So here I am in Phoenix, having made it through a plane flight to get here. I’m giving a speech to a corporate group tonight and the hardest part of the day is the flying part. I’m writing this late Thursday afternoon since I have to get up at 5 a.m. in the morning to catch a flight to Chicago. I’m going to see some friends there and then drive over to Notre Dame Saturday morning to do Navy-Notre Dame on the radio.
I’m not terribly optimistic: Navy’s playing for the 10th straight week and is very beat up. Notre Dame is getting wide receiver Michael Floyd back to what is clearly a very good offense. It will be very tough for Navy to make this one of those years where the refs have to intervene for Notre Dame to win.
Am I biased? Of course. I can honestly say I have great respect for Notre Dame and have a lot of friends connected with the school—notably Mike Brey, the basketball coach. But, as you’ve probably gathered, I’m not a fan of Charlie Weis and I really believe Notre Dame has more advantages than any school playing football in America. The fact that it hasn’t won a national championship since 1988 and has barely been a blip on the national radar in recent years is mind-boggling.
Now, of course, people are saying if Notre Dame wins out it will get a BCS bid. You know what, they’re probably right because one of the bowls is going to want the name and the TV ratings, regardless of the quality of the team. If Notre Dame keeps winning, they’ll keep moving up in the polls so a BCS bowl can pick them.
The best team the Irish will have to beat to do that is Pittsburgh, which is pretty good, but hardly a power at this point. Their wins to date are over Nevada, Michigan State, Purdue, Washington, Boston College and Washington State. There’s not a ranked team in the bunch and Washington State is about as bad a team as Division 1-A has to offer. Their losses are to a Michigan team that will be lucky to finish in the top half of The Big Ten and Pete Carroll’s worst USC team in eight years. Ask Oregon how tough the Trojans are this season.
And yet, when we all know that Boise State will not get a BCS bid even if it wins out unless TCU loses a game, Notre Dame is in the mix.
Ridiculous.
But I’m not here today to rail about Notre Dame or even the BCS. I do that enough and I might do it again Monday if Navy somehow stays close.
Actually I’m looking for help. Seriously. I HATE to fly—hate everything about it from dealing with security to wondering about the weather to the flight itself. When I was younger, I flew all the time. I flew big planes and small planes. I was always a little bit nervous—lack of control, which is what scares most of us—but still got on planes whenever I needed to.
I still remember flying on a private plane 21 years ago from Clemson to Chapel Hill with Lefty Driesell. He was doing TV for Raycom that year and someone had gotten sick so Lefty had to do an afternoon game at Clemson, a night game in Chapel Hill. The only way to get him to Chapel Hill in time was a private plane. I hitched a ride since I was writing about Lefty for my second book, “A Season Inside.”
The day was beautiful and the flight was smooth. Lefty was white-knuckling the whole way. “Coach, these little planes are safer than the big ones,” the pilot said.
“Might be so,” Lefty said. “But they don’t FEEL safer.
He told me a story during that trip about flying to New York a few years earlier on a recruiting trip. There had been some kind of a problem with the plane’s hydraulic system and the oxygen masks had dropped down. “This flight attendant was showing me how to put it on,” Lefty said. “I remember thinking, ‘I’m gonna die and the kid I’m going to see ain’t even that good. Now if I’d been going to see Moses (Malone) that would have been okay. Moses was worth dyin’ for.”
I’ve gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. It started when my son was born. All of a sudden, every time there was turbulence I thought about Danny. When Brigid came along, I thought about both of them. I also had some bad flights. I landed on a foamed runway once in London because the pilots weren’t sure the landing gear would come down. We circled for about 45 minutes while we were shown the crash position.
On another flight, the pilot went right through a thunderstorm. I’ve been told by pilots that the one thing that makes a pilot nervous is flying through a thunderstorm. We were in this one for a solid 30 minutes. You know how sometimes when you fly and it get bumpy you look around and you see people sound asleep? Not on this flight. Everyone was wide awake, sitting up, staring straight ahead.
We finally got through the storm and when we landed everyone on board applauded. As we waited for the jetway, the pilot came out from the cockpit.
“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said.
“On a scale of one to ten, how scary was that?”
He shook his head and smiled. “I’d say it was a solid seven, maybe an eight,” he said.
“When do you get nervous,” I asked.
“About six,” he said.
Great.
Back then I had what I called, “the four hour rule.” If I could drive someplace in four hours, I drove because it was just as fast as flying and almost always easier. After 9-11 it became a seven hour rule and it has risen through the years. Now, if I have the time I will drive as far as Chicago and Orlando. I’ve learned not to even mind it: I listen to tapes, talk on the phone, listen to a ballgame at night.
Phoenix though is a bit far. San Antonio for The Final Four was a bit far too. Friends have suggested drugs: I tried Xanax because Tony Kornheiser said it would knock me silly. It knocked me nowhere. I had three glasses of wine, even though I wasn’t supposed to drink and THAT helped. Problem is you can’t really start drinking on a flight that leaves at 7:30 in the morning and it worked. Today I tried valium. Nothing. I mean NOTHING. I felt every bump and sweated through a bumpy landing. So if anyone has any suggestions, I’m open to them. The shame of it is, I’m actually a good speaker and I turn down a lot of offers because unless the money is really, really good I’m not getting on an airplane.
So, as you read this, say a little prayer that I make it to Chicago in one piece. And then cheer, cheer for…The Midshipmen.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
All’s Well in Yankeeland – Rivera is Difference Again; Great Answers Yesterday
And so, all is well in Yankeeland again. At least for a couple weeks.
