SportsProf

More Bad News Out of Yale: The Story Behind a Collapsed Candidacy for a Rhodes Scholarship

2012-01-26T20:53:00.003-05:00

Read this and then contemplate it.

Who are the real heroes?

What can you believe any more?

A QB allegedly turned town a Rhodes interview to play in the "Game" against Harvard. Gets national coverage. A possible testimony to what's right and pure about college athletics.

Except. . . that he was yanked as a Rhodes candidate ostensibly before he would have had the chance to interview. For what's it's worth, he had a disciplinary record -- both at Yale and at the university from which he transferred -- and because of football either went to three high schools in four years or four in three years.

Role model?

Yale QB. Great grade-point average. Choosing teammates over fame.

Sounded great, didn't it?

But it was too good to be true, it seems.

What are we supposed to believe anymore?

An Afternoon at a Volleyball Match

2012-01-25T12:57:00.004-05:00

I'm sure that each of us prefer one or the other, depending on whether we have a team that we're rooting for, whether we know someone involved with the team and, most importantly, whether our team wins or loses the game. Clearly, you want your team, your friends, your kids, your kids' friends and your friends' kids to give a good effort and to win. That's why they keep score.

There are levels to this of course. You want your professional teams to win championships. You want your favorite college teams to do the same, or, at a minimum, beat the rivals and those over whom you want bragging rights or, perhaps better, don't want to hear bragging from. You want your kids' teams to win, yes, but you want your kids to play on the right teams for their level of ability so that they can get the level of instruction, playing time and involvement that they seek. As well as good coaches and good kids, because when it's all said and done, if the teammates aren't good kids, the experience can be dreadful.

Yesterday, I witnessed a very good volleyball match between two teams that gave it their all. My daughter happened to be on one of them, and her team, while playing hard and competing reasonably well, loses a lot more than it wins. Yet, the girls play hard, they are spirited, they support one another, and when you see them before a game you cannot tell that they lose more than they win. That's a tribute to their coach, their captains, and the girls themselves.

They were playing a team that had beaten them twice before, once in three straight games on the road, and then in their own gym in four games. They found themselves short a captain and a few upperclassmen as they ventured on the road to play this rival for a third time.

To call the opponents' gym a "band box" would be an understatement, as a shoe box would be more like it. There was barely any room on the sidelines for parents to sit, and the floor itself was very hard, not the most conducive to diving and sliding. At any rate, the teams battled mightily. The hosts got off to a quick start and won game 1, while the visitors rebounded nicely and won game 2 by a nice margin. The hosts then took game 3, and right then I figured that my daughter's team would battle gamely, lose a close game, lose the match 3 games to 1 and call it a day. That's been their modus operandi -- they simply have enough talent to go so far.

Yesterday was different. It was as though after the third game the bells in the song from Rocky "Go the Distance" started chiming, and the group of girls on the floor looked particularly game. They didn't look resigned, they looked pretty relaxed with a tinge of a sense of purpose that indicated that perhaps they had one more run in them yet. The hosts also sensed the kill, and they upped their intensity. Yes, there were some bad serves and unforced errors that gave the other team points, but by and large there were good points, hard fought. For my daughter's team, girls who had trouble serving served better, diggers dug with fewer mis-hits, hitters kept the ball inside the lines and blockers blocked pretty well. The result was a solid victory in Game 4, which meant that they'd have to play a 15-point Game 5 to decide the match.

The referee held a coin flip, which the hosts won. They promptly chose the side they wanted over serving, and the referee told me it was because the team that won each game took the side that the hosts just took. I smiled. The way I figured it, my daughter's team got to a Game 5, not a frequent occurrence. In certain ways, the pressure was on them to overcome prior odds and win. In other ways, the pressure was on the hosts not to lose to a team in their own gym that they had beaten twice before.

The action was intense, and the hosts pulled ahead 11-8. It looked somewhat bleak for my daughter's team, but then they rallied to tie it and ultimately go ahead, 14-13. They needed one more point and were serving. They got a good serve, but the other team made a few good hits and won the point. Tied at 14.

The hosts' served, and there was a vigorous back and forth that led to a set for the outside hitter of the hosts, perhaps the most talented player on the floor. She might be about 5'6", but she has hops, and up she went, launch a cannon shot between two of the visitors' back line. There was no way they could return it, except. . .

it was out. By two feet, not even close. 15-14 visitors, serving for the match.

Again.

In a loud, crowded gym.

Against a team that beat them handily about a month ago, less handily several weeks ago, and without a few regulars.

The serve was in. The hosts returned it, and the visitors answered, placing a ball near the feet of a host player who just couldn't get to it.

The visitors -- my daughter's team -- won!

For the first time in a long time.

In the fifth game. On the road. In a crowded gym.

It was something to behold. A barnburner of a game. In a tight space, with young kids who gave it their all and who played their hearts out.

It wasn't the NBA, the NFL, the BCS championship game or anything close.

What it was was a hard-fought contest between two well-coached teams who gave a great effort and got a lot out of their abilities. What it also was was a victory by a team against the odds, and you seldom see that. When you do, it's pretty satisfying at many levels, a real treat.

I had texted my wife with updates all afternoon, and she offered that I really built the excitement because of the way the match unfolded. I am sure that her exclamation after my report of the final point was louder than mine, as I had developed a friendly relationship with a dad from the host team who was sitting next to me. And besides, why act like you hadn't been there before, like winning was new or rare?

Games like these are the most rewarding. Sure, part of it is because you know the kids. But perhaps a bigger part of it is that these kids play for their schools, each other and for the love of the sport -- and that's it.

And it's more than plenty.

It's pure gold.

What Happened Between Ryan Madson and the Phillies

2012-01-11T15:44:00.002-05:00

Madson's agent, Scott Boras, says that the Phillies and Madson had a deal and then the Phillies decided to sign someone else.

Ruben Amaro, Jr., the Phillies' GM, sharply disagrees but doesn't want to get into a public dispute with Boras.

Whom do you believe?

The story I heard was that Madson and the Phillies had agreed in principle on a four-year, $44 million deal and then it got stuck on the desk of Phillies' owner David Montgomery. Then, a few days later, voila, the Phillies inked Red Sox' closer Jonathan Papelbon to a 4-year, $50 million deal. That story would suggest that the Phillies had told agents for both players that they would go hard after both and try to sign them fast, so that they both should be ready to deal. What the Phillies didn't say, logic suggests, is that they wanted Papelbon all along and that either a) his agent would respond quickly or b) they would use Madson's faster response to prompt a decision from Papelbon or settle with Madson. And then they signed Papelbon (and perhaps significantly overpaid for him given that no other team gave Madson a huge deal, which means that in all likelihood there might not have been serious competition for Papelbon, either). Of course, this is plausible if you believe the initial report that the deal got stuck on Montgomery's desk -- and that's where things get murky.

To me, Boras's public statement is logical, and the Phillies' denial is logical perhaps if only to save face, because Boras's explanation hints that the Phillies used Madson to get Papelbon, and, while players use one team to leverage another all the time, the Phillies' management doesn't want to look bad to the players on the team and therefore will deny what Boras says and perhaps get away with the denial because Boras is unpopular in Philadelphia. But, there's another equally plausible explanation.

Then again, I'm an Amaro fan, so I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt. It just may be that Boras didn't have a deal but is saying what he's saying to save face before his player (Madson), his other players (many) and potential future clients. Why is that logical? Because if Madson signed with the Phillies, he would have gotten a 4-year, $44 million deal. Now he'll get a 1-year, $8.5 million deal, and that looks very bad if you are an agent.

So what really happened? That's a good question.

And one that will be forgotten pretty quickly.

Pitchers and catchers report in 5 weeks.

On Bill O'Brien's Hiring at Penn State

2012-01-08T13:07:00.003-05:00

Penn State alums have nothing to complain about insofar as who the powers that be chose to follow Joe Paterno as head football coach. The powers that be so screwed up any meaningful succession process because of the alums idolatry about Paterno that they just need to embrace who they got, period, and move on.

They resisted any meaningful call for a decent succession plan, going so far as to get nasty to anyone who suggested otherwise, even on these pages (where I have touched upon this point for years). And while the passage of time has proven that Jerry Sandusky was far from fit, a toxic cocktail of nepotism (in the form of the overemphasis on Jay Paterno's role, thus impeding any succession planning process), pushing out one possible candidate years ago (Fran Ganter, who might not have been perfect but who did all the right things), Paterno's stubbornness on the question and the pretentious fawning of alums over all things Paterno led to the combustion of the Penn State program and its "we're better than you" image. So, when you have a disaster on your hands, you do the best you can.

By enabling the Paterno aura beyond reason, the powers that be created a situation where the most viable of candidates wouldn't want to enter because how could they "replace" Joe Paterno (as it turns out, given what we believe has happened, that might be much easier to do than anyone thought). By waiting this long, they missed out on some good candidates. By having the scandal on their hands, many people who otherwise would have jumped at the chance probably passed. Say goodbye to Kirk Ferentz, Urban Meyer, James Franklin, Gary Patterson, Chris Petersen, Al Golden and others. So, it's not as though Penn State had its pick, which is a shame, because years ago it would have. What it was left with was a group of risers who might be great be who offer less certainty than an "A" list that would have emerged had those who ran Penn State at the time run it well and not permitted anyone to become bigger than the institution.

Enter Bill O'Brien. Symmetrically ironic in that he went to the same school that Joe Paterno did, Brown University. Interesting in that he's the offensive coordinator for one of the best coaches in the history of the NFL, Bill Belichick. But a question mark because none of Romeo Crennel, Charlie Weis, Eric Mangini or Josh McDaniels has succeeded as a head coach. And that makes the selection of O'Brien the triumph of hope over experience. At least for now.

And, to a degree, it shows how deep the Penn State administration had to dig to find the right candidate. To LaVar Arrington, Brandon Short and those who are upset, they should ask themselves why they are upset. Are they angry because someone shattered their myth? And, if that's the case, are they angry with themselves for believing in the myth so deeply, perhaps more so than their own religion or self-worth? Are they angry with the guy who sold them the myth? That would make sense. And are they hurting? Of course. They, like the rest of the Penn State faithful, should reflect as to why this happened, why they let any one person have such a disproportionate emphasis on their extracurricular activities and self-esteem, and why their institution -- which should be in charge first and foremost of the betterment of society and the individuals who go there, individually and as a whole -- let everyone down?

But they should not be angry at those who were left to pick up the pieces, to make some sense out of everything and to move the institution forward. When you look at all the problems in the world today, this is a relatively high-class one. We're not talking about avoiding a nuclear war, the overthrow of a government, a plague, massive hunger or double-digit unemployment. We're talking about a state university's football program, and that's all that it is, ever was, or should be. So to get all lathered up about the selection of Bill O'Brien as opposed to someone who has Penn State somewhere in his pedigree doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Because that culture was flawed.

Bill O'Brien will try to play nice, and he'll say all the right things. He'll be diplomatic with those with whom he has to be, but if he's smart he'll try to put his own image on things quickly. He'll use the intellect that gained him admission to Brown in the first place and the passion that he's demonstrated on the sidelines to create a program that not only talks about how good it is, but that really is good and stands up where it counts. I don't have any qualms with Arrington or Short -- they are hurting and like the rest of us lost something late last year -- but O'Brien cannot rebuild a program by worrying about the feelings of anyone with a history with the program.

No sir. Bill O'Brien must create a vision and lead toward it. It shouldn't be about a P.R. machine, about image building and defending, the building of statues or anything else.

It should be about the values that we all hold dear and that led to the ripping asunder of the same institution that disappointed everyone so completely because in the end, it forgot those values and didn't live them.

O'Brien may or may not be the right choice, but it doesn't really matter now. He is the choice, he deserves the full support of all Penn State faithful, and he should be given every chance to succeed. Comparisons to his predecessor might be inevitable, but they for right now are very much unwarranted.

The quicker Penn State moves forward into the next chapter of its football history, the better.

It's time for the alums to end their mourning period. What happened was terrible.

Let a new chapter begin.

What Jeffrey Lurie Really Said

2012-01-05T18:29:00.002-05:00

His press conference was a mixed bag, but listening closely, one concept keeps coming back to me -- he's the best coach for us to win a championship next year. That's what Lurie said, so let's consider the comment.

First, if you agree with the premise that this team can win a championship next year, then logically it might follow that Reid knows the personnel the best and, therefore, is best situated to continue with his team and win a championship.

Second, if you agree with the premise that over the past couple of years the Eagles needed to shift gears, get younger and re-tool, you might be more patient with Reid than others because at some point the team did need to get younger. But that doesn't mean that you agree with the next premise, that the re-tooled team is in a position to win a championship.

Third, if you listened closely, does Reid pretty much have an ultimatum -- push the rock up to the top of the hill or leave town?

I don't agree that this team can win a championship. The team lacks linebacking, had iffy safety play, has some holes in its offensive line, needs a seasoned defensive coordinator and more consistent play from its quarterback, who, yes, must learn how to slide to protect the team's investment. He also must learn how to play in the pocket more, because it's hard to name a QB who won a Super Bowl by not staying in the pocket. One does not exist. The team does have a bunch of talent, should improve next year, but win a title? Unlikely.

I do think that in saying that he did without being very blunt, Lurie has told us that if Big Red doesn't win a title, he might be gone. Or, perhaps the impression he wanted to give off, but no fan bit. And the reason that no fan has bit is because had the Birds gone 4-12 this year, Lurie might have had no choice but to fire Reid. But the Birds went 8-8, and, well, it's tough to argue with Reid's entire body of work. Especially if you are Jeffrey Lurie. So, it stands to reason that despite this "ultimatum," were the Birds to go 11-5 next year and lose in the NFC Championship game, well, Reid might just get another 5-year deal.

So. . . tea-leaf readers might infer that Lurie gave Reid and ultimatum. Or they just might infer that Lurie is bullish that the combination of the re-tooled team, another year of experience and Reid's helmsmanship might be able to win a title next year. That's probably the most logical inference.

But not one that makes any Birds' fan happy at all.

It's Lurie's team, the fans will keep on coming back and buying merchandise and expensive beer no matter what, so Eagles' fans shouldn't expect any dramatic changes. Drama, yes, but dramatic changes at the top? Probably not.

What they can expect is a steady state of 8-8 to 11-5 finishes, perhaps an appearance in a conference championship game, etc.

But not a Super Bowl title.

Eagles' Fans Should Vote With Their Feet

2012-01-03T19:59:00.002-05:00

They cannot fire owner Jeffrey Lurie, but they can try to make him look bad, not buy the team's merchandise, and so forth.

Lurie's announcement today that he will bring back head coach Andy Reid means that the owner has the following thoughts -- he thinks with his heart and not his head. Reid has been with the Eagles for 13 years, and Lurie is loyal to him, even though a) they haven't been to the Super Bowl in 7 years, b) Reid made a boneheaded decision in naming Juan Castillo his defensive coordinator, c) the team has only had one good linebacker during Reid's tenure and d) inking Michael Vick to a long-term deal doesn't look like a good decision now. Oh, and there's another one -- Lurie probably feels bullet proof because the demand for his tickets and merchandise is such that his fan base would probably re-up even if Joe Kuharich or Jerry Williams were coaching the team and guys like King Hill were still playing quarterback.

Ugh. Aargh.

Will this prompt the second "WTF?" headline from The Philadelphia Daily News, second only to the one that the people paper inked when Reid named Castillo his defensive coordinator after having served as the o-line coach since Bill Clinton was elected for his second term? Look, Reid is a good coach -- his record proves that. But there is a difference between someone who can manage the team to make the playoffs and someone who can win a championship. Reid has had plenty of opportunities to win a championship, and he hasn't gotten there. And look, this past season he put together a team more designed to draw headlines than to win games. The team lacked good coaching, lacked good leaders and blew 5 second-half leads. Win 2 of those 5 games and you make the playoffs. Lose all 5 and then win your last 4 and have a 5-1 record against divisional opponents and try to rationalize the season wasn't all that bad.

It was a train wreck. And it's been a series of train wrecks frequented by blind spots about positions (such as going into a season once without a punt returner and then without a fullback and almost never with linebackers who can come close to make a Pro Bowl save Jeremiah Trotter), bad time management, and, this season, almost no leadership among the players, no one holding DeSean Jackson accountable for his attitude or Michael Vick accountable for his, yes, stupid unwillingness to slide to avoid hits. I like Vick, but where is a leader who will tell him that the team needs him to avoid getting hit?

Sorry, but I just don't get it. And the only way for Eagles' fans to send Lurie a message that his head coach is the fourth best among the four major teams in the city -- is to vote with their feet. Don't buy the merchandise, don't buy the tickets, and don't go for being teased that almost is good enough. Every year, we get pumped up that "this is the year" and every year we hear sanitized nonsense about how the Eagles are improving and how it's Reid's fault when they don't and you hear Howard Eskin arrogantly dictate to us that football is complicated, we don't know the game and the Eagles obviously know more than we do. Huh?

Football is a game, it's easy to understand because it is a game, and it's not higher math, rocket science or neurosurgery. Not even close. If it were, it wouldn't have so many fans. And what the fans see is accurate -- and that is that the team was flawed, that it's head man cannot handle the dual role of coach and GM, and that under his leadership it won't go any further than say 10-6 any more, perhaps a division title and perhaps to a conference championship game. Reid has had an owner who has given him carte blanche, and he hasn't delivered.

True, I've written before that a fundamental tenet of human resources is that you shouldn't can someone without a better alternative as a replacement. That said, there must be better alternatives out there. Duke didn't hire Coach K knowing that he'd be the most successful college hoops coach ever. He was a young head coach with a career record of 1 win over .500 at Army when he got the Duke job. Dick Vermeil was the Eagles' 6th choice in the 70's when he got the job, and for a while he had the highest rating as a celebrity on Philadelphia-area commercials because of his success as a coach (okay, he didn't win a Super Bowl in Philadelphia, but he was a much more straightforward communicator).

There is another Mike Tomlin or Mike McCarthy out there. Jeffrey Lurie should have taken the time to check around, figure that out and go get the guy. 14 years ago he thought he had another Shula or Noll in Reid, but it just didn't work out that way. And it doesn't look like it's going to work out any time soon.

So, instead of change, we'll have to listen to the likes of Cullen Jenkins telling us that the defense finally jelled, despite the fact that they did so when they were 4-8 (or, put differently, garbage time for their season), that the players like Juan Castillo (sure, because if you have a coach who doesn't know what he's doing, he won't hold you as accountable as one who does), that Castillo will be back, that DeSean inexplicably won't be despite what he means to the team, that linebacking isn't all that important to their scheme, that somehow they'll figure out a way to play Nnamdi Asomugha, and that their safeties are actually pretty good. Worse yet, you'll have media types buy into the hype and tell us that they should be a favorite to win the division. The whole rap will be so saccharine that if you don't brush after listening you might just get a cavity.

Sorry to be so tough, but clarity can be offensive, and Jeffrey Lurie made it perfectly clear that somehow, after watching this regression, Andy Reid can rebound and turn the franchise around and get the team a championship. I suppose that if you tell yourself something like that enough, you'll be able to convince yourself of anything. The will not to believe is always strong, and, in Lurie's case, the will not to believe is that Lurie refuse to believe that his chosen coach cannot win a championship. That's a dangerous way of thinking, and Lurie's stubbornness not to admit what many of us believe is either courage or folly.

And most fans would argue folly.

I hope that Lurie is proven right, but I don't think that he will be.

And where will the accountability be if the linebackers stink again, the safeties can't cover, and the offensive line has holes in it?

Because we'll hear, "well, we've been working to get the team younger, and I'm looking forward to having Andy return for another year."

Huh?

Really?

WTF?

Reflections from the Winter Classic

2012-01-03T07:50:00.003-05:00

When they announced that Philadelphia would be hosting the Winter Classic, my sixth grader offered that it might be neat to go. Well, have a partial season ticket plan to the Phillies, and, presto, I got a chance to enter a lottery to buy two tickets to the event, "won" the lottery, got two tickets underneath the cover on the third-base line that gave me an obscured view of the scoreboard (but a good view of the rink) for the same amount of money that third-row seats to the NBA Finals featuring the 76ers about 10 years ago cost (for some perspective; I was a guest at that game). My wife and I decided to surprise my son for this birthday, so when he opened a relatively light box inside was an email touting the game and a warm pair of Wigwam socks. That was about four weeks ago.

The build-up was fun, what with the alumni game and a 66 year-old Bernie Parent, who lives on a houseboat in Wildwood, NJ, strapping on the pads for the first time since perhaps Ronald Reagan was President (first term) (the team hasn't won a Stanley Cup since 1975). The coverage of that was pretty cool and set the backdrop for yesterday's game.

The powers that be postponed the game from 1 to 3 p.m., owing to weather patterns, sun angles, glare, possible sun melt and whatever combination of meteorology and outdoor ice hockey would have not blinded the players and turned the playing surface into what the average Center City street corner looks like the day after a snow storm. So, my son and I ate lunch at home, foregoing the opportunity for a quick stop at John's Roast Pork for a cheesesteak (among the best in the city and featured in, of all things, Zagat's national restaurant guide). The traffic to Citizens Bank Park was okay, and when we arrived at the stadium complex we noted how early the tailgaters got there. We parked in our usual lot, albeit a bit further from the Bank because where we normally park was full of tailgaters who seemed content hanging out in 40-degree weather in little more than a turtleneck and a $199 commemorative jersey over it drinking much cheaper beer than they would find inside.

Our contribution to the great sale of all things Flyers was the purchase of two wool hats, the one for me being relatively standard, the one for my son being the type with the flaps that go over the cheeks. As we were walking to the stadium, we started chatting with a couple who presumably was doing the same thing. The man had on a Claude Giroux jersey, and my son offered that the Flyers' star was his favorite player. To which he got this response, "That's nice to hear. We're his parents." And then we got to chatting about how Claude likes Philadelphia (loves it) and whether they've had cheesteaks (plenty of times -- remember, I'm with a 12 year-old -- and that they had been to Geno's just the other day). They ended up peeling off to go to a get-together near the Wachovia Center, and we made our way to the stadium.

My son honored me and the old Flyers by wearing, as his fourth layer atop cold-weather Under Armour, a long-sleeved Flyers t-shirt and a hooded sweatshirt the Moose DuPont #6 jersey that my father bought for me at Mitchell & Ness (well before they made the vintage jerseys) when the Flyers went to the Stanley Cup for the first time in 1974. Under those layers, it looked pretty good on him, and it was neat to see him where it. Despite the fervence of the fans and some near misses, the Flyers haven't won a Cup since 1975. It was cool to see him in this garb, even if the temperature dictated pretty quickly that he needed to don his winter jacket to stave off the cold.

The whole area was jammed, a sea of orange and black, with some New York Rangers' red and blue interspersed (Flyers' fans take note -- the average Rangers' fan spent a lot more for his tickets than you). The weather was okay to start, but got colder as the sun began to set and the winds kicked in. It was electric to a degree, and here are some observations:

1. The "experience", as it were, lacked two things that the Phillies add that would have made it a little more fun -- a) having photographers take commemorative photos of you that you can purchase on the website and b) giving out towels for the fans to wave. The former would have created revenue and keepsakes; the latter, well, a more electric environment akin to a Phillies' playoff game.

2. It's amazing how many beers people will drink in a below-freezing wind-chill factor environment.

3. The bathrooms seemed much more crowded than at any Phillies' game. Is it because the crowd is more male, or because people can go 18 times between innings, and only twice between periods?

4. People who wore only a turtleneck beneath a $199 dollar commemorative Winter Classic jersey found out how cold it can get and were cold.

5. We counted 20 different Flyers jerseys, at least from the names and numbers on the back. the most prominent were Giroux jerseys, but we also saw Hextall, Clarke, Powe, Sinisalo, Boucher and a dozen or so others.

6. I wore about 4 layers, we had blankets, and the "warmers" that hunters use that we kept in our gloves to keep our hands as warm as we could. We sat under cover, and the wind kicked up pretty strongly for most of the game.

7. We had pretty good seats, sitting behind the goal where the Flyers shot at twice. Henrik Lundquist, the Rangers' goalie, was terrific as the Rangers sleep-skated through the first period. The crowd stood for the entire first period.

8. Yes, it was hard to see the puck and the average fan cheered not at a score, but when he/she saw the players from his favorite team celebrating a goal. Remember, baseball stadiums are designed for baseball viewing, not ice hockey. So while it was exciting, it wasn't like every seat was a good one (and the purist could debate how many seats really gave the viewer a great shot at the action -- perhaps the luxury boxes along the third base line, which were high up enough to see above all the boards).

9. The Flyers need a goaltender.

10. People were generally pumped up to be there, as most people in most cities like to go to events, spend a lot of time at them and a lot of money on them. We had fun, we were cold, and we wished that the outcome were different. Overall, it was a good experience and showed a city that favors football and baseball that hockey can appeal to a group that's larger than the core of diehards that has subscribed to season tickets for years.

11. As for prices. . . beers were $7.75, programs $10, and parking $25 ($50 for larger vehicles).

12. We saw Barry Melrose walk by us as we walked into the stadium. The grey mullet kind of works on him, but he's not as big as he looks on camera.

13. Is it me, or have they grown bigger hockey players since, say, 30 years ago? The Rangers have a 6'7" center, and there were a bunch of players over 6'4" out there.

14. By my count, players from about 10 different countries were represented.

It was, in many ways, a classic, and, of course, when you go to a main event with your son for his birthday present, it's all the more special.

Setting the Bar Higher

2011-12-31T10:07:00.002-05:00

Lately I have found myself saying the following: "If you set the bar low, many people will figure out ways to fall beneath it. If you set the bar high, you'll be amazed and how much people can accomplish." Perhaps that derives from John Wooden's, "If you aim for perfection, you'll achieve excellence," but I think that there's some truth to it.

I was working with my son on his overall basketball game, and he's worked hard on the form of his shot, and it's been great to see the improvement. The other day, I suggested that he work on his weaker hand. I asked him to go through a bunch of lefthanded layups, and it was very difficult for him. He had trouble putting the ball up consistently with his left hand. And, yes, he wanted at times to give up.

I got to thinking about people who learn foreign languages. While it's nice to be able to sit in a class room in the U.S., get taught a language and then go home and speak English and not reinforce it, we've all heard the stories of people getting some training on a foreign language and then going to live in a foreign country. They get immersed in everything -- and have no alternative but to learn more of the language in order to live life daily. So, gradually -- and probably with some tutoring -- they become proficient. Translated. . .

