris and no one outside the Bois de Bologne really cares, is it really being played?

Seriously folks, I know tennis junkies are agog about Novak Djokovic’s winning streak and certainly if he ends up playing Rafael Nadal there will be interest but beyond that does anyone care? There’s not a single woman in the draw anyone outside of family, agent and friends really wants to watch play and no American man has been a contender in Paris since Andre Agassi and Jim Courier moved on to the hit-and-giggle world. Does anyone remember the days of Evert-Navratilova; Graf-Seles; McEnroe-Lendl or Agassi-Courier? For that matter where have you gone Michael Chang, our nation turns its lonely clay-filled eyes to you.

The only reason to watch The French Open this week and next is if you have Tennis Channel and you can watch Mary Carillo—who told ESPN to take a hike last fall—explain the game as only she can.

Question 5: Why oh why do I torture myself, even for 10 minutes, listening to the morning pitchmen? One reason is that The Sports Junkies seem to always be in commercial when I’m in the car, and I mean for the entire 10 minutes.

This morning my friend Jayson Stark was on. His is usually one of the few listenable bits on the show if the two pitchmen will SHUT UP with their fake bickering long enough to let him talk. This morning though, Jayson was talking about Mets owner Fred Wilpon’s comments about some of his players in this week’s New Yorker.

Wilpon was—at most—mildly critical of some of his stars. He said he made a mistake signing Carlos Beltran (for the record, Beltran, when healthy has been one of the Mets BETTER signings: Can you say Oliver Perez? Jason Bay? Pedro—one good year on a five-year deal—Martinez?) and that he wasn’t going to give Jose Reyes a “Carl Crawford contract.” David Wright—according to WIlpon—is a very good player but not a franchise player.

First of all, everything Wilpon said is true. The mistakes he’s made go well beyond those three players and are too numerous to list here. (Yes, I’m a frustrated Mets fan). But Jayson, who is one of the few real reporters ESPN has, felt the need to imply that Jeffrey Toobin, who wrote The New Yorker piece, got these comments from Wilpon because WIlpon didn’t realize he was being quoted when he said what he said. One of the pitchmen chimed in to say Wilpon just thought he was, ‘schmoozing,’ when he made the comments.

Oh come on fellas. This reminds me of the time when I was sent to John Riggins’ house in Lawrence, Kansas in 1980 to ask him why he wasn’t at Redskins training camp. He had refused to talk to anyone so my boss sent me out there to try to talk to him. After saying repeatedly he had nothing to say, Riggins finally started talking and answered several questions. Later, when several regular Redskins reporters asked him why he had talked to me—a complete stranger—he said he thought we were talking off the record.

Really? Did he think I flew to Lawrence, Kansas because I was personally curious about his holdout? Did Wilpon think that Toobin came out and spent hours and hours with him because he really wanted to know what he thought about Carlos Beltran. It is worth noting that WILPON has not used this excuse.

So, I ask one more time: Why or why do I do this to myself?

John Sterling, Suzyn Waldman, Cashman, Steinbrenner and Torre thoughts; Playoff baseball coming up

I had a long car ride yesterday from DC to Atlanta (If a Tour Championship falls in the forest and Tiger isn’t playing it did it really happen?) and, as I always do I spent a lot of time on the phone before it got dark and I could begin to pick up ballgames on the radio.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: it is amazing how fast the time passes when I’m spinning the dial from game-to-game in the car; even if some of the games are meaningless (as in Mets-Marlins). Two of the games I picked up were very meaningful: Yankees-Rays and Braves-Phillies.

Listening to the Yankees is always entertaining. As I’ve said before I like both John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman personally and Suzyn works as hard as anyone in the business to try to know what is going on in the clubhouse she covers. That said, listen to the two of them wax poetic about George Steinbrenner and the ceremony unveiling his monument was almost fall down funny. (BTW, did anyone else notice that Steinbrenner’s plaque is about four times bigger than any of the others in Monument Park? Actually, I’m not sure why they need a monument at all, the new stadium IS the monument he built to himself).

So John and Suzyn are going on about how moving the ceremony was and how tastefully it was handled and how great it was to see Joe Torre and Don Mattingly back in Yankee Stadium. I wondered for a second if either of them had mentioned Torre’s name on the air since 2007 but then realized I was being silly. I think. Then I wondered this: If Joe Girardi decides at the end of the season that the Cubs really are his dream job—there are some around the Yankees who believe it will happen; others say absolutely no way—and goes to Chicago would Brian Cashman bring Torre back for a farewell tour?

I understand the chances are at least 100-to-one. Torre’s book (which Tom Verducci wrote and reported brilliantly) burned some serious bridges between himself and the Steinbrenner family. Or so it would seem. Yogi Berra didn’t set foot inside Yankee Stadium for close to 20 years. Steinbrenner was famous for firing people—most notably Billy Martin but others too—and then making up with them and bringing them back.

Brian Cashman isn’t Steinbrenner. My guess is he’s more of a grudge holder and he felt burned by Torre’s book. But he’s also pretty smart and, if Girardi decided to leave and there’s no other eye-popping candidate (is there?—certainly not on the coaching staff and if you think Bobby Valentine is a good idea you should, well, work for the Mets) maybe he would sit down with Torre?

Highly unlikely but still worth a thought or two as I-85 winds its way through South Carolina. As my mind was wandering I was brought back to reality by Suzyn, who was still going on about Steinbrenner.

“Do you know what Curtis Granderson said to me after the game last night?” she said to John in a hushed tone.

“What,” John prompted in an equally hushed tone.

“He said,” Suzyn said, pausing for dramatic effect, “’I wish I’d known him.’”

Okay, now I was almost into a tree driving off the road. Really? Curtis Granderson is a bright guy—if you listen to him for five minutes you’ll know that. Surely, if he thought about that, he might restate his position. If Steinbrenner was still running the Yankees now how do you think he would have reacted when Austin Jackson was hitting something like .350 in June and Granderson, who the Yankees traded Granderson to get, was hitting .200? It would have been great. “My baseball people said Granderson would hit 30 home runs, drive in 100 runs and steal 30 bases? What were they thinking?” Granderson might have been traded to Kansas City at the All-Star break for a middle relief pitcher.

Steinbrenner would have had George Costanza’s father on the phone screaming, “Curtis Granderson for Austin Jackson, what were you thinking?!”

So let’s be real about Steinbrenner, okay? We’ve all heard the stories since his death about his acts of kindness and I don’t doubt them. When I hear them though I’m reminded of my first conversation with Dan Snyder, who called me years ago to tell me I shouldn’t be so critical of him.

This is how it went:

“Are you being critical of me because you have something against Children’s Hospital?”

“WHAT? What in the world are you talking about?”

“Well, you know, I’m on the board of Children’s Hospital and I raise a LOT of money for them so I thought maybe you had a problem with them so you’re turning that on me.”

(I swear to God I’m not making this up).

“First of all Dan, I think Children’s Hospital is a great place. My son had hernia surgery there and they were fabulous, start to finish. Second, if he hadn’t ever been there why in the world would I rip someone for raising money for a hospital—especially one devoted to kids?”

Long pause as he thinks of his next move.

“Well, you probably don’t know how much money I give to charity.”

“Dan, I honestly don’t CARE how much money you give to charity. You’re a rich guy, you SHOULD give a lot of money to charity and then NOT brag about it. Either way, it has nothing to do with what you do as an owner or how you treat people.”

I think I’d say the exact same thing about Steinbrenner. I’m not saying he’s Snyder; the major difference besides the fact that Steinbrenner did finally learn to let his baseball people actually run things after his second suspension from baseball, is that Steinbrenner did feel badly when he behaved badly and tried to do something about. Snyder still thinks he should be allowed to scream at people because he gives money to charity.

The Yankees won 7-3 which is good because I thought John and Suzyn were going to go down and lecture Phil Hughes right on the mound about handling an early 5-0 lead if he didn’t get his act together. The Phillies also won, leaving the Braves scuffling to try to get a wildcard berth. I truly hope they do even though I think the Padres are a great story because I’m a Bobby Cox fan and I’d like to see him go out with a playoff team, not a team that led most of the season and didn’t make it to postseason.

The problem right now is their starting pitching is either hurt or struggling. On the other hand if I had to pick one team I like in postseason it would be the Phils. They’ve been hurt all year and now they’re the hottest team in the game. The team I’d like to see win is the Twins. I love the way they run their team; I can’t wait to see the new ballpark in person someday soon and Joe Mauer is just SO good.

