Maryland's men's lacrosse team made collegiate sports history over the weekend as the Terps battled Virginia in the longest college lacrosse game ever -- an incredible seven overtimes -- before losing, 10-9. But the defeat was even tougher to take when a Maryland goal in the seventh overtime that would have been the winner was negated by a ref's bad call. To bring that game to life a bit, here's the radio call of the dramatic ending as it was heard on
WINA 1070 AM in Charlottesville, Va. Play-by-play by John Freeman with commentary by Doug Tarring.

Posted by Bill Ordine at 2:20 PM in Must-see Web TV | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

In some alternate reality, Brian Billick is still the Ravens head coach and the team went through three quarterbacks last year without finding a long-term solution. (Oddly, also in this bizarro reality: Steelers fans eat salads, Americans drive on the left-hand side of the road and Chinese food is best served smothered in melted cheese.)

So if Joe Flacco never set foot in Owings Mills, if John Harbaugh, Cam Cameron and Hue Jackson never took up office space in The Castle, the big question Ravens fans would be debating these next several months would be: What about Michael Vick?

According to today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Vick is planning on returning to the NFL as soon as possible. He has no choice: Vick needs to make mad cash to pay his debts. I don't think those Payday Loans shops will front you money unless you have a job. (According to the AJC story, Vick's planning on earning $10 million a year when he returns to the league. And in unrelated news, I'm planning on taking Scarlett Johansson out for caramels this weekend.)

So let's dip a pretend foot into this pretend reality: Would Vick be worth the risk?

It's a tough question to answer. As the Ravens proved in the real universe last year, the real solution lies with drafting a young quarterback that can stabilize the franchise for years to come. But if that wasn't a draft-day option, I'd have no problem with a team like the Ravens taking a run on a guy like Vick down the road (again, in our alternate reality).

Vick will likely be a free man this summer and he'll likely apply for reinstatement to the NFL before 2010. By then, he'll still be an exciting player. Vick was only 26 when he played his last game; he'd be 30 years old at the start of the 2010 season. Plenty of quarterbacks have posted some of their most successful seasons at age 30 and beyond.

Though the Falcons steadily declined Vick's last couple of seasons, you don't want to attribute that entirely to Vick. His passing yards, in fact, slightly rose over his final three seasons, as did his number of touchdown passes. And don't forget that in 2006 -- the last season before Bad Newz Kennel was boarded up -- Vick rushed for more than 1,000 yards.

He'll make some team better. It's just a matter of a general manager taking a chance and a fan base offering forgiveness.

I'm in the camp that believes sitting in a prison cell is paying one's debt to society. It doesn't mean you have to like him -- you don't have to hire him to babysit your children or walk your miniature schnauzer around the block -- but the NFL need not punish him harsher than the court.

So the question to you: Would you have been willing to cheer Vick in a Ravens jersey?

Photo: Associated Press

Posted by Rick Maese at 2:02 PM in Ravens | Permalink | Comments (40)
        

And now it's time for Random Thoughts with Mike Klingaman. You know the zany neighbor in TV sitcoms, well, Kling is kind of our Kramer. You never know what you're going to get.

Theme gardens are in. Want to create a landscape with a sports motif? Here are a dozen rose varieties to fit your garden needs:

"Crimson Tide"

"Gold Medal"

"Golden Gloves"

"Green Diamond"

"Jockey"

"Kentucky Derby"

"Olympic Torch"

"Pimlico"

"Pinstripe"

"Rocky"

"Tony Jacklin"

"Wilhelm"

What's missing? A "Pete Rose" rose. Charlie Hustle just can't catch a break.

AP photo

Posted by Mike Klingaman at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

I must have also thought about the economic woes facing the sports world, because as my eyelids grew heavy, I slumbered my way through an alternate reality that makes Oz feel mundane.

In a Technicolor haze, I flipped on SportsCenter and it took me a few minutes to understand what had happened. But the headlines began to run together and soon it was clear: newspaper executives were running sports.

In Oakland, Al Davis announced that he’d placed his defensive ends on furlough for Week 7. He received special exemption from the NFL to field just 10 starters on defense, and in a bizarre pregame speech, he challenged his team to “do more with less.” Bill Bidwill cut his team’s health insurance benefits and Dan Snyder charged his players to park at the practice facility.

It was even worse elsewhere...

No sport was immune. In Baltimore, the local baseball team was buoyed by a favorable television contract but still needed to cut costs. They took the field for the 2009 season with no batting helmets, which saved the team nearly $6,000. Unfortunately, by season's end, it had cost them two men off the active roster. It seemed everyone around the league was trying to save money. The National League started using Greyhound to get to games, and most American League teams were relying on Amtrak.

One of the saddest things was the plight of race car drivers. Even with every inch of their cars covered, they were still forced to go out and acquire new sponsorships, offering their own skin for logo placements. Jimmie Johnson was covered from head-to-toe with tattoos of corporate logos. The one for Flomax just below his navel looked especially painful. At least the NBA players didn’t have to suffer such pain. But they did have to go find companies whose logos matched their existing ink. There’s only so many churches and barbed-wire companies out there with the kind of dough to sponsor a basketball player’s biceps.

In the NHL, players were mostly spared, but many office workers were handed pink slips. That meant that players were asked to wear multiple hats. They sold tickets, peddled advertising and even had to dress as mascots during intermissions. At least the NHL was quick to realize it couldn’t keep asking the Euro-born players to drive the Zambonis. They kept driving on the wrong side of the ice, which resulted in near-tragedy when a youth league team of 6- and 7-year olds was playing an exhibition game during one intermission in Toronto.

At least hockey survived. R.I.P. WNBA. Newspaper execs, still giddy over their online success in journalism, decided to give away their product for free at basketball games. They no longer had to employ ticket-takers, but they also weren’t making any money. It was a sad yet entirely predictable passing.

I awoke in a sweat, truly scared about these trying times. I needed better dreams. After a glass of water, I again lay my head down, determined to think positive thoughts. Hey, I got one. What if sports executives ran newspapers? A multi-million dollar contract and seasonal work? That'd definitely help me sleep better at night.

Posted by Rick Maese at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Each week in the Toy Department, veteran Sun sports writer Mike Klingaman will track down a former local sports figure and let you know what's going on in his/her life in a segment called "Catching Up With..." Let him know who you'd like him to find.

Fifty-five years later, Bob Turley remembers the first big-league baseball game ever played at Memorial Stadium. Why not? He won it.

Sun photo by Leroy Merriken. From left, Vern Stephens, Bob Turley and Clint Courtney. Stephens and Courtney both hit home runs in the Orioles' 3-1 victory over the White Sox on Opening Day on April 15, 1954.

Turley, a hefty, hard-throwing young right-hander, pitched the Orioles to a 3-1 victory over the Chicago White Sox, juicing the crowd of 46,354 that turned out on a gray, drizzly day to welcome Baltimore back to the majors.

The Orioles would lose 100 games that year but on April 15, 1954 they were baseball’s darlings.

"I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous going out there," said Turley, now 78. "But I pitched the whole game. Had to. Back then, if you didn’t go nine, they sent you back to the minors."

Four times that day, Turley fanned batters for the third out with runners on base. Twice he struck out Sox cleanup hitter Minnie Minoso who, the Baltimore News Post reported, "swung so viciously he spun around and landed on the seat of his pants."

Turley’s second start was another dilly: a two-hitter against Cleveland in the first major league night game played in Baltimore. He lost his no-hitter – and the game – in the ninth inning on Hall of Famer Larry Doby’s home run.

Afterward, Turley seemed unruffled.

"That pitch got away from me – 350 feet away," he told reporters.

Armed with a fastball clocked at 98 mph, "Bullet Bob" won 14 of 29 games for the seventh-place Orioles and led the American League in both strikeouts and walks. At season’s end, he was dealt to the New York Yankees as part of a 17-player trade, the biggest in baseball history.

The move made a star of Turley, who would win a Cy Young Award and lead the Yanks to three world championships. He joined an insurance firm, made millions and now lives on Marco Island, Fla. where his home overlooks the Gulf of Mexico.

"I do what I feel like doing," said Turley, who made $9,000 as an Oriole. "Got a 34-foot boat that sleeps six. We catch marlin, grouper and snook, a great eating fish."

He got a new hip awhile back and had a heart valve replacement last year.

"I’ve slowed down a bit," he said. ‘I’m not ‘Bullet Bob.’ I’m throwing BBs now."

Though he spent just one of his 12 big-league years in Baltimore, Turley has fond memories of the town that helped launch his career.

"The fans were friendly in every sense of the word," he said. "When my first son was born that season, people gave us a crib and free diapers. They treated us royally."

Later, Turley opened a bowling center in Bel Air and an insurance firm on York Road, where he partnered with Orioles catcher Gus Triandos.

"Truth is, after the trade I lived in Lutherville for another 12 years. I would have crawled to New York to play there, but I wasn’t a big-city kind of person."

At a card-signing show last month, he was approached by Cleveland Hall of Famer Bob Feller, who recalled Turley’s stellar effort against the Indians on that cool April night in Baltimore long ago.

"He (Feller) said, ‘That was the best game I ever saw you pitch,’ " Turley said.

He won a Cadillac in 1954 as the Most Valuable Oriole and was told he would anchor the staff the next year.

"I started working in the off-season at Hecht’s, in sporting goods, signing autographs and greeting people for $200 a week," he said. "One night I was at home feeding the baby his bottle and watching ‘The Tonight Show," when, boom, my picture flashed overtop that of (host) Steve Allen."

BOB TURLEY TRADED TO NEW YORK, the bulletin read.

Stunned, he sat there, child in tow.

Orioles fans reacted swiftly.

"The next morning, when I went out to the car, someone had written ‘Damn Yankee’ on it in the dust," Turley said.

"Nobody from the Orioles ever told me I was traded. To this day, I’m still waiting for that call.

Posted by Mike Klingaman at 10:00 AM in Catching Up With, Orioles | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

I’m sitting at Gate A26 at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, about to board a Southwest flight to Baltimore. I'm in the B group, which would normally bother me more than it does this morning.

It's early still, but I can’t seem to shake what I saw last night. There’s a reason March is such a special month on the sports calendar. I'm not sure I’ll ever get over the array of emotions that you see at an NCAA tournament game. And to be honest with you, I don’t really want to.

There were tears in both locker rooms last night, after No. 3 seed Louisville ended the season of the top-seeded Terps. For me, it’s what truly separates professional sports from college (aside from the money, of course).

At the pro level, even though bonuses, endorsement deals and millions of dollars might be on the line, you don’t see the same level of unabashed joy. Similarly, you don’t see near the same level of disappointment and sorrow either. On both ends, the emotional outburst is so raw, so true and sincere, that even as a spectator, it crawls under the skin. It finds its way into your bloodstream. One second you can taste the joy at midcourt, but then just seconds later feel your heart grow heavy in the losing locker room.

I won’t soon forget Louisville’s Angel McCoughtry (pictured below), a Baltimore native and St. Frances graduate, bouncing around the RBC Center court when the final buzzer sounded. I’m not sure why, but she screamed. “Where you at President Barack? I want to meet you, baby!” I liked that; I guess because I'll bet today she doesn't recall anything she said last night. McCoughtry was just lost in the moment.

Nor will I forget the look in Kristi Toliver's eyes, not far away in the Maryland locker room. In there it felt like a funeral service. The Terps were mourning not just the night’s missed opportunities, but a season that ended too soon. A team that was good enough to win a national championship instead lost by 17 points to a No. 3 seed in the Elite Eight. Toliver tried to maintain a stiff lower lip. "We didn't want it to end," the senior said.

How often in sports are two extremes shoved so close together? Sorry, but it’s not the same at the Super Bowl or the World Series or a golf major or maybe even the Olympics.

These are young people. They feel things deeply. Their world often doesn’t extend beyond the weekend. And for the seniors especially, their collegiate careers have only a short wick. There’s a profound sense of finality to the tournament that makes it different than any other championship.

To compound matters for the Maryland women, the Terps really thought they were going to the Final Four. And yes, they were good enough. They shed tears not just for this loss, not simply to mourning the season’s end, but for disappointment and even for regret.

It’s among my favorite clichés – the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. When you see it – when you see both emotions in a tender and vulnerable state – something inside of you is stirred. A tournament game is the full gamut of human emotions offered up to us on one serving dish. In Raleigh, similar to a dozen other sites these past two weeks, it's all separated by just a hallway in an arena. Tears are shed in each locker room. But they’re not the same.

I’ll never forget watching Coleman and Toliver celebrate winning a national championship in 2006. And I’ll never forget seeing the pain in their eyes when they came up short in 2009.

Regardless of what CBS is splicing together, March isn't about One Shining Moment. For me, it's the collection of feelings. It's the disparate emotions that separate winning from losing. It's the way tears can fall, splash on a basketball court and forever represent two very, very different feelings.

Posted by Rick Maese at 8:35 AM in Terps | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

Stopping by the Toy Department for some grilling this week is Dan Connolly, longtime Orioles and national baseball writer. Dan went to Calvert Hall so he never really picked up math or logic. But otherwise, he's a good egg. And Peter Angelos used to refer to him as the cunning Irishman, so there's that.

TD: If you had to convince a lapsed Orioles fan to watch the team this season, what would be your pitch?

DC: What else is there to do in Baltimore in July? How many times can you go down and sweat at the harbor? Or get a fifth receiver’s autograph at minicamp? Seriously, the Orioles you see in the second half should give you a glimpse of the future. My guess is at least one of the young, stud pitchers will be up in the second half, and so will Matt Wieters. Endure the first half and there could be individuals worth watching in the second half.
 
TD: There was a lot of talk about the Japanese media going into this season. Were they much in evidence in Lauderdale?

DC: Once Koji Uehara got hurt, the herd thinned out. They’ll be in evidence whenever he pitches, but will probably be elsewhere during the other four days. As O’s closer George Sherrill said when asked about his experience with the Japanese media during his time in Seattle with Ichiro Suzuki, after a while you get used to them and they aren’t an issue. Besides, as a group, the Japanese media are very respectful. So it shouldn’t be a hindrance this year.
 
TD: What do you think of Uehara? Does he join Jeremy Guthrie and the closer du jour as Orioles pitchers worth owning on a fantasy team?

DC: Sadly, I really haven’t seen him pitch in games because he was hurt when I was with the team. I expect to see him later this week in his final exhibition tune-up. I think he knows how to pitch and I think he will be solid for the Orioles. He’s probably worth a late pick/cheap buy in fantasy baseball. But his injury history and the Orioles’ rough schedule stop him from being someone to count on fantasy-wise. But a flier? Sure.
 
TD: People keep talking about the identity of the Orioles' fifth starter but does it even matter?

DC: No. The back-end of the O’s rotation may have more bodies passing through than a 2009 Camden Yards turnstile.

TD: Can Felix Pie hit better than Corey Patterson?

DC: One would really hope so. I liked Corey Patterson, a super nice man and a wonderful athlete who I would love to see do well. But Corey never understood what it would take for him to succeed consistently on the big-league level. I think Pie is open to suggestions from hitting coach Terry Crowley and does not seem to be set in his ways. How much he hits is anyone’s guess, but he is worth the gamble.
 
TD: We know things change after spring training, but has anyone replaced Kevin Millar as the loud, funny guy in the clubhouse?

DC: No one can replace Millar in that aspect. An absolute one of a kind. I remember listening to one of his tirades in the dugout last year when Aubrey Huff walked by and said, “Man, I can’t wait until you retire and I get to watch this on Baseball Tonight. Then I can turn it off.” That said, Gregg Zaun has never been shy to speak up and Ryan Freel has a tremendous sense of humor. So I can see those two at least being clubhouse and media favorites. 
 

TD: What's your gut feeling on Nick Markakis' development? Does he take one more step or will we see a bunch of seasons like last year (not that there's a thing wrong with that)?

DC: I think he only gets better offensively. He is 25 for goodness sake. I wouldn’t be surprised if he challenges for a batting crown one day. I also think he’ll hit a few more homers (maybe 25 or so each season) and steal a few more bases. There are only a few athletes I have covered over the years that could focus on improving one part of their game and then automatically do it. Nick is that type. His defense is a perfect example. Last year he made himself into arguably baseball’s best defensive right fielder.
 
TD: When do you expect Matt Wieters in Baltimore?

DC: Who? Oh yeah, the young catcher. I think the Orioles would like to give him two months to half a season in Triple-A for various reasons. So my guess is late June or early July.
 
TD: Do you believe he will walk on water before the end of the season? 
 

DC: I was in the Fort Lauderdale clubhouse two weeks ago and Wieters thought he was alone. It looked as if he were going to attempt to walk across the whirlpool water. But he stopped just short. I was disappointed. But then I saw him turn the water into wine. And that was cool.
 
 TD: Of the non-Wieters prospects and new arrivals, who are you most intrigued to watch this season?

DC: I think Ty Wigginton is going to have a big year. He is an old-school-Oriole type player – so is Ryan Freel, for that matter – and I think Wigginton has been underrated most of his career. I have only caught glimpses of him over the years, so I am looking forward to seeing him for a full season. As for the prospects, I think Chris Tillman is impressive, and I’d like to see him get a shot toward the end of the year.  

TD: Does Dave Trembley get to remain manager throughout the team's rebuild?

DC: Ask Andy MacPhail. I don’t know. Recent history and the Orioles’ revolving managerial door say no. But MacPhail is a patient man and he knows what Trembley is up against. I doubt Trembley gets fired during the year. But will his contract be renewed if they are terrible again? I’m not sure.
 
TD: You've covered the Orioles through the worst era in team history so where do you think this season will fall on your finely-tuned suck-o-meter?

DC: Well, I covered 34 of the 36 games to end the 2002 season when the Orioles lost 32 of them. That is the Mona Lisa of suckitude in my era. Although last year’s collapse was a pretty valuable Picasso. And the 2005 second half of drugs, DUIs and broken arms was masterful as well. My guess is that this one starts as bad as any of them (the April schedule is brutal), but gets a little more entertaining in the second half.
 

TD: We've also heard tell that you were a national baseball writer. So outside of the Orioles, what story lines and players have you paying the most attention in '09?

DC: Obviously, the Yankees will be a fun one to monitor. A $430 million offseason will buy you some newsprint (In these days, it will buy you a whole newspaper chain). Especially when you have Alex Rodriguez occasionally demonstrating his one weakness: speaking. Like everyone around here, I want to see how Mark Teixeira deals with playing in New York. He’s not in Arlington or Atlanta or Severna Park anymore. But he’ll hit enough to make that marriage work, I believe. I’m also curious as to how the WBC participants do once the season starts. It’s a great concept, but I am not sure how practical it is.
 
TD: Last but not least, do you ever wake up in a cold sweat, wishing you'd gone to a better high school?

