Finger Food Columns

Reflecting on 10,000 losses

2007-07-15T20:26:00.001-07:00

If we have said it once we’ve said it a thousand times: stick around long enough and your team will lose some games. And as one of the older clubs in the history of Major League Baseball, the Phillies have lost more games than any other team in professional sports history.

Actually 10,000 of them.

The Phillies, as everyone knows by now, lost their 10,000th game on Sunday night to the St. Louis Cardinals. In fact, the outcome was never in doubt even when the Phillies scored two runs in the ninth inning of the 10-2 loss. Even when images of that game from Dodger Stadium in August of 1990 when the Phillies rallied for nine runs in the ninth to win 12-11 were conjured, no one really thought the Cardinals were going to blow it.

Something like that would have really upset the fans that remained to see a bit of “history,” stomping and clapping with anticipation with each pitch following the second out of the ninth inning.

Nevertheless, the remarkable part regarding the Phillies and all of the losses in the fact that they have been to the World Series just twice since 1980, five times since 1883 and have won the World Series just once in 125 seasons.

That, folks, is amazing.

But a stroll through the Phillies clubhouse reveals that the players are not really hung up on any of those facts. Better yet, when rookie Kyle Kendrick was asked about winning Friday night’s game to delay the dubious milestone for another time, the 22-year old right-hander just shrugged.

Yeah, sure, he seemed to say, it was really good that I didn’t lose the game that would have been the 10,000th loss in team history. Then again, it didn’t seem like Kendrick really cared about all of the fuss. For one thing Kendrick is 4-0 in his six big league starts for the Phillies so it’s not like he contributed anything to three centuries of baseball futility in Philadelphia.

“He’s done his part,” fellow rookie Mike Zagurski mused to a couple of scribes while relaxing in front of his locker with an amused look on his face as more than a few reporters scurried about in a vain attempt to get someone, anyone to say anything about the Phillies and their 10,000 losses.

But why would they? The elder statesmen of the team are Jimmy Rollins and Pat Burrell who have had nothing but winning seasons since their first full seasons in 2001. Sure, there was that 80-81 year in 2002, but in every season since – save for 2003 – the Phillies have been in the playoff mix all the way to the last week of the season.

Like Burrell and Rollins, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard know nothing about playing for a losing Phillies club. Ask them about the frustration about missing the playoffs on the last few games of the season and they have a full range of experience. But being on a losing team? They haven’t been there.

That doesn’t make them too different than nearly every other player to ever pull on the Philadelphia uniform, though. Better yet, the players who actually have been to the playoffs as a member of the Phillies is as select a group as a collection of Nobel Laureates. Actually, the Phillies with playoff experience are a more select group. After all, they give out a bunch of Nobel Prizes every year and at the current rate the Phillies go to the playoffs once every 13.8 years.

That is, of course, if form holds up and they miss out again this season.

Perhaps the point is that since 1883 the Phillies have provided a much more esoteric definition of what winning and losing is. Maybe for the Phillies and their fans victories come in small packages, like that game at Dodger Stadium in 1990 where they scored nine runs in the ninth to win 12-11? Maybe the measure of a true victory is one in which the odds and trends are tipped ever-so slightly for a brief and fleeting moment in time? Aren’t those victories more exhilarating any way? You know, proving people wrong just that one time before returning to the old song and verse…

After all, by now all the followers of the Phillies ought to know that tune by heart.

Floyd Landis on Tour to Clear His Name

2007-07-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

EPHRATA, Pa. – It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Not here. Not now. In any other era or any other point of history, Floyd Landis should be relaxing after a ride through the Pyrenees near his training base in Girona, Spain, or perhaps even trekking his way from France to London ahead of the prologue of the Tour de France, which is set to begin next Saturday.

Perhaps even he would be preparing for a ceremonial role in the 2007 Tour de France after undergoing hip-replacement surgery last November. Instead of leading his team through the heat of the French lowlands and the brutal climbs up the Pyrenees and Alps every day for three weeks, Landis could have been like the Grand Marshal in the race he won quite dramatically just a year ago. It could have been like a victory lap around the entire country and a way for the American rider from Lancaster County, Pa. to say thanks to the fans for witnessing the culmination of a lot of blood and sweat to make a dream come true.

Better yet, he could simply be watching it all from a top-floor suite at Le Meridien with sweeping views of the elegant City of Lights and an unobstructed look at the Eiffel Tower. That is if he had not chosen to grind it up Alpe d’Huez or Col du Galibier in an attempt to bring home two in a row.

Yeah, that’s how it was supposed be.

Landis speaks...

Why is there a disconnect between the public/press on the issues? Is it because they are “doped” on the issue of dope?
"It’s a lot of things and that tops it all off. The subject of sports is all about doping and people have had enough. So whenever the subject comes up and someone is accused, they just write it off as, ‘Yeah, he didn’t do it, I’ve heard it all before.’ That’s all fine and USADA and WADA say that [its] tests are perfect and people believe them because why would they say it if it wasn’t true? You can’t imagine that an anti-doping agency would want to do anything other than find the truth.

"But the problem is they have this lab and it’s not a very good lab and they made all of these mistakes. And when they realized they had made these mistakes and made a huge public scene and Dick Pound [president of World Anti-Doping Agency] says that, ‘Everyone says he’s guilty.’ Well, if they back down from that then they lost all credibility. They just can’t all of a sudden say, 'we’re sorry.’"

I assume you have heard about the Walsh book?
"People have told me about it… "

Are you going to sell more books than him?
"Oh for sure. First of all, his book is in the fiction section so if people are looking for some entertainment, there you go.

"His problem is that he just hates Lance. It’s clear. He’s not anti-doping, he’s anti-Lance. That serves no purpose."

It's his third time writing the same book...
"How many times can you write a book in different languages? It’s still the same book."

What can you tell people about Lance Armstrong that no one else knows?
"I don’t think I know anything that anyone else knows. People have perceptions of him that might not be very accurate, but I don’t know any details that they wouldn’t know. The guy is obsessed. With whatever he does he is obsessed, and whatever he does he wants to be the best at it.

"Ultimately, he doesn’t have a lot of close friends because of it and he winds up not being the nicest guy. But that doesn’t make him a doper. That doesn’t make him a cheater. It might make him someone you don’t want to be around, but that doesn’t mean he took advantage of anyone else or that he deserves the harassment some people are giving him, like in the Walsh book."

Are you still going to race at Leadville (in August)?
"Yeah, it seemed like a good idea back when I was training more… that’s going to be painful. I’ve been riding a little more since the hearing ending – I’ve been trying to get some more miles in. If I can just get a few decent weeks of training in I’ll be alright. I don’t particularly like to race at altitude and this one is at 10,000-feet, but I’ll be fine.

"I don’t like altitude at all. I hate it. I did that thing a few weeks ago in Vail (Colorado) at the Teva Mountain Games for a fund raiser and that was a problem. The problem there was that I sat in that hearing for 10 days and I didn’t do [anything]. I didn’t even move. It wasn’t like I even exercised, I just sat there. Then I got on my bike a week later and tried to race and it was painful. Hopefully I can get some time up at altitude somewhere."

When you train, do you usually go to altitude?
"When I really care and I want to be in shape and I’m training for the Tour or something, I go to altitude. It helps. It helps if you’re going to race at sea level, but if race at altitude you have to train there. You can’t just show up."

Is training in the Northestern U.S. humidity as difficult as training at altitude?
"It’s not the same. It’s equally as hard, but (humidity) doesn’t help you adapt to altitude. It’s very difficult if you aren’t used to altitude. Riding around here is hard if you aren’t used to humidity. Those little hills that go up and down – you get tired fast riding around here [in Lancaster County]. You don’t ride 100 miles around here. In California, for example, you can ride along the coast and do 100 miles and not climb a whole lot and be alright. There’s nothing like that here."

How good are the riding conditions in this part of the country?
"This is one of the best. If you want to win the Tour or are at the level I was at, you need big mountains. You need to be able to climb for an hour or an hour-and-a-half at a time. But as far as just riding goes and training and you want nice roads, it doesn’t get any better than this."

Who is going to win the 2007 Tour de France?
"Not me."

-- John R. Finger

Instead, Landis was sitting on a soft couch in a dimly lit but comfortable room atop of a bicycle shop near his old stomping grounds in Ephrata, Pa. answering a reporter’s questions. And he’s trying to figure out the fastest way down Route 222 in order to get from Ephrata to Lancaster for an appearance at a Barnes & Noble. From there it was figuring out how to negotiate the Schuylkill Expressway for another media outing. Instead of stages on the tour like Mazamet to Plateau-de-Beille, Landis will be attempting to get from West Chester, Pa. to Washington, D.C. to Wheaton, Ill.

Instead, Landis has lost a potential $10 million in earnings and has spent more than $1 million of his own money to clear his name.

What a difference a year makes, huh?

“I wasn’t doing this (last year),” Landis said. “Right about now I was flying from California to France to start the Tour and I was in the best shape of my life. I’m not so much now, but I’m into some other stuff.”

That other stuff is a different type of tour. Call it the Tour de Book or the Tour de Plead-thy-Case. Landis was relaxing after an afternoon ride in Souderton, Pa. to help promote the Univest Grand Prix race that will take place on Sept. 8. While relaxing, he multitasked by taking a phone call from a reporter before entertaining questions from another reporter from a Lancaster TV station and newspaper. After that, it was off to the Barnes & Noble in Lancaster where he would sign copies of his new book, Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour de France until late into the evening.

That’s what his life is like these days – another city; another stage; more books to sign; and more reporters asking questions leading to the same theme of, “Did you do it?” Or “How can they get away with it?” It’s a different kind of preparation with more grueling jagged mountains to climb. But unlike the Tour de France, this tour doesn’t have an end in sight.

And when it does end, it could end badly.

Needless to say, Landis hasn’t thought much about his victory in the Tour de France and it’s no wonder that he was a bit unsure of when the world’s biggest cycling race was going to begin this year. In a sense it’s like he never really won it behind the cursory pomp and celebration, but then it didn’t really mean anything yet.

“At some levels it seems like forever and other levels it went very quickly,” he said. “The whole thing was a strange experience. Winning the Tour in the first place – although it was a goal – you can imagine it all you want, but it’s not the same until it really happens. Then I basically had two days to think about it and in those two days even if you win or just finish you feel awful for awhile. So I got through those two days and I really didn’t get a chance to think about, and little did I know those were my only two days to enjoy it, and then this whole doping thing started.

“Right there that eliminated any thought of winning the Tour from my mind. It’s always been dealing with this – and I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know how the process worked, how the testing worked, and for that matter I didn’t even know what the accusation was against me. I didn’t have any paperwork or anything. It took about two months for me to get it. So everything I thought about and learned was just about what I needed to do and how to deal with the press, and obviously, I had very little idea.”

The whole doping thing has been Landis’ life since he stepped off the victory podium in Paris last July. His life, to this point, has been spent learning the intricacies of science and legal world, with equal parts circus thrown in. Along the way, Landis has become not only the biggest pariah in sports outside of baseball players Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, but also one of the pioneers in the battle for athletes’ rights as he fights to retain his 2006 Tour de France championship that could be stripped from him for an alleged positive test for testosterone following the 17th stage of the race.

Never mind the fact that Landis has not tested positive for anything before or after the now infamous Stage 17, there is a pretty good chance that he could be a banned doper despite the mountains of evidence accumulated that indicate otherwise.

And what if the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s (USADA) arbitration panel rules against Landis?

“If they rule against me, they are going to have to fabricate something,” said Landis, who could face a two-year ban and become the first ever rider to be stripped of his Tour de France victory if he is convicted.

Man on a mission
It would be very difficult these days to find any one in America who hasn’t heard of Floyd Landis, the recovering Mennonite from little old Farmersville, Pa. in bucolic Lancaster County. Winning one of the biggest sporting events in the world has a way of making anonymity disappear. Everybody knows Floyd Landis now. His story has been told and re-told over and over again amongst friends and acquaintances like it was the latest episode of a favorite TV show or a crazy snap of the weather.

Be that as it may, here’s a quick recap:

Before he won the Tour de France last summer and his world was turned into fodder for the gossip and science realm of the sports pages, Floyd Landis was the cult hero in professional cycling. In fact, there was not an aspect of Landis’ life that wasn’t legendary. His training methods were renowned for being grueling and insatiable.

"There's only one rule: The guy who trains the hardest, the most, wins. Period. Because you won't die,” he famously said in a pre-Tour de France Outside Magazine profile last year. “Even though you feel like you'll die, you don't actually die. Like when you're training, you can always do one more. Always. As tired as you might think you are, you can always, always do one more.”

You can always do one more. That is the line that personifies Floyd Landis.

Meanwhile, his on-again-off-again relationship with the sport’s biggest star, Lance Armstrong, was something every cyclist talked about. So too was Landis’ background and Lancaster County/Mennonite roots. Growing up in Farmersville, more dusty crossroads than rural hamlet, Landis didn’t have a television.

But mostly the stories about Landis amongst cyclists start out with, “Remember the time when Floyd… ” and end with some oddball feat like, “…drank 15 cappuccinos in one sitting.” Or, “rode in the Tour de France nine weeks after having hip surgery.” Or, “ate 28 bags of peanuts during a trans-Atlantic flight.”

Floyd Landis stories are the ones that involve a person pushing himself to extreme limits and taking silly risks that sometimes end with everyone smiling about what they had just witnessed.

The story should have ended after Stage 17 of the ’06 Tour. That’s where the Legend of Floyd reached epic proportions following his legendary ride to bounce back from an equally monumental collapse just the day before. It was over just 24 hours that Landis lost the leader’s Yellow Jersey in the Tour when he “bonked” and lost nearly nine minutes off his overall lead and dropped to 11th place. But in the very next stage Landis attacked the peloton from the very beginning of the 111-mile stage to amazingly regain all the time he had lost.

A few days later he was standing all alone in Paris. Floyd Landis, the kid from Farmersville, Pa., was the winner of the Tour de France.

That’s where it was supposed to end.

Instead, he became Floyd Landis the professional defendant because a urine test after that epic Stage 17 had come back positive, revealing an unusually high ratio of the hormone testosterone to the hormone epitestosterone (T/E ratio), according to a test conducted by the French government's anti-doping clinical laboratory, the National Laboratory for Doping Detection. The lab is accredited by the Tour de France, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and USADA.

An arbitration hearing led by USADA took place in Malibu, Calif. in May and Landis is still waiting on a ruling from a three-member panel.

But in the months leading up to the arbitration hearing, Landis became a trailblazer of sorts. Just as he attacked during Stage 17, Landis attacked USADA with mountains of evidence culled from his positive test to make the case that, as he says, never should have tested positive. Some of the evidence Landis collected included forged documents, faulty testing procedures, erroneously contaminated urine samples, and claims that the positive finding on one of the urine samples came from a sample number not assigned to Landis.