Here’s hoping his knee is okay. Oh, and here’s hoping the Yankees don’t hire Torre and the Mets do. They might even play a September game next season worth listening to if that happens.

Sports, for me, is a companion; Ivan Lendl; Working on new book – reader suggestions on it are welcome

The other night while I was watching the Cubs—minus Lou Piniella—maul the Nationals—minus Stephen Strasburg—my wife walked in, glanced at the television set and said to me: “Is there ever a day in your life where you say to yourself, ‘I just don’t want anything to do with sports?’

The question was semi-rhetorical but I got the point. Here’s the answer: No. Some might call it an addiction. Others might point out—correctly—that I need to track sports on a daily basis because of my job. But that’s really not it. In fact, in my 20s when I didn’t cover sports, I probably went to more games and watched more games than I do now. (Children are a factor in that too).

Sports, for me and I suspect many others, is a companion. On almost any day, regardless of the time of year, no matter what else might be going on in your life, sports is there. Sometimes just checking scores can provide escape from either the dullness of everyday life or the pressures of everyday life. As I’ve written before, I still vividly remember how happy I was to be able to watch Mets-Brewers highlights on the day of my heart surgery (even though the Mets lost) in part because I was alive to watch them but in part because they were a reminder that there were going to be games to watch during my recovery period at home.

I needed to know that. So perhaps I am addicted.

If so, there can be worse addictions. I don’t gamble on sports; never have and never wanted to. I get emotional about sports but not so much about who wins and who loses but who has a story worth telling. I guess in that sense, given what I do, I am different than a lot of people. That’s not to say I don’t care at all about ‘my,’ teams anymore. I still roll my eyes at the mediocrity of the Mets (not to mention their doctors) and, as history has proven, I can get wound up about Navy football. Army football too, as a matter of fact.

More often though, it is about individuals. That’s why I laugh when others in my business claim to be ‘objective.’ I make no such claims. Those posters who rip me every time I criticize Tiger Woods are right about one thing: I don’t like him. What they’re wrong about is when they speculate that it has something to do with him not talking to me (he doesn’t talk to anyone one-on-one except on TV to promote himself in some way or if he’s being paid—as Golf Digest does—for the time). Tiger has a perfect right not to speak to me. I was the first guy to criticize his dad publicly and he took that personally. As I’ve told him, I get that. What I don’t like about him is the way he treats people—whether it is kids seeking autographs; my colleagues asking reasonable questions or anyone NOT doing something FOR him. (That’s an Earl lesson by the way, do nothing for free).

That said, I almost gagged yesterday when a gossip columnist from The New York Post asked him TWICE if he still loved Elin. First of all, the question is irrelevant. Second, when he clearly ducked it (legitimately) the first time why the hell ask it a second time?

He started out this morning in his first round—first guy on the tee at 7:10 am because of his FedEx Cup ranking—by birdieing four of his first seven holes. That will start the, ‘Tiger’s back,’ stories again. He might very well win this week. Heck, he might even win the FedEx Cup. But it will still be a lost year in his mind because he didn’t win a major.

Anyway, back to individuals I’ve liked and disliked. Tonight, I’m having dinner with Ivan Lendl, who I covered extensively when I was The Washington Post’s tennis writer and when I wrote, ‘Hard Courts,’ back in 1991. I’m starting research on a book that will be keyed to the 25th anniversary of ‘A Season on the Brink,’ and I’m going back to talk to a lot of the people I’ve met along the way who I found either interesting or fun or challenging. The number one test for me in deciding who to track down is simple: How many times have people said to me, ‘so what became of ------.’ (If anyone has ideas or suggestions I’d love to hear them).

That means Chris Spitler, the unofficial hero of, ‘The Last Amateurs,’ will be in the book and so will quite a few players from ‘A Civil War,’—among, I hope, many others.

Lendl certainly qualifies. We had a very combustible relationship. I was very hard on him at times. He had a tendency to lose from ahead in big matches early in his career—particularly against John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. He turned that around completely when he came from two sets down against McEnroe in The French Open final in 1984 (McEnroe got into a fracas with the umpire in the third set and let it get to him) to win. From that point on he became a great competitor in big matches.

We battled often. When George Bush (the first) was pushing as Vice President to waive the five-year waiting period for citizenship so Lendl could play Davis Cup for the U.S. I was very much against it and said (wrote) so. Lendl saw it as a shot—which it really wasn’t, I just didn’t think you pushed aside the law in the name of winning a tennis competition—and we had it out a few times.

One night, after he had won a tight match from Connors in Washington, he was asked about a third set incident in which he had slammed his racquet.

“Well,” he said. “I figure no matter what I do John Feinstein is going to rip me so why not slam my racquet?”

It was a funny line but he wasn’t being funny. Eventually, because Lendl is at heart a good guy, we talked things out, agreed to disagree and, if you read, ‘Hard Courts,’ you can tell he cooperated with me on the book. When I tracked him down (with the help of one of the blog’s regular posters, so who says doing this is a waste of time?) for this book he said: “I just have one question. If you want to write about the most interesting people you’ve met, why are you calling me?”

I look forward to catching up with him tonight. Maybe someday I’ll do the same thing with Tiger. Then again, maybe not.

****

A brief note to a couple of angry posters: I didn’t rip Tiger for criticizing the greens at The PGA—it was at the U.S. Open. Hard to tell those two events apart I guess. Here’s a quote from that tournament after he called the greens, ‘ridiculous,’ the first day when he failed to make a birdie: “He’s whining. He needs to stop blaming the greens for his failures and go out and play golf.”

Pretty harsh, huh? There I went, Tiger-bashing again, huh? One problem: That line came from Tiger’s good friend Notah Begay. I was sitting next to him when he said it. Yes, other players were frustrated during the week as the greens got worse in dry weather. But they all said the same thing: this is what you get with poa annua greens. That’s what Tom Watson was saying on Sunday talking about how tough they were to putt.

And to the person who posted in regard to my referencing my own mistakes: “Um, the Duke soccer players?” Um, I believe you’re talking about LACROSSE players?

Time to sound off on the Mets, and time for changes at the top

As I have said here many times, I grew up in New York City and have been a life-long New York Mets fan. Actually, that’s not completely accurate. In 1992, when I was working on my first baseball book, “Play Ball,” the Mets clubhouse was filled with such a bunch of surly jerks—led by the always delightful Vince Coleman and Bobby Bonilla—that I found it impossible not to root against them. To know that Mets team was to hate them and their play lived down to their personalities.

It actually took me a few years to get past that experience and, to be honest, I wasn’t completely back on the bandwagon even in 2000 when they made The World Series. I thought Bobby Valentine was an excellent manager and certainly didn’t dislike him as much as some people dislike him but he wasn’t exactly Joe Torre, who is one of the most admirable men I’ve ever met in sports.

Somewhere along the line, boyhood memories kicked back in and I became live-and-die with the Mets again. Certainly by the time I worked on, ‘Living on the Black,’ in 2007 I was all the way back. The last 17 games of that season were torture, not just because they were bad for the book—which they were, especially when Tom Glavine blew sky-high on the last day of the season—but because I was a suffering fan.

I have tried—TRIED—really hard not to whine on this blog about the travails of the Mets during these past 13 months. I kept my mouth shut most of last year because they were devastated by injuries. I bit my tongue and said nothing about their consistent stonewalling on how serious injuries were and tried not to second-guess the medical staff because, seriously, what in the world do I know about how to treat a knee injury or, the latest in-vogue injury, the oblique. Is it just me or is EVERY baseball injury now an oblique injury? Remember for years no one had ever heard of a rotator cuff? Then every pitching injury was to the rotator cuff.

Steve Somers, easily WFAN’s best and smartest host, took to calling the Mets the “Medicalpolitans,” last winter when Carlos Beltran announced in January that he’d decided to have surgery on his knee. January? What happened to October? God knows the Mets weren’t playing any baseball that month. I was actually in my car, driving back from a basketball game in Charlottesville on the night the Mets announced the surgery. As usual they were optimistic about his recovery. They were figuring eight to ten weeks. He MIGHT miss the start of the season but he’d be back by the end of April at worst.

I remember saying to myself as I listened, “All-Star break.” That’s when I figured he might be back. Of course he didn’t come back until after the All-Star break and he now looks a little bit like Willie Mays in centerfield—in the 1973 World Series. There’s really only one position he should be playing right now: DH. Oh wait, they don’t have that in The National League.

