Hitting a lot of topics: Jeter, Clarification for the Socceristas, My upcoming book ‘Best Seat in the House’, Navy and other radio changes

There are a number of topics to cover today so, as my good friends in television would say, let’s get right to it.

Derek Jeter I: Of course he should have gone to the All-Star game. Look, it isn’t worth killing him for making a mistake in judgment. On the other hand, it isn’t worth Commissioner Bud Selig falling on his sword for him either saying, “I would have done the exact same thing.” (If that’s true Commish aren’t you admitting this is just an exhibition game, not a game worthy of deciding World Series home field?)

To review: Jeter gets his 3,000th hit on Saturday in Yankee Stadium in remarkable fashion, going five-for-five in the game and hitting a home run for No. 3,000. Throw in the fact that he also got the game-winning hit and The Legend of Derek became even bigger than it had been in the past. All of a sudden, the .260 batting average seemed not to matter.

On Sunday he announces he isn’t making the trip to Phoenix because he’s emotionally and physically exhausted.

Look, no one doubts the last month hasn’t been difficult. The strain of his struggles at the plate; the injury that delayed getting to 3,000; the pressure of knowing he needed to get it last weekend or he would almost certainly get the magic hit on the road—everyone gets that.

But it would not have been THAT exhausting to get on a private jet on Tuesday morning, take a bow in Phoenix and perhaps play long enough to get one at-bat. Since the game started at 5:30 local time, he could have flown home that night and probably been in bed by 2 a.m. which isn’t a lot later than he probably goes to bed after a night game. Or, he could have flown Wednesday morning and had plenty of rest before the Yankees resume play Thursday.

Again, this is not that big a deal. Jeter hasn’t committed a crime against humanity. But he should have gone. He was voted in by the fans even though, based strictly on this season, he didn’t deserve to start the game. Take a deep breath and make the effort so the fans can cheer you and you can, in affect, say thank-you.

Jeter doesn’t make a lot of PR mistakes but when he does it is usually around The All-Star break. Missing Bob Shepherd’s funeral two years ago was also a mistake. That said, if that’s the worst we can say about him after 15 years in the searing New York spotlight, the guy has done pretty well.

Jeter II: The home run ball. There is no way I’m going to criticize Christian Lopez, the young man who caught the ball Jeter hit into the leftfield stands for hit No. 3,000 for wanting to ‘do the right thing,’ and hand the ball over to Jeter. If he’s a Yankee fan it is a way of saying thank-you to Jeter for all the pleasure he’s given him through the years. Heck, if he’s a baseball fan, same thing applies.

That said, I understand the people who are saying he should have been given 48 hours to decide what to ask for rather than being whisked into Yankee-land where just being in a normally restricted area AND getting to meet Jeter probably overwhelmed him. He may look back sometime next season when he’s no longer sitting in that luxury box and say, ‘what the hell was I thinking?’ My guess is he won’t be hanging with Derek at that point either.

So, what’s the best solution? Easy. Jeter should say, ‘listen Christian I REALLY appreciate the gesture. You are a mensch. (I’ll teach him the meaning of the word). But I want to do something for you and your family so I’m going to take $100,000 of the $17 million I’m being paid this year and establish a college fund for your future kids. If you have no kids, convert it to a retirement fund when the time comes. (That 100K should be worth a lot more in 20 years. At least we hope it will). This way everyone has done the right thing: Jeter’s got the ball, Lopez walks away knowing he did the right thing and so does Jeter. Maybe the Yankees can match Jeter’s 100K and start the fund at 200K.

Make sense?

Onto other things:

Socceristas: I know some of you are upset because I said on Washington Post Live on Monday that I have trouble taking a sport seriously when it decides a championship on penalty kicks.

Sorry, that’s the way I feel.

For the record though let me clear one thing up since my friend Mike Wise in his never-ending quest to create ‘good television,’ (people shouting) kept insisting I was being sexist since the question came up after the U.S. beat Brazil on penalty kicks in the women’s World Cup.

This has nothing to do with whether men or women are playing. I feel the same way, regardless.

You don’t decide Stanley Cup hockey games in shootouts. Regular season, fine, but when the championship is at stake you keep PLAYING HOCKEY. You don’t stop a postseason baseball game—or any baseball game for that matter—after 12 innings and have a Home Run Derby. You don’t have a free throw shooting contest at the end of the second overtime in a basketball game.