There’s no doubting that the Yankees deserved their World Series win over the Phillies. They got a gutty performance from Andy Pettitte, whose postseason pitching may someday be the reason he gets into the Hall of Fame—although the steroids admissions two years ago may be the reason he DOESN’T get in the Hall.
They got Derek Jeter play from Derek Jeter, a remarkable performance from Hidecki Matsui and just enough from Mark Texeira and Alex Rodriguez to be champions for the first time in nine years.
In the end though, the difference was Mariano Rivera. It isn’t as if he’s been completely infallible as a postseason pitcher—he gave up the home run to Sandy Alomar in 1997 and the two runs in the ninth inning in Arizona in 2001—but all that does is prove he’s human. Sort of human anyway. What Rivera does for the Yankees is something no closer of this era has done: he makes the game seven innings for the both teams.
Everyone knows that if the game gets to the eighth inning with the Yankees in front, Rivera’s coming in and the odds are that’s it, he’s going to do what needs to be done and the Yankees will win the game. He now has FORTY saves in postseason. Think about that number. That’s a very good SEASON for a closer in saves in the games that matter the most.
What’s truly funny is to think back two years to when Joba Chamberlain first came up at mid-season. He was throwing 98—back then he actually threw strikes on a consistent basis—and within two weeks he’d become a cult figure in New York. There were actually people saying it was time to ease Rivera out of the closer’s role (he’s had his annual run of a couple bad outings about then) and give the ball to Chamberlain.
I know I bring up “Living on the Black,” a lot when writing about baseball but, if nothing else, Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine were two of the really smart guys I’ve met along the way in sports. I remember Mussina talking about the notion of replacing Rivera with Chamberlain.
“People really make me laugh sometimes,” he said. “They just cannot understand what Mo does or how he does it and what it means to a team to look out at the bullpen and know he’s the guy coming in to finish off a game. Heck, he’s worth a few outs before he gets in there because guys are squeezing the bats knowing if they don’t get runs before he gets in the game’s over. Joba’s a great talent but we’ve all seen great talents come up in this game. You don’t even think about replacing Mariano Rivera until HE tells you it might be time.” He smiled. “And then you try to talk him out of it.”
Think about this too: The Yankees had three absolute lock Hall of Famers on the field last night: Rivera, Jeter and Rodriguez—whose bases loaded strike out in the third would have overshadowed everything else he’s done in postseason had Matsui not picked him up and had the Yankees not gone on to win. Pettitte will be a very credible Hall of Fame possibility at some point and the Yankees have younger players like Texeira and CC Sabathia who may get to that level. Point being: they’re really good.
Of course the Phillies started a probably Hall of Famer last night too in Pedro Martinez. But it was clear from the start that he didn’t have it and it’s almost surprising it took the Yankees as long as it did to get to him. In fact, he did a good job of keeping the game competitive. Philadelphia
The first question that’s going to come up is what the Yankees will do with Matsui. The consensus all year was that this was his sayonara tour in New York
I don’t know about you, but I always feel a certain melancholy the day after The World Series ends. It doesn’t matter who wins, I know there’s no baseball of any kind for four months and no real baseball for five months—even when the Series ends in November. I’m one of those people who always has the number of days until pitchers and catchers report (I also make it February 15th since it’s never more than a day or two off that each year). So, this morning as I read the paper I did the math: 102 days until pitchers and catchers report. Another two weeks until the exhibition season begins. And, if all goes well, I’ll get home from The Masters on April 12th and go to a ballgame the next day. And you wonder why people think I’m nuts.
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I really enjoyed some of the posts and e-mails yesterday about favorite TV shows. Some of my favorites beyond ‘West Wing,’ came up—including ‘Hill Street Blues,’; ‘Mash,’; WKRP in Cincinnati’ (where have you gone Bailey Quarters?) and ‘Seinfeld.’ Worth noting by the way that ‘The Wire,’ was written by a former newspaper guy. Some of those people DO have talent.
As I was reading the posts, I thought about another show I loved: “The Odd Couple,” with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. It had the greatest ending of any show ever (Newhart was a strong second). Felix gets re-married to Gloria and the wedding is in the apartment. As Felix is leaving he and Oscar share a handshake and a sincere thanks. Felix points his finger and says, “You know what I’m going to do JUST for you?”—and he walks over and dumps a garbage can on the rug.
Oscar looks at him and says, ‘you know what buddy, just for you, I’M going to clean that up.”
Another warm handshake. Felix leaves. Oscar turns to look at the garbage for a moment, then waves his hand and says, “I’m not cleaning it up,” and leaves the room.
Great ending you think. About 10 seconds go by. Finally, the door opens. It’s Felix. He looks at the garbage and says, “I KNEW he wouldn’t clean it up.” He cleans it up. Truly fall down funny great ending.
Let’s hear what your favorite TV ending was.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Updated II - Radio Segments for This Week (The Sports Reporters, Tony Kornheiser Show, The Gas Man Show)
I made my regular appearance on 'The Sports Reporters' with Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in my regular spot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's) this evening. Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment on a topic making the rounds again, Len Bias and Maryland, the Dez Bryant/NCAA situation and Doug Barron's situation.
Click here to listen to Wednesday afternoon's segment: The Sports Reporters
This week my segment on The Tony Kornheiser Show (normally Thursday's, 11:05 ET) was Tuesday because of a scheduling issue. It was a typical segment with Tony, starting out with a little concert and theater talk prior to discussing the Len Bias documentary.