We kept going back to the gym, and day after day -- guess what -- my son's left hand got stronger in just one week. Why? Because he concentrated on it and he knows that to play against better competition he needs to develop both hands well. With that sense of urgency and focus, he not only showed improvement, but he looked forward to doing the drills and trying to improve daily. The alternative would be to tell him that he's terrific and doesn't need to change, but then, I think, that wouldn't be fair or honest. No, it's not because I want a superstar or delude myself that he'll be one, it's just about developing good habits, concentration and a sense of trying that understands that before you see gains, you have to put in the work to get there and, to use an overused phrase, you have to enjoy the journey.

So, each week when we coach our team, we set a brisk pace for the kids to keep up. We ask them to defend well, to protect the ball, to steal it and deflect it, to run the break where possible, find the open man and screen where there is an opportunity. We do not settle -- even in a rec league -- for telling them that it's okay whatever they do so long as they are out there. We challenge them a bit more, run plays, and tell them that if they focus on trying to improve, they will have every opportunity to do so.

I figured that I would share this tidbit because sometimes I need to remind myself of it. Emerson wrote that our chief want in life is to have someone push us to become something more, and let's take the opportunity -- with caring, encouragement and thought -- to help make each other -- each coach, each player -- better.

The Philadelphia Eagles' Big Off-Season

2011-12-27T18:58:00.002-05:00

Questions abound:

1. Will owner Jeffrey Lurie fire Andy Reid?

2. If the answer to question 1 is no, will Jeffrey Lurie make Reid choose between being the GM and the head coach?

3. If the answer to question 1 is no, will Andy Reid fire or demote defensive coordinator Juan Castillo?

4. If the answer to question 3 is yes, will perhaps soon-to-be-former Rams head coach, former Giants' defensive coordinator and former Eagles' linebackers coach Steve Spagnuolo become the Eagles' defensive coordinator?

5. Will the DeSean Jackson return to the Eagles?

6. Will the Eagles demand that highly paid QB Michael Vick learn how to slide (unbelievably, he dissed the concept of sliding at a recent post-game press conference, hubris to the initiated because the odds are that if he continues his bold ways he'll become a one-dimensional cardboard cutout propped up on the sidelines and talked of in the "he coulda been a contender" type of way)?

7. Will the Eagles get some leaders who set the tone for the team?

8. Will Asante Samuel return?

9. Will the Eagles get some linebackers?

There are probably more questions than that, but those are the big ones. Lurie is loyal to Reid, and one of the fundamental issues in human resources is that you don't replace someone who has been a good performer unless you can get someone who is better. So, with respect to the biggest question -- the one about Big Red -- who could Lurie get to replace Reid? And before you start that Jon Gruden and Bill Cowher both are available, remember that no coach has won a Super Bowl with two teams (the closest were Dick Vermeil and Bill Parcells). So, if you want an up-and-comer, the best one in a while coaches in San Francisco, and it's hard to say whether Nick Saban would succeed or not. After all, some coordinators for legends have failed, and some relative lesser knowns (Mike McCarthy) have succeeded. So, the bet here is that Reid stays -- gulp -- in both roles.

That leaves an open question about the defense. It's hard to see Castillo remaining, and it would be interesting to find out whether, if Reid were to remain, that a condition was to fire Castillo and hire a veteran defensive coordinator (Jack Del Rio, the deposed Jaguars' coach, also is available). The bet here is that the Eagles have a new defensive coordinator.

Jackson will return, Samuel will go, Vick will learn how to slide for 3 games before forgetting and being turned into one of the pretenders that fought Rocky for the title in Rocky III, and the team will make some moves that will get it some vocal leaders and perhaps a linebacker or two not named Ernie Sims or Takeo Spikes (two guys who were supposed to have the special sauce but failed in Soft Pretzel City). It is hard to believe that for all the money they paid these guys, that neither Nnamdi Asomugha or Michael Vick is a leader. Cullen Jenkins, the DT acquired from Green Bay, is vocal, but the dearth of leaders for such a highly paid squad is striking.

Right now, the Eagles are a disappointing fantasy football team, a team in disarray, a team without any zing and oomph that has enough talent on a given day to beat anyone but a pronounced difficulty to succeed in life's red zone, let alone the NFL's. There are only so many times that you can blow a second half lead before fans will just give up hope that you can close the deal. The Eagles, plain and simple, need finishers. (And I think that DeSean Jackson, for all his warts this year, is one of them, as are Jeremy Maclin and LeSean McCoy).

So the Eagles will play the Redskins this weekend, probably win by two touchdowns, have an 8-8 season, with Reid's trying to take a victory lap of sorts for a strong finish while acknowledging that the failure to make the playoffs starts with him, that it's all his fault and that he failed to do enough before the season to prepare the team for making the playoffs. It will all sound very good, until you do a compare and contrast with teams like the Packers, Saints and 49ers and realize that each of them has twice the giddy up that the Eagles do. Reid and his front office can do all the scouting that they wish, but somehow they miss out on the guys with the "gotta/wanna/have it" as Sal Palantonio of ESPN calls it. (As an aside, they thought that they had one of those guys with 26 year-old first-round pick Danny Watkins of Baylor, who admitted prior to the season that he was overwhelmed. Many fans' responded with a "how hard do they try to find guys like this?").

This season was a train wreck for the Philadelphia Eagles. Normally, I would bet the mortgage money that Jeffrey Lurie would back Andy Reid 100%. But as I write this I have more doubts than ever before. Lurie opened up the checkbook to sign big free agents, gave Michael Vick a big contract, brought in two expensive position coaches in Jim Washburn (defensive line) and Howard Mudd (offensive line) and signed Michael Vick to a big extension. He also acquiesced to permit Reid to hire Castillo as defensive coordinator. In short, he indulged every whim and desire of Andy Reid, with disastrous results. If Lurie were ever to can his beloved head coach, he might be tempted to do so now. It might not be the right move, but it would be a popular one with the fans, most of whom have concluded that while Reid is a good coach, he might not win a Super Bowl, at least not here.

It's funny, when you spend the big bucks, ignore popular wisdom that your perennial shortcomings can bite you (read: this season, safeties, Vick's blind side and linebackers) and you hold yourself out as the team that outfoxed everyone else with respect to having bandwidth for signing free agents after the lockout, that instead of making yourselves the envy of the league, you make yourself the biggest target and the one subject to the most derision when you fail. I hope that in there off-season Jeffrey Lurie and Joe Banner do a root cause analysis -- with a root cause analysis expert -- as to what went wrong and then begin to fix the team based on that analysis.

And I hope, also, that they get some linebackers, too.

Memo to Top 100 Harvard Basketball Recruits: Why?

2011-12-27T12:44:00.002-05:00

Several decades ago (give or take one, perhaps), I had a conversation with a friend who was a very good Ivy League basketball player. He had mentioned that his high school, a basketball powerhouse, had a player who had succeeded him at his position and who was drawing national attention. North Carolina, Kentucky, UCLA, to name a few, were hot after this player.

My friend also offered another tidbit: "And the thing of it is, his grades and scores are better than mine."

Which drew the following automatic response from me: "So why doesn't he go to your school?"

My friend laughed. "If you could really play, why would you play where I do?"

I tried to talk about the benefits of an Ivy education, that sometimes an Ivy school could have a breakthrough, perhaps get to the Round of 16, but my friend wasn't buying what I was selling. He had gone Ivy and done well, but he lacked foot speed and a jumper to go to a big-time school, despite the reputation of his high school and its coach.

He just shook his head and offered that if you were that good a player, you had to go where the best players played to see how good you were and to play at an elite level. He also offered that if you were reasonably motivated as a student -- as this kid was -- you could get a good education at any of those schools (my note: back then he was right; today, you have to wonder about a) being "one" and done and b) the pressure put on the kids, so much so that do they have time to progress toward a degree in something other than keeping seaweed off the fine arts' program's batik collection, and, as for a), well, then, you're en route to a pretty good career, aren't you?).

The compulsion, though, was the competition. My friend went Ivy because it suited him and because the combination of aid, academics and basketball was better than say a low-DI school that had offered him a full ride. But the thought -- for an 18 year-old -- of playing in the ACC on national TV against the best competition and for Dean Smith, for example, was very compelling to him. But what of the kids who now populate ESPN's Top 60 for the Class of 2013, three of whom have Harvard on this lists (as do one or do of the Top 100 for the Class of 2012)? What are they thinking?

Sure, Harvard is a great school, perhaps the greatest, but what is Harvard and coach Tommy Amaker trying to accomplish? And will these kids be happy in a place where they pretty much will be kids who participate in just another extracurricular activity and who have to play Columbia and Cornell on back-to-back nights twice, when, legitimately, they could be playing a Pac-12, Big Ten, Big East or ACC schedule? And, presumably, if their academics are that good, get a pretty good education, to boot, depending on how much effort they elect to put into their school work?

In other words, these recruits can really play. They are not a step slow, a few inches too short, have limited range, a weaker left hand, etc. They are the real deal. And forget all the hype about Harvard's trying to do something special. If you're an elite cellist, you'll want to go to Juilliard or Curtis. If you're an elite astrophysicist, MIT, Cal Tech or Princeton, to name a few. And if you're an elite basketball player. . . you'll want to go to . . . Harvard?

Not Carolina? Kentucky? Duke? Ohio State? Syracuse?

Food for thought.

FIFA 12 -- Achieving Goals

2011-12-26T17:54:00.002-05:00

I once spoke at a professional seminar, and the topic of creating balance in one's live and having diversions came up. It was a very driven group, so I got their attention by talking about how you can always figure out how to achieve goals on a given day -- even when everything can go haywire at the office.

I told the group that after a long day I would go home into the kid/man cave in the basement, put in the FIFA soccer game (then on PlayStation, but now we have an XBox) and play a very good English Premiership team (usually Arsenal) against a League Two team, play at the amateur level (there are five levels, and amateur is the lowest) and then win something like 12-0. "So," I offered, "if you can't achieve any goals at the office, you can go home at night and score tons of them in this video game." You probably had to be there, but I recall that the audience laughed at my suggestion. Given all of the connectivity we have and the fast pace of the world, I think that it was hard for them to find diversions. Or so it seemed.

Now I have discovered one of the best video games there is -- "Manager Mode" in FIFA 12. Basically, you get a team and a salary and a transfer budget, you get to sell contracts of players, buy them, loan players to other teams for experience, hire scouts to sign teenaged prospects, offer them contracts for the big club and then run your lineups. Players have a bunch of grades -- overall excellence, some subgrades for about 6-8 difference competencies depending on their position and then are evaluated on a color-coded system for morale, energy and form, and they can get suspend for red cards or accumulating too many yellow cards, and they can get hurt. Translated, if you play a 4-4-2 formation, you'll need 2-3 goalies, 9 defenders, 8 midfielders and 5 strikers to get through a season, plus a bunch of junior players whom you loan out to other teams, either with the hope of playing them in your rotation the next season or, alternatively, selling their contracts to create more funds to purchase more or better players. You also negotiate contracts and have to be sure that you have enough budget at all times to extend contracts (or not). Finally, you'll get emails from the ownership about your performance and from players asking for more playing time or telling you that they're tired. And, yes, you'll see newspaper headlines about the major leagues in the world.

Put simply, it's a comprehensive game, and here's what we've learned. First, you need a very solid back line. Sure, you need to score goals, but if you have shutdown defenders the way the NFL has shutdown cornerbacks, it helps. Having one of the best goalies in the world is helpful but not essential. Then again, the top teams's goalies typically rank among the world's best. You need all sorts of players at midfield at up front -- defensive midfielders, playmaking midfielders, speedy wings and strikers who can create shots in very little space. It's probably good to sell players' contracts when they hit a certain age, and it's wise to sell a player for whom you get a significant over-market bid if you are not the best-funded team, because you can parlay that money into 2 or 3 key signings that can help fortify your team. Most goalies and defenders don't sell for as much as young, playmaking midfielders (among the up-and-comers, the Dane Christian Eriksen and the Brazilian Lucas) and strikers with significant potential (Man City's Mario Batelli and Chelsea's Romelu Lukaku come to mind).

As you can see, the realism and the combinations of activities are captivating and a worthy diversion from the rest of your day. Your career can go for 15 years, after which you'll get an e-mail from your management congratulating you on your retirement -- in 2026. At that time you'll still be coaching against Man United's Sir Alex Ferguson, who will be a chipper 82. I took Man City in one simulated career because of the oil money that fortifies the team and won 13 premierships and 12 champion's league titles (hint: it helps if you play the games yourself as opposed to simulate them, because typically you'll fare better). By 2026, when I had a bunch of youth squad players whom I had developed into regulars, the game retired me.

It's a great way to learn the international game, who the key players are, who the established stars are and who the up-and-comers are. During that career, I was offered the top jobs at Inter Milan, Juventus, Athletico Madrid, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Schalke 04, Borussia Dortmund, Newcastle, Arsenal, Paris St. Germain, PSV Eindhoven to name a few. Okay, so perhaps I'm just a kid at heart, but it was fun playing games in the large stadiums with English announcers talking about the pitch, using the word "nil" for zero and marveling about my team's patience and passing ability.

Check out the game yourself -- set goals for yourself as manager, score a few, while you're at it, and have fun. And tell me if you think that this is a good team:

GK -- Manuel Neuer
RB -- Subotic
CB -- Pique
CB -- Hummels
LB -- Criscito
RCM -- Wilshere
LCM -- Bale
CAM -- Fabregas
LW -- Balotelli
ST -- Neymar
RW -- Lukaku, with, among others

Ramsey, Gourcuff, Song, Acerbi, Benedetti, Walcott, Sturridge, Baumann and others on the bench.

Enjoy!

Yale's Football Coach Resigns Amidst Controversy About Resume Misrepresentations

2011-12-21T13:09:00.002-05:00

You can read the story here.

My friend Jeff from Philadelphia (not to be confused with Jeff from Manhattan) and I used to wonder over beers whether what some people were telling us about their backgrounds was true. Among the questions were "did this guy really play there?" and "was he all-league?" Some of the boasting we dealt with was before the age of the internet, which has enabled all of us to instantly check someone out. And there were occasions where what we were told differed from the truth. And how did we find that out? Because on occasion we once would come across someone about whom it was well-known that he played there, and we would ask, "well, then, you must know so-and-so, who played there at the same time." When you get met with a blank stare and a "I don't know him," well, you start to wonder.

As Jeff from Philadelphia would have said, "Well, as [former President and Michigan football All-American] Gerald Ford used to say, 'everyone is an All-American more than 50 miles from where he grew up.'" That held true say 20, 20+ years ago, but you would have figured that people who might have been wont to embellish or outright lie would have stopped such behavior because, well, it is easier to check out. That said, the checker outers, as they were, are busier than ever, and, well, most people don't want to assume that they are being lied to, especially by as accomplished a guy as Tom Williams was when he applied and got the Yale head coaching job. It makes one ask the question, "why did do this; did he really need to do it?"

Williams became unmasked when a big wire story circulated that his QB bagged a Rhodes Scholarship interview to skipper the team against Harvard in The Game. It didn't take a Yale graduate to connect the dots between the QB's goal and the coach's representation that he had interviewed for a Rhodes. Heck, that's a pretty cool, feel-good story for a sportswriter to write in so many ways. Except when it didn't exist. Then that same writer gets a pretty hot story to write about how someone claimed to be something that he wasn't.

Why do people do this? Who do they think that they are impressing, and should we let ourselves get impressed by things other than competencies, character and personality? Should that Rhodes cache made one bit of difference for Yale to determine whether to hire Tom Williams as its coach? Probably not. Better yet, would he have gotten the job had he not mentioned that lie on his resume? Probably. (Of course, it's also surfaced that Williams claimed that he was on the 49ers' practice squad 18 years ago, when in truth he was at a 3-day tryout camp).

This is a sad day in so many ways.

And the Justification for a High Salary for a Low DI Men's Basketball Coach Is?

2011-12-18T21:49:00.003-05:00

Princeton beat Northeastern in Boston 71-62.

938 people attended.

My guess is that the Northeastern coach makes north of $250,000 a year, perhaps significantly so.

Why?

Because men's basketball is a revenue sport?

Really?

Could it be that ticket sales and revenues from the concession stands didn't pay for the cost of running the game? I would bet that's the case.

So the justification for a big-time DI program with scholarships and highly paid coaches is exactly what?

A chance to win a low-ranked conference and go to the NCAA Tournament, for the opportunity for a school like Kentucky or Kansas to pound you into the hoops equivalent of dust?

Really?

Remember my adage -- that I don't want my kids to go to any college where a coach makes more than the university president. That still holds, unless, of course, it can be proven beyond a doubt that any coach is worth it.

Bread and circus?

One thing is for sure -- Northeastern's circus doesn't generate enough bread to pay for the program.

A Boy's Best Birthday Present

2011-12-12T15:02:00.004-05:00

I've coached my son's team in the rec league for going on five years now, and we've won many more than we've lost. I can joke that it's because of superior coaching, but truth be told we get a bunch of kids who come eager to learn and to play hard. We also have gotten "older" kids who encourage the younger ones, and, yes, I'm sure that the friend with whom I coach and I have something to do with it. But mostly it's the kids who try so hard that make it all happen.

One of the kids we coach asked me before the season began what he could do to improve. I told him that while he's aggressive on defense, we need him to shoot and score more. So, in the second quarter of our first game (the first quarter in which this player saw action), what did he do? He took four shots from fifteen feet or beyond, making only one, and that came when he shot from between the foul line and the top of the key and he banked it in. And, no, he didn't "call" it.

We were up big at halftime, so when he and his unit came off the floor I observed that when I advised him to shoot more during the season, I didn't recommend that he take a season's worth of shots in his first quarter of play. (We all got a chuckle out of that.) I told him and a teammate that there was room to drive and shoot from closer, and, to this player's credit, when he got a pass at the foul line in the fourth quarter he drove the lane and made a layup, a much higher percentage shot. That's a great feeling for a coach, when your kids take the feedback quickly and improve upon their play. It doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, you smile.

Of course, later in that game he was on the baseline and a long rebound made its way to this same player. But instead of driving the baseline (akin to driving toward the basket from the foul line as he did earlier in the game), he opted to put up a fifteen footer -- which missed badly. After the game I said that if he were to see a wide open lane to the basket again, he'd need to take the ball to the hoop. He nodded in agreement.

On Saturday we played our second game of the season, against a tougher and more aggressive opponent. It was a close game -- well-defended -- and we found ourselves trailing by four at the half. The younger players then went out in the third quarter and left it all on the floor and made it closer, but with 30 seconds to go we were down one and got a rebound. I called timeout.

I have a clipboard with a basketball court on it, and I took my marker and drew a play, getting nods from each kid after asking him what he was to do. I designed a "picket fence" of a triple pick for our leading scorer, with the inbound passer to loop behind him for a handoff and shot if our leading scorer was over-defended. The inbound passer was the kid I wrote of earlier, aggressive on defense but sometimes reluctant on offense.

The play broke down immediately. Our big fellah went the wrong way, our leading scorer was hounded, and another would-be screener bumped into the ballhandler. Bedlam. But then, suddenly, a sense of calm and purpose set in, and the ball made its way to the inbound passer, who found himself on the baseline with pretty much was an open lane to the basket. Without hesitation (and unlike just a week earlier), he put the ball on the floor, drove to the hoop, laid the ball up on the rim where it took a soft bounce and dropped through the hoop. We were up by one! Our leading scorer then forced a turnover, and the game was over.

As I wrote, we have won over the years many more than we have lost, but coming from behind and winning that close a game is about as satisfying as it gets. Parents from both teams acknowledged how exciting it was and how hard the kids played. The kid who hit the game-winning bucket -- who has tried hard over the years and received some kudos and missed out on some others -- was all smiles. That morning he turned 12, and he got a few things for his birthday that made him smile widely.

But, perhaps, not as widely as this, because there are times in life when the best gifts are the ones that you work hardest for to earn -- because you've failed before, because you've learned from an error, and because you've picked yourself back up and mastered a skill, in this case, finishing a play properly.

As a coach, this type of situation is a great thing to see.

Especially when that player is your son.

He got many gifts that day, but saved the best one of all for his coach and, more importantly, himself.

It was a great day in many ways.

A Vote for Tony Dungy as Penn State's Next Football Coach

2011-12-01T13:11:00.003-05:00

It's pretty simple, really.

Urban Meyer?

To Ohio State.

Philadelphia-area native Dan Mullen, the Mississippi State coach (and former Meyer assistant)?

Not interested.

Al Golden?

Signed a longer-term deal at Miami, perhaps opting to stay with a more manageable crisis situation.

Truth be told, Penn State needs a Mr. Clean. Or so that's the perception. Well, DI football, as currently constituted, requires coaches to be aggressive. And that might mean ignoring bad behavior (Jim Tressel), raising money from boosters and being ignorant of bad behavior (perhaps Randy Shannon and Pete Carroll) or embarking upon some recruiting techniques that might push the envelope. That is not to say that all coaches out there are bad actors. But it is to say that whoever Penn State -- the school that has put itself out there as holier than holy -- chooses -- will be subject to great scrutiny.

Scrutiny that turns blemishes into Stage 4 melanoma under the media spotlight quickly. Scrutiny that might have most stakeholders holding the coach to a higher standard than they hold themselves? Pinch a secretary's butt once twenty years ago? Done. Text the #1 recruit in the land 5 times 2 hours before it was permissible to do so, thereby drawing a sanction? You're out. Or something like that.

Which brings me to the most revered man in recent years in football coaching -- Tony Dungy, a man who has won, a man who looks very comfortable in his own skin, a man who has mentored many, including, most notably, Michael Vick. A man who coached in the NFL for so long that he won't have the possible baggage of transgressions while having coached in college. A man who just might have one more gig left in him and who might relish the challenge of helping heal the Penn State community. Tony Dungy would attract top-notch assistants, at least 2-3 of whom, under his mentoring (for coaching, recruiting and good conduct) could grow into successors when he and the powers that be in State College believe that they have done much to help restore Penn State's brand.

Many of the current coaches whose names are bandied about are probably scared. If they're successful, they probably have a very good gig, one where they aren't under a constant microscope for the types of things that any coach in State College now will be. At one point, it would have been an honor to survive the scrutiny to be tapped to succeed Joe Paterno (even if frightening that the comparisons to him would have been harsh). Now, it's not so much an honor as a burden -- a burden of proving what Paterno preached but ultimately failed to live up to -- that he and his program were better than all others when it came to doing the right thing -- playing hard and fair, graduating players, behaving well. That would be a tough set of standards to meet, one that might rival the requirements for canonization.

I don't want to equate Tony Dungy with sainthood, as that's not fair to anyone. But he's a terrific guy with a great track record, someone who is as respected -- if not more respected -- than anyone out there who might be available to coach Penn State. And while he might be comfortably retired and enjoying his TV work, this could be the one challenge that might interest him enough to come back to the sidelines -- to help heal a once-sacred community and set standards of excellence in actions and not, sadly, in just words.

This could be a great match.

The End of the Innocence: Penn State, Football and Us

2011-11-11T20:38:00.010-05:00

Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky
Didn't have a care in the world
With mommy and daddy standing by
But "happily ever after" fails
And we've been poisoned by these fairly tales
The lawyers dwell on small details. . .

-- from Don Henley's "The End of the Innocence."

I've waited for a while to comment on the Penn State situation because of two factors. First, as a native Pennsylvanian and Pennsylvania resident, I have gone through many emotions -- disbelief, shock, anger, frustration and sadness, to name just five. Second, I know from experience that it's good to let a difficult situation settle in to gain some perspective before writing on it.

The entire situation is a very sad one and one where there are no winners. Everyone lost, particularly what we'll probably learn are dozens if not hundreds of young boys who were victims of Jerry Sandusky and a culture/system that failed to protect them. My guess is that the situation will get worse before it gets better, because we will learn many more disturbing facts as the investigators continue to turn over rocks. My guess also is that certain powers at Penn State -- most notably Joe Paterno and the higher ups in the university -- knew of Sandusky's "dirty little secret" long before now on-leave assistant coach Mike McQueary witnessed a horrifying act in 2002. Why no one did anything -- other than presumably force Sandusky to an early retirement near the peak of his career perhaps because his secret was coming into their workplace too often -- is a question that we will discuss for a long time. At the core, a culture existed in the now-misnamed Happy Valley that failed to protect some of society's most vulnerable members. We all feel deeply for the victims.

Beyond that, we learned something very disturbing about our society, our belief system, our needs and ourselves. As a Pennsylvanian, I can assure you that I have wonderful neighbors, people who extend many kindnesses to one another. I have among my friends many Penn State alums and friends whose kids have gone to Penn State. Forever, they all have cherished the place -- as some type of haven unsullied by the pace, grime and higher crime rates of big cities, as a haven where goodness rules and where a demigod named Joe Paterno set a morale code on the campus that enabled the university to play its extracurricular games on national stages at a high level while ostensibly not sacrificing its standards of making sure that players both graduate and behave. You could hear the reverence of Penn State, State College and Paterno in the way they talked about the place. Some would watch Penn State games with life-sized cardboard cutouts of Paterno in their family rooms. The whole aura of Penn State -- and their connection to it -- gave them an extra bounce in their step.

And now that's all gone. Here are two pieces -- one from the leading sports talk show host in Philadelphia (a Penn State alum) and a business writer in Philadelphia (also a Penn State alum) that touch upon this very notion. The former suggests that perhaps the gritty town from which he went to Penn State wasn't so bad after all. The latter -- who chose Penn State over Temple because of similar idyllic reasons -- is shaken to the core. Make no mistake -- first and foremost they have expressed sympathy for the victims -- but they too are hurting because they are wondering how their once-sacred alma mater could have let them down and, derivatively, how they -- educated and intelligent people -- could have bought into a system in the first place that let vulnerable kids and our society down so greatly.

And perhaps because so many reporters and commentators have covered so many aspects of this case that I will choose a different angle. Many have commented on the power of Joe Paterno, the culpability of the administration, whether university president Graham Spanier (whose specialty as an academic ironically is family therapy) should have lost his job, whether Paterno should have lost his job, whether assistant coach Mike McQueary should have lost his job (he's on administrative leave), what happened when the university seemingly compelled Jerry Sandusky's departure over a decade ago, why some students rioted after the news of Paterno's dismissal, whether Saturday's game against Nebraska should have been played, whether the remainder of the season should have been cancelled and many other topics related directly to the university, the people there and its alumni. There have been many eloquent pieces written, from Phil Taylor's great piece in Sports Illustrated to dozens of columns particularly in Pennsylvania papers. I would recommend many of them.

