Sweet Lou Will Be Missed #MLB

Sad day for MLB and fans of MLB who like to watch grown men lose their grip on reality when an umpire makes a mistake. Lou Piniella announced that he is going to retire as a baseball manager at the end of this season.

Too bad. Really.

Lou is one of, if not the, last ‘old school’ baseball manager. I’m not talking about ‘old school’ in the ‘if a guy hits a home run and watches it too long, our pitcher is going to try and take his head off’ kind of old school. Ozzie Guillen is still around to do that. I am talking about a guy who not only wants his team to play the game ‘the right way’ but a guy who throw a temper tantrum in front of 50,000 in the seats and another 10 million on TV, and not think twice about it.

Lou Piniella, gone after this season. Bobby Cox, the all-time leader in managerial ejections, gone after this season. And for the record, you can have most hits, most strikeouts, most home runs, or most wins. Give me the most ejections title. Very cool.

Tommy Lasorda, Earl Weaver, Billy Martin, all long gone. Who is going to be the one to come charging out of the dugout, belly flopping all over the place, throw their cap on the ground, kick dirt like an infant, scream into another man’s face like a drunken fool, rip bags out of the ground and throw them across the field, and look like they are about to stroke out, all because someone missed a tag?

The modern manager is tactical, even keeled, and media savvy. They think before they act. They know if they go ape, it will be run endlessly on highlight shows. It is a dying art. Bud Black is not going to pick up second base and heave it into the outfield. Mike Scioscia may have his share of arguments, but he is never going to throw his cap and kick dirt.

Baseball needs it. The players aren’t on the right drugs anymore. No one likes to watching pitching, and a 60-year old man acting like a 5-year old is often times the best part of any given ball game.

You will be missed Lou. Not your strategy, not your baseball acumen, but you utter shamelessness when it came to acting the fool.

D. Wade Is A Basketball Player, Not a Diplomat #NBA

Can everyone just take it down a notch? Can we get pissed at things that actually matter and let harmless, stupid mistakes slide by without reacting like someone has committed a felony.

I speak of Dwyane Wade and his stupid comments regarding September 11th, 2001 and comparing a future Heat losing streak to another terrorist attack.

The comments were dumb, not malicious. The comments were out of line, but does anyone for a second think that he was actually disrespecting the dead of that horrible tragedy? It was a boneheaded comment, there was no master plan to denigrate the dead.

Dwyane Wade is a basketball player, a very good one at that, not a guy who uses words for a living or a guy who is paid to turn an elegant phrase. He was looking for an analogy and swung and missed.

I think everyone would be much better served to find out why he insists on spelling ‘Dwayne’ D-W-Y-A-N-E. That would be a much better use of everyone’s time and energy than beating the guy up for something he said without thinking.

His spelling is much more offensive than anything that came out of his mouth.

USC Has A New AD #ncaafootball

Mike Garrett is out, Pat Haden is in as the athletic director at USC according to numerous reports.

Garrett raised big bucks for the school athletic department, and stumbled into the hiring of Pete Carroll as head coach of the football team, and built the beautiful Galen Center, but he was also at the controls when the NCAA came in swinging an axe. He was either complicit in the payment of players like OJ Mayo and Reggie Bush, (unlikely), or was purposefully ignorant of what was taking place in his own backyard for fear of what he might find out if he asked some simple questions, (probable).

However, worse than being intentionally stupid was being brazenly arrogant. A full day hadn’t passed before Garrett went before a group of Trojan boosters and declared,

“As I read the decision by the NCAA, all I could get out of all of this was … I read between the lines and there was nothing but a lot of envy, and they wish they all were Trojans.”

Huh? He may as well have dropped his pants while at the podium and relieved himself in front of everyone, it would have had the same effect...he was shown the door. The football program gets slapped down for three years because of rampant cheating, recruiting is damaged for years on your watch and THAT is your response? See ya’.

Years of being secretive, elusive, and hostile towards the media may have worked when the football team went BCS title hunting every year for the better part of a decade, but once you got popped for cheating, you needed to do a little more than go to the ‘Everyone wishes they were us’ card.

As for Pat Haden, it’s both great news and a little scary for the millions of front runners who call themsevles USC football fans. The car flags and license plate frames that dot the city when the Trojans are in the Top Five may be hard to find in the immediate future.

The good news is that Haden is, by almost unanimous account, an honest, hard working, and aboveboard operator. What happened on Garrett’s watch will not happen with Haden as the headman in Heritage Hall.

That's also the bad news.

Corners won’t be cut, agents will not be allowed to roam the sidelines with envelopes stuffed with cash and real estate deeds. Someone will be asking questions, not looking the other direction when someone shows up with a new car.  He is already sending back Reggie Bush's Heisman Trophy.

Men’s basketball coach Kevin O’Neill won’t be able to get away with a Tim Floyd-esque, ‘OJ Mayo just called me and said he wanted to play here. Is that cool?’ explanation as to how the country’s most visible and sought after high school basketball player showed up at a school across the country; a school with no basketball pedigree.

Pat Haden might ask a follow up question that Mike Garrett never would. Something along the lines of “What, do I look stupid? I went to Oxford, you idiot. What do you mean OJ wants to play here? How? Who is setting this up? Rodney Guillory? The same guy who screwed us with Jeff Trapagnier? You want to have the NCAA set up shop on campus and have them start asking even more questions? Get the hell out of my office.”

