Myers departs

BALTIMORE – When longtime baseball player Wil Cordero was arrested for domestic violence in 1997, the Boston Red Sox immediately sent the ballplayer home. Cordero had more important things to worry about rather than playing baseball, the Red Sox reasoned.

So for eight days the Red Sox went on with their business without Cordero. He wasn’t a distraction to the team because he wasn’t there nor was there any fodder for columnists or the talk shows about the Red Sox’s sensitivity toward women’s issues or domestic abuse, because the team jumped in and took care of the troubled employee immediately.

Ultimately, Cordero returned to the Red Sox for a little while and was eventually released. But not before the player did some work in Boston for abuse awareness and then plead guilty to the charges and received a 90-day sentence, suspended for two years.

Last weekend, the Phillies had a chance to be proactive in regard to one of their ballplayers up on charges of domestic abuse in Boston. Instead, the team allowed Brett Myers to pitch on national television against his idol, Curt Schilling, just a day after he was released on $200 bail. Additionally, the team issued a terse statement reading that the team was going to respect the privacy of Myers, and the alleged victim, his wife, Kim, and chose not to do anything.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. The Phillies chose to allow Myers to pitch.

Four days later, when Myers decided it might be the correct course of action to leave the team until after the All-Star Break, the Phillies finally did something. They allowed the pitcher to do what he wanted.

Again.

Perhaps this is the proper action. After all, unlike the Cordero case there are several witnesses that saw Myers’ alleged violence against a young mother of two small children. But the popular sentiment coming from Camden Yards on Tuesday afternoon was that the Phillies, once again, reacted instead of acted.

Not so say the Phillies. In team president David Montgomery’s statement issued through the club’s public relations staff on Tuesday, the club acted in the only way that it could:

“After last Friday, the Phillies did not comment further on the events surrounding the arrest of Brett Myers out of respect for the Myers’ privacy and because there is a criminal prosecution pending,” Montgomery wrote. “Likewise, the Phillies did not summarily suspend Brett Myers immediately upon his arrest, prior to any judicial determination of guilt or complete evaluation of the entire matter. Such a decision, unfortunately, has been portrayed or interpreted as the Phillies indifference to problems of spousal abuse. Nothing could be further from the truth. We abhor such violence and recognize that it is a very serious problem affecting a substantial number of victims, particularly women, across the country.

“If we have been guilty of delay in expressing these sentiments, we are sorry. We have been engaged in a difficult balancing of concerns for the rights of our employee, the presumption of innocence, the rights of his spouse, and the legitimate public concern about allegations of spousal abuse by a Phillies ballplayer. We believe that the present status, including a public apology by Brett Myers, time off from baseball, professional assistance for Brett and Kim Myers, and this statement achieves the appropriate balance for now.”

That’s all well and good, says Julie Cousler Emig of the Philadelphia Domestic Violence Collaborative, one of four organizations in Philadelphia that fights domestic violence and supports victims, but the Phillies are missing the ball once again. Cousler Emig wrote a letter to Montgomery indicating that she would like to see one of the large market Major League clubs like the Phillies take a bold stance on something as serious as domestic abuse.

“I think we'd like to see some further action taken by the Phillies,” said Cousler Emig. “It seems like Brett Myers offered a convenient out for the team to deal with this in a minimal way. We would like to see, in the meantime, the Phillies take us on our offer to join us in an anti-domestic violence complaint. This is really a chance for them to right some wrongs.”

The charges against Myers would be a good place to start. After all, it seems as if this recent arrest of a Phillies player is just the latest on a long list of some questionable behavior. For instance:

Ugueth Urbina, the relief pitcher who spent most of 2005 with the Phillies, is currently in jail in Venezuela awaiting a trial for attempted murder. Urbina and three friends are accused of beating, hacking and torturing six workers in a dispute allegedly about the disappearance of a pistol from Urbina's ranch. The workers said Urbina told his friends to splash paint thinner and gasoline on them before setting them afire.

At the time of his arrest, Urbina was technically a free agent.

Jason Michaels was arrested around 3 a.m. on July 3, 2005, after allegedly punching Philadelphia police officer Timothy Taylor as he left the "32 Degrees" nightclub in the Olde City. “He punched a Philadelphia police officer and wrestled him to the ground, in the process ripping the police officer's shirt,” Philadelphia police spokesperson Jim Pauley said.