But the topic that I would like to address is how and why our society has evolved the way it has, why we need football so much, why we have put it on a pedestal, why people's self-esteem can rise and fall through a connection with a program or an institution and its successes and failures and, correspondingly, the lengths that people will go to ignore problems in order to protect their beloved institutions seemingly at all costs. Is it simply human nature that we don't feel complete unless we align with a group, a school, a team everyday in some way? Does it have to be the case that we can't feel good about ourselves unless those associations are excellent? And when I say "we" I mean people in general, as we all know of someone who thinks that football is silly and that spending a day watching a contest means that you're spending a day not exercising, not reading, not improving your house or volunteering to help others.

One linked writer wrote of all of her Penn State swag that decorates her home and her cube at the newspaper. The other linked writer talked of how he wasn't proud of where he grew up, and Penn State was supposed to be an idyllic, special place. But in the end, does the omnipresence of the swag suggest the worshipping of a golden calf, a lesson that the human race once learned a very long time ago? And does the relative dissatisfaction with where one grew up -- and a thanks that one did not have to endure the gritty streets where Temple University is located -- say something bad about ourselves? That we equate proximity to a factory with bad values and four years in Happy Valley with good ones automatically and without question? More poignantly, should we feel superior about ourselves and our institutions -- and blindly follow them and not question whether sports get emphasized out of proportion -- just because they have "excellent" football programs and coaches who seem larger than life. Maybe we don't give ourselves, our communities and what we do daily enough credit, that maybe all of that stuff is good enough -- without a need to feel better because our gridders beat up on someone else's.

At the end of a day, football is -- or perhaps should be -- an extracurricular activity the same way student government, the band and the school newspaper are. At the end of the day, head football coaches are university employees and should not be more important than the university president or the university itself. In David Halberstam's book on Bill Belichick, the author spoke of how the coach's father, a legendary football scout, responded to comments that his son was a genius. "Genius," the father mused. "All he does is run up and down on the sidelines in a sweatshirt coaching football."

For an institution to be worthy of enduring respect, it must be bigger than any coach, any team, any professor, any department and command the respect of those who work there. Why? Because people come and go, but the institution -- if having the right values -- will and should endure for much longer. Penn State had, has and will have much more going for it than the football team and its coach. None of my friends who went to Penn State had any involvement with the football program other than going to games and all have much to recommend themselves regardless of where they went to school and whether their alma mater had a good football team or a legendary coach. But somehow the football program grew to be bigger than the school and, tragically, forgot why it was there and, as a result, a reasonable measure of accountability.

The entire Penn State affair shows how societies can lose perspective on what's important. I hope and pray that everyone involved with Penn State -- especially its board of trustees and its leadership -- does a deep dive as to what a major university's priorities should be and, over time, reconstitute and re-earn the faith and trust that many placed -- without question -- into Pennsylvania State University. And, in the process, teach us that what we do every day -- by being good neighbors, good friends and good family members -- should give us enough self-esteem that we don't have to blindly protect our institutions and football programs at all costs so that we can feel better about ourselves. If Penn State's leaders can achieve that, then as a public university Penn State will do all citizens a lot more good than Joe Paterno's 409 wins and packed stadiums in State College ever have.

Pennsylvania State University, its football team and its coach were among the things and people that the average Pennsylvanian and alumnus could believe in as some of the best things their society had to offer, shining examples of what a public university, its teams and its leaders should be. The news of the past few weeks ended the innocence of those who were the true believers in everything blue and white, all but a few of whom are decent people, the neighbors and friends of you and me. Yet, that tragic realization is far eclipsed by the stories of the victims, whose innocence ended far too early and far too awfully. Penn State alums would readily trade their current misery -- and the happiness they had while they were in State College -- so that this whole thing would never have happened.

Let's hope and pray that those same decent people will work to heal their community, to do right by the victims, and to work to make Penn State a better place.

Is Harvard Officially the Evil Empire of Ivy Men's Basketball?

2011-10-26T19:33:00.002-04:00

You have to either subscribe to ESPN the Insider or ESPN the Magazine to get the article about Harvard's recruiting efforts, which amount to trying to lure 3- and 4-star recruits to Cambridge. It's pretty amazing as to how a) Coach Tommy Amaker (who still hasn't convinced me that he is a good technical coach, as opposed to a good recruiter) can lure these kids to Cambridge, b) how so many top players are good enough students to play at Harvard and c) how the kid featured in the article said that he liked the concept of Harvard because of the possibility of making good basketball connections and going to "an Ivy." From this article, it also sounds like talent-loaded Harvard has a bunch of recruits who could be the Ivy's version of the "Fab Five" -- AAU teammates who might choose the Cantabs over bigger-time basketball schools.

Too often in my life have I run into situations that seemed too good to be true. Sure, call me a jealous hoops zealot who is lamenting the loss of the vivid Penn-Princeton rivalry and who resents Harvard as a wannabe interloper. I can assure you that's not it. I enjoyed watching the Crimson last year and marveled at the assemblage of talent. (I also think that had Sydney Johnson coached the Crimson, they wouldn't have lost a single game). It's just that it seems hard to believe that having gone 65 years without an NCAA tournament bid and without having put a very good team on the court for decades, that all of a sudden perhaps dozens of top-notch recruits are considering Harvard over scholarship schools with good academics and traditional Ivy basketball titans Penn and Princeton, not to mention recent superpower Cornell, which had about as good a three-year run of any Ivy team in a long time.

I recall talking to a Princeton assistant about six, seven years about a top 100 recruit who had a connection to Princeton. The kid was considering Duke (he eventually went there), but word came through that he was interested in Princeton. The recruit went to the school for a visit, but he ultimately chose Duke. Commented the assistant, "We always lose kids when we go up against Stanford, Duke and schools like that." I'm sure that Penn probably would say the same thing. Yes, the schools get good recruits, but increasingly over the years both Penn and Princeton have lost players to schools that somehow Harvard is now competing against and perhaps winning.

What gives? It's not that Harvard has a winning tradition (it doesn't). It's not that Harvard has a great facility (it doesn't). It's not that Harvard has an outstanding coach (Amaker didn't do well at either Seton Hall or Michigan, and while he's recruited well at Harvard he hasn't won a title yet, although with the talent he has he should mail it in and win a title this year). Sure, Harvard has a huge name, but since when has the huge name simply been enough? Especially when you have schools with storied programs in your conference.

Something just doesn't seem to add up. It could be that Harvard finally has gotten it's men's hoops' act together and corralled the optimal combination of hoops talent that can qualify for Harvard. If so, congratulations for catching lightning in a bottle or something like that. Go on-line if you subscribe to ESPN the Insider or buy the magazine and see what you think. Is it newly found brilliance on the Charles River, or something else? And, if so, what?

Any way you slice it, Harvard is certainly defining itself as the team to beat (perhaps for years) in the Ivies. They'll still have to beat archival Yale (which has a good team this season) and take on Penn and Princeton on back-to-back nights twice this season. That's a tough challenge whether you have three- or four-star recruits -- or not.

More Evidence That Penn State Football Is Eroding Even More

2011-10-19T11:35:00.002-04:00

A top recruit from the Philadelphia suburbs, who once gave an oral commitment to the Nittany Lions, is going to Wisconsin.

The reason offered up is that Wisconsin is Offensive Linemen U., and the recent article in Sports Illustrated -- an elegy to the Badgers' development of offensive linemen -- had to help. Look, if a kid wants to go into a profession (and especially where there is no grad school to gain an extra credential), why shouldn't he look at the school best suited to give him the training to get to that career? Because that's precisely what J.J. Denman is doing, and, yes, Wisconsin is a good academic school too.

But here's the thing for Penn State devotees -- Penn State used to get kids like this automatically just by showing up. Penn State was the default drive, the major aspiration -- good program, kids get their degrees, chance to vie for a national title. But the first is in question and the last hasn't been true for a while. So, recruits like Denman will go to a place where not only to they have a better chance to fulfill their potential, sadly, they also will have a better chance to connect with the head coach (read the whole article and see what I mean).

Penn State fans shouldn't be mad at J.J. Denman. He's doing the right thing for himself. If they're frustrated, they should direct their disappointments and dissent to the Penn State administration, which has let the entire issue of succession planning for Joe Paterno get out of hand. Look, I've written this before -- Paterno's body of work is tremendous in every way -- but how far is the administration supposed to let the program slip because they're honoring the past -- extremely so -- at the expense of the present?

No, of course, Penn State won't put together two consecutive 0-12 seasons and fall off the proverbial cliff, but the Nittany Lions are a far cry from what they used to be -- a dominant presence as to the right way to run a major college program that can win championships. Perhaps Penn State fans are okay with the current state of play, and that's okay if the majority of them are.

It's just that they, the university, Coach Paterno and his friends -- they all can do a lot better.

And everyone knows it.

Former Buffalo Bills Center Kent Hull Dead at 50

2011-10-19T11:34:00.003-04:00

There have been some wonderful testimonials about Kent Hull.

We all should aspire to have similar things said about us.

On the NBA Lockout

2011-10-14T12:35:00.003-04:00

Required Reading: Michael Wilbon's post on ESPN.com yesterday.

I am not an economist, but in a world saturated with alternatives -- whether in music, theater, movies or sports -- I do wonder how many discretionary dollars are out there for the average person to spend. Tickets are not cheap, and we all go through scaling back when funds become more scarce or, alternatively, when we perceive that in the near future there might be a time where funds might become more scarce.

And it's easiest to cut either the biggest ticket items or the recurring items that add up to be the biggest tickets. You might not take a vacation, make that extra improvement to your home, buy a car or a computer or a sofa, you might eat out less, cancel the health club membership and go to the barest bones cable TV subscription, among other things. You also might give up your tickets, opting to go onto StubHub, Craig's List or eBay to buy single-game tickets. If you live in a town where the team isn't vying for a title, there's a good chance that you might be able to buy tickets for below face value. And for the games that you want. You'll do, in essence, what Apple did to the recorded music business with iTunes. Instead of having to buy an entire album -- one with 1.5 songs that you want and 7.5 songs that make you wonder why they were recorded -- you'll be able to zero in on what you want.

All that is background to a general observation that the NBA is in big trouble. To begin with, it already has too many teams and too many teams make the post-season. Because there are too many teams, there are too many bad teams. A few years ago I was in Washington to see the Wizards play the Pacers, and more than half the luxury boxes were unlit and the arena was less than half full. That situation repeats itself around the league more often than the league would like to admit. And now there's the lockout, and, as Michael Wilbon points out, the NBA pales in comparison to the NFL. A lot of people would have suffered withdrawal symptoms had the NFL not started on time. It seems like few are noticing that the NBA might not start on time. Atop that, there's college basketball, which has a very big following and which many conferences play at a high level. Of course, it's not the NBA, but it's still good basketball, sometimes very good fundamental basketball, too.

I don't know whether this still holds true or not, but I have heard it said that in supermarkets if a bread company misses a delivery, it will lose its shelf space to the company that delivers timely that day. Analogously, if the NBA fails to deliver a product when its season is supposed to begin, the consumers will fill up their time with other entertainment options -- other sports, for example. Now, of course, some will miss the NBA terribly and hurry back, but others will attrite simply because they'll have allocated that time to something that they enjoy -- a different brand, a different flavor, so to speak. And then where will the NBA be?

The NBA is facing a perfect storm -- a lockout, a bad economy, intense competition for the discretionary entertainment dollar, a product that has needed improvement for years and a league economy that has more teams losing money than making it. Unless if figures out a way to have some good come out of this and perhaps turn itself into the basketball version of the English Premier Soccer League, the product that returns after what seems to be looking like a long lockout might be significantly weakened.

Michael Wilbon is right -- there is plenty of money to go around, so the parties should figure out a way to settle the dispute and get back to work.

Where are Bob Lanier and Larry O'Brien when you need them?*

Reflections on the Phillies' Season and Post-Season

2011-10-09T10:02:00.002-04:00

Most Phillies' fans would have told you two things -- that failing to reach the World Series would be a disappointment and that they had their doubts that the team would get there. As to the former, well, the Phillies and the media pumped out that expectation ever since the team signed Cliff Lee in the off-season. As to the latter, forget the ghosts of Chico Ruiz stealing home against them down the stretch in '64 and the pinch-hitting of ageless wonders Manny Mota and Vic Davalillo in the '77 playoffs against the Dodgers, no these concerns were more real -- inconsistent hitting, a young bullpen, and an aging core of position players.

So, was I disappointed that the team lost to the Cardinals? Yes.

Was I shocked? No.

Will it take me a while to get over it? Thankfully, I have other interests, but it stings a little.

But let's go through the roster, the season and the post-season in no great order.

1. The Team Paid Cliff Lee the Huge Bucks To Win Game 2 of the NLDS. I hope that this point doesn't get lost in the vortex of blame that's getting thrust upon Ryan Howard, Hunter Pence and any Phillie not named Rollins, Utley, Victorino or Francisco. The Phillies trashed the Cards in Game 1, just slammed them around, and took a 4-0 lead in the first inning of Game 2 with Cliff Lee on the mound. Check mate was in the offing, not just for the game but for the series, because teams down 2-0 have something like a 4-37 record in the post-season. The Phillies needed Cliff Lee not only to shut down the Cards in the bottom of the first (which he did not do), but for the rest of the game. Win that game, and the series is all but over. Let the Cards come back against a guy who will come in no lower than fourth in the NL Cy Young voting, and, well, the irony is that a Philadelphia team turned the Cards into Rocky. So, as much as Phillies' fans love Cliff Lee, he's among the top of the list for goats in this series.

2. Businesses Make Decisions When They're On Top That Can Cause Them to Lose Their Edge. You have to remember that despite all the accolades tossed Pat Gillick's way (including the accolade to end all accolades, a spot in the Hall of Fame), as Baseball Prospectus has pointed out, all of his big signings failed (see, e.g., Adam Eaton), but his genius lay in the fact that he kept on tinkering to find a piece here and a piece there. So, while to compare Ruben Amaro, Jr. to him right now isn't fair (as Amaro has many years to go in his career), Amaro made some big moves that might turn out to be questionable, such as a) signing Raul Ibanez in the first place (despite Phillies' fans love of chanting his name, there didn't seem to be much logic in adding a 36 year-old player to an aging team) and b) perhaps what will prove to be the biggest error (and might have proven to be even if he hadn't ripped his Achilles) signing Ryan Howard to a huge deal at $25 million per year (when at the time the reports were that the new contract made him untradeable and that most other GMs thought the Phillies seriously overpaid). Look, I like Ryan Howard enough, but in the end, baseball is a stone-cold business, and the Phillies aren't the only team that makes this type of mistake (see, e.g., the Yankees and Derek Jeter). These moves might have foretold the results of this season (but only if you're a sharpshooter of a soothsayer).

3. The Team's Plan Didn't Include Getting Younger. I will be the first to admit that baseball mystifies me, at least in terms of the health of the players. Baseball isn't nearly as physical for its players the way football, hockey, soccer and even basketball are. But position players (save catchers) don't have the physical demands that the other sports' players do. Pitchers do have physical demands, because pitching is an unnatural motion and because of the "repetitive motion" aspects that peck at all sorts of workers (including those who work at keyboards). Yet, even with that -- the swinging and the throwing -- baseball players seem to get nicked up at an alarming rate, with the types of injuries that linger. And it's typically the older players who get hurt more and whose injuries linger. A look at the Phillies' injuries this season would have revealed a damaged infield particularly. By having the oldest roster in baseball, the Phillies exposed themselves to both roster depletions and day-to-day flaws that younger teams (within reason, as a team of rookies won't win much) did not have. Put simply, they need to get younger -- and fast -- or risk suffering more of the same problems in the upcoming years. (Yes, you can surmise all you wish that the elimination of steroids might contribute to the injury problem, but unless anyone can prove anything now, it's probably not worth it because that comment could apply to every team).

4. The Team Was Built to Pack a Stadium with Big Names and Sell Merchandise, But the Front Office Didn't Evolve Its Thinking to Include Continuing to Win World Series. Go through the roster -- Howard, Utley, Rollins, Victorino, Halladay, Lee, Hamels, Oswalt -- and those are some pretty big names. You see them on replica jerseys and jersey shirts around Citizens Bank Park, which has had something like 200 consecutive sellouts in a football town in a down economy. At the beginning of the season, fans boasted that if you had a ticket to a game, you had an 80% chance to see one of the "Phour Aces." (The fifth pitcher, Vance Worley, actually outpitched the fourth -- Oswalt -- much of the year). The signing of Cliff Lee -- which came as a big surprise -- the lingering aura of 2008, the four straight division titles -- all of them pumped up the team and the fans. But a deeper dive beneath the surface revealed an untested bullpen (which got old -- fast, too -- with early injuries to Jose Contreras and Brad Lidge and the final falling off the table by J.C. Romero) and a lineup with players whose on-base percentages weren't exactly dazzling if you weren't named, say, Utley or Ruiz. Lots of wild swinging, lots of impatience at the plate, lots of question marks that existed beneath the veneer of confidence, accountability and teamwork. In the end, despite the big names, the one thing that concerned everyone -- consistent hitting -- came back to bite the Phillies. They just didn't have it.

5. Vanity Hurt the Phillies Too. Two years ago, they carried a Rule 5 player on the roster -- David Herndon -- for no good reason, costing more worthy minor leaguers spots on the Major League roster. This year, they "found' a utility player named Michael Martinez on the Rule 5 draft, but, get this, he was 28 and was on the Nationals' roster. And they decided to keep him, despite a weak bat and a glove that got increasingly iffy as the season wore on. Put simply, neither player belonged in the Majors at the time he was there. Worse than that, they carried two players this year with injuries that deprived them of their effectiveness -- pinch-hitter Ross Gload and third baseman Placido Polanco. It's pretty gutsy to think that you can win with folks with bad hips and sports hernias. Sorry, but while a fan can accept that many players have nagging injuries, it's hard to accept carrying players with very much diminished offensive capacities. That hurt the team more than the team let on.

6. For All the Big Money, Ryan Howard Must Evolve. The Phillies had a rookie, many years ago, who hit .198 his first year, struck out about 180 times, showed some pop and walked enough. That player got more selective at the plate, to the point where by the middle and end of his career his strikeouts were "acceptable" and far less than his rookie year, his walks were up, and his on-base percentage -- batting third -- was about .400 every year. Several years later, they had another infielder who had the looks of a Hall of Famer -- he could run, hit for power, hit for average -- but after a few good years he suffered a downward spiral that made him into a super-utility player for other teams, owing to the fact that he just couldn't lay off sliders that were sometimes horribly out of the strike zone. The former player -- a third baseman -- is in the Hall of Fame, a guy by the name of Mike Schmidt. The latter player -- is now the team's third base coach, a guy by the name of Juan Samuel. But ask anyone who saw Samuel in his first year or two, and he thought that he saw someone who would be a very special player.

But Samuel failed to evolve, didn't figure out how to become more selective at the plate, and became exposed as an everyday player. He had a nice career, but baseball requires continuous adjustments. Hit inside pitches, they'll throw you pitches outside and in the dirt. Murder fastballs, and you'll see slop. The greats continue to adjust.

Ryan Howard is between those two players. Unlike Schmidt, he wasn't born with the great batting eye that led to on-base percentages that were dazzling. But Schmidt did get more selective as his career unfolded. Unlike Samuel, while outside "slop" breaking balls do paralyze him, Howard rebounds from downward spurts within a season to seem plateaued with a batting average below .270, an OBP around to slighly below .350 and with similar (and very good) power numbers. That's pretty impressive given that he appears to be the same hitter that he was when he came up, albeit less effective because of injuries and because other teams now know how to pitch him.

So, the Phillies have what they have. A cleanup hitter who is not an elite hitter, but a dangerous one who will continue to put up among the best power numbers. Regrettably, the human mind focuses on memorable failures and spectacular successes, and, with well-known professional athletes, the former seem to stick in fans' minds more than the latter. But if Howard were to try to take a page out of Schmidt's book regarding selectivity and approach, he might be able to put up even better results. It does seem kind of late in his career to do that, though.

7. There are Good Things, Too. So Let's Focus on Them for a Moment. Skipper Charlie Manuel and the team's leaders have created a culture of hard work and accountability. Watch a game and you normally can see the bounce in the players' steps, their passion for the game (both on the field and in the dugout). I don't expect that to change much. John Mayberry, Jr., emerged as someone who might be able to play every day in left field or at first base (to spell the injured Howard, who might be gone until July). The top three starting pitchers are as good as any in baseball. Some of the young relievers -- Bastardo (despite his late-season woes, which should be fixable) and Stutes (despite his late-season fatigue) -- showed promise, as did Herndon in his relatively limited role in his second year in the big leagues. The (rapid) aging of the team might overshadow these developments, but remember that the front office has a lot of money going off payroll and will tinker with the roster in a way to improve it -- by getting younger and signing some hitters who are more selective at the plate. Those sellouts and all that merchandise portend that a bold GM will get the green light from ownership to make more moves to fortify the team.

8. So, Let's Look at the Team.

There are lots of decisions to be made. Presumably, Brad Lidge ($12 million per) and Raul Ibanez ($11 million per) will not be back. The club has a $16 million option for Roy Oswalt, and I don't think that they'd take him for half the salary. He was too inconsistent, and it would look like after Halladay, Lee and Hamels two of Kyle Kendrick, Vance Worley and Joe Blanton will be the starters. Most likely, it will be the latter two, but don't count out the possibility of a trade involving Worley. Also, Kendrick had a very good year (period) and made $2 million last season and is eligible for arbitration again. You have to wonder whether the Phillies will let him go rather than risk paying him say $4 million as a sixth starter and long man in the bullpen.

As for the bullpen, Jose Contreras and Brad Lidge should not return even if for low numbers. Both are up there in years and injury-prone, and their best days are behind them. Ryan Madson in all likelihood will not return, leaving a huge hole in the bullpen (and showing the first break in the "core" group that has been with the team since '08 and before). The reason is simple -- his agent, Scott Boras -- delivers for his clients, and one of the 30 MLB teams out there will overpay for Madson the way the Nats did for Jayson Werth. The rest of the 'pen is relatively young, needs some veteran leadership, but somehow, some way, teams constitute bullpens. Sure, the Phillies' 'pen might not rival Atlanta's, but it won't have to. I have full confidence on this score that the team will have a bullpen sufficient to do the job in 2012.

But pitching isn't the biggest worry. The everyday lineup is.

Catching seems to be in reasonably good shape, even with Carlos Ruiz's failure to hit in the post-season. He has some pop, he has a good on-base percentage, and while he isn't Joe Maurer or Yadier Molina, he is pretty good. Back-up Brian Schneider deserves a return, if only because the team was something like 28-6 or so when he started this year. The Phils don't have a young catcher who Schneider is blocking, as their best catching prospect, Sebastian Valle, is about 21 years old and years away.

Infield is the biggest question mark. Howard, ripped Achillies and all, might be out until July. Utley showed that he's a gamer in the post-season, but he's brittle and seemingly not his old self (his skipper offered in the post-season that he's about 75% of his old self). The leader, Rollins, is 32, had a good year after two bad ones, but is injury-prone. A team like the BoSox, big payroll and all, is likely to overpay for him to provide leadership in the clubhouse. The Red Sox would be wise to do so; the Phillies also would miss Rollins greatly. But the Phillies are in a pickle because of the Howard injury, their commitment to starting pitchers who are here to win now, their need to continue to sell out, their need for leadership and the fact that their best SS prospect (Freddy Galvis) isn't ready. Given the Howard injury and despite the team's need to get younger, look for the Phillies to (perhaps) overpay for Rollins. Placido Polanco at third is the big question mark -- he looks to be through, but the team owes him $8 million for 2012. Clearly, he's not the answer, and clearly, third would be a spot where the team could get younger.

Outfield isn't without its issues. Ibanez will be gone, although some AL team might ink him to a 1-year deal to be a part-time DH, and that would be a good investment. He's also a class act. Victorino is sold in center, but you have to wonder about Hunter Pence. Sure, he was an energy boost after Domonic Brown played fairly at best, but he's a wild swinger on a team that needs to show more plate discipline. Brown should figure in the mix next year, as should John Mayberry, Jr.

Overall, it's an aging lineup, injury prone, with many on the declining side of their careers, and lacking in plate discipline. Ruben Amaro, Jr. is a former Major Leaguer with a degree from Stanford, and he'll need to summon all of his smarts and best instincts to pivot this team into a state where it can contend for not one or two more years, but many. But while Amaro has proven to be a pretty good trader, at some point it also would be nice to see some home-grown talent populate the roster.

My view is that the team can contend for perhaps as many as three more division titles with this nucleus (and particularly with the starting pitching, assuming they ink Hamels to a well-deserved long-term deal), but it might be hard for them to get to or even win another World Series, thereby more so resembling the Braves who won 14 straight division titles but only 1 World Series than the Yankees, who won a fist full of World Series titles in the late 1990's.

This particular off-season will be one to watch closely.

What Good Luck Charms are Phillies' Fans Trotting Out Tonight?

2011-10-07T08:52:00.002-04:00

My pessimistic cousin -- who despaired mid-season before the Phils were en route to winning 102 games -- says the game's a lock for the Phillies.

The reason?

The steam patters from the red rocks in his sauna somewhere in the desert foretell a Phillies' victory. It's the calmest he's been about the Phillies since the beginning of the season. He said he might not even watch the game. Somehow, I think he will.

At any rate, Game 5's in divisional series are big games, and they are humbling games. They reveal that a journeyman like Don Kelly can be a hero, while a Hall of Famer like Derek Jeter can struggle with runners in scoring position. What's in store for the Cardinals and Phillies tonight?

That's why they play the games. Both are good teams, and their play to date has warranted a Game 5. Based on my sense of momentum, I think that the Cardinals should be favored -- they have played more consistently and have been more patient at the plate. Yet, the Phillies are home, they are trotting out their ace, and all will expect a big game from him tonight. But he's facing his old, good friend in Chris Carpenter, an ace himself, and, unlike in Game 2 where he was pitching on 3 days' rest for the first time in his career, Carpenter will be pitching on full rest. This game has the makings of a great one, as all deciding games do.

At the Bank on Saturday Night: The Old Masters

2011-10-02T16:45:00.004-04:00

Observations:

1. I did learn from the Weather Channel that when they say there's a 50% chance of rain what they mean is that with the weather patterns presented, it has rained 50 times out of 100. Thankfully, we were on the favorable side of that prediction last night.

2. We sat in the second deck in right field, about 10 feet on the "foul" side of the foul pole. Good seats, under cover, although the wind was whipping something fierce.

3. The pre-game environment was exciting, and, yes, Lance Berkman's bomb in the first inning deflated the crowd a bit. I'm not sure that I agree with newspaper reports that the homer sucked the energy out of the place, because it happened so early in the game. Yes, the fans did get quieter, but I didn't hear despair or cursing about Halladay. The fans were patient.