Okay, okay, I’m sounding like a frustrated fan. Sorry. I AM a frustrated fan. I watched much too much of the west coast trip—my friend Frank Mastrandrea, who really should be committed, watched EVERY inning. To quote the great Lefty Driesell, ‘I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid.’ I watched a lot but not all of it. I WAS in bed at the end of the 14-inning game in Arizona because I KNEW what was going to happen.

Here’s what bothers me the most: The Mets went 2-9 on the west coast trip and scored 23 runs. They were shut out four times. They aren’t going to make any big moves at the trading deadline and I’m actually okay with that because I honestly don’t think they’re going anyplace this season. What’s bothersome though is that I believe they aren’t going to make a big move because the Wilpons can’t afford to add payroll or won’t add payroll. Why they paid $66 million for Jason Bay to prove they still had money this offseason when they needed pitching I’ll never know.

Of course the pitching hasn’t really been the problem. Johan Santana has been mostly great and they’ve caught lightning in a bottle with R.A. Dickey. Mike Pelfrey was great, then bad and I think will bounce back. Jonathon Niese has been good. They need a fifth starter. They also need a closer. When a pitcher nicknamed K-Rod can’t get anyone out with his fastball, you’ve got problems.

But, I’m sorry, the time has come for change at the top. Has Omar Minaya done an awful job? No. He’s done some things well, some things not so well. The same is true for Jerry Manuel. Some of his moves are baffling, but he has done a decent job.

But decent and not-awful are synonyms for mediocre. The Mets are much too willing to accept mediocrity. The Wilpons aren’t good at admitting mistakes, which is why Oliver Perez, the $36 million anchor around their necks, hasn’t been released and Luis Castillo, who has the range of a beached whale, is playing second base. They held meetings on Monday after the road trip—which would have been 1-10 if Phil Cuzzi wasn’t a complete incompetent—and say things are fine, we’re okay at 50-49 with the ship sinking fast.

I’m not saying that promoting Wally Backman from Brooklyn because he’s fiery and an ex-Met is the answer. In fact, I think it’s NOT the answer. But some thing has to be done right now, even if it is only to release Perez and Castillo to let the world—and the rest of the clubhouse know—that the days of claiming the Emperor has beautiful clothes are coming.

At season’s end, everyone has to go. Sorry, nothing personal, but it is time. The Mets need to find a Theo Epstein to be their general manager. Maybe Mark Shapiro would leave Cleveland. Maybe, for big dollars, Billy Beane can finally be lured out of Oakland. But Minaya’s time has come and gone. He has to take the hit for the Perez and Luis Castillo contracts; Bay too. He gets credit for Dickey, but that was a throwaway move that turned into gold.

I don’t think Joe Torre wants to come back and manage in New York at the age of 70. My preference would be an aggressive young up-and-comer type, someone who fits the profile of Willie Randolph six years ago. Don’t gag. Randolph brought life to the clubhouse, came within an inning of The World Series in 2006 and wasn’t the guy who crumbled completely at the end of 2007 although it did ultimately cost him his job. I wouldn’t mind seeing Ozzie Guillen in the Mets dugout or Terry Pendleton, the Braves hitting coach who is one of the bright guys in the game.

Finally, every doctor has to be fired. Seriously. I don’t see how any player can have confidence that he’s going to be treated properly at this point. John Maine just went and found his own doctor for shoulder surgery. Who can blame him? Jose Reye’s ‘oblique,’ injury was botched (again) from the get-go. He was in, he was out. He was going to be ready in a day, then it was ten days. The beat goes on.

Okay, I’ve vented. I’d fire the Wilpons too but that isn’t possible. I guess I should be happy that Vince Coleman isn’t playing centerfield—even if he might be faster than Beltran NOW.




------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

Sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for NCAA wisdom; Discouraged by Islanders, encouraged by Mets

Some time later this week the suspense will finally be over.

No, believe it or not, I’m not talking about LeBron James or any of the other NBA free agents. I’m talking about the new NCAA basketball tournament format.

I know this because last week I received an e-mail from the NCAA announcing that the basketball committee had, in fact, reached a decision on how to deal with the new 68 team format. The press release basically said this: the committee has reached a decision but we’re NOT telling you what that decision is until next week. It went on to add that none of the committee members would DISCUSS the decision or what went into it until next week.

Full radio silence.

Imagine if the committee had been making a decision on something that was actually important. They might have been locked in hotel rooms with no access to TV, cell phones or the internet until the announcement was made.

What’s strange about the remarkable self-importance of the committee through the years is that I’ve had the chance to know most of those who have served on it dating back thirty years. I LIKE most of them individually—there have been notable exceptions, led by Jim Delany, college athletics’ answer to Darth Vader—but when they gather as a group it gets almost scary.

Years ago, after the committee had done an especially horrific job seeding the tournament I said to Tony Kornheiser on his radio show: “They should all be lined up and shot.” (Okay, I get a bit carried away sometimes).

Noting this Tony said, “But Jack Kvancz (the AD at George Washington and then a committee member) is a good friend of yours.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Just shoot him in the leg.”

Jack, who was listening, told me later he was grateful.

Now, I’m all for giving credit where it is due. The committee did NOT decide to expand the tournament to 96 teams beginning next year as most of us believed they would this past spring. I think when they realized they could still get huge money from CBS/Turner for a new long term contract without getting pilloried—as they knew they would—for rewarding mediocrity by going to 96 teams—they backed off. How long that back off will last none of us knows but at least they held off for now.

But seriously folks, a press release announcing that you’ve made a decision on a minor issue but you aren’t announcing it for a week? Is there some curiosity among those of us who love college hoops about the new format? Sure. But there really aren’t that many options out there.

The committee will either make the last eight automatic bid qualifiers play-in against one another to reach the round of 64 as No. 16 seeds or it will make the last eight at-large teams play-in to the round of 64 as No. 12 or No. 13 seeds—which is the right thing to do. You might wonder why not compromise and have four at-large teams play four automatic bid teams. That really can’t work because you can’t say if the at-large teams win they’re No. 12 seeds but if the automatic bid teams win they’re No. 16 seeds. It just makes no sense.

The committee then has to decide where to play the four games. It can send all eight teams to Dayton, which has been an excellent host for the dreaded play-in game for nine years or send the eight teams to first and second round sites. My guess is eight automatic bid teams to Dayton, but we’ll see.

My other guess is, if I’m right, the committee will try to make the announcement the same day James makes his, in the hope that it will be completely buried in the James hype. No doubt it will be. Then again, if it had made the announcement last week, it probably would have been a five-paragraph story most places rather than a four-paragraph story. I’m surprised the committee didn’t also announce that it had decided to designate the coming weekend as The Fourth of July.

As I said, I like most of these people individually although I did almost gag out loud last April when Texas San-Antonio Athletic Director Lynn Hickey tried to explain during the annual Final Four meeting between selected committee members/NCAA staff and the U.S. Basketball Writer’s Association that we writers needed to understand that everything the committee did was, “for the good of the student-athlete.”

And it don’t rain in Indiana in the summer time. I realize that a lot of people don’t have much respect for the media but did she really think we were THAT stupid. Apparently so.

Anyway, I’ll wait to see what the committee announces this week. Maybe it will announce that it has decided to make a final announcement next month.

*****

I know most people were focused this weekend on Wimbledon (exciting finals, huh?); World Cup soccer, the announcement of the baseball All-Star teams (Omar Infante?) and the pennant races but I was on the edge of my seat waiting for Ilya Kovulchuk to make a decision.

For those of you who aren’t hockey fans, Kovulchuk is a perennial 40-goal scorer still in his 20s traded by Atlanta to New Jersey last winter. On Saturday, Newday reported that The New York Islanders might have a shot at Kovulchuk. On Monday, the Los Angeles Kings dropped out of the bidding. By late morning, I was hearing Kovulchuk might actually be headed to Long Island, giving them the kind of scorer they haven’t had for years, the star they desperately needed to take some pressure off John Tavares.

I almost got excited. Then a few hours later The New York Post reported Kovulchuk was going back to New Jersey. The Post doesn’t get hockey stories wrong. It didn’t when I was a kid, it doesn’t now. Of course Kovulchuk’s agent would only say he had “narrowed,” his choices. Maybe he’s angling for a spot on the NCAA basketball committee.

Having read that several other free agents backed away from the Islanders because The Nassau Coliseum is so outdated and there is no sign that a new building is coming along anytime soon—it is completely mired in political muck in Nassau County and the Town of Hempstead—I am completely and utterly discouraged.

I’m amazed at my age and having seen what I’ve seen through the years that I still care about a hockey team, but I do.