Click here to listen to the radio segment (I start at the 19:45 mark): The Tony Kornheiser Show
I made my regular appearance with The Gasman Thursday (5:35 PT), and this week we discussed speaking engagements, the BCS and a little ND-Navy.
Click here to listen to the radio segment: The Gas Man Show
Click here to listen to Wednesday afternoon's segment: The Sports Reporters
This week my segment on The Tony Kornheiser Show (normally Thursday's, 11:05 ET) was Tuesday because of a scheduling issue. It was a typical segment with Tony, starting out with a little concert and theater talk prior to discussing the Len Bias documentary.
Click here to listen to the radio segment (I start at the 19:45 mark): The Tony Kornheiser Show
I made my regular appearance with The Gasman Thursday (5:35 PT), and this week we discussed speaking engagements, the BCS and a little ND-Navy.
Click here to listen to the radio segment: The Gas Man Show
On a Crowded Sports Page, Edgerrin James Sticks Out to Me; Question on TV Shows
There were a number of big stories in this morning’s Washington Post. The Washington Wizards, who appear to be at least a playoff team once again, lost to the nemesis, the Cleveland Cavaliers, in Cleveland. The Washington Capitals are preparing to deal with life for at least a little while without Alexander Ovechkin. To put that in perspective that’s like me trying to live without a computer for an extended period of time.
There was also a story—the lead in the sports section naturally—about the fact that Dan Snyder had broken his ‘policy,’ of not speaking to the media during the season (at least on the record) to speak briefly at a Redskins charity event about the god-awful team he and henchman Vinny Cerrato put together.
Snyder said he felt terrible for the fans and was sorry things had gone so poorly. That’s progress—a little tiny first step—but he never said the words, “I screwed up.” That would represent actual progress. My guess is someone told him if he wanted to avoid a possible fullscale boycott in two weeks or, worse, some serious unrest in the stands, he better say SOMETHING. So he did his ‘I feel sorry for the fans,’ bit—Joe Gibbs would have been proud—and went back into seclusion.
None of those stories, however, really caught my eye. After all, the Wizards are supposed to be better with Gilbert Arenas finally healthy and with some smart offseason moves by Ernie Grunfeld and one doesn’t need to know the shape of a hockey puck to know that Ovechkin on the bench for any extended period of time is trouble for the Caps no matter how many times the other guys talk about, ‘stepping up.’ And Snyder speaking? Yeah, that’s a surprise but if you read carefully he said just about nothing.
Here’s the story that got my attention: The Seattle Seahawks released Edgerrin James. It was one paragraph, mentioning he had rushed for 125 yards on 46 carries this season (under three yards per rush) and 12,246 yards in his career. That’s a lot of running and a lot pounding.
James is only 31-years-old. Think about that: he’s two years YOUNGER than Tiger Woods, who is just coming into his prime as a golfer. There is no job in sports that spits you out and beats you up like being an NFL running back. My most vivid memories from the year I spent watching from the sidelines (2004) while researching my book on The Baltimore Ravens were the hits Jamal Lewis—who announced last week he’d retire at the end of the season—took week-after-week as he charged ahead with the football. I honestly wasn’t sure who to feel worse for: Lewis, who is about 6-1 and 230 pounds or the guys trying to stop him.
During one game, Lewis carried six straight times on a possession. He came to the sidelines during a TV timeout and took off his helmet. I was standing right there and I just said, ‘you okay?’
He smiled. “I’m like novocaine,” he said. “I’m the needle that keeps digging in deeper and deeper until they scream for mercy.”
I might have thought he’d be screaming for mercy but he was just fine. The timeout over, he put his helmet back on and ran over two defenders on the next play.
But there’s more to it than just the pain players go through. There is now all sorts of documentation about the injuries players suffer during their football careers and you can bet there’s plenty more to come especially with new union chief DeMaurice Smith insisting that both the league and the union have swept the problem under the rug for years.
Whenever I read an item like the one on James or look at transactions and see a note on someone being waived or cut, I think back to that year with the Ravens. I go back as far as their mini-camps when all the undrafted free agents showed up, each one of them honestly believing they were going to play in the NFL at some point.
Brian Billick called guys who couldn’t play ‘slap-dicks,’ when the coaches would meet to discuss cuts. He wasn’t being cruel, he just didn’t want the meetings to go on for hours and hours as they easily could. “The guy is a slappie,” he would say. “I wouldn’t even recommend he stick around for NFL Europe. He needs to get a job.”
Back then NFL Europe was still out there as a developmental league for the NFL. It was the lifeline for a lot of players who didn’t want to give up the dream. Billick would often tell players when he cut them that they should consider staying in shape in the fall and catching on with an NFL Europe team in the spring. That’s no longer there. Most guys go home and wait—hope—for the phone to ring.
There was one player on the Ravens that year who had been, if I remember correctly, a third round draft pick. He was a rare Ozzie Newsome mistake. The team had kept him on the practice squad hoping he’d get better but he hadn’t. They finally concluded he was a slappie.
As Billick did with every player he cut he asked him if he had his college degree. The player looked at Billick as if he was crazy. “No I don’t coach, what’s that matter?”
Billick, who was a slappy himself in a couple of training camps after graduating from Brigham Young, was always very good in these situations.
“It matters for a lot of reasons,” he said. “Mostly it matters because, and I could certainly be proven wrong, I just don’t think you’re going to play football at this level. I think you need to think about another route. Sometimes you have to move on from the dream.”