4. Kyle Lohse did his best Don Larsen imitation for the first five or so innings, going perfect for about the first four and dazzling the Phillies with his off-speed stuff. Lohse is a good if not great starter, and while he was outdueling Roy Halladay deep down I felt that the faithful thought that they'd get to him.

5. Credit Tony LaRussa for pulling out the stops on Halladay early. In recent starts, Halladay was vulnerable to yielding first-inning runs before settling down, and LaRussa made sure he maximized that weakness by running leadoff hitter Rafael Furcal early.

6. Lohse was so brilliant that after 5 innings he might have thrown 50 pitches. The Phillies weren't patient, but when Ryan Howard worked the count off Lohse in the sixth and hit his three-run homer, the place erupted about as loudly as I've ever heard it. And then when Raul Ibanez homered two at bats later, the place was just pumped up. Ibanez is in the last year of his contract, and it would behoove some AL team to ink him to a 1-year contract to be at least a part-time DH. Sure, his OBP was bad this year, but he had a bunch of key hits and overcame a terrible start. He has some more gas in the tank. I doubt that the Phillies will re-sign him (even if at 1 year for $1 million), only because they need to make room for younger players.

7. Halladay was the first pitcher since Larsen to retire 21 in a row in a post-season game. Last year, when he pitched his no-hitter against the Reds, he "only" retired 14 in a row. I kept a book last night, and he just kept on mowing the Cardinals down. His rebounding from adversity was impressive.

8. Most Phillies' fans were worried about whether the team would hit in the post-season, given the lapse during the 8-game losing streak near the season's end and what happened in last year's post-season. Well, the team shook off the cobwebs and figured out Lohse and then clobberred the Cardinals. The 11-6 final score was misleading. The Cardinals scored 3 runs in garbage time -- the top of the ninth -- after the Phillies had pummeled them and led 11-3. If the Phillies can hit reasonably well, they'll get at least to the World Series and then will have the chance to win it all.

9. The Cardinals are formidable, as is LaRussa, so one game does not a series make. Remember, this is the same LaRussa that skippered a team that finished 83-79 in the regular season in 2006 to a World Series title. LaRussa has a lot of tricks up his sleeve and will be in Cooperstown some day.

10. It was a vintage night, last night at the Bank. It was like Old Masters were painting their masterpieces -- key hits by the veterans, a future Hall of Fame pitcher pitching brilliant after a bad start, and fun for the home town fans. Still, this series -- and the post-season -- is far from over.

Philadelphia Eagles: The Dream Team is a Living Nightmare

2011-10-02T16:34:00.003-04:00

The Eagles have blown second half leads in the past three weeks.

They are 1-3.

Some dream team, perhaps a "nightmare" team.

Just because you add all the parts that you did in the off-season doesn't ensure that you have chemistry. The Phillies, who play across the street, have both the big names and the chemistry. The Eagles have the big names, but they lack leadership on the field and have some blind spots off it.

Here is the critique:

1. You don't jettison an All-Star kicker unless you're sure the replacement is better. I don't blame today's loss to the 49ers on rookie Alex Henery, but if you miss two kicks at home of less than 40 yards, you won't have a job for long if you don't figure it out. Perhaps there were chemistry issues with David Akers, but he's a better kicker than Alex Henery.

2. The team lacks leadership on the field. The Phillies abound with leaders -- Halladay, Lee, Rollins, Howard, Utley, you name it, they have them. Who are the leaders on the Eagles? Who helps fire up each of their units -- offense, defense and special teams? Can you name anyone? That's part of their problem.

3. The team lacks judgment off the field. No one stands up to Andy Reid in the organization. I mean, how can they justify moving their offensive line coach to defensive coordinator? Why did that make any sense? And, how can they justify year after year not bolstering the linebacking corps? This team cannot stop the run. I mean, the 49ers came into the game with the NFL's worst offense, and the Eagles couldn't stop them.

4. Don't they practice ball security? I've seen better ball protection in Pop Warner leagues. That's Football 101.

5. And what's with the Red Zone offense? It doesn't matter all that much if you can move the ball before the 20 if you can't punch the ball into the end zone. The team had that problem last year and didn't fix it.

The Eagles seems stuck in being above average. While there might be few coaches with Andy Reid's track record, there are a bunch of them who seem to be able to surpass him. Year after year, his teams have flaws that turn out to be fatal. This year, the flaws were a) poor linebacking, b) question marks at safety, c) question marks on the interior offensive line, d) a bust of a first-round draft pick, and e) whether they'd improve their red zone offense. Reid has done a very good job over the past 10+ year; there's not disputing that. But he also hasn't been held as accountable for his decisions as he should be, and then he was given great leeway off-season with respect to his coaching staff and to personnel moves. And, so far, they have not materialized.

This is clearly a team that can sell tickets. This is a team that would populate a fantasy team well. But it isn't necessarily a playoff team, a team with the "giddyup" to really take it to the other team, get a lead and keep them down. They aren't closers, or at least they haven't shown this much so far. You just cannot blow second half leads and consider yourself playoff material.

Horrible, horrible day for the Eagles.

The dream team right now is a living nightmare.

A Tale of Two Sports in One Town

2011-09-21T12:33:00.002-04:00

Because every dad seems to know something about baseball, the dads flock to it, and so do their kids. In our town, the dads are all over the sport. They coach it as if each game were a Major League contest, despite the fact that while a Major League GM and a AAA manager live in the area, the area itself hasn't turned out a Major Leaguer in at least 25 years (the town probably never). There are more travel teams than you can count, populated not by virtue of tryouts before disinterested judges and an elevation of the best of the best, but because of who coaches the team, how many of his buddies assist him, how many parents want to say their kids play travel, how many parents can devote the time to 70+ game schedules and how many parents want to foot the bill.

The high school team in the area stinks.

And it's a very big high school.

There is also a regional lacrosse program that draws kids from multiple school districts. The kids who play typically like activity, because when you boil it down, of the hours that a baseball game takes to play, perhaps there are only 20 minutes of action, and each kid isn't a part of the entire 20 minutes. The men who coach typically don't have sons on the team -- they are young guys looking for a coaching credential, dads of kids who are older and don't have kids on the team. The teams themselves don't play against kids from the same town or county, but sometimes drive as far as an hour to play an opponent. The league's elders evaluate the kids at different grade levels each year and place them on a team that's appropriate for their skill levels and upside. Few complain.

The high school team finished in the top 10 in the state and is viewed as an up-and-comer.

I took lots of Latin when I was in school, and liked geometry a lot. My high school geometry teacher used to finish off her proofs with the letters "QED," which stood for quod erat demonstratum, or "that which has been proven."

If I were to put down a blank before my own scribbling of "QED," what do you think would fill it in?

Our local baseball/softball association is about to have a huge, nasty fight about who will head up the organization. On the one side are the softball guys, each of whom has his own agenda, a team to showcase his own daughter(s) on (some of whom are very good, some of whom are not), and each of whom really isn't accountable to the organization or to the town that lets them use the fields, as most of the kids on the travel teams are roaming Hessians who cast their lot with different teams each year, no matter where they live. They could care less about the town. These guys do want to reform travel baseball, though, by making it more of a meritocracy and taking it away from the "appoint a head coach, let him pick 4 assistants, and have 5 of a team's 12 spots get taken by their kids, each of whom gets priority playing time" approach. The other side wants to keep the approach, doesn't care about softball (although if pushed some one admit that the situation isn't good for the town but since each local softball association seems to work this way, the fact that everyone else does it is sufficient justification for our town's not helping its own girls), and wants to build more fields to create more travel teams, thereby cannibalizing the rec leagues even more. Their answer to the lament that the travel culture is bad is to offer a travel experience to anyone who wants it.

It's a classic case of the fact that I'm happy that a) I don't have a horse in the race and b) I hope that both sides lose. I have friends on both sides of the fight, among them a few good souls who first and foremost want to do right by town kids. There are also people on both sides who have their own selfish motives and who have acted badly. The situation calls for Solomon, if one is around. My kids are finished playing in and for this organization. The fight will be nasty and will linger. It's just a shame that the powers that be can't focus on what makes sense, what works, and put out offerings that are for the public good and the good of the town, and not just to fill the needs of the fathers who participate.

QED

In Case You Missed It. . .

2011-09-21T12:32:00.003-04:00

Metta World Peace was the first person voted off Dancing with the Stars. He used to be known as Ron Artest, who plays in a league that's called the National Basketball Association. That is, when it's functioning.

Penn State 14 Temple 10

2011-09-17T17:43:00.002-04:00

I went to the game at the Linc today. I went to root vociferously for Temple, as my father played a few seasons there not too long after the Owls' last victory over the Nittany Lions and because he used to take me to their games -- at Temple Stadium, Veterans Stadium and Franklin Field. We saw some great games, some upsets and some disappointing losses (especially two heartbreakers to Penn State in the late 1970's). So, with the point spread below 10 (it was 7 at game time), I figured this was Temple's best chance in years to beat Penn State, and, to continue a ritual (which turned out to be watching Temple imitate Sisyphus by pushing the big rock up the hill and not getting to the top) of going to Temple games.

That said, I wanted to note the following:

1. I was surprised that the place wasn't packed to the rafters. Franklin Field (for a 31-30 Penn State win) and the Vet (for a 10-9 Penn State win) were packed and very loud. Then again, it was the 1970's, Penn State was a top 10 team, and Joe Paterno was "only" in his early 50's and very much relevant. Now, Penn State is not even a top 25 team, Paterno's legacy is getting tarnished weekly (he made himself bigger than the institution, and both his beloved Penn State and self are suffering). So, Penn State fans don't have the mojo that they once did, because their team is not all that good.

2. On the other hand, where did all of these Temple fans come from? Temple had its largest number of students ever attend an athletic event today -- almost 11,000 (a far cry from the number that go to games in Happy Valley, but, then again, Temple is a smaller school and more importantly for purposes of this paragraph a commuter school). There were lots of people in red at the Linc today, and you'd have to venture to guess that most of them weren't early arrivals for the Phillies' game to be played 7 hours later.

3. The Linc could do a better job for Temple. True, the game lacked the buzz of an average Eagles' game, but the concessions stands and services were somewhat lame in comparison. Perhaps it was just that it was a noon game, the place wasn't packed, and no one -- except for some players on both teams -- seemed to be fully alert.

4. The game was exceedingly sloppy. If I were Penn State's special teams coach, I'd start thinking seriously about stepping up my and my charges' game or else begin thinking about a different line of work. Temple blocked a field goal, blocked a punt and Penn State's kicker hooked a short field goal attempt and then hit the upright on an attempt in the fourth quarter that would have tied the game at 10.

5. After the game, we heard a Temple fan, somewhat irate, shout out to no one in particular, "They should take that offensive coordinator out on North Broad Street and shoot him." To which several Penn State fans responded, "Which one?" That was the funniest moment of the day, and it really spoke the truth. Both offenses were unimaginative, both yanked their starting QBs and then reinserted them late in the game. No QB played particularly well -- Temple's Mike Gerardi made some bad reads and threw too many interceptions, including a few late in the game that were invitations for Penn State to win the game. Temple's Chester Stewart, an option quarterback, didn't show much imagination in his reads. Penn State's Rob Bolden fumbled the ball near the Temple goal line late in the game and was otherwise unspectacular. Penn State's Matt McGloin probably looked the best of the four, but also made a few bad decisions and was yanked for Bolden late in the game. As they say on ESPN, "if you have two quarterbacks, you don't have a quarterback." Touche, for now, for both schools.

6. The two names I heard the most today on the loudspeaker were Michael Mauti (a linebacker for Penn State whose dad, Rich, played for the Lions in the 1970's) and Blaze Camponegro, a sophomore linebacker for Temple. Mauti made a key interception late in the game, seems to be a spiritual leader for the Lions' defense, and at one point had to have gone into the defensive huddle after too many offensive miscues to count and said to his teammates, "Guys, we're going to have to figure out a way to win this game, because the offense can't." Similarly, Camponegro seemed to be in on almost every big play, and it's hard to forget a name like his. And, yes, his first name is Blaze and not "Blaise."

7. Overall, Penn State won the game because they were bigger, quicker and better at pushing the Owls around than the Owls were at pushing them around. Still, I thought that when the FG attempt in the fourth quarter hit the crossbar, the Owls were going to win the game. To Penn State's credit, they stunk the joint out, but they still won the game. That said. . .

8. I don't think that they'll fare very well in the Big Ten. Sure, they should beat Eastern Michigan next week, but it's hard to see this offense doing much against any Big Ten school, and, as a result, winning more than two games in the Big Ten. I just don't see it -- they don't have the QB (and, quite frankly, State College is a place where the careers of outstanding HS quarterbacks have been known to die), they had trouble running the ball for the most part, and their passing game was good enough but not of the type that a fan who hadn't seen them would run away raving about it. Their defense was pretty good, and their special teams were bad (except for kicking off and receiving, where they were okay).

9. Their leadership also is very much at issue. Their top 3 coaches on offense -- the head coach, the offensive coordinator and the quarterbacks coach -- are all up in the booth. That leaves WR coach Mike McQueary, a onetime Penn State QB who is hard to miss because he's about 6'5" and has bright red hair -- as the leading offensive coach on the sidelines. That's pretty hard to understand. McQueary is animated and appears to be a take-charge guy, but you have to wonder what he says to his wife when he goes home after practice. There must be some big-time ventilation, including mutterings such as, "Honey, if I am still here next year, just take me out back during deer hunting season, shoot me, and tell the police it was an accident."

10. And that gets us to Paterno himself. I'm sorry, but I just don't get it, and Penn State alums and fans should say "enough is enough." He isn't Penn State, he doesn't run the place, the football program is a shadow of what it once was, and it's hard to believe that many if any top 100 recruits or their parents want to consider a school with an 84 year-old coach. This is not to say that Coach Paterno isn't a legend, doesn't stand for good principles and hasn't had an awesome career at Penn State. He has. But it's been long since past the time he should have retired, and now the program is suffering. It was plain for all to see today -- just a clunker of a game after another clunker of a game against a program with whom it competed annually for a national title.

You only have to go as far as Tallahassee, where Florida State had to deal with the issue of getting Bobby Bowden to retire. Unfortunately, it wasn't the most graceful exit, but it was time for Bowden to retire years before he did. And, in Jimbo Fisher, the Seminoles got a senior assistant coach with strong recruiting ties who has put Florida State back on the map (they are in the top 10 now) and will keep them there.

Penn State needs to do the same thing and tab a replacement for Coach Paterno after this year. No, it's not his son, Jay, either, as these positions are not a family business. That's not to say that Jay hasn't made valueable contributions to Penn State -- he has -- but there are many head coaches out there who would love the job, among them Al Golden, an alum who was UVA's defensive coordinator before turning Temple around and then taking the head coaching job at Miami, one he might want to leave if the NCAA levels the U with enough recruiting sanctions to turn it into solely a music school. There are other coaches out there as well with outstanding track records, and it's time -- for everyone involved.

Good atmosphere down at the Linc, exciting (if sloppy) game, good weather. Temple should go to a bowl game (if it can spring star RB Bernard Pierce free, which it couldn't do today) and finish about 8-4, 9-3 overall. Penn State will end up 5-7 or 4-8, and I just cannot see it winning more than a game or two in the Big Ten.

It was a Tale of Two State Schools today, and a very interesting one at that.

Another Reason for Phils' Fans to Boo Joe West

2011-09-05T17:56:00.003-04:00

Click here and see what I mean.

For what it's worth, if it's a battle of who's telling the truth -- West or Phillies' skipper Charlie Manuel -- well, given West's history and history with the Phillies, I'd bet on Manuel.

That said, it's hard to win a protest like this, and the ruling on the field in all likelihood will stand.

But what MLB should do is review the rule, generally, so as not to let the home team benefit from the interference rules. Quite frankly, the rule should be construed against the home team, which has a better ability to control the fans than the visiting team. Since the home team has the better ability to control the risk, it should bear the burden of its fans' behavior. So, in this case, Pence's batted ball should have been ruled a hit. The rules committee can further develop the rules to determine what discretion the crew chief would have to call it a double or a home run. But to let the home team benefit from interference seems ludicrous.

Then again, to let the Phillies' benefit from a) poor planning by not having enough relievers because of some noble notion that it doesn't want to deplete its playoff-bound AAA team from glory at the expense of burning its bullpen and jeopardizing a world championship and b) having David Herndon pitch horridly (albeit after the fact) might not be wise either. Put differently, the Phillies had their chances yesterday, but they didn't capitalize.

Still, the rule should be examined in the context of whether to permit the home team to benefit. A shout out to Phil on the morning/afternoon weekend show on 97.5 the Fanatic for emphasizing this point yesterday.

Kris Humphries Can Afford to Quit His Day Job

2011-08-21T21:58:00.002-04:00

Kim Kardashian grossed $18 million on their wedding, netted $8 million after expenses.

Humphries isn't a household name; Kardashian is. Humphries isn't an NBA star, and while Kardashian isn't a star per se, she's perhaps the most famous for making herself famous. Sounds a bit like Yogi Berra, doesn't it?

There's a famous line in accounts about Joe DiMaggio when his then-wife, Marilyn Monroe, recounted to him a trip she took overseas. She told her husband, "Oh, you've never heard cheering like that." To which the Yankee Clipper responded, "But I have."

Don't know if Humphries has heard much cheering since his abbreviated college career (where one could argue that the biggest yelping going on in Minnesota was when he chose Minnesota as his college), and I also don't know if Kardashian has heard such cheers, either. But it's certainly the case that she draws a crowd almost anywhere she goes, while Humphries might draw fans because tall people usually draw the question, "did you play basketball?"

It will be interesting to see how he'll fare playing Mr. Kim Kardashian, as it would be interesting to see his financial statements to determine how much of his net worth he spent on her engagement ring.

The TV special on the wedding airs in October, which is good timing because the NBA season might not start at all. Kris Humphries will get more exposure for this than for his hoops career. But the NBA will get plenty of exposure because he's a hoopster, regardless of whether there's a lockout or not. Sounds like a good deal for everyone.

Crunch Time for Phillies' Farm System

2011-08-13T09:49:00.002-04:00

Part of the Phillies' great run from 2007 on has been the strength of their farm system and their ability to replenish it with solid prospects. Otherwise, it's hard to explain how they've been able to pry good players from other teams to fortify their roster.

But it could be that the Phils' magic is running out. Right now, their top two draft picks -- Larry Greene and Roman Quinn -- are unsigned, and they have until Tuesday to sign them.

Having traded top prospects Jared Cosart and Jonathan Singleton to the Astros for Hunter Pence, the Phillies drew upon their deep well of talent to get a good bat for the #5 slot in their lineup. That said, it's not as though any farm system abounds in talent endlessly. And while one scout offered that the Phils' farm system probably dropped back to the middle of the pack after that trade (which is a pretty good thing given the number of prospects they've traded over the past five years), they still need to replenish it. Greene and Quinn -- according to the experts -- would help, and you don't have to be an expert to realize that a team's top two draft picks should help. The question is whether the front office can get the job done.

This story won't be a headline grabber in all likelihood, but it's an important one for a top team looking to remain elite for the next couple of years before Father Time catches up with it.

Much Adu About. . .

2011-08-13T09:43:00.002-04:00

Okay, so I couldn't resist, but I didn't finish the headline because Freddy Adu is only 22 years old and still have some of his best soccer left in him. Unfortunately, when he was 14, he entered the soccer world as a Premiership All-Star and, right now, is coming out as a hand-me-down for a second-tier league. He just signed with MLS's Philadelphia Union a few days ago.

Eight years ago this would have been a huge story. Today, it's a bit of "where are they now," and I'm sure Philadelphia Union fans are thrilled to have him in tow (he's no Thierry Henry, but he's a headliner and MLS desperately needs those). MLS has succeeded in grabbing headlines, especially in Philadelphia, where the Phillies have baseball's best record and the Eagles' average pre-season signing makes Adu look like the back-up goalie for your local soccer association's "B" 14 and under travel team.

As for soccer in the U.S. itself, that's probably better discussed on another day and in another blog. If MLS's short-term goal was to grab a headline, they succeeded. If it's to put a world class product on the field, well, they have a ways to go.

"There Goes The Best Hitter That Ever Was"

2011-08-12T21:44:00.002-04:00

That's what Ted Williams wanted everyone to say about him. Problem was, Williams was one of those guys who became more appreciated after his career ended. During his career, he ran into all sorts of problems with the media, some self-inflicted, others unfair. Clearly, he wasn't as bad a guy as some of the "knights of the keyboard" (his sarcastic moniker for Boston sportswriters) made him out to be.

Today, there's a AA player in the Nats' farm system about whom much has been written, Bryce Harper. Problem is, the negative reports that we hear about Harper aren't nearly as subjective as the ones that the fans heard about Williams back in the day. The reason -- streaming video, YouTube, and the internet. Harper might be a transcending talent, but he also has a transcending temper and ego. Together, they are a toxic combination, sure to turn opponents and umpires against him. Take a look at this video clip from YouTube about a recent (with the past few days) ejection of Harper to see what I am talking about.

Right now, Harper is both a super talent and his own worst enemy. Part of the issue is that he's only 18 years old, and part of it is that he's been so hyped that he believes a lot of it (of course, if you can deliver, the saying goes, "it ain't bragging."). The world has to be patient with Bryce Harper, for sure, but the Nats need to figure out a way to reach him, coach him better, and turn him into a more solid professional. If they succeed, they could have an achiever for the ages. If they fail, they'll have a head case who becomes more trouble than he is worth.

Real Madrid Signs 7 Year-Old Prospect

2011-08-08T10:40:00.003-04:00

I'm sure that this is something that Jerry Jones or the late George Steinbrenner wished he could have thought of.

Read the wire story here.

This is nuts, isn't it? Is there any other way to put it other than to let kids be kids, let them play in various leagues, get more structure as they get older, and then make their way into the professional ranks. Can't they let him grow up outside an incubator? Can't they let him grow up and be "normal" for as long as possible?

Either it's a slow news day and Real Madrid wanted to get back in the headlines in a big way or something is really wrong. Is there anyone who can stop this?

Leave the kids alone.

Are Baseball Players Like Flood Water?

2011-08-06T13:19:00.002-04:00

Flood water will go everywhere you don't want it to go unless you put up barriers. Before Robert E. Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia, he was a colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and spent a significant amount of time helping design and build the flood wall that protects St. Louis from the potential ravages of the Mississippi River. At one point, there was a statue in St. Louis honoring Lee for his accomplishments as an engineer. (I do not know whether that statue still stands today).

Try as it can through testing, MLB simply cannot find enough ways to ban performance-enhancing substances. As Jim Bouton wrote in Ball Four, if you told a pitcher that a pill existed that would guarantee him 20 wins in a season, he'd take it, even if it would take five years off his life. The French, you recall, wanted to prevent a second world war, so what did they do? They built the Maginot Line near the border with Germany. So what did the Germans do? They took a page out of a football playbook, made an end run around the Maginot Line and went into France via Belgium.

So what are MLB players doing since they get tested for steroids? Apparently, there's a spray made from deer antlers that has properties to induce the building/regeneration/replenishment/healing of muscles. And, of course, MLB doesn't test its players for deer antler spray. I mean, they don't test players for ingesting hippotamus urine or lyophilized hyena toenails, so why think of testing for deer antler spray?

But that's how tenuous a hold many Major Leaguers have a hold on their jobs, or at least think they do. For every Chase Utley there are handfuls of the Michael Martinezes, Wilson Valdezes and Ben Franciscos, each of which doesn't get that much of an opportunity to distinguish himself before the brass when he gets a shot. The player with sporadic playing time -- and those who get more playing time but who are perpetually fearful (as they should be) of losing their jobs -- need to find an edge. The reason that I say that they should be fearful for losing their jobs is rooted in my reading of the 2009 Baseball Prospectus and counting in my head the number of players still with a team or its organization today from that list. My count is roughly 30-35%. In digging deeper on the team I'm most familiar with, the Phillies, I noted that the core from back then remains intact, but the periphery has changed dramatically. Most of the jobs in the bullpen have turned over, as have a few spots in the rotation and many spots on the bench. That's how tenuous a hold most players have on a roster spot.

Enter Jim Bouton's premise and the advent of deer antler spray. I don't know what the answer is or how to solve the problem, but to point out that it's pretty sad that players will resort to snake oil if they believe that they can make more money and spend more time playing baseball. After all, there are only so many boundaries that MLB can put up to catch bad behavior.

So, if you hear that many more players are going deer hunting in late November and early December, now you'll know why. And if players' stats increase, venison will be on the post-game spread menu in each clubhouse.

Punk Move by Giants' Catcher Eli Whiteside in SF Tonight

2011-08-06T00:20:00.003-04:00

Eli Whiteside might have thought that he was going to star in the first coming of Jackass, the Baseball Game tonight in San Francisco. The Giants' journeyman catcher (and that's not a compliment) could have hurt someone tonight -- and badly -- because he acted wrongly, dangerously and stupidly after his pitcher, Ramon Ramirez, started a bench-clearing brawl by hitting Phils' CF Shane Victorino in the back with two on and two out in the top of the sixth with the Phillies leading 8-2.

Ramirez was clearly headhunting -- the pitch was that bad. So what did Whiteside do after Victorino gestured toward Ramirez and took a few steps toward him? He moved in front of the plate -- which would have been okay had he wanted to simply stop something from escalating. But then he started jumping up and down, as if he wanted to start something and as if he wanted to start a fight. You'll see the replays and agree with me on this -- Whiteside was an escalator, not a peacemaker, and then the benches emptied and things got ugly -- lots of pushing and shoving, a few people falling, and someone could have gotten seriously hurt. As it was, Ramirez, Whiteside and Victorino were ejected, and the Phillies lead 8-2 in the top of the seventh. Now 9-2, as Hunter Pence just jacked one to left.

But what was Eli Whiteside thinking? There are ways to fire up your team, and there are ways to get your (very much sliding) team pumped up -- but picking a fight after your team made a dirty play is not one of them. And the Phillies have a lot of big guys on their roster, and they're not going to back down against anyone, especially a team that had their number in the post-season last year and with whom there's been bad blood. Thankfully, no one got hurt.

I am sure that there will be suspensions. My guess is that Whiteside will get the biggest one for his pro wrestling-like hijinx, Perhaps his manager, Bruce Bochy, likes his moxie, but Whiteside has guaranteed one thing -- the next time he comes to Philly, he'll join the roster of players who will get loudly booed -- alongside the Brothers Drew, umpire Joe West and Scott Rolen.

And with good reason.

These organizations are better than this. They should stick to playing baseball and leave the fighting to those who get paid to do it for a living. If the umpiring crew does it's job, it will ensure that the tensions simmer over the course of this and the next two games.