But the real innovation came in what Landis did with the information he had gathered. Instead of waiting for the arbitration hearing and hiding out behind lawyers and legalese, he took his case to the people. Like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia which allows users to add information to an entry when new findings are made, Landis mounted a “Wiki Defense” in which he posted all of the information released by USADA and the French lab and allowed experts to help him mount his case and find errors in the opposition’s stance.

He also went on “The Floyd Fairness Tour” in which he raised money for his defense, made detailed presentations regarding his case and talked to anyone who would listen regarding the French lab’s findings and USADA’s case against him.

In a sense, Landis took his fight to the streets and claims that USADA has never once disputed any of his findings. In fact, USADA never disputed any of Landis’ arguments in the arbitration hearing, nor have they answered the claims he made in his new book, such as USADA offered a more lenient penalty if he could help the agency mount a doping case against Lance Armstrong.

USADA, an agency that receives some of its funding from U.S. taxpayers, did not return phone calls or e-mails for comment in this story.

Said Landis about USADA not disputing his testimony: “They don’t have anything to say.”

In the interim, Landis has become the leading advocate for non-union athlete’s rights against the national and world agencies. In fact, in facing new allegations from Irish investigative reporter David Walsh in a newly released book called, From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France, Armstrong has copied some of Landis’ moves by releasing all of the legal findings from his cases on the Internet.

So just like that Landis goes from winning the Tour de France to legal innovator? How does a guy who grew up in a home without a TV set create a “Wiki Defense” on the World Wide Web?

“That wasn’t even in the back of my mind, and honestly, I didn’t realize the jeopardy that athletes are in because it never crossed my mind. I had no problem giving a urine sample because I did it all the time and I assumed that the people testing it were legitimate and out to do the right thing. It never crossed my mind that it could be the way it is,” Landis explained. “And it’s hard for people to believe when I say it really is that bad. They think, ‘Yeah, he’s guilty. That’s why he’s trying to accuse them.’ But, even a guilty person deserves to have the evidence against him provided to him without having to spend $1 million in a year.”

Landis is mounting his legal case against the doping agencies, his information tour, and his book tour without the aid of a cycling union. In fact, if player in the NFL or Major League Baseball faced the same accusations as Landis, the players’ union would have his back. There is no such union to represent Landis.

So if Landis were a defensive lineman attacking the quarterback instead of a bicyclist attacking Alpe d’Huez would he have even tested positive?

“Of course not,” he said. “None of this should have ever happened. Look, if you’re going to enforce ethics then you have to hold yourself to the absolute highest standard. You can’t have a lab that’s doing the testing forging documents and doing just random things wrong, and when they do just write it off as, ‘Well, it’s just a mistake we’ll just write it off and ignore it.’”

It’s not the science, it’s the circus
Despite Landis’ piles of evidence and USADA not refuting them, the cyclist's credibility was what the anti-doping agency attacked during the arbitration hearing. That’s because three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond testified that Landis’ former business manager threatened him in a crank phone call that he was going to go public with LeMond’s secret that he had been sexually abused as a child.

The manager, Will Geoghegan, was fired immediately, according to Landis, and the cyclist admits he was in the room when the call was made.

But in retrospect, Landis says LeMond’s testimony as well as the attacks against his credibility are irrelevant because LeMond and a former professional cyclist named Joe Papp were brought in to testify for USADA for no real reason.

“Either it’s science or something else. If it’s not science than what is it? Take, for instance, at the hearing where they brought in Greg LeMond and Joe Papp, neither of whom said anything,” Landis explained. “They didn’t say anything and they had no relevance. For example, Joe Papp told us that he took a bunch of drugs and apparently they didn’t help him and then he left. I didn’t know the guy, I never raced the guy – what that had to do with science is beyond me.”

Because of the LeMond controversy, the real point of the hearings was lost for headline writers and the general public, says Landis. The fact is, he says, the French lab didn’t even test him for the substance that he is accused of using.

“What really got lost and I have been trying to tell people this: when they got to the point where they had to identify the substance and they had to measure it, they identified the wrong thing. And that got lost in the whole big mess because there were so many arguments, but if you just look at that there’s no point in even talking about the rest of it. The other 200 things they did wrong don’t even matter because they didn’t even test testosterone,” Landis said.

Then, he paused, leaned forward on the couch and raised his voice beyond a normal conversational tone:

“And I don’t know how they are going to get around that! What are they going to say, ‘Well, it was something close to testosterone so we’ll just call him guilty.’ How is that going to work? I don’t know, but believe me, I’ve seen them do some pretty strange things to this point.”

An uncertain future
The Floyd Landis story has been nothing but strange. Nothing has been ordinary and nothing has come easy. Listening to Landis speak after reading his book, as well as Daniel Coyle’s Lance Armstrong's War: One Man's Battle Against Fate, Fame, Love, Death, Scandal, and a Few Other Rivals on the Road to the Tour de France, makes anyone want to stage a riot or a march proclaiming the man’s innocence. It’s very difficult not to believe him simply because he is fighting. Oftentimes people are baffled that those who claim they are wrongly accused don’t display anger and choose to hide in the legal system of behind the words of an attorney.

But Landis isn’t doing that. Instead of cashing in as every other Tour de France champion has, Landis faces the reality of personal bankruptcy. He very well could lose his home and his daughter could lose money once earmarked for her education simply because Floyd Landis believes he has been wronged and has chosen to stand up for himself.

He isn’t in France living a cushy life that years of putting in the hard work on the saddle have earned him, but instead is talking to everyone who will listen, signing every autograph requested and making sure that everyone who wants to have a book signed gets it.

Very certainly Landis could mail it in. He could give pat answers in a detached way, but chooses not to. Instead he engages everyone and has a conversation when no one has forced him to.

One of the biggest pariahs in sports has decided he has to fight. Actually, he doesn’t see any other choice.

And that leaves us with one more question… will Landis still be fighting next year at this time or will he be relaxing after a ride through the Pyrenees near his training base in Girona, Spain in preparation for another ride down the Champs Elysées?

“I hope so. I really hope so and I think so,” he said excitedly. “The longer this thing goes on the more I think things are going to work out because we put on a case that was never refuted even in the hearing.”

That, after all, was the way it was supposed to be.

Doing the work

2007-02-13T09:38:00.001-08:00

I was probably 12-years old the first time someone told me I wasn’t going to make it to the NBA. At the time the thought of it made me laugh – I was one of the tallest kids on my basketball team, I was relatively coordinated, I could dribble with both hands and I was the best shooter in the league. Plus, I went to basketball camps and worked on my shooting as much as a kid my age could. When games were on TV (not everyone was televised in those days), I watched hoping to pick up some moves from Julius Erving, Larry Bird or Kevin McHale.

Better yet, the Sixers’ pre-season training camp was held in the gym where I practiced after school. I went to every practice session because when the NBA champs were finished using the court, I was going to go through my paces. Sometimes a few players hung around to snag rebounds and offer a few pointers. Dr. J did once, and Leon Wood was very friendly. No one, though, was as helpful as Andrew Toney. It always seemed that Toney was working on his shooting long after his teammates had left the gym to do whatever it was they did in Lancaster, Pa.

So when I was told that I wasn’t going to make it to the NBA it was laughable. How could that be?

Looking back it all makes sense now. I grew up to be 6-foot-1, which is the same size as “Tiny” Archibald. Plus, I soon ventured out of my insular little world and found out that there were players just as good as me who sat on the bench for their teams. Sure, I was an above-average shooter – probably amongst the best two or three in my school – but there is a lot more to the game than just shooting the ball from the outside. On defense, chances were that I was going to allow just as many points as I scored. Occasionally I got in the way and stopped my opponent, but that was usually just dumb luck.

More telling was the fact that I went to the high school regarded as the finest in athletics in the area. The basketball teams have won more league championships than any other school, while the other sports – specifically track and field – were sometimes powerhouses. Yet despite this, my high school has never produced an NBA player. Actually, we’ve had just three Major Leaguers, two NFLers, and just a handful of Division I standouts.

So what’s the point of this? Simple. Mo Vaughn knew by the age of 12 that he was going to be a Major League baseball player. At least that’s what his parents said during a game at Fenway a few years back when asked when they realized their son was going to be a big leaguer.

When Mo was 12, Mr. Vaughn said, he played in a men’s baseball league and, “he dominated.”

It seems like 12 is the magic age to determine a person’s athletic future. Oh sure, there are late bloomers like Ryan Howard who was overlooked even when he was deep into his college career. But one thing is for certain: Ryan Howard was on the path to the big leagues long before that. A diamond in the rough is still a diamond.

But baseball doesn’t last forever. Sure, these days getting a big-league contract is a lot like winning the Powerball. The thing a lot of parents and kids don’t understand is that the odds of getting there are just as slim. Yet even though Mo Vaughn dominated adults before he was a teenager, he was made to prepare for the day when the games ended. Interestingly, these days Vaughn is in real estate development, but he’s not simply putting up high-end McMansions that only other lottery winners can afford. Instead, Vaughn, according to George Vecey's story in The New York Times, is building affordable housing for folks with modest incomes.

Baseball, it seems, was nothing more than a tool for Vaughn to put him where he could do really important work. That’s the key – kids should use the games to put them where they need to be. Chances are that’s not going to be in the big leagues.

Ryan Howard seems to believe that, too. According to what he told Bryant Gumble on the latest edition of HBO’s Real Sports that there was no doubt in his mind that he was going to return to school and finish his course work.

Believe it or not, that’s much more important than hitting 60 homers.

Manuel enters last year of contract

2007-01-28T18:31:00.001-08:00

It wasn’t all that long ago when general manager Pat Gillick stood in front of the local press and said that he didn’t think the Phillies would be able to compete for a playoff spot until 2008. To be fair, it certainly didn’t look good for the Phillies from anyone’s perspective after the team had just sent Bobby Abreu and Cory Lidle to the Yankees while dealing away veterans David Bell and Rheal Cormier in a payroll purge that had “Fire Sale” written all over it.

So when Gillick – a GM who has witnessed enough in his four decades in the game to know a salary dump when he saw one – the “wait until the year after next year” was chillingly honest.

“It will be a stretch to say we’ll be there in ’07,” Gillick said on last July 30. “We’ll have to plug in some young pitchers and anytime you do that you’ll have some inconsistency.

“It’s going to take another year.”

But a funny thing happened on the Phillies’ trip to oblivion. After the trading deadline Ryan Howard emerged as the slugger in the Majors by smashing 23 home runs in the final 58 games. Furthermore, Chase Utley joined Howard amongst the game’s elite and clubbed 10 homers in the last month of the season to form a dynamic duo that should be a staple for the Phils well into the next decade.

A team does not live on homers alone, which is a good thing because heralded rookie Cole Hamels showed glimpses of the brilliance everyone had predicted by going 6-3 with a 2.60 ERA and 76 strikeouts in 69 1/3 innings during the season’s final two months. Those are numbers any veteran would take, let alone a 22-year-old kid who had never completed a full season ever because of one injury or another.

With that, when Jimmy Rollins proclaims the Phillies are the team to beat in the NL East everyone just kind of shrugs and says, “Yeah, maybe he’s on to something.”

“We've improved ourselves, and some other teams haven't really done a whole lot,” manager Charlie Manuel said. “We've cut some ground on the Mets. On paper, we got stronger in our division.”

In other words, despite Gillick’s anti-Knute Rockne speech, the Phillies believed they were good enough to compete for a playoff spot now. With a youthful exuberance that prevents the players from doing something silly by allowing the media or fans to dictate how good they can be, the Phillies took the season to its final days for the second straight season. Actually, the prospects for success changed so much that Gillick backed off his claim from last July and went out and added a couple of veteran pitchers for the rotation, a veteran bat or two for the bench, and just might have another move up his sleeve to get a relief pitcher before the Phillies break camp in Clearwater and head north in late March.

Suddenly, wait-until-the-year-after-next-year became let’s-get-them-now.

This turnaround begs the question, “How did this happen?” Or better yet: “Just what did the Phillies do to go 36-22 after trading Abreu and three other veterans to nearly reach the playoffs for just the second time since Hamels, Howard and Utley were babies?”

Do you really want to know what the players say? Well… it’s the manager.

“He's a big reason the chemistry on this team is as good as it is,” Aaron Rowand said at last week’s media luncheon in Citizens Bank Park. “You guys don't get to see it, the fans don't get to see it, because you guys aren't in the clubhouse all the time. You guys aren't in the dugout during the game when he's talking to the guys, when he's conversing with people, helping guys out, pumping guys up. He's one of the best managers I've ever had a chance to play for, and I would have been very sorry to have seen him go after last year.”

Rowand, who won the World Series with Ozzie Guillen as the manager for the White Sox in 2005, isn’t the only player who says these kinds of things, either. Actually, it’s harder to find a player who says Manuel is not his favorite manager. Any player who has spent time with Manuel has lots of stories to tell with most of the subject matter dealing with something that left everyone in stitches and gets retold in an imitation of the skipper’s Virginia drawl.

In that regard, if imitation is the most sincere form of flattery then Charlie Manuel is the most beloved man in Philadelphia.

Yet for as much as the players love him, and for as much as the writing press respects him, something about Manuel’s down home, everyman persona has missed with the sophisticates in Philadelphia. In fact, a common thing heard from folks talking about the Phillies’ chances is that the team is ready to make a run at the playoffs, but if they don’t maybe they’ll finally get rid of that Charlie Manuel.

And because Manuel is heading in to the last season of his three-year deal, it could be playoffs or bust for him.

Yes, he knows all about it.

“Believe me, that doesn't affect me,” Manuel said. “I want to focus on winning ballgames. It's not about me. It's about our players. The players are the ones who are going to win the game for us, and if we're successful, then I think Charlie Manuel will be successful.”

Make no mistake; there are a lot of people who don’t want the Phillies to be successful for that very reason. Forget that after two seasons in which Manuel won more games than all but one manager in team history through this point in his tenure – a fact first reported on CSN.com. With the Phillies, 173 victories in two seasons in which the team was eliminated from wild-card playoff contention at game Nos. 162 and 161 is borderline historic. Actually, it’s more than remarkable – it’s unprecedented.

This is a franchise, after all, where only two (two!) managers have taken the team to more than one postseason. It’s a franchise that has been to the playoffs just nine times in 123 seasons. For comparisons sake, look at the Atlanta Braves who… wait, nevermind. It just isn’t fair to compare the Phillies to any other franchise.

One thing hasn’t changed from the Phillies’ golden days in the late 1970s and early1980s and that’s the bottom line. In the end, winning is the only thing that matters.

“Ever since I came here, from Day 1, I said I came here to win,” Manuel said. “It's not, ‘I need to win.’ It’s, ‘Philadelphia needs to win.’ ‘The organization needs to win.’ And I understand that.”

So what happens if the Phillies win in 2007? Does Manuel get a new deal to take him into the next decade, or does the organization allow him to walk away? Of all the intriguing plotlines for the upcoming baseball season, the case of Manuel and his future with the Phillies could be the most interesting. After two seasons littered with hope and promise there is plenty of room for improvement.