It reportedly took four Philadelphia police officers to subdue Michaels, who spent nine hours in detention. However, Michaels reported on time and was in uniform for that night’s game against the Braves.

Cole Hamels broke his pitching hand in a bar fight before the season began in 2005. The injury cost him most of the season and a potential chance to join the Phillies for the stretch drive. Hamels was not charged in the incident.

Terry Adams was arrested during the 2003 season and charged with hitting his wife during a fight in his New York City hotel room before a game against the Mets. Adams was charged with an assault misdemeanor.

Marlon Byrd was arrested in 2002 for an alleged assault on his girlfriend outside of the team bus when he was playing for Scranton-Wilkes-Barre. The charges eventually were dropped.

Robert Person was arrested in Clearwater, Fla. before spring training in 2002 on charges of obstructing or opposing an officer without violence, and giving a false name, after failing to walk away from a fight when ordered. Person was hogtied by police after he smashed the back window of a police car.

The Phillies response after all of these incidents has been consistent – issue a statement through the PR staff and hope people get distracted by something else.

No such luck in this case.

There is still time for the Phillies to be proactive this time. Perhaps the club can take Cousler Emig up on her offer and do something meaningful in combating the scourge of domestic abuse. Better yet, the Phillies and Myers could get involved in some behind-the-scenes work at a shelter without fanfare, press releases or TV cameras.

According to the Centers for Disease Control domestic violence is a serious, public health problem affecting more than 32 million Americans, that is more than 10 percent of the U.S. population, and three different Phillies have been in the legal system for alleged domestic abuse since 2002.

That’s three too many.

America's Past Time

As the World Cup of soccer heads in to its third week, the inevitable cry from the American press regarding the sports’ popularity in the states seems to have flaked out like spores from a dandelion in a wind tunnel. As always it was the same tired, old self-aggrandizing meant to do nothing more than belittle “the world’s most popular sport” ugly American style.

But this time around, the questions about whether soccer can remain ingrained in the public eye after the World Cup passes on until four years from now flickered and faded. No, not because the sport is going to be mixed into the American sports gumbo with football, baseball, basketball and NASCAR. That’s just not going to happen.

Soccer in America doesn’t need the marketing arm of NBC, ABC/ESPN or FOX with weekly broadcast games of the week in order to be successful. That’s because American soccer has something much more important than anything that can be storyboarded into a flashy gimmick like the major four sports have…

Soccer has the kids.

Yes, the sport that is ignored by the American viewing public could very well be the most popular sport there is. Better yet, since the 1970s, when Pele, the great Brazilian soccer star came to America to play for the New York Cosmos in the old NASL, kids have been swarming to the fields only to leave the game behind for baseball, football and basketball when they reached adolescence.

But that’s not likely to be the case in the future. With fewer athletic scholarships trickling around, and the physical requirements that other sports carry to simply get a kid noticed, more and more specialization is the rage. Kids are finding their niche at an earlier age and painstakingly honing their craft.

Of course they burn out quicker, and the single-minded focus on one thing isn’t exactly mentally or physically healthy or even the best way to go about getting little Johnny that big scholarship to State U., but that’s a different argument for another day. The point is kids aren’t giving up on soccer for the glamour sports anymore.

Here’s a simple experiment to try out:

Drive by any suburban (and maybe even urban) playground, school athletic complex or grassy field. Once you get there, look for the kids and note what sport they’re playing. Nope, it isn’t hockey or football or even the great American Pastime. It’s soccer.

And it just isn’t at one school or the one little field around the corner. It’s everywhere. And they have sponsorships, too, from the giants like Nike and adidas as well as the local restaurants and car dealerships. Hey, that’s where the kids are. Get ‘em while they’re young.

Certainly, this isn’t anything new. Soccer has always been one of the first participatory sports that kids play just because it’s such a simple sport to learn. All you need is a ball, a net at both ends of a field and some kids to run around. That’s it. In fact, ask anyone from the age of 40 or younger what the first team sport they played as a child was and chances is it was soccer. If it wasn’t the first sport then it was definitely the second one.

Oh, but there’s more. Where I live, within spitting distance from Franklin & Marshall College’s athletic fields, soccer rules. Those fields, which are approximately a mile-and-a-half wide and a half-mile deep, and tucked between a residential neighborhood and a copse of woods, could be the most popular spot on campus. Or at least, the most well visited spot for the community-minded college.