Can You Drink Your Way to Health?

2011-08-03T08:55:00.002-04:00

Need a good laugh?

Read this piece in today's Wall Street Journal. Jim Sollisch talks about the healing effects of drinking large quantities of different beverages -- in the same day -- all of which could combine to give you all sorts of health benefits.

It's a short piece that underscores the absurdity of health studies when you elect not to read them in a vacuum but instead try to fuse them all together.

Durant Scores 66 at Rucker Park

2011-08-02T20:39:00.002-04:00

Saw that headline and a related article on ESPN.com, and it took me back to a day where you heard the old-timers talk about the legends who played on playgrounds in New York and Philadelphia. Joe "The Destroyer" Hammond, Herman "Helicopter" Knowles, and, of course, Earl "The Pearl" Monroe, elegized in a Spike Lee Joint He Got Game as the "Jesus" of North Philadelphia.

The Herman Rucker League in New York, the Charles Baker League in Philadelphia, summer leagues where the pros used to play wearing shirts promoting a furniture store (Nate Ben's Reliable), a tap room (Jimmy Bates B-Bar) and a haberdashery (Ducky's Dashery), and where once Monroe, dressed in somewhat ratty attire for him, parked his Rolls in the middle of North Broad Street near Temple University's McGonigle Hall and, as legend has it, racked up 60 points.

In the second half.

It's hard to play pick-up tackle football at a high level, and it's almost impossible to play pick-up baseball anywhere. But it's easy to play pick-up basketball, and pick-up basketball is at the core of the lore and allure of all basketball anywhere. The stories just abound, and some, like a good single-malt, age better as the years progress. Kevin Durant played here. Wilt scored 100 points in Hershey, as memorialized by pioneer rapper Kurtis Blow in Basketball ("Tell me were you in the joint, the night Wilt score one hundred points. . .."), Kobe stopped by at the Rucker, someone else played at the West 4th Street playground, the Belfield Recreation Center in Philadelphia or the Duckrey playground there at 15th and Diamond. And the old timers, the Sonny Hills and the John Chaneys, well, they can tell you stories -- great stories -- all day long.

So, as the NBA and the players' union engage in a Star Wars-like light sabre battle to see which side can push the other closer to the edge and therefore threaten -- temporarily -- the existence of the highest level of pro ball on the planet, certain players, through where they are showing up, are reminding us what a simply eloquent game basketball is.

Kevin Durant racks up 66 at the Rucker.

Larry Brown showed up at Princeton and then at a high school in Cape May, New Jersey talking to kids during the last strike (when Brown was coaching the 76ers).

There will be other sightings.

And basketball, as a whole, will be better off for it.

Because it's a wonderful game.

And there's not a thing, really, that the suits with the big bankrolls and the stars with the big cars can do to ruin it.

Because there always will be someone like a Kevin Durant to score 66 at the Rucker.

Electric Night at the Bank

2011-07-31T10:27:00.002-04:00

About 6 weeks ago, friends of ours told us to block out Saturday night, July 30 on the calendar for a game between the Phillies and the Pirates. We go to many games, and there was no reason to look forward to this game any more than any other game at the Bank. The reason is simple -- the Bank is an exciting place to be, a sea of red (although Nebraska fans have nothing to worry about), with a team that has a core of great players, not only because of their individual talent, but because of the leadership the best players show and the chemistry on which everyone in the locker room seems to insist upon.

Yet, there was something particularly exciting about going to the ballpark last night -- the arrival of Hunter Pence.

Don't get Phillies' fans wrong -- we love the players we have, but we figure that the window for this group of players to win World Series will shut in 3, 4 years, and the idea of holding onto well-regarding high A ball prospects for the future perplexes the faithful because this team can win it all now. And the amateur GM in all of us compelled the conclusion that the Phillies have such a good shot to win it all this year that adding one more piece might make that good shot great. When you couple that thinking with the track record of GM Ruben Amaro -- the actual, professional GM whose day job it is to outthink the amateur GMs in the stands -- we figured that he wouldn't sit idly by while the Giants upped the ante in the high-stakes game that is the run toward and into the playoffs by doing nothing.

So, when the news broke on Friday night that Hunter Pence -- all 6'4", 220 pounds of a strong-armed, power-hitting, righthanded batting rightfielder -- was en route, Phillies' fans became even more excited (as did the local merchants, who probably began ordered their Pence jerseys and jersey shirts at on-call shirtmakers after midnight). And that electricity was apparent as we walked into the ballpark.

If you park behind the outfield, the Phillies have huge posters up on the wall near left field behind the stadium that tells you what the starting lineup is. And, in the fifth spot, there was a picture of the field with the indication below it that the right fielder was batting there, behind Ryan Howard. Despite bad public press, the average education provided to Philadelphia-area residents is such that we all could deduce what we had hoped for -- that Pence was going to start on this night.

Regulars at the games can predict with great certainty which players emerge from the clubhouse and in what order for their pre-game warmups. We saw Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins emerge from the dugout to right behind the first-base area to get their stretching and running in. A bit later we saw Carlos Ruiz walked toward the bullpen, followed by Cliff Lee, who was to begin his regimen of stretching and then long toss before going into the bullpen to start throwing hard. Raul Ibanez, Ryan Howard and Shane Victorino also came out, and they, too, began their twists, stretchs, turns and runs. Finally, the last one out -- and a 4:30 arrival at the ballpark -- was Hunter Pence.

He's hard to miss -- a ballplayer right out of central casting -- big, strong and with the high red sox that make him look like he'd want to play two at mid-day in the midst of a heatwave. He ran out to the same area, and by the time he was closer to the rightfield seats, the fans realized who this large player wearing #3 was. And then they stood and applauded, and, as Pence moved toward center, the fans did the same thing. He acknowledged them with a wave, which drew more applause. As he then moved back toward the right field foul line, the fans there obliged him with rousing cheers, and he waved to them.

Welcome to Philadelphia, Hunter Pence! Welcome to the electricity and excitement of the team with the best record in baseball. Pence would receive loud cheers all night, and it was a night for the fans to cheer loudly. Ryan Howard homered before Pence's first at-bat, causing the faithful to be even more loud than they would have been had Howard whiffed before Pence's first appearance. Howard would go on to have a single, two doubles and an intentional walk in addition to that home run, and the second double was of the sort that could he have borrowed Shane Victorino's wheels he would have hit for the cycle. Cliff Lee got two hits, Victorino tripled, Pence got a hit (and should have had another but for a missed call at first on a close play) and, all told, the Phillies had 7 runs and 16 hits en route to a 7-4 victory over a Pirates' team that was gritty and refused to lie down.

Phillies fans don't take these times for granted. We know that they don't last as much as we know the baseball famines that we and our parents and grandparents have endured over the course of generations. We have a great appreciation for how special this era of players is, as we also have -- in the back of our minds now -- the mentality of the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam in the mid-1970's, wondering whether there will be one last helicopter to rescue us before the opposition overruns our position. We know that the getting always isn't this good.

Which makes nights like Saturday night extra special. We celebrated a wonderful new addition. We celebrated Jimmy Rollins' making of two acrobatic plays at shortstop that seemed to declare that he isn't declining any time soon. We celebrated the amalgamation of a great core group of players, the sum of whom far exceeds the contributions that any individual can make, and we celebrated an ownership group and front office that has evolved from being cheap and defeatist into an elite. We celebrated summer, we celebrated togetherness, and we celebrated a victory.

We know that nights like this don't come around all that often.

And that makes them all the more special.

Holiday Season in Philadelphia

2011-07-30T08:47:00.002-04:00

Boy, what a difference four decades can make.

About 40 years ago in July, every Philadelphia sports team was flailing (with only one -- the Flyers -- showing any hope). The average Philadelphia kid just went about his business, went to the local pool, to a day camp, played softball at dead ends, in open fields, basketball on courts with torn nets, what have you. No one -- and I mean no one -- had any hope that their team could make a run for a title any time soon. The sports landscape was like Irkutsk, Siberia in mid-February, without all the charm.

Fast forward to yesterday, and it was as though the two "major" sports teams in Philadelphia were in a steel cage match to see which one could wrestle the sports headlines from the other. In one corner, wearing the red and white, were the Phillies, with baseball's best record and a pitching staff that's the mound version of a modern-day Murderers' Row. In the other corner, the perenially gridiron challengers, the Eagles, wearing the green with white trim. Each were on a mission.

The Eagles were busy all week, trading for a cornerback, signing a defensive end, a tight end, a wide receiver who can return kicks, and a back-up QB with all the potential in the world, some decent results in his past, but a more recent history of a bad attitude. They had put up a lot of points, got kudos for moving forward when their division rivals were retreating, shedding some big names and past contributors to get under the new salary cap. They were impressing the media judges with their tireless jabs for success, working the media ring, getting attention, but they didn't score the knockout blow.

The Phillies, in contrast, got attention because of the moves that they hadn't made, and the annual debate about whether low-minors prospects can turn into the next Jon Smoltz or a jar of schmaltz (read: chicken fat) had begun in earnest. They also drew news because last year's World Champions took 2 of 3 in their house and then elected to rent the best OF available, Carlos Beltran, to serve as a human version of a PED for their anemic offense. The media judges were questioning their resolve, their tentativeness, noting that while their body of work was impressive they were questioning whether the team had enough to deliver the knockout blow to the rest of baseball.

And then both teams struck at once, one by surprise, and other by stealth.

Early last evening, the media reported that the Eagles came out of nowhere in the sweepstakes for classy all-world CB Nnamdi Asomugha, landing him for enough money to reduce the national debt for about 2 hours. Eagles fans were rejoicing, because now the team had 3 -- count 'em -- Pro Bowl-caliber CBs to help face whatever the best passing offenses could throw at them. I'm sure that the local sporting goods' stores are rushing to mint Asomugha jerseys, and that they'll sell a ton of 'em. Score a huge blow for the Eagles in their quest to knock the Phillies right off the sports pages mid-season.

The normally aggressive Phillies were tentative, because recent history has shown us that they've spent their prospects in trades the way Congress has spent our tax dollars. Over the years, they've shipped over a dozen prospects for Joe Blanton, Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt, so much so that we fans were getting worried that the pimply kid who lives three doors down and broke his arm playing wiffle ball on the ice while wearing shorts was now going to be the top OF prospect in short-season "A" ball. But the reports have been that despite the massive trades, the Phillies were doing a good job of replenishing the farm system, shedding any illusions that it was turning into the after picture of a West Virginia strip mine.

Phillies' fans were getting anxious -- the window for the core players on this team to win it all (again) has an ETA to close in 3-4 years, at which time, perhaps, the prospects whose names were being bandied about might be rookies. Then, about 3 hours later, after the euphoria of the Eagles' signing Asomugha was hitting its peak (where it might remain indefinitely), Comcast SportsNet showed Hunter Pence coming out of the game in Houston and receiving a very warm sendoff from his teammates. Shortly thereafter, the Phillies' broadcasters hinted that rumors were swirling that the Phillies got the 6'4", 220-pound RF with the good arm (if funky mechanics), good power, good OBP and, yes, his right-handed bat. Score one huge blow for the battler in red and white. The euphoria over the Pence trade will last for a shorter while, but it will peak tonight when he's spotted at the Bank and announced -- he'll hear the cheers loudly and strongly.

The final tally? Both teams won, and won big, and their fans are elated. If you had told Philadelphia fans 40 years ago that a day like this would be in the offing, they would have spat their Ortlieb's or Schmidt's at you, tossed a few crumpled Taskykakes your way, and told you that you were delusional.

So, when my son came downstairs this morning, still waking up, he asked, "Dad, is it really true that we're getting Asomugha and Pence?"

"Yes," I replied with a smile, "it is."

Christmas is 5 months away, but the presents came early in Philadelphia.

Calling out Bruce Bochy

2011-07-16T20:49:00.002-04:00

Sometimes you read diplomatic language and wince. Our government uses soft language to describe how it's really annoyed with another sovereign power. Or, our legislators sit before the cameras and smile about their attempts to solve the deficit issue, when you know that John Boehner would like to stick a shiv in Nancy Pelosi's career (or at least her hair), and when you know that Steny Hoyer would like to do the same to Eric Cantor.

Which brings me to the diplomatic speak that the Phillies' brain trust had for Giants' manager Bruce Bochy. If the math in this post plays out, then Bochy outright screwed the Phillies in what could be an unethical matter and should be held accountable for it. Then again, he did so in plain view under the fog of war, so he'll get away with it.

Put simply, Bochy warmed up and used Phillies' aces Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee at the top of the All-Star game, trying to get each to go 2 innings, or 1 more than any other hurler pitched in the mid-summer classic. And that means, of course, that both are unable to pitch this weekend at Citi Field against the Mets. And that means that the way the Phillies' rotation sets up, both will be unable to pitch against the Giants when they arrive at Citizens Bank Park in a few weeks.

And that simply is unfair and unethical.

Now, Bochy and his minions and apologists will smile, say "aw shucks" and argue to they are blue in the face that they were putting the senior circuit's best foot forward in trying to win the All-Star game and give the NL home-field advantage by putting two of the best starters in the game for four innings in an attempt to help the NL win the game. It sounds terrific and plausible, especially if you have a horse in the NL race and want your team to have home-field advantage in the World Series. That's hard logic to argue with.

But if you read the post, you'll discern quite clearly that even if Phils' skipper Charlie Manuel was demure on the topic, his pitching coach is hopping mad. Why? Because the logic of Bochy and his defenders is flat-out wrong and transparently so. The reason? Because if it's a true All-Star game, there are many pitchers who could have played the roles that Halladay and Lee did. And, even if the manager of the NL squad thought it optimal to have his starter (Halladay) go 2 innings, why then did he feel compelled to put in as the next pitcher a starter from the same team, a team his team plays in a few weeks? The simplest explanation is that he wanted to screw up their rotation in a way that would benefit his team. Period. After all, he has some pretty good hurlers on his team -- guys who won him the World Series last season and who are very well-regarded. If he felt so strongly about winning, why didn't he use his guys, guys who'd pull very hard for him and his cause? Why not? Because he didn't want to wear his guys out and then screw up his rotation after the All-Star game.

It was bush league all the way.

The Commissioner's office should investigate this, punish Bochy and then institute a role that prevents this type of shenanigan from recurring. Credit to Rich Dubee for at least showing some body language that suggests he'd like to pole-axe Bochy (figuratively) when he sees him next in Philadelphia.

Bad blood?

You bet.

What's Next, the Best Hockey Players from Ecuador?

2011-07-16T20:44:00.003-04:00

The Princeton Basketball Blog linked to this post from yahoo.com, which names the 7 best NBA players from Ivy League schools.

Four are from Princeton; none are from Penn. (And one Princetonian, Bud Palmer, was a pretty well-known sportscaster years ago for one of the major networks; another was a U.S. Senator from New Jersey).

None from Penn? Really? Not Dave Wohl, Corky Calhoun, Bob Bigelow, (current Penn coach) Jerome Allen. Yale's Chris Dudley, who lost a bid to become Oregon's governor last year, also failed to make the list. And neither did Harvard's Jeremy Lin. I don't know why Yahoo focused only on 7, but that's what they did.

The Power of an Encouraging Word

2011-07-16T18:47:00.002-04:00

A young boy, in fifth grade, took up a new sport this spring. There were three teams in his age group, and he was on the novice team because, well, he was a novice.

He loved the game. He was timid at first, the result of not knowing what he was doing and, also, not having his coach present at as many practices as would have been optimal because, well, the coach is a volunteer, has a life, and has a job. Still, despite being younger and smaller than many of the kids, he persisted.

He wasn't a star by any means, probably in the middle of the pack toward the bottom third, but he practiced with vigor and did the best he could. A sibling has had more success athletically, and near the season's end he wondered aloud on which team he'd play the following season. Would it be even possible, he asked, if he could make the first team?

We didn't discuss the topic much. All I offered was that kids who succeed do the work in the off-season to get better, which in this case would be to get into better shape and to practice frequently to develop skills. But I'm his dad, and that's what dads are supposed to say. And while I coach him in a different sport and he tells me I'm good at it (and it's not just because he might want me to buy him something, either), it's not easy to push your own child beyond his comfort zone. It's almost like there's something in the human gene pool that creates a barrier that prevents families from going berserk, something like a force field. It was, though, my hope that my son would have an incentive to work hard in the off-season so that he could distinguish himself in the fall in tryouts.

His last practice took place in the late spring, and, as it turned out, the coach of the first team ran it because my son's coach traveled to the state tournament to see his sons play on a team that was more like the Hickory Huskers in Hoosiers than the heavily favored South Bend Central squad. This coach encouraged the boys, but he knew my son's name, and he said, "I'm counting on you to improve, as I really need people who play your position next season."

The conversation wasn't long, but it was powerful. The coach offered enthusiasm and encouragement -- something that any almost adolescent boy needs. My son came home from practice and recounted the story -- with brighter eyes than normal -- and had some extra verve as a result. We then discussed what he needed to do, and he offered that he needed to practice his skills so as to be ready for the tryouts.

And, pretty much, he's been doing that, and through daily activities playing a variety of sports, he's been getting into better shape, building endurance and quickness. He sees an opportunity and wants to take advantage of it, and he has some extra impetus all because of a one-minute conversation in which an adult who wasn't his father told him that he had faith that he could improve enough to play for his top-level team.

There's plenty of yelling, doubting and negativity in this world. So, if you work with someone, are in a position of leadership or are a coach -- you have a duel role -- to challenge your team to do better, and to encourage them that if they have the skills and the tools they can actually achieve beyond what they believe they can. Sometimes all people need is a word of encouragement, even if you say, "Hey, the bar is here, you're not there yet, but I have all the confidence that you can get there. The big question is whether you have the same confidence and whether you can show me."

I watched a recently documentary on HBO about Vince Lombardi. There was a vignette in the film, an interview of Hall of Fame guard Jerry Kramer. Kramer recounted that one day he had an awful practice because he kept on jumping off-side. Lombardi chewed him out pretty good in front of the team. After practice, the coach walked through the locker room. Kramer was sitting on a bench, changing, and Lombardi approached him. The coach patted his young guard on the back and said something to the effect of "Jerry, keep on working hard. You know, you can be one of the best guards in this league." Kramer recounted the story and then said, "After that, I was determined to work as hard as I could. How could you not after encouragement like that?"

The world is in desperate need of leaders who connect with people. You don't have to be a politician or a CEO, it might be that you manage a shift at a convenience store, run a moving crew, coach a Little League team or a cheer team or run a pizza joint or an executive committee. Wherever you are, though, set the tone and make a difference by leading, challenging and, most important of all, encouraging. If you do that, you'll make everyone better -- including yourself.

The End of "Friday Night Lights"

2011-07-16T18:32:00.002-04:00

The last episode of Friday Night Lights aired last night on NBC. The powers that be at the network expanded the show to fit a 1 1/2 hour time slot, though truth be told they did so to sell more ads, as it didn't seem that there were more scenes.

The last 10 minutes were really all you needed to see, and they told us that Tami and Coach Taylor moved to Philadelphia (a tip of the cap to the author of the book by the same name, H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger, who is from the City of Brotherly Love; Tami incongrously after being a high school guidance counselor in Texas is going to be Dean of Admissions at a Philadelphia college, while Eric, fresh off another state championship, is coaching a high school team in Philadelphia). The Riggins brothers reconciled, with Tim opting not to go to Alaska but to build a house on the land he bought a few years back (with money he earned from helping his brother carry through on his idea of running a chop shop to support his family, and, when the authorities came a-calling, it was Tim who took the rap for his brother so that his nephew would have a father in his home). Tyra returned from college, still attracted to Riggins, but determined to make her way out of Dillon into a new life (although the ever-romantic/seductive Riggins said that he hoped their paths would mesh again). Matt and Julie are together again, in Chicago, where Matt is in art school and Julie presumably will be in college. Landry made a cameo appearance, home from Rice. The town of Dillon formed a "super" team to combine the teams of the two high schools to save money, and Vince is the starting QB, while Tinker has a spot on the team, as does Buddy
Garrity, Jr., and it looks as though Coach Taylor's assistants at East Dillon are running the show for the Panthers. Meanwhile, Vince's co-star, Luke, is back with Becky, but then he ups and joins the army and catches a bus out of town. That means that Becky is along, again.

Got it?

This was one great TV show, even if it didn't get the ratings. You don't have to take my word for it -- take the Associated Press's. My wife really doesn't care much for football, but the show riveted her because it was about a town and a community, about individuals with many virtues and flaws, living life, taking steps forward and backward, but in the end coming together because, well, that's what community is all about. We learned about the Riggins' brothers struggle to grow up without a mother and within an absent, alcoholic father, about the tenuous hold even a successful coach has on his job, about the difficulties raising an artsy daughter in a football family, about Landry's being a brilliant kid in a town where football takes priority, about Luke's quest to get off the farm, and about Vince's struggles given that his mother is overcoming an addiction and his father just got out of jail. We see the hurt that Buddy feels when the Panthers abandon him after they jettison Coach Taylor in favor of a puppet that the father of the star quarterback controls, we see his estrangement from his family after a bitter divorce, and we see the differences between two sides of a town. What we see, or what we saw, in essence, was life playing out, sometimes fairly, sometimes not, but we also saw the power of the individual to make a difference by believing in the power of rebounding and trying harder the next time.

This was a special series. Buy all 5 seasons on DVD. You'll get so hooked from the first episode you'll watch endlessly until you've watched them all.

Thanks, Peter Berg, Jason Katims and the cast and crew of Friday Night Lights. Coach Taylor, Tami, Riggins, Matt, Landry, Lila, Tyra, Billy, Mindy, Julie, Buddy (for whom Brad Leland should have garnered and Emmy nomination) and relative newcomers Becky, Jess, Luke, Buddy Jr., Hastings, and, of course, Vince (as well as Vince's mom and dad) as well as those from years gone by -- Jason, Smash, Smash's mother (whom Liz Mikel did an excellent job portraying) -- as well as some of the unsung actors who played Levi, Mac, Coach Crowley, Coach Spivey and, of course, "Slammin'" Sammy -- you guys were just plain awesome.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are in First Place

2011-07-16T07:31:00.002-04:00

When was the last time you could say that?

When was the last time you could say that after the All-Star break?

Here are the standings. Yes, it's true.

The Life of A College Hoops Assistant Coach

2011-07-05T12:45:00.003-04:00

About a month ago, Dana O'Neil of ESPN.com wrote this excellent piece on the lives of three veteran assistants.

Think selling houses, moving vans, having your kids change schools - time and time again. One assistant had 12 moves in 24 years.

The game is very alluring, and these gentlemen (and their families) make significant sacrifices, all in the name of both opportunity, job security and, at the bare-bones level, employment (period).

Masterful--Lee!

2011-06-28T22:39:00.002-04:00

Cliff Lee's stats for June are mind-boggling.

5-0, with 3 straight shutouts (first time a Phils' pitcher has done that since Hall of Famer Robin Roberts did so 61 years ago).

1 earned run in 42 innings, for a 0.21 ERA.

It's hard to imagine that Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and Lee all will not make the NL All-Star team.

Oh, and tonight he shutout the Majors' best hitting team, the Boston Red Sox, 5-0 on a 2-hitter (he no-hit them through 5 innings). No runner got past second base, and he helped his own cause with a sacrifice fly.

Amazing game, and it also could mark the breakthrough of super-prospect Domonic Brown, who hit a line-drive 2-run homer to center and then doubled to left. Pretty good game for a 23 year-old rookie playing in the first game of a much-hyped series.

But the story right now is Lee, who is just unhittable.

The Phillies Should Fire Their Hitting Coach

2011-06-25T22:40:00.002-04:00

Last year, when their lumber was laboring, the Phillies fired their hitting coach, Milt Thompson, who, as memory serves me, was also the hitting coach when they led the league and or Majors in many categories in 2007, 2008 and 2009. But when they slumped or had a AAAA lineup because of injuries or both, the brass decided that they needed to fire Thompson. The players felt terribly, showed remorse and then hit well enough to win the division and go to the NLCS, only to labor again at the plate.

So now, they have a hitting coach in Greg Gross, who, like Thompson, is a Phillies' alum, but, who, unlike Thompson, doesn't have any track record of success with the big club. I heard on the radio tonight that the team has scored fewer than 4 runs in more games than they've scored over 4 runs, and, well, at almost the half-way point, it's time to shake up a squad whose bats look like they're pulling baseball's version of Rip Van Winkle (that is, if Washington Irving still gets read in high school literature classes). So, since the brass cannot fire the hitters, they should fire the hitting coach.

Of course, it's probably not Greg Gross's fault, and he makes a fraction of what most of the players make. But still, it's the simplest option. Gross will get fired, some hitting guru will replace him, the (overpaid) starters will express remorse and then go on a tear. Seemed to work last year. But if anyone can get Raul Ibanez, he with a .285 OBP, to stop swinging at the ball as if it were the slo-mo version of a golfing rendition of Swan Lake, or to get Domonic Brown to shorten his swing or to get Shane Victorino or Jimmy Rollins to stop swinging for the fences as if they were playing in the steroids era, good luck. Because at some point, this type of change must come from within.

That's my thought of the evening as to how to help fix the Phillies. Got any better suggestions?

First Jack McKeon, Now Davey Johnson. Who's Next?

2011-06-24T21:33:00.002-04:00

When Edwin Rodriguez resigned from the Marlins, the Fish replaced him with 80 year-old Jack McKeon.

When Jim Riggleman left the Nats yesterday, well, it looks like they're going to name 68 year-old Davey Johnson, who seemingly last managed in the Majors when Bush I was president.

Which got me to thinking -- who else could be on a list with this type of logic -- you have to be over 65 and have had to have managed in the Majors but not for a while. Who else could be induced to return? Earl Weaver? Pat Corrales? Dallas Green? John McNamara? Lou Piniella? Jim Fregosi? Whitey Herzog?

I'm sure they're are a bunch of guys out there who might fit the bill -- Fregosi is the first who comes to mind, so, stay tuned, for instead of finding the next Mike Scioscia or Sparky Anderson, some GM won't want to rock the boat and instead will opt for the retread model instead of the latest model. If I had time to run the numbers, I would look to see whether the first-time managers or retreads fared better in their first season with the new club.

Meanwhile, though, somewhere "We want Fregosi" chants are bound to emerge from the deepest bowels of a one-third full stadium.

Penn Coach Jerome Allen Has Some Fans in My House

2011-06-24T21:24:00.002-04:00

My son attended a basketball camp at Pennsbury High School this past week. It was a great camp, four straight days of non-stop basketball, with the counselors being current and former Pennsbury H.S. basketball players, among them, all-time Pennsbury great Dalton Pepper, who recently transferred to Temple from West Virginia (and, to top that, Pennsbury and Temple alum Lavoy Allen made an appearance the same day the hometown 76ers drafted him in the second round). And two college coaches spoke to the kids -- the first day it was Temple's Fran Dunphy, and the second day it was Penn's Jerome Allen.