I also still care about the Mets and I’m encouraged by what they’ve done the first half, especially without Carlos Beltran, but I’m still skeptical. If they actually pull off a deal for Cliff Lee, then we can talk.

Maybe they’ll announce that they’re going to make an announcement about a deal. If it is next week, that’ll be fine. In the meantime, I’ll sit here on the edge of my seat waiting for the basketball committee to share its wisdom with the rest of us.


-------

John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:



------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

Sportstalk radio – All LeBron All The Time – until the puffs of white smoke appear

I was driving through New York last night on my way back to Shelter Island from the AT+T National sort-of-hosted by Tiger Woods golf tournament and, as always, I was spinning around the radio dial.

The Mets and Yankees are both in excellent pennant races right now—the Yankees to no one’s surprise; the Mets to most people’s (myself included) surprise. The Mets have pitched a lot better than anyone thought they would and have actually produced some good-looking young players who have filled in well for Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes and Luis Castillo. Beltran has been out all season, Reyes and Castillo for lengthy stretches. And yet there are the Mets, hanging in there with the Braves and Phillies.

And so, as I made my way up The New Jersey Turnpike—the traffic wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected—I looked forward to hearing talk about the Mets and Yankees.

Not so much.

Both sportstalk radio stations were All LeBron All The Time. In fact, during Michael Kay’s, “New York Baseball Hour,” the discussion was about LeBron. The names of other free agents came up but mostly within the context of who might fit best with LeBron and who LeBron might want to play with for the next five years.

The Apocalypse is seriously upon us in sports. Beginning yesterday team executives, coaches and owners flew TO Cleveland to be interviewed by King James. Basically they all came hats—and of course checkbooks—in hand. I’m pretty sure that whenever LeBron does make a decision puffs of white smoke will come out of the roof of the IMG building. What’s interesting is that they’re all going to pay James the same money; the maximum allowed by the NBA, so the decision comes down to where he believes he can accomplish what he wants to accomplish next in his life.

That’s really what this comes down to. The biggest stage is New York—not Brooklyn with the Nets—but Madison Square Garden with the Knicks. The best road to a championship is either Miami or Chicago. The right thing to do is to stay in Cleveland and finish what he started in his home state where he has iconic status rarely conferred on any athlete or any human being.

The latter clearly isn’t going to happen. Very few athletes are about doing the right thing—except in terms of what is right for THEM. LeBron and his “people,” clearly feel he’s outgrown Cleveland; that it is time for him to take the next step on the road to conquering the world and that means moving on—even without a championship ring. Remember, LeBron only played three bad games in seven years by his count, so what the heck does he owe Cleveland? When he became the invisible man during the series against Boston in game five he said he had let HIMSELF down. Forget about anyone else.

So Cleveland fans, welcome to the Byron Scott Era. Check E-Bay to see if there’s any old film of the Browns 1964 championship available because that’s as close as you are going to get to a title anytime soon. You deserve better—a LOT better—but LeBron isn’t concerned about that.

Of course everyone has a different theory about where he is going and why. Each of the four serious candidates (The Clippers, are you kidding?) has a different reason to believe it has a chance. To put it in one sentence: The Bulls have good young players; the Heat has Dwyane Wade; the Knicks have New York and The Nets have a Russian owner who is richer than most of the NBA owners combined and clearly has some serious Chutzpah.

We’ve all heard all the various reports citing sources—my guess is the one constant in all this is LeBron’s walk-around guy World Wide Wes being a constant leak in all directions—who KNOW he’s going to New York; know he’s going to New Jersey; know he’s going to Chicago or know he’s going to Miami. Maybe David Stern will pass a ‘LeBron Rule,’ and let him play 20 games apiece for four different teams and then pick and choose where and when he wants to participate in playoff games. Maybe he can go to the Lakers for the playoffs and let Kobe take the big shots down the stretch.

I haven’t a clue where he’s going. I talk to World Wide Wes about as much as I talked to Tiger Woods’ people. Here’s what I believe though: I think LeBron knows where he’s going and I think he may have known where he was going at the exact moment that he turned the ball over for the ninth time in game six against Boston. He probably knew even before then. (By the same token I never thought for one second that Phil Jackson wasn’t coming back to coach the Lakers. I know he’s had health problems but all that talk about MAYBE going to Cleveland or Chicago or the Knicks or MAYBE retiring was a negotiating position. Jackson is a shrewd guy who works the media as well as it has ever been worked).

This whole LeBron Over Cleveland interview process is nothing more than an exercise in ego and a way for LeBron to remind people that Kobe may have all the rings (five) but he still controls the basketball world. Certainly the continuing panting over this whole thing is evidence of that.

Let me make a confession here: I have never completely bought into the LeBron hype. The first time I ever saw him was in a summer camp in New Jersey and, because I’m not a complete idiot, it was clear he was a special talent. That’s when he and his people—yes folks he had them in high school—were floating the notion that he might leave high school after his junior year and challenge the NBA draft rules. Clearly he—and they—knew how to play the hype game even then.

My sense was that LeBron was really, really good but life in the NBA against men as opposed to life in high school against boys would be a little different. I was wrong—the guy was a star from day one and has gotten better. That why now, when I hear people say, ‘well, he’s not a winner, he hasn’t got any rings,’ I don’t jump on that bandwagon—even though I’d kind of like to do so.

Michael Jordan won his first title in his seventh season. Kobe won his first when Shaq came to Los Angeles. Bill Russell is the only guy who came into a non-championship team as a rookie, won a title and kept on going from there. My guess is LeBron is going to win titles wherever he lands. It will happen faster in Miami or Chicago but it will probably happen in Manhattan or Brooklyn at some point in the future too if he goes there. Good players will want to play with him.

That said, it is tough to embrace the guy. He never cops to not playing well (three bad games in seven years, remember?); his ego is very tough to swallow especially since at this moment he does not yet have a ring and the people around him are, well, World Wide Wes.

So let’s hope he sticks to his word and announces his decision very soon (one that, as I said I think he’s already made). Then we can get back to baseball and ESPN can start updating us hourly on Brett Favre throwing passes to high school kids.


-------

John recently appeared on The Jim Rome Show (www.jimrome.com) to discuss 'Moment of Glory.' Click here to download, or listen in the player below:



------------------------------
John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

Mets, Nationals fans emerge from April baseball with hope

There’s an old saying in baseball: Don’t believe too much of what you see in April or September.

It is not uncommon for lousy teams to get off to a good start in April only to be worn down by the grind of the 162 game season. There are lots of off days in April—some caused by poor weather—and the need for five starting pitchers (or more later when injuries kick in) isn’t there yet. The bullpen is still fresh and someone destined to hit .260 might be hitting .400.

In September, when teams have been eliminated from contention and bring players up from the minor leagues, there are always a couple who catch people’s eye with their play. Sometimes there’s a reason for it—Derek Jeter was a late call-up in 1995—sometimes it’s just September baseball.

So I sit here on the last day of April caught in a conundrum. The New York Mets, the team I grew up with, after what appeared to be a predictably terrible start, has reeled off seven straight wins and sits atop The National League East at 13-9. The suspect starting pitching, which appeared to be Johan Santana and whomever wanted the ball next, has suddenly been world-beating. Mike Pelfrey hasn’t given up a run since about 1994 and the team is winning WITHOUT centerfielder Carlos Beltran.

So, do I get excited? Or do I still to the old baseball axiom and check back in June?

The same question is being asked in Washington, where the Nationals, coming off back-to-back 100 loss seasons, are 12-10. Unlike the Mets, whose winning streak came entirely at home, the Nats have just gone into Chicago and won two-of-three from the Cubs, causing Lou Piniella to lose his mind, which is always entertaining.

Like the Mets, the Nationals are pitching better and, perhaps as important, they’re catching the ball much better. Last year their defense was so bad you had to avert your eyes on routine ground balls unless you were extremely brave. Now, the Nats are not only making routine plays, they’re making some spectacular ones too.

What’s more, the Nationals best pitcher is currently pitching in Harrisburg. Stephen Strasburg, the phenom picked No. 1 in last year’s draft has looked every inch of The Next Great Thing since spring training began. In his last outing he pitched five innings of no-hit baseball. He will probably be moved up to Triple-A Syracuse in the next couple of weeks and his pitch count will be carefully monitored as he is allowed to pitch more innings. He should be in Washington by June and if you put him at the top of the current starting group, the Nationals could be—dare I say it—pretty good.