A few years ago, those fields used to hold five soccer pitches, seven baseball diamonds, and a rugby field. There was always a flurry of activity on the weekends with kids and the parents filling up the neighborhood waiting for the chance that team after team could jump on one of the fields for soccer game.

But over time, it seemed as if the fields had become too quaint or maybe it was time to cut down a few trees to expand the grass back to the Conestoga Creek that winds its way through the neighborhood. There were just too many teams and too many kids standing around and not playing. Frustration grew and people started going elsewhere to play.

That is until Franklin & Marshall came up with a better plan.

It got rid of most of the baseball fields.

Now the kids play soccer all year round. Even in the summertime, camps of boys and girls teem from morning to dusk, tearing through the grass doing drill after drill while the summer days just wile away.

Somewhere else they’re playing baseball.

Twenty Years

Twenty years.

Think about all that can happen in the space of twenty years. Friends come and go, and milestones are recognized and passed. Sometimes, even, lifetimes are lived, and always it seems like everything had happened in just a fleeting moment.

Time marches on. It always does.

In sports, 20 years is an Era. There are rare cases that a career can last 20 years, but those are few and far between. The number of players that every franchise in every sport has seen make through multiple decades of service can be counted on one hand.

For the Phillies, Mike Schmidt played 18 seasons. That was the most of any Philadelphia player. Think about it, in 20 years, the Phillies have made the playoffs once and the city’s major sports teams have brought home… well, there haven’t been any parades for championships. But you get the point; a lot can happen in 20 years.

Levity aside, it’s been exactly 20 years since Len Bias – the great college basketball player from the University of Maryland – died of a cocaine overdose (June 19, 1986) less than two days after he had been selected as the No. 2 pick in the NBA Draft. Billed as the next great Boston Celtics All-Star, Bias had the world by the tail.

Bias’ death was, according to Celtics great Larry Bird, “The cruelest thing ever.”

It certainly seemed that way at the time. With the aid of time and distance we learned that Bias and his university had a several other significant problems and the cocaine abuse was just the tip of the iceberg. Bias had been flunking out of school and was known to keep company with a few unsavory characters, including Brian Tribble, the convicted cocaine dealer who is said to have supplied the dose that killed him.

Ultimately, Tribble was cleared of any wrongdoing in Bias’ death, but Maryland coach Lefty Driesell’s reputation remains sullied in the aftermath of his star players’ death. Actually, in 20 years there has been a lot more damage and disgrace than growth, but that’s the way it goes when a star is extinguished long before his time.

And “star” is the best way to describe Bias. He was to be the next great star of the NBA – not like Karl Malone or Charles Barkley, his contemporaries – but instead like the guys who only needed one name.

Michael, Magic, Larry.

And Len.

Not in this lifetime.

For those who grew up in the ‘80s and lived for basketball the way the devout love the gospels, Len Bias was The Truth. Not privy to all of the scouting reports or the 24-hour inundation of sports and analysis, we only had one player to compare Bias to, and that was the guy from Carolina who was the ACC Player of the Year before him.

Comparisons are always odious, especially when everyone knows who Michael Jordan is and what he accomplished, and Bias, amongst today’s live-for-the-now sports mindset, is largely forgotten. Yet as collegiate players, Bias, Patrick Ewing and David Robinson remain the best I have ever seen. Like Jordan, Bias could play forward and guard, but at the same age, Lenny was a better shooter, stronger and meaner.

People always talked about Jordan and his competitiveness and how he forced his teammates to become better players. It’s all part of his legend. But Bias played with a nastiness that made Jordan seem meek. Then there was that devastating, baseline jumper that just carved an opponents’ heart out.

Sadly, no one remembers anything about the way Len Bias played. They just remember the end.

Long before Sept. 11, or the O.J. circus, and a handful of years before the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union crumbled; Len Bias’ death was people of my age’s Kennedy Assassination. I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I remember where I was standing when my mom and sister came running outside to tell me the news. I remember how the sky looked and how the sun felt. I remember the way the evergreen bush next to the driveway felt when I touched it and pulled a little red berry off of it.