Allen made a point to say that he was reluctant to go and speak at a school whose colors are orange and black (and, believe me, if you live in or near Pennsbury, you see a lot of orange and black). He asked the crowd of kids if anyone knew why.

A bunch of kids raised their hands and answered incorrectly, guessing that perhaps Allen went to a rival high school in the area. When he looked to my son's side of the gym, he saw a friend of my son's point to my son (which was somewhat ironic, given that the friend's father went to Oklahoma State, whose colors are orange and black). So Coach Allen asked my son if he knew, and my son said, "Because they're Princeton's colors." Happy that my son answered correctly, Coach Allen started to hand my son a very nice Penn practice jersey. At which point my son offered that he knew because his father went to Princeton. Whereupon, Coach Allen playfully pulled the jersey back, but then he gave it to him.

It was a great moment, and my son wore the jersey proudly the other night. (After all, two of his grandparents went to Penn and his father -- me -- rooted hard for the Quakers when he was a kid). There might well be some limits to the wearing of the jersey -- such as I don't think it would be wise for him to wear it in Jadwin Gym when Penn is playing Princeton, but it's as much a memory of a great camp and a unique moment with a great guy in Jerome Allen as it is about the Penn Quakers.

At least I can hope that, right, kids being their own people after a while?

Thanks to the folks who ran the camp and Coach Allen for a great day for my son.

A Manager Quits a Team That's Exceeding Expectations -- What's the World Coming to?

2011-06-24T08:37:00.002-04:00

About a week ago, Edwin Rodriguez resigned from his post as manager of the Florida Marlins because the Fish were 1 for June. That was unfortunate, because the Marlins are in a perpetual state of flux and have one of the two shortstops in all of baseball (let alone the NL East) who are as enigmatic as they are talented and productive. So, blame Rodriguez if you must, but then the front office and the guys on the field should shoulder some of the load, too? Right?

Wrong, because it's far easier to jettison the skipper than a dozen players or the owner.

And then you have the Nationals, who, while not baseball's version of the Washington Generals (we'll leave that for the Pirates) have been something close. Yet, they've made some bold moves, have a few guys who can play, and, under the guidance of their skipper, Jim Riggleman, found themselves at a 38-37 mark (which is great in and of itself, but they also benefit from the unstable equilibrium that is the Marlins and the Madoff- and almost any other type of malady-bitten Mets). So, if Rodriguez were to get the blame for the Marlins' demise, you would think that Riggleman would get some share of the credit for the Nats' upswing (especially without #3 hitter, Ryan Zimmerman and last year's once in a many generation pitching wunderkind draftpick, Stephen Strasburg, both lost on account to injuries)? After all, Terry Collins, who is managing a Mets' team that has a funky combination of no-names, fading stars and upstarts, is getting some credit in the Big Apple for helping the Mets avoid the abyss, which is, in this case, unfavorable comparisons to the Piraes.

You'd be wrong again.

Riggleman approached the Nats' powers and asked them to exercise his option for 2012, given the Nats' great start. The Nats' front office's response? Nuts! (Okay, so that's what the 101st Airborn'es Anthony McAuliffe told the Germans when they asked him to surrender after surrounding him in Bastogne in World War II). Actually, it was probably a polite, "no," or "no, not at this time," but whatever it was, Riggleman decided that he'd rather spend the summer at some place he'd be appreciated than in the sweltering heat of D.C. So, he quit. Just like that.

There's probably more to the story, but you don't have to be a genius (and there are quite a few self-appointed ones in Washington) to deduce that somewhere someone has whispered into Riggleman's ear that because of his success in D.C., he could be a hot commodity for other jobs come season's end. Otherwise, why resign?

Just when things were starting to improve for the Nats, they lose their manager. Right fielder Jayson Werth opined that it really wasn't a big deal, because the players do the hitting and the pitching. Perhaps Werth thought he was showing public leadership for his younger teammates, who do need not to get unnerved at the loss of their skipper. Or perhaps Werth was just being inarticulate, as he has been at times in his career. Or, worse, Werth really means it, which meams that if Werth is the exemplar of veteran leadership in the Nats' clubhouse, the Nats' might have some deeper problems than the reports out of D.C. have hinted at thus far.

A League for Old Men

2011-06-13T05:27:00.002-04:00

Congratulations to the Dallas Mavericks, who proved that thirty-somethings with the wisdom to play great together can win a title. Hats off to Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd (17 years in the league, first title), Jason Terry, Shawn Marion, Tyson Chandler and the team for a great run.

Panama Beats U.S. 2-1 in Soccer; They Must Have a Half Dozen Soccer Equivalents of Mariano Rivera, Don't They?

2011-06-12T17:33:00.002-04:00

Read about the one step forward, two-plus step backwards approach that U.S.A. Soccer seems to be taking here. And then ask yourself the question: why is this sport so frustrating for a nation of 310 million people that has citizens who can solve many complex problems and that mustered the ingenuity, among other things, to build one big ship a day during WWII (courtesy of Henry Kaiser)?

Is soccer big in your area? Many kids play it, because at a young age it doesn't involve the investment in football equipment or the potential for bad injuries. It doesn't involve the hand-eye coordination of baseball, and at a young age when kids pitch either they stand around and get walked or cannot get the bat off their shoulders when facing the best kid. So, they get bored. Lacrosse and ice hockey are expensive, too, the former in terms of equipment and the latter in terms of paying for both equipment and ice time. Basketball, to me, is a winner, because the kids at the youngest ages get equal playing time and get to run around. Soccer, then, is similar.

A one-time U.S. coach offered that the training in the U.S. is so regimented that the country is "a nation of midfielders." What's clear is that the country has had significant problems developing strikers, and there appears to be a dearth of talent at the highest levels, so much so that the U.S. soccer powers that be have scoured the world looking for dual citizens who somehow live and play in another country but will be eligible to play for Team U.S.A. It's almost as though they've posted a neon sign that exclaims: "If you can play striker and have U.S. citizenship, apply immediately."

Why is the U.S. having so much trouble?

There are several explanations:

1. Soccer remains a secondary sport in this country. Sure, there is a groundswell of fans in various places, but there aren't as many as there are for professional football, college football, baseball, college basketball and, yes, even pro basketball and pro ice hockey. As a result, despite the outstanding play and money in England and Spain, among other places, it just doesn't get the play here. In almost any other country, soccer is the thing. Not here.

2. The best athletes in the U.S. do not play soccer. They play anything but. That's the simplest answer to why the U.S. isn't better, but if you were to take Derrick Rose or Chris Paul and have had them play soccer, I have little doubt that they might be on par with the Kakas and Messis of the world, and their height would give them an advantage. That supposition also assumes that there would be some many good athletes playing the sport that the competition -- formally and informally (in pickup games) would be so good that the U.S. would continue to develop outstanding players. So, even if one Derrick Rose-caliber athlete were to play soccer, I don't think that would be the answer for the U.S., as it wouldn't appear that we have the systems in place -- or the competition -- to hone the skills of such a high-level athlete (I'll explain soon enough).

3. The reason for the hypothesis at the end of paragraph 2 is that if you had Rose-caliber athletes playing, presumably they'd be working out on their own -- on playgrounds -- to create, to work on their individual skills, to improvise. This happens all over the world, especially with kids who have a passion for the game or a drive to get out of some pretty poor living situations (that said, Kaka's father is a fairly well-to-do engineer in Brazil). But the fact remains that they play "pick-up" soccer in many countries, and it doesn't seem that they do so here. The demands are great, but the creativity isn't. It's good that Claudio Reyna has taken up a sizeable role in U.S.A. soccer, because he once remarked that the didn't want his kids to play organized soccer here because it was too regimented and stymied the creativity that makes players all over the world great. That's something that the powers that be need to chew on.

4. The U.S. had made advances, but I don't think that the U.S. will significantly improve its stature until you have about 30-40 players playing in the top leagues in Europe. Once that happens, then you'd have some serious competition for the national team that might lead to a Final Four appearance in the World Cup. If you looked at the roster that Spain fielded against the U.S. a few weeks ago in a friendly match, the players either played for Barcelona or Real Madrid, two of the best teams in the world. The U.S. might have a player or two on a top team, but none are stars. The Spanish team is loaded with them.

5. So what's the solution? First, recruit athletes who might opt for other sports, such as football. Small running backs might get some glory in high school, but a 5'7", 165 pound kid with quick feet and great moves in traffic might play soccer for money into his early 30's. He might be done after high school. Second, recruit athletes beyond what seems to be the traditional vineyards -- the middle class. Try to recruit kids from a broader economic spectrum -- that might help. Third, change training methods. What has been going on hasn't been working. Find a nation that has been more successful, study why, and see what the U.S. can implement that might work. For example, a recent article in the Sunday New York Times wrote about the Dutch system, which, while flawed in certain ways, doesn't overwork its young players and nurtures them until they're ready for the big time. Fourth, it's not totally about the money. I'm sure that wealthy donors can help fortify the U.S. national program with the best of everything, but that's not enough. The leaders need to be more creative and think out of the box about how to get going -- and that means more than looking for expatriated U.S. citizens to return.

This is a big opportunity for the right leadership. Right now, U.S.A. Soccer will tout the virtues of MLS (which does have its diehards), but, let's face it, it's not a Major League product along the lines of the best leagues in England, France, Spain and Germany (I'll include Italy, too, but I'm mindful that corruption over the years has made it pretty hard for teams not named A.C. Milan and Juventus not to win, although Inter Milan and AS Roma have fared well on occasion).

I like soccer. It's a great game, but U.S. fans should be critical of the sport and the product the way they can be of everything else. And that criticism isn't meant to bury the sport because it might threaten the "traditional" sports. Nope, it's not. It's mean to challenge the powers that be to piece together the best thinking of other national powers to come up with a feeder system that can help make the U.S. preeminent.

MLB To Realign?

2011-06-11T14:41:00.002-04:00

Apparently the topic has come up in the talks over a new collective bargaining agreement.

The plan would be to have two fifteen-team leagues (with possibly the Astros moving to the AL to form a natural rivalry with the Rangers), and then you'd have 5 playoff teams from each league, dispensing with the divisions. That structure would avoid a few bad results of recent years, where a more worthy team that finished say second in the wild-card race lost out on a playoff spot to a division winner who barely had a .500 record (I think this occurred with the NL West a few years ago). What it will not do, of course, is mimic the English Premiership soccer league by forcing the worst three teams in each league into AAA and then elevating the best three teams. The new structure also won't help teams like Baltimore, Kansas City and Pittsburgh suddenly improve.

That said, the new structure would offer hope for teams like Baltimore and Toronto, who are stuck in a division with high-spending New York and Boston. There's nothing to say that were they to have a record that wasn't as good as that of the Yankees or Red Sox but that was among the top five that they couldn't make the playoffs. Under the current structure, no matter how good they would be, they would be out of luck. I am pretty certain, though, that concerns about high-performing AL East also-rans and their potential for making the playoffs hasn't driven this discussion.

Change is challenging. The proposed changes are, among other things, not only this new format but also adding a fifth playoff team. The details for the structure of the playoff aren't clear, but it had been reported that if there were to be a fifth wild-card team added to the divisional format, the two wild-card teams would have a very short (perhaps 1-game) playoff series. Under the proposed new structure, there wouldn't be divisions, but the only way to get to a "Final Four" in each league would be to have the fourth and fifth teams in a playoff. If the powers that be are not willing to shorten the regular-season schedule, you could have the World Series in early November, and that's not appetizing for the sport as a whole and fans in the Middle Atlantic region and New England in particular.

Still, it's good to change things up every now and then, but all this talk of restructuring belies a major flaw in MLB that could haunt it in years to come -- the lack of a salary cap. The union detests it, but practical economics might compel it. The simple reason is this -- there will be a pronounced need to prop up the teams that perennially will not be among the top half in payroll. Statistics have shown that while spending in the top half doesn't guarantee a winner, your chances of making the playoffs are much less than if you do spend in the top half. Which means that if the economy gets tougher, perhaps there' s another recession, perhaps we hit either a deflationary or inflationary spiral, discretionary spending might take a hit. Which means that the teams that seemingly hang in there on a thread because they offer a product that cannot make the playoffs, well, those teams might not hang in there any more. Sure, the "bankruptcy" word seems incompatible with professional sports, as there is always some newly minted billionaire who might not blowing hundreds of millions of dollars for a trophy. It's hard to argue with that. But it's also hard to argue with teams that are tantamount to the Washington Generals, trying to hang in there year after year with mostly empty ballparks, relying on a few good gates when close by, winning teams visit and bring fans (see, for example, the gates in Pittsburgh and Washington when the Phillies are in town or the gate in Baltimore when the Yankees are in town). Without a salary cap, those teams' mission could become futile, and, yes, under the right circumstances, they could disappear. At some point there won't be a point to fielding a team that just has no chance of making the playoffs.

MLB needs a full roster of teams so that they can have a full season, but it needs to give fans and future fans (young people) a chance to see the hometown team win. What are the owners' and union's suggestion for this outside a salary cap? Revenue sharing doesn't seem to have worked, and the NFL's model suggests that in any given year a poorly performing team can turn its fortunes around pretty quickly and become a winner. MLB is more complicated, because in football you don't need to groom players in a farm system the way you do in baseball. But, if you had a salary cap, the best teams would have to do more than outspend the small-market teams. And then things would get interesting.

One friend in business has suggested that you don't need panels of smart people to come up with new, brilliant ideas. Sure, MLB can create committees to study this, but they can do something much simpler -- copy the NFL's model, because it works. If they were to do that, they'd have a more vibrantly competitive league, instead of one that depends upon big-market teams and the best-heeled owners. It would be great for the Pirates and Royals to contend again, and it would be great for fans everywhere if their team had a legitimate chance. Sure, there are some owners who will continue to botch it, but you might even draw more and better owners if they knew that they would compete in spending on players on a level playing field, regardless of how much revenue their media networks can generate.

The powers that be in MLB are focusing on the deck chairs.

They should be focusing on the ship.

And not just steering it, but considering whether it needs an overhaul.

Why is Succession Planning So Difficult?

2011-06-10T17:29:00.002-04:00

Exhibit A: West Virginia's handling of head football coach Bill Stewart. It's a mess.

Exhibit B: Penn State and Joe Paterno. Another mess, and, yes, risking heresy and vitriolic attacks from Penn State fans, it's gone on for way too long. JoePa should have had a graceful and gracious exit many years ago.

Exhibit C: Fill in the blank.

In the case of Stewart, they had hired a coach in waiting, which was fine, but now the WVa faithful and brass are impatient and want that successor manning the conning tower now. The problem is that they failed to tell Stewart that, and they have a mess on their hands.

In the case of JoePa, well, they let him become larger than Penn State itself, which is ironic given that Paterno, through large donations, has shown his love for Penn State. Except, unfortunately, Paterno's love for himself exceeds his love for the institution to which he's added so much. When someone becomes bigger than the institution, well, then you'll have the makings for a disaster in succession planning. Other examples are Bob Knight at Indiana, when accountability for outbursts (but never integrity) became and issue and Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, who occupies a perch in a somewhat inaccessible tower in Cameron Indoor Stadium and for whom succession plans are unclear (although Coach K is in great shape and his teams are performing at a high level, so there are no issues there, but there could be some day).

Succession planning anywhere is one of the most difficult tasks to undertake. It's hard to find good and patient successors, and it's hard to get leaders to step aside, especiallly if they won't have anything to turn to or think that they won't or, plain and simple, will miss the adrenaline rush. Combine the two, and you'll have major problems. Look, Texas had Will Muschamp as a coach in waiting to replace Mack Brown, only to have Florida pluck him away when Urban Meyer surprisingly retired. Score one for Texas for having a good plan, but now they'll have to go back to the drawing board. So, even when you do it right, you run the risk that an opportunistic program will grab your program's successor, thereby getting a free ride off your school's planning. Penn State had John Sandusky and then Fran Ganter in waiting; the former left to work with troubled youth (where he's had some personal problems) and Ganter, who turned down the Michigan State job, ended up timing out, so to speak -- Paterno didn't leave and Ganter's offenses had their troubles.

So, what to make of all this? I suppose that the coaching trees of life are such that there are ample successors anywhere, and that the meritocracy is such that a halfway decent coach will succeed a coach who retired or was terminated. And, perhaps the problem that I identify is only for schools with older coaches (of whom there aren't many) and legends (of whom there are even fewer). And that compels a question: can you name a school where someone followed a legend and excelled? Let's think about that.

John Robinson did a pretty good job at USC after John McKay. Bill Guthridge did a good job at UNC after Dean Smith, but then Matt Doherty failed (and somewhat miserably at that). Mike Davis couldn't fill Bob Knight's shoes at Indiana, but Joe Hall did a good job succeeding Adolph Rupp at Kentucky. And that's pressure, isn't it? Would you want to succeed Coach K? Or, would you rather carve out a path -- like Brad Stevens at Butler -- where you could build your own name without following a legend? After all, Coach K was one game over .500 after about 7 years at Army when he got the Duke job. He was by no means a sure thing (and it took John Wooden 15 years at UCLA and perhaps Pete Newell's retirement at Cal before he won his first national title).

So, perhaps it's a slow sports news day. Dallas's 3-2 advantage over Miami is yesterday's news. Hitting is down in Major League Baseball. Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith had a jovial dinner -- yesterday. And if you think that the labor skirmish in the NFL is bad, wait to you see the sabre-rattling in the NBA.

But, for now, contemplate succession planning for all your teams. Both for coaches and position players.

It's much harder than it seems.

Sale Would Be Great for 76ers' Fans

2011-06-08T08:34:00.002-04:00

Why?

Because as Comcast, they're part of a corporate entertainment portfolio, and their "owner," Ed Snider, never understood much, if anything, about basketball (except when the team was a tenant in his building). The problem for the hoops team is that Comcast' owns the Flyers, Snider's their leader, too, and, well, having a hockey guy run a hoops team is like having, well, a hoops guy running a hockey team.

It hasn't worked and it doesn't work.

My guess is that New York financier Josh Harris is a hoops fan, can't budge the Knicks from the Dolan family and either didn't want or missed out on the opportunity to buy the Nets. As much as Harris's $1.5 billion net worth is staggering, he wouldn't have been able to win a bidding war against a Russian oligarch anyway. You can bet your Faberge egg on that one.

Anyway, the next best thing for Harris is the team 90 miles to the south, the 76ers, with a good young nucleus and an energetic coach who revived the franchise. True, most NBA teams lose money and, true, the 76ers had the sixth-worst attendance in the league, and, true, the average salary for an NBA player is $5 million, but it's also true that this summer's collective bargain agreement negotiations might just well rearrange the salary structure in the NBA the way the owners believed they had to in the NHL in order for that league to survive (come to think of it, perhaps the 76ers could use the influence/talents of Ed Snider this summer, if only regarding the CBA negotiations for the NBA). So, Comcast might think it's getting out before an anguish-laden, bloody contract negotiation, while Harris might think he's getting in when the buying is good, because the new CBA (in his view) only will serve to improve the average team's profitability.

If Harris is looking on the 76ers' purchase as the ability to turn around a distressed asset, that will be one thing (and perhaps he won't endear himself to the 76ers' fans). If, on the other, he's looking to do that and he is a big hoops fan, well, the 76ers franchise will fare far better under his stewardship than they have under Ed Snider's.

76ers' fans and Philadelphia-area hoops fans have known this for a while -- when it comes to hoops, Comcast's sports emperor, the almost sycophantishly referred to "Mr." Snider, has been naked for a while. It will be good to see someone take over the team who will make the 76ers -- and only the 76ers -- his top priority.

Close the deal, Mr. Harris. Pro hoops fans in Philadelphia can't wait for a new era to begin.

The Phillies Have a Starting Pitcher at AAA who is 5-0 with an 0.74 ERA

2011-06-07T09:16:00.002-04:00

His name is Brian Gordon. He's 32 years old and not on the 40-man roster. He converted to being a pitcher in 2006 (he was an outfielder).

On the one hand, if he were a prospect, he'd have made the Show a while back.

On the other hand, you play you who play, and the results do not lie.

What becomes of the Brian Gordons, especially in an organization with 7 guys who've started for the Phillies already, and he's probably behind a few others as well?

The Rec League

2011-06-07T08:06:00.002-04:00

It was a hot night last night, and my daughter's softball team played in the first round of the playoffs.

It was a game featuring the following:

1. The umpire giving the other team's pitcher the size of a regulation door and her team's pitchers a strike zone the size of a window.

2. Fielders seeing routine balls go under their gloves, throwing to the wrong base, getting picked off base.

3. A fielder, after having two frustrating plays in a row, storming off the field and throwing herself down into the ground, crying.

4. A batter throwing down her helmet and bat after striking out (and not being held accountable by her coaches).

5. Base coaches staring into space and not sending runners on obvious "move up" situations, such as wild pitches.

6. A coach yelling at his team to get more energy and cheer for teammates and to pay better attention, only to miss sending a runner because he was talking to a parent while his team was batting.

7. A coach showing up with a shirt quoting the bible with a cross on it -- and showing up with alcohol on his breath. (Two dads with significant knowledge of the game offered to help at the season's outset, only to be told "we've got it covered.").

8. The body language of many of the girls suggested that they wanted to be elsewhere.

9. A girl getting called out on strikes on a ball that bounced in front of the plate (strike two bounced before the plate and was outside). She swung at neither.

10. Everyone bats, which is fine (the rosters have about 15 girls on them), but one team batted its best four hitters fourth, seventh, eighth and tenth.

Was this "The Bad News Bears?" Was Morris Buttermaker coaching one of the teams?

Nope.

This was a middle school/high school rec league playoff game.

Huh?

Yup.

Look, I don't have the highest expectations for rec leagues, but I do for any municipal athletic association that runs one. Ours, regrettably, is so focused on its travel organization that the travel teams hog the fields (and have "invitational tournaments" where they use township fields to raise money to support their travel habit, without, I'm sure, paying any significant user fees because the township elders believe that the kids are from the township, when only about 25% of the girls in the organization are). I also expect coaches to be responsible, organized, communicative, enthusiastic and didactic, and, yes, I expect them to play to win.

The league's commissioner is a saint, ever committed to the rec league cause by trying to create a decent experience, accounting for the strengths and weaknesses of people. He's doing great work while getting little support from a corrupt organization. Why corrupt? Because the guy who heads up the softball program seemingly does it so that his daughter can have a spot on an elite "A" travel team that she has no business being on because she cannot hit (nice kid, by the way, but either you can hit or you cannot). That dad is one of that team's coaches, and that team only has 4 kids (of 12) from our town on it (two come from 30 miles away), and one of the locals -- a great kid -- apparently quit because of playing time issues. Unfortunately, there are too many stories of people taking leadership roles to help assure that their kids will get their spots.

So, what's the solution? While this particular rec league ambles along, I am not sure we're doing adolescent girls a good deed (particularly the 13 and 14 year-olds) by putting them into situations where they cannot learn good skills and teamwork and achieve excellence. A few of the coaches are terrific, the commissioner among them. But why this doesn't happen is because the town has created a caste system. The local girls that do play travel walk around with an air of confidence (and some should, they are fantastic players) because they are fortunate enough that the local township and athletic association have agreed to give the travel organizations a stranglehold on the resources -- they get priority for fields and practice time. And that's just wrong.

What should happen, instead, is that the townships should have much more inclusive programs that help develop the girls -- holding clinics, situational practices, and then give the best players the chance to play a modified travel schedule that puts them in some tournaments and perhaps the Babe Ruth championship. Interestingly, some townships that have a lower average income than ours do just that, if for no other reason than the families cannot fork over the $1000 or so it takes to join a travel team (not counting a bat, glove, gasoline, tolls, sunscreen, food and whatever other ancillary costs are involved). I would submit that while those organizations might not win an ASA or PONY national title, they might have more fun (so long as they have good enough pitching, which is important for fastpitch) because the girls are from the same town, know each other and get to bond, as opposed to being gypsy mercenaries who can rove from team to team each year because their parents are looking for a better spot for them to showcase their talents and perhaps, ultimately, get them a look from some college that might be willing to give them some money. I ask the mathematicians out there to tell me what the odds of that happening are versus winning a $200 million Powerball lottery.

Oh, and by the way, the odds of an elite travel organization from a non-warm weather place winning an ASA or PONY national title can't be that big, either,

At the end of the day, we're all looking for fun and rewarding experiences for our daughters. My daughter happens to be a pretty good player who could play travel had various circumstances (too many very early weekend wakeup calls, conflicts with other commitments, behavior of certain parents and coaching lapses) not combined to tell us that perhaps living a more balanced life for everyone in the family was a better idea. True, the softball isn't as good, and we didn't expect that. But what we do expect, and what every citizen should demand, is that a local athletic association donate a significant amount of resources for rec league experiences for girls of all ages.

There's a place for the travel and the rec league, and both can co-exist. But don't let selfish parents hijack the travel organization for their own purposes, and don't let your local athletic assocation support that behavior or turn a blind eye to it.

And love your kid, no matter what, and tell them that there can be all sorts of experiences, good and bad, but, at the end of the day, they should pursue excellence in everything they do and not settle for less, that they should set the bar high for themselves regardless of the circumstances.

Make the good throw, chase the runner back to a base, know what to do with the ball before you get it, take aggressive leads, and play hard.

Regardless of whether your local organization's leadership really cares, and regardless of whether your coaches have a clue.

The Sad Decline of Lenny Dykstra

2011-06-07T08:01:00.002-04:00

The former Mets' and Phillies' star faces 12 years in prison for a variety of charges.

Yes, of course, he's innocent until proven guilty, but this guy's had more problems than are contained in the average problem set given to chemical engineering majors in their thermodynamics class.

The difference is that the engineers are getting trained to solve those problems, while Lenny seems to be out of moves.

It has to be such a high, playing Major League Baseball at such a high level. Everyone wants you, seeks you out, you're making huge sums at a young age, and you are sitting atop the world. But unless you have another skill set that can elevate you to that same perch after you're done playing, how do you deal with the fact that you're not drawing close to the same compensation and you're not in demand the way you used to be? That has to be difficult for anyone to deal with, and the way the world is we read more about the declines than the guys who go back to relatively "normal" lives in the same world in which we live. I'd like to hear both stories -- the stories of the coping and the stories of the struggles, because all that glitters is not gold forever.

BCS Strips USC of 2004 Title; So Who Gets Stripped of a Recently Won Title in 5+ Years?

