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?

If I was ever to write another tennis book, it’d be based on this time of year; Next up - Queens, Eastbourne, Roehampton, the great Ted Tinling

Perusing the morning paper today, I caught myself doing something I rarely do at this point in my life: reading the tennis results—known in newspaper terms as, ‘the agate,’ because that’s the type-face used for results. Years ago, when I covered tennis on a regular basis, I read the agate daily. Not only did I know just about every name I came across, I had a pretty good sense of what a win or a loss meant to that player.

These days I read the golf agate carefully—not just the results from The PGA Tour but also The Champions Tour and The Nationwide Tour. I may not know all the names, but I know a lot of them on all three of those tours. I can tell you most of the time where the guys I know stand on The PGA Tour money list and I usually have a pretty good idea about The Nationwide list too, especially as it relates to the top 25—the magic number of make the big tour—but also the top 60 because that gives you a spot in The Nationwide Tour Championship and also exempt status on The Nationwide next year if you don’t make it through Q-School.

Most of the tennis names fly by me un-recognized now. Oh sure, I know the big names, even the semi-big names, but in the old days I could give you name, rank and serial number on anyone in the top 100 and a lot of players not in the top 100. I used to take great pleasure in wandering the back courts at tournaments in the early rounds to watch a match between two qualifiers, knowing that a first round win was huge for the winner.

Those days are gone. I still get nostalgic watching The French Open or when I notice that The Italian Open is going on and I have fond memories of traveling to Australia, especially the month I spent down there researching ‘Hard Courts.’ That said, if I ever did go back to do a tennis book it would be during this month—the next four weeks. The time of year is the reason I found myself checking out the agate this morning.

The French Open is over. The grass court season has begun. It lasts exactly five weeks (including Newport, the week after Wimbledon) and is played almost exclusively in Great Britain. The men are at Queen’s this week—note it is The Queen’s Club NOT Queens Club—and the women are in Birmingham. The men also have an event in Germany that will draw some good players but it almost doesn’t count. Queen’s has almost as much tradition as Wimbledon and is one of the best tennis venues I’ve ever been to in my life.

Next week the men and women BOTH go to Eastbourne. This is a radical change in tradition. Until last year, Eastbourne had always been strictly a women’s site, a wonderful event in an old English seaside town at another tennis ground—as they are called in Britain—that just reeks of tradition. Last year the men’s event that had been played in Nottingham was moved to Eastbourne to coincide with the women’s tournament. I can’t imagine that made the women happy but if I was still covering tennis it would be a dream come true to have the men and the women in the same place the week before Wimbledon.

Of course a lot of players don’t play the week before Wimbledon although Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert almost always played Eastbourne. It was a great place to go the week before Wimbledon to get time with top players in a relatively relaxed atmosphere.

One year at Eastbourne I was sitting with the great Ted Tinling watching a match in the front row, so close to the players you could just about touch them. Ted was one of the most remarkable, can’t-make-him-up figures I’ve ever met in sports. He had become famous for designing Gussie Moran’s famous lace panties at Wimbledon in the 40s and had been very close to the great Suzanne Lenglen. He was also a spy for The British during World War II and one of the great storytellers ever born. There was NOTHING Ted wouldn’t say to anyone or about anyone.

Ted was about 6-foot-4, completely bald, wore a diamond stud in his ear long before men did that and was always open about the fact that he was gay. He was as good a source I ever had because he knew everything and everyone and never considered anything a secret. It was Ted, as an advisor to The Wimbledon media committee, who convinced the gentleman of the club that they needed to allow a member of the American media into their daily planning meetings—not just a member of The British media.

One morning when I was the American rep, the committee chairman, a very nice guy named Barry Wetherill, made the mistake of asking the innocent question, “everything alright with your group John?”

Well, he asked. I told Barry—and the others—that I thought the lack of access we had to the players was ridiculous. We couldn’t even get into the tea room (Wimbledon for player lounge) without someone sneaking us through the entrance and the fact that we couldn’t even walk over to the practice courts to find a player was a joke. Barry turned to my English counterpart to ask if he saw any of this as a problem: “No not at all,” he said. “We’re very happy to have players brought to the interview room.”

Thanks for your support. I explained that the reporting we (Americans) did was a bit different than the Brits since it involved, well, reporting. Wetherill looked at Ted. “What do you think about all this Ted?” he asked.

Ted had been lying in wait. “Well OF COURSE John’s right,” he said. “It’s OUTRAGEOUS. Who do these players and their bloody agents think they are prancing around like royalty. The Royals sit in the Royal Box. The rest of the people in this place should TALK to people for more than the nine minutes when they come into the interview room. It’s HORRIBLE.”

I drank the sherry in front of me in one swallow at that point to keep from falling down laughing. The committee members were not nearly as amused.

So, on this day at Eastbourne, I’m sitting with Ted watching what was a pretty bad match when suddenly a fan a few yards away from us stands up during a changeover and points a shaky, drunken finger at Ted. “That’s it, that’s it!” he says. “I’m not watching another minute of this. Nothing but lesbians playing here. (The two women playing were, in fact, gay). And you Tinling, you f----- homosexual, you shouldn’t be watching this either!”

With that he sat down, apparently having forgotten that he was leaving.

Ted was very calm. “You know,” he said. “If I was a PRACTICING f---- homosexual I wouldn’t mind. But, given that I’m not, I think I’ll have him removed.”

Which he did.

The other cool place to go that week was Roehampton, in suburban London, which is where the Wimbledon qualifying tournament has always been held. Very intense, competitive tennis on dicey grass courts with very few fans around. There are always a couple of up-and-coming names or down-and-fading names at the qualifier. Most of the time if you wanted to talk to a player after he or she had played, you’d just plop down on a grassy bank near one of the courts and talk.

Queen’s has the same type of atmosphere. It is right in downtown London, best reached by subway and the stands, put up each year just for the tournament week, sit right on top of the court. Unlike at Wimbledon, there is (or at least used to be) ample access to the players since their dining area is (was?) open to the media. It was a perfect place to get time with players and watch very good tennis from very close up.

For me, the two weeks between the end of The French and the start of Wimbledon were always the best two weeks of the tennis season. Then came Wimbledon, which was always difficult to cover because of the lack of access (believe it or not the committee did NOT rewrite the rules based on my semi-tirade, although they did make a few changes eventually) but always great fun with great drama.

Someday I’d like to go back. Especially to Queen’s and Eastbourne—even though Eastbourne would never be the same without Ted.



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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

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