“No,” the player said emphatically. “I’m NOT moving on from the dream. I know I can play.”
He stood up to go. He was the only player cut that morning who didn’t’ shake hands with Billick on the way out. I’ve never seen his name on an NFL roster since then.
James is no slappy, that’s for sure. He may very well end up in the Hall of Fame someday. But I have no doubt he’s hurting today. The mother of his four children died in the spring from cancer and now, after being a star all his life, he was called in yesterday and told it was time to move on from the dream.
I don’t care who you are, how old you are, how accomplished you are, that hurts. There is always a moment—or even a long period—of denial. That’s why great players like James end up being journeyman towards the end, searching for some kind of happy ending that isn’t likely to come.
I’ve never met Edgerrin James. But I feel for him this morning.
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Entirely different subject: With no baseball last night and almost no hockey (Islanders have won four in a row folks) I did what I often do: watched “The West Wing,” on DVD. I still think it is the best written show in TV history, especially the first four years when Aaron Sorkin was writing it. Last night I watched the first two episodes of season two: ‘In The Shadow of Two Gunmen.’ I’ve probably seen those episodes ten times and I STILL can’t get enough of them. They’re brilliantly written and acted.
Anyway, I was just wondering: If you could have ONE TV show on DVD to watch in quiet moments what show would it be? And, on that show, what episode is the one that makes your hair stand on end (like the start of season two of ‘West Wing,’ for me) or makes you laugh every single time you watch it. (For me that would probably the ‘Festivus,’ episode of Seinfeld).
There was also a story—the lead in the sports section naturally—about the fact that Dan Snyder had broken his ‘policy,’ of not speaking to the media during the season (at least on the record) to speak briefly at a Redskins charity event about the god-awful team he and henchman Vinny Cerrato put together.
Snyder said he felt terrible for the fans and was sorry things had gone so poorly. That’s progress—a little tiny first step—but he never said the words, “I screwed up.” That would represent actual progress. My guess is someone told him if he wanted to avoid a possible fullscale boycott in two weeks or, worse, some serious unrest in the stands, he better say SOMETHING. So he did his ‘I feel sorry for the fans,’ bit—Joe Gibbs would have been proud—and went back into seclusion.
None of those stories, however, really caught my eye. After all, the Wizards are supposed to be better with Gilbert Arenas finally healthy and with some smart offseason moves by Ernie Grunfeld and one doesn’t need to know the shape of a hockey puck to know that Ovechkin on the bench for any extended period of time is trouble for the Caps no matter how many times the other guys talk about, ‘stepping up.’ And Snyder speaking? Yeah, that’s a surprise but if you read carefully he said just about nothing.
Here’s the story that got my attention: The Seattle Seahawks released Edgerrin James. It was one paragraph, mentioning he had rushed for 125 yards on 46 carries this season (under three yards per rush) and 12,246 yards in his career. That’s a lot of running and a lot pounding.
James is only 31-years-old. Think about that: he’s two years YOUNGER than Tiger Woods, who is just coming into his prime as a golfer. There is no job in sports that spits you out and beats you up like being an NFL running back. My most vivid memories from the year I spent watching from the sidelines (2004) while researching my book on The Baltimore Ravens were the hits Jamal Lewis—who announced last week he’d retire at the end of the season—took week-after-week as he charged ahead with the football. I honestly wasn’t sure who to feel worse for: Lewis, who is about 6-1 and 230 pounds or the guys trying to stop him.
During one game, Lewis carried six straight times on a possession. He came to the sidelines during a TV timeout and took off his helmet. I was standing right there and I just said, ‘you okay?’
He smiled. “I’m like novocaine,” he said. “I’m the needle that keeps digging in deeper and deeper until they scream for mercy.”
I might have thought he’d be screaming for mercy but he was just fine. The timeout over, he put his helmet back on and ran over two defenders on the next play.
But there’s more to it than just the pain players go through. There is now all sorts of documentation about the injuries players suffer during their football careers and you can bet there’s plenty more to come especially with new union chief DeMaurice Smith insisting that both the league and the union have swept the problem under the rug for years.
Whenever I read an item like the one on James or look at transactions and see a note on someone being waived or cut, I think back to that year with the Ravens. I go back as far as their mini-camps when all the undrafted free agents showed up, each one of them honestly believing they were going to play in the NFL at some point.
Brian Billick called guys who couldn’t play ‘slap-dicks,’ when the coaches would meet to discuss cuts. He wasn’t being cruel, he just didn’t want the meetings to go on for hours and hours as they easily could. “The guy is a slappie,” he would say. “I wouldn’t even recommend he stick around for NFL Europe. He needs to get a job.”
Back then NFL Europe was still out there as a developmental league for the NFL. It was the lifeline for a lot of players who didn’t want to give up the dream. Billick would often tell players when he cut them that they should consider staying in shape in the fall and catching on with an NFL Europe team in the spring. That’s no longer there. Most guys go home and wait—hope—for the phone to ring.
There was one player on the Ravens that year who had been, if I remember correctly, a third round draft pick. He was a rare Ozzie Newsome mistake. The team had kept him on the practice squad hoping he’d get better but he hadn’t. They finally concluded he was a slappie.
As Billick did with every player he cut he asked him if he had his college degree. The player looked at Billick as if he was crazy. “No I don’t coach, what’s that matter?”
Billick, who was a slappy himself in a couple of training camps after graduating from Brigham Young, was always very good in these situations.