DC: For the record, I went to humble Calvert Hall College High School and this question was asked by a Gilman University For The Chronically Wealthy alumnus. Although it does bother me that I attended an educational institution that did not put proper emphasis on sailing and eating gourmet cheese, I will point out that the CHC Cardinals have beaten the Gilman Silver Spoons roughly the last 87 times they have met on a baseball field. I’m just saying ...

Posted by Childs Walker at 6:00 AM in Orioles, Today's Special | Permalink | Comments (16)
        

Each week in the Toy Department, a Sun sports writer will take a moment to offer his or her Endorsement of something they feel passionately about. There are no rules, and the subject can be as broad, or as narrow, as the writer chooses. This week, Kevin Van Valkenburg makes the case for why high school basketball should be able to skip college entirely if they want.

LeBron James was featured on 60 Minutes this weekend where he was interviewed by journalist Steve Kroft. Right about the time during the interview when James cupped a basketball and fired it -- underhand -- from three-quarters court in his high school gym, hitting nothing but net, it dawned on me that I was probably watching the most athletically-gifted player of my lifetime.

James is now in his sixth year in the NBA, and it's obvious by this point that he didn't need to attend college to hone his basketball skills. He's an absolute freak of nature at 6-feet-9 and 270 pounds: quick and yet graceful, explosive around the basket, but possessing an artist's touch on the perimeter. Magic Johnson is my favorite player of all time, and James, like so many men his age, grew up worshiping Michael Jordan. Watching him is like seeing a hybrid of those two stars. The next 10 years of his career are going to be an absolute joy to watch, and the fact that he's turned out to be such an astute businessman only makes him all the more likable. I'm glad he didn't play college basketball. He was simply too good for that level. It would have been a waste of time and someone (perhaps even James) most likely would have gotten hurt.

But you know who else makes me believe high school basketball players should be able to jump straight to the NBA if they so choose, without this ridiculous 1-year apprenticeship the NBA now enforces? Darius Miles, Korleone Young, Jonathan Bender and Kwame Brown. And all the other prep stars who either fizzled and disappeared from the league, or never really lived up to their potential.

Because they didn't belong on a college campus anymore than James did.

They wouldn't have suddenly developed as players or as people just because they spent two years reading Madame Bovary, attending frat parties and doing trigonometry. They wouldn't have suddenly become injury-free once they reached the NBA. Their careers would have been, in all likelihood, pretty similar. Dick Vitale just never got the chance to rave about them. You never got the chance to bet on them in an office pool.

In a few days, Lance Stephenson, a New York city prep star who averaged 35 points a game his senior year, will announce whether he's decided to attend Kansas, St. John's, or Maryland. (All signs seem to point to Kansas.) But whatever he decides, no one really believes he'll be there for more than one season. "One and done" is the term, and it's tossed around frequently in college basketball these days, ever since the NBA said it wouldn't admit players until they were one year removed from their high school graduation. And if we were really honest about it, we admit that wanting to watch Stephenson play in college has nothing to do with his own interests and everything to do with our own.

We don't really believe a semester of college will mature a prep star or better prepare him for life in the NBA and beyond. We simply want to be entertained. We want the NCAA tournament to remain exciting. We make the players who don't really want to be there go through a charade instead of simply embracing the athletes who do want to experience college.

College basketball has become one giant game of three-card Monte, and no one knows how to deal with it because there is so much money involved, it's in everyone's best interests not to talk about it. But we're the mark, because we keep buying in. It's laughable the way some college presidents go along for the ride during the NCAA tournament, openly rooting on players who, deep down, they must know aren't really interested in any form of education.

I like James in part because he saw through some of that. If you're not interested in college course work, why play for free (for a business, because that's what college programs are) when you can get paid to play in the NBA? You have more time to work on your jumper there anyway. If you seek knowledge at a later date, those opportunities will still be available down the road.

The notion that players "learn the fundamentals" in college and that the NBA is now unwatchable mostly because "no one knows how to play defense" are two of the biggest falsehoods repeated whenever this debate comes up, and sadly no amount of logic can convince most people otherwise. (Recruiting has become so important to college basketball these days that most of the true teachers are dinosaurs on their way out, and the main problem with the NBA is that people play too much defense, not too little.) But those concerns could easily be addressed the way baseball does, with a true minor league system, where players could be brought up and sent back down if they still needed to sharpen their skills.

The NBA doesn't have to do that, though, because college basketball has been willing to do it for them for free. Even though institutions of higher learning are essentially prostituting themselves, it's OK because the money makes it worth it. (It's like a real life Pretty Woman where CBS is Richard Gere.)

Whether or not you succeed in life is mostly a measure of talent, character and effort. In the interview with Kroft, James mentions that he never really got into trouble as a kid because it simply didn't interest him. College wasn't going to teach him that kind of lesson. He already understood it.

College basketball would be fine if more athletes skip right over it into the NBA. It might even be better off, since it might cut down on various shenanigans. And the players who jump, like James (or Kobe Bryant, or Kevin Garnett, or Tracy McGrady, etc.), will still sink or swim based on their own talent and drive. The ones who fail were likely going to fail anyway. They just got paid to do so.

LeBron James on 60 Minutes:

Posted by Kevin Van Valkenburg at 4:20 PM in The Endorsement | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

From time to time, we'll share with you some photographs that catch our eye. We'll provide a couple of possible captions, and you can try your hand at one or two of your own.

-- "Sure, Mr. Angelos, I'll sign anything you want."

-- "Is this really the bat Julio Franco used?"

-- "I appreciate the offer, but I'm not sure I've slowed down that much on the base paths."

-- "Really? Autographed canes work like currency in South Florida?"

-- "So you want me to write, 'Dear Esther, I'd love to get to second base with you?' For serious?"

-- "Look, Schmuck, I already signed your pill box. Will you leave me alone?"

Photo: Doug Kapustin /Baltimore Sun

Posted by Rick Maese at 3:27 PM in Caption This | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

To paraphrase The Godfather's Michael Corleone, "You're breaking my heart, Nicanor!"

I'm really beginning to worry that Nicanor is becoming the Fredo of the Dynaformer family.

In case you're unaware, Nicanor (below) is the full brother of the great Barbaro (they both have the same sire, Dynaformer, and dam, La Ville Rouge). Like the Corleone brothers -- Sonny, Fredo and Michael (remember, Tom Hagen was adopted) -- there are three Dynaformer full brothers, Barbaro, Nicanor and a two-year-old kid sibling Lentenor.

Well, as you may recall, Sonny was the rising star of the Corleone family until he was cut down in his prime --- sort of like, well, you know. Then there was Fredo, the middle brother, who was the doofus of the family, which brings us back to Nicanor.

On Saturday, while the real three-year-old contenders for the Triple Crown were racing in the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park, Nicanor was trying for the third time just to win a race, this time a $42,000 maiden.

For the second straight race he finished second, even though he went off as the 3-to-5 chalk. In his first outing, Nicanor tripped over his own feet coming out of the gate and finished 10th. In his second race, he was leading in the backstretch when -- according to jockey Jose Lezcano -- "he was intimidated coming around the final turn." Then on Saturday, Nicanor was in position to take the lead coming into the stretch when, again according to jockey Lezcano, "he was just playing around looking at the other horses."

Now, as mentioned above, Saturday happened to be Florida Derby Day. Three years ago, the winner of that Kentucky Derby prep at Gulfstream was a colt named Barbaro and I guarantee you, he wasn't playing around and he was the one doing the intimidating.

Posted by Bill Ordine at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

You won't read about it in most sports pages, but Tuesday afternoon, in a small park in the middle of New York City, athletes will gather for a competition that is a commentary on life and sports.

The Unemployment Olympics will pit jobless folks against each other in events such as, "The Fax Machine Toss," the "You're Fired Race," and "Pin the Blame on the Bosses."

It's not exactly the 400-meter freestyle, but it is a contest many of us can relate to right now or figure is in our future. Certainly 15 percent of the U.S. Olympic Committee staff--54 people--felt that pain earlier this month when they got pink slips.

To qualify, you must bring proof of being kicked to the curb: an unemployment packet, a letter from an old employer or a government-issed unemployment card will do.

Prizes are being offered by bars and restaurants in the city.

Nick Goddard, 26, came up with the idea and promoted it on-line, complete with a hand-drawn press release featuring the sacred five Olympic rings that no one is supposed to use without paying millions of dollars to the pampered people who run the International Olympic Committee.

If the IOC's lawyers want to chase Goddard and try to extract royalties from him, good luck. He was laid off from his job as a computer programmer last month.

Posted by Candus Thomson at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Someday I'll tell my children about Tiger Woods.

I'll tell them about the Masters. About the Tiger Slam. About the 2000 Pebble Beach National Pro-Am (making up seven strokes over the final seven holes? And winning by two? Are you kidding?) I'll tell them about the 2000 U.S. Open, of course, and the 2006 British Open and probably the 2006 PGA Championship, too. And definitely the 2008 U.S. Open.

Will I tell them about Sunday? I don't know. He's made the improbable almost routine. Starting the day five back, he kept doing what Tiger does. He fought his way to a share of the lead and stood over a 16-foot putt on the 18th green. He nailed it to beat Sean O'Hair by a single stroke. He shot a final-round 67. Just another Sunday.

Someday I'll tell my children about Tiger Woods. They'll need to know about the most dominant athlete I've ever seen. I'm not even sure who's second. But let's try to figure that out.

Poll question: Who's the most dominant athlete of the past 10 years? Click here to vote.

(And if your favorite isn't mentioned, feel free to call me an idiot and write-in your preference below.)

Photo: Stephen M. Dowell / Orlando Sentinel

Posted by Rick Maese at 11:45 AM in Burning Question | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

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We see the Rally Girls bringing players treats before the game, the cheerleaders practicing, the town shutting down in preparation for Friday's big game, and the muted browns and grays of the West Texas landscape. Coach Taylor gives his big speech about the big loss the team has suffered, and we see an entire town nervous with anticipation. It might be my favorite five minutes of network television in a long time. I can attest, as a high school football player, that nothing has ever nailed what it feels like quite like that scene. Of all the songs this show has nailed over its three seasons, the musical director, W.G. Snuffy Walden, gets major props from me for picking "Devil Town" for that montage.

 

Anyway, I kick it back to you. Any scenes stick out in your mind that hooked you? Do you want to see the show come back for a fourth season?

 

Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose, 

 

Kevin:
 
It's funny that you mentioned the "Devil Town" scene because when you first asked what hooked me, the word that popped into my head was "montages." And that's a great one, but the first that really hit me in the gut came near the end of the pilot.
 
I wasn't at all sure about the first episode outside of that montage. The Jason Street-paralysis plot struck me as exactly the sort of overblown, gimmicky hook that The Wire would have eschewed. We both played football in high school (you at a much higher level) and the reality is that most games go by without a dramatic happening. If you're good, you win a lot of games pretty easily, and the superstar often glides around without being touched, much less shattered.
 
But that montage, set to the same music as the opening credits, if I recall correctly, was so poetic. It captured the town's investment in the team -- that weird mix of innocence, insanity, desperation, euphoria, pride, squandered dreams, etc., that you mentioned in your post. I didn't encounter that here in Baltimore but my first newspaper job had me covering the town of Salem, Va., in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Salem had one high school and the team contended for a state championship almost every year. The young boys in town dreamed of playing for Salem as much as Virginia Tech. The young girls started wearing their Salem windbreakers before they hit puberty. It was intense, in ways both wonderful and frightening, and Friday Night Lights took me right back to Salem with that montage.
 
So I watched the second episode and pretty soon, the character work pulled me all the way in. Not only do I wish Eric Taylor had coached me in school, I wish I could hire him as some kind of life coach now. Especially if his wife (a covert contender for sexiest woman on the show) came around sometimes. I've been married 10 years and they are the best representation of a successful couple I've ever seen on television. They share a deep affection and ability to make fun of one another in ways only life partners can. But they can also be pigheaded and reactionary without jeopardizing their underlying bond. It's really beautiful work.  
 
So many of the characters took on a pleasing complexity. We saw Jason's evolution from a guy paralyzed in body and life to an adult who could apply his old football leadership skills to work and family. We saw Smash flirt with the devil on his shoulder but never forfeit the basic charm and decency he learned from his mother. I could go on. I love Landry's Christian garage band, Matt's awkwardness, Buddy's follies (his recent strip club fight broke me up completely) and well, I better stop.
 
Tell me more about your love of Coach Taylor (neck and neck with Sandy Cohen as my favorite dad and husband in television history) and steer us to the inevitable conversation about the respective hotness of Lyla, Tyra and Julie.

Childs 

 

KVV

Kevin:

Totally agree about the power of little moments between Eric and Tami. For example, I loved his tone when steering her away from buying a new house this season. He danced the line between indulging her dream and being the realist and never stopped sounding like a real person. The writing for those characters is good, but the actors deserve a ton of credit for mastering tone, facial expressions and physical chemistry. I think watching them carried me through a lot of the disappointments of Season 2.

Look, it's pretty clear what happened to that season. They didn't have a clear plan for what they wanted to say past Season 1. They barely got renewed. So in a grab for greater popularity, they pumped up the melodrama, especially with the ridiculous Tyra murder angle. The writers and producers showed commendable understanding of what would seem true to the show throughout Season 1. But the murder storyline was a brazen misstep and piled on top of that, you had the awkwardness of them getting Coach Taylor back to Dillon. It just didn't work and given that Season 1 had been such a self-sufficient narrative, I believed FNL was only tarnishing itself by going on.

But they gradually won me back. I don't remember the individual Season 2 episodes as well, but a lot of the Smash stuff remained compelling as did the maturation of Julie Taylor. This season has offered near-total redemption, with moving conclusions to the Smash and Street storylines, the ongoing complexity of the Taylor family, the collapse of Buddy and the J.D. storyline (Coach Taylor's mixture of toughness, wariness and grudging politeness to the overzealous father has been spot-on.)

Now, on to the ladies. I don't know if you've seen the movie PCU. But there is this space cadet college senior who's doing his thesis on Gene Hackman and Michael Caine movies. So he spends the whole movie watching television, waiting for said movies. Finally, a flick featuring both Caine and Hackman comes on and he has his eureka moment, screaming, "I can finally stop watching TV!" That was how I felt when Lyla and Julie were standing together before the same bathroom mirror in a recent episode.

And here's what I decided. Lyla is clearly the most beautiful woman on the show. We were watching recently and Caroline (my wife) noted that her storylines have been boring this year. "Yeah, but she's really hot," I replied.

Caroline waited for a second and said, "Yeah, she is." So if Lyla's hotness is enough to justify her existence to my wife, well, that's something. Here's my problem, however. She's too gorgeous to be a high school senior stuck in small-town Texas. She looks like a starlet who's dating Derek Jeter, and nothing about Minka Kelly's performance makes me forget that.

I don't know why you're pussyfooting around Julie Taylor's desirability. She's the perfect attainable-but-not-really high school hottie. You know there are dorks all over Dillon High secretly lusting after Julie Taylor. She's smart and nice, so she seems like a real possibility to the kind of guys who know that Lyla Garrity exists only in the realm of fairies and elves. The kicker is that Julie is way too hot to date those guys. But the fact that they feel they could ask her out is enough to make her hotter than Lyla in reality.

After that disturbing trip into my high school psyche, I'll toss a relatively benign question back to you. If the show continues past this season, where will it go? Who will last? And for the record, if Tim manages a fourth season with the Panthers, I'm done.

Childs

Childs,

Midway through the first episode of the second season, when Gracie Taylor was born and Wilco's "Muzzle of Bees" provided the backing track, Eric and Tami exchanged a look and I thought "Well that pretty much seals it. This is the greatest show ever. Never in my life did I think I'd hear "Muzzle of Bees" on network television." And of course, by the end of the episode, after Landry and Tyra decided to throw the attempted rapist's dead body in the river, I felt completely betrayed, like someone had stolen the last 10 pages of an FNL script and swapped them with an episode of Law and Order.

Where the second season really went astray, though, was that it drifted too far away from the football field. The first season had its share of storylines that, in retrospect, stretched the bounds of believability -- I think the Panthers won their last seven games on last-second plays, and Tim's Mrs. Robinson dalliance with the hot neighbor was a bit much -- but the fact that the universe was always grounded in the week-to-week doings of the football team gave it a specific focus. The second season lacked that, starting with the fact that we were supposed to buy into the fact that Tim Riggins was BFFs with the star quarterback, even though it turns out he was a sophomore. (Didn't Jason Street have any friends his own age? Cripes, no wonder Buddy was mad when Lyla and Jason said they were getting engaged. Turns out she was like 15.) By the time they put the silly murder storyline to bed, got Coach Taylor back in Dillon and started to focus on football again, the writer's strike doomed the entire thing. The low point, I think, was the episode where Tim saved Julie from a tornado.

It's funny you mention that Minka Kelly is so hot, her presence seems justifiable even to your wife because my wife doesn't seem to mind my running commentary on Lyla's hotness as long as she can continue to swoon over Taylor Kistch's portrayal of Tim Riggins. It used to be I didn't think he was much of an actor, but he's really grown on me. His final scene when he tearfully told Street he hoped he would get everything he wanted in life, and then watched his quarterback convince his baby momma to give them a shot was probably my favorite moment in Season 3 that didn't involve Smash.

What would make me stick around for Season 4? I'm probably in the minority, but I'd like to see the show shift its focus to a whole new group of Dillon kids. I'd love to see Riggins and Saracen go to college, Lyla leave for Vanderbilt, and Tyra start working shifts at the Landing Strip. (Or whatever fate awaits her.) The writing on this show is so good that I could easily see myself getting invested in another group of football players. JD McCoy is a decent start -- the dynamic between athletic prodigy and crazy father could make for a two-season arch -- but I want to get to know an offensive lineman or a linebacker on next year's Panther squad and follow his story. I want to see a Terrell Owens-esque receiver in a hot tub full of Rally Girls. (By the way, can we get another powder puff football game? Thanks.) As long as the show remains anchored by Eric and Tami Taylor, and even Buddy Garrity, I think it can succeed. I think if Riggins hung around Dillon to drink beer and Saracen became an assistant coach, it would mirror where so many teen dramas go wrong. They hang on to characters for too long instead of trying to reinvent and in this case, have the team, and the high school, remain the focus of the show.

I wonder what Slamming Sammy Meade thinks of all this, 

KVV 

Kevin,

Wow, yeah, the tornado. I really had blocked out a lot of Season 2. You raise a good point about getting away from the football, but I have mixed feelings on that subject, because the game scenes have always strained credulity. The most recent episode was a perfect example with JD's Joe Montana scramble in the muck. I mean, really, if you had Riggins, wouldn't you just slam him off tackle and call it a night? Has Riggins ever been tackled by one guy in the history of the show? But no, every game has to be like the state final in Hoosiers.

You know I've complained as much as anyone about the characters not aging, so I'm right there with you in wanting some newbies to be integrated. I wouldn't mind if Riggins screws up his scholarship and becomes a background character as he follows his brother into useless semi-depravity. I also wouldn't mind if Lyla gets stuck in Dillon because of Buddy's irresponsibility. Those strike me as the sorts of things that actually happen to kids in small towns, or anywhere really.