But then again, for the Phillies 173 victories in two seasons is nothing to sneeze at.

Calling it a career

2007-01-08T14:19:00.000-08:00

It was in July of 1966 when Jim Brown got the call from Cleveland Browns’ owner Art Modell that he should report to training camp immediately. But after nine seasons of hard running where he delivered as much punishment as he received in rushing for 12,312 yards and another 2,499 receiving for 126 touchdowns – excluding five playoff games – Brown decided enough was enough. Just 29-years old and regarded as the best football player ever, Brown couldn’t wrestle up the desire to heed Modell’s call and head to steamy, sultry Ohio for two-a-days.

Instead he remained in France to continue making The Dirty Dozen.

For anyone who has seen that epic film I think we know that Brown made the correct choice. Come on think about it… make The Dirty Dozen with Lee Marvin and John Cassavettes or run around in Cleveland to prepare for the 1966 NFL season. Does anyone remember anything that occurred in the 1966 NFL season?

Does anyone remember 1966?

It is worth noting, however, that Brown likely never would have had the chance to be anywhere near the production set of any motion picture had he not played football. The NFL, and all of professional sports for that matter, seems to be a great proving ground for acting, public speaking, and journalism. Based on generalizations from national and local television appearances, even the most middling careers as a professional jock carries more weight than an advanced degree from some of the country’s best universities.

And just like in national politics, correct grammar, syntax and prowess over the language is optional.

Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the spectrum from Brown is Barry Sanders, who had no blockbuster movies or a career as a smiling suit to tackle after 10 seasons of piling up more than 18,000 yards for the hapless Detroit Lions. Instead Sanders acted like a insouciant cool kid who was invited to a party hosted and attended by a group a little beneath his social standing.

Imagine what that conversation sounded like when the Lions called Sanders, then just 31, to ask him why he wasn’t at training camp.

“Hello.”

“Hey Barry, it’s the Lions. We’re just calling to see how your summer was going and to see if you were going to come on out to training camp. We have a lot of people here and it looks like it’s going to be a really good time.”

“Hmmm.”

“Yeah, well, we kind of have everyone here and were hoping you’d show up soon since you’re the best guy we have.”

“Yeah, about that… who else is going to be there?”

“Well, it looks like pretty much all the same guys who were here last year. There are a few new guys, but no one you ever really heard of.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty much the same guys that were here last year.”

“Hmmm. Well, if that’s the case I guess I’m just going to go ahead and retire. I was hoping we’d get some new guys to show up that were really good at football, but since it’s pretty much the same guys as before, I’m going to stay home and never play football again. I think it will be much more beneficial for me to be able to walk without a limp when I go out to pick up the newspaper or heading toward the green at the first hole. That’s the thing – I’m just tired of getting the crap kicked out of me.”

“But Barry, you’re a few yards away from being the greatest rusher in football history. Don’t you want to get the record? Wouldn’t it be neat to be able to tell your grandchildren that nobody ever ran for more yards than you?”

“No. I think it will be better to be able to walk. Thanks for the offer and the millions of dollars, though. I really appreciate it.”

click

Somewhere in the middle of all of this is Tiki Barber, who like Sanders, is just 31 and tired of playing professional football for a living. Like Brown, Barber hopes to have a career in the national media when all of his former teammates report to training camp in the heat and the sweat of July. According to reports, Barber has a very lucrative deal from Disney lined up where he lend his expertise and smile to the television cameras for the occasional football game and on the gabfests like “Good Morning America” and “20/20.”

If all goes well, it’s quite possible that Barber could land a role in something as epic as The Dirty Dozen. After all, he already has a national television commercial for the Cadillac Escalade – filmed on the moody, dark and stylish streets of The City – to his credit. With that, I suppose the endorsement deal from the Concerned Friends of the Environment is out.

Nevertheless, when Barber’s career came to a close after David Akers’ 38-yard field goal knifed through the raindrops and split the uprights at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday evening, the speculation began in earnest. Could that 137-yard effort in a playoff game in Philadelphia really have been his last game? Is he really going to stay retired? Michael Jordan came back – twice. George Foreman couldn’t stay retired, either. Nor could Mario Lemieux.

How could he just walk away?

Well… easy.

You see, most people dreamed of becoming an professional athlete and what could be better than being the running back for the football team in the country’s largest city? But Barber says he doesn’t want to be defined by simply being a football player. There is much more to him, he says. Most people -- not just athletes -- don't think this way because they view themselves by the mundane and pigeonholing labels that societies places on people, places and things. Plus, what skews things is that they often really define themselves by what they do. In fact, most of them say that they will not stop playing until they are dragged away.

There lies the contradiction. Most people do not define themselves by their jobs. Instead, regular folks have hobbies or passions that drive them more than just their jobs and work. Why should people whose job is to play football be any different? Why should athletes be held to a different standard?

Why should Tiki Barber have to live out someone else’s dream?

Besides, more people are going to remember Tiki Barber, Jim Brown and Barry Sanders as something other than a football player.

Garcia has Eagles on right path

2006-12-18T16:48:00.000-08:00

It seems so long ago that Donovan McNabb went down with his knee injury. Along those lines it seems kind of funny that there was actually a debate over whether or not Jeff Garcia should be the Eagles’ starting quarterback.

It’s funny what a couple of big victories do, huh?

With Garcia at the helm, the Eagles have gone from a team simply playing out the string to one that controls its own destiny in the NFC East. If the Eagles beat the Cowboys in Dallas on Christmas night and the Falcons in South Philly on New Year’s Eve, they win the division.

Who would have guessed?

If the Eagles win both of those games and get some help (the Saints lose two games and the Seahawks lose one), they will get a first-round bye in the playoffs as the No. 2 seed. In fact, the Eagles’ PR staff has even e-mailed out the NFC playoff scenarios:

(Before 12/18 Cincinnati-Indianapolis Monday night game)
For Week 16

NFC EAST DIVISION
Dallas has clinched playoff berth.
Dallas can clinch division with:
1DAL win.

Philadelphia can clinch playoff berth with:
1) PHI win, OR
2) PHI tie + NYG loss or tie, OR
3) PHI tie + ATL loss.

New York can clinch playoff berth with:
1) NYG win + MIN loss or tie + ATL loss + PHI win or tie + SEA win or tie, OR
2) NYG win + MIN loss or tie + ATL loss + PHI win or tie + SF loss or tie.

NFC NORTH DIVISION
Chicago has clinched homefield advantage.

NFC SOUTH DIVISION
New Orleans has clinched division.
New Orleans can clinch first-round bye with:
1) NO win + DAL loss.

NFC WEST DIVISION
Seattle can clinch division with:
1) SEA win or tie, OR
2) SF loss or tie.

One thing that no one is talking about is the Eagles not making the playoffs even though that possibility is realistic. How goofy is that? Based on the results of the next two games the Eagles could be the divisional champions, a No. 2 seed with a first-round bye in the playoffs, or on the outside looking in.

That's with Jeff Garcia, not Donovan McNabb as the quarterback.

Now here’s the big question:

How in the world did we get here? Didn’t the season end a month ago during that nasty loss to the Titans?

Apparently not.

After the crucial victory over the Giants on Sunday, Brian Dawkins said the Eagles’ resurgence was a matter of the team clicking at the right time. Certainly there is no doubt about that. But perhaps the biggest reason for the Eagles’ dash for the playoffs has been the team clicking as Dawkins suggested along with Garcia handling the offense.

Before anyone jumps to conclusions I am not suggesting that the Eagles are a better team with Garcia at quarterback instead of McNabb. I’m not smart enough to make that argument. However, I took the time to ask certain folks who spend a lot of their time with the Eagles and other NFL teams whether or not the team’s changed fortunes are simply a matter of the offense doing what it’s supposed to do or if Garcia is playing well.

The consensus is that it’s both with an emphasis on the latter. The Eagles, I’m told (including by CSN.com’s bulldog Eagles’ scribe Andy Schwartz), always had the players to fit the offense. But Garcia, they say, has been really good.

In that regard the numbers don’t lie – Garcia has thrown just one interception (yeah, it was a big one) with nine touchdown passes and nearly a 62 percent completion percentage. Statistically, Garcia compares quite favorably with McNabb excluding the rushing.

In another regard, Garcia lived up to some minor hype in rallying the Eagles past the Giants. Prior to the game, the 36-year-old veteran was the subject of a small feature in The New York Times and just may have resurrected a career that even Garcia thought was on the doorstep of fading into oblivion after uninspiring stops in Cleveland and Detroit.

“I'd started to lose faith in football and having fun like I've been having the last three or four weeks, just making plays and letting loose like I used to when I was younger,” Garcia said after his solid 237-yard performance against the Giants. “A year ago, I wasn't thinking this would happen again. But it's starting to come for us.”

But better than good stats and a feature in the paper of record, Garcia’s teammates have full confidence in him. On Daily News Live, Monday, linebacker Jeremiah Trotter heaped praise on the quarterback noting that he prepared every week as if he was going to start the game even though McNabb was off to a Pro Bowl-caliber start to the season. That’s especially important following a lost 2005 season when McNabb went out with an injury and Mike McMahon was asked to guide the ship. Mix that with the Terrell Owens debacle and the difference between last season and 2006 is as different as night and day, noted sure-bet Pro Bowler Brian Westbrook.

“Last year, we were a team divided. We weren’t together at all. We didn't have a hope,” Westbrook said after Sunday’s game. “This year, when Donovan went down, we rallied. This team is real resilient. Garcia comes in, he doesn't make many mistakes, he runs this offense, he leads the team, and with him back there, we have a chance of winning. That's what we need.”

Garcia, of course, wasn’t around last season. Instead he was playing out the string in Detroit at this time a year ago. Needless to say, the situation in Philadelphia is much better.

“It's just exciting to be able to fight for another week,” Garcia said. “We're just glad to be in a place where we all can live another week.”

Now here’s the craziest part…

Maybe – just maybe – the Eagles can wiggle through the ever-fickle NFC playoffs and get all the way to Miami for a game in early February.

One thing at a time, of course, but then again, crazier things have happened.

Deal or not?

2006-12-13T12:42:00.001-08:00

According to a few newspaper reports, it sounds as if Allen Iverson – once again – is controlling the 76ers. Apparently, as reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer, Iverson balked at a trade to the Charlotte Bobcats, which ruined a potential deal.

That’s one story, but there are others.

Those other stories are all rumors, of course. The Kings, Celtics, Timberwolves, Mavericks, Globetrotters, Real Madrid, and yadda, yadda, yadda, are all interested in making a deal for the 76ers’ star-crossed All-Star but have yet to cross the eyes and dot the tees.

Needless to say, on the record the teams rumored to be involved in negotiating for a deal to get Iverson have all denied their involvement. So in other words, no one knows who knows what is true.

Or false.

But here’s a theory no one in Philadelphia is really giving much credence. In fact, the idea of it just makes the head spin and is so hard to grasp that it could make the feint of heart break into convulsions...

Ready?

Maybe no one wants Iverson.

Let me write that again…

Maybe no one wants Allen Iverson on their basketball team.

There it is.

Oh sure, big-time players like Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett will say they want the so-called Answer. General managers like the T'wolves' Kevin McHale and owners like the Kings’ Maloofs will say that Iverson would be a lovely addition to their franchises, too. But when it comes down to putting the money, the soon-to-expire contracts and the draft picks where the mouth is, the Iverson trade watch is dragging on like a hostage situation complete with TV graphics that spell out the time that has passed.

In that regard, I suppose we’re at “Day 5: Iverson Watch.”

It has a little bit of a cool ring to it, but maybe we should add an exclamation point at the end.

Punctuation and splashy graphics aside, lending so fuel to the ugly-stepchild theory is all-time three-point shooter Steve Kerr, who not only played and battled with Michael Jordan, but also serves as an NBA analyst on TV. That, I suppose, makes him an expert on most things related to the NBA. According to Kerr, who talked to Dan Patrick on the eponymously named ESPN radio show, the only teams that would make a trade for someone like Allen Iverson are the ones that are beyond desperate.

“There are only a few teams in the league that would even think about wanting to pull the trigger because the baggage is just too heavy,” Kerr said about trading for Iverson on Patrick’s show. “I’m like everyone else in that I love the way he competes and I love his talent, but part of being a winner is understanding team dynamics and the importance of practice and being professional and being at team functions. If you’re going to take a guy like that and pay him 20 million bucks a year, that’s a pretty big risk.

“In my mind, the teams that will do it are really desperate.”

There’s another caveat, too, said Kerr. In exchange for Iverson, the Sixers will likely want expiring contracts and draft picks in return in order to build a team for the future. But with Ohio State phenom Greg Oden likely to enter the NBA Draft this June, there aren’t too many teams that will want to hand over a lottery pick if they have a ping-pong ball in the mix for the No. 1 selection.

“But who is going to give up a first-round pick this year when you know Greg Oden is probably going to come out,” Kerr asked, wondering if a “deal is going to happen at all.”

Is it likely that we could enter, "Day 37: Iverson Watch!"? Probably not. But let's at least lend some weight to the notion that the 76ers just might tell Iverson to stay at home for the rest of the year.

Don’t worry, Alley I, the checks will keep coming.

Detroit Rock City (revised)

2006-10-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

As you read this sentence, the party should finally be smoldering just south of its apex in Detroit. The Tigers, as it is, still have some work to do and a season to finish. After all, the World Series starts on Saturday night. Not that anyone in Philadelphia knows or cares about Detroit and the baseball renaissance that occurred there this season.

It’s a good thing Philadelphia sports fans are so provincial and laser-focused because the sight of Placido Polanco dashing around the field and slapping hands with the fans at Comerica Park with a bottle of champagne in on hand, the ALCS MVP trophy in the other, and a smile that spread from ear-to-ear would be enough to make a Philadelphia baseball fan sick.

That’s until the camera panned to Jim Leyland being carried off the field, coupled with the comments that followed from one-time Phillie Todd Jones who told reporters that Leyland was the only manager he played for during his 14-year career that actually made a difference in the standings.

At in the notion that Leyland should he have been carried off the field by Chase Utley and Ryan Howard instead of Sean Casey and Kenny Rogers and it’s enough sickness for some hospitalization.

At least until the playoffs end or the Tigers are eliminated.

For those too wrapped up in the Eagles season, the Detroit Tigers, managed by Jim Leyland, sent the vaunted New York Yankees and their considerable offense home for the winter in four games in the ALDS as well as the “Moneyball” Oakland A’s in another four games. With just four more victories, the Tigers will be World Champions.

Not bad for a team that lost 119 games three years ago, averaged more than 96 losses per season for the past decade, and had just two winning seasons since 1988.

How does that team come four victories away from the World Series title?

Do I have to say it?

Apparently, Jim Leyland wasn’t good enough to manage the Phillies even though he took the Tigers to 95 wins this season. Apparently the ideas he expressed to president David Montgomery and then GM Ed Wade were just a little too harebrained. Especially the ones about the corner outfielders – remember that? I do. He said the Phillies had too many strikeouts in the corner outfield positions, needed a new center fielder, third baseman and catcher.