Of course there’s a strong sense of foreboding based on disappointments of the past in both places. On their last homestand, the Nats played two playoff teams from last year, the Rockies and Dodgers, and struggled to draw 20,000 most nights. The Mets played in front of half-empty ballparks most of the time on the just-ended homestand. It may be that if both come back from road trips still playing well that the crowds will pick up. Baseball fans are like all other fans—they’re frontrunners. Fans of these two teams have lots of reasons to be skeptical though, regardless of their April records.

Still, it’s nice to see some hope. It’s better than being a fan of the Baltimore Orioles, who won two games in a row earlier this week to improve their record to 4-16. They’re now 4-18 and even with the Yankees in town this week, Camden Yards wasn’t close to sold out. Attendance was 26,439 on Thursday night—most of them Yankee fans. If the Orioles aren’t playing the Yankees or the Red Sox their attendance these days is brutal. Next week, they play the Minnesota Twins at home and the Twins have one of baseball’s more entertaining teams. They currently lead the American League Central. Do you think there will be a single crowd of more than 20,000 people?

Not likely. This in what is still as nice a ballpark as there is in baseball, even in its 19th year. And yet, with the Orioles clearly headed for a 12th straight losing season, they are down to die-hards only except when the Yankees and Red Sox show up and turn the ballpark into Yankee Stadium-south or Fenway Park-south. It is sad to see such a proud franchise in this state.

Team President Andy McPhail thinks the young pitchers the team has are going to get things turned around and it’s entirely possible that they will. Good pitching is like good goaltending in hockey or good putting in golf—it can hide all your other weaknesses. Right now, the Orioles pitching just isn’t good enough to hide anything. Maybe that will change.

The Mets are another story—at least at the moment. They go into Philadelphia this weekend on a roll. Most people had conceded The NL East title to the Phillies for a fourth straight year before the first pitch was thrown earlier this month. There still isn’t much reason to believe that isn’t going to be the case. That said, the team that was given the best chance to chase the Phillies was the Braves and they are off to an awful start. The Mets swept them last weekend in New York.

I can imagine what the talk shows are like in New York right now. They are probably discussing what the ticket prices will be like for a Subway Series in October in the two new ballparks.

I’m not ready to get that carried away just yet. It IS nice, whether you live in New York or Washington, to see the calendar turning from April to May and not be wondering what players your team might unload at the trading deadline. Think about this: in Baltimore, in Kansas City, in Pittsburgh, in Houston, the hopeful part of the baseball season is already over.

At least in New York and Washington right now, there’s hope. If that feeling still exists a month from now, it might be time to get serious. For now, I’m just going to sit back and enjoy.

God knows Mets fans and Nats fans are both entitled to a little bit of fun.

Great baseball broadcasters, led by Vin Scully; Addressing comments

A few weeks ago, when Vin Scully took a fall getting out of bed and was hospitalized briefly, a friend of mine who is a big baseball fan shook his head and said, “You get to a certain age, you should just hang it up and go home.”

In a lot of cases, that’s true. It isn’t true of Scully. I was reminded of this yesterday afternoon when—thanks to the baseball package, one of the great inventions of this century—I was able to sit and watch Scully work his magic during the Dodgers-Diamondbacks game. For a baseball fan, listening to Scully broadcast a baseball game is like someone who loves classical music listening to Mozart or Beethoven.

Some of it no doubt is familiarity. Although I never got to hear Scully work Dodger games as a kid, he was there every Saturday for many years doing the NBC Game of the Week and he was also around a lot doing the NFL and golf on CBS. Part of it also is that unique cadence of his: the way he draws out ‘one and one,’ can be imitated but it is unique to him. It also seems as if every Dodger broadcaster who has followed him—I’m thinking mostly of Ross Porter and Rick Monday—has ended up picking up on Scullyspeak. The Dodgers are never the Dodgers they are the ‘Daaadgers,’ and Daaadger Stadium is almost always referred to as Chavez Ravine—which for those of you under 40 is the area where it is located.

I’ve written before about how much I enjoy listening to great baseball broadcasters. Bob Murphy was a huge part of my boyhood and I get a big kick out of listening to Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling on the Mets telecasts now. I don’t enjoy watching the team very much, but the broadcast is terrific, especially since there’s no covering up the team’s deficiencies in the booth. If you’d like to experience the opposite end of that spectrum tune in the Orioles or Nationals sometime. (Disclaimer: Cohen is a friend. Having said that, I don’t think you have to be his friend to appreciate his work).

There are plenty of other baseball broadcasters who are great fun to listen to: Joe Castiglione in Boston; Marty Brenneman in Cincinnati (also a friend though we agree on almost nothing); Dave Niehaus in Seattle and Howie Rose on radio for the Mets (okay, I have a Mets bias) come to mind. The game really misses Skip Caray and Harry Kalas.

But there’s still only one Scully. His calls are lyrical and his familiarity with the players and the game is still astonishing even at 82. Yesterday when the camera showed a shot of injured Diamondbacks pitcher Brandon Webb, he basically went through Webb’s entire life story in about 90 seconds. He wasn’t reading from the media guide either, you can tell when someone is doing that. Webb popped up on camera in the dugout and Scully just started talking.

There’s another thing about Scully: he’s a genuine star—he’s only been doing Dodger games for 61 years (!!!) now—who never acts like one. Although he doesn’t travel east anymore in the regular season, he does during the playoffs. Last October I ran into him—almost literally—in the press box in Philadelphia. We were walking through a door from the dining area to the press box area.

When I stopped to open the door for him, Scully said to me, “Aaah yes John, a man who believes in age before beauty, something I can admire.”

I told him I wasn’t sure if he was right on either count but that I was honored to open the door for him. He laughed and said, “We’re all just honored and lucky to be here aren’t we?”

I’m pretty sure he was 100 percent sincere when he said that which might explain why he still sounds so happy to be in the broadcast booth even after all these years. I hope he keeps doing what he’s doing for as long as he can do it because the day he isn’t doing Dodger games is the day that the ‘Daaadgers,’ won’t really be the ‘Daaadgers,’ anymore. Someone will sit in Vin Scully’s chair, but no one will ever replace him.

I am SO glad it is baseball season.

*****

On a far less pleasant topic I am going to go over this Tiger Woods issue one last time and then people like ‘anonymous,’ who kept insisting on the posting site the last few days that there is some deep, dark secret I am hiding can either accept what I’m saying or not accept it and we’ll all move on.

I have never had any sort of personal run-in with Woods and he has never ‘done,’ anything to me that has caused me to dislike him. When Mike Wilbon said a few months ago I was angry with Woods for not talking to me for the book I did on Rocco Mediate and that’s why I was criticizing him for his behavior, he was, quite simply, mistaken. As I said before, I told Rocco when he first called about doing the book that I KNEW Tiger wouldn’t talk to me for the book and doubted, quite honestly, he’d talk to anyone but he’d have a better shot at it if someone else did the writing. The person who was upset was ROCCO because he’d done a number of favors for Tiger post-U.S. Open. If you don’t believe that, ask him sometime. He’s a very approachable guy.

‘Anonymous,’ sort of wants it both ways: On the one hand he says he bases his disbelief in what I’m saying on the Wilbon theory—which Mike has since withdrawn by the way after we talked the whole thing through. On the other hand he says I’ve disliked Tiger for years. How can both be true? Then he throws in John Hawkins silly comment about my ‘lack of a relationship,’ with Tiger because I don’t cover golf ‘fulltime,’ like he and some others do. I responded to that too: I’ve never claimed to have a ‘relationship,’ with Woods although I’d bet I’ve spent more one-on-one time with him than a lot of the guys he calls by nicknames in press conferences. That isn’t a lot of time but it is probably more than almost anyone other than Jaime Diaz, who may be the one writer who has some sense of who Woods is, having known him since he was 15.

My objection to Woods has more to do with the way he has treated people through the years than anything else: I’ve seen him blow by kids looking for autographs consistently since the day he turned pro (and the excuse that he can’t sign for everyone so therefore he signs for no one is not only tired and worn out it isn’t true; you have one of your flunkies cut off the line at some point and say, ‘Tiger has to go, but he’ll be signing again tomorrow.’ Sure, he might disappoint a couple kids but he’d thrill a hundred of them. Phil Mickelson, for the record, signs every single day for 45 minutes. Most players plan some time into their day to sign).

Woods has also been disdainful and condescending in most of his dealings with the media; he does almost nothing if it doesn’t involve money; he tells TV networks who he will or will not talk to based on how much they have or have not sucked up to him during broadcasts and his on-course behavior has been lousy from day one. (I’m not talking the profanity as much as the club-throwing and club-pounding. By 34 you should have that under control).