“It matters for a lot of reasons,” he said. “Mostly it matters because, and I could certainly be proven wrong, I just don’t think you’re going to play football at this level. I think you need to think about another route. Sometimes you have to move on from the dream.”
“No,” the player said emphatically. “I’m NOT moving on from the dream. I know I can play.”
He stood up to go. He was the only player cut that morning who didn’t’ shake hands with Billick on the way out. I’ve never seen his name on an NFL roster since then.
James is no slappy, that’s for sure. He may very well end up in the Hall of Fame someday. But I have no doubt he’s hurting today. The mother of his four children died in the spring from cancer and now, after being a star all his life, he was called in yesterday and told it was time to move on from the dream.
I don’t care who you are, how old you are, how accomplished you are, that hurts. There is always a moment—or even a long period—of denial. That’s why great players like James end up being journeyman towards the end, searching for some kind of happy ending that isn’t likely to come.
I’ve never met Edgerrin James. But I feel for him this morning.
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Entirely different subject: With no baseball last night and almost no hockey (Islanders have won four in a row folks) I did what I often do: watched “The West Wing,” on DVD. I still think it is the best written show in TV history, especially the first four years when Aaron Sorkin was writing it. Last night I watched the first two episodes of season two: ‘In The Shadow of Two Gunmen.’ I’ve probably seen those episodes ten times and I STILL can’t get enough of them. They’re brilliantly written and acted.
Anyway, I was just wondering: If you could have ONE TV show on DVD to watch in quiet moments what show would it be? And, on that show, what episode is the one that makes your hair stand on end (like the start of season two of ‘West Wing,’ for me) or makes you laugh every single time you watch it. (For me that would probably the ‘Festivus,’ episode of Seinfeld).
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Election Day – My Past in Covering Politics
Today is election day—though not in very many places since it is an odd-numbered year—but nevertheless it brings back a lot of memories that have little to do with who won or who lost elections.
When I was a kid growing up in New York City Shelter Island
When we were little, my grandmother would come and spend the day with us. Mom and dad would drive the two hours to Shelter Island
If sports was my passion growing up, politics was second. I actually met President Johnson at a fundraiser in 1964 on my first trip to Washington
I met Bobby Kennedy in 1968, about two months before he was killed, when he came to New York
The first election I was eligible to vote in was 1976, when I was in college. I voted absentee and then drove down to Burlington , North Carolina 5 a.m. on election day to canvas voters coming out of the polls for The Burlington Times-News. My old college roommate, David Arneke, was working there then and he recruited me to help him out. I think I got paid $10 and David bought breakfast at McDonald’s when we took a break.
In 1982 and 1983, I covered Maryland Maryland Montgomery County
Most of us probably were—although, for those who don’t remember, Bob Woodward was a registered Republican when he was working on The Watergate stories—but I can honestly say that never affected the way I covered Pascal. I liked him but it was pretty apparent from the start he wasn’t getting elected. Hughes had done a very good job rebuilding the state government in the wake of the scandal that forced Marvin Mandel out of office and the state leans heavily Democrat most of the time anyway.
Pascal was being pushed hard from the right on the abortion issue. One day, as we were driving in his car to a campaign speech, I asked him how he would deal with a hypothetical: if one of his four daughters got pregnant and told him she just couldn’t deal with having the baby how would he handle it.
“I would try to talk her out of it,” he said.
“But what if she was insistent.”
“Then I would support her decision.”
I wrote that and all hell broke loose in the Pascal campaign. They were demanding a correction saying that Pascal was absolutely pro-life 100 percent of the time. I went back to Pascal and went through the questions again. His answers—to his credit because he was an honest guy—were the same.
I finally said, ‘Bob, this is a pro-choice position. If this is the way you feel, the pro-lifers will consider you pro-choice.’
“Okay,” he said. “But I’m NOT as pro-choice as Harry Hughes.”
None of it really mattered in the end. Hughes got 63 percent of the vote. I was in Pascal’s hotel suite with several other reporters at 8 o’clock on election night when the polls closed. Pascal had been talking all day about how “shocked,” we were all going to be that night. He came bouncing into the room at 8 on the dot just in time to see Hughes’s face on the TV.
“NBC News is now projecting that Maryland Governor Harry Hughes will be re-elected with about 63 percent of the vote,” said the anchor—can’t remember who it was right now, maybe Tom Brokaw.
I still remember the stunned look on Pascal’s face. It occurred to me at that moment that he really HAD expected to somehow win. Politicians always believe there is going to be a miracle no matter what the polling data says. I’ll bet John McCain went into election day last year believing he was going to win too.
Pascal shut himself in the bedroom for about an hour before going downstairs to concede defeat. When he finally came out, we all rode downstairs to the ballroom in a freight elevator. Pascal was on the elevator with his wife Nancy (still one of the nicest people I’ve ever met) his mother, two of his daughters, a couple of state troopers and about five of us who had covered the campaign.
As we rode down, packed in tight, Pascal’s mom was standing directly in front of me. She was very short. She turned around to look at me, pointed a finger straight up in my face and said, “my son would have made a great governor and it’s your fault he lost.”
There was dead silence in the elevator. What was I supposed to do, argue with a 75-year-old woman who was about a foot shorter than I was? “M’am,” I finally said. “I’m truly sorry you feel that way but I don’t believe that’s true.”
“You tell him mom,” Pascal said.