2011-06-06T21:59:00.002-04:00

Read the story here.

Everyone hailed USC's depth, Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart and head coach Pete Carroll. What they heralded was a team with a weak leader and not much character. Unfortunately, there were young men on that team who had character and could lead, but Bush apparently had his hand out and Carroll either knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it or should have known.

What a mess, and there are legions of coaches who get fired because they won't do what USC did. And, sometimes because of that, they cannot win. Meanwhile, Carroll gets rewarded for his coaching expertise (where it seems, depending on the hijinks, he was playing with a loaded deck). Instead, will USC investigate whether to pursue Carroll for damages? It would be a first, but, then again, what did the university know and when did administrators know it.

Are we now supposed to be cynical about the leading programs the way we were (but not the media who covered the players) about buffed up baseball players?

Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

How Generations Change: I'll Take Scott Cousins on My Team

2011-06-04T09:42:00.002-04:00

I want to start this by saying that I think that the Giants are a great organization, that how they came about to winning the World Series last year was terrific, and that Buster Posey was the spark plug that put them over the top and is a great player. So let's get that out of the way now.

But I also want to say that I like hard-nosed baseball players and players who play to win. There is no "slide or surrender" rule like there is in girls' softball (and I like that rule), so until there is, players are allowed to crash into catchers who try to block the plate. That's the way it's been in baseball since the Wrights played for the Cincinnati Red Legs, and that's the way it is now.

So, to me, all this condemnatory talk about Scott Cousins is wrong, even if it is borne out of something that for all intents and purposes a baseball team's form of mourning for the loss of the heart of its team. I get that, and I'd be sad if I lost a player like Buster Posey for the season. But let's make one thing perfectly clear -- what Cousins did was within the boundaries of the rules and within the spirit of the game -- he played to win. Had it happened in the heat of a pennant race in September to give the Marlins' the NLCS clinching game, people would have heralded it as the baseball version of the last full measure that combatants at Gettysburg gave (according to Abraham Lincoln). That it happened before the All-Star break shouldn't even matter much, for the last time I checked, a game in early April counts as much as sometimes the more closely watched games during a September pennant chase.

So all of the lingering focus on Cousins in San Francisco -- and some of the comments, whether intentional or not but that might provoke violence against Cousins -- must end. The Giants need to get over this incident and fast, or otherwise their leadership will give their team -- a good team -- an excuse to fail for the rest of the season. Why? Because right now the focal point is the loss of Posey, and that focal point will give the average Giants' player an excuse to lose, simply because they can all say, "well, what did anyone expect, we lost Buster, didn't we?"

And that's precisely what you never want your team to think. What you want them to think is that the remaining guys each have an opportunity to step it up, show that they can make a bigger difference and, also, honor their hurt teammate by playing even harder to make up for his loss. If Brian Sabean wants to serve his team well, he should take a different approach, focus his energy on inspiring the healthy Giants, and fire them up about going on a mission to show the rest of the league that they still are a very good baseball team.

As for Cousins, well, I harken back to almost 40 years ago, where there was a firebrand named Pete Rose who played for the Reds who ran the bases with a fury, played the field with a fury, and tried to figure out every which way to beat you. He studied pitchers, he studied situations, and they didn't call him "Charlie Hustle" because he waltzed to first base after a walk. No, he sprinted. And, yes, he smashed into Ray Fosse in the 1970 All-Star game to score the winning run and injured Fosse in the process. Fosse at the time was a promising young catcher, and regrettably his career didn't progress thereafter the way many thought it might have.

There wasn't any hue and cry after the game that Rose played dirty or that the rules should be changed. The collision was unfortunate, but emblematic of one of the most charismatic players in the game, Rose, who played to win and played for winners. (My father admired Rose's approach to the game, and once I asked him why, and he said because Rose reminded him of one of his favorite players of all-time, Jackie Robinson, by the way he did anything to beat you).

Rose, perhaps because he had "Hall of Fame" stamped on his forehead, was admired, and Fosse wasn't an established star. This time, the circumstances perhaps are reversed, and Cousins is getting vilified as a result. I am not so sure, though, had this collision happened in 1970 that there would have been much public outcry about Posey's injury other than it was unfortunate but part of the game.

Would you have wanted Rose on your team?

Absolutely.

Would you want Cousins on your team?

If that collision is an indication of his fire to win, absolutely.

Is it very unfortunate what happened to Posey?

Absolutely.

Was it within the rules?

Yes.

Is it understandable that Posey is upset and that the Giants have been reeling over this?

For sure.

But it's time that everyone moves on -- there is still a lot of baseball to be played and in Posey's case, rehab to do so that he can reestablish himself as the star he still remains destined to become.

Why Some Ivy Athletes Are Special: Penn Hoopsters Zack Rosen and Dau Jok and Their Trip to Rwanda

2011-06-01T17:36:00.002-04:00

Read their travel diaries here.

This isn't about a job on Wall Streetor a no-show job, it's not about trading memorabilia for tattoos (allegedly), about getting a car for nothing from someone you shouldn't have dealt with, about playing your sport all summer so that you can keep a starting job and potentially your scholarship.

It's about two Penn students who happen to be basketball players on their trip to Rwanda.

They sought to be inspiring, and they, themselves, were inspired.

As you'll be when you read of their journey.

College Football, Ohio State, Jim Tressel

2011-05-31T21:40:00.003-04:00

It's hard to know where to begin, but Ohio State either just had its Waterloo or Watergate, a program in disgrace, a coach forced to resign, players and hangers on seemingly corrupt, and you wonder what exactly was Ohio State running -- a floating crap game, a political party, a well-regarded football program or a circus, or some of each of the above?

Is it time either for colleges to drop football, period, given all the risks of major injury and the potential brain damage that many can incur? Is it time to de-emphasize it so that money will not corrupt it? Or is it time to call it what it is, the way the Olympics did, and pay players a sizeable enough stipend so that stuff like this will not happen? Or, will it happen regardless of the size of the stipend because stars always will want more? Or, is this the type of problem that needs to be cleansed from time to time, only to have it rise up after the cleaners -- the NCAA enforcers -- are long gone?

Questions abound on a hot northeastern night. Is Ohio State the only troubled program, or are they just the most egregious in failing to enforce the rules? Surely, there must be others, aren't there? Kids with cars or tattoos they cannot explain, kids with Apple stuff, fancy sneakers, jewelry, what have you? Kids having jobs keeping the seaweed out of the mountain climbing equipment, kids having majors that involve multiple-choice questions with partial credit for a wrong answer, all the old tricks.

And, the final question: for what purpose? Is a championship worth winning if it is not won the right way? What type of championship is that, and what are we teaching our kids and each other if we win dirty?

Hank Aaron Receives Honorary Degree from Princeton

2011-05-31T21:38:00.003-04:00

You can read about it here.

Princeton has awarded honorary degrees to well-known athletes in the past, including Arthur Ashe, Larry Doby and Bill Russell.

Four amazing people.

Sunday Musings

2011-05-30T21:04:00.002-04:00

1. I wonder how Jayson Werth felt playing his old team today. He struck out late in the game with a few men on, when he had the chance to tie it. I'm sure that the Phillies' brass felt good about that. Could it be the case that during his time with the Nats Werth will find out just how long 7 years is?

2. My son traveled to DC for the game and texted that they were selling Nationals hats in Hebrew. I texted back telling him that Hebrew National is a brand of hot dog. It's good to have useful knowledge like that. It might make me more interesting at a cocktail party.

3. Who is the guy on the Jos. A. Bank clothing ads? I think that the government should deploy him to resolve any crisis. The man is very convincing.

4. Jim Tressel's resignation just confirms for me how messed up BCS football really is. It's like on the one hand there are rules, but on the other hand, you prevail when you figure out how to stretch them any way you can. Case in point were the stories about the schools that overrecruited on purpose, so as to deny rivals good players. Why isn't there any accountability on that front?

5. Watch out for Bill Tierney's University of Denver squad on the national lacrosse scene. Denver made the Division I Final Four and will return so long as Tierney is the coach. He'll be able to recruit because Denver's a great city and he's a legend.

6. Is anyone following the NHL playoffs? They're getting very little play in Philadelphia, which some consider to be a hockey town.

7. Is the news vacuum on the NFL talks a good thing or a bad thing?

Have a good week!

Former St. Joe's Great Boo Williams is a Huge Deal in Youth Basketball

2011-05-29T09:11:00.002-04:00

So much so that there is a $13.5 million rec center in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia named after him. And, what seems to distinguish Williams from some of the smooth talkers, politicians, hustlers and pimps (among others) that seem to dominate the AAU scene in other parts of the country (including California), is that while Williams has prestige and influence, it's not all about him (or, as one local reporter puts it, if he's doing it for financial gain, well, it's hard to see unless he has money stashed away in his freezer or in off-shore bank accounts).

Read the whole thing and see what you think.

Jayson Werth: We Wondered How Long It Would Take

2011-05-27T22:12:00.002-04:00

Apparently, Jayson Werth's frustration with losing already has boiled over. And it's not even June 1 in the first year of a megabucks 7-year deal.

What the*#&)! did he expect? That his presence in the lineup would vault the Nats into the playoffs?

C'mon!

Fuggedaboutit.

Listen, Jayson got his payday when he inked this huge deal in the off-season. And he knew that the Nats were years away from contending.

But the reality is pretty bad. His team is almost out of contention 6 weeks before the All-Star break.

Great choice, Jayson!

When Do You Decide to Watch (or Stay for) the Entire Game?

2011-05-26T21:34:00.003-04:00

Easy answers are post-season games, there's a no-hitter, or perhaps the world's been designated to come to an end that day. Otherwise, what are your criteria?

Call me a wimp or a Philadelphia-born pessimist, but I'm reluctant to watch after 10 innings for the precise reason that the game could go 19 innings and my team could lose, and then I'm left with being revved up at 1:20 a.m., needing to wind down before perhaps falling asleep at quarter to 2 and then getting up at 6 to go to work, where I'll be groggy, cranky and tired during a day full of (obviously important) meetings. So, to cut my losses (perhaps), I'll stick with my routine, get to bed at a reasonable hour, read something on my Kindle, turn in, have the birds wake me up and then hope that the daily paper bears news of a victory. Is that reasonable? Is that a sign that I'm not a diehard? Or, as a cousin e-mailed this morning, a wimp?

A colleague splurged on Hall of Fame club seats for last night's contest to celebrate her husband's birthday. They stayed for ten innings, bemoaned a lack of (not just timely, but just plain any) hitting, and listened to the game on their way home, but they too turned in before the game was decided. My cousin, on the other hand, elected to watch for the duration, emailed in the 15th that it was painful rooting for/hoping that Denys Baez could hold on to get the win. He went AWOL online after that, on to return to the email universe this morning to render his thoughts on the game.

Perhaps I'm not alone. The Phillies usually sell out, and out of a denominator of 45,000 or so fans, only about 5,000 stayed until the game's end. The Phils said that these men and women energized them through their passion, and I'm sure that it was a fun time. Then again, 40,000 people perhaps opted to do what I did, which goes to show you that even being a diehard has its limits.

And yet, as a caller to the Mike Missanelli Show said today, twenty-five years from now, 40,000 people will say that they were there when Wilson Valdez got the win. In twenty-five years, I'm not sure how many people will remember Wilson Valdez (who apparently drew a huge laugh from Ryan Howard when he shook off catcher Dane Sardinha despite having one and only one pitch).

What would you do?

Wilson Valdez, You're the Man!

2011-05-26T10:24:00.002-04:00

The Phillies' utility infielder got the win in last night's 19-inning win against the Reds. He even shook off his catcher at one point.

Despite its offensive woes and injuries, there's something about this team that suggests that they don't win by accident.

Fred Wilpon Disses His Own Mets

2011-05-23T20:40:00.003-04:00

Just when you thought that things couldn't get much worse for the Mets, their owner decided to speak publicly about some of his stars.

And he wasn't very nice, either. . . about Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, David Wright and even the entire team. No, he wasn't very nice at all.

Meanie!

At least Wright responded in a classy fashion, acknowledging Wilpon's struggles and refusing to engage in a public retort. Privately, of course, he might have texted his agent imploring him to "get me the heck out of here." That's what most normal employees would do when they lose a connection with the boss. And, yes, there would be tons of takers for Wright (at least Wilpon called him a "nice kid.").

Fred, what are you thinking? What are you on, or, what medicine have you neglected to take? Seriously, even the average Phillies' fan wouldn't wish the horror on Wilpon that he, his team and his family are enduring. That trauma has to take its toll, mentally and physically. And it's sad to see.

But even as accomplished a man as Fred Wilpon ought to know that leadership requires you to be positive in public and critical in private. Wilpon has done his team no good through being so candid in public about his disappointment in them. And I don't think that his players have spoken publicly about his shortcomings, because if they did, you could imagine Carlos Beltran saying, "Well, okay, I haven't had the career that the team thought I would have had when they signed me to a huge contract, but, then again, I wasn't stupid enough to invest with an old friend who spoke a financial dialect I didn't understand -- and English is my second language and I didn't go to college -- and whose firm was audited by Larry, Curly and Moe, and I still have my money and can live like a king in my home country while the Wilpons might be eating spam for breakfast soon, but I'm not going to say that." Instead, the Mets' players pretty much have been mute on the subject.

Can things get any worse for the Mets?

What a mess -- for everyone!

Ed DeChellis Leaves Penn State to Coach Navy (Mens' B-ball)

2011-05-23T19:57:00.003-04:00

When I was a kid, I was helping my father work at the polls on election day. One of the political parties was hosting a lunch for its big wigs at one of the nearby country clubs. And one of them asked me how to get to that country club. I was a kid, so I had no idea. An older man was standing by, and he said, "Well, to get to [country club x], you have get kicked out of [another nearby country club, one that was more prestigious]." I supposed you had to be there, but if you lived near me and knew the people, it was hilarious.

So, at first blush, you might ask yourself, why would a basketball coach leave the Big Ten for Navy, where it's tough to recruit and as tough to win?

Well. . . first you have to get kicked out of. . . you know the punchline.

But as this article explains, Penn State didn't kick Ed DeChellis out of the tent (they just didn't offer to pull him all that far back in). After all, he had led them to their first NCAA tournament game in ten years. That's a pretty tough feat at a football school that's very far away from any big city, but the powers that be in Happy Valley didn't offer DeChellis any extension on a contract that was due to expire in 2012. So, not feeling the love near Mount Nittany, DeChellis decided to go to a place that offers a different challenge and more job security. So, while he didn't get kicked out of Penn State, he didn't get asked to stay for the long term, either.

As Dana O'Neil points out in her article, Penn State won't have the easiest time to find a big-name head coach. The Nittany Lions lost three good players, including star Talor Battle, to graduation, and the job is a rebuilding effort. Also, the season for replacing coaches came and went, so to speak, and any coach coming in will have to coach someone else's recruits exclusively for a year.

That said, Division I jobs are scarce, so here are some thoughts for replacements for DeChellis:

1. Drexel's James "Bruiser" Flint. (Probably itchy at Drexel, good coach, good connections).

2. St. Joe's Phil Martelli (he's struggled recently on Hawk Hill, but he's a well-respected coach who might relish the challenge of the Big Ten).

3. Quinnipiac's Tom Moore (once a Jim Calhoun assistant, Moore has fared well in Hamden, CT and might relish a big-time challenge if he's not in line to succeed his mentor).

4. Richmond's Chris Mooney (unlikely, as Mooney just got a huge extension from the Spiders, but he's a native Pennsylvanian, and the Big Ten is a step up from the Atlantic 10).

5. Bucknell's Dave Paulsen (took the Bison to the NCAA Tournament, also had a great record in DIII before then, but he hasn't been at Bucknell for long).

6. Harvard's Tommy Amaker (a longshot, because it seems as though he was up for bigger jobs in the off-season. While Amaker has had mixed results as a head coach, he can recruit, and the Duke pedigree doesn't hurt. And, hey, if Maryland lured away Harvard's lax coach a year ago to lead the Terps back to the Final Four, anything is possible).

7. Duke assistant Chris Collins. He's been caddying for Coach K for a while, and if there's some good karma it's that his dad, Doug, is the head coach for the Philadelphia 76ers. Okay, so State College is four hours away from Philadelphia, and I might be digging here, but perhaps there's a shot.

8. Princeton coach Mitch Henderson (just kidding, as Henderson just got to Princeton, but had he been coaching there for four years, who knows, as Penn State just lured away Princeton's men's hockey coaches as they upgrade their program to the top end of DI).

So, that's my list. What do you think?

Phillies-Rangers at the Bank Last Night

2011-05-22T12:36:00.002-04:00

Observations:

1. First foray into the Hall of Fame Club, where the average seat for a season costs about $5,000 for 81 home games. The advantages -- padded seats, shade, private dining areas with air conditioning and a neat Hall of Fame type of gallery. Dining options were good. I bought our tickets on StubHub yesterday morning, paid over face value, but, then again, we wanted to experience the Hall of Fame Club and, so, it was worth paying a little more.

2. As for the game. . . Cliff Lee pitched a masterpiece, striking out 10 in eight innings, getting a hit, stealing a base and doing just a great job. Ryan Madson closed out his seventh straight Phillies win and had one local columnist offering that he's now the best closer in baseball. It is the case, though, that upon their return, neither Jose Contreras nor Brad Lidge will return to a closer's role. That job is Madson's to lose, which suggests a different paradigm from the usual "you don't lose your job to an injury" mentality. Translated: Contreras will get the eighth inning when he returns and if Lidge is to return, well, that's pure gravy. My guess is that Lidge is through and it would be surprising to see him pitch for the Phillies again. The Phillies will have to pay more for Madson and Cole Hamels within the next year or two, but they should have enough room in the payroll to do just that. . . John Mayberry, Jr. had a good game, has a very good OBP and will push others (Raul Ibanez and Ben Francisco) for playing time. When Shane Victorino returns, you'll have him in CF, Domonic Brown in RF (platooning with Francisco) and Ibanez in LF, although Mayberry should push him. Ibanez is very close to the end of his career. . . Carlos Ruiz made an uncharacteristic baserunning blunder last night that closed out a rally for the Phillies. . . the Rangers' bats don't look too good, either. . . Rangers' starter Colby Lewis pitched a very good game last night. . . Domonic Brown's swing still looks loopy and a bit too long to me. . . Ryan Howard's home run got out of the park quickly.

3. All worries aside, the Phillies have the second-best record in baseball (behind the Indians, and it's hard to believe that they will sustain their pace) with Chase Utley due to return tomorrow, some good young relievers (Antonio Bastardo, Michael Stutes and Scott Mathieson) and some starting pitching depth (Vance Worley). Phillies' fans would love to see Denys Baez go, David Herndon to remain in the minors, Kyle Kendrick not to be too heavily relied upon and Joe Blanton, well, ditto for him. The big question regarding Utley, of course, is whether you get the early-in-the-career Utley or the over-the-hill Utley. That's probably a more serious issue than most Phillies' fans would like to admit. Nomar Garciaparra was a superstar until he fell off the table and into a utility role, but he couldn't shake the injury bug. Will that be Utley's fate, too?

All in all, as with most nights, a fun night at the Bank. Great weather (low 70's), great food, fun neighboring fans, an okay drive to and from, and a sold out, electric crowd.

The Phillies' franchise is on a great run. It won't last forever, but it's a lot of fun now.

Why Dick's Sporting Goods Won't Last

2011-05-22T12:25:00.003-04:00

I don't know if you've had a similar experience, but the people who work at Dick's for the most part show absolutely no enthusiasm, product knowledge or initiative to get you an answer. You can tell with their body language -- shoulders slumped, tough for them to look you in the eye, as if they're entitled in life to have the job and then have no accountability for it, as opposed to taking the attitude that if you have a positive attitude and a sense of urgency, your day will go faster, someone will notice you and good things can happen in your career and, if no one notices, you'll be able to transport some good skills that you've built to a better place where the management cares. While the rank and file are somewhat to blame, it makes you wonder what the corporate mission is, what the store managers are told, and how the store managers train their staffs, if they do so at all. (My guess is that they don't train them on much, other than how the inventory is stored in the back and how to work a cash register).

Over the past year, when I've tried to buy things, trying to find someone to help you and, if you do, getting someone who knows the products or has any enthusiasm for connecting with a customer to make the customer's experience enjoyable has been rare. In the winter time, I went to buy lacrosse equipment on a specially dedicate night, and if the coaches from our organization weren't there, there was no one at Dick's who knew anything about the sport or had been trained to be of service that night. Ditto for football in the fall -- other parents helped me. A few weeks ago, I went looking for a pair of shorts for my son -- only to find that they only sold the brand in the adults' section. When I got there, I asked the sales associate whether they had the kids' version, and he didn't check, he just told me "no." So my son went back to school, only to have a friend tell him to check the kids' section -- we did and they were there (believe me, if I could have found them on-line, I would have given my money to another vendor). Finally, if you try to give feedback about a store on-line, forget about it. My preference would have been to send a private e-mail to someone with a clue so that perhaps management could sense that they're missing a golden opportunity.

But perhaps they do not care. Perhaps their business model is that they don't need much of a store staff, because sporting goods customers do their homework on-line and then come in looking for the best equipment at the best price, that they already know the features, that they sell too many goods, so it's impossible for some high school kid or sophomore in college to know anything about anything other than to slosh around the store, checking in the back on occasion or getting a store manager to deliver more details about the installation of a basketball backboard and hoop. Perhaps that's it.

But it seems to me that in an age when things are impersonal, that's a lost opportunity. Customers like to talk about features, they like to have a conversation, and, believe it or not, if customers see an effort they might be more likely to reward it with a purchase. Not to mention the good the average sales associate can do by pointing out clearance items or specials to help move merchandise. Instead, it seems like the average sales associate at Dick's comes in solely for a paycheck and, perhaps, for the comradery with other sales associates. But them don't seem to appreciate the customer or believe in what they are selling.

Note to potential competitors: come into the field with good locations, good inventory and a sales team that is enthusiastic and knowledgeable, and you will take away market share from Dick's. Note to existing, smaller stores -- offer service, offer knowledge, hustle, find something from a supplier and bond with local athletic associations, and you, too, will have a good niche.

Because if you go to Dick's, they think that they've got your business, no matter how much (or little) effort they put into the sale.

And that doesn't sound like much of a strategy.

Rest in Peace, "Macho Man"

2011-05-20T13:50:00.002-04:00

Randy "Macho Man" Savage is dead at 58. The entire pro wrestling world mourns his passing.

His real name was Randy Poffo, and his brother was "Leaping Lanny" Poffo, who wrestled around the same time that Savage did. Savage was one of the leading lights when pro wrestling rose to great heights, battling with the likes of Hulk Hogan, Ricky "The Dragon"Steamboat, George "The Animal" Steele, "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan, King Kong Bundy, Big John Studd and many others. He was a good athlete and a great entertainer, and he will be missed.

Phillies Broadcasters

2011-05-13T19:46:00.002-04:00

Listening to Chris Wheeler underscores the depth of loss the fans suffered upon the passing of both Richie Ashburn and Harry Kalas.

Wheels was a Major League apologist/pollyanna for awful Phillies' teams during the years when Bill Giles was the president and called the Phillies a "small market" team. Now, he's a master of the obvious and trite, tries too hard and pales in comparison to both Gary Mathews and Larry Andersen, neither of whom will go down as all-time color commentators.

My wife, a baseball enthusiast by marriage, offered tonight that "it's just painful to listen to him."

Tom McCarthy, the Phillies' very good play-by-play man, deserves better.

So do the fans.

It's Not Just Football Players Who Suffer From Too Many Hits to the Head

2011-05-11T19:35:00.003-04:00

This bit of idiocy comes from 46 year-old boxer Bernard Hopkins.

The subject: Donovan McNabb.

The hits -- literally and figuratively -- just keep on coming.

And who really cares what Bernard Hopkins thinks about Donovan McNabb, as, when it comes to football, he's an observer just like everyone else who is not on the field.

Enough said.

Chase Utley Hits Two Home Runs

2011-05-07T21:03:00.002-04:00

Okay, so it was in "extended spring training," but he's on the mend, trying to heal and get back to the big leagues. It's an auspicious start, if only because it's better than, say, going oh for two and swinging and missing badly.

Botching the Adverb is a Must if You're in a Baseball Uniform

2011-05-05T19:48:00.002-04:00

"He pitched good."

"I hit it good."

It's almost as though there's an unwritten rule that you must not, under any circumstances, use proper grammar and the word "well." About as unwritten, I think, as the rule that a team should not bunt or steal if it's up more than 7 runs.

Do you recall any manager or player saying, "He pitched well tonight." "He hit that ball really well." The broadcasters might use proper grammar as a way to honor their teachers and not irritate their parents, but the managers, coaches and players seemingly are constitutionally barred from using the word "well."

Gary Williams Retiring at Maryland

2011-05-05T19:26:00.002-04:00

Williams had a great career. Now, of course, the speculation will run rampant as who will get this job, one of the best in college basketball. Before we get to the speculation, let's consider the top jobs in college b-ball:

Duke
North Carolina
Kentucky
Kansas
Indiana (even post-Bob Knight, still a great job with a rich tradition)
UCLA (hard to argue with the dynasties, isn't it?).

Then, there is another tier, and it's hard to figure out all of the next, say, 14, but I'd offer the following:

Maryland
Ohio State
Florida
Texas
Michigan State
Georgetown
Villanova (okay, I'd argue Penn, Temple and St. Joe's, too, but I'd lose)
Pittsburgh (at least for now)

and, okay, I do give up.

But I don't want to digress, so let's consider who Maryland might consider:

1. VCU's Shaka Smart (one of the two hottest coaches out there).
2. Butler's Brad Stevens (one of the two hottest coaches out there).
3. Gonzaga's Mark Few.
4. Richmond's Chris Mooney (if Smart and Stevens were tied at 1, Mooney is #3).
5. Arizona's Sean Miller (successful out west, might want bigger spotlight in the east).
6. Temple's Fran Dunphy (outstanding coach, successful in A-10).
7. Notre Dame's Mike Brey (can he really win it all in South Bend).
8. Michigan's John Bellein (successful everywhere; eastern roots).
9. Oregon State's Craig Robinson (long shot, but being the First Brother-in-Law has it's privileges).

I'll stop there. This is one of the plum jobs in all of college basketball. Expect a big-name hire.

Phillies-Nationals Tonight

2011-05-04T22:27:00.002-04:00

Observations:

1. All 25 player on the Nats do belong in the Majors. They just don't belong on the same team.

2. The baseball writers' nation still puts access above tough questioning (the way they did when they somehow missed the steroids era while it was happening). Case in point, the Nats' Jayson Werth. Why hasn't a Philly writer asked him the following question: "Hey, Jayson, how does it feel to have signed a lucrative contract with a perennial loser that looks like it will continue to lose for years?" Perhaps even with Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg.