The program will be cleaner, but don’t anticipate it being better. The days of nearly free houses for player’s parents are probably done for a while. Lane Kiffin may have been able to do Lane Kiffin things if Garret was the one looking (or more to the point not looking) over his shoulder. With the NCAA already gutting the Trojans for the next three years, Haden can’t afford to let Kiffin do what he did in Tennessee, namely, play in the NCAA gray areas and hope it goes his way.

USC did the right thing in making a change, Garrett was ultimately responsible for what went down while he was in charge (so is Pete Carroll for that matter), and he needed to go.

Pat Haden is a solid choice. A Trojan, a former athlete, and bright mind (Oxford!). Just don’t expect another run of seven straight BCS games. You need envelopes full of cash and free houses to get that done.

Jordan Cracks JaMEs #NBA

As pathetic and stupid as that despicable preening and dancing showcase that LeBron JaMEs, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh unleashed on the world a few days ago, that was not the most embarrassing moment for King JaMEs, post ‘The Decision’. He even managed to top his mugging for the camera in a shower of fireworks and a cloud of self-congratulation during his coming out party for the Heat.

He so baldy damaged his reputation as an NBA alpha-dog, that he managed to get Michael Jordan to put down his cigar and 8-iron long enough to take a run at him.

Speaking at the "Lake Tahoe Celebrity Let’s Get Drunk; Gamble; Chase Women and Pretend We Are Doing It For Charity; Presented By Ben Roethlisberger; Classic, Jordan cracked King JaMEs for needing to run for cover with his superstar pals in an effort to win an NBA title.

“There's no way, with hindsight, I would've ever called up Larry, called up Magic and said, 'Hey, look, let's get together and play on one team. But that's ... things are different. I can't say that's a bad thing. It's an opportunity these kids have today. In all honesty, I was trying to beat those guys."

Translation: Puss.

Ouch. Remember, JaMEs thinks so much of Jordan, that he lobbied the NBA to have ’23’ retired, ala MLB and Jackie Robinson’s ’42’. King JaMEs is shelving the 23 he has worn since high school, and trading it in for a ‘6’ out of respect for Jordan. And for all that, Jordan calls him a coward.

That’s what he was saying, plain and simple. I was a champion. Larry Bird was a champion. Magic was a champion. We tried to kill each other and I never would have rolled over and joined the guys who I competed against in order to get a few easy titles. LeBron needed to orchestrate a scam to get together with a real closer, a real champ, D. Wade, and then got another guy with a solid game, Chris Bosh, to come along for the ride as well. Wuss.

Of course Jordan wouldn’t have done what JaMEs did. Jordan was a killer, JaMEs is a follower, the best second option in the history of the game. JaMEs told the world he couldn’t get it done without the assistance of a real finisher so he ran and ‘took his talents to South Beach’.

JaMEs could end up winning multiple titles in Miami. He very easily could rack MVPs and become the ‘global icon’ he so desperately wants to be. But he will never be thought of as an all time great, with the same level of respect as that group of guys. MJ, Magic and Bird are killers, alpha-dogs. So are Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade. Those guys will get respect reserved for true greatness, not just great skill.

Enjoy South Beach, LeBron.

Worst Event of The Year #PGA

And THAT is exactly why the British Open is the worst of the four golf majors played every season.

What is THAT, exactly?

How about...all of it. The course; the weather; the competition; the star factor; the winner; all of it.

Yes, I do know the history of the course, the venue, and every other reason that people pretend to like the British Open, I just don’t buy it.

Sports, at it’s core, is about one thing, competition. This tournament was an ass kicking of the highest order. And not even a fun, record setting,' Tiger Woods-esque roll the field by 15 shots' kind of ass kicking. A 'boring, watch me get the lead early and slowly bleed any life out of this thing for three straight days', ass kicking. Louis Oosthuizen took the lead on the seventh hole on Friday, and that was that. No one challenged him, no one pushed him, and the next 47 holes were a formality. No crash and burn disasters from the leader or the field, no come-from-behind push. Nothing. A guy no one outside of the Oosthuizen living room had ever heard of, just slowly pulling away from the field. Mike Tirico and crew must have wanted to kill themselves. "Good shot, nice lag, solid par'. Repeat for 72 hours.

Look at the list of winners from this 'major'. Paul Lawrie? Ian Baker-Finch? David Duval? Todd Hamilton? Ben Curtis? Stewart Cink? Justin Leonard? Tom Lehman? Yeah, the greats of the game. All ‘one and done’ major championship winners, with only Cink a legitimate chance to grab another one at some point. No other ‘major’ has such an undistinguished list of winners to it’s credit.

Shouldn’t a major have a signature moment? The one that makes people at work say, “Did you see ______ make that ____ at ___?” Not this time. Unless watching Louis roll in a five footer for par 14 times gets your motor running, this thing sucked from tee to green. The signature moment for most came when a 60 year old man, Tom Watson, walked across an old bridge.

Even Tiger switching putters, missing everything, and looking over his shoulder like he was afraid Joslyn James was going to come running out of the gallery couldn’t save this thing.

Give me the Masters and a chance to see eagles and double bogeys on the same hole. Give me the US Open and guys grinding to make pars. At least the US Open has the possibility of disaster, if not great play. And believe it or not, give me the PGA Championship. A deep field, a reasonable set up, and a chance to see real sports drama unfold. Screw the British Open.

Not only is it the worst of the four majors, it isn’t even the Phoenix Open at this point.