I'm intrigued by the redistricting plot, because the intra-town rivalry was a compelling subplot in Buzz Bissinger's classic book. And JD's dad as Marv Marinovich has potential as well. They've regained my trust with this character-driven Season 3, so no matter where they go with the plot, I'll go with them.

Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose,

Childs

Childs,

OK fine, I'll admit it before we get out of here, Julie Taylor has become a stone-cold hottie, and I'm not going to apologize for it. I actually thought the scene where she came into the house and looked in the mirror, shortly after losing her V-card by the lake with Matt, was one of the truly tender moments of the entire series. And her scene with her mom, where they both realized this meant she couldn't be daddy's little girl anymore, was really touching.

Since we've spent plenty of time talking about the ladies of this show, I'd be remiss if I let us close without mentioning my favorite one of all: Corrina Williams, or as she's known in our house, Mamma Smash. I absolutely adore that woman (played by Liz Mikel), and believe she's stolen every scene she's ever been in. As thrilling as it was earlier this season to see Smash juke and cut around Texas A&M defenders (inspired by one of Coach Taylor's greatest speeches in the history of the show) it was even more satisfying when he told his mama he was going to college to play ball.

All the way to state (and hopefully beyond),

KVV 

Posted by Kevin Van Valkenburg at 9:35 AM in The Conversation | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

The last time U.S. women figure skaters did not medal at the Olympics was 1994.

If the World Championships held in Los Angeles last week were any indication, next season is going to be a long, cold winter.

U.S. champion Alissa Czisny, she of the perpetual yips, dug herself such a deep hole in the short program that no amount of perfectly executed spins, spirals and jumps in the free skate could boost her into the top 10. Her short program was so atrocious that she was relegated to skating her finale in a black hole Saturday night before NBC prime time.

Had Czisny finished the competition just three places higher -- in eighth -- she and teammate Rachael Flatt, a worlds rookie who finished a respectable fifth, would have secured three spots for the U.S. at the Olympics in February. Instead, it's just two.

"The outcome is not in my hands," said Czisny, 21, a lovely skater except when it counts. "There's nothing I can do about it." 

Yes, that must have been someone else out there on her skates.

Flatt, 16, appears to be the real deal, an athlete who just gets better and better with experience and seems to have had all of her nerves surgically removed.

That's one U.S. skater in the Olympic mix. The others?

Kimmie Meissner, 19, the 2006 world champion and 2007 U.S. champion from Bel Air, has Olympic experience and says she's over the hip injury that ended last season early. There's a pair of 15-year-old skaters: 2008 U.S. champion Mirai Nagasu, who was hobbled this year by a growth spurt and a foot injury; and Caroline Zhang, former junior world champion and U.S. 2008 bronze medalist. 

Sasha Cohen, 24, the 2006 Olympic silver medalist, might or might not return. Her showing in Turin means she get an automatic berth to the U.S. championships in January, where the Olympic team will be selected.

Michelle Kwan, a five-time world champion and nine-time U.S. title holder, said on NBC that she is training, "very seriously ... I've got my triples down ... I haven't been home eating potato chips."

But Olympic figure skating is a younger woman's sport. At the 2006 Winter Games, Japan's Shizuka Arakawa, 24, became the oldest woman to win Olympic gold in more than 80 years. The previous "geezer" was a 27-year-old Brit at the 1908 Olympics.  

When pressed on her plans, Kwan, who will be 29 by the next Olympics, said, "You've got to see what the competition is." 

If that's the case, she might want to keep working on her gig as an NBC analyst. As good as Kwan was in her hey day (1996-2004) -- and she was a joy to watch -- the future appears to belong to women a decade younger. Kim Yu-Na of South Korea easily grabbed the world title from Japan's Mao Asada, who finished fourth.

Kim, 18, left everyone in her rearview mirror with a tremendous short program that was just a preview of her free skate. But she didn't let up in the free skate and, with a combined score of 207.71, she became the first woman to break the 200-point mark.

It's hard to think of anything Kim can't do, and that includes standing atop the podium in February.

"You can't keep your eyes off her," Kwan said. "She has the whole package. It's unstoppable."

Asada, also 18, is a two-time Grand Prix Final winner in addition to being the 2008 world champion. She is Kim's artistic and athletic rival and has a triple axel in her arsenal that she's not afraid to use.

Other skaters look strong, as well. Worlds runner-up Joannie Rochette of Canada beat Kim and Asada in the free skate at other competitions. Rochette, 23, has a tendency to be a little too workmanlike as she goes about checking off the elements in her program, but that's fixable.

Japan's Miki Ando, 21, has now bested teammate Asada twice on the world stage, taking the gold in 2007 and the bronze this year (an injury forced her to withdraw last year). Her problem is that while she easily completed her jumps Saturday night, there was no artistic glue holding those leaps together as part of a whole program. Again, fixable.

So where does that leave U.S. women? 

"Improving," said Kwan on NBC, which has shelled out $820 million to broadcast the Winter Games and has to hope she's right. "We have to learn from this: Get stronger, work on the jumps, get faster, get consistent."

And all in the next 10 months.

Posted by Candus Thomson at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

My bracket was busted on the first couple days of the tournament, but that’s not the reason I’m switching allegiances. With only four teams remaining in the men’s NCAA tournament, I know who I’m going for: the University of Connecticut Hustlers – er, I mean, Huskies. Until NCAA officials yank their heads from the sand, they deserve to deal with Heisman winners on the take, bowl champions with deep funding and Final Four teams who accept the NCAA’s rulebook for what it really is: an idle threat.

Let’s begin with an analogy:

In the city limits, Baltimore has more than 600,000 residents. To police this population the Baltimore Police Department employs more than 3,000 officers.

The NCAA oversees nearly 400,000 student-athletes. To police this population, the NCAA employs fewer investigators than Mayberry.

No, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it does speak to the NCAA’s priorities. We know the NCAA likes coming up with rules, they’ve just shown little interest in actually enforcing them.

It reminds me of the classic Seinfeld scene in which Jerry derides the rental-car agent: “You know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to hold the reservation and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.”

The way the NCAA chooses to divert its resources tells us exactly how much interest it has in enforcing its own rules.

By the last count I heard, the NCAA, which brings in more than a half-billion dollars in revenue each year, employed just three full-time investigators and about two dozen others who are used on a contract basis. This is a small part of the reason why the NCAA never unearths any wrongdoing. It waits for the news media (lately, Yahoo Sports), to force them into action.

Dan Wetzel is Yahoo's esteemed sports columnist and one of the two journalists who broke the UConn story (the other reporter was Adrian Wojnarowski). He says the NCAA uses 20 investigators.

"That isn't nearly enough," Wetzel said in an email this weekend. "They have the resources to do more, but not the will."

It’d all make for a really good sixth season of The Wire, where we’d find a group of men and women eager to bend the rules because another group of men and women see no incentive to enforce them.

Instead, the NCAA is more concerned with making sure kids don't get free T-shirts or rides home from practice. They make sure the bars and restaurants surrounding their tournament sites don’t use their logo and they make damn sure reporters on press row drink from an NCAA-sanctioned paper cup. The truth is, it’d cost the circus too much money in lost revenue if it ever punished one of its clowns.

So why doesn’t the NCAA police its schools better? The general explanation is money, but the simple answer is resources. A couple of investigators might be able to handle the Missouri Valley, but not all 300 member schools. So the real question is why doesn’t the NCAA invest more in the enforcement of its rulebook? Again, the answer is probably simple: It goes against the NCAA’s self-interests.

Forget the non-profit status, the NCAA is a business. And coming down hard on its member schools – particularly those from BCS conferences – is effectively pinching the NCAA’s revenue streams.

The system is one giant conflict of interest. It’s a kangaroo court of blindfolded marsupials. The infractions committee are made up of presidents from the member institutions. Punishing its member schools directly impacts the NCAA’s own pocketbooks. And exposing wrongdoing undermines the sanctity of competition and the farce that is the NCAA’s “amateur” status.

They don't want to find cheating; and when they do, they'd prefer not to acknowledge it.

I keep coming back to the mess at USC, another litany of wrongdoings unearthed by Yahoo. Granted, a public university such as UConn is different than a private institution like USC. (When public money is involved, an institution really has no choice but to investigate itself.) The case against Reggie Bush -- and by extension USC -- was so damning, complete with bank statements and audio recordings. But here we are, nearly three years later and the NCAA has still taken no action.

Here’s why the UConn case will be different (and why it won’t): The NCAA is very interested in setting precedents. UConn laughed at the NCAA’s rules, skirted those rules and ultimately illustrated why the rules are inadequate. You can bet that the NCAA’s challenge now will be to use UConn to set a precedent while punishing them as lightly as possible.

UConn will do what cheating schools do: They investigate themselves and then recommend a slap on the wrist. Of course, no school will investigate unless someone has the goods on them. They’re not worried about the NCAA, but if a reporter has a source or some paperwork, then it's time to come (partially) clean. Unlike the NCAA, the schools will generally outsource the investigation, so there’s at least the illusion of impartiality. (For example, UCF just paid $60,000 to have its football program investigated third-party. No major problems were found.)

It’s such a joke of a process, akin to a rich father punishing his kid for breaking curfew. Dad doesn't want to come down too hard because the kid is the family and why rock the boat? So to avoid being grounded a month, the kid says, “My bad, Pops. You should ground me for a week.” Problem solved.

(Another reason USC is still whistling Disney songs: As a private school, their records are protected and they felt no need to self-investigate. They asked the Pac-10 to investigate. Still waiting on those results…)

Another thing to keep in mind and a reason to keep a close eye on Tallahassee the next several months, where school officials are ready to go to war to make sure Bobby Bowden achieves sainthood: If a school doesn’t like its punishment, it has recourse. A child might pout, but it has no choice but to accept its punishment. A university? It can sue. The result, as you can imagine is the NCAA investigators have to think twice before dropping a major punishment on rule-breakers.

Yahoo had the goods on UConn coach Jim Calhoun. The coach even acknowledges he “could have made a mistake.” So how did Calhoun respond? Contrition? No, of course not. He blamed the NCAA, saying its 508-page manual is too big and cumbersome. (Never mind the fact that Calhoun has a staff of employees at the university whose sole job is to deal with compliance questions.)

The truth is, the NCAA shouldn’t be in the investigation business. It should outsource the entire process and pay whatever it costs to bring dignity to the system. It’d be a huge undertaking, sure, but shouldn’t the NCAA be interested in maintaining a fair playing field?

And shouldn’t they be just as interested in enforcing their rules as they are in creating them. Otherwise – 500 pages or 5,000 pages – it’s just another big book collecting dust on the shelf.

Cartoon: Bob Englehart / Hartford Courant

Posted by Rick Maese at 6:00 AM in Today's Special | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

It's been a fun first week here at the Toy Department. Hopefully we did enough to convince you to stick around, or make you feel comfortable enough that you'll kick off your shoes and crack open a beer when you return. Part of the reason we started this blog was to break down the wall that exists between writers and readers, to convince you we're not the grumpy, bitter, failed novelists we're sometimes portrayed as.

To continue that mission, we're reprinting something that ran first on another Sun blog, The Life of Kings (R.I.P.) that we're going to try and turn into a semi-regular feature here. It's called my Greatest Day in Sports Writing. For better or worse, sports writing should be about emotion, whether it makes you angry, makes you laugh, or makes you feel like you were there. Sometimes the best moments of this job never make it into the newspaper, and they end up almost like deleted scenes in our notebooks. Hopefully this will be a place for them to find a home. To get us started, here is Kevin Van Valkenburg writing about playing baseball in the Dominican Republic.

Normally, we media types tend to shy away from telling stories about ... how we tell stories. My father, a prosecutor who also spent much of his life devoted to Montana politics, was always a fan of the folksy saying you probably know well: "Anyone who loves sausage or the law shouldn't watch either as they get made." Sometimes, I think that applies to sportswriting too. For the most part, people want to read stories about athletes, not read our memoirs (unless they're fellow sportswriters). We're not particularly interesting, when you break it down.

But there are exceptions, and hopefully the one I'm about to share is one. It represents my most rewarding day in sportswriting. And up to this point, I'd not written a word about it.

In 2005, just hours after the Orioles sent a bag of magic beans and four cracked bats to the Chicago Cubs for Sammy Sosa, sports editor Randy Harvey asked me if I wanted to hop on a plane to the Santo Domingo and write about what, if anything, Sosa still meant to his countrymen and women down in the Dominican Republic. It was a very cool assignment, and one that immediately made me wish I'd paid more attention during my four years of high school Spanish. (To this day, I can only conjugate Spanish verbs after two or three beers have loosened the cobwebs in my mind, and even then, it's not pretty.)

Having, up to that point, never traveled outside the country on assignment, I relied heavily on the kindness and courage of Sun photographer Liz Malby to guide me. Liz has shot photos in exotic and dangerous locations around the world during her journalism career, including multiple trips to Iraq, and if she sensed my nerves, she didn't let on.

For nearly a week, Liz and I drove through neighborhoods where houses are held together by little more than string, rusty nails and prayer. We sidestepped goats and petted mangy dogs. We got hugs from women so skinny, you wondered how long it had been since they'd had a real meal. It was heartbreaking. And beautiful, oddly enough. When you see third world poverty up close, and try to imagine the daily struggle some of those people endure just to stay alive, it's impossible for it not to feel personal by the time you leave.

One day, after seeing the tiny house that Sammy Sosa bought his mother after he signed his first professional contract ($3,000), we decided to just walk the neighborhoods of San Pedro de Macoris for awhile. We talked to neighborhood moms and waved hello to women hanging clothes to dry in the sun, until we came upon a group of kids, maybe 10 of them, playing baseball with a stick and a rolled up sock.

None of them was older than 11 years old, from what I can tell. Maybe one in three had shoes. I probably spent more on lunch today than they'll spend in a week on food. We sat and watched for several minutes, until one of the kids came over and tried to talk to me, laughing and speaking in rapid Spanish that I couldn't even begin to follow credibly despite my years of schooling. I remember he had big, sad brown eyes and a tee-shirt with holes everywhere. I can't say this for sure, but he looked like the poorest of all his friends. At one point, he ran inside his house, which was constructed of plywood and cardboard, and probably would have fallen over had I leaned on one of the walls, and when he came back out, he extended his hand and offered me two pieces of candy.

It looked like a Dominican Tootsie Roll. We sat on some rocks and chewed, smiling, as the other kids continued to play baseball. Mine tasted like burnt chocolate.

After several minutes, another kid -- a handsome, dark-skinned, lanky, raggedly-dressed 10-year-old with a huge smile -- came around the corner, glove in hand, and he saw Liz's big professional camera and smiled. She raised it up to take a picture of him, and just before the camera clicked, he flashed her the finger.

His buddies burst into laughter. I shook my head and smiled. Soon, the same kid who gave me the finger sat down next to me, and tried to explain in the most elementary Spanish how one makes a "beisbol." You take a piece of sponge, I gleaned, ball it up with string, wrap it inside an athletic sock, then tuck the sock inside itself. As I listened to this, a goat wandered through someone's yard to chew on some trash.

To my surprise, Bird-flipper bounced up from our talk and handed me a "bat", which was little more than a stick, broken off a tree, and stripped of bark. Several kids ushered me to stand at the "plate," (which is literally a dust-covered paper dinner plate) and the kid who gave me the finger ran out the "mound."

Bird-flipper, who I'll call Ace, crouched in his best Pedro Martinez stance. (It was uncanny how much he looked like Martinez to me that day, lanky arms and huge smile.) His friends sensed what was up, and began to chant, "Dominicano! Dominicano! Dominicano!"

I nodded to him, pretended to kick some dirt off my heels with the bat, and got into my best Manny Ramirez crouch. Ace wound up and fired a balled-up-sock fastball my way. For a second, it felt like the entire world had slowed down.

I took a gigantic cut, at least a half a second late, and whiffed like Reggie Jackson, nearly falling over.

The kids erupted.

They high-fived Ace, laughed and pointed, and I stood at home plate, sheepish, shaking my head.

"Dominicano! Dominicano! Dominicano!" they shouted. 

Ace hollered to me to get back in the box, and this time he threw me something a little slower, clearly on purpose, the way you might take pity on a friend.

I swung (in balance this time) and, as luck would have it, crushed it. (As much as one can crush a sock, I guess.) Every kid turned to watch as the beisbol went sailing through the blue sky, high above the tree line, until it plummeted back to earth, onto the roof of a nearby shack.

Again, the kids erupted.

They high-fived me this time, and then urged me to run around the "bases," which were paper plates and ragged dish towels. When I touched home plate, they began to chant, "Americano! Americano! Americano!"

Ace was laughing. He walked over and gave me a high five as I touched home.

I thought about those kids the entire plane ride home. The Sosa profile I wrote was fine. My bosses liked it, but reading it now, it feels like nothing special.

But I still have that other piece of candy that the kid with sad brown eyes handed me, sitting on my bedroom dresser.

Sun photo: Liz Malby

Posted by Kevin Van Valkenburg at 7:02 PM in My Greatest Day in Sportswriting | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

The Mint 400 -- The Great American Desert Race -- roars into the rugged wilderness surrounding Las Vegas  tomorrow (March 28), renewing a tradition that started in 1968 as a PR event for Del Webb's Mint, a downtown gambling joint that was later swallowed up by another casino. After a 20-year spin, the Mint 400 disappeared into sports lore but, after another 20 years of hibernation, was revived a year ago.

Perhaps more importantly, in the early '70s, the event earned a place in literary history as the reason why Sports Illustrated dispatched Dr. Hunter S. Thompson to Vegas to set down his observations on the race. Terry McDonell, currently the Editor-Sports Illustrated Group who became a friend of the late Dr. Thompson, said that Thompson came back with four- or five-thousand words that the magazine's editors felt were unusable and suggested that it all be boiled down to a long caption for some photos. Apparently, that was unacceptable to Thompson and the manuscript seems to be lost, McDonell said.

But Thompson did author a Rolling Stone magazine article about his odyssey in Sin City and then a book called Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a gonzo journalism manifesto at its drug-inspired and/or drug-addled finest.

Among the trappings of the Mint 400 are the Mint 400 Girls. And, yes, that's Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter in the black-and-white photo.  A video of last year's race is below (note: the mostly G-rated video has a couple of NSFW expletives at about the 1:05 mark when a VW Bug gets stuck).

Posted by Bill Ordine at 12:15 PM in Must-see Web TV | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

I have never been a slender man. I'm also neither particularly tall, particularly coordinated nor particularly light of foot. So athletic glory was not what the universe had in mind for me. Which is why, after three rounds of the NCAA tournament, my love for Levance Fields has expanded more quickly than my waistline ever did.