The only sport that changes the rules at all is college football when it places the ball on the 25-yard line to begin overtime. I’m not crazy about that either but at least they’re still playing football.

Anyone who has read this blog at all knows I LIKE soccer. I loved my time covering the Diplomats in the old North American Soccer League but I still support Johan Cruyff’s approach to hokey non-soccer endings. When the Diplomats opening game in 1980 ended in a 2-2 draw with The Tampa Bay Rowdies, Cruyff was asked by Diplomats Coach Gordon Bradley to take one of the ‘shootout,’ kicks—the shootout was the NASL’s version of penalty kicks.

“I don’t do shootouts,” Cruyff said walking away.

I’m no Johan Cruyff but I don’t do world championships that can be decided by penalty kicks. I didn’t like it as far back as The World Cup final in Pasadena in 1994 or in the women’s World Cup in 1999—still one of the most bogus endings ever to a major sports even. For Sports Illustrated to name that team the ‘sportswomen of the year,’ when they won the championship game without scoring a GOAL was a joke—and I don’t like it now.

Socceristas like my friend Steve Goff insist this is the only way to do it. Bologne—or some word like it. You do what they do in hockey: You play sudden death overtime after 90 minutes. More often than not someone will score within the 30 minutes allotted for extra time now. If not, play on. If it takes 100 more minutes for someone to score—fine, that’s the nature of the sport. Please don’t tell me it is unfair because the winning team will be tired for the next game. In knockout rounds in a world championship you always have at least two days off and if you can’t recover, well tough, win sooner the next time. That’s part of competition. You can’t on the one hand tell me soccer players are the best-conditioned players on the planet and then on the other say overtime has to be limited lest they get tired. Use your bench. Allow more subbing in overtime. But play SOCCER.

Briefly on the Navy radio flap: I was amazed at all the various emotions my decision seemed to stir up both in posts and e-mails and in long-time friends contacting me. To those who understand why this would bother me so much, thank-you. To the ex-Army and Navy players who are friends from ‘A Civil War,’ I can’t tell you how much your rallying around me right now means to me. To those who say they understand why I’d be upset but I should suck it up and go do the games I think you’re missing a point: I’ve done the games for years because I ENJOY doing them. I haven’t done them because Navy needs me—it certainly doesn’t—or because I owe Navy anything. If I’m going to dread going to the games—whether you think I should dread it or not—I shouldn’t be going. For those who think I’m setting a bad example for the kids at Army and Navy by walking away because of some adversity, perhaps that’s true. To quote Charles Barkley: I’m not a role model—particularly for those young men. And to the one guy who posted that he is glad to be rid of me: good for you. Enjoy the broadcasts. Why you wasted your time reading the blog or posting any thoughts at all is a mystery to me.

Finally some news on a couple of fronts: Several people have asked about my new book. It will be out around Thanksgiving and the title is ‘Best Seat in The House.’ It begins the night I asked Bob Knight about doing what became, ‘A Season on the Brink,’ and proceeds through my experiences in dealing with a lot of the people I’ve worked with since that first book 25 years ago. There is a lot on Knight. I had forgotten until I checked old notes and tapes how many stories about my experiences with him have gone untold. I don’t think he’s going to like this book either. (On another front: Simon and Schuster is bringing out a 25th anniversary edition of ‘Season on the Brink,’ at about the same time.)

Another radio note: As of next week I’m no longer doing my weekly appearances on WTEM—Sportstalk 980 in Washington. The other sports station—or should I say the newer one—106.7 The Fan made me the proverbial offer I couldn’t refuse to move over there. I’ll be on once a week with Mike Wise---looks like Wednesdays at 11:05--and once a week with The Sports Junkies—time and day TBA. I’ll miss Andy and yes, even Steve, but since the new gig may also include doing some hosting down the road, I couldn’t say no. And, after what happened with Tony Kornheiser’s show, it wasn’t that tough a decision.

And finally: My wife and son finally couldn’t take it anymore and they set up a Facebook page for me. We should have a link to it on the blog shortly. Please ‘like,’ me. I think right now I have about 14 ‘likes,’ and my wife says Mike Lupica has something like 12,000. I’d be more embarrassed if I actually knew what a ‘like,’ was.

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.

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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.