Then he went out to the CVS on Broad St. for a pack of smokes only to come back to resume his meeting when Wade told him it would be a good idea to keep his interview date scheduled with the Mets.

Look what happened. The Phillies hired Charlie Manuel, came within a game of the wild card, fired Wade, and hired Pat Gillick. A few months later, Gillick traded right fielder Bobby Abreu, third baseman David Bell, and tried as hard as he could to get left fielder Pat Burrell to waive his no-trade clause. After the World Series, Gillick will allow catcher Mike Lieberthal to limp away as a free agent.

Talk about unoriginal ideas. I wonder if Gillick walked over to the CVS on Broad St. for a pack of smokes.

I may write about baseball and sports for many, many years. Or, Powerball numbers willing, tomorrow could be my last day. Either way, I will never ever forget how hard Leyland campaigned to be the Phillies manager during the winter of 2004. He was as shrewd as any seasoned politician and went above and beyond to the point of kissing babies and returning phone calls. In fact, Leyland wanted the Phillies job so badly that he even returned my phone calls.

Talk about desperate.

Now let’s stop for a minute before this descends into a Leyland-equals-good and Phillies-equals-bad essay. That’s just way too easy and not completely accurate. Surely, Leyland was not the only reason why the Tigers went from 300 losses in three seasons under Alan Trammell to 95-67 and the doorstep of the World Championship this year. Actually, there are many reasons why the Tigers were able to turn it around so quickly.

The biggest one? Someone listened to Jim Leyland.

Apparently, Leyland went into his interview with the Tigers and told them what he would do to the team to make it better in very much the same manner he did with Montgomery and Wade. But guess what? The Tigers bought it and look where it got them.

Yes, I will always remember that day sitting in the conference room in Citizens Bank park listening to Leyland talk about what makes a winning baseball team as Wade stood in the doorway privately seething. Leyland, with his resume padded with a World Series title with the Marlins and all of those division titles with the Pirates, acted like a know-it-all questioning him to the very group of people who questioned him for sport in the papers and talk shows, daily. They had turned the fans against the straight-laced GM and here was a potential employee giving them more fodder?

Who did he think he was?

Leyland had a lot of ideas to make the Phillies better on that chilly November afternoon and he didn’t keep too many of them secret. He explained what he thought his job as the manager should be:

“When you have veteran players who buy into your thought process, it eliminates a lot of nitpicking,” he said. “The veterans set the tone. Leadership is production. Putting winning numbers on the board, that's leadership. The manager is supposed to be the leader. That's not ego talking, that's just the way it is. I've said it all my life, you're either the victim or the beneficiary of your players' performance. That's as simple as this job is.”

And what elements make up a good team:

“[It's about] trying to create an atmosphere that's comfortable,” he said. “I'm not as big on chemistry as a lot of other managers. If it works, it's wonderful. I've managed teams that ate together, played together, prayed together, and we got the [crap] kicked out of us, and I managed some that punched each other once in a while and we won. It's getting the best out of talent. They're not all going to like me. Hopefully, they will, but I doubt it. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you're working toward the same goal -- win.”

Perhaps Gillick had similar thoughts going through his head after he traded away Abreu and Bell and when he was ironing out that deal to send Burrell to Baltimore?

Maybe.

More interesting to ponder is if things would have ended differently the past two seasons if Leyland were the manager instead of Manuel? Well, it’s not as easy as simply replacing one guy for another, despite what Todd Jones says. There’s no telling how all of the personalities would have blended if anyone but Manuel were skippering the Phillies. Besides, if Leyland were in Philadelphia it would be unlikely that Pat Gillick would be the GM, too.

Maybe Wade sealed his own fate by not hiring Leyland when he campaigned so hard for the job. But then again we should have all seen the handwriting on the wall when Wade stood at the podium after Leyland’s cleansing tell-all and said:

“Even if you’re polling the 3.2 million people who came to watch us this year, I don’t think you can get hung up on this people’s commanding lead in the votes 320 to 112 or anything like that. We’re going to hire a manager we hope our fans like, but at the same time we’re going to try to hire a manager that is going to get us to the World Series.”

Hindsight being what it is… well, you can fill in the rest.

But make no mistake about one thing – Philadelphia is barely a blip on Leyland’s rear-view mirror now. Actually, it’s hard to look back at anything when champagne is stinging the eyes.

Apropos, how would the Phillies' seasons have ended in 2005 and 2006 if Placido Polanco had been the third baseman instead of David Bell and Abraham Nunez? Just curious...

There is crying in baseball

2006-10-12T07:22:00.001-07:00

They say there is no crying in baseball.

Surely whoever made up that inanity never spent a day in baseball. In the 30-plus years in which baseball has been a part of my consciousness and, truth be told, one of the major focuses of my life, the game has been nothing but crying.

There have been tears of joy, like the time when the Phillies won the World Series, or the celebration of the rare chance that someone will get the game-winning hit.

Then there are tears of defeat, like the 122 other seasons when the Phillies did not win the World Series or the hard-luck losses on center stage for the entire world to see. Mitch Williams, for example, and poor Bill Buckner. Donnie Moore.

Tears of pain, of course. Like the time I bravely stood too close when the big kids were hitting and took a line drive off my shin. Too this day I’ve never felt anything that hurt so bad or saw a bruise turn as purple as Welch’s jelly.

Yes, tears of sadness. Sadness for Donnie Moore. Thurman Munson, of course. Roberto Clemente. Lyman Bostock Tim Crews.

And now this.

There’s no crying in baseball?

That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.

Cory Lidle was killed on Wednesday afternoon when the plane he was flying crashed into a 50-story high rise on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Cory was a budding pilot, stellar golfer, smart poker player and a hard-working Major League pitcher. All of those pursuits, which Cory excelled at beyond the simple dabbling of a regular old hobbyist, took guile, wit and grit.

Certainly those traits were on display to Phillies fans who watched Cory pitch for parts of the past three seasons. They saw it on the mound, where the average-looking right-hander with an unexceptional repertoire of pitches somehow figured out a way to win 26 games for the Phillies.

Or they saw it in the papers where Cory’s penchant for expressing himself sometimes set off controversy or criticism, but were never ever boring. In an age of heightened PR sense and political correctness, Cory was nothing as simple as outspoken, but instead was bold. Unpopular decisions or controversial talk were always met with a shrug and a mischievous grin as if to indicate that he planned on getting everyone so riled up all along.

Sure, some teammates didn’t like it – such as Arthur Rhodes or Billy Wagner – but it’s hard to deny how lively Cory was.

That’s what I’ll remember the most about Cory. He was alive. He was engaging. He was aware. He knew what other people did, what they thought, what they wrote and what they were interested in. That’s not just rare behavior for a Major League Baseball player, but also for most people you come across on a daily basis. How many people do you come across who not only show an interest in you, but also give their time?

Isn’t time the most valuable thing we own?

But there Cory was after every game – wearing that ball cap pulled down over his eyes with a t-shirt tucked into jeans and clutching a plastic bag – waiting for the press. He answered every question, asked a few of his own before carrying on a few private, revealing conversations.

Last April he told me he thought he would be traded around the deadline if the Phillies weren’t in the playoff hunt. He didn’t have any insider information; it was just a hunch that proved to be correct. He also appreciated people who liked to tell jokes or stories, which made him a favorite sounding board for the writing corps.

More important than all of that, Cory was a father to a six-year-old boy named Christopher, who liked to run around the clubhouse. In just a short time it was easy to see where little Christopher got that mischievous grin and nature that often caused his dad to tell him to go sit in front of the locker and wait patiently. It was clear as the face on a clock.

He was also a husband to Melanie and a provider and friend for his family. Sometimes Cory’s twin brother Kevin came around when his Independent League team was playing in Camden. He was also especially close with his sister and parents.

So when I hear that saying where there is no crying in baseball, all I can do is shake my head in disbelief. There is crying in baseball.

There is crying in baseball when you think of that six-year-old boy who is never going to be able to play catch with his dad again.

Detroit Rock City

2006-10-10T14:09:00.002-07:00

As you read this sentence, the party should finally be smoldering just south of its apex in Detroit. The Tigers, as it is, still have some work to do and a season to finish. Not that anyone in Philadelphia knows or cares about Detroit and the baseball renaissance that occurred there this season.

It’s a good thing Philadelphia sports fans are so provincial and laser-focused because the sight of Placido Polanco dashing around the field and slapping hands with the fans at Comerica Park with a bottle of champagne in on hand and a smile that spread from ear-to-ear would be enough to make a Philadelphia baseball fan sick.

That’s until the camera panned to Jim Leyland being carried off the field, coupled with the comments that followed from one-time Phillie Todd Jones who told reporters that Leyland was the only manager he played for during his 14-year career that actually made a difference in the standings.

At in the notion that Leyland should he have been carried off the field by Chase Utley and Ryan Howard instead of Sean Casey and Kenny Rogers and it’s enough sickness for some hospitalization.

At least until the playoffs end or the Tigers are eliminated.

For those too wrapped up in the Eagles and Cowboys, the Detroit Tigers, managed by Jim Leyland, sent the vaunted New York Yankees and their considerable offense home for the winter in four games in the ALDS. With just four more victories over the Oakland A’s, the Tigers could go to the World Series.

Not bad for a team that lost 119 games three years ago, averaged more than 96 losses per season for the past decade, and had just two winning seasons since 1988.

How does that team come four victories away from the World Series?

Do I have to say it?

Apparently, Jim Leyland wasn’t good enough to manage the Phillies even though he took the Tigers to 95 wins this season. Apparently the ideas he expressed to president David Montgomery and then GM Ed Wade were just a little too harebrained. Especially the ones about the corner outfielders – remember that? I do. He said the Phillies had too many strikeouts in the corner outfield positions, needed a new center fielder, third baseman and catcher.

Then he went out to the CVS on Broad St. for a pack of smokes only to come back to resume his meeting when Wade told him it would be a good idea to keep his interview date scheduled with the Mets.

Look what happened. The Phillies hired Charlie Manuel, came within a game of the wild card, fired Wade, and hired Pat Gillick. A few months later, Gillick traded right fielder Bobby Abreu, third baseman David Bell, and tried as hard as he could to get left fielder Pat Burrell to waive his no-trade clause. After the World Series, Gillick will allow catcher Mike Lieberthal to limp away as a free agent.

Talk about unoriginal ideas. I wonder if Gillick walked over to the CVS on Broad St. for a pack of smokes.

I may write about baseball and sports for many, many years. Or, Powerball numbers willing, tomorrow could be my last day. Either way, I will never ever forget how hard Leyland campaigned to be the Phillies manager during the winter of 2004. He was as shrewd as any seasoned politician and went above and beyond to the point of kissing babies and returning phone calls. In fact, Leyland wanted the Phillies job so badly that he even returned my phone calls.

Talk about desperate.

Now let’s stop for a minute before this descends into a Leyland-equals-good and Phillies-equals-bad essay. That’s just way too easy and not completely accurate. Surely, Leyland was not the only reason why the Tigers went from 300 losses in three seasons under Alan Trammell to 95-67 and the doorstep of the World Series this year. Actually, there are many reasons why the Tigers were able to turn it around so quickly.

The biggest one? Someone listened to Jim Leyland.

Apparently, Leyland went into his interview with the Tigers and told them what he would do to the team to make it better in very much the same manner he did with Montgomery and Wade. But guess what? The Tigers bought it and look where it got them.

Yes, I will always remember that day sitting in the conference room in Citizens Bank park listening to Leyland talk about what makes a winning baseball team as Wade stood in the doorway privately seething. Leyland, with his resume padded with a World Series title with the Marlins and all of those division titles with the Pirates, acted like a know-it-all questioning him to the very group of people who questioned him for sport in the papers and talk shows, daily. They had turned the fans against the straight-laced GM and here was a potential employee giving them more fodder?

Who did he think he was?

Leyland had a lot of ideas to make the Phillies better on that chilly November afternoon and he didn’t keep too many of them secret. He explained what he thought his job as the manager should be:

“When you have veteran players who buy into your thought process, it eliminates a lot of nitpicking,” he said. “The veterans set the tone. Leadership is production. Putting winning numbers on the board, that's leadership. The manager is supposed to be the leader. That's not ego talking, that's just the way it is. I've said it all my life, you're either the victim or the beneficiary of your players' performance. That's as simple as this job is.”

And what elements make up a good team:

“[It's about] trying to create an atmosphere that's comfortable,” he said. “I'm not as big on chemistry as a lot of other managers. If it works, it's wonderful. I've managed teams that ate together, played together, prayed together, and we got the [crap] kicked out of us, and I managed some that punched each other once in a while and we won. It's getting the best out of talent. They're not all going to like me. Hopefully, they will, but I doubt it. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you're working toward the same goal -- win.”

Perhaps Gillick had similar thoughts going through his head after he traded away Abreu and Bell and when he was ironing out that deal to send Burrell to Baltimore?

Maybe.

More interesting to ponder is if things would have ended differently the past two seasons if Leyland were the manager instead of Manuel? Well, it’s not as easy as simply replacing one guy for another, despite what Todd Jones says. There’s no telling how all of the personalities would have blended if anyone but Manuel were skippering the Phillies. Besides, if Leyland were in Philadelphia it would be unlikely that Pat Gillick would be the GM, too.

Maybe Wade sealed his own fate by not hiring Leyland when he campaigned so hard for the job. But then again we should have all seen the handwriting on the wall when Wade stood at the podium after Leyland’s cleansing tell-all and said:

“Even if you’re polling the 3.2 million people who came to watch us this year, I don’t think you can get hung up on this people’s commanding lead in the votes 320 to 112 or anything like that. We’re going to hire a manager we hope our fans like, but at the same time we’re going to try to hire a manager that is going to get us to the World Series.”

Hindsight being what it is… well, you can fill in the rest.

But make no mistake about one thing – Philadelphia is barely a blip on Leyland’s rear-view mirror now. Actually, it’s hard to look back at anything when champagne is stinging the eyes.

Not good enough?

2006-10-10T14:09:00.001-07:00

New York sure is different than Philadelphia.

Yes, that really is an ambiguous statement, but when comparing the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies, grand, open-ended ambiguity is the safest bet.

For the Phillies, the “Golden Age” of the franchise started in the mid-1970s and lasted until the early 1980s. For about a decade, the Phillies were about as good as a team could be in the Major Leagues. They were so good, in fact, that in 1979 Danny Ozark was fired as the manager of the team because he didn’t win the World Series after winning 101 games in 1976 and 1977 and a 90-win NL East title in 1978.

It wasn’t enough to get it done.

In 1983, general manager Paul Owens bounced Pat Corrales from the managerial seat even though he had the Phillies in first place with 76 games remaining in the season. Owens came down from the front office and kept the Phillies right where Corrales left them before the collapse in the World Series against the Orioles.

Those were the days when it was either the World Series or failure for the Phillies, and it’s safe to say that a similar mentality never really occurred in the team’s 123-season history.