To be fair, Fields isn't exactly fat. It's just that the Pitt point guard has short, toneless arms and legs, a beer-barrel torso and a teddy-bear face. You just know that for all of his life, coaches and opponents have looked at him and thought, "That kid's not a player." Yet there Fields was last night, juking at the top of the key and draining a stepback three to give Pitt the lead with less than a minute left. There he was stealing the ball and laying it in to salt the game away.

In any NCAA vs. NBA debate, wondrous variety of size and shape has to be a point in the college game's favor. I can't imagine four more different looking people than Bryant "Big Country" Reeves, Khalid El-Amin, Mike Dunleavy Jr. and Joakim Noah. But all four helped lead teams to the Final Four in the last 15 years.

I mean, I love watching LeBron James, but in relation to me, he might as well be Zeus. He inspires lots of awe, little to no identification. Levance Fields, on the other hand, is my kind of dude.

So Fields got me thinking about my favorite fat athletes of all time. Who belongs among the phenoms of flab, the champions of chunk? 

Charles Barkley had my heart from the moment he appeared in Sports Illustrated with a box of pizza on his lap. During the 1984 Olympic Trials, when Bobby Knight ordered him to lose weight, a gloriously defiant Sir Charles decided to eat more. Then he went out and dominated the best college players in the land, enveloping rebounds on one end and rumbling the length of the court to throw monster dunks on terrified defenders. It didn't matter that blubber spilled over the top of his shorts as he did it. The fat boy from Alabama played himself into the lottery. Now, I know Barkley played at a relatively svelte 260 for most of his pro career. But he quickly let himself go in retirement, so we'll give him a pass.

Of course, you can't talk pantheon of pudge without mentioning Babe Ruth. It has always irritated me that people think Ruth was fat for his whole career. As a young man, he was tall and well-proportioned, the rare 1920s athlete who wouldn't look out of place in modern times. But you can't inhale beer and hot dogs forever and stay trim. Amazingly though, the Babe stayed productive. As a fat 37-year-old, he batted .341 with 41 homers and 137 RBIs. Ken Griffey Jr. wishes he aged so well.

Ruth is one of my favorite time-machine athletes. As in, if you owned a time machine and could bring him to the modern era exactly as he was in 1927, how would he do? Would his love of wine, women and food render him a laughingstock in an age when we're less tolerant of gluttonous men? Would his lack of fitness leave him unable to compete with the ripped modern athlete? Would he be the John Daly of baseball?

I'd like to think the Babe would do fine because no matter what he did to himself, he always dominated on the field.

Back to our Hall of Fat. I'm skeptical of including NFL linemen because extreme bulk is part of their job description. Maybe Refrigerator Perry slides in because he scored a touchdown in the Super Bowl, the type of fantasy that's normally off limits to fat boys.

Baseball is ripe with candidates. You have David Wells, who worshiped Ruth and defied his critics by pitching effectively into his 40s. There's Cecil Fielder and his son, Prince (an athlete named Prince almost has to be a wonderfully gifted fat dude, right?) And my favorite of all might be Rich Garces, aka "El Guapo." Garces wasn't a great talent, but he was an effective reliever for several years despite being the only pro I can remember who appeared as wide as he was tall. He gets extra points because he baffled hitters with a delivery that made it look like the ball was tumbling out of his ample midsection.

This choice might not connect with some readers but I always loved boxer James Toney, who won his first title at 160 pounds but somehow remained competitive as a pudgy, 5-foot-9 heavyweight. Toney was the rare guy who looked completely at home in a prize ring. You'd have thought he was sipping cocktails in a lounge chair as bikini models fanned him. He could stand two inches from an opponent and, with the slightest torques of his body or head, slip the worst damage. And he talked a lot of smack ... perfect for our little club.

I'm just getting the dough ball rolling here. Please submit other suggestions for the Hall of Fat. And Levance, keep playing the way you have and your plaque (crossed chicken wings for an emblem?) will be in the mail.

Posted by Childs Walker at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Here at the Toy Department, we want readers to feel like they can ask us anything. We may not have the answers, but we are great at faking it if we don't. So each week, we'll open up our email inbox and (toydepartment@baltsun.com) and have Sun columnist Rick Maese take a crack at addressing your concerns.

Maese, I saw that New Kids on the Block are touring again. You look like you were in a boy band at one point. From what I understand, you also used to live in Orlando. Did Lou Perlman get you this gig? Is it possible for me to get some kind of overweight Svengali to run my life?

I run across this type of misinformation from time to time and feel compelled to set the record straight: NKOTB never stopped touring. The left-wing media just refused to properly promote their long-running Strip Malls Across America tour. And yes,  an overweight Svengali is the way to go. I met mine via Craigslist, but allow me to warn you: Don't trust their pic. I hear there’s actually one overweight Svengali looking for work. Check him out here.

The Sun sports section sometimes says less than flattering things about my favorite teams. I think you should report on none of the bad things and all of the good things. Everyone knows you're just trying to drive sales with your sensationalism. What the hell is your problem? Also, do you think Lance Stephenson will pick Maryland? Thanks.

Thanks for writing, GW. A lot of people don’t realize this but the Sun and the Washington Post, an unrelated step-cousin publication printed down the road, actually meet every year prior to various sports seasons and they flip a coin. Heads is good cop, tails is bad. I hear Lance Stephenson is using a similar method to pick his college: heads is Kansas, tails is St. John’s. If the coin somehow lands on its side, he’s headed to College Park, though! So there’s that to look forward to.

Maese, how much money would you pay to see Van Valkenburg do the Ray Lewis dance, and then have a video of it uploaded to Youtube? I'll go in at least $10 after seeing him nearly drown trying to swim the butterfly. Also, did you see Pineapple Express? Hilarious.

 

Oh, playful readers. Like I needed an excuse to share with you video of Van Valkenburg in a Speedo (Warning: Do not view before eating.) I’m early in my research still, but I’m currently conducting a study for Goggles and Shaved Pits Quarterly and it appears that the ’08 Summer Games increased swimming participation by 40 percent in the United States. Unfortunately, this video of Van Valkenburg decreased it by 70. (And M. Phelps, if you liked Pineapple Express, check out the forthcoming film Harold and Kumar Go to the 2012 Olympics. You’ll love it.)

Maese, I'm going to be in town this season and I'm meeting woman down in Fells Point. She's pretty cute, and I want to impress her. How long should I wait before I tell her I'm actually an Aruban knight? Does that kind of thing still impress women?

Right in my wheelhouse, Sir Sid. The only thing I know better than cricket is relationships. If I can refer you to Chapter 7 of my out-of-print book, Will She Take Me Home? you’ll see that this is actually a pretty easy question. You don’t need to tell her you're Aruban knight. Most girls in Fells don’t know Aruba from Arbutus anyway. Here’s what you do, though: Tell her you know a guy who works the valet stand at the Hilton downtown where visiting teams stay. It is my experience (not first-hand) that this might get you places with the ladies. Good luck!

Maese, I suspect President Obama is exaggerating his abilities in pick-up basketball. He's way too skinny, and if I faced him, I would destroy him. If he played in the ACC, he would score like two points a game. Do you think I'm right?

How’s the weather in Venezuela?! Man, I wish I had 5 bolívares for every time someone asked me this one. President Obama can beat the ACC, the SEC, the FCC, the FDIC and the NYSE before lunchtime. Basically, between Obama and Matt Wieters, there’s very little to worry about these days.

Maese, how come no one told me newspapers were a shaky investment? WTF? A little heads up would have been nice, huh?

I wish you would have written me sooner, S. Zell. Financial advice is among my specialty areas (once, in college, I had 14 credit cards!) Newspapers, in fact, are a great investment. All you need is a flux capacitor (available at your nearest Circuit City) and a DeLorean.

Hey Maese. Love the new blog. I've noticed there are a lot of people contributing a variety of different things. Got anyone there who knows how to throw bleeping strikes? I'm running out of options here.

Thanks for the kind words. I think your problem is a little bit deeper than throwing strikes. Sounds like a spiritual problem, which happens to be right up my alley. Stop looking at the strike zone and thrust yourself into your life zone. I believe it was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who said, “All we need to do is want to achieve something great and then simply to do it. Never think of failure. For what we think, will come about.” (Then again, another famous Yogi said, “Baseball is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical.” So maybe you should find that other half.)

Maese, buddy, want to know if you can settle an argument between me and my friend. Who is the hottest gal at Dillon High school? Lyla Garrity, Tyra Collette or Julie Taylor? Thanks.

T-Rig, I’m sorry it took me so long to respond to your question. I began doing some research using the Google and before I knew it, a week had passed. Suffice it to say, all three of the young ladies are worthy of Maxim’s cover – and I’m thinking it should be the same cover. But let’s not compare and contrast. Let’s appreciate beauty for beauty’s sake. (BTW, Lyla by a Texas mile.)

 

Posted by Rick Maese at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell made some news Thursday at the owners' meeting in Dana Point, Calif., saying he'd be in favor of expanding the regular season to 17 or 18 games over the next few years. Under the proposal, which the NFLPA would have to sign off on, every team would get an extra home game, and they would also play another game at a neutral site. I can't imagine why the NFLPA would agree to this, since it would almost certainly shorten the careers of some of its membership, but I assume the few extra dollars dangled in their faces might at least make them consider the proposal.

It's just one more example, though, of the way the NFL (and its fans) view the players as meat to be thrown into the grinder, the wear and tear on their bodies be dammed. We don't like to talk about it, because it falls under the category of not wanting to see how sausage is made, but the life of an NFL player isn't particularly glamorous for 95 percent of those doing it. Yes, they get paid millions of dollars, but that's because billions of dollars are pumped into the game by advertisers who want to sell you beer or erectile dysfunction medication. The idea that players are paid well enough to deal with it -- and that they should simply shut up and ignore the fact they're almost guaranteed to have serious health issues after they retire as a result of the game's violence -- is insulting. They're the ones providing the entertainment. They should be the ones compensated.

The suggestion that these games would just be replacing preseason games already on the schedule is a joke. We all know that most of the people playing in those games won't even be on the roster two weeks after the final whistle. The toll on the starters -- especially positions that regularly require violent collisions -- would be far, far greater than in preseason games.

If the NFLPA does go ahead with Goodell's proposal, they ought to, at the very least, ask for this concession: If we want to take steroids or human growth hormone to stay healthy, or smoke marijuana for medicinal reasons to deal with the pain, let us.  

You might laugh, but that's the only way to make this proposal work. It's ridiculous to pretend that drugs aren't already a major part of life in the NFL. Teams could literally not field a full roster each week without painkillers, legal or otherwise. Marijuana isn't just a recreational drug for a lot of NFL players, it's the only way they can get out of bed on Monday mornings. And it's much less addictive than a painkiller like Vicodin, which is legal.

The reason we don't really care about how much punishment NFL players have to endure is because there is always a steady stream of hungry replacements streaming in from college, eager to jump right into the meat grinder as soon as there is a spot available.

You might see the NFL try to make the case that they can simply expand rosters to decrease the wear and tear on the starters, but that's a total farce. You've replaced two games that no one cared at all whether you won or lost with two games that are absolute must wins. Do you think a 35-year-old head coach is going to be able to step back and see the bigger picture and reduce the number of carries his star running back gets? Absolutely not. And why? Because he is under that much more pressure to win those two games. And so any player talented enough to make it eight years in the league essentially has the body of a nine-year veteran. Had Ray Lewis played 18-game seasons throughout his career, he'd likely already be retired right now, costing himself at least $24 million. Ed Reed's neck would have another full season of punishment on it, and he'd be one step closer to walking away. The NFLPA would be insane to approve this proposal without guaranteed contracts in return, but we know that is never going to happen.

For some reason, we've decided we care about the moral implications of MLB players using steroids -- "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN???" -- but when it happens in the NFL, we mostly shrug our shoulders. You know why? Because we know the human body shouldn't be able to run a 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds at 265 pounds, but we like watching a guy, like Shawne Merriman, who can. We'd just prefer they do whatever it is they have to do to get ready on Sunday in private, and that we never have to hear about it so we can go on pretending.

Let's at least get it out there in the open. Ricky Williams never should have been driven from the NFL simply because he needed marijuana to deal with the anxiety and pain of getting 400 carries a year. If a player gets hurt, maybe he should be able to use steroids to rehab. The alternative is a bunch of guys using walkers at 38, which might very well happen anyway.

Greed is driving his proposal, pure and simple. And if anyone thinks the NFL has a drug problem now, this is only going to make it worse. Let's at least be honest about it. We're the Romans and we want to see the gladiators chop one another into pieces for our entertainment. At least give them something for the pain.

"Are you not entertained watching Tom Brady's knee buckle?"  

Posted by Kevin Van Valkenburg at 9:34 AM in Ravens | Permalink | Comments (20)
        

Sure you'd rather stay inside all weekend re-reading your favorite Toy Department features. But let's face it, you're starting to smell bad. Bugs are circling your head. And it's time to move so someone can vacuum under the couch. As we do every Friday in this space, may we humbly suggest you do everyone a favor and, "Get out!"

There is no actual starting day in Maryland for trout fishing. If you don't keep what you catch--that is you practice catch and release--you can fish every day of the year.

But for those who like to put a little butter in the pan and fry up a few fillets, opening day is Saturday at 5:30 a.m. And, yes, there are people out there before dawn.

The state stocks many rivers and streams with trout and then closes the waterways for a few weeks to let the fish get settled in and spread out a bit.

It's easy to get started.

First, find a stocked spot near you by looking at www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries/#4d. The recent lack of rain (except for yesterday) means some spots, such as Gunpowder Falls from Cromwell Bridge to I-95, won't get fish until water levels rise.

The Daniels area at Patapsco Valley State Park is a good bet. Severn Run upstream of Route 3 in Anne Arundel County is another favorite. Other spots are Howard County's Laurel, Centennial and Elkhorn lakes. 

Get a freshwater license ($7.50 for five days; $20.50 annual) with a $5 trout stamp--the stamp helps pay for the stocking effort.

Buy a rod and reel, you don't need to spend more than $20-$25, or better yet borrow some tackle and a small net. Get some worms or a little jar of Power Bait and hooks, ranging from size No. 6 to 14.

Once along the stream bank or lake, bait up. If you're fishing moving water, add a piece of split shot or two to your line and cast across and upstream of a hole or pool and let the bait float down as you slowly reel in the line.

The rest is up to you. Of course you can cut out all this stuff and just bring someone who knows what they're doing.

Either way, enjoy. 

Posted by Candus Thomson at 8:30 AM in Get Out | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Each week at the Toy Department, in addition to offering one of our writers the chance to endorse something they feel strongly about, we'll also give one of our writers a chance to dismiss something -- however unpopular that opinion may be -- in a segment we call "Dead. To. Me."

This week, Candy Thomson makes the case for why it's time to get over the Colts midnight move

 .

Let's pause for a moment to remember that the Colts left Baltimore for Indianapolis 25 years ago Sunday.

OK, that's enough.

Yes, The Sun will have stories about that fateful day just as sure as Gov. Martin O'Malley will take credit for the grass turning green as part of his "Smart, Green and Growing" campaign. (Now don't you get all mad, Marty. Snarky press is better than no press at all).

When it comes to anniversaries ending in "5" or "0," news organizations can't help themselves. Just once, I'd like to see coverage of the 16th anniversary or the 31st anniversary of something. Won't happen, though.

But just because we lack the discipline to stop rehashing old news doesn't mean the good people of Maryland should sink to our level and wallow in grief and anger. 

Yes, the great escape in the Mayflower vans was a blow to sports and civic pride. Yes, it took a dozen years to right that wrong by stealing another city's team and spending taxpayer money on a new football stadium that requires fans to shell out money for a seat license before shelling out more money for the actual seat.

Time out: I am the daughter of a died-in-the-wool Colts fan who proudly wears her Ravens shirt IN PITTSBURGH, where she now lives. My granddad worked for Beth Steel and saved up money to move from a rented house on Hudson Street to his own home on Fait Avenue in "the county." My parents met while bowling in the Standard Oil league and their first date was at Bud Paulino's on Lombard Street in Highlandtown. So, I GET IT! (Otherwise my 81-year-old mom will beat the crap out of me)

Start the clock: The Colts are gone. We need to move on, especially the folks who don't have a dog in this fight. I mean, when Indianapolis came here three seasons ago for the playoffs, tons of Baltimore fans who screamed about the Mayflower hijacking and the Irsays were barely alive in 1984. You may be old enough for a personal seat license now but it does not include grieving rights. 

And anyway, things turned out OK. The Ravens won a Super Bowl. Joe Flacco looks like the real deal. On any given Sunday, the noise level at M&T Bank Stadium creates goosebumps on goosebumps and sets off car alarms.

Besides, you could be a Detroit Lions fan. How lousy is that?

The five stages of grief are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Sports are all about the moments and the memories. Real Baltimore Colts fans have both. For the sake of our sanity and future generations, we need to take that final step.

***

Poll: Compare the Baltimore and Indianapolis players at each position and pick the best Colts overall.

Posted by Candus Thomson at 6:00 AM in Baltimore Colts, Dead To Me, Today's Special | Permalink | Comments (71)
        

I think we can all agree that grandparents and newspapers are among the very last people on the planet to understand new technology. But why is at that NBA players seem to be on the cutting edge of this stuff? They got the best cell phones and the latest music players. Their laptops are so up-to-date, you’d think they simply save the receipt and exchange for a new model every Monday.

Gilbert Arenas was hip to blogs before most everyone else. Shaq Twitters when he’s walking through the mall and Charlie Villanueva broke the news of Jim Calhoun’s health condition last week via a tweet. (Sports by Brooks has more.)

To satisfy our need-to-know, we need athletes in other sports to catch up. Here, I’ll even help them get started with suggested debut tweets:

Jon Scheyer had a random thought while shaving this AM: mom was right about my face freezing this way.

Rafael Palmeiro just heard about the HOF. So excited. Booking a block of rooms in Cooperstown now.

Rafael Palmeiro Nevermind that last tweet.

Greivis Vasquez thinks UConn reminds me of an AAU team.

Gary Williams advises you to ignore Greivis' Twitter updates. It’s cultural. Message gets lost in translation.

Coach K just sat down for dinner. I’m so much better at eating than everyone else.

Miguel Tejada just got the news: 1 yr probation. lol i love this country

Daniel Snyder At owners meeting. Just proposed a 162-game schedule for next season. Cash money!!! LOL

Lance Armstrong woke up today in quite a bit of pain here. Not sure if it’s enough for another book deal, though. : (

Myles Brand is looking the other way.

Ralph Friedgen just caught Franklin with his feet on my desk. Again.

Pat Summitt is bored.

A-Rod wonders Why does that reporter lady keep following me?

A-Rod Nevermind. That’s Madonna.

Matt Wieters is still waiting. But if I have to spend another three months eating at an Olive Garden in Bowie, Im gonna go crazy.

Steve Bisciotti At owners meeting. Wish Snyder would STFU already.

Dave Trembley If ur not busy tomorrow, stop by stadium. Holding pitcher tryouts. Bring own glove.