Tiger and I have had one major disagreement from day one and it is something we have discussed on a number of occasions: I always saw his dad as just another pushy stage-jock parent who got lucky that his kid was the one with ridiculous talent. Obviously—and understandably—he didn’t see his dad that way.

We had a lengthy conversation about this years ago over dinner in San Diego—yes, we had dinner—during which I said I objected to Earl cashing in on Tiger by writing not one but TWO autobiographies. “He wrote the first one because people kept asking him how he did it,” Tiger said.

“Okay,” I said, “Even though I don’t buy that he did anything, I’ll accept that. Why’d he write the second one?”

Tiger smiled. “Okay, good point,” he said.

So we agreed to disagree and we’ve done that through the years. I know the people around him—except for Glenn Greenspan who I knew for a long time before he joined ETW Inc. two years ago—think I’m the devil because I have consistently not bought into the Tiger off-course myth. Ironically, I thought Tiger was headed in the right direction a couple years ago (I wish I could remember exactly what he did, but there was something that impressed me. It may have been—sadly—his seemingly changed demeanor after he became a father) and actually wrote to Mark Steinberg to tell him that. Turns out I got that one wrong.

Bottom line: I don’t hate Tiger and he’s never ‘done,’ anything to me. I just disagree with a lot of what he’s done and feel like there are enough cheerleaders and apologists out there for him that I don’t need to be another one. I felt that way before November 27th and still feel that way. If cringing when Nick Faldo says, “after all Tiger’s been through,” means I’m ‘out to get Tiger,’ in some people’s minds, so be it.

And, to quote Forrest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that.

Opening day is right around the corner – amidst busy week, baseball is on my mind

So here we are in the midst of Sweet Sixteen week surrounded by everyone (including me) trying to psychoanalyze Tiger Woods and I find myself thinking about baseball this morning.

The weather finally turning warm is definitely a factor as is Dave Sheinin’s piece in today’s Washington Post about the Orioles trying to at last turn a corner after 12 straight losing seasons. Brigid, my 12-year-old daughter, is a huge Orioles fan in large part because she fell in love with The Bird mascot when she was about three-years-old and it occurs to me that the last time the Orioles had a winning season was in the year she was born.

Brigid is very optimistic about this season not so much because of the young pitching as because Miguel Tejada, long her favorite Oriole, has returned to Baltimore.

I’m not especially optimistic or pessimistic about any team at the moment although I do think the Nationals will be better and the Mets will be, um, the Mets. As one long-time Mets follower pointed out to me last week, the thing they needed to improve the most this off-season was their starting pitching and they did nothing. Their two best players, Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes, are going to start the season on the Disabled List. David Wright hit 10 home runs last season in Citi Field. Other than that…

There’s just something about baseball that makes me feel good. I can honestly say that there are few things in life I enjoy more than sitting in a ballpark on an afternoon or evening, watching a game and keeping score. I have to keep score. If I don’t I feel like something is wrong.

There’s more to it than that. Some has to do with boyhood memories—more connected to my mother than my father. My dad was never a big sports fan and what little interest he had in sports pretty much died when the Dodgers left Brooklyn. So, when I was little, it was often my mom who took me to games. She wasn’t a big fan either but she MADE herself a fan because I was a fan.

I’ve probably told this story before, so forgive me if you’ve read it already. One afternoon the Mets were doing something they rarely did—coming from behind. Down 2-0 to the Phillies in the bottom of the eighth, they shockingly pieced together a four run rally. When Cleon Jones singled in the tying and go-ahead runs (yes, I distinctly remember it was Cleon) my mom was right there next to me, jumping up and down, completely into it.

We were in good seats that day—back then you could walk up on game day, put down $3.50 for a box seat and sit between home plate and first or third base—and an usher walked by as the Mets took the lead, 3-2. He paused, look at my mom and said, “so which one is your husband?”

My mom thought it was cool that someone thought she was young enough to be married to a ballplayer.

The kid stuff is only part of it though, there’s more. As I’ve mentioned before, I love long car rides during spring and summer, especially at night, when I can flip the radio around from game-to-game. I’m so sick I enjoy PRE-game shows, even though they’re rife with commercials and managers saying, “we just have to come back ready to go tonight.”

My favorite pre-game interviews are between John Sterling and whomever is managing the Yankees. I like Sterling, he’s always been very nice to me, but I LOVE listening to him explain what happened the night before to the manager. In fact, whether it’s Joe Torre or Joe Girardi, their response to just about every “question,” is, “you’re right John…”

I was talking to Gary Cohen, who has done play-by-play for the Mets on radio and now on TV since 1989 (and is, as far as I’m concerned as good as there is in the business) about why people connect to guys doing radio play-by-play in baseball more than other announcers. “It might be because there’s so little to talk about compared to the other sports,” he said. “I love doing baseball on radio. It just lends itself to story-telling and bringing the listener along. TV’s not the same. There are 100 things you have to get done in-between pitches. Or at least it feels that way.”

The Mets wanted Gary to be their TV voice when they started their own TV network four years back and he’s been great at it along with Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. But he still misses radio. Having done some of both myself, I completely get it. Radio’s more fun to do and to listen to if truth be told.

There’s one other thing about baseball: it IS ubiquitous, from April to October. Every day there are games; every day there are box scores. Nowadays, with the baseball package, if you don’t go to a game on a given night, you can sit down and watch games all night and see how different perspectives are on the game in Boston as opposed to Chicago or Seattle. I just wish the people who run the package would make a deal with the Phillies so we could watch games from Citizens Bank Ballpark.

Last summer, after my heart surgery, I wasn’t house-bound but I didn’t have that much energy for the first four-to-six weeks. I also couldn’t drive for three weeks, which just about put me back in the hospital. When it comes to being a control-freak where driving is concerned Tiger Woods has nothing on me.

Most of my nights were spent in front of the TV watching baseball games. Truth be told, that was one of the good things about the surgery. Because I didn’t have to be up first thing the next morning to work or take a kid to school or someplace else, I could stay up as late as I wanted and watch as much baseball as I wanted. I have friends who say they can’t watch more than couple of innings without getting bored. Not me. There were nights when I watched doubleheaders—a game at 7 o’clock—flipping around in-between innings—and a game at 10 o’clock.

It was comforting and it made me feel like a kid again—knowing everyone’s batting average and ERA, understanding why someone was out of the lineup. Of course watching the Mets, even with Gary, Ron and Keith, wasn’t too much fun.

So now we’re on the doorstep of another spring and another baseball season. I can’t wait to go to the ballpark again or to watch games that matter on TV. I can’t wait to keep score. One thing I do when I keep score is write down the inning-by-inning score at the bottom of my scorecard. It’s just an old habit. But I always like writing down the score after the top of the first inning, whether the visiting team has put up an ‘0,’ or an ‘8’ or something in-between. It just makes me smile to see it, knowing the game has just begun.

April’s a great month. The Final Four; the Masters and early season baseball—which is full of hope for everyone. I can’t wait.

Potential ramifications for decisions by Mets, Wizards on Beltran, Arenas

Carlos Beltran and Gilbert Arenas are both in the news today.

Arenas will be in court later today to accept a plea bargain that in all likelihood will keep him out of jail. I’m going to refrain from saying too much about this until it actually happens because there’s no point in ripping the prosecutors for copping out until I actually know they’ve copped out.

Beltran isn’t going to court or to jail but he won’t be playing baseball for a while. He had surgery on his arthritic knee on Wednesday and is likely not to be able to resume baseball activities for at least 12 weeks. My guess is he won’t be penciled into a Major League lineup card before May. All of which means the Mets have pretty much picked up at the start of 2010 where they left off in 2009.

But I’m not writing about Beltran to rip the Mets—although they are eminently rippable. They are so incompetent that they can’t even get a player they owe $37 million to over the next two years to go and see one of their doctors before having surgery. Then they whine about it and don’t even send their general manager to talk to the media about it. Apparently after some of his bang-up performances last summer (notably in the Tony Bernazard debacle) the Mets don’t trust Omar Minaya to speak in public. Which begs the question: If you don’t trust him to run a simple press conference how can you trust him to rebuild your broken ballclub?

As I said though, that’s another issue for another day. Today is about what Beltran and Arenas have in common. Which is this: The Mets are reportedly considering the possibility of refusing to pay Beltran while he is out of the lineup because he had the surgery without their formal permission OR even going so far as to try to void his contract. The Washington Wizards are reportedly thinking about trying to void Arenas’s contract—worth another $80 million after this season is over—on the grounds that he will have pleaded guilty to a felony even if he avoids jail time.