I remember the local TV sportscaster delivering the news in his attempt at solemnity opposed to his typical wacky sports guy shtick. I remember mowing the grass in the backyard and wondering whether any one would ever wear No. 30 for the Celtics again.

I remember the drive home with my mom, sister and grandmother from Rehoboth Beach the day before and hearing the news in the Rehoboth Mall that he had been selected with the second pick in the NBA Draft. I remember Red Auerbach’s creepy laugh when his Celtics and the Sixers were the only two who hadn’t been called in that year’s draft lottery. Sure, the Celtics ended up with the No. 2 pick behind the Sixers, but Red knew Harold Katz would figure out a way to mess it up.

Who could have guessed that Jeff Ruland ended up more productive for the 76ers than Len Bias for the Celtics?

Twenty years later we wonder where the time went and how to make the news sting a little less. Twenty years can seem like an eternity or a blink of an eye. But make no mistake, 22 years is far too young to die.

King Kong, the second baseman and the big 'clean up'

While cleaning out a closet that had become nothing more than a container for junk that I had refused to throw away for "sentimental" reasons, I came across some old baseball cards I’d saved from the 1980s. Rather than pitch them into the trash pile, or placing them up for sale on eBay (I’m saving them for my son because they’ll be valuable one day, right?), I decided to sit down and look at them.

You know, a little stroll down amnesia lane.

As I thumbed through all of the old names – George Hendrick, Frank Tanana, Tippy Martinez, Chet Lemon, Ron Cey, etc., etc. – it felt like it was 1985 again and there was nothing to worry about.

But there were two things that were particularly revealing about those old cards. Firstly, let’s hope that there is never a '80s retro trend. For anyone who survived the style trends of this particular era of our culture, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

For those of you still hanging on with the hope that parachute pants make a stylish comeback, God bless you.

Secondly, and more importantly, the most fascinating part about looking at those baseball cards was how skinny the players looked. It wasn’t an unhealthy skinny where it appeared as if the ballplayers needed to chow down on a few more carbohydrate-heavy dinners, but it was a fit skinny.

Though dressed in those crazy uniforms for the bright colors zooming at you from all angles, the players looked athletic – like a college miler or someone who spends three-quarters of their time at the gym on cardio instead of the weights.

It’s a look that is nearly non-existent amongst the current crop of ballplayers, and, certainly, no explanation is needed.

With the curious case of one-time Phillie Jason Grimsley suddenly dominating all the seedy chatter about baseball these days, as the Steroid Era finally enters into the darker, uglier Human-Growth Hormone Era, it was striking to see the 20-year old images of sluggers Dave Kingman and Jack Clark.

Kingman and Clark, as followers of baseball remember, were two of the most-feared home run hitters of their era. At 6-foot-6 and a wispy 200 pounds, Kingman was known as "King Kong" for routinely bashing 30-plus homers per season and for smacking the ball a long way.

In 1985, Clark was slugger and catalyst for the St. Louis Cardinals and such a power threat that he often walked more times during a season than he reached base on a hit. But during that ’85 season in which Clark struck a menacing fear into all pitchers, he hit just 22 home runs, and during his 18-year career Clark hit more than 30 homers just once.

In 24 combined big league seasons, Clark and Kingman reached the 40-homer plateau just once.

These were your sluggers, folks.

And yes, both players were blade thin. In fact, Clark and Kingman had the same type of physique as second baseman Chase Utley, a strong hitter who smacked 28 homers a season ago and is on the way to duplicating that total this season.

Those are definitely strong statistics, but how many people would consider Chase Utley a home run hitter?

Right. Not many.

So what exactly then is the point? That strength training, nutrition, performance-enhancing drug abuse, and fashion sense has come a long way in 20 years? That baseball’s statistics are about as valuable as the paper they’re printed on? Yes, we already knew that.

But what about this: baseball, like those old cards buried in the back of a closet, is a fun diversion. A night at the ballpark or in front of the tube watching a game and talking about the strategy, the players and those forgotten heroes is a pretty good way to spend an evening. And based on attendance figures and TV ratings, a lot of other people think so, too.

Even with Congressional hearings where nothing meaningful was learned about steroid abuse other than a few ballplayers were less than honest, or an investigation and the chance that one of the game’s most prolific sluggers might have perjured himself in front of a federal grand jury, interest in the game has not waned.