What else?

Posted by Rick Maese at 3:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Every Thursday in the Toy Department brings another installment of "From the Editor's Desk," a weekly dispatch from Tim Wheatley. For the record, this feature has been mandated from management and there's not a whole lot we can do about it. We're not even sure what he does. We suspect he has photos of the publisher or something. To ask him questions, register complaints or recommend raises for the Toy Department staff, email him at tim.wheatley@baltsun.com.  

My title is Assistant Managing Editor/Sports. It’s kind of a confusing title, but in essence, I’m king of the Toy Department. My Toy Department colleagues don’t always -- OK, never -- show me that kind of respect, but they have allowed me to have a weekly spot in their space. Even though we have been referred to as the Toy Department, we deal with serious stories every day. Jeff Barker’s exclusive story on Maryland being on the hook for a $1 million payment to offensive coordinator James Franklin is an example of using public records requests. Barker also broke the story that the Feds were investigating Miguel Tejada for perjury. Sports is not all fun and games. Sports is also about money, drugs, sex, lies and videotape (thank you, Bill Belichick). And we report on all aspects of it.

What I’d like to do in this space is answer your questions and tell you how and why we do some things in the sports department and the Toy Department. I want to answer critics and discuss some of the difficult coverage decisions we’ve been forced to make as the economy, technology and changing times have depressed the media business, but not us. I want to engage you in the debate as well.

Please send questions, suggestions, complaints or suggested topics for discussion to tim.wheatley@baltsun.com.  

So what does an Assistant Managing Editor/Sports do? I tell people all the time that I have a great job. I have a TV in my office and it’s on sports channels all day. And they pay me for it. In reality, I manage people and content -- and go to a lot of meetings. I’m responsible for all the Sports content in The Baltimore Sun and on baltimoresun.com. I’m also responsible for managing the sports staff. Take a guess which is the easiest part of my job.

Since I don’t have any questions from you yet, I’ll fill you in on some of the topics that I’ve fielded from readers the past two weeks.

Maryland men vs. Maryland women’s basketball: Several callers complained that the Terps women didn’t get a big enough splash on the sports cover when they won the ACC tournament. They countered that when the men lost a game (to Wake Forest) we made a huge deal out of it. They also noted that our coverage of Maryland men in the NCAA tournament was more than the women. When the Terps women won the ACC tournament we did put it at the top of the page with a large headline. The main photo on the page went with a very good story about Morgan State coach Todd Bozeman, who had stepped in to raise his nephew when his older brother died. I wish I had a do-over on that one. Maryland’s OT win over Duke deserved not only the big headline, but the main photo as well.

I think our NCAA tournament coverage was fair. When the men made the tourney, we ran a photo on the front page of the newspaper. We did the same for the women. Once the tournament started, the men’s coverage was a little more dominant, but not by much. The Maryland women have had a terrific season and our coverage will only increase as they advance farther into the tournament. But we also know that there is more interest in the Maryland men’s basketball team than the women’s. That’s not just my opinion. It’s verified by TV ratings, Web hits and the blogs and comment boards. You may disagree and you may also argue that if we covered women’s sports more, that would drive interest. It’s a debate I’ve had since I entered the business. Feel free to weigh in with your comments.

Favorite call of the week: Are Ralph Friedgen and Brenda Frese related? I saved him from making a bad bet on that one.

TV listings: I get a lot of calls about TV so to save a few phone calls, here are answers to the most asked questions. MLB is the Major League Baseball network. You can only get it if you pay extra on cable or satellite. CSNP is Comcast Sports Network Plus. It’s comes into play when Comcast has two live events on at the same time. CSNP then moves to the C-SPAN. For most viewers that’s Ch. 17.

One final thought on TV: If our listings say the game starts at 7, don’t call me at 6:58 and wonder why the game isn’t on. Just reset your clock and save me the call.

Posted by Tim Wheatley at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

For a variety of reasons, I was a little surprised to read that gymnast Shawn Johnson has a stalker and that he was arrested outside of "Dancing with the Stars." I mean, I understand that there are sick people and they're motivated by sick impulses. But there were other things I just didn't understand: 1) Why do people watch "Dancing with the Stars?" and 2) Shawn Johnson? A 17-year-old Olympian? Really?

KVV interviewed Johnson before the Summer Games and he reports she sounded like Rainbow Brite on helium. So why? WHY?

OK, we're not going to make light of the danger posed or the gravity of the situation surrounding Johnson. But it does raise a question I've often thought about: If you could follow an athlete or team around the country for an extended period of time, who would you choose? Not like a paparazzo. And not in that creepy never-showering, cutting-out-letters-from-magazines, wearing-black-eyeliner kind of way. I mean like a Grateful Dead fan. Like a Phish groupie. Like Ryan Seacrest's team of hairstylists.

This isn't simply about watching your favorite team; rather you've got to decide which athlete or team is guaranteed fun, provides something different every time out and is certain to never grow stale. I've got the team category narrowed down to the Cubs and any English soccer team. And in the athlete category, I've got Tiger Woods, Lebron James and Anna Kournikova.

And frankly, right now I'm leaning toward Anna. Nah, the sports part isn't that cool, but her life is like a choose-your-own-adventure book. Just this morning she rang the bell of the NYSE (possibly rescuing our economy in the process) and yesterday she played beer pong with Jimmy Fallon.

Photo: AP

Posted by Rick Maese at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Big-time soccer is coming to M&T Stadium with AC Milan playing Chelsea so we thought we'd take a look at an aspect of the game that helps make the real football a worldwide favorite -- the drama. Or should we say the melodrama. Oleee, Ole Ole with an assist from "Weird Al" Yankovic.

Posted by Bill Ordine at 1:05 PM in Must-see Web TV | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Some readers might remember that until last summer, Childs Walker wrote a weekly column on fantasy sports for The Sun. That ritual died for the cause of reducing newsprint costs (tough business, newspapers). But with the Toy Department open and its aisles boundless, Childs is back with his insights, laments and odes to joy regarding pretend baseball and pretend football.

I hate to revive my fantasy ramblings on a down note, but I'm feeling as burned out with my teams as I have since college (when I stopped playing altogether in favor of listening to gloomy music and pursuing women).

Normally, fantasy baseball guides are like cute girls in tanktops, suggestive of spring and life beginning anew. But this year, they're as bad as an e-mail from the boss, reminding me of tasks I haven't completed. I just stare at my 2009 Baseball Forecaster and think about all the draft prep I haven't done, all the middle relievers I don't know, all the sleepers still slumbering in my resistant brain.

OK, this is ridiculous. Can one really be depressed about fantasy sports? Are there fantasy shrinks (I'm scared to look)?

So here's what I'm going to do: Just have fun. I've spent so many years preparing so hard for fantasy baseball, that perhaps I've trapped myself in a soul-crushing loop. Must every year involve a dozen guides and serious analysis of strikeout rates in early January? I'm saying no. I'll enter 2009 with Sam Walker's Fantasyland in mind. For those who didn't read the book, Walker, a Wall Street Journal columnist, hired a research staff in his quest to win the Tout Wars expert league in 2004. He finished well back but returned to Tout Wars in 2005, buoyed by little preparation, and won the league.

I'm not predicting such lofty accomplishments for this Walker. But in the name of my quest for joy, here are 10 players who should be fun to own in '09.

Clayton Kershaw - Nothing is more fun than owning the pitcher who explodes into a full-fledged ace. This Dodgers lefty has as much talent as anyone in the game and began to harness it down the stretch last year. He might not go all 1985-Dwight-Gooden on the league. But then again, he might and that's a possibility worth paying for.

Shin-Soo Choo - Korea was the surprise darling of the World Baseball Classic. Choo could be the first position player from said nation to be a fantasy star. I'm talking .300 with 20 homers and 20 steals, aka Nick Markakis numbers. And I dig his name.

Tim Lincecum - OK, so he won't be fun in the sense that his excellence will come as a surprise. But part of the joy of fantasy sports comes from watching your guys on television. And no one is more fun to watch than Lincecum. His build and delivery are so far from the scouting ideals, but he's such a great athlete that he can repeat his funky motion 100 times a game without hurting himself or becoming obvious to hitters. I know Crash Davis said strikeouts were fascist but allow me to disagree. They're a great pitcher's way of saying that he needs little help to paint his canvas.

Elijah Dukes - He's fun in the same sense as dropping acid or driving too fast on a curvy road. With his great strength and surprisingly acute batting eye, he might give you the season of your life. Or he might send you careening into fantasy madness and/or death. Hey, if you can't take risks in pretend baseball, where can you?

Miguel Cabrera - Because he's still only 26 and given the general stench around the Tigers, I think people have forgotten that he's a Hall-of-Fame hitter. He's every bit as potent as say, Manny Ramirez.

Jay Bruce - He was everybody's prospect darling last spring but scared the faithful by flatlining through the middle of the season. He rebounded to hit 14 homers in the last two months and his home park will only help him in his quest to belt them at that rate all the time. Guys who have the Wieters glow and disappoint slightly are always the best breakout candidates. Bruce sits at the top of that list for '09.

Brian Fuentes - I know some people dismiss him as a situational lefty but that's nonsense. He was just as good as Francisco Rodriguez last year and that was with Coors Field as an albatross. As K-Rod's replacement in a better park for a better team, Fuentes should be awesome.

Jimmy Rollins - Because he seemed as safe a bet as any fantasy first rounder last season and will be available in the second this year. He doesn't need 30 homers to be great. He's durable, he always makes contact and he steals 40 a year. So if he gets the homers back to 20, pow, you have an elite player.

Justin Upton - He's got that Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds kind of talent and the same post-hype breakout potential as Bruce. Actually, I might like him even more for next year when he'll be 22 and primed for the post-post-hype breakout. Anyway, you want him.

Randy Johnson - He's the most unique pitcher I've seen (and one of the most intimidating athletes I've interviewed). So it shouldn't surprise me that he can still go at age 45. He's someone I'd tell my kids about, so owning him when he gets his 300th win seems like exactly the sort of thing that would make a fantasy season fun.

Posted by Childs Walker at 12:00 PM in Childs Play/Fantasy | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Every Thursday we'll present two Sun sportswriters squaring off in a video feature called Faceoff. This week, Rick Maese and Childs Walker run down the next round of games in the men's NCAA Tournament.

Posted by Rick Maese at 10:30 AM in Faceoff | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

In a warehouse corner office, overlooking Camden Yards... 

Peter Angelos: MacPhailure! In my office! Now!

Andy MacPhail: Mr. Angelos, you know I don't appreciate it when you call me that.

Angelos: There is no time for backtalk, MacPhailure. Time is of the essence! Some gentlemen that I regularly lunch with have informed me that spring training is fast approaching, and as I look over my personal planner under Offseason Goals, I have two things underlined: 1. Crush Nestor Aparicio 2. Sign Mark Teixeira ... How are we doing on the latter, MacPhailure? I want to make certain I'm out of town when we hold the press conference to announce his arrival!

MacPhail: Um, sir, I'm not sure how to break this to you, but ... we were unable to sign Mark. We put together a competitive offer within our budget. And as you requested, we made certain to point out that we were the only club offering Berger cookies, aquarium tickets and a slightly used complete set of Homicide: Life on the Street DVDs in our package. But in the end, he decided to go in a different direction.  

Angelos: He decided to play in Japan, eh? Damn the declining American dollar! (Slams fist on desk.) I can't believe anyone would want to play there after seeing Lost in Translation. Do you think Teixeira has seen it? We should have sent him a copy. Nothing happens the entire film, MacPhailsalot! It's just a bunch of talking and bad karaoke! Total foolishness. The groundskeeper from Caddyshack doesn't even get laid! If I didn't have better things to do, I'd throw together a class action lawsuit and put Focus Features out of business. 

MacPhail: Um ... sir, Mark didn't go to Japan. He signed a multi-year deal with the Yankees.

Angelos: He what? That is unacceptable! Get him on the phone, this instant!

MacPhail: Mr. Angelos, I'm sorry, but you really can't do that. There are rules about tampering, and you of all people obviously understand that it would violate a number of legal clauses put in place to discourage this kind of thing. I believe you actually negotiated a few of ...

Angelos: That's enough, MacPhailing! I'll handle this myself. Pretty secretary lady! Get me Mark Teixeira on the phone, post haste.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: Right away, Mr. Angelos.

(Ring, ring! Ring, ring! Ring, ring!)

Mark Teixeira: Yo, Tex in the house! Who's bumping me on the cell?

Angelos: Mark ... it's me, Peter Angelos. Look, let me get right to the point. What's it going to take to get you to sign with the Orioles? Discounted infield tickets to the Preakness? I can make that happen. Lunch with Speaker Pelosi? Within my reach, son. I can't promise everything, but do not underestimate my influence in this town. We're going to make you a hero, my boy. You'll be the new Cal! I'll even have one of those fancy cabs pick you up at the airport, and we can split the tip. Just throw a number at me in terms of salary. No agent fancy talk here, Mark, just mano-a-mano. What say you? 

Teixeira: Um ... Mr. Angelos, all due respect, but I've already signed with the Yankees. I'm actually in a Manhattan restaurant right now with A-Rod and his date, who ... oddly enough  appears to have bigger biceps than I do. But, seriously, why are you calling me? I signed an eight-year contract for $180 million, like, three months ago. I'm a Yankee. Don Mattingly was my boyhood idol. The implication that I should sign with Baltimore at a discount because of some bizarro civic pride that should translate into helping you prop up your poorly-managed business always struck me as crazy talk.

Angelos: Mark ... I like you, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm willing to offer $50 million over the next six seasons, free gloves for the Mount St. Joseph baseball team, and a nonspeaking part as an extra in the next David Simon project. But that's my final offer, son.   

Teixeira: (Silence)

Angelos: Be straight with me, Mark. Your wife won't let you sign here, will she?

Teixeira: The humidity really messes up her hair, Mr. Angelos. And to be honest, I can't convince her that you're not actually The Greek from Season 2 of The Wire.

Angelos: Nonsense, son. I am far better looking than that scoundrel. And he wasn't even Greek, if you recall. But I do agree that Frank Sobatka had to go. Business, Mark. Always business. 

Teixeira: Mostly though, sir, I just don't want to be part of a rebuilding project at this stage of my career. You guys have some decent pieces in place, but I think we actually had a better pitching staff than you do when I played at Mount St. Joe's. I'm sorry, Mr. Angelos.

Angelos: I understand, son. No hard feelings. Now, I'm wondering if you have Kevin Millar's phone number. I'm told he is a suitable fallback option because despite his declining statistical markers, the fans love his scrappy leadership and hilarious clubhouse antics.

Teixeira: I think I'm going to hang up now, Mr. Angelos. A-Rod is my ride home, and he's been missing for like 15 minutes. Cripes, I hope he's not kissing the bathroom mirror again.

(Click)

Posted by Kevin Van Valkenburg at 8:45 AM in Imaginary Conversations, Orioles | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

As the field of 64 has been whittled to 16, the odds on who will wear the crown become a little more realistic. North Carolina remains the favorite at 3-to-1 on online wagering site Bodog followed by Louisville (4-1) and Pittsburgh and Connecticut (both 6-1). On the Vegas Insider information Web site, Carolina is 2-1, Louisville is 7-2, Pittsburgh is 4-1 and Connecticut is 5-1. Here’s the entire Bodog field (listed below). And the link to the Vegas Insider odds, scroll down past the Regional odds for the full field.

North Carolina.........3/1
Louisville................4/1
Pittsburgh..............6/1
Connecticut............6/1
Memphis................13/2
Oklahoma..............15/1
Duke ...................16/1
Gonzaga...............18/1
Michigan State.......20/1
Syracuse..............20/1
Villanova..............22/1
Missouri...............30/1
Kansas.................30/1
Purdue.................40/1
Arizona................50/1
Xavier.................50/1

Posted by Bill Ordine at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A statistical revolution has swept sports analysis over the past 30 years, first changing the way we thought about baseball but gradually spilling to the NFL and the NBA. College basketball hasn't found its Bill James yet, but John Gasaway and his colleagues at Basketball Prospectus are pretty good candidates. You think Wisconsin was a mediocre offensive team this year because the Badgers didn't score in droves?  Nope, Gasaway would tell you. They were actually incredibly efficient but opted to play at a slow pace. These and other insights entertained and educated me throughout the season. So with the Sweet Sixteen upon us, it seemed like a good time to bring some data-fueled wisdom to the Toy Department via an e-mail chat with Gasaway.  
 
 
TD: What are some of the biggest misconceptions about basketball that you feel you've been able to address with your methods?

JG: Well, "my" methods are of course ones I've learned from innovators like former North Carolina coach Dean Smith and basketball analyst Dean Oliver.  But I hope those methods, whoever's applying them at a given point in time, have helped correct at least two misconceptions. Speaking first to the team level, there should be no such term as "scoring defense." A college team that allows 60 points a game might be a really good defense, a really bad one, or anything in between. If North Carolina does it while averaging 75 possessions a game, they're a really good defense. If Iowa does it while averaging 57 possessions per game, they're not so good on D.

And then second, on the level of the individual player, there should be no such expression as "needing" to get "20 a game" out of a certain player. It may well be true that a given player is your best bet for scoring, but the idea that a certain number of points automatically means you're playing well couldn't be more misleading. If you need 20 shots to get your 20 points, you're hurting your team more than you're helping. Scoring a lot of points can be a good thing. Scoring a lot of points efficiently is always a good thing. 
 
TD: Why do you think it took so much longer for folks to apply statistical analysis to college hoops than to say, baseball or even the NBA?

JG: The idea's actually been around a long time. Smith, for one, was counting possessions as an assistant at North Carolina 50 years go. What took longer was its widespread use. I have no idea why it wasn't picked up sooner. I can only say that for myself, speaking almost literally, I first came across this stuff on a Tuesday morning and then started using it that afternoon. It made that much sense to me. 
 

JG: Well, there's still basketball to be played, of course. But this year I'd venture to say that those methods did a pretty good job spotting at least a few overrated teams. I was on the record as saying Boston College, Illinois and Florida State were all over-seeded. So that worked out. Then again I said BYU and West Virginia were under-seeded. You can't win them all. 
 
TD: Did others shock you by going down as easily as they did?

JG: No one went down! Really, the only team that did was Wake Forest and, in another stroke of good fortune, I'd already been captured in print as saying I didn't expect much from the Deacons. 
 
TD: Do you have a sense, based on data, how much North Carolina would be crippled without Ty Lawson?

JG: I think I have a sense but it's not based on data, per se, because Lawson didn't miss enough time to look at this in that way. Then again this might be one of those instances where the only data you need is what you see. Without Lawson, UNC barely beat Virginia Tech and then lost to Florida State, both in the ACC tournament. That might be enough information right there.

What's interesting about Lawson is that last year he did miss enough time -- seven games -- to get a sense of what he means (or meant) to his team. During that time the offense became significantly less efficient -- but the defense improved by almost the exact same amount. Then again, that team had Marcus Ginyard in the lineup.
 