It would be interesting to see what fate would beset Charlie Manuel if he stumbled the way Ozark and the Phillies did in 1979. Or what would happen to Manuel if he were the skipper in 1983 when Corrales’ first-place Phillies were doing something wrong 86 games in to the season.

How can a team fire the manager when his team is in first place?

Make no mistake; there are a lot of people who don’t want Manuel to return to the bench for 2007 after two seasons in which he won more games than all but one manager in team history through this point in his tenure. With the Phillies, 173 victories in two seasons in which the team was eliminated from wild-card playoff contention at game Nos. 162 and 161 is borderline historic. Actually, it’s more than remarkable – it’s unprecedented.

This is a franchise, after all, where only two (two!) managers have taken the team to more than one postseason. It’s a franchise that has been to the playoffs just nine times in 123 seasons. For comparisons sake, look at the Atlanta Braves who… wait, nevermind. It just isn’t fair to compare the Phillies to any other franchise.

Anyway, one of those dynamic duo of managers was Ozark, who won the NL East three years in a row but was axed when he couldn’t do it for a fourth, and the other was Ozark’s replacement, Dallas Green, who delivered the franchise’s only title in 1980 only to lose to Montreal in the 1981 NLDS.

That loss was enough to send Green on his way to Chicago where he thought he could break the Cubs’ losing curse. But Green quickly learned that even he isn’t that good. Sure, historically things are really bad for the Phillies, but even they don’t compare to the futility of the Cubs.

Maybe Joe Torre is the manager the Cubs need to help them end 98 straight seasons without a World Series? After all, it appeared as if Torre was going to be out of a job after 11 seasons as the manager of the New York Yankees.

Torre apparently was headed for the same fate as Danny Ozark in 1979 before general manager Brian Cashman and the Yankees players interceded. But unlike Ozark, Torre didn’t miss the playoffs this year. Actually, Torre made it to the playoffs in every season he was the manager for the Yankees. He averaged close to 100 victories per season, won the World Series four times, including three years in a row, figured out how to charm the fickle New York media and even more erratic, owner George Steinbrenner.

There is no way to categorize Torre’s time with the Yankees as anything other than wildly successful. In fact, there are some of those fickle and hyperbolic New York-media types who have deemed Torre’s Yankees’ career as Hall-of-Fame worthy alongside the all-time greats like Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel and Miller Huggins. Add Torre to that tribunal and get 21 of the Yankees’ 26 World Series titles, and 30 American League pennants.

In other words, Joe Torre has done a lot better than Charlie Manuel, but only one of them was truly on the proverbial hot seat for returning to the same team in 2007.

One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. Obviously, making it through Game 161 with a fighting chance is not a good season in the South Bronx. Steinbrenner, unlike David Montgomery and the Phillies, does not celebrate moral victories or potential. Because of that, Torre and his failure to deliver a World Series title since 2000, ends the season as a “sad disappointment,” as his boss stated. Those 1,079 victories, not including the 75 more in the playoffs, ring a bit hollow.

Torre, it seems, built expectations so high that anything less than perfection was not good enough. Is it his fault that his hitters picked a really bad time to stop being the best offense in baseball, or that the pitching staff he was handed didn’t live up to its old press clipping s anymore?

Of course not. But Torre made the mistake of having high standards.

We don’t have that problem here.

Instead, Charlie Manuel’s run in Philadelphia is still littered with hope and promise. For the Phillies, 173 victories in two seasons is nothing to sneeze at.

Nothing to do (and all day to do it)

2006-10-05T15:48:00.000-07:00

The 12:02 pulled out of the station just as my traveling companion and I stepped on to the platform. I wouldn’t have noticed the train heading toward a horizon where the sky seemed to be resting right on top of miles and miles of a treeless green valley until my partner – from the vantage point of my shoulders – pointed and shouted.

“Look! Tommy! Choo-choo!”

Every train to a two-year-old boy is named Tommy or Thomas, but unlike the diesel and electric fueled Amtrak that rockets from city to city, these Tommy trains sound a hard-to-ignore “choo-choo!” To anyone who has ever seen a modern, 21st Century train it is hard to think if they make any noise at all. The only noise is a whoosh of speed as it quickly turns to a blur.

But here in Strasburg, Pa., just 45 miles from Center City, anachronisms reign. Not only do the trains go “choo-choo!” but also they run on coal-powered steam engines along a countryside devoid of strip malls and tacky suburban sprawl. They don’t need a Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s here because it’s just as easy to go out in the backyard and dig up all of the organic produce desired.

Nevertheless, we would have to come up with Plan B because we missed that 12:02. Then again, Plan B was the easy part. On the way to the railroad station we had stopped at an Amish roadside stand where we bought a few apples, a bag of pretzels and a couple of drinks. Instead of the ride we parked it on a circular bench under a shady birch tree where we watched the train disappear beneath the inky plume of black smoke on a day so sunny and warm it was almost cartoonish. There, we shared the fruit and the pretzels while he sipped from a small plastic container of juice.

Plan B was perfect. We had nothing to do and all day to do it. There was no ballgame to rush off to watch and write about because the Phillies didn’t make the playoffs again. The Eagles had played the night before, but my companion was in bed long before kickoff. Besides, “Blues Clues” holds much more appeal to him than Andy Reid’s game plan. So instead of talking about sports or work we were going to sit there on that bench, eat those pretzels and feel the sun on a rare quiet day.

There would be time for games later. There always is. That’s the great thing about sports – a game is always there if you need one. Flip through the dial on the TV, or better yet, head out to the field nearby and there is sure to be a game going on. Sometimes the games that are played on those tiny fields in the middle of nowhere are the best ones. After all, it’s not the result that is remembered in the end – it’s the company you kept. No one says, “Remember the score of that game we went to five years ago?” Instead it’s, “Remember when we went to that game five years ago and how much fun we had.”

You know, just being there with your people. That’s what the games are about, right?

My companion pointed out the water tower blooming over a row of old dining cars and cabooses as he scraped the salt off his pretzel. He also pointed out the engineers in their overalls and funny, short-brimmed caps preparing for the next engine to barrel down those tracks. Mostly, though, we just enjoyed the quiet and the company.

It’s hard to imagine anything other than tranquility from our perch on that bench. Miles removed from the tourist traps where folks from New York and Philadelphia came to see the Amish (“are the Amish open on Sunday?”) and the farms while shopping for brand-name fashions in the outlet malls, the fields surrounding the train tracks barely quaked in the gentle breeze that seemed to spread the sunshine as if it were spores from a dandelion.

Yet even then there is quiet tenacity in that energy. To us it’s nothing more than a Rockwellian backdrop to a perfect scene.

Kind of like we are on that bench.

So it’s hard to imagine that just hours before chaos was in command. How could the roads that can barely handle the traffic at roadside stand or a country fair provide access for the fleet of ambulances and emergency vehicles? Forget about the teeming TV satellite trucks rushing to yet another tragedy like flies to manure or the helicopters circling overhead, how are these vehicles going to get where they desperately need to go?

It was a brisk, 20-minute jog from where we were sitting to where the ambulances, helicopters and satellite trucks had rushed. Three miles, tops, which, out here is like a couple of city blocks. Out here miles melt into the horizon like the clouds of smoke into the cloudless sky from that old train.

Sometimes it’s weird how lives intersect – a chance encounter here or there brought about by the ambiguity of geography. Weirder yet is how dreams and hopes haunt each of us. For some of us, all we want is a day in the sun, free from work and responsibility or a respite from the cares that can weigh us down. I’m lucky that I get to live a dream. All my hopes and desires are right here in the country alongside a railroad track. We have pretzels, some apples, a cool drink, great company and nothing else to do.

This could be the greatest day ever.

But for Charles Roberts – who lived just down the road from where we sat – dreams are nightmares. Worse, those little Amish girls who did nothing other than show up at the one-room schoolhouse on the wrong day, dreams go unrealized and unformed.

All we can say is that it isn’t fair.

It’s a shame that Charles Roberts could not find joy in playing soccer with his kids, or inviting his people over to watch a game on television. Why couldn’t he find joy simplicity and the nuance that makes the world spin a create smiles so big that they turn to tears of pure happiness?

Why couldn’t Charles Roberts take a trip up Route 896 to the Strasburg Railroad and sit with his boy at the side of the tracks?

Why?

Almost too fast, the food has been eaten and the drinks sipped dry. We’re starting to get restless from staring out into the miles and miles of fields that just won’t end until they reach the clear, blue sky. The platform is starting to fill up with tourists ready to board the 1 p.m. for a trip through the countryside to Paradise and back.

“Hey Michael,” I said. “Let’s get a couple of tickets and go for a ride.”

Manuel just wins for Phillies

2006-09-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON – There’s a lot more to Charlie Manuel than people see on television. In fact, the Charlie Manuel people see on TV is not the same one the writers and players see every day. That guy is verbose and uncomfortable in his own skin. He isn’t the kind, patient and quick jokester that people behind the scenes see.

Maybe that’s part of the act or part of the homespun manager’s charm? Maybe Manuel’s uneasiness that has made him a target for so many slings and arrows has allowed his players to escape their errors and miscues behind a façade of stutters and malapropisms.

Could he be that diabolical?

Probably not. Often with Manuel, what you see is what you get. But at the same time…

“When it comes down to [crunch] time, I’m going to do what’s right,” Manuel predicted last season.

For the second season in a row the Phillies have taken the season down to one final do-or-die weekend. If they can survive one more game against the Nationals and three in Miami against the Marlins and get some cooperation from the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Phillies will capture the National League’s wild-card spot. If not, well, the Phillies certainly made it interesting. That’s especially so after general manager Pat Gillick jettisoned veterans Bobby Abreu, David Bell, Rheal Cormier and Cory Lidle then told fans to wait until the year after next season.

“It will be a stretch to say we’ll be there in ’07,” Gillick said on July 30. “We’ll have to plug in some young pitchers and anytime you do that you’ll have some inconsistency.

“It’s going to take another year.”

Yet in two seasons at the helm in which the Phillies will be in contention until the very final out of the season, Charlie Manuel has been ridiculed, questioned and put down. His intelligence has been questioned and his Appalachian drawl has been made fun of in a manner that can only be described as mean spirited and personal. It seems as if people believe Charlie is dumb because of the way that he sounds – never mind that some of these critics of Manuel’s baseball acumen have thick, undecipherable accents that can only be heard in Philadelphia.

Hello, pot.

So Manuel takes the insults and keeps going. Aside from leading the Phillies to the doorstep of the playoffs and getting closer than any of his predecessors had in the past 13 years, Manuel has won more games in his first two seasons than every manager in Phillies history except for Pat Moran. More than 90 years ago Moran won 181 games and took the Phils to the World Series in 1915.

But Moran had Grover Cleveland Alexander anchoring his staff, while Manuel has Jon Lieber and Brett Myers – hardly pitchers destined for the Hall of Fame. Sure, Cole Hamels, all of just 22-year old, may one day be a Cy Young Award-caliber pitcher, but right now he’s an inconsistent rookie.

Yet maybe therein lies the genius of Charlie Manuel. Not only can he get the most out of Lieber and Myers, as well as players like Shane Victorino and Chris Coste, but also he can be deemed as a poor manager for winning. When has that ever occurred with the Phillies?

Along those lines, when have the words “Charlie Manuel” and “genius” ever been used in the same sentence?

The secret to Manuel’s success might be the rapport he has with his players. On one side he appears to be everybody’s favorite uncle always picking players up with positivity and kind words when things aren’t going well. Often, when he lumbers with his distinctive gait through the clubhouse, he stops to joke with a player or ask them about how things are going away from the field.

Then there is his loyalty to his players that is sometimes criticized by the fans and media, but always respected by the players. Rarely will Manuel speak poorly of a player in public, and his critique of his team’s sometimes shoddy play is always peppered with language about how “we” have to play better.

Or he’ll make a joke, like with hyped-up rookie Michael Bourn whose excitement and greenness caused the Phillies trouble on the base paths a time or two this week.

“I might have to put one of those shock collars on him,” Manuel laughed.

Though Manuel is an old-time baseball man who speaks fondly of playing with Harmon Killebrew and for managers Billy Martin and Walter Alston, his approach is hardly "old-school" in the sense that former Phillies managers Larry Bowa, Jim Fregosi and Dallas Green wore that label. But as long-time old-school baseball man Johnny Pesky, the 87-year-old treasure for the Boston Red Sox, points out, modern ballplayers don't need a manager to motivate them.

"These guys are making millions of dollars and they don't need somebody screaming at them to make them play better," he said.

Manuel understands that treating a player with respect and a little humanity is the best tact.

That method is hardly fullproof, though.

Perhaps Manuel has stuck with Pat Burrell and Mike Lieberthal longer than he should have in the final month of this season. Perhaps he should have turned to Coste or David Dellucci and Jeff Conine much sooner than he has. But don’t think for a moment that Manuel’s loyalty has gone unnoticed by his players.

But do not mistake Manuel’s kindness for weakness, pitcher Randy Wolf warns.

“Charlie is a great guy. He’s friendly and really cares about his players. He’ll do anything for us and wants us to trust him,” Wolf said. “But he is not soft. You don't want to cross him because he'll let you know about it.”

Jim Thome liked to tell the story about the time in Cleveland when Manuel removed the ping-pong table from the Indians’ clubhouse when he thought the players were too focused on table tennis than baseball. Then there was the time earlier this season when the Phillies were sleepwalking through another April loss in Florida when Manuel ordered his players back into the dugout before they could take the field and launched into a tongue-lashing that proved to be the impetus to a nine-game winning streak during a stretch where the team won 13 of 14 games.

So maybe there is a method to Manuel’s madness?

Just don’t ask him to explain it with the cameras rolling.

Primeau makes the smart decision

2006-09-14T18:25:00.000-07:00

The hardest thing for an athlete to do is to be smart. No, that’s not an insult, nor is it any type of indictment of certain scholastic records. After all, it takes a top-flight engineer to be able to memorize and decipher all of the variables in an NFL playbook. Besides, those things are thicker than phone books and like Rain Man, guys like Peyton Manning and Donovan McNabb know the whole thing by heart.

What is meant by smart is that oftentimes for athletes the easiest and most logical decision is usually the hardest thing to come to terms with. Some athletes have no trouble going out and running 20 miles a day without fail, but when it comes time to take a day off to rest the mind and muscles most guys would prefer root canal surgery.

Take Flyers’ captain Keith Primeau, for example. After battling the effects of post-concussion syndrome for nearly a full calendar year with no foreseeable end to his rehabilitation, the erstwhile 34-year old was forced into retirement on Thursday morning. Certainly, after at least four or five concussions during his 14-season NHL career, Primeau made the “smart” decision. At home he has his wife, Lisa, and four children, whom will be around and will need their dad longer than the Flyers will need a captain and a center. In fact, in one of those “get-to-know-the-players” questionnaires that teams like to publish for the fans, Primeau lists becoming a father as his greatest accomplishment to date.