A year later I covered the mayoral election in Baltimore—which was more like a coronation for William Donald Schaefer, who was running for a fourth term. Schaefer was a heroic figure in the city having rebuilt the inner harbor and having completely changed the city’s image. (He was elected governor in 1986). But he was, to say the least, quirky. There were all sort of stories about his temper and, in a lengthy profile I wrote on him which was what people in my business call a puff piece (it was tough to say anything bad about him given the job he had done) I described one of them.
According to his staffers, if The Baltimore Sun wrote ANYTHING critical about him, Schaefer would lock himself in his office and spend an hour watering his plants—and he had a LOT of plants in there. I used that anecdote as an example of how sensitive Schaefer was to criticism.
On election day, I was assigned to be there when Schaefer voted, which he did as soon as the polls opened at 7 a.m. so he could spend the day traveling around the city urging people to get out and vote. That meant another 5 a.m. election day wake up. I didn’t mind. It was fun.
When Schaefer came out of the polling place, about a dozen of us surrounded him. Someone asked him—naturally—whom he had voted for. I asked some harmless question about what percentage of the vote he hoped to get (the final number was, I believe, about 87 percent).
Shaefer looked at me, pointed his finger at me (I seemed to get that a lot on election day) and said, “I’m not speaking to you!”
I thought he was kidding. I was still getting a hard time from people not so much for writing a puff piece on Schaefer but for writing the LONGEST puff piece anyone had seen on Schaefer.
“Not speaking to me Mayor?” I said. “Why in the world not?”
“How dare you,” he thundered, “write that I’m sensitive to criticism!”
Monday, November 2, 2009
John's Monday Washington Post Column:
Here is my column today for The Washington Post ------
This column is going to be written in a very calm tone. There will be no calling the BCS presidents liars because their veracity really isn't a relevant issue at this point. There will be no calls for a congressional investigation or even for President Obama to follow up on his comments of a year ago calling for a college football playoff.
The president has other issues on the table and, to be honest, short of threatening the tax-exempt status of the big-bucks schools, even his presence probably won't force the heads of the 66 BCS schools in question to end their hypocrisy.
Let us look factually at the college football landscape with five weeks to go before BCS bids are handed out.
At this moment there are seven teams in the college football bowl subdivision -- as it is now called by those nice people at the NCAA -- with undefeated records. Five of those teams -- Florida, Texas, Alabama, Iowa and Cincinnati -- play in conferences where the champion receives an automatic bid to a BCS bowl, regardless of record. The other two, TCU and Boise State, play in non-BCS conferences where it is possible to go undefeated and not play in a BCS bowl and impossible to play for the national championship under any circumstances.
Click here for the rest of the column: BCS is busy trying to fix its image, but nothing else
This column is going to be written in a very calm tone. There will be no calling the BCS presidents liars because their veracity really isn't a relevant issue at this point. There will be no calls for a congressional investigation or even for President Obama to follow up on his comments of a year ago calling for a college football playoff.
The president has other issues on the table and, to be honest, short of threatening the tax-exempt status of the big-bucks schools, even his presence probably won't force the heads of the 66 BCS schools in question to end their hypocrisy.
Let us look factually at the college football landscape with five weeks to go before BCS bids are handed out.
At this moment there are seven teams in the college football bowl subdivision -- as it is now called by those nice people at the NCAA -- with undefeated records. Five of those teams -- Florida, Texas, Alabama, Iowa and Cincinnati -- play in conferences where the champion receives an automatic bid to a BCS bowl, regardless of record. The other two, TCU and Boise State, play in non-BCS conferences where it is possible to go undefeated and not play in a BCS bowl and impossible to play for the national championship under any circumstances.
Click here for the rest of the column: BCS is busy trying to fix its image, but nothing else
Alex Rodriguez Close to Having Sins Wiped Away; Wikipedia Issues
I actually feel good for Alex Rodriguez this morning. I think.
He really is one of the more confusing figures to come along during my lifetime. On the one hand, he’s an absolutely brilliant player who has had some breathstreaking streaks and seasons. On the other hand he got caught cheating this past spring and then hid behind partial truths—blaming a cousin at one point for helping him acquire steroids, then claiming he didn’t really know what he was taking—and a refusal to answer direct questions.
He’s had some terrible postseasons and his off-field judgment has, at times, been really, really bad. Forget being seen in clubs with other women while he was still married, the announcement he was opting out of his Yankees contract during game four of The World Series in 2007 was absolutely brutal. If he wants to blame that one on Scott Boras—fine. Who hired Boras?
That said, he probably hasn’t done anything to deserve being pilloried the way he’s been pilloried by some although that comes with the territory in New York. No one is ever good in New York. You are either “absolutely great,”—a favorite saying of Yankees broadcaster John Sterling—or you absolutely suck—a favorite saying of anyone who has lived in New York for more than 15 minutes.
If the Yankees win one more game this season, many, if not most of Rodriguez’s sins will be forgiven in New York because he will have played a key role in delivering a World Series title. You will see the word redemption linked with his name a lot. Don’t be surprised if there isn’t a book next spring and the word redemption appears in the title.
The smartest description I’ve ever heard of Rodriguez came from Mike Mussina during the time I spent with him in 2007 researching, “Living on the Black.” Mussina was never one to pull a punch when you asked him a question and when I first asked him about Rodriguez, sitting in the living room of his home in Tampa during spring training, he smiled.