TD: Why do you think UNC has been a slight disappointment relative to preseason expectations?

JG: The preseason expectations were inflated by the way UNC started the year, up to and including beating Michigan State by 35 points in Detroit. Also keep in mind that when the Heels beat Notre Dame by 15 in Maui, we thought at the time that was kind of a big deal. Turned out it wasn't, of course. That being said, to brand this team a "disappointment" would be unjust. By many of the measures I use, this team is almost exactly as good as they were last year. Believe me, most coaches would take being "almost exactly as good as" a team that was a one-seed and went to the Final Four. 
 
TD: What did Maryland's poor efficiency margin tell you about them as a team? Does it mean they actually overachieved or got lucky to compile the record they did?

JG: Keep in mind the efficiency margin stat tracked Maryland only during conference play, when they were 7-9. Then and only then did the Terps proceed to go out and get an NCAA bid by beating Wake Forest in the conference tournament. That win against the Deacons might be another case where, at the time, we thought it was a big deal. Maybe Cleveland State proved otherwise. Say this for Gary Williams' team, though. They were better than Cal.
 
TD: There's a lot of debate here about Gary Williams. Do you have a take on how important coaching is compared to raw talent in the college game? Do you believe an excellent game and practice coach can consistently transcend mediocre recruiting?

JG: I guess it depends on what you mean by "transcend." It is true that if you want to play with the big boys you have to recruit with them as well. It's not just national champions that are customarily stocked with future NBA talent. Even to get to the Final Four usually requires that same level of talent. George Mason was the exception and not the rule. But at the same time, the vast majority of D-I programs are out there working hard and trying to improve, happy in the knowledge that a national championship is not their objective.

Every year there are excellent examples of talented teams that aren't  very good, just as there are plenty of good teams that aren't very talented. I actually wrote about Gary Williams this year.  
 
TD: You've said Memphis is your favorite, which is certainly believable to Maryland fans at this point. But what do you like so much about their team?

JG: They have size, they have quickness, and they defend. They're not going to be confused with North Carolina or Pitt on offense, but they simply make life miserable for opposing offenses. Every year, John Calipari takes highly sought recruits and somehow persuades them to play outstanding defense, which is something a lot of observers always say can't be done. Louisville is like that, too, I just think the Tigers are a hair better.
 
TD: Do you have any sense that the lack of upsets means something sweeping about the state of college basketball? Or do you suspect that chance simply lined up that way?

JG: Both! (I'm a natural politician.) Western Kentucky could have very easily knocked off Gonzaga. Utah State came within a couple free throws of beating Marquette, who in turn just missed beating Missouri. So, yes, to a certain extent the fact that teams like the Bulldogs and the Tigers are still alive is indeed chance.

But if there is indeed something sweeping going on, it's that scouting is way better. Not because we're so much smarter than people 10 years ago, but simply because anyone can watch any game and get tape of any game. There are no secrets.

That's why I loved how Baylor coach Scott Drew went to a zone defense in the Big 12 tournament. He created his own secret and it was good enough to beat Kansas and almost get the Bears to the NCAA tournament. I'm amazed coaches don't switch gears like that more often. What in the world did Baylor have to lose? Nothing. Drew apparently came to the same conclusion.
 
TD: Which of the remaining teams do you find most interesting to watch and why?

Oklahoma. I'm expecting Blake Griffin to put on a goodbye-to-college show, kind of like Derrick Rose last year. I have DeJuan Blair as my Player of the Year, but Blair has Sam Young and Levance Fields to partner with. Griffin, on the other hand, is it for the Sooners, though of course Willie Warren is a great talent, too. I would hope for Griffin to really seize the moment now that every game could be his last in college.

Connecticut also has my attention with the way they blew out Texas A&M. They really didn't look too good after Jerome Dyson went down late in the season with an injury. But then the NCAA tournament started. In their first two games, they've looked better than any other team in the field.
 
TD: Who's your final four and champion?

I'm on the record as thinking Memphis will win it all, though that didn't look real smart for a while there against Cal State-Northridge. I also have Louisville, Pitt, and North Carolina as making it to the Final Four.
 
TD: What's the next frontier in statistical analysis as applied to college hoops?

The next frontier will be simply the swelling usage of existing tools, for instance the use of tempo-free statistics by the NCAA selection committee. Not that this new stuff (which, again, isn't at all new) should be the only thing the committee looks at, of course. Merely that the information that hundreds of D-I coaches are already using merits a seat at the table alongside RPI and a team's won-lost record over their last ten games.

Posted by Childs Walker at 6:00 AM in Today's Special | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

So there's Guthrie and Uehara, then pray for ... what?

Three days of rain? A volcanic eruption on the East Coast? An appearance every fifth day by the ghost of Moe Drabowsky?

As the Orioles' braintrust ponders the imponderable of how to fill the third, fourth and fifth spots in the pitching rotation, we offer a suggestion -- a variation on the JUGS pitching machine.

Posted by Bill Ordine at 4:30 PM in Must-see Web TV | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

So Orioles experiment Rich Hill needed 28 pitches to get out of the first inning and beaned two batters in today's intrasquad game in Fort Lauderdale. He said he was happy with his return from debilitating elbow soreness. But the performance certainly provides ammunition for those who believe Hill has lost his control ... permanently.

I liked the Hill acquisition. He's 29, left-handed and only two years removed from striking out 183 batters in 195 big league innings. Guys with that profile are not a dime a dozen, and he was available for a player to be named.

Why did Hill come so cheap? Because baseball executives are rightly afraid of pitchers who suddenly lose the ability to throw strikes. It's often a symptom of serious injury or worse, of a psychological malady. If you want to know how difficult the latter is, read Roger Angell's classic piece from the New Yorker about Steve Blass or look at Rick Ankiel, one of the most touted pitching prospects of recent times.

Hill, of course, did not melt down on that scale. He simply walked 62 batters in 67 1/3 innings between the majors and minors last season. He says back pain, not psychological problems, caused his loss of control.

I looked to Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projection system for some insight on Hill. I like PECOTA (devised by deadly accurate political guru Nate Silver) because its projections are based on the careers of similar players and because it spits out a range of possibilities.

PECOTA is not optimistic about Rich Hill. His projected 5.46 ERA in 77 innings would've fit all too well in last year's disastrous Orioles rotation. The system sees him as similar to a bunch of pitchers who had a good season or two and were never heard from again. At least PECOTA offers some hope on the high end. Its 90th percentile projection suggests Hill could post a 4.04 ERA and strike out 74 in 92 innings.

I don't claim to have the answers on Hill. I hope he pitches well because I like good stories. But the sad truth is that most pitchers who go down this road don't find happy endings ... at least not on the mound.

Posted by Childs Walker at 2:24 PM in Orioles | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

[UPDATE: Be sure to vote in our related poll right here.]

According to Pittsburgh newspapers, at the NFL owners meetings, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin was asked who should be favored to win the division next season. He picked the Ravens.

"You have to like Baltimore. They won 11 games last year with a rookie head coach and a rookie quarterback. They have a good football team. They have a great defense, they have a quarterback who proved he's their quarterback of the future, he's a guy on the rise. You have to respect that."

His track record as a sports prognosticator isn't too hot. For what it's worth, Tomlin's pick to win the AFC North before last season: the Cleveland Browns.

(Another AFC North coach hasn't swallowed quite as much purple Kool-Aid as Tomlin. Bengals coach Marvin Lewis picked the Steelers: "They're world champions, they're division champions, so they've got to be the team to beat and Baltimore's probably a close second.")

 Photo: AP

Posted by Rick Maese at 1:20 PM in Ravens | Permalink | Comments (72)
        

The hip injury that kept Kimmie Meissner from competing at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships has healed and the 2006 world champion is in Toronto working on next season's short program with choreographer Lori Nichol.

Still, the Bel Air resident, who also won the 2007 U.S. title, is thinking about the worlds competition a continent away in Los Angeles. With the men's event about to begin and the women set to take the ice on Friday, Meissner offered her podium predictions.

Men:

1) Patrick Chan, Canada; 2) Evan Lysacek, U.S.; 3) Brian Joubert, France

Women:

1)Mao Asada, Japan; 2) Joannie Rochette, Canada; 3) Yu-Na Kim, South Korea

Posted by Candus Thomson at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Well, the word is out. If the other 15 teams still playing in this NCAA Tournament are sweet, you can bet the Maryland women's basketball team will be licking its chops. Around College Park, trash-talking is out; baby-eating is in.

I spotted at least a half-dozen signs in the crowd last night -- an easy Terps' win -- that innocently-noted, "Terps eat kids!" You'd think such heresy would've been uttered by Utah fans. But no, "Eat kids!" is a motto adopted by Maryland players. "Go team!" is sooo last year. D.C. Sports Bog was all over this yesterday.

The cheerleaders need to come up with whole new routines for this bunch:

Dahmer defense

Offense Hannibal

Let's go Terps!

We're all cannibals!

It got me thinking, if cannibalism is an acceptable rally cry, what other brutally honest yet obscenely graphic mottos and slogans should area teams use to inspire?

Ravens: Spit on homeless!

Redskins: Price-gouge fans!

Orioles: Park illegally in handicap spots!

Nationals: Blindfold Daniel Cabrera!

Wizards: Maim small forest animals!

Capitals: Burn American flags!

Maryland men's basketball: Unleash the pent-up fury and venom that is locked and hidden in Gary Williams' heart and laugh as the world scurries for safety apparently unaware that no matter where they hide Gary will find them! Oh yes, Gary will find them!

Maryland football: Date ugly girls!

Photos: AP; Kenneth K. Lam / Baltimore Sun

Posted by Rick Maese at 11:31 AM in Terps | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Statistically, Julian Tavarez hasn't had the greatest career. But last week when he reluctantly agreed to sign with the Washington Nationals (the only MLB team to make him a real offer this spring), he uttered what will probably go down as one of the greatest sports quotes of all time.

"Why did I sign with the Nationals?" Tavarez told a group of reporters. "When you go to a club at 4 in the morning, and you're just waiting, waiting, a 600-pounder looks like J-Lo. And to me this is Jennifer Lopez right here. It's 4 in the morning. Too much to drink. So, Nationals [are] Jennifer Lopez to me."

You have to love that kind of brutal honesty. But it got us thinking: What if we viewed every franchise the way Tavarez does: As the equivalent of a bar-time hook-up?

What would the Red Sox look like? Or the Washington Redskins? Or even the Baltimore Orioles?

The possibilities are as magical as they are skanky.

Franchise: The Dallas Cowboys

At the bar, they are: The silicone-injected (not-so) young lady trying to seem more "Texas" by sipping Bud Light out of a bottle while all of her friends are downing pink drinks. Desperate for your attention, but doesn't want to show it, mostly because she won a few beauty pageants back in the '90s, but can't seem to realize that was almost 10 years ago. She might still be kind of cute if you could ever shake the mental image of her together with some of the morons who used to hang around her. Thinks of herself as America's sweetheart, but hang around her long enough and you're probably going to end up either in jail, or in a doctor's office.

Think: Pamela Anderson

Franchise: Cleveland Browns

At the bar, they are: The All-American cougar who would be totally fun to hang out with if she weren't still obsessed with the way her fairy tale marriage deteriorated. Even though she's reinvented herself like five times since the split and he moved to another city, she can't help but make snide comments about him and how she's sooooo over it, and totally doesn't care if he's happier now. Everyone in the bar is rooting for her to find true love, because she's been hanging around forever. But deep down, people are starting to suspect that it's her own fault she's not happy. Wholesome on the surface, but totally neurotic in private.

Think: Jennifer Aniston

Franchise: Washington Redskins

At the bar, they are: The dumb blonde whose answer to everything is to either throw a fit, or throw money at the problem. No one seems to know why she has enough money to do whatever she wants, just that it doesn't seem to be working in terms of personal fulfillment. Has a fairly high opinion of herself, for reasons unclear to everyone around her. Sometimes accused of racial insensitivity. The media seems to be in love with her, even though her resume of actual accomplishments is extremely thin. Would probably be fun to hang out with for a few days, but the kind of girl who would totally cut you loose to chase the latest fad, even though by the time she gets there, the fad is already on its way out of style.

Think: Paris Hilton

Franchise: Detroit Lions

At the bar, they are: The girl passed out in the booth in back who has clearly seen better days. Looks like she's been smoking cigarettes two at a time and guzzling whiskey with no chaser for the past 10 years, which is a fairly accurate breakdown of how she got to where she is now. Currently a whirlpool of despair that is difficult to escape from, but even in her better days, she managed to help ruin the career of talented people around her. Would be funnier if she wasn't so tragic.

Think: Courtney Love

Franchise: Boston Red Sox

At the bar, they are: The wicked smart girl in glasses who is doing shots, dancing on tables and acting way too loud. Rumor is she was all emo in high school and college, moping about how she'd be a bridesmaid for the rest of her life, but now she's totally blossomed and pretty hot. She has some scars from her past, but it's all good. They've pretty much faded. Truth be told, it was hilarious the first time she got a little wasted and belted out "Sweet Caroline" but now ... not so much. Also, does she have to remind us all the time how smart she is?

Think: Tina Fey (post 2004)

Franchise: New York Yankees

At the bar, they are: Admittedly pretty and elegant woman who is sipping wine and looking around the bar wondering if there isn't someone more important she should be talking to. Arrogant enough that she doesn't quite realize she was at her peak six years ago. Doesn't have to tell you she's better than you because she assumes you already know. Would love it if you didn't bring up all the jokers she used to date before she decided she was classy. Probably wears a gold thong when no one is looking.   

Think: Gwyneth Paltrow 

Franchise: Baltimore Orioles

At the bar, they are: The husky blonde in a $5,000 dress who is slamming Natty Bohs and making it hard for even her closest friends to defend the way she's let herself go. Sure, she was a babe once, and we'll never forget the good times, but mercy, that was a long time ago. Maybe you can squint and pretend that's Reese Witherspoon, assuming you're drinking doubles, but it sure would be nicer to have hooked up with her about 10 years ago.

Think: Jennifer Coolidge 

Franchise: Pittsburgh Steelers

At the bar, they are: The brunette who looks skinny tonight, but the more you think about it, wasn't she just in here last month wolfing down a Primanti Bros. sandwich with a large order of fries stuffed in between the bread? Yikes. Is the kind of gal who would probably go on television and brag about how good she looks now, and then pound a case of Rolling Rock and a bucket of chicken wings when no one was looking.

Think: Kirstie Alley 

Franchise: Baltimore Ravens

At the bar, they are: The girl on the dance floor who is waving her arms and shaking her caboose. True, she's probably doing it because she loves the attention, but you have to admit, she's also pretty talented. Has worked hard to make people forget her Southern roots. Hated on by a lot of people when she was at her hottest in 2000, but either way, people were forced to pay attention. Hit a real rough patch for a few years when she struggled to get out of a bad relationship, but now isn't looking half bad again, something that almost no one expected. Probably lucky she didn't end up in prison at some point, but that's all in the past, right?

Think: Britney Spears 

Posted by Kevin Van Valkenburg at 9:45 AM in Burning Question | Permalink | Comments (41)
        

I'd love to see Michelle Kwan skate again--graceful, elegant, megawatt smile as she glides into her final spiral.

And Sasha Cohen, the saucy vixen with porcelain-doll exterior and blow-torch soul? Absolutely.

How about three-time world champion and 2006 Olympic gold medalist Evgeni Plushenko? Hey, the more the merrier.

With the 2010 Winter Olympics less than a year off and the world championships taking place in Los Angeles this week, all three athletes are making noises about coming out of retirement.

Russia's Plushenko might be able to pull it off; there's not a skater in his country who even approaches his old skills. But for the sake of their bodies and our memories, here's hoping Kwan and Cohen get on with the rest of their lives.

It was about a year ago that Kwan told me she was finally pain-free when she put her feet on the floor each morning getting out of bed. Years of practice had left her with a ton of hurt that only healed with surgical intervention and time.

At 28, the five-time world champion and nine-time national champion has earned a college degree and a future chock-full of whatever she wants. But apparently her to-do list might include reaching for the Olympic gold that eluded her.

Cohen, 24, runnerup at the 2006 Olympics, endured a lifetime of pounding that left her with a creaky back, hips and neck.

The sport that they left is not what they're thinking of stepping back into. Kwan is a virtual stranger to the new scoring system and Cohen isn't much better versed. Believe me, it's a jungle out there, and with more mandatory elements, more critical judging and slo-mo instant replays, it's getting meaner every season.

And while each woman might have a shot at making the U.S. team going to Vancouver next February, the likelihood of them leaping over Japan's Mao Asada and Korea's Yu-Na Kim (not to mention Canada's Joannie Rochette and Carolina Kostner of Italy) to the podium isn't great.

It's not surprising that each woman still feels the desire to compete. You don't become great by being passive.

Would I love to see Kwan and Cohen skate again? Absolutely. In the same way I'd love to watch Johnny Unitas hit Raymond Berry down the sideline or the "Showtime" Lakers of Magic Johnson and James Worthy run the court or Sandy Koufax retire the side.

Speaking of retired, that's where Kwan and Cohen should stay.   

Posted by Candus Thomson at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

You can't get much more Baltimore than Cal Ripken, so in launching this here blog, it only made sense for us to pull some words of wisdom from the Iron Man. Ripken has spent much of his post-playing career devising ways to pass the lessons he learned from his father on to the next generation of would-be baseball stars. In his latest venture, a joint project with MLB.com, he will sell online lessons in which he splices instructional video, diagrams and major league highlights. In promoting GetGreat.com, Ripken fielded a few questions from the Toy Department.

TD: Is this your first deep foray into Web instruction?

Cal:  We always felt that we had great content, but this opportunity with MLB.com gave us the perfect place to put all that stuff. We always used the expression with my dad that he was the encyclopedia of baseball. Well now, we feel like this can be a living, evolving encyclopedia of baseball. We can take real, live big league footage, put a voice over it, put diagrams in it. We can cement those teachings that I had passed on to me.

TD: Are you a frequent Web surfer?

Cal: I've learned to use certain tools when I want to learn something. I use it in a boring sort of way, looking for training aids, field design stuff, overhead shots of various minor league parks. It used to be you would have to make a site visit for a lot of that stuff. Now, you can find it pretty readily at the tips of your fingers. I also have it set so that MLB comes up first. It's great for watching footage so I can do some scouting and get familiar for the work I do at TBS. I can't get by without a computer anymore.

TD: When did you become a serious computer user?

Cal: About halfway through my career, I bought a laptop. I designed some databases to keep my own information on pitchers and I would use it on team flights and stuff.

TD: Of course, the issue on all of our minds right now is the economy. How does the economy impact Cal Ripken?