Perhaps Phillies catcher Sal Fasano is correct when he says the only thing he remembers turning off the fans from the game was the strike in 1994.

"We know the substances are being used, and we know baseball is doing what it can to clean it up," said Fasano before last Thursday’s game at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., just two miles away from where the Congress vowed to "clean up" baseball. "But do fans want to hear about it all the time? I don't know."

A night out, some good and affordable food and maybe even a few homers from the home team… what’s better than that? Who cares if King Kong is the same size as the second baseman?

Formula for Floyd: Toughen up

During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, swimmer Amanda Beard went home with three medals – one gold and two silvers – in part because of her tenacity. Oh sure, Beard had a lot of talent. She had to in order to simply make the Olympic team. But the difference between Beard and a middle of the pack swimmer was her mental toughness.

But just being tough against the competition was the least of it. Beard dealt with a lot of pressure that had nothing to do with swimming. That summer, TV cameras followed Beard around, sometimes basing the day’s programming around her basic daily routines. Then there was the promise of fame and money and all of the ancillary trappings that go with that kind of stuff if she swam exceptionally well against the best in the world.

And don’t forget the press attention and the expectations from family and friends as well as the petty jealousies that always seem to crop up when someone is rising faster than expected. In other words, it wasn’t about swimming for Beard. It was about everything, yet through it all she still handled it all with great aplomb.

Now here’s the crazy thing: Beard was just 14 years old during the ’96 games.

At that young of an age she already was as mentally tough as even the most seasoned of athletes. After all, weaklings usually don’t win Olympic medals.

That summer when Beard was swimming her way into the record books, young Gavin Floyd, the pitcher who was just demoted from the Phillies’ rotation to the minors so that he could go get “tough,” was just 13 years old and undoubtedly dominating his baseball league near his hometown Severna Park, Md. Like Beard, Floyd had talent to spare. That much was evident when the Phillies made him the fourth overall pick in the 2001 draft when he was just 18.

In fact, it took a big signing bonus (and the promise to pay for his college studies) to keep Floyd from giving the Phillies the J.D. Drew treatment and enrolling at the University of South Carolina. Once in the minor league system, Floyd’s ascent was quick with very few challenges. His domination in the bushes – one that included a no-hitter in Single-A ball – got to the point where team insiders and observers said that it appeared as if the tall right-hander was bored.

The difficult part, some offered, was hoping that Floyd became engaged in a game, or that his interest was piqued.

That’s not something anybody ever said about the great ones. Beard, at 14, was invested in her sport. The same goes for all of the true competitors in recent sports memory. Michael Jordan with the flu in the NBA Finals. Curt Schilling with the bloody sock in the World Series. Aaron Rowand doing a face plant into an exposed metal bar on a fence.

Heck, even that kid in the National Spelling Bee that fainted, pulled himself off the ground, composed himself and then stepped up to the mic and correctly spelled the word all have something that the fourth pick of the 2001 baseball draft seems to be lacking.

Toughness.

No one is really inspired by the guy with all of the talent in the world who suffers from boredom.

What’s most baffling, according to some of the coaches and players with the Phillies is that Floyd is talented. Actually, he’s very, very talented. But to live up to the expectations others have set for him, as well as the goals he has set for himself, Floyd is going to have to do something he has never had to do before…

Stand up and fight.

“It's just to a point where he has to look down deep within himself and find something that will help him in his career,” catcher Sal Fasano told Phillies.com.

But even with his talent and the soul searching that will come during the next few weeks, there is no guarantee that Floyd will ever return to the Major Leagues. He really has to do some work and it has nothing to do with boning up his repertoire of pitches to accompany one of the most knee-buckling curveballs anyone has ever seen.

“The competition isn't a threat,” team pitching coach Rich Dubee told Phillies.com. “It should be a challenge. It intimidates him sometimes. Everything's life and death, and it doesn't need to be that way. This needs to be something that he enjoys doing. I'm sure he felt extra heat – a lot of a lot of good players have had to go backward to go forward. Hopefully, he can get straightened out and get back up here.”

Some have suggested that Floyd simply needs the tough love, that he needs someone to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and scream at him, “You are good!” But that metaphoric kick-in-the rear seems so simple and even a little trite. It shouldn’t have to come to that.

After all, no one had to tell 14-year-old Amanda Beard that she was good.