“This decision will allow me to live a normal life and hopefully, with time, few reminders of my injuries,” Primeau said on Thursday.

“My biggest fear is that I’d have regrets and at this point I don’t have regrets.”

But even something as big as being a dad rarely extinguishes what burns inside of a person. For someone like Primeau, a hockey player personified, that flame burns with a lot more intensity. Need an example? Try this out:

It was the second period of Game 2 of the 2000 Eastern Conference Finals where the New Jersey Devils are skating circles around the Flyers and are on the verge of taking a 2-0 lead in the series. Even though he missed parts of two games after he was carted off the ice on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital after taking a big hit from Pittsburgh’s Bob Boughner and suffering the first of a series of concussions, Primeau called out the Devils’ Randy McKay for a little tête-à-tête.

Now it wasn’t necessarily important whether or not Primeau beat McKay in the fight. The message was loud and clear.

“I thought our team needed a spark,” Primeau said at the time, noting that he envisioned Lisa sitting in the stands with her head in her hands as he brawled with McKay.

“I realize it may not have been the best thing to do,” Primeau said before telling me that he had three prior concussions that he knew of before the one in Pittsburgh, and noting that he probably had others as a kid growing up in Toronto, but nothing so serious that his dad didn’t pick him up, brush him off, and send him back out onto the ice. “I’m a father and a husband, but at the same time I’m a hockey player… ”

Sometimes hockey players don’t always make the smart decision. But in retiring, Primeau did make the smart decision because the term concussion softens what medical folks call the affliction – traumatic brain injuries.

If Primeau takes one more hard shot to the head while skating up the ice at break-neck speed, the result could be dire.

And we aren’t talking about something as easy as retirement, either.

Yet despite Thursday’s announcement and the lingering symptoms from all of those traumatic brain injuries, something tells us the fire still smolders inside of Primeau. Maybe that comes from watching Primeau run up and down the area steps after games at the Wachovia Center. Besides, doing what is smart is one thing, but the human brain is no match for the heart or guts. Worse, that little voice saying, “What if… ” will always nag even if the brain says, “This is correct.”

“He's always going to feel like he didn't get to finish on his own terms,” coach Ken Hitchcock said.

The operative word is that Primeau was “forced” into retirement because trainer Jim McCrossin tried every mind trick he could to get the captain’s head to drill some logic into his heart and guts. The trainer told Primeau he could skate with the minor leaguers on the Phantoms, or he could practice wearing a white jersey with a red cross so that other players would know not to touch him.

What self-respecting hockey player shies away from the contact?

When McCrossin finally told Primeau what he really felt – that he didn’t want to live with the consequences if the hockey player took another shot to the head – it was like getting run over by a truck.

“It was the first real time I'd been in touch with reality the last few months,” Primeau said Thursday. “I didn't want to become a distraction again.”

Primeau was thinking about the team. That’s just what a captain does. But in time, Primeau won’t be a captain anymore, and maybe he’ll start to feel better and get the itch to put those skates on again to see what he can do.

“If they let me go I’d keep pushing through. I’d keep going until they dragged me away,” Primeau said.

Hopefully, making the smart decision will be a lot easier if that itch needs to be scratched.

The greatest of all time?

2006-09-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this is a trend or simple marketing of sports so that people will not only stay tuned to the game (or whatever), but also will think they are watching something historically significant, but often it appears as if I have tuned in to watch an "all-time greatest of the game."

It seems like such a debatable hyperbole, yet often there is no debate. It just so happens that I, luckily, have tuned in to something historic.

Mostly this occurs with individual sports like golf and tennis, but lately the G.O.A.T./history trend has morphed into mainstream team sports as well. Take Ryan Howard for instance -- last week in Washington I was sitting in the press box for a supposed historical occasion when the slugger tied and passed Mike Schmidt's franchise record for home runs in a season. It was something to see because the shots Howard hit were magnificent and I remember watching Schmidt hit a lot of those 48 homers during the 1980 season. So to be there when the record changed hands was pretty cool.

But it wasn't historical despite how it was being billed by certain media types. Not even close. If I had been outside of the Appomattox Court House on Palm Sunday of 1865 when Lee surrendered his army to Grant, now that would have been historic. Had I been alive to watch Neil Armstrong hop off the Apollo and onto the moon, that would have been historic. Waking up five years ago to desperate phone calls from my wife to, "TURN ON THE TV! NOW!" That was historic. This is just baseball. A nice milestone and definitely something very cool, but not anything I can brag about seeing. Not when half the people I know don't care.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I'm just being one of those uptight guys who likes to toss a wet blanket over everyone's fun. Well... yeah. Sometimes I enjoy being iconoclastic and "brutally honest." But mostly I just don't appreciate being misled. Even in the insular world of baseball, Howard passing Schmidt was barely a blip in its history. Maybe for the Phillies Howard's homers are significant since the franchise's history is pock-marked by losing season after losing season and overt racism during the game's "Golden Era" in which the team failed to integrate its roster long after nearly every other team.

Along those lines, Howard is already being referred to as potentially the greatest Phillie ever. Hell, he ought to just retire now. He almost has one full season in the books; he ought to hang 'em up. What else does he have to prove?

Certainly those who call Howard the G.Ph.O.A.T. acknowledge their silliness. Let the man have a career first. But that didn't stop anyone from waxing exaggeration in regard to Roger Federer during the finals of Sunday’s U.S. Open.

For anyone who saw it, Federer was often brilliant and mostly dominant in cruising to a four-set victory over Andy Roddick for his ninth Grand Slam victory. That's within the range of Tiger Woods, Federer's Nike brethren, who was sitting courtside with the Swooshes blazing for all of the close-up shots that stopped being about a celebrity watching a tennis match and more about selling over-priced athletic gear and shoes. Hey, if you're going to be a corporate shill, go all out... right Tiger?

So as Federer cruised, the debate started. Actually, it wasn't a debate, it was history.

It also got me thinking, which is probably not what CBS, the USTA, or Nike wanted anyone to do. But the idea was out there -- was Federer the greatest tennis player of all time?

Certainly the way he pushed around Roddick on Sunday made the debate easy for that day. Federer is easily the greatest tennis player out there now, but whom is he playing? Andy Roddick? Rafael Nadal? Lleyton Hewit?

Please.

But when I saw Federer blast balls from the baseline, daring anyone to approach the net against him, I thought, "this kid watched tapes of Borg play."

Who can forget Bjorn Borg? For as great as the "Super Swede" was -- and he is on the short list for G.O.A.T. -- he was even more of an enigma. But perhaps that's the way Borg had to be since he had John McEnroe always buzzing around and trying to knock him off. When it wasn't McEnroe, it was Jimmy Connors -- a guy who was No. 1 in the world for 160 straight weeks -- gunning for him.

Then came Ivan Lendl. Then Boris Becker. Then Pete Sampras, who re-wrote the record books.

Beneath the top layer guys like Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Stefan Edberg, Mats Wilander, Pat Cash and Michael Stich always seemed to be hovering around the top ranks for decades.

These days Federer isn't the king of the hill; he's a man on an island.

That's not Federer's fault, of course. Since you can't pick your parents, you can't really pick when you are born, either. Blaming Federer for being dominant in a weak era is a lot like judging Wilt Chamberlain for being bigger than everyone else during the infancy of the NBA. Any competitor like Federer wants to measure himself against the very best.

Eventually, Wilt had Bill Russell as his nemesis, which often brought out historical performances from both men. It remains to be seen whether or not Federer will develop a big-time rivalry with Nadal or Roddick, just like it's still up in the air whether or not the slugging Phillie will ever fall to mere mortal status against a tough lefty pitcher.

Then again mere mortality never seemed to happen for the golf-swatting Nike billboard sitting courtside for the tennis clinic on Sunday.

Where's the hype?

2006-09-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

Let’s play a little game of make believe, shall we?

Like, let’s make believe there is no such thing as androstenedione. Or better yet, let’s pretend that the scientists who came up with “The Cream” and “The Clear” never told anyone that their little invention had sports performance-enhancing traits. How about if they figured out ways to make the ointments cure cancers or diseases instead of making over-muscled men hit baseballs farther or run faster?

While we’re at it, let’s pretend Bud Selig, the Major League owners and the players’ association all worked together to put effective, and Olympic-quality drug testing in place during the mid 1990s. Or how about if the athletes who used (and use) human growth hormone thought, “You know, I could use this and it would make me stronger and recover faster so I can work out twice as hard and hit those baseballs really far. That would probably mean a few extra million dollars in my next contract, but you know what? There’s some sick little kid who might need this more than me.”

Let’s pretend that because of everything listed above, Mark McGwire didn’t hit 70 home runs in 1998 or 65 in 1999. Or that Sammy Sosa didn’t hit 66, 63 or 64 homers in ’98, ’99 or 2001, respectively. Suppose Barry Bonds didn’t hit 73 homers in 2001, and continued to average his 33 homers per season like he did prior to the 2001 campaign. At that rate – if he were still playing – he might be threatening the 700-home run plateau. Maybe then there would be some excitement about Bonds’ feats instead of the collective yawn his homers receive as he approached Hank Aaron’s all-time mark.

Pretend all of things happened, or didn’t happen.

Now pretend you’re a Phillies fan watching Ryan Howard. How excited would you be right now?

Though the Phillies’ smiling slugger is on pace to become just the third player in Major League history to reach the mythical 60-home run plateau and not sit in front of a Congressional sub-committee or grand jury so that a bunch lawyers could ask what he took to hit the ball so far, there could be so much more excitement. Philadelphia could be the focus of the sporting world right now as Howard zeroed in on Babe Ruth and Roger Maris. He would be a national icon instead of just the guy who beat Mike Schmidt’s record for most homers in a season by a Phillie.

Remember how everyone checked the box scores every morning or stayed up late to catch the sports highlights to see if McGwire or Sosa smacked another one during the ’98 season? Remember how they said that chase rekindled the nation’s interest in baseball and turned the casual fans into degenerate seamhead stat freaks? That could all be happening right here, right now.

Thanks to his player-of-the-month August where he slugged 14 homers, and this past week where he hit six bombs in seven days, including three in consecutive plate appearances against the Braves last Sunday, Howard needs eight more home runs in the final 24 games to tie Maris’. In fact, Howard’s output has been so prolific that his slugging and the Phillies’ wild-card chances have become the talk of the town instead of the Eagles’ season opener this Sunday in Texas somewhere. Questions like, “Do you think he can hit 60?” have been the focus of conversation instead of “Do you think the Eagles can get back to the playoffs?”

Phillies games are now divided into three, quick need-to-know categories:

Did he hit one?

Did they win?

How far back are they?

But it’s Howard and the “what if” game that is the most intriguing. Because we have to wonder what happened in those darkened corners of baseball before there was serious drug policy, it kind of throws a wet-blanket over Howard’s season. For instance, since Howard is not chasing the record, as he very well could be, his season will be memorable only in our little provincial world. Sure, he could win the MVP Award this season, but we’re still missing out on the daily media frenzy.

Worse, because it is assumed that Bonds, Sosa and McGwire were cheaters, people will always wonder about Howard, too. Indirectly – even with power exploits going back to when he was 12-years old and hit a home run that went so far that it crashed into a Red Lobster – Howard is a victim of the steroid era.

Columnists and talk-show types, who never show up to the ballpark to chat with Howard even though he is always waiting in front of his locker on the front right side of the clubhouse, can flex with no-it-all poses about how Howard is under suspicion. Very easily, those people can show up at the park and walk right up to the easy-going and accessible slugger and ask him, point blank, if he’s juiced.

The answer, as reported by Paul Hagen in the Daily News:

“People are entitled to their opinions,” he said, rolling his eyes. “But it does bother me. It casts a shadow on the game.

“I know I'm not using steroids. This barrel right here [pointing to his stomach] is proof enough. People are going to say what they want to say. I thought about it once and then it was like, ‘Well, whatever.’ I'm not doing it. If they want to test me, they can test me.

“I just think it sucks. The thing about it is, if you're going to make those kinds of comments, have proof. Otherwise, you can ruin people's reputations.”

Howard is already making his own glowing reputation. Aside from the huge numbers – he has a chance to become just the fifth player in history to hit better than .300, smash 50 homers and drive in 150 runs – Howard is accountable. Not just for the media, but for his teammates, too.

Count on this: Howard will never sit in front of a Congressional committee and say: “I’m not here to talk about the past… ”

Schmidt ready to step aside for Howard

2006-08-29T17:35:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON – If one were looking for someone to talk baseball with, it’s definitely hard to top Mike Schmidt. Introspective and opinionated, there isn’t too much regarding the game that Schmidt won’t wax philosophical about. He’ll offer his thoughts on the game during his era, these modern times, the new ballparks, and, of course, the never-ending steroid issue.

There’s a joke amongst the media types that if anyone really wants to know how good the Hall-of-Fame third baseman was all you have to do is ask him.

“I wrote a book about it,” Schmidt joked during a phone call on Tuesday afternoon.

But if one really wants to engage Schmidt and listen to him talk, just ask him about hitting. Schmidt wrote a book about that, too, but that came when baseball’s statistics had a totally different meaning, and when Ryan Howard was two-years old.

The “old statistics,” as Schmidt calls them, are the power numbers. Back when he was playing, Schmidt led the National League in home runs six different times without reaching the 40-homer plateau. In fact, Schmidt hit 40 or more homers in a season just three times during his 18-season career. Compare that to someone like Albert Pujols, who is working in his fourth consecutive 40-homer season in just his sixth season in the league and it’s plain to see what Schmidt means by the old numbers.

“I was seventh (on the all-time home run list) when I retired and now I’m 14th,” he said.

Despite the dwindling status in the record books, Schmidt will always be remembered as one of the classic all-time home run hitters. His distinctive batting stance along with the eight home-run crowns, 548 long balls, and, of course, the three MVP Awards, has more than solidified his legacy.

These days Schmidt is something of a baseball watchdog, chiming in on the big issues of the game. He was an advocate for Pete Rose's reinstatement into the game for a while until it became a little too politically incorrect to be so vociferous regarding the self-proclaimed “Hit King,” and has weighed in on everything from the Hall of Fame’s standards, to the modern game, which includes performance-enhancing drugs.

Now it appears as Schmidt’s 26-season reign atop the Phillies’ single-season home run list is about to become an old number, too. With 32 games remaining in the season, second-year slugging first baseman Ryan Howard needs to hit just one more homer to pass Schmidt’s record of 48 bashed in 1980. Even by throwing in the two homers that Schmidt hit during the World Series that season shouldn’t daunt Howard rewriting of the club’s record books.

Actually, at the rate Howard is going he should have 50 by the weekend and the once-magic number of 60 isn’t out of the realm of possibility either.

Regardless, becoming just another name in the record books doesn’t upset Schmidt despite his opinions in the publishing world and on several television programs, including Bob Costas’ HBO show where Schmidt said if he had played in an era where steroids or performance-enhancing drugs were more prevalent that he just may have dabbled a bit.

“I’m happy for Ryan and content with what I did,” Schmidt said.