Cal: You have to start examining all aspects of your business and when you see things going the wrong way, you have to be super tight. The first step is looking for early indicators on the [minor league] season. I can tell you that so far, we're getting hit a little bit on sponsorships. But as far as campers and people renewing their tickets, things haven't changed much. It's affordable family entertainment, so maybe that's the last thing to go when people are figuring out their budgets.

TD: Were you as fascinated by last year's presidential election as much of America?

Cal: As you get older, I think you naturally look around you more. But I've always thought I had to be very careful if I ever wanted to use my platform to get involved with politics. I've never been comfortable taking that step.

TD: But did you enjoy following it, just as a story?

Cal: Generally speaking, as you get older, issues do become more important. I was laughing with Kelly the other day about how our parents used to sit and read the paper every day. And you just have no interest in that as a young person, but as you get older, those habits do set in.

TD: Did you take it as a positive sign for the Orioles' future that Nick Markakis and Brian Roberts signed long-term extensions in the offseason?

Cal: Well, I say this without having talked to Andy [MacPhail] about it, but it certainly seems their plan is to fully rebuild where, at times in the past, they maybe tried to half rebuild and half compete. I think with the trades of [Erik] Bedard and [Miguel] Tejada, they got 10 quality prospects, and those guys are starting to get aligned. With Brian Roberts, you have a mainstay, a player you can market around and a guy who still has a lot left in the tank. Markakis is a potential superstar guy. It was good to see him find that kind of stability. Those are anchors you can build around so I applaud both of those moves.

TD: Which players do you most enjoy watching now?

Cal: I always like to watch guys at the shortstop position, to see the evolution of what's happening there. I got a chance to watch a lot more of the National League with TBS and Jose Reyes is certainly a sensational player. David Wright, it's hard not to be impressed with him. B.J. Upton, with his athletic way of playing the outfield, is fun to watch. He almost made me think of Paul Blair. Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins in Philadelphia. I'm enamored with those guys. They remind me of a [Lou] Whitaker-[Alan] Trammell situation, where they've had the chance to get better together.

TD: I know it's a tired issue, but I have to ask your reaction to A-Rod's announcement that he used steroids?

Cal: I was shocked and surprised. I was glued to the TV, to try to watch and know what was going on with him. There's sadness involved because I've known him well. You think about the choice and wonder what it is that would cause Alex ... you could see that kind of talent with him so early on, so why would he make that choice? It's not good for the cloud hanging over baseball.

TD: Did it hit you harder because Alex has often talked about you as a model for his game?

Cal: I have a personal relationship with him, because I've known him since he was 16. You take pride in his success and marvel at his talent. I didn't want to think that about Alex. It makes you think that the problem was far bigger than what we thought. But at the same time, I think Derek Jeter is right. It wasn't everyone.

AP photo

Posted by Childs Walker at 6:00 AM in Orioles, Today's Special | Permalink | Comments (16)
        

I’m going to make a prediction: Koji Uehara is gonna catch on in Baltimore. I don’t know if it’ll be like Brooks or Cal, where suddenly everyone’s naming newborns after him. But I wouldn’t be surprised if by July 1, there’s a lot of miniature poodles walking around Mt. Vernon with the name Koji spelled out on their dog collars.

Sounds like he looked pretty good today in his first start in more than two weeks (3 2/3 IP, 1 R, 2 H, 7 Ks), but his spot in the rotation was never in doubt.

Time is running out to make a couple of key decisions. The Orioles say they’ve figured out two of their five starters. With less than two weeks to go until Opening Day, that’s encouraging.

In truth, Dave Trembley probably knows four of them: Jeremy Guthrie, Koji, Mark Hendrickson (who doesn’t need a ladder to change a light bulb) and Adam Eaton.

So for that fifth and final spot that leaves, Danys Baez, Alfredo Simon, Brian Bass, Hayden Penn and just about anybody else who wanders by Fort Lauderdale Stadium. (Sounds like Rich Hill will be starting the season on the DL.)

I don’t really think the problem is that the Orioles don’t know by now. They can wait until the second week of April for all I care. The problem is that the options available to them are lousy.

Penn and Baez seem safe. But Bass and Simon have had more interesting springs. I’m not sure what the Orioles have to lose by taking a bit of a gamble. Simon, who was signed out of the Mexican League last year and missed the first couple weeks of camp dealing with visa issues, has had a couple of good outings this spring, but no, I don’t trust that he’s the real deal. Not yet. I suppose in the five slot maybe you give him a few outings in April and see if he can get batters out in the regular season.

Since I obviously don't have a clue, maybe you do. Here’s a poll question: Who should be the Orioles' fifth starter? To make it more interesting, let's toss a couple of wild cards into the mix -- Jim Palmer and Jennie Finch (Palmer because I still think he has 200 innings left in his arm and Finch because as the old zen saying goes, can you really have a good blog post without a good picture?).

Click here to vote.

(No, the Toy Department isn't sexist. We already posted a pic of Palmer in his underwear, though.)

Photos: AP

Posted by Rick Maese at 3:57 PM in Orioles | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

The voice on the other end of the phone is passionate, and he’s becoming more passionate by the second. His words grow louder and they fly out faster.

“I grew up in the streets,” he says. “I’ve seen pimps in action. I look at the NCAA and I say, ’Wow, these guys would make excellent street pimps.' What they say -- and I mean this in all seriousness - is what a street pimp would say to an athlete.”

This isn’t some radio shock jock speaking. Dr. Boyce Watkins is an assistant professor of finance at Syracuse University. He’s in town tonight, delivering a lecture at Loyola College titled, “The Business of College Sports: Is the NCAA Playing Fairly?”

I ask him to explain tonight’s message a bit.

“The model under which the NCAA currently operates was designed without excessive commercialization in mind,” Watkins explains. “Since that time, you see where this amateur sports organization has become effectively a professional sports league that refuses to pay its employees.”

Ahhh, one of those you’re thinking. Kick sports off campus! Tear down the arenas! Set flames to the football field!

But Watkins insists he isn’t against college sports. In fact, he loves them. So I feel a bit better. See, March always brings about conflicted emotions. I love filling out the brackets and love following the tournaments -- even though there’s an undercurrent of hypocrisy, unfairness and disparity that fuels the whole show.

I admit: For me, there’s a sense of guilt.

The NCAA is in the middle of an 11-year, $6 billion contract with CBS to broadcast tournament games. Coaches on the sidelines make seven figures a year, even though no one’s tuning in because they want to see what color tie John Calipari’s wearing. And shoe companies are pouring money into universities across the country by the truckload -- but the kids who have to wear the shoes don’t see a dime of it.

Watkins doesn’t want to abolish college athletics; he just thinks athletes should be compensated.
I play devil’s advocate with him: But they receive a scholarship and a free education.

“OK, if Tom Cruise starred in a $100 million blockbuster, could I pay him with a scholarship? He’d say, Yes, you paid me but that wasn’t fair compensation,” Watkins says. “That’s the problem with collegiate sports: scholarships are not fair compensation. Here at Syracuse, where I teach, we make more money from one nationally-televised game than what it costs to pay tuition for every single player on basketball team. That’s in one game. So that whole notion is just archaic.”

But the idea that we can suddenly professionalize collegiate sports sounds pretty ambitious. The NCAA has more than 1,200 schools under its umbrella and thousands upon thousands of student-athletes -- most of whom aren‘t earning millions of dollars for their respective schools. Watkins doesn’t think they should all be compensated. Allow the market to dictate their salary, he says. It’d be tough to shove the genie back in the bottle, I tell him.

“It’s not matter of putting the bull back in the stable, we need to learn how ride the bull more effectively,” he says, ditching my genie metaphor pretty quickly. “There won’t come a day in the next 30 years that people will turn off March Madness and won’t want to watch a good basketball. That’ll always happen, but what I’m hoping is the NCAA can simply stop trying to be an elephant in a rabbit suit. We see the rabbit ears. We know what the NCAA is: a professional sports league. So pay the people generating the revenues.”

Most estimates suggest that 25-50 million people wager money -- totaling billions of dollars -- on the NCAA Tournament. We’re all condoning the system on some level. Does Watkins really think he can change everyone’s mind?

“You know, people don’t care when they buy soccer balls made by 5-year olds somewhere across the globe. What in world would lead us to believe they’d care about some athlete who gets to play for free and gets to play on national TV. No one is going to feel sorry athletes -- myself included,” he says. “But my goal is to speak for those who don’t have a voice. I’d like to speak up for them.

“I’m from Kentucky and there was a player at Louisville, Francisco Garcia,” Watkins continues. “He took his team to the Final Four. The school made $18 million that year off the basketball program. During the season, his brother was shot and killed in a housing project. If Francisco was seeing even a fraction of what he’s worth to the university, his brother would be alive because he wouldn’t be living in a housing project. Do you think Rick Pitino’s son is hanging out in the project? Why do we expect the players to endure these socialist norms -- these un-American norms -- when no one else is really a part of it? Not the coaches, the athletic directors, no one.”

Watkins doesn’t expect to convince everyone, certainly not every basketball fan. But he’s targeting his message for the movers and shakers. The issue, he says, is one for Congress and one for the Justice Department. And for him, it’s an issue he hopes to take to the student-athletes, who he says will have to make a stand of their own someday.

“If I had a wish list, I’d love to see the players in the Final Four refusing to play, refusing to take the court until they’re fairly compensated,” he says. “I don’t see that happening, but I’m going to work as hard as I can to make sure they understand the issues.”

Watkins speaks at Loyola College tonight at 7 o‘clock in McGuire Hall East. The event is free and open to the public.

Posted by Rick Maese at 2:30 PM in Terps | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Each week in the Toy Department, veteran Sun sports writer Mike Klingamen will track down a former local sports figure and let you know what's going on in their lives in a segment called "Catching Up With..."

Ran into Wes Unseld the other day. The Basketball Hall of Famer they called "The Baby Bull" was coming out of – where else? – a meat market near his home in Westminster.

Having turned 63 two weeks ago, he’s still the big galoot who put the Baltimore Bullets on the map 40 years ago. His first season in the pros (1968-69), Unseld took the Bullets from worst-to-first while winning both Rookie-of-the-Year and MVP honors. Only one other basketball player, Wilt Chamberlain, has ever done that.

Oh, the fun we kids had that year in the Civic Center, scarfing cheap weiners and whooping with every rebound the 6-foot-6 Unseld grabbed against taller centers – and every fast break he started with those crisp outlet passes. How he managed to outmuscle the Chamberlains, Russells and Reeds of the league was a mystery.

What was the secret, Wes?

"I was country-strong," he said. "I didn’t lift weights or work on some Nautilus machine. I grew up in Kentucky, carrying block and brick in construction work with my dad."

Nowadays, Unseld operates a private school in West Baltimore with his wife, Connie. There, the five-time NBA all-star does everything from typing memos to cutting the grass to teaching youngsters how to bake bread. The man once dubbed "Wes Unselfish" is still a team player.

On weekends, he said, "I dilly dally in photography and woodworking. Got a wood shop at the house."

What does Unseld make?

"My wife calls it ‘expensive kindling,’ " he said, then paused. "I think she’s right."

He still follows the Washington Wizards (nee Bullets), the team he later coached and helped run, as well as the University of Louisville, his alma mater.

"Could I have played center today? Why not?" Unseld said. "The guys I played against – Chamberlain, (Kareem Abdul) Jabbar, (Nate) Thurmond – were taller than these guys they’ve got now. The difference is, basketball is more a game of specialty than in the past. Used to be that you had to do everything pretty well – dribble, shoot and play defense. Now, if you’re just a great shooter, you’re a star."

In Unseld’s neighborhood, his house is the one with no hoop in the driveway. The old Bullet, who has had one ankle fused and both knees replaced, hasn’t played pick-up ball in 20 years.

"The game was good to me," he said, "but it almost killed me, too."

Posted by Kevin Van Valkenburg at 1:00 PM in Catching Up With | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

There's a fine line between calamity and hilarity and Wyoming basketball player Adam Wadell was fortunate to be on the better side of that divider. His unintentionally acrobatic dunk last week has received national attention and a scheduled trip to the Today Show this morning.

Posted by Bill Ordine at 12:00 PM in Must-see Web TV | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A: Greivis is very “in the moment.” I don’t think he thinks about the consequences of what he says. He doesn’t have a filter. In a way, it’s very refreshing that Greivis is more candid than calculating . But you just know it can drive Maryland crazy.    

A: Very funny, Maese. I know when I’m being baited. Here’s how you can tell Greivis understands what he’s saying – because he’ll repeat the same thought in slightly different words for every reporter who  wanders in his direction.

A: Only that usually when players explore whether to leave, they actually do leave. The problem is that Greivis doesn’t know exactly which recruits are coming to Maryland so he can’t gauge exactly what type of team he’d return to.

Q: Anything new on Lance Stephenson. How crucial is it that the Terps land him for next season? Is he the real deal?

With the start of the major league season still two weeks away, the best baseball game of the year already may have been played.

Japan beat Korea, 5-3, in an electrifying 10-inning game Monday night in Los Angeles to defend its World Baseball Classic title.

The night belonged to the twos. With two on and two out and two strikes on him, Ichiro Suzuki smacked a two-run single to center and 22-year-old Yu Darvish--product of Iranian-Japanese parents-- pitched a scoreless half inning to secure the victory.

Real baseball fans can hardly wait for the possible rematch – in 2013.

And there's Bud Selig's problem. The Major League Baseball commissioner has a nifty international product to sell, a true World Series, but a market won't open again for four years. His local supplier, MLB (which holds a monopoly), isn't interested in competition and doesn't provide the necessary parts to make Team USA competitive and boost the TV ratings.

"We need everybody's best players. We can't settle for any less," Selig said on ESPN Monday night. "They've all got to make a sacrifice."

But the only sacrificing going on was by the Japanese and Korean players, who showed Americans how the game ought to be played: running out every hit, charging grounders, laying down bunts, hitting the cut-off man and comepting with intensity and focus.

Riddled with injuries and lacking versatility, Team USA lumbered through the Classic until it was put out of its misery by Japan in the semi-final round. Manager Davey Johnson did what he could, but was forced to play the game as an All-Star contest, making sure everyone got a chance to compete and nobody got their feelings hurt.

With the WBC, Selig is onto something great. But the man is moving at a glacial pace usually found on an MLB diamond.

If he wants to succeed, he needs to alter the rules, and not in time for 2013. He should convene a panel that includes guys who have international experience, like Johnson and Bobby Valentine, to figure out a way for Team USA to compete without hurting the hometown product.

Bring the WBC back in 2011, a year before the Olympics, which cut baseball loose. Shorten the tournament by a week to two weeks and replace the bloated, meaningless All-Star break with the WBC. Or have Team USA's starting squad consist of the MLB's best players and back them up with a platoon of Triple-A substitutes.

But don't nibble around the corners, Bud. Throw strikes. 

Posted by Candus Thomson at 10:30 AM in Orioles | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

I was sitting courtside at the Comcast Center Monday, watching the Maryland women practice (the top-seeded Terps play No. 9 Utah tonight in College Park). As they began, I was one of only a couple of reporters watching – a stark contrast from what I’d seen in Kansas City, Mo., last week covering the men’s team.

I’ll answer the headline’s question in a bit, but first let me note that women's practices are great for eavesdropping. Here’s a sampling of what I heard:

-- “It’s like Bob Knight said, ‘Bury me upside down so my critics can kiss my ass.’ "

-- “I just shaved my armpits… plus I used cocoa butter so it’s real smooth.”

-- “Yo, D, I’m gonna get you some Depends, those old people diapers.”

-- Maryland player 1: “Look how congested it is.”

   Maryland player 2: “That’s a good word. That’s an SAT word.”

   Maryland coach: “Do you know how to spell it?”

   Maryland player 2: “Oh, Coach B trying to get you!”

   Maryland player 1: “This is practice time. We’re away from academics right now.”

Every March what separates the men's and women's tournaments is unmistakable. It's the parity. Or at least it was.

For the longest time, the women’s tournament lacked the possibility of a Cinderella. Brackets were easy to fill out: 1) pick the top seeds, 2) collect major winnings from office pool, 3) remark how cool it is that your office has a pool for the women’s tournament.

But Tennessee lost on Monday night. Granted, they were a No. 5 seed – losing to No. 12 Ball State – but believe me, this is college basketball royalty getting clowned by the jester.

“Obviously to see a heralded program like Tennessee go down in the first round to a mid-major team -- it used to always be the talk of UConn and Tennessee -- and to see this happen, it absolutely speaks to the parity of our sport,” said Maryland coach Brenda Frese. “As our sport has grown and the talent base has increased, you’ve got to have those upsets to notice that the game isn’t just a matter of the No. 1 and No. 2 teams winning every year."

This kind of stuff doesn’t happen on the women's side. (In fact, Pat Summitt has never failed to reach the Sweet 16 round.) But this year, it is. At least it’s happening enough to notice a difference.

One year ago, the women had just three upsets in the first round – that’s in 32 games – and only seven total in the first two rounds (48 games, if I'm doing my math right). For the sake of comparison, the men had eight upsets in the first round last year and 12 total in the first 48 games of the tournament.

Fast-forward 12 months: In the men’s field this year, there were a total of 10 upsets, including a 13 beating a 4 and two 12s topping 5s. The women this year had eight upsets in the opening round, including two 12s over 5s.

“There’s definitely a lot more parity,” said Terps senior Marissa Coleman. “Ball State beating Tennessee – that’s never happened in Tennessee history. You can’t take any team lightly. There’s not just three powerhouses any more like years past. Anyone can win a national championship.”

Maryland continues its quest tonight at 7. I’m certainly not rooting for anyone, but I do think upsets are good for the sport. Intrigue and uncertainty is a positive thing. Ultimately, I’d like to view the women’s sport as I do the men’s: searching for Cinderella in the first two rounds but eager to see quality teams reach the Final Four.

Photo: AP

Posted by Rick Maese at 9:42 AM in Terps | Permalink | Comments (17)
        

To say I’ve been blessed would be like calling Refrigerator Perry "a bit overweight.”

Leave it to Curt Schilling to run down someone else while waxing poetic about himself in his retirement blog yesterday.

Response No. 1: Get a ShamWow and cry me a river.

Response No. 2: I thought he had retired already.

And I'm a Red Sox fan.

Yes, his 20-year career has a Hall of Fame patina: three World Series rings, a 216-146 record (11-2 in the playoffs), 3,116 strikeouts, 3.46 ERA. There's his heroic 2004 post-season play highlighted by the "bloody sock" that already resides in Cooperstown. His outreach to fans on the radio and online is commendable. And his charity work is above reproach.

So why is it so hard to work up any enthusiasm for No. 38?

Google "Curt Schilling" and "blowhard" and you'll get more than 2,100 hits; "Schilling and "gasbag" is worth another 3,800.

Then recall Mister Bluster's anti-steroid rant in a 2002 Sports Illustrated article, when he remarked that he couldn't give some teammates a congratulatory pat on the butt because that's where they shot up.