“Try to imagine this,” he said. “You’ve been told, with a good deal of justification, that you are the best baseball player of your era that, in fact, you might end up being the best baseball player of all time. Then you come to New York and you’re told this: ‘You might be the best player in the game today but you’re no Derek Jeter.’ No matter what he does he’s always going to be in Jete’s shadow. He can’t escape it. If he wins a World Series, Derek will have five. If he wins four, Derek will have eight. He’s like a little brother trying to be as old as his big brother. It isn’t going to happen.”
Think about that. Rodriguez’s ego is as big as it gets. I remember watching him in the Yankee clubhouse during that ’07 season and you could almost read the pain on his face when the media would surround Jeter and gobble up every word he said. Jeter is the kid everyone wants to be—and Rodriguez can hit 1,000 home runs and what Mussina says will always be true.
When Mussina talked about Rodriguez he always called him, ‘Rod.’ Never ‘A-Rod,’ and rarely Alex; almost always ‘Rod.’ One day, sitting in the dugout I asked Rodriguez if anyone else on the team called him, ‘Rod.’ He shook his head, smiled and said, “No, Moose is the only one. I think it’s because he knows I’m the only guy on the team who likes him.”
Mussina was as well-liked and respected as anyone in the clubhouse short of Jeter and perhaps Mariano Rivera. When I ran that line past him he shook his head and said, “Do you think it might be the other way around?”
I suspected he had that right although if the Yankees end up dumping champagne on one another either tonight or by the end of the week, we will be told by one and all how much all the Yankees love ‘Rod,’ and vice-versa.
One other thought on Rodriguez that has very little to do with him directly: Am I the only one who finds Sterling’s, “it’s an A-bomb by A-Rod,” home run call offensive? I really don’t mind all of his little sayings for home runs, its shtick, he knows it and most Yankee fans enjoy it. I wasn’t alive when the A-bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but I know the damage they did. I’ve also lived through all the fear that has gone hand-in-hand with the spread of nuclear arms and remember what the cold war was like.
Maybe I’m overreacting but I have to say I wince every time I hear that call. A ‘Tex message,” never killed anyone. A-bombs did.
--------------------------------------------------------
The other night my son showed me my ‘Wikipedia.’ I have steered clear of looking at it ever since I first looked it up whenever it came into vogue a few years ago. I honestly don’t know who writes them and I gave up long ago on the notion I was ever going to get mine to focus on the fact that I’ve written 25 books—not the 23 they report—or that several of them are, well, pretty well known and were huge best-sellers. I’ve also never HEARD of The Chapin Report which I write for according to Wikipedia.
It DOES annoy me that the first sentence of my bio claims I’m best known for being wrong on the Duke lacrosse case. I’m not even going to go through that mine field again but I really don’t think I was wrong when I first said the kids should lose their scholarships if they didn’t cooperate with police (which they initially refused to do); then wondered how Mike Nifong could keep the case alive after all the DNA tests came back negative (he ended up being disbarred) and said when it was all over I thought they were probably guilty of everything but rape—as in stupidity, being out of control at parties long before the fateful night, shouting racial epithets that night and sending out hateful e-mails. Okay, I got into it and I know some of the pro-Duke folks out there will want to open the debate again: I don’t. It’s over, the players received millions of dollars in judgments (which they deserved) and so did Coach Mike Pressler who was the real martyr in the case.
It also says I was the subject of major controversy when I called for the abolition of the second amendment after Plaxico Burress shot himself. Major controversy? Lots of people disagreed with me, so what? Happens all the time and that wasn't the first time--by any stretch--I called for the abolition of the amendment, knowing full well it will never happen. THAT was a big moment in my career? I wouldn't put it in the top 100 to be honest.
What got me the other night and the reason my son showed it to me was an update that included my heart surgery. Whomever wrote it, quoted from my post-surgery appearance with my pal Mike Gastineau on KJR in Seattle. According to what was posted I “claimed,” to be a-symptomatic, and “claimed,” to have had an angiogram done because of one small black spot detected on a stress test.
Why the hell would I “claim,” any of that?
Here’s what’s most disturbing. My son said, “don’t worry dad, I can fix it.” Sure enough, an hour later, he had fixed it. What that tells me is that just about anyone can hack into the Wikipedia system. My ‘claim,’ would be that anyone using it as a research tool ought to be very careful.
By the way, kudos to Coach David Cutcliffe for winning five games in a season at Duke for the first time since 1994. It really doesn’t matter that the bottom of the ACC is awful this season, that’s real progress for a school that was a complete joke for most of the last 15 years. One warning for you Dukies who think the team is one game from being bowl eligible: It’s not so.
Because some genius in the athletic department decided to schedule North Carolina Central this year (not sure who made that call) before NCCU is officially a Division 1-AA team, that win doesn’t count towards bowl eligibility. Duke will have to win seven to play postseason.
He really is one of the more confusing figures to come along during my lifetime. On the one hand, he’s an absolutely brilliant player who has had some breathstreaking streaks and seasons. On the other hand he got caught cheating this past spring and then hid behind partial truths—blaming a cousin at one point for helping him acquire steroids, then claiming he didn’t really know what he was taking—and a refusal to answer direct questions.
He’s had some terrible postseasons and his off-field judgment has, at times, been really, really bad. Forget being seen in clubs with other women while he was still married, the announcement he was opting out of his Yankees contract during game four of The World Series in 2007 was absolutely brutal. If he wants to blame that one on Scott Boras—fine. Who hired Boras?
That said, he probably hasn’t done anything to deserve being pilloried the way he’s been pilloried by some although that comes with the territory in New York. No one is ever good in New York. You are either “absolutely great,”—a favorite saying of Yankees broadcaster John Sterling—or you absolutely suck—a favorite saying of anyone who has lived in New York for more than 15 minutes.