“I'm happy for Ryan. I think everyone would agree with me that eventually that record of 48 would be surpassed. It should have been passed a few years ago by Jim Thome (who hit 47 homers in 2003). (Howard) may take it, eventually, so far that nobody will catch it.”

That’s not out of the realm of possibility, either. Currently, Howard is on pace to smash 58 homers, which is more than impressive. But considering that Howard hit 11 homers after Sept. 1 last season – his rookie year, no less – it’s very reasonable to believe that the slugger can duplicate that feat to get to the 60-homer plateau.

In baseball history, only five different men have hit 60 or more home runs in a season, and of that group, only two players – Babe Ruth and Roger Maris – have not been tied to baseball’s ugly steroid scandal.

Steroids and performance-enhancing drugs don’t even enter into the same equation when it comes to Howard. Actually, based on conversations around the cage during his work as a hitting instructor at spring training as well as watching Phillies games on DirecTV at home in Jupiter, Fla., Schmidt says Howard’s success comes from nothing more than ability. In fact, says Schmidt, there isn’t really much of a comparison between the two hitters at the similar points of their careers – Howard is just that much better.

“Howard’s in a see-the-ball-hit-the-ball mode,” Schmidt said. “It will be a lot easier for him when he has a track record against these pitchers. He’s not a pull hitter and he has a lot of great qualities.

“If he has any hole in his swing it’s high and inside or breaking balls away out of the zone and let him get himself out. He’s a different type hitter in that he uses the whole field and that will keep him out of prolonged slumps.”

Howard is just the type of hitter that will not only be talked about for his prodigiously long blasts, but also his unique style that conjures remembrances of a certain Hall-of-Famer.

“He might be the modern-day Willie Stargell,” Schmidt said. “He’s a left-handed hitter with a distinct approach to hitting that I'm sure guys will be imitating for years. Making that extension with the bat just like [Stargell] used to windmill that bat as the pitcher was winding up. Both can hit the ball in the upper deck. Willie used to hit some of the longest balls in the history of the league and they talked about them, just like they're talking about some of Ryan's home runs.”

Schmidt says he was easily fooled by sliders off the plate, but one pitch that did not fool him was the one Stan Bahnsen chucked up there on the next-to-last day of the 1980 season in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. It was that 10th inning blast that sealed that NL East for the Phillies and propelled them into the NLCS and the only World Series title in the franchise’s 123-season history.

“It was a crucial home run,” Schmidt remembered. “It was the last home run of the year and it had a tremendous impact on the history of the Phillies.”

What's left to be seen is whether Howard's final homer of 2006 has an equally as important impact on the history of the Phillies.

Excuses not making the grade

2006-08-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

August 23, 2006
My days as a science cheat were very short lived. Actually, unlike Floyd Landis, Justin Gatlin and now Marian Jones, and the host of athletes nabbed in failed drug tests and a blanket of bad excuses, my dabbling in cheating ended quickly after it began.

Lucky me.

No, this tale has nothing to do with altering my body chemistry to become bigger, stronger and faster, but in the end, cheating is cheating. Right?

Well …

Nonetheless, this story was just as sordid and dirty for everyone (well, just me, actually) caught up in the tangled web of the controversy. Or something like that. Better yet, like one can deduce from following the cases of Landis, Gatlin, Jones and every other notorious drug case permeating sports during the past two decades, my case involves greed, pressure, arrogance and the desire to make oneself look better.

Sounds dramatic, right? It was. You see on the way home on the last day of school in eighth grade, I steamed open the envelope holding my report card, pulled out the red pen from my backpack I had secured just for the occasion, and changed my grade. Yeah, it still makes me queasy thinking about now. What was I thinking? A red pen? In the bushes near my house on the way home from Wheatland Junior High? Science? Cheating?

Geez.

The motive, honestly, was simple. I needed a C in eighth grade science to finish the year on the Honor Roll. Science was never (and still isn’t) my thing, so getting a C was a tall order. With the extra pressure of actually making it onto the Honor Roll thrown in, it was just too much to handle. When I opened my report card and not surprisingly saw that big, round D taunting me from the thin, official-looking piece of paper, I felt as if I had no other choice than to turn that D into a C.

Now I know exactly what you are thinking. Everyone thinks the same thing when hearing about Landis and is 11-to-1 testosterone ratio, or Marian Jones’ positive test for EPO, and every other cheater caught in the web of credibility. The question is why. Why do it and how did I think I could get away with it?

Honestly, with the aid of two decades of retrospect, I never thought it through that much. I saw the glory of the Honor Roll, which for a mediocre student like me, was major. You see, my academic record sounded a shrill, annoying alarm of a classic underachiever when examined. My sister, on the other hand, lacked the diversity of the alphabet sampler on my report cards. She was consistent and never had to worry about getting a B, let alone not making the Honor Roll. And because we are so close in age, the competition was fierce.

But, again with the aid of 22 years to ponder my cheating escapade, it never really made sense. Why did I desire to be on the Honor Roll so much? Isn’t it odd that people were rewarded for doing what they are supposed to do, which is get good grades? Worse, the pursuit of such accolades for doing work you were supposed to do just seemed so… tacky.

Needless to say, my ruse was quickly discovered. The C covering the D in red pen just looked too suspect and unprofessional even in those days before the proliferation of computer databases, e-mailed grades, and easy access to information via the Internet. We were still using pen and paper in those days, folks.

But unlike any other science cheat, I didn’t waste anyone’s time with a series of lame excuses. Unlike Landis, I didn’t use a late-night whiskey binge as an excuse for my poor grade. Nor did a masseuse rub in an illicit steroid like with Gatlin, or was I “framed” like Jones’ camp offered when she failed her drug test.

Framed? Yeah, because Jones’ running is just so vital to our national interests.

But there are many more excuses a science cheater like me could have used. Remember when Ben Johnson ran so fast in the 100-meters finals during the 1988 Seoul Olympics that it appeared as if he was either going to combust into flames or take off in flight? Yeah, well, that speed came from Winstrol, the same steroid reportedly favored by Rafael Palmeiro.

Ben’s excuse? Someone dosed his water bottle. Rafael’s? He thought it was a B-12 vitamin that teammate Miguel Tejada gave to him.

Still, those are better than the excuse Barry Bonds reportedly gave during his grand jury testimony in attempt for prosecutors to glean more information for the star-crossed slugger’s role in the BALCO case. In admitting to using “The Cream” or “The Clear,” two hardcore and ultra-scientific designer steroids, Bonds said he thought he was just rubbing flax seed oil onto his body.

Really?

Suffice it to say, my cheating days ended there. The effort, coupled with the guilt, made it not worth it. Besides, the time put into cheating could better be used for studying, or in other cases, for working out and getting stronger naturally. Honestly, it’s not too hard to do it that way. Then again, it seems as if the big thing for athletes these days is not winning or losing, but not getting caught.

Anyway, the real lesson came from my dad when he told me, “You know, a D turns into a B a lot easier than it turns into a C.”

Coste to Coste

2006-08-18T17:01:00.000-07:00

Chris Coste leaned up against his locker in the Phillies’ clubhouse casually chatting about Wednesday night’s 3-0 victory over the first-place New York Mets for the team’s third win in a row. Certainly it was no typical day for the Phillies’ catcher, who drove in the winning runs with a two-run home run in the second inning off potential Hall of Famer Tom Glavine on his way to a 3-for-3 game. After all, it isn’t every day a when a guy has a feature story written about him in The New York Times – the paper of record.

On the strength of that story, Coste received two letters from literary agents that were set beneath his cell phone that blinked on and off like a faraway beacon on the horizon. Perhaps it was another (yes, another) Hollywood agent calling to check in about developing a feature?

Heck, maybe it was the president. After all, he spent the day campaigning for money in Lancaster.

So as Coste entertained the gaggle of writers and TV folks who formed a semi-circle about three bodies deep around him, it could have dawned on him that, yes, maybe I ought to pinch myself. How can all this be happening? A triple short of a cycle and two RBIs against Tom Glavine?

Is this a dream?

“I wouldn’t have ever guessed this,” Coste said. “My whole career has been a fight and I just never got a chance. Just to make the big leagues was enough.”

But that was before. Now, after 11 seasons in the minors and five different Major League organizations – as well as two independent league teams – the 33-year old rookie isn’t thinking about his one shot. He’s already accomplished the dream. Now his trying to live it.

“To say this is a dream wouldn’t do it justice,” Coste said.

The reporters didn’t gather around Coste to hear the fairy tale stories all over again – though it was interesting. Instead they came to ask Coste about another game in the big leagues. Another game in which he produced a clutch hit, and caught a good game just like he was any other player making his way through another long baseball season. It didn’t matter that Coste had the improbable story of winters spent playing in Mexico or spending Christmases at a Wal-Mart with teammates only to have the doors of the big-league clubhouses slammed in his face year after year. It didn’t matter that he was the 33-year-old rookie who Hollywood types were looking to cash in off of like that science teacher from Texas.

In this case Coste is sharing the starting catching duties with a guy playing in his 13th Major League season for a team very much in the middle of a playoff run, and is making a significant contribution.

In fact, Coste was calling the pitches for Jon Lieber on Wednesday night as the big right-hander turned in the team’s best pitching outing of the season. With Coste behind the dish, Lieber threw a taut five-hitter where he threw 101 pitches in nine innings without a walk in shutting out the Mets.

"It’s been awesome. He’s done a tremendous job back there, especially after spring training and going through that difficult situation,” Lieber understated. “He’s definitely building up his confidence.”

That difficult situation Lieber was talking about was when Coste was sent back to Triple-A even though he pounded the ball during Grapefruit League action in spring training for a .472 batting average. Instead of Coste as a backup catcher or a utility infielder, the Phillies opted to go with Sal Fasano and Alex Gonzalez instead.

Fasano, of course, was designated for assignment and then dealt to the Yankees, while Gonzalez decided to retire after hitting .111 in 20 games.

Said manager Charlie Manuel: “He’s doing a good job. He can put the fat part of the bat on the ball.”

That’s another understatement. Since making it to the Majors on May 26, Coste is mostly fattening up his stats. In going 3-for-3 on Wednesday, Coste’s average jumped to .359 to go with five homers and 22 RBIs. His on-base percentage is a robust .400 while his OPS, is a very lusty .973.

In 100 games from Fasano and 13-year veteran Mike Lieberthal, the Phillies have received seven homers, 30 RBIs and a .247 average. But take away the 0-for-13 Coste had when first making his debut, and the average climbs to .411.

Looks like the Phillies found their catcher.

Right?

Well…

“I sneak up on everybody. That’s my style,” Coste said about his red-hot start. “It’s nice being under the radar a bit. The second time through the league will be different. That’s what everyone is telling me.”

That certainly seems to be the case. Coste isn’t a secret any more. With the features in The Times, literary agents writing for ideas, and Hollywood producers looking for the latest feel-good story, it’s very likely that Coste is going to have to make some more adjustments in order to keep the good times going.

As far as that goes, Coste is ready.

“As a human you want more and you get greedy,” Coste said. “If you get up here for a year you want to stay for 15. I want to be like Julio Franco playing when I’m 47. You want more. That’s human nature.”

And at this point, more is never enough.

Play me and trade me

2006-08-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

As this week’s baseball trading deadline passed with all the subtlety of a hammer pounding a nail, it quite fascinating to think of the notion of the trade. Actually, it’s quite baffling to think of it. No, not the trade that sent the Phillies best hitter and hottest pitcher to the New York Yankees for four minor leaguers with very limited potential. That’s a different story that will be discussed for years. For this it’s the actual concept of the trade that’s weird.

Think of it – an employee for a company is just shipped off without warning to another totally different company. Sure, they’re in the same business, but it doesn’t really seem fair.

Does it?

For instance, I doubt that there is any chance that someone in your company’s accounting department is going to come into the office tomorrow morning with a yellow post-it stuck to the computer with the message, “Come see me” from the boss scrawled on it. And it’s doubtful that the scene that happens quite often in pro sports will be played out when the Accounting guy shows up at the door of the boss’s office.

“You wanted to see me, boss?”

“Yeah, Bob, come on in and sit down. Close the door behind you, too, please.”

“Sure thing… what is it, boss?”

“Well, this isn’t going to be easy because, as you know, we really like your work around here, and your jokes were knocking everyone out at the company’s summer luau last month. We just really like having you around, and that’s not because you are having a great season with the company softball team, either. It’s more than that… ”

“So what is it, boss?”

“Well, as you know we’re a little short staffed in the marketing department. We just really need some extra help down there with all the vacations coming up and the fiscal year ending. Anyway, I don’t want to drag this out so I have to put it straight – we’ve traded you to a medical supply company in Duluth. Now I know what you’re thinking and I want you to know that we didn’t want to do this. But they really needed a top-notch accountant and they’re a really good company. I think you’ll fit in well there and really help them out.”

Yes, people in certain industries get transferred from place to place all the time. It’s also more than common for military professionals to bounce around the globe from base to base, packing and re-packing the family for the next home, school so they can make a new set of friends only to re-start the process all over again in a few years.

Actually, I have a close friend who requested his “trade” within his company. He did it not once, but several times, going from Boston to Washington, D.C., to Toronto and then back to Boston where he eventually left as a free agent to go to another firm. During all of this my friend said the most important thing he learned was to make sure he emptied the trash can before the movers came to pack everything up and ship it to another city.

“If you have trash in Boston, it’s going to show up in the same trash can in Washington,” he said.

The funniest thing about trades in pro sports is how non-chalant the athletes are about being told they were being sent somewhere else to work. Oh sure, they act surprised and talk about the friends they made and the good times with their former employer, but there is always one phrase every pro jock uses when discussing their trade to a new team. In fact, every former Phillie used it on the way out the door this past week:

“It’s part of the game. It’s part of the business… ” said David Bell on his way to Milwaukee last Friday.

“It’s part of the business… ” said Bobby Abreu as he headed to New York to join the Yankees.

“I wanted to stay here but it’s part of the business…” added Cory Lidle as he joined Abreu on the way to the Bronx.

“I enjoyed my time here. I wish it could've included a playoff run, but it’s part of the business… ” added Rheal Cormier as he left Philadelphia for Cincinnati.

Where’s Crash Davis when you need him? And there’s one aspect of the sporting life that most people are glad hasn’t gone mainstream.

Say it isn't so, Floyd...

2006-07-27T16:56:00.000-07:00

LANCASTER, Pa. – I’m often asked by people who are not writers or in the media business why most writers – specifically sports writers and journalists – are so darned cynical. It’s a fair question because most of the people who write for a living seem to take a bit of perverse pleasure in debunking myths and raining on parades.

“The reason writers are so cynical,” I answer, “is because almost all of them have been burned by the truth more than once.”

It’s kind of like the time when I was a teenager and spent two weeks during a summer working in one of my grandfather’s restaurants. I would never eat there, I told people, because “I saw what went on in the kitchen.”

That’s the way it is with most writers. The clichéd credo is often either “hope for the best but expect the worst,” or “if something is too good to be true, chances are it is too good to be true.”