"I know guys who use and don't admit it because they think it means they don't work hard," Schilling continued. "And I know plenty of guys now are mixing steroids with human growth hormone. Those guys are pretty obvious."

But three years later, when Congress shined the light on Schilling during the infamous Mark McGwire-Rafael Palmiero hearings, he admitted that he "grossly overstated" the steroid problem, adding, "I think at the time it was a very hot situation and we were all being asked to comment on it."

Yes, and it's easier to run your mouth when you haven't sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you, Miguel Tejada.

Now Schilling's gone, or as he said, "This party has officially ended."

If we're lucky, the next debate will be about his Cooperstown credentials. Because he didn't pitch last season, Schilling will be eligible in 2013, one year before former Oriole Mike Mussina. So how does he stack up as a player and person? My colleagues weigh in:

Childs Walker: Like him or not, Curt Schilling was a helluva pitcher, the kind of inning-eating, power-control combo that every general manager dreams of. He had about six seasons that would fit neatly into any Hall-of-Fame career. But is that, combined with his famous postseason performances, enough? Fellow retiree Mike Mussina makes for an interesting comparison. He pitched about 300 more innings and won 54 more games than Schilling, but Schilling produced more signature moments and slightly better ERAs relative to his league. Ultimately, I'd say Schilling scrapes in as a kind of Don Drysdale redux -- really famous guy who pitched for famous teams and had enough outstanding seasons to leave a strong impression.

Kevin VanValkenburg: Every great athlete (just like every great writer) yearns to be praised for his or her gifts. It is their egos, often, that make them such intense competitors who refuse to accept failure. But Curt Schilling never quite figured out to genuinely mask his primal desire (a desire we all feel) to be loved and praised with baseball's expectations and its unwritten code that he remain the humble teammate who was just one part of a larger machine. Schilling was the rare athlete who could be both arrogant and needy, a person who loved the spotlight, yet desperately wanted to seem the humble everyman. None of that made Schilling a bad person; in fact, in my eyes, it made him so much more human. He ain't no Hall of Famer, though. Hall of Very Good, maybe.

Bill Ordine: I see Schilling as for-sure in the Hall of Fame because his candidacy is blessed with a combination of credentials rooted in both reality and perception. Some of his statistical bona fides are, in truth, border-line -- 216 wins and a 3.46 ERA are marks that are acceptable for the HOF but not elite. A couple of categories, though, are spectacular -- strikeouts (3,116) and post-season record (11-2). If the resume stopped there, Schilling would be a bubble guy but he has become bigger than the numbers for a number of reasons.

In an era that will be tainted by steroids, Schilling has been an anti-steroids crusader. In a comparative way, his numbers may be perceived as being even more impressive.

He was on World Series winners in both leagues.

And something that is particularly important in baseball, he has that element of romantic lore going for him -- the famous bloody sock.

Perception can be reality and in something that can be as subjective as HOF voting, perception works in Schilling’s favor.

Posted by Candus Thomson at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Each week in the Toy Department, a Sun sports writer will take a moment to offer his or her Endorsement of something they feel passionately about. There are no rules, and the subject can be as broad, or as narrow, as the writer chooses. This week, Kevin Van Valkenburg makes the case for refusing to give up playing in his Sunday football league.  

When I was a teenager, my parents were adamant that I pick up a "life sport." I was a pretty decent football player (all things considered, of course; I'll concede that the competition in Montana wasn't exactly on the same level as Texas high school football) and I didn't mind crashing into others at high speeds, or tearing up my elbows and knees when I attempted to make a catch.  

My family, though, was full of golfers, and they were constantly imploring me to face facts. The human body can repair itself pretty easily when you're 16. It does not do quite as well when you're 35. "You need to find a sport you can play when you get older," my mom pleaded. Golf, tennis, and even squash were among the more common suggestions.

I'm 31 now, and certainly a bit heavier than I'd like to be. My parents were right, of course. As I type these words, my right knee aches. My left shoulder throbs. I have a small scar next to my nose that just recently healed. 

Rec football is entirely to blame. 

(Photo: Jennifer McMenamin)

I've learned to love golf, and I'm not half bad at tennis, but I can't give up football. I cannot go quietly into the sunset without a fight. I refuse to stop scraping up my elbows and spraining my joints. It drives my wife crazy, the way I'm constantly coming home with turf burns and bleeding on our fanciest bed sheets. But it's like an addiction; my personal version of Fight Club. It's part of what makes me feel alive, the pain of real competition. I totally understand why Brett Favre didn't want to retire, even though the Packers clearly want him to last year, and why Matt Stover doesn't want to retire now, even the Ravens clearly want him to now.

Because arm-wrestling Father Time, even with a bad shoulder, is kind of fun.

I'm entering my ninth year of playing in a competitive rec league, and about half the players out there are older than I am. Many have been playing in the league even longer than I have. I don't know most of their names, and most of them don't know mine, but we recognize one another. We nod our heads and exchange goofy grins before games. Most of us played in high school, a few of us (like myself) strapped on a helmet in college. We even have a quarterback who played in the CFL for nearly a decade, from what I understand.

All of us are out there for similar reasons, though. Football is like chess played on speed. It's fast and angry and occasionally violent, but it's also strategic. And beautiful. For a few hours, and for a few dollars forked over to pay the referees, nothing else matters. Not our careers, or our children, our wives. Not our aspirations, or the reality of life's disappointments. Just the adrenaline rush you feel when you shake loose from a defender and see the ball coming your way.

In the past few years, I've seen hamstrings tear and Achilles tendons rip. My buddy Brent, who I've played with every season, just messed up his knee. Each time it happens, I wonder if it's a window into my future. Earlier this year, I landed hard on my shoulder, trying to reel in a touchdown, and it hurt so much, I couldn't lift my left arm above my head for nearly a week without grinding my teeth.

I kept playing. (It was the playoffs, after all.) It was stupid, but if I had to do it over, I wouldn't change a thing. There is something foolish in my DNA that forces me to drag my broken body out of bed every Sunday morning, whether it's bright and sunny or freezing cold, and pull on a pair of smelly cleats and sweat-stained football gloves. I leave my home in Baltimore and drive thirty minutes south to Columbia or Annapolis, depending on what season it is. It's such an obsession, I even mentioned it in my wedding programs as a way to explain why Brent was one of my groomsmen. Our friendship owes a lot to rec football.

I say all this not to brag or because I want to thump my chest in some macho way. I realize that, when I put it into words, it sounds like the sad lament of the washed-up jock, someone you catch humming Springsteen's "Glory Days" in the deli section of the grocery store. I should be hitting golf balls or working in the yard, taking long power walks or swimming laps in a pool. But I'm not. I'm sure people who won't let go of lacrosse, or soccer, or full-court basketball understand. 

Because there are moments, every so often, that remind me why I won't, and why I can't, quit doing this, even if my body is begging me to stop. It usually happens on a post corner route, a pattern I'm arguably too slow to be running the the first place.

But I'm not quite as slow as I look, so there is usually that brief second when the free safety turns his hips the wrong way and I break to the corner of the end zone. The ball is almost always a little beyond my reach, traveling through the air on the path of a perfect parabola, and there is that moment when I realize I'm going to have lay out for it if I want to haul it in.

Everything is quiet. I'm not thinking about the potential turf burns that will sting like hell in the shower, or the sprained shoulder I'm risking by doing this. I'm not even thinking about the score, or the outcome of a game that, by any logical measure, is totally meaningless.  

I'm just thinking: Catch the damn thing, Kevin.

Just catch it one more time.  

Posted by Kevin Van Valkenburg at 6:55 PM in The Endorsement | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

From time to time, we'll share with you some photographs that catch our eye. We'll provide a couple of possible captions, and you can try your hand at one or two of your own.

-- "Greivis said what???!"

-- "Note to self: Cancel subscription to the Washington Post when I return home."

-- "In case anyone's wondering, this is my 16th straight postseason appearance, I've won nine straight NCAA first-round games and we've been to the NCAA Tournament two of the past three seasons. Just sayin'..."

-- "I must remember to ask Calipari about his tailor after the game." 

-- "Conference USA isn't so bad."

-- "I hope Lance Stephenson isn't watching this."

Photo by Karl Merton Ferron / Baltimore Sun

Posted by Rick Maese at 3:26 PM in Caption This | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

When I was in elementary school, every December we made a chain of paper links. We tore off a link for every single day leading up to Christmas. It helped satisfy the anticipation. Orioles fans eager for a big free-agent signing can do that too. They'll need about 700 links or so.

O's boss Peter Angelos says they'll reel in a big fish once the team is closer to playoff contention, which most likely means in advance of the 2011 season. Let's start counting the days!

Because it's never too early to start planning, here's a roadmap for the offseason that precedes 2011 Opening Day:

Priority signing: Albert Pujols (who has an option for that year but will most likely want to bat behind Matt Wieters.)

Add some arms: Josh Beckett, Brandon Webb and Jeremy Bonderman.

SS probably still needed: J.J Hardy, Jose Reyes and Jhonny Peralta are all worth a look.

Outfield possibilities: Brad Hawpe, Carl Crawford, Magglio Ordonez and maybe Jose Guillen. Get all four of them so there's some options for the manager.

The future is indeed bright. Can we purchase 2011 season tickets right now or should we wait?

(A list of 2011 free agents is here.)

Posted by Rick Maese at 1:32 PM in Orioles | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

We really do appreciate Michael Phelps around here. Heck, let's face it, when it comes to drawing Web traffic, the guy is absolute money. And, of course, we're very respectful about the business of the eight gold medals and bringing all this credit to Baltimore and blah, blah, blah.

But seriously, we really, really do appreciate Michael Phelps. So it's all in the interest of just funnin' around that we bring you this little goof on one of Charm City's favorite sons.

Posted by Bill Ordine at 12:45 PM in Must-see Web TV | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

By far, my favorite answer in Jamison Hensley's Q&A with Steve Bisciotti was in response to a question about Ray Lewis. The Ravens' owner was asked whether he was disappointed with the way his star linebacker handled himself during the offseason. Bisciotti said, "No. It humored me." And in response to a follow-up, he said, in part: "I was just amused."

Humored? Amused? What odd characterizations. And I know it must've reminded you of Goodfellas, too? Can you imagine how the conversation between the owner and linebacker must've went down?

Steve Bisciotti: Ya know, Ray, you're a pistol, you're really funny. You're really funny.

Ray Lewis: What do you mean I'm funny?

SB: You're amusing, you know. Jets… Cowboys… it's funny, you're a funny guy.

RL: What do you mean? You mean the way I talk? What’s the bottom line here?

SB: It's just, you know, you're just funny -- it's amusing the way you tell the story, the way you thought every team was gonna open their vault doors for you. It’s humorous.

RL: Let me understand this… I'm funny how? I mean, funny like I'm a clown? Am I like Chad Johnson? Or Kenny Mayne? Do I amuse you? I make you laugh? I'm here to amuse you? How am I funny?

SB: Geez. Calm down. Just humorous, Ray. That’s all I’m saying. I was just amused.

OK, I'll stop there. But you gotta admit -- Bisciotti's answer to that question was a bit, um, humorous.

Other great tidbits in there on Suggs and Mason and Stover. I'm also glad Jamison asked Bisciotti about the Ravens raising ticket prices. The Ravens have rationalized the price hike in a convincing way. Still, with the economy what it is, it would've been a nice gesture to skip this year's scheduled increase.

One interesting thing: While Bisciotti said the Ravens would be competitive "and then some" during an uncapped 2010 season, he also acknowledged that he's worried about selling sponsorships and suites during these tough economic times. Let's hope they figure out something before then, in order to avoid another ticket price hike (which, it should be noted, the franchise has been doing every two years).

I'm thinking of fundraiser possibilities. Could the offensive line sponsor a bake sale? Maybe the Ravens Marching Band should start playing birthday parties? Or perhaps a charity car wash by the Ravens cheerleaders? Yeah, that last one might have some potential.

Photos: Warner Bros.; Getty

Posted by Rick Maese at 10:08 AM in Ravens | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

Special to The Baltimore Sun: Contact Ricig at michaelricigliano@gmail.com

Posted by baltimoresun.com at 10:00 AM in Mike Ricigliano's View, Ravens, Terps | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Each week here at the Toy Department, two Baltimore Sun staffers will engage in a segment we like to call The Conversation, where they'll swap emails with one another and debate something that is in the news. This week, Childs Walker and Kevin Van Valkenburg debate the state of Maryland basketball, and what the Terps will do going forward.

Hey Kevin:

As I watched Memphis take Maryland to the woodshed this afternoon, I couldn't help but think the beatdown was a perfect representation of where the Terps stand.

They turned into a fun team this year, they really did. They played hard. They rallied around Gary Williams when his critics took out the long knives. Greivis Vasquez produced memorable performances and even more memorable quotes. Dave Neal found a way to keep scoring with his self-described YMCA game.

But when they ran into an elite team playing at the top of its game, they not only lost; they couldn't compete.

The game was Maryland's worst nightmare really. We knew the Terps were overmatched body for body, but we couldn't have expected Memphis to shoot 70 percent and make 8 of 11 threes in the first half. The Tigers were so efficient that they didn't even need to pound the offensive glass to outclass Maryland. The Terps, meanwhile, struggled to score for long stretches ... just as they have all season.

It's hard to see any of this changing until Williams stocks his team with a few blue-chip recruits. Given the same set of players, he might well be a better coach than Memphis' John Calipari. But when was the last time Williams had a group as talented as this Memphis team? Probably 2002.

The short-term prognosis for Maryland is fine. Gary will be back as will most of this year's team. Maryland will add two desperately needed inside players in Jordan Williams and James Padgett. If one of them (probably Williams) helps immediately, if Sean Mosley matures, if Landon Milbourne improves a bit more, if Eric Hayes shoots with a little more confidence, if Vasquez eschews the NBA, they could finish in the top half of the ACC next year.

We know Gary will maximize what he has and whip his crew to a few upsets. But it's equally obvious that without a better grade of talent, Maryland won't make deep runs into the NCAA tournament. They'll run into teams like Memphis in the second or third round and they'll be hopelessly outclassed.

So my questions to you are: Do you see any of this changing? Do you think there's anything philosophically wrong with the state of Maryland's program (or is Gary really kind of a noble figure)? Should Greivis come back?

Fear the Turtle, I suppose.

Childs

Childs,

At some point during the second half, when Memphis was just breaking Maryland's press with ease and throwing alley-oops like they were playing against the Washington Generals, I began to wonder why some Terps fans have have decided to frame the argument this way: Either you embrace Gary Williams and pretend that his program and his methods are flawless, or you're a hater and an enabler and you're contributing to everything that's wrong and immoral with amateur athletics.

As you know, life is almost never that black and white. It was fun to watch Maryland rally around Williams this year, and you can understand why the players did so. When someone complains about recruiting, what they're really saying is the players the Terps have right now aren't quite good enough, so you can see why a Greivis Vasquez or a Dave Neal or a Landon Milbourne might take that personally and defend their coach. But holding the program to high standards, questioning it while at the same time rooting for it, doesn't make you a traitor. You'd think that Dick Cheney was running the Terrapin Club the way some people rage against anyone who dares suggest finishing 7th in the ACC isn't good enough.

This year ends, despite the Memphis loss, with pretty good vibes. But in the second half of that game, I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like if the two coaches could switch teams. Wouldn't it be fun to watch some of those athletes the Tigers have play in Williams flex offense? There might be some evidence out there that proves John Calipari is a dirty coach, but if there is, it hasn't surfaced in Memphis. All he's done is recruit blue chip athletes from all over the country and win basketball games. It's OK to embrace Gary Williams while also wondering why he doesn't want to do the things that Calipari does (or Roy Williams does, or Jim Boeheim does, or Jim Calhoun does) to get the best players? I'm not even talking about cheating. I'm talking about simply befriending AAU coaches, traveling constantly to scout players, calling kids as often as the NCAA allows, and selling them on the whole experience of Maryland athletics.

Williams absolutely hates talking about this kind of stuff, which I understand, but it's a reality of the the sport. Maybe the university and the admissions department fight you every step of the way when you try to sign players without stellar academic credentials, but if that's the case, you certainly shouldn't have one of the lowest graduation rates in the ACC. Gary and his supporters seem to want it both ways. During the season, I don't think anyone in the country cares more about his team than Williams does. He asks a lot of his players, and he gives a lot back. During the offseason, I think it's another story. I really, truly admire the man, and the last thing I want to see is for him to leave the program before he's ready, but I also don't think it's unfair to ask him to adapt with the times. Of course, sucking up to 17-year-old kids with pimples is demeaning for a coach who has won a national championship, but if Roy Williams can do it, so can Gary. I don't think it's going to change, because Gary's whole life, he's found success doing things his way, and certainly a know-nothing punk like me doesn't know what I'm talking about, at least in his eyes. But I reject the line of argument that says it has to be done exactly his way or Maryland will be led down the dark path toward ethics violations.

I'll address the Vasquez situation in a second, but first I want to talk about Sean Mosley. I really like this kid. He was a great blue chip recruit that Williams did land, and even if he doesn't blossom into a scorer -- which wasn't his role this year -- I think he has the chance to be a special player. He really tough, he's a tremendous rebounder, and he sees the floor so well, I could even see him playing some point guard if he wanted. It's not a coincidence that Maryland found stability the second half of the season when he entered the starting lineup. If I were him, I'd make a vow that I was going to shoot 1,000 jumpers a day between now and next season, and turn myself into a perimeter threat. Because right now, that seems like the one flaw in his game. He did average 25 points a game in high school, so maybe he'll grow more assertive next season, especially if Vasquez is gone.

Lastly, what can be said about Vasquez that hasn't been said already? He's a fascinating player, and honestly, there is no story I'd rather write in the pages of The Sun right now than one that allowed me to travel to Venezuela (preferably with Greivis) to see where he grew up and what forces shaped him into the fiery competitor he is. He's not a big fan of the media, though, and newspapers don't exactly have the kind of cash to throw around, so sadly I think it's going to exist only in my imagination. I'd like to see him come back, but he's like Williams in so many ways that you have to understand what you're getting: A stubborn, talented competitor who will thrill you some nights and hurt you others. I don't think his pre-game trash talk was really much of a factor in Memphis' play, but it didn't help that he didn't find his offensive game until the second half.

Let me throw this back at you with a few questions of my own: Can Maryland's program continue to thrive despite the fact that there is clearly tension between the head coach and the athletic department? How much did losing Billy Hahn and Jimmy Patsos hurt Williams on the recruiting trail? And shouldn't the school just go ahead and let the band play Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part II" seeing as how the student body sings it a cappella anyway, adding in the "You Suck!" in all the appropriate places?

As you know, my wife is a Maryland grad (1998, Print Journalism) and a Terps fan, and she teared up at the Wake Forest game this year when Gary pumped his fist to the student section and when the students sang their own version of "Rock and Roll, Part II." You've got to love that kind of fan support, when defiant gestures and naughty words can make a woman nostalgic for all those yesterdays.