Chances are very good the Mets will back down. Chances are decent the Wizards will back down too and see if there’s any way to trade Arenas.

The reason neither team is likely to take any seriously punitive action has little to do with the players involved. It has to do with potential future players.

It really doesn’t matter that Arenas acted like a complete bonehead in this whole thing from the moment he put the guns in his car and drove them from his home in Virginia to The Verizon Center in Washington, committing a crime the minute he crossed the bridge into D.C.

It doesn’t matter that Arenas acted as if the whole thing was a joke until he was suspended by NBA Commissioner David Stern. It doesn’t even matter that he has said when this is over everyone will owe him an apology.

The Wizards are probably going to have to rebuild their entire team—again. Arenas has to be gone one way or the other and they will try to trade Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler because both players have considerable value, especially to teams in contention. The draft only has two rounds and if you get one truly outstanding player in a draft that’s a good year. That means you have to sign free agents.

Are there some players (and coaches) who will sign with the highest bidder, regardless of who it is? Absolutely. How else can Dan Snyder, whose reputation as the worst owner in sports always precedes him, continue to sign free agent players and big name coaches? If you believe Mike Shanahan when he says he took over the Redskins because of how much he likes Snyder, I have oceanfront land in Kansas I’d like to sell you. Shanahan’s friends are the checks for $7 million a year Snyder will be writing.

But if someone else had matched that $7 million, Shanahan probably would have been very good friends with THAT owner. And the Wizards will worry that if a free agent has a choice between their organization and another that’s offering comparable money, Arenas’s name will come up. As in, “you guys are the ones that voided Gil’s contract.”

Don’t think for a second that won’t happen. Before this is over—especially if the Wizards do void the contract—Arenas is going to be the victim here. There will be apologists pointing out athletes who have done worse things (there are) and pointing out that Delonte West was acting far more reckless than Arenas last fall when he was arrested on a motorcycle on the Washington Beltway carrying guns. That’s also true. It’s also true that West has kept his mouth shut and not tried to act as if the whole thing was a joke.

Reality doesn’t matter here. Athletes live in their own reality, one in which Tiger Woods’s agent can actually send an e-mail to a New York Times reporter saying, “Give the kid a break.” The kid being a 34-year-old, billionaire father of two who has been in the public eye for 20 years and crafted an image that has been proven to be totally false.

No doubt a lot of basketball players will think the Wizards failed to give Arenas a break. The Wizards know that. They know that voiding the contract (IF their action is upheld when the players’ union contests it) will save a lot of money short term and will give them a partial escape from this disaster. But they also know that anytime a free agent doesn’t sign with them, people will wonder if Arenas was part of the reason. And if by some chance a player comes out and says, “I wouldn’t sign with Washington because of what they did to Gil,” whether what they did to Gil was fair or unfair will be a moot point.

The Mets and Beltran are different. Beltran’s never been in any trouble at all and for a lot of the last five years has been the Mets best player. And yet—he’s been hurt a lot. He also has become for many fans the symbol of their frustrations in recent years. If you are a Mets fan (which as I always confess I am…sigh) it is pretty much impossible to forget the sight of Beltran with his bat on his shoulder while strike three went past him with two outs in the bottom of the ninth of game seven of The 2006 National League Championship Series.

Beltran’s had good moments since then but the Mets collapsed in September of 2007 and 2008 and in early June in 2009. Beltran, like a lot of his teammates (Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, J.J. Puetz; even David Wright) missed large chunks of the season. Now, after saying his knee felt fine all fall, he has surgery five weeks before spring training begins.

Beltran’s agent, the lovely and talented Scott Boras, insists that the doctor who did the surgery in Denver consulted with the Mets team doctor, David Altchek and got the go-ahead to do the surgery. Then—according to Boras—after Beltran was IN surgery on Wednesday, the Mets called again to say they wanted Beltran to see their doctors. If that version proves true not only do the Mets have no case against Beltran but they have pulled yet another public relations blunder by ripping a key player who did nothing wrong.

If that’s NOT the case and Beltran did the surgery without letting the Mets know he was doing it, then the Mets do have a case—certainly in terms of not paying him until he can play again.

But don’t bet on the Mets to do any of that. More likely they will come back and say it was all a big misunderstanding and everyone loves everyone. Minaya tried to blame the Bernazard debacle on Adam Rubin of The New York Daily News. Maybe the Mets will blame Adam for this too.

But you can bet they won’t take drastic action against Beltran. They’re going to need to sign free agents to rebuild again. And, while money talks, it someone else has money that’s also talking, a “reputation,” for not taking care of your players can quickly shut your money down.

What a world. And people wonder why I hang out at Patriot League basketball games.

Side Stories of September Baseball; Quick Re-Analysis of Big East

September baseball has always fascinated me. I'm not talking about the pennant races, which everyone takes an interest in, but the side stories--which team has a September call-up who may play a critical role next year; which managers or general managers may be in trouble; what teams that aren't in contention have--nonetheless--made real progress. There's more time than usual to pay attention to those stories this year since the pennant races--wild cards aside--are all but over even with almost four weeks left to play.

On Monday, as I noted here yesterday, the Pittsburgh Pirates clinched a record-breaking 17th straight losing season. Last night, in Boston, the Baltimore Orioles, another once proud franchise, clinched a 12th straight losing season. The Kansas City Royals continue to be awful year in and year out which makes Zack Greinke's performance all the more remarkable. If Greinke was with any kind of decent team he would either have 20 wins by now or be closing in on 20 wins. Except for one brief stretch in the summer, he has been brilliant almost every time out. He's 13-8 with a 2.22 ERA which means if he was pitching in The National League his ERA might very well be under two runs a game. It will be interesting to see if Greinke (who is only 25) wins The Cy Young Award with 15 or 16 wins or if Mariano Rivera, who has also been amazing all year, wins it. Anyone else winning it would be a crime.

There's more: the complete demise of the Mets. Yes, injuries have played a huge role, but it isn't that simple. Omar Minaya has made one mistake after another and it’s pretty clear the players don't have a lot of respect for Jerry Manuel. Often they don't play hard and more often they just play dumb. A couple of Saturdays ago a potential big inning was broken up in Chicago when Fernando Tatis tried to score from third--after initially stopping--when a ball thrown from the outfield rolled loose for a moment. He was out by 10 feet with NO ONE out. Tim McCarver, doing the game on Fox, made the point that a play like that has nothing to do with injuries. Plays like that happen to the Mets all the time.

The Cardinals are having a superb season; the Cubs have collapsed meaning their fans don't have to watch them collapse in October this year; the Phillies have lots of power but pitching that looks too shaky (especially Brad Lidge) to win it all again and Ozzie Guillen says the White Sox' mediocrity is his fault. The Rays made a run but have dropped back and the Rangers have been a pleasant surprise. The Orioles and Nationals are both building future hopes around young pitching although the Orioles kids look a lot more solid than the Nationals kids right now although Stephen Strasburg's arrival could change that equation.

And then there are the Yankees. Since the All-Star break they have been virtually unbeatable. Night after night they find a different way to win. A.J. Burnett went more than a month without a win and it didn't matter. C.C. Sabbathia has earned his millions the last couple of months and Andy Pettite has looked more like 27 than 37. Rivera is simply the eighth wonder of the world and both Derek Jeter and Mark Texeira have had MVP-like seasons.

Even so, none of it is going to matter if they don't win--and I don't mean the division series--in October. They haven't won a World Series since 2000 or a pennant since 2003. In fact, they haven't won a postseason SERIES since the Collapse of '04. To say that memories of that disaster linger in New York is like saying The French remember Waterloo. Jeter is going to pass Lou Gehrig on the career hits list very shortly--isn't it amazing the Yankees have NEVER had a guy with 3,000 hits?--and Alex Rodriguez has managed to stay out of headlines since his spring outings as a steroids user. The new Yankee Stadium has been full most of the summer after being half empty for much of the spring.

All good. But if the Red Sox show up for the ALCS, there are going to be some seriously frayed nerves in New York. The irony in this is inescapable. For years, all Red Sox fans cringed every time a team with "NY," on the uniform showed up. The Red Sox were the coyote and the Yankees were the roadrunner. Sooner or later the anvil came down on the Red Sox head. That all changed during those four remarkable evenings in '04 and now the anvil is on the other head. Oh sure, the Yankees won the division in '05 and '06--the Red Sox not making the playoffs--but the Red Sox added a second World Series title in '07 and almost won another pennant last year. In postseason series the last five seasons the Yankees are 1-4, the Red Sox are 7-2.