If the Yankees win one more game this season, many, if not most of Rodriguez’s sins will be forgiven in New York because he will have played a key role in delivering a World Series title. You will see the word redemption linked with his name a lot. Don’t be surprised if there isn’t a book next spring and the word redemption appears in the title.
The smartest description I’ve ever heard of Rodriguez came from Mike Mussina during the time I spent with him in 2007 researching, “Living on the Black.” Mussina was never one to pull a punch when you asked him a question and when I first asked him about Rodriguez, sitting in the living room of his home in Tampa during spring training, he smiled.
“Try to imagine this,” he said. “You’ve been told, with a good deal of justification, that you are the best baseball player of your era that, in fact, you might end up being the best baseball player of all time. Then you come to New York and you’re told this: ‘You might be the best player in the game today but you’re no Derek Jeter.’ No matter what he does he’s always going to be in Jete’s shadow. He can’t escape it. If he wins a World Series, Derek will have five. If he wins four, Derek will have eight. He’s like a little brother trying to be as old as his big brother. It isn’t going to happen.”
Think about that. Rodriguez’s ego is as big as it gets. I remember watching him in the Yankee clubhouse during that ’07 season and you could almost read the pain on his face when the media would surround Jeter and gobble up every word he said. Jeter is the kid everyone wants to be—and Rodriguez can hit 1,000 home runs and what Mussina says will always be true.
When Mussina talked about Rodriguez he always called him, ‘Rod.’ Never ‘A-Rod,’ and rarely Alex; almost always ‘Rod.’ One day, sitting in the dugout I asked Rodriguez if anyone else on the team called him, ‘Rod.’ He shook his head, smiled and said, “No, Moose is the only one. I think it’s because he knows I’m the only guy on the team who likes him.”
Mussina was as well-liked and respected as anyone in the clubhouse short of Jeter and perhaps Mariano Rivera. When I ran that line past him he shook his head and said, “Do you think it might be the other way around?”
I suspected he had that right although if the Yankees end up dumping champagne on one another either tonight or by the end of the week, we will be told by one and all how much all the Yankees love ‘Rod,’ and vice-versa.
One other thought on Rodriguez that has very little to do with him directly: Am I the only one who finds Sterling’s, “it’s an A-bomb by A-Rod,” home run call offensive? I really don’t mind all of his little sayings for home runs, its shtick, he knows it and most Yankee fans enjoy it. I wasn’t alive when the A-bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but I know the damage they did. I’ve also lived through all the fear that has gone hand-in-hand with the spread of nuclear arms and remember what the cold war was like.
Maybe I’m overreacting but I have to say I wince every time I hear that call. A ‘Tex message,” never killed anyone. A-bombs did.
--------------------------------------------------------
The other night my son showed me my ‘Wikipedia.’ I have steered clear of looking at it ever since I first looked it up whenever it came into vogue a few years ago. I honestly don’t know who writes them and I gave up long ago on the notion I was ever going to get mine to focus on the fact that I’ve written 25 books—not the 23 they report—or that several of them are, well, pretty well known and were huge best-sellers. I’ve also never HEARD of The Chapin Report which I write for according to Wikipedia.
It DOES annoy me that the first sentence of my bio claims I’m best known for being wrong on the Duke lacrosse case. I’m not even going to go through that mine field again but I really don’t think I was wrong when I first said the kids should lose their scholarships if they didn’t cooperate with police (which they initially refused to do); then wondered how Mike Nifong could keep the case alive after all the DNA tests came back negative (he ended up being disbarred) and said when it was all over I thought they were probably guilty of everything but rape—as in stupidity, being out of control at parties long before the fateful night, shouting racial epithets that night and sending out hateful e-mails. Okay, I got into it and I know some of the pro-Duke folks out there will want to open the debate again: I don’t. It’s over, the players received millions of dollars in judgments (which they deserved) and so did Coach Mike Pressler who was the real martyr in the case.
It also says I was the subject of major controversy when I called for the abolition of the second amendment after Plaxico Burress shot himself. Major controversy? Lots of people disagreed with me, so what? Happens all the time and that wasn't the first time--by any stretch--I called for the abolition of the amendment, knowing full well it will never happen. THAT was a big moment in my career? I wouldn't put it in the top 100 to be honest.
What got me the other night and the reason my son showed it to me was an update that included my heart surgery. Whomever wrote it, quoted from my post-surgery appearance with my pal Mike Gastineau on KJR in Seattle. According to what was posted I “claimed,” to be a-symptomatic, and “claimed,” to have had an angiogram done because of one small black spot detected on a stress test.
Why the hell would I “claim,” any of that?
Here’s what’s most disturbing. My son said, “don’t worry dad, I can fix it.” Sure enough, an hour later, he had fixed it. What that tells me is that just about anyone can hack into the Wikipedia system. My ‘claim,’ would be that anyone using it as a research tool ought to be very careful.
By the way, kudos to Coach David Cutcliffe for winning five games in a season at Duke for the first time since 1994. It really doesn’t matter that the bottom of the ACC is awful this season, that’s real progress for a school that was a complete joke for most of the last 15 years. One warning for you Dukies who think the team is one game from being bowl eligible: It’s not so.
Because some genius in the athletic department decided to schedule North Carolina Central this year (not sure who made that call) before NCCU is officially a Division 1-AA team, that win doesn’t count towards bowl eligibility. Duke will have to win seven to play postseason.
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