3. Out of town broadcasters might have said something to the effect of, "well, it's the middle of the game in Philadelphia, and they're pitching another shutout. Who's going for them tonight? Roy Halladay? Cliff Lee?" Nope, it as 23 year-old Vance Worley, who's pitched 12 shutout innings in his first two starts in place of Joe Blanton. Baseball Prospectus projects him as a #4 starter with a better upside than Kyle Kendrick. If Worley keeps on pitching like this, the Phillies will have a high-class problem when Blanton returns.

4. It was $&*@~# freezing at the ballpark tonight, in the low 50's, winds whipping, winds blowing at you, just a cold night at the ballpark. We wore middle-weight jackets, gloves, put our hoods over our heads and used the warmers that they sell at places like Dick's. Still, it's warming to see the 139th straight sellout (albeit with a lot of no-shows) and to participate in an electric atmosphere.

Phillies are 20-9 -- without Chase Utley, without Domonic Brown, without Brad Lidge, all while playing a relatively weak schedule. Then again, you play who you play, and the Phillies have been taking it to 'em.

The Steelers' Rashard Mendenhall: Deep Thinker, Victim of Too Many Hits to the Head or Out of His Element?

2011-05-03T13:52:00.002-04:00

Mendenhall Tweeted on the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Next thing you know, we'll have Christiane Amanpour running off tackle for the Steelers.

Two Baseball Statistics I'd Like to See

2011-05-03T12:09:00.003-04:00

Unless, of course, you can convince me that they're not all that telling.

I know that the Baseball Prospectus guys have all sorts of stats to measure all sorts of things. My biggest issue with them is that they speak in a type of code normally reserved for experts in, well, codes, such as the Internal Revenue Code, healthcare reimbursement codes, the Uniform Commercial Code and the like. So, if you dial back the clock a bit, they can sound like either Cliffie the Mailman from Cheers or, worse, the Dave Meyer character (the direct mail guy) from LA Law (where, on one show, he had a memorable string citation to all of the small cities outside Los Angeles that his direct-mail efforts could reach). I can't really tell you the difference between BABIP and WXRL and some of the rest, and I do have an advanced degree (then again, perhaps I'm just too lazy to read the introduction, which has a Rosetta Stone to help you decipher the metrics; then, then again, perhaps they make all this stuff up to dazzle you with their brilliance, make you want to join the bandwagon, and then get you to stay mute with your questions because if you were to raise them, you might risk humiliation from the smart guys because, well, they're smart and obviously, from your questions, you're not). Being a celebrant of the better aspects of human nature, I'll credit the BP writers for their brilliance but will suggest that they could become better explainers.

That said, why don't we calculate two numbers for pitchers -- on-base percentage yielded and total bases per nine innings yielded. The former will mirror the OBP stats for hitters that are so valuable, and the latter will go further than OBP by telling you how many bases that are yielded. The reason I think the latter is compelling is that you might have a pitcher with a decent OBPY (on-base percentage yielded) but a worse-than-average TB/9 (because the guy, when he yields baserunners, gives up a bunch of extra-base hits). For what it's worth, I think that it might be fun to examine these numbers both separately and then in concert with the other metrics that the stat wonks examine to determine if there's anything that we can learn from them.

Or not.

Food for thought.

2 of the NFL Draft's Top 54 Picks Went to Temple

2011-05-02T20:10:00.002-04:00

That is not a typo, Muhammad Wilkerson and Jaiquawn Jarrett went to the Jets in the first round and Eagles in the second round, respectively. Last time I checked, yes, while Penn State did beat the Owls this season, the Nittany Lions didn't have 2 kids in the top 54. Those of us who have rooted for the Owls year after year for four decades are smiling widely at this development.

Go Owls!

Roger McDowell Got Off Easy. . . and I'm Surprise That the Atlanta Braves Haven't Taken More Serious Action

2011-05-01T18:08:00.002-04:00

Seriously. . . if you were at work, cursed out customers, made hate-related statements and threatened someone, you'd lose your job.

So Roger McDowell should be thanking Bud Selig, the Braves' administration, the MLB gods and whomever else for the fact that he didn't get fired as pitching coach of the Atlanta Braves. Because if he worked for your company, it's hard to fathom that he wouldn't have lost his job for acting this way.

Read this article and see what you think.

Quite frankly, I'm surprised, and I'm not sure that this is MLB's finest moment. Actually, it is not.

Sunday Observations

2011-05-01T17:30:00.002-04:00

1. Roy Halladay's first 18 pitches against the Mets yesterday were strikes.

2. The ESPN crew today pointed out that after Halladay won the Cy Young Award last season, he had a replica made and gave it to his catcher, Carlos Ruiz.

3. Just wondering who the Philadelphia Eagles will play at cornerback and on the defensive line next season. Also wondering how many seasons a 26 year-old guard will have left in him, even if he didn't start to play football until age 22.

4. Is Father Time starting to catch up with the Boston Celtics?

5. As teams advance in the playoffs, their weaknesses become more pronounced. The Flyers' 7-3 loss to the Bruins in Philadelphia yesterday underscores that despite how much his teammates might like him, Brian Boucher is not the answer in goal for the team. And neither are his back-ups.

6. Will Andre Iguodala be back in Philadelphia next season? Will there be a season next season? The NBA players need to be cautious about one thing -- their game isn't quite as popular as professional football. If the players walk, causing a shortened season or no season, the fans will view it as an opportunity to save money for a season.

7. Talked to an acquaintance with knowledge on the topic -- Stephon Marbury is doing fine in China, because he's embracing the Chinese culture. That's interesting, because the talented guard had trouble embracing the U.S. hoops/pass it first culture in the U.S. Perhaps, though, Marbury will be to Chinese hoops what the Buick is to Chinese cars -- get there first, and they'll love you.

8. Talked to a friend who runs a local baseball/softball association. Another friend once remarked that he was the girls' softball commissioner in his northern New Jersey town and that he once played college rugby, and that softball administration was rougher. Well, this fellow told me that the parents are relentless, and that travel organizations are cannibalizing his desire to build stronger rec leagues that send all-stars to post-season tournaments (as opposed to having full-year travel teams). One parent led an insurrection that took half a travel team to a nearby organization, only to have another leader of that group apologize afterward for participating in it (realizing that he had made a mistake). Sheesh! I told him that he should have his association award certificates to the parents of would-be travel kids that certify their travel worthiness (so that they can display them on their cars) but then skip the travel organization altogether. He laughed. As it is, he's trying to make tryouts much more objective, so as to award spots to the best players (and to avoid the worst aspects of daddyball). After getting an overall commitment in a meeting that went past midnight, he told me that the intrigue is starting again, and pockets of resistance are forming. Stay tuned.

9. I told the commissioner of my idea, which he liked. First, involve "empty nester" dads who played in college, coached it, taught it, etc. and have them run the travel programs. Have them run the tryouts and serve as the nominal head coach of the team. Second, hire (at a reasonable stipend) recent college grads learning to get some coaching credentials to coach third base and make the lineup decisions. Most likely, these folks also can teach the fundaments pretty well. Third, parents would have the role of scorekeeper and "team parent." Even with that, you'll have the bands of parents of talented players trying to muscle organizations to make room for their kids in a packaged deal (think LeBron, D-Wade and Chris Bosh) and then to call the shots regarding coaching decisions. Perhaps you can prevent that, perhaps not, but local organizations should do more grass roots work, do more to strengthen their rec leagues, and do more to make all experiences more enjoyable.

So, those are the observations for Sunday. What are yours?

Is Cam Newtown the Next Akili Smith?

2011-04-28T20:08:00.002-04:00

Just wondering.

And it's amazing how the talking heads fall in love with a flavor of the month each year. The kid has tremendous gifts, but he had 14 starts.

Yes, some expert on ESPN Radio this morning said "it's a quarterback's league." Fine, but this still seems to be a risky first pick.

It's all up to Cam Newton, of course, and the coaching staff of the Carolina Panthers.

Thank You, 76ers!

2011-04-27T21:47:00.003-04:00

Thank you, Doug Collins, for your masterful coaching.

Thank you, Elton Brand, for showing the heart of a lion.

Thank you, Andre Iguodala, for ignoring all of the comments that you're not a primary option on a good team and playing great.

Thanks, Jrue Holiday, for showing the poise of a veteran at the age of 20.

Thanks, Jodie Meeks, for your precision shooting.

Thanks, Lou Williams and Thaddeus Young, for being so good off the bench.

And thanks, Evan Turner, for trying (and sometimes succeeding) to show the doubters that you are a bona fide player.

You guys were so much fun to watch -- you looked like you liked playing with each other, respected each other, and responded well to your coach.

You reminded us what a fun game this is. You honored some rich traditions. You showed us (again) how much fun the game can be when it's played the way you play it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Former Penn Star and Temple Assistant Matt Langel Named Head Coach at Colgate

2011-04-26T16:54:00.003-04:00

You can read about the appointment here.

Several observations:

1. Had Penn not hired Jerome Allen as a first-year assistant during what proved to be Glen Miller's last year in University City, I thought that Langel would have been the obvious choice to replace Miller (having played and served as an assistant coach at Penn before following his mentor Fran Dunphy to Temple). Once Allen was in the interim role, it would have been hard for Penn AD Steve Bilsky to forsake the Penn legend for anyone else.

2. Langel's brother Casey played for Colgate.

3. Don't be surprised if Langel hires one of the Earl brothers as an assistant coach. Dan (an assistant at Penn State) and Brian (an assistant at Princeton under Sydney Johnson) are good friends of his. With Johnson leaving Princeton for Fairfield and Earl not getting the Princeton job, the time might be ripe for Earl to leave Tigertown for Hamilton, New York.

4. Langel was a finalist for the Cornell job last year.

5. Langel's learned from a great teacher in Fran Dunphy, the one-time Penn and current Temple coach. He's been a head coach in waiting for a while and should be an excellent fit for Colgate.

6. It's funny how worlds collide. As you know, the Penn-Princeton men's b-ball rivalry is about as intense as it gets. One of Langel's players at Colgate will be Texan (by way of Princeton, NJ's Hun School) Sterling Melville, son of former Princeton captain and first-team all-Ivy player Randy, who starred for the Tigers in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

Phillies' Injury Report: Jose Contreras to DL

2011-04-24T21:39:00.002-04:00

The Phillies should be worried, because this is what can happen when you have baseball's oldest roster.

At the season's outset, closer Brad Lidge, age 34, goes on the DL with shoulder problems and we learn he's out until about the All-Star break. This is the last year of Lidge's contract, one that was earned in the midst of his spectacular 2008 season but that's been a roller-coaster ride ever since. Many fans believe that they won't see him in a Phillies' uniform again (and the wags think that the home for former Phillies, the Houston Astros, might be chomping at the bit for a Dollar Store-type of deal come this off-season).

Today, the back-up closer, the 39 year-old Jose Contreras, went on the DL with a strained shoulder. Michael Stutes, who pitched well last year and in spring training this year, was called up from AAA Lehigh Valley to replace him on the roster. Outstanding set-up man Ryan Madson will take Contreras' spot as closer, and here's to hoping that if Madson gets frustrated this year he pounds his glove as opposed to kicking a water cooler and ending up on the DL for two months (which is what happened last year).

About to be 34 year-old lefty set-up man J.C. Romero went on the DL about a week ago, and, again, fortunately the Phils could call up Mike Zagurski from AAA (Zagurski had a great year at Lehigh Valley last season). And 32 year-old second baseman Chase Utley has been on the DL since the season's outset with patellar tendinitis that resulted from his working out too much (ironically, in trying to be the most fit in order to fight Father Time's gravity pull, Utley showed even more of his age).

Phew! Last year, the Phillies were the walking wounded, and I recall one mid-summer lineup where the numbers 6 through 9 hitters were career minor-leaguer Dane Sardinha at catcher, Wilson Valdez at 2B, Juan Castro at SS and the pitcher. I think that the Phillies won some of those games, keeping them (miraculously) in the race. But that was last year, and that was somewhat fortunate, and you have to wonder if the Phillies can do the same thing again this year.

Because the way the season is trending, every player over 30 might spend some time on the DL.

Last year, some of them spent a lot of time on the DL, and some made repeat trips. It was a tribute to the team that they played so hard and so well, and that the back-ups showed an esprit de corps that was downright heroic. It's a gritty organization that uses all 27 outs, and the starting pitchers will keep them in many ball games.

But if you're a realist, all these early injuries have to bug you if not scare you.

So far, with the exception of Domonic Brown (who's very young), they're all to relievers. And, yes, teams do use about 16-20 pitchers each season. But most don't see three go to the DL before the end of April.

And those who do are usually not the ones who expect to go to the World Series.

And win it.

When Should Your Kid Specialize in One Sport?

2011-04-24T18:36:00.002-04:00

There's a good article in today's Bucks County Courier Times on this question, and it's worth a read if you have a kid in middle school, or, heck, even in elementary school. Sure, Bucks County is the land of covered bridges, preserved farms, a place with great cupcakes, a canal to ride your bike on and a whole bunch of wonderful things, and this paper has writers that match up well, in my humble opinion, with those in big cities. You can read the article here.

Now, if you're about my age, don't have kids, pulled a Rip Van Winkle or have lived as a recluse in a remote cave in Borneo for the past 20 years, you might think that this suggestion is crazy. You would figure that the best boy athletes would play football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring. I'm sure that as you're thinking that you're using you're typewriter, your rotary dial phone and an abacus to balance your checkbook. That's how out of touch you'd be.

I see it already in middle school, where kids play travel soccer and nothing but and girls play travel softball and nothing but. It's almost as though they and their parents have joined a cult that worships a big time commitment, lots of driving, and a messiah in the form of a scholarship, a lot of aid, or at least a preferred admission to an excellent college as a result of the commitment. The last time I checked, though, none of the teams is named the Golden Calves.

But still, I wonder about these commitments, and I can share a story. My daughter plays two sports and will go to a high school that should enable her to play three. She's a pretty good athlete (this comment coming from other parents, as I'm usually the one to push her to do better, inspired by a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson that I read in a book on the Indiana Hoosiers and Bobby Knight that suggest that we all crave someone who inspires us to be the best we can be, but I digress), and she enjoys the change in sports as much as those who live in the Northeast enjoy the change of seasons. She has a friend who is one of the best softball players in her grade in the school district, and they were talking about the middle school team. My daughter commented that the season should be fun. To which the response was, "Softball. Fun?" The girl was serious, and it appeared from her tone that softball seemed to be a chore. This at the age of 14.

The travel softball commitment is 11 months a year, pretty much, 3 days a week in the off-season and then about 5 days a week during the good-weather months, at least in the Middle Atlantic region. Weekends pretty much are dedicated to tournaments, where on the first day a team plays three games to get seeded for the elimination round the next day, and the next day you can play as many as four games (depending on how many teams are in the tournament) if you keep winning. Everyone gets Easter weekend off, and some get Mother's Day weekend off, but pretty much from late March to early August there is a tournament every weekend, and there are two practices per week and perhaps a game during the week too.

You had better like your coaches, your teammates and their parents, as there is a lot of togetherness.

And you had better like [okay, Mad Lib time, list a sport to fill in the blank]. Because, if you don't, well, you might turn around in your late teens or later wishing that you had been more of a kid and less of a semi-professional and had tried different sports and had different kids as teammates. It's a lot to ask of pre-teens and young teenagers to make such an extensive commitment to a single sport.

And, of course, you must ask the question: who is this for? The kid? The parents? The coaches (many of whom are parents). What purpose is this type of commitment serving? What voids are the parents filling in their lives? Do the kids really enjoy the team (outside of feeling elite because they made a travel team and other kids did not)? Are the coaches committed to putting the best team on the field (translated, are they willing to bench their own kids if they are not part of the best 9 if it's softball, best 11 if it's soccer and best 5 if it's basketball)? How much of a meritocracy are we talking about?

And, the fact that someone has to use the word meritocracy makes the whole conversation seem somewhat ludicrous, doesn't it? These are kids we are talking about, and they should be given the opportunity to be kids. My daughter elected not to play travel this year (quite frankly, as parents we couldn't make the commitment to getting her to practices at teams that are about 1/2 hour away), and one of her reasons was that all her friends who played travel could talk about was softball and that they didn't have lives beyond it. That soured her on the sport, as did the acting out of some parents last year and some aspects of one of the worst words in all of travel softball, "daddyball," (something from which, thankfully, she did not suffer directly). That has put her at a disadvantage in getting playing time for the school team, but so be it. The other night in a rec league game, wearing shorts on a 40+-degree night with a 15 mile an hour wind, I saw her out there laughing with a few of her teammates, one of whom was a travel teammate last year.

I didn't see her do much of that on her travel team last year (then again, they lost a bunch more than they won, so admittedly there was a "cause and effect" correlation).

And she's a happy kid, too (this not only from our observations, but from teachers and coaches).

So, should your kid specialize? My advice would be only if that's what the child wants to do. If you have a kid who just loves basketball, then that love of the sport will be a guide. But, even then, it might be fun for her or him to play in the rec league in soccer in the fall, just to get some running in, just to be with different kids, and just to get a sense of what it's like to being part of a team where perhaps she/he is not the absolute star. There are lessons to be learned -- on playgrounds, in working out with mom or dad, in rec leagues, and, yes, on travel teams.

But one of the lessons for parents everywhere to remember is that kids are kids, so let's not waste youth on the young by compelling them to grow up too fast.

Going to Boston This Summer and Have a Question

2011-04-24T18:34:00.003-04:00

Anyone have a way to get actual seats atop the Green Monster (as opposed to the standing-room only tickets)? E-mail me at sportsprof@comcast.net with any ingenious solutions, as the StubHub offerings pretty much are for the SRO seats.

The San Diego Padres

2011-04-24T18:33:00.001-04:00

So as to protect the innocent, I won't link to the lineup that they put out there against the Phillies today, but if that's the type of lineup that they're going to trot out there, they will lose 100 games.

Shopping List for Philadelphia Teams

2011-04-24T18:32:00.002-04:00

Here goes:

1. Phillies. A player with a "live" bat.
2. Flyers. A goalie.
3. 76ers. A few more players about 6'8" who can play.
4. Eagles. Someone to protect Michael Vick's blindside. A cover corner. A defensive lineman or two. A few playmaking linebackers.

On Mitch Henderson's Hiring at Princeton

2011-04-24T18:31:00.002-04:00

William of Ockham would have been proud of the university.

Winckler's Ribs: Great Any Time (and Particularly on a Rainy Day!)

2011-04-17T11:46:00.002-04:00

Living in Bucks County, I'm always looking for neat places to eat, and I had read about Mike Winckler a bunch of times in the past but somehow never got down to Morrisville to sample his cuisine -- southern-style cooking, and, yes, at its finest. It was a terrible weather day yesterday in Southeastern Pennsylvania, thunderstorms and about 2 inches of rain, and we were marooned inside. We weren't climbing the walls. We did some chores, watched some of the Derrick Rose show, saw the 76ers launch themselves like a rocket, only to fizzle and have a rally come up short. But lethargy was in the air, and I decided to brave the elements for the short hop to 46 Washington Street in Morrisville to pick up some barbecue -- racks of ribs, rice and beans, potato salad, collard greens with turkey, cornbread and Buffalo wings. Awesome stuff. Quiet dinner table, because everyone was into everything. The meat fell off the ribs, and it had a nice sweet taste to it. The cornbread was excellent, freshly made and moist, and the collard greens were terrific. Ditto for the rice and beans and the potato salad. It's not a sit-down place, but it was great food on a terrible weather day. So check out Winckler's -- you'll be glad that you did.

Nails Further Nailed?

2011-04-15T21:33:00.000-04:00

It only gets worse for Lenny Dykstra.

Halladay and Lee and the Road to Victory

2011-04-14T21:46:00.002-04:00

Do you remember "Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain," the mantra regarding the Milwaukee Braves teams of the 50's where you had two aces named Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain and then a bunch of guys who weren't all that good? Well, Roy Halladay pitched a complete game against the Nats last night and Cliff Lee pitched another one, a 3-hit gem in which he walked 1 and struck out 12. And that reminds me of a story I once read about Dizzy and Paul Dean, who pitched for the Cardinals' "Gas House Gang" of the 1930's. In game 1 of a double header, Dizzy pitched a two-hit shutout. Paul pitched a no-hitter in the second game. That prompted Dizzy to remark, "Well, if I knew 'ol Paul was going to go out and throw a no-hitter, I would have too." It's been said that you play better when you play with better players. The 2011 Phillies thus far are an example of that, 9-3, having won each of the four series in which they've played. It's easy to get up and go to the ball park then there's an 80% chance that one of your pitchers will be any of Halladay, Lee, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels. It's Oswalt's turn tomorrow in what's quickly becoming baseball's version of "Can You Top This?" Lee's line tonight was 9 innings pitched, 3 hits, 0 runs, 1 walk, 12 strikeouts. Which means that Oswalt would need to go 9 innings, 2 hits, 0 runs, 0 walks and 14 strikeouts to one-up Lee. It's to a degree unlikely, but this rotation is that good. The team won 97 games last year -- most in the regular season of any team -- with a battered lineup and a pitching staff that added Oswalt in August and didn't have Lee for the whole season. Sure, they're laboring with Joe Blanton now, but my recollection is that Blanton hasn't gotten off to fast starts in the past. But with the "Phour Aces" as they're called, repeating that number of wins is a distinct possibility. Roy and Cliff and Watch the Opponents Whiff. Hallelujah! Amen.

Why Your Team Shouldn't Invest In Relief Pitchers with Many Seasons of Excellent Work

2011-04-14T17:16:00.002-04:00

Sounds counterintuitive, right?

But it's not. The Yankees signed lefty reliever Pedro Feliciano in the off-season to improve their bullpen. Feliciano had pitched in 266 games over the past three seasons for the Mets, and that doesn't include spring training or the times he warmed up and then wasn't used. He was terrific (killed the Phillies), but now he's done for the year. And it's only April 14.

Brian Cashman probably should have known better. As a diehard Phillies' fan, I always wondered why the team, when in need of a lefty reliever several years ago, didn't pursue Will Ohman, Joe Beimel or more recently John Grabow as free agents. The reason was that they were concerned both about overuse and about the price tag these pitchers would command after being used heavily (such as $3-$4 million a year for 3 years). I had even read one GM offer that his team was more interested in an underused reliever with a live arm coming off an injury-prone year (I know that sounds like an oxymoron) than someone with three years of good work in a row because of overuse.

So now the Yankees have a hole in their bullpen, which I'm sure that the energetic and well-bankrolled Cashman will fill. But all GMs need to be careful with signing veteran relievers with too much tread on their tires, even if they excelled last season at torturing Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. Sometimes the obvious choice isn't the best solution (sorry, William of Occam, but in baseball the simplest solution isn't always the best one).

Caveat emptor!

Mets' Chris Young Has Elbow Tendinitis

2011-04-13T22:10:00.002-04:00

Click here to read more.

Some people are free spaces on the bingo card. Others could be answers to Mad Libs. Unfortunately for Chris Young, he's probably the answer to the question, "Name a major league pitcher who is frequently injured."

Now, he's not on the DL, he's just having a start pushed back. This, of course, after he got off to a good start and has been hailed as a great signing by Sandy Alderson's front office.

That still may be the case, but the Mets need some good news. Young provided that at the season's outset. Now he's fighting a history of injuries, and the Mets are battling a bunch of demons, both real and imagined.

They -- and Young -- need some good news.

Larry Brown to Coach the Princeton Tigers

2011-04-13T21:50:00.002-04:00

Ah, so I got your attention because you have search engines that pick up this type of stuff. But he's available, and it gets you thinking. . .

I had read somewhere that when Butch van Breda Kolff left Princeton to coach the Lakers that Larry Brown and Bob Knight were interested in the Princeton job. I also had read that Brown had expressed interest when Joe Scott left for the University of Denver and the school hired Sydney Johnson. And, of course, as recently as within the past week we read that Brown had contacted UNLV about their job, only to have the school hire a long-time assistant.

He's a Hall of Famer, he's won everywhere, and imagine what he could do with players who will listen to everything he says (which hasn't always been the case in the NBA, as this guy had the (mis)fortune of coaching Allen Iverson. He likes challenges, and Princeton would be a unique one for him. You figure that you partner him with some good recruiters and potential successors, and the Tigers could be onto something special for a few years while grooming a successor who might want to stay on for a while. Brown has made tons of money (thanks, among others, to an aborted stay with the fickle Knicks), so he doesn't need a big payday. But he might just be interested in a unique hoops laboratory and elite institution.

Sure, he'd be reminded that he isn't in Kansas any more, that he cannot hire a star recruits dad to assist him (probably not needed at Princeton), that this isn't Carolina, that recruiting is hard and that he'll have to do it. He gets all that. Sure, he doesn't have a Princeton degree like Brian Earl, Mike Brennan and Mitch Henderson, among others, and perhaps he's as old as all three of those guys combined, but the default drive keeps on coming back -- the guy can really coach.

And he's available, and perhaps Princeton has to think outside its box and its family and try another great coaching family -- North Carolina's. (Duke's would be a bit odd given that the Duke family once tried to give enough money to rename Princeton "Duke" and because Coach K's coaching tree isn't necessarily as compelling as Dean Smith's). Okay, so I just showed a preference for Carolina, but so what?

Larry Brown certainly would take the spotlight off Harvard and coach Tommy Amaker. Larry Brown would be a recruiting magnet. He even could join the Anthropology Dept. and teach a course in the origins of basketball, given that he helped invent the game along with Dr. James Naismith (okay, so just kidding about that one, as the Anthro Dept. does require a PhD and tons of publications that were well-reviewed in peer-reviewed journals before making an offer of employment).

Enough joking. Larry Brown is available. He's a basketball institution. Princeton is an institution with a great basketball tradition, a tradition of winning. Larry Brown is his own tradition of winning. Do the math, see the synergies -- Larry Brown could be a very good fit in Tigertown.

Bonds Convicted of 1 Count

2011-04-13T21:45:00.002-04:00

Hard to know what to make of this except that we used to celebrate retired baseball greats. Now we wonder what they were on when they played and whether they had an unfair advantage as a result.

We used to speak reverently of the accomplishments of guys like Jackie Robinson (an all-time hero), Ted Williams (a war hero), Willie Mays (in certain ways, a super hero), Hank Aaron (a great player and ambassador for the game), Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, and many, many others.

Fast forward a couple of generations, and what do we talk about now? What are we supposed to say about Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, among many others?

It's an empty feeling, isn't it?