Ouch.

As someone who grew up a Mets fan I am supposed to hate the Yankees. I don't. A lot of people criticize them for spending so much money but the owners I think are really evil are the ones who spend NO money and leave their fans to live through one losing season after another. The Yankees--love them or hate them---are good for baseball. They sell out ballparks and drive TV ratings up. Yes, I get tired of all the Yankees-Red Sox hype (thank you once again four letter network for leading that charge) and SOMEONE ought to make John Sterling cool it with the corny home run calls, especially the "A-bomb from A-Rod." A-bombs are not a topic that should be brought up as part of sports. Too many people died because of them.

But you can't NOT respect Jeter, Rivera and Jorge Posada or the demeanor in that clubhouse most of the time. I hate the way Joe Torre was treated but he brought class and dignity to the team for 12 years. Torre gets it like few people get it in sports. A couple of years ago I was interviewing him during spring training while researching, "Living on the Black." My cell phone began ringing. I started to turn it off, then saw it was my son, who I had been trying to reach. "Joe, can you give me one second," I said. "It's my son and I need to talk to him."

Torre just smiled. "I know how that feels," he said. "I've done this long enough that I can pick up in mid-anecdote." Which is exactly what he did.

I may not like the Yankees but I respect them. I wish there was a salary cap in baseball--and a salary floor--so the Yankees couldn't spend more than $125 million on payroll and the Rays and Pirates had to spend at least $75 million. THAT'S the problem, not the Yankees.

Having said all of that, even being as sick and tired as I sometimes get of Yankees-Red Sox, I'd love to see them play in October if only to see all my friends who are Yankees fans walking around looking a little green while the series is going on. Because believe me, if they somehow get up 3-0, they won't feel comfortable.


*** ***

A number of people wrote in responding to my Washington Post column on the wonders of ACC football Monday, commenting that it was unfair of me to lump The Big East with the ACC. Upon further review, they're right. I think The Big East was down last year and isn't that good this year, but its record the last several years is far better than the ACC's--especially in BCS bowls, most notably the West Virginia win over Georgia and Louisville's victory in The Fiesta Bowl. So, I stand corrected--the ACC stands alone when it comes to true mediocrity in the BCS conferences no matter how entertaining the Miami-Florida State game was on Monday night.

Emotional Weekend - Celebration of '69 Mets Brings Back Memories of Being a Young Fan

It was an emotional weekend for me. No, not because Ryan Moore won his first event on The PGA Tour or because the tour's 'playoffs' are about to begin. It wasn't Brett Favre appearing in a Minnesota Vikings uniform or even another weekend of Yankees-Red Sox.

I went back to my boyhood this weekend.

There is no sports memory I have that is more vivid than the 1969 New York Mets--aka The Miracle Mets. They were part of an extraordinary 16 month run in the history of New York sports--the Jets shocking upset of the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in January of 1969, followed by the Mets World Series win in October of that year and, finally, the Knicks world title in May of 1970. All were remarkably dramatic. In fact, I can still remember the exact date each time won its title: January 12; October 16th; May 8th. Seriously, I did not look that up.

I remember Namath and the Jets because no one gave them a chance. I was a Jets fan as a kid because there was no way to get Giants tickets in Yankee Stadium and you could actually walk into the Jets offices at 57th and Madison on Monday and buy a standing room ticket for $3. Then you'd find an empty seat somewhere. I'd gotten into the habit of pacing in front of the TV whenever the Jets played for good luck. On the day of The Super Bowl I paced and paced as the Jets built a 16-0 lead. My dad came home from a concert early in the fourth quarter and actually sat down to watch.

"Stop pacing," he said. "You're making me dizzy."

It was 16-0. Okay, I sat down. Johnny Unitas came in for Earl Morrall and took the Colts straight down the field to make it 16-7.

"Okay, pace," my dad said.

I will skip the Mets for a moment. I was a huge Knicks fan. My friends and I used to go to Madison Square Garden in the middle of the night to line up to be sure to get playoff tickets. We always tried for either section 406 or 430--they were at halfcourt in the blue seats, the only tickets we could afford. I was there on May 8th, wondering like everyone else if Willis Reed could play game seven against the Lakers with the championship on the line. Wilt Chamberlain had gone off in game 6 in LA with Reed sidelined.

During warmups, I heard a huge cheer go up and looked down to see Cazzie Russell walking out. Russell always came out late for warmups and, from a distance, some people had mistaken him for Reed. Finally, Reed did come out. The place went nuts. He hit his first two shots of the game and then Walt Frazier took over. The Knicks won 113-99 and it wasn't that close. I still remember hearing the tape of Marv Albert counting down the final seconds while Dave DeBusschere simply stood holding the ball. "Pandemonium in the Garden!" he screamed when the buzzer sounded. He was right.

But there was nothing quite like the Mets. They were my first love in sports--a truly awful expansion team my friends laughed at me for adopting as my team at the age of six. I'm old enough to have seen them play in The Polo Grounds and I suffered through those first six truly awful seasons. I started riding the subway to Shea Stadium--I knew every stop on the No. 7 train by heart--when I was 11--and paid $1.30 to sit in the upper deck. I loved the Sunday doubleheaders best if only because the Mets often won the second game against the other team's backup players.

In that sixth season--1967--hope began to arrive. Tom Seaver was clearly a rising star. The next year Gil Hodges became the manager and Jerry Koosman and Nolan Ryan showed up. I remember Ryan pitching a one-hitter against the Phillies on a day he didn't have blisters and doing Kiner's Korner with his wife Ruth, who wore a mini-skirt on the show. Talk about first love.

And then came '69. I remember being discouraged on Opening Day when the Mets lost for the eighth straight year even though Seaver was pitching and the opponent was the expansion Montreal Expos. The final was 11-10. But sometime in late May they went on an 11 game winning streak. I remember Jack DiLauro coming up from the minor leagues and beating the Dodgers 1-0. Of course there were the two July series with the Cubs--including Seaver's imperfect game (I still hate Jimmy Qualls). I remember reading a story in which Buddy Harrelson, who was on reserve duty that week, was watching in a bar trying to convince people that he KNEW Seaver. Then the incredible rally from mid-August on. I was there for the black cat and the (Randy Hundley) rain dance and then on September 10th for a twi-night doubleheader with the Expos when the Mets went into first place for the first time.

It was a joyride from there. The clincher on September 24th--Joe Torre hit into a double-play to end the game at 9:07 p.m.--as Lindsey Nelson kept shouting--and then the sweep of the Braves and the amazing five game win over the unbeatable Orioles.

In all I saw 66 games in person. A few times we splurged for big games and bought seats in the mezzanine for $2.50 and my dad loaned me money for the postseason tickets. I remember everyone hugging one another when Cleon Jones made the last catch (on a ball hit by Davey Johnson who later managed the Mets only other World Series win) and it was one of those perfect moments in time.

Forty years later, the Mets celebrated that team again. Some of them are gone--McGraw, Agee, Clendenon and, of course, Hodges who had a heart attack less than three years later. Some others didn't make it back. But there was Seaver and Ryan and Koosman and Gentry and Harrelson and Ron Swoboda and Dr. Ron Taylor and Jerry Grote and Wayne Garrett and, of course Cleon, who may still be the best hitter the Mets ever had with apologies to Mike Piazza. Not to mention Ed Kranepool, who I remember seeing at the tail end of 1962 when he came up straight out of high school. In a God-awful season for the team, there was real joy in the new stadium. All of us old enough to remember had to get choked up as the players were introduced and the highlights montage was shown.

It would be very easy to feel old looking at all the over-60 Mets but I didn't feel that way. I felt warm and happy that it had all happened the way it did and that I had the chance to see as much of it as I did. When I got older and became a reporter, I more or less stopped rooting for teams and started rooting for good guys--regardless of who they played for. I couldn't stand the '92 Mets and I'm not so crazy about the current group, not because they've been injured or mediocre but because I'm not sure how much they care.

But the '69 team happened when I was still innocent--a year before I read 'Ball Four’ and my view of athletes changed forever. To me, they're all still great guys and always will be. Steroids can't change that; Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens can't change that--nothing can change that.

They gave me joy then and they still give me joy now. There aren't a whole lot of things in life about which your feelings do not change even a little bit in 40 years. The '69 Mets are an exception--and, for me, they always will be.