Nevertheless, there is still the idea of hope. Hope for the best – a good story, a hero or something uplifting. Hope is always the operative word.

So when Floyd Landis and his improbable story rocketed into the sports landscape like it was Haley’s Comet, writer-types broke out the binoculars and telescopes with the hope (there’s that word again) of gleaning something new and interesting. You know, something out of the ordinary from so many of the stories that dot the papers and Web sites like so many stars in the sky.

But when the news of Landis’ failed drug test first began to tickle out – showing higher levels of testosterone/epitestosterone allowed by rule – it was like a jolt to the solar plexus, followed by a kick in the gut. This hurts. This hurts badly.

That’s especially the case for a writer-dude like me, who grew up in Lancaster city – not too far from where Landis was brought up in his fundamental Mennonite household. Though our upbringings were about as different as could be, just the idea of the winner of the Tour de France coming from the same general place as me was, well, neat. Though those differences are myriad, there definitely had to be some shared experiences. Like I once bought a bike at Green Mountain Cyclery in Ephrata, Pa., which just so happened to be the shop where Landis hung out, got his first real bike, and signed on for his first racing sponsorship.

Heck, I even live on Landis Avenue.

Actually, it’s the same way for the folks all over Lancaster County where people are looking for some way they can share in greatness. You know, find something they can touch and relate to.

At the Oregon Dairy, a food market, dairy, ice cream shop, gift shop and restaurant, located just at the edge of the Lancaster suburbs and farm country, there is a makeshift shrine on the wall near the entrance for Floyd Landis with newspaper clippings, a copy of VeloNews, photographs, and the coup de grace, a sheet of poster board neatly written with a simple sentence:

Floyd Landis Worked Here!

Needless to say, there was no talk about Thursday’s news – aside from a headline on the front page of the Lancaster New Era taunting the locals from the paper box on the sidewalk:

Floyd Landis Fails Drug Test.

Six miles away from the Oregon Dairy through rolling countryside with little-used back roads that are perfect for bike riding along the banks of the wildly winding Conestoga River, is East Farmersville Road. At a neat farmhouse filthy with TV trucks, writer-types and curiosity seekers sitting astride touring bikes, no such dichotomy exists. The headline, not poster, is the reality. Nevermind the fact that the truth is still out there in the ether waiting to settle on those pages and Web sites, or that Landis issued a strong denial to Sports Illustrated on Thursday evening.

All that’s left is hope. Hope that the “B” sample proves that there was a false positive. Hope that something extraordinary will occur just like during Landis’ miraculous comeback during Stage 17 of the Tour de France. Hope that Landis will still have an honorable reputation remaining when this is all over.

His mother and devout Mennonite, Arlene Landis, is hopeful.

"My opinion is when he comes on top of this, everyone will think so much more of him. So that's what valleys are for, right?" Mrs. Landis told reporters from in front of her house on Thursday.

"I'm not concerned. I think God is allowing us to go through this so that Floyd's glory is even greater."

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Question begat more questions as the poking and prodding of what Landis puts into his body has just begun. Landis knows this and is not hopeful, according to his interview with Sports Illustrated.

Landis told the magazine that he "can't be hopeful" that the "B" sample will be any different than the "A."

"I'm a realist," he said.

Sadly, we all are.

A final word on Floyd from Farmersville

2006-07-25T16:58:00.000-07:00

LANCASTER, Pa. – If one were to ask someone from Lancaster where in the world Farmersville, Pa. was or who the heck was Floyd Landis, chances are they would probably respond with a long, blank stare. Oh sure, there had been some mention of Landis in the local papers a few years ago when he spent the summers as one of Lance Armstrong’s cadre of lieutenants who did all the dirty work to help bike racing’s biggest star win all of those Tour de France titles, but the majority of folks had no clue as to who or what Floyd Landis was.

As for Farmersville, that sounded like something conjured by Hollywood types or from the preconceived notions as to what Lancaster and the county that bears its name actually is. Yeah, there are farms in Lancaster County – lots of them, in fact. But for the people who live in Lancaster city and its suburbs, the farms and places like Farmersville are for the tourists or places one ends up after a wrong turn off the Turnpike or Route 30.

Farmersville? Never heard of it.

But it’s funny how three weeks can change things.

It would be very difficult to find any one in America who hasn’t heard of Floyd Landis, the recovering Mennonite from little old Farmersville, Pa. in bucolic Lancaster County these days. Winning one of the biggest sporting events in the world has a way of making anonymity disappear. Everybody knows Floyd Landis now. His story has been told and re-told over and over again amongst friends and acquaintances like it was the latest episode of a favorite TV show or a crazy snap of the weather.

“Can you believe that Floyd Landis? Did you read that one how his parents don’t have a TV so they go to the neighbor’s house to watch highlights from the race?”

“Yeah, I saw one where his dad said that the family didn’t disown him after he chose to leave their ultra-conservative way of life to move to California to become a pro cyclist. They just told him that he was ‘living a sinful life.’”

Landis mania runs rampant in Lancaster now. So much so that Farmersville – more a sweeping country crossroads than a hamlet – has become a tourist destination for people who live just a few miles away. It seems as if Lancasterians are curious about just where in the world Floyd Landis comes from.

The locals aren’t the only ones, either. According to the Lancaster New Era, reporters from all over, including one from the French newspaper L’Equipe joined the fray of TV trucks and curiosity seekers at the Landis home.

And what did Arlene Landis, Floyd’s mom, do when everyone showed up? She invited them in and made them steaks while the neighbors wondered what the fuss was all about and hoped that Landis’ new celebrity won’t turn the little street into another tourist stop the way nearby Amish farms are.

“We’re not really into all this. It seems kind of something we wouldn’t do, and I don’t really watch TV,” Mary Jane Horst, a neighbor of the Landis’, told the New Era.

According to Google Earth, Farmersville is very near New Holland, Pa. in West Earl Township. To get there from Philadelphia, it’s just a few miles south of the Pennsylvania Turnpike on Route 222. Once in Farmersville, visitors are swept up in a sea of cornfields and greenness, with rolling hills and little-used back roads. To get to the city of Lancaster, it’s a good 14-mile bike ride through farm country and suburban sprawl, but it feels like stepping through a time machine. Speeding cars, shopping centers, and industrial parks replace the horse-and-buggies and unmitigated earth.

Yet it seems to make a lot of sense that the best bike rider in the world came from this little spot on the globe. It’s still very much a place where work ethic, community and selflessness are more than cheap buzzwords used by people who don’t know the meaning of those words. It’s also a place where those values are more than a way of life, because that simply isn’t strong or forceful enough.

No, the toughest man on the planet comes from a place where what you do is a lot more important than what you say. Where else could someone like Floyd Landis be from?

Farmersville. Where else?

The Legend

2006-07-22T16:55:00.000-07:00

While the Eagles training camp and Brett Myers’ return to action in Philadelphia is the big news in these parts, the most riveting and exciting televised sporting event was Floyd Landis’ clutch performance in Saturday’s time trial in the penultimate stage of the 2006 Tour de France. From those just flipping around the dial it looked like nothing more than a bunch of guys in tight clothes riding bikes, but for those who knew what was at stake, it was sports at its best.

Better yet, it was impossible to turn away from.

Landis, the 30-year-old star from Lancaster County whose story and background is now well known, came into the time trial in third place, trailing by 30 seconds. But 30 seconds was not a lot to make up for Landis, who is known for his strength in the time trial. All Landis would have to do is ride as hard as he could, avoid any mechanical issues with his bike, and don’t crash.

Sounds easy, but think of the pressure. Anything less than the best effort would go down as nothing but a big choke – especially since the entire cycling world had its eyes glued to Saturday’s action.

Making it more interesting is the fact that Landis is headed for hip replacement surgery when the Tour ends. In fact, Landis’ degenerative hip injury is similar to the one that ended Bo Jackson’s football career. Because of that it’s quite possible that this could be his one and only shot at winning the Tour.

“I have to say that since it’s a dream of mine, and having hip replacement puts that in jeopardy, that having won the race, I’ll be much more relaxed” about the surgery, Landis told The New York Times. “I don’t feel like my life is a failure if I didn’t win the race, but it’s a dream, and I’d be extremely disappointed if that was taken away by an unfortunate accident.

“I’ll fight as hard as I have in this race to come back next year or the following year, whatever it takes to be back.”

But tomorrow’s race toward the Champs-Élysées in Paris should be just a formality with a 59-second lead squirreled away. Certainly such a lead was unfathomable earlier this week when Landis dropped from first place all the way to 11th after a seemingly monumental collapse during the 16th stage. At that point all of the cycling experts wrote Floyd off as cracked, beaten and battered. He was finished, just another rider chewed up in the Alps in the most grueling race on earth.

Then the next day the unthinkable happened. Landis had the day of his life – until Saturday’s time trial, that is – vaulting all the way to third place by making up nearly eight minutes.

Those same experts that wrote Floyd off jumped back on the bandwagon by calling him a “Legend.”

Whether Landis ever makes it back to contention in France again is of no consequence now. He is truly a legend on his way to becoming the just the third American to win the Tour de France, joining Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong.

Imagine that – it’s actually quite difficult, actually. Floyd Landis, the Mennonite kid from Farmersville in Lancaster County, Pa. mentioned in the same sentence as Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong.

Wow!

During the 1980s, Greg LeMond was looked at by kids like me as one of the baddest men on the planet. He won awe-inspiring Tour not once, not twice, but thrice. Americans started to race bikes because of LeMond. And then came Lance who took it all to another level by actually transcending his sport to become a celebrity and a cyclist.

Now comes Landis – from Conestoga Valley High School over on Horseshoe Road. He bought his bikes at Green Mountain Cyclery in Ephrata, Pa. just like all everyone in the know from Lancaster.

“Talents like Floyd come along once in a lifetime,” said Mike Farrington, the owner of Green Mountain Cyclery, to the Harrisburg Patriot News.

Once if we’re lucky.

Don't forget about Furyk
Yeah, that's right... Floyd Landis might be getting all of the attention in Lancaster right now, but homeboy Jim Furyk fired a 66 on Saturday to crawl to within two shots of Tiger Woods heading into the final day of the British Open.

Imagine if Furyk wins the British Open on the same day Landis wins the Tour de France... bottle up that Lancaster County water and sell it as a magic elixir to anyone dreaming of athletic glory.

He's from where?

2006-07-18T16:52:00.000-07:00

At Foolish Craig’s, a restaurant and juice/coffee bar on the fashionable Pearl St. in Boulder, Colo., diners and imbibers halted their conversations mid sentence in order to catch the latest action from the Tour de France flickering from the TV hoisted above their heads. When American Floyd Landis was presented with the Yellow Jersey, signifying that he is the leader of the great race, there was an audible, “YESSSS!” to go along with a few happy fist pumps.

Actually, Foolish Craig’s is no different than any other establishment in Boulder. Instead of the Rockies-Reds matinee burning up the airwaves, it’s the bike race from France that has everyone’s attention during a busy lunchtime. If there were sports talk radio just for the hip and trendy folks in Boulder, all of the chatter would be about Landis, the latest on the summertime European running circuit, and the Denver Broncos.

Colorado still shuts down when the Broncos play and it’s still impossible to get a ticket for a game. Lets not kid ourselves and think that endurance sports have surpassed the NFL just yet.

Nevertheless, Boulder is crazy for Landis. So too is the establishment – the New York Times recently published a six-page feature detailing the 30-year-old cyclist’s plans for surgery to replace his broken hip following this month’s Tour de France. Imagine that – a guy is at the top of the Tour de France (the Tour de France!), riding all of those miles day after day with a broken hip. No wonder cycling crazy Boulder and the pages of the New York Times have dedicated some prime space for the guy.

Yet meanwhile, in Landis’ hometown of Lancaster, Pa. where he grew up and graduated from Conestoga Valley High in 1994 …

Crickets.

And in the Philadelphia area, where the budding superstar pedaled thousands of miles along the Schuylkill, through Valley Forge and the environs cranking out another routine century …

Ho-hum. Have two-a-days started at Lehigh yet?

This is where it gets tricky. Take away the altitude and the 300 sunny days a year and there really isn’t that much different from Boulder and Lancaster/Philadelphia areas. In fact, some in the know have suggested that the roads and trails in bucolic and wide open Lancaster County are better than the mountain cycling routes in Boulder County.

According to a story in USA Today, Philadelphia was rated as one of the best places for bike riding, though the ratings seem to have ignored smaller metropolitan areas like Lancaster and Boulder. Nevertheless, here’s what appeared in the Sept. 23, 2003 edition of the national paper:

Home to the USA's most prominent cycling race, the Pro Cycling Tour's Wachovia U.S. Pro Championship, which is run the first week of June. Need a personal challenge? "Try an out-and-back ride on the Schuylkill River Trail to Valley Forge starting at the Philadelphia Arts Institute and climbing the steep and infamous Manayunk Wall."

At the same time, stories have appeared in The New York Times and Kiplinger’s with throwaway sentences in which Lancaster is called “one of the best places in America for cycling” as if this was a given and common knowledge.

You know, bike riding in Lancaster. Of course.

Still, it’s hard to believe our region is rated so highly, especially when one considers what goes on outside of the actual athletics in both places. Though Boulder and the area surrounding Philadelphia are approximately the same size (for now… Boulder’s growth is ridiculous), running and riding are a way of life in the Colorado college town and participatory sports is serious business there. A common conversation heard in Boulder goes something like this:

“Well, I work for (Insert tech company here) by day, but really I’m getting ready to move from trail running to the triathlon.”

With 60 Olympians living in Boulder County, it’s easy to understand why playing instead of watching sports is a big deal. It’s also easy to see why the communities for sports like running and bicycling have transformed the area.

Perhaps Boulder is best summed up by Marc Peruzzi in the August issue of Outside magazine: “The Dunkin’ Donuts went out of business, but the oxygen bar next door to the gay-and-lesbian bookstore seems to be doing well.

“In most American towns, outdoor-sports aficionados are part of an elite counterculture minority. Mountain bikers and climbers have cachet. Not so in Boulder. Recreating outdoors in the norm here, and it’s in your face.”

Maybe it’s starting to get that way in our area, too. Yoga studios are springing up and are a much more mainstream style of exercise and cross-training than ever before. Actually, in my neighborhood in Lancaster, the question isn’t where you take your yoga class; it’s which discipline you practice.

Along with this come the restaurants with healthier foods, the supermarkets that cater to that set, as well as the chiropractors and physical therapists. Bottom line wise it all means higher property values and a better quality of life.

But there are still battles to be waged. Despite the 300 sunny days a year, it still snows quite a bit in Colorado. However, the first thing that gets plowed as soon as the trucks get rolling is the biking and running trails. Meanwhile, we still haven’t learned how to share the roads here.

Perhaps most telling is the way the locals react in Lancaster when the pro cycling tour rides into town every May. Instead of embracing it the way the Philadelphians have (OK, it’s another excuse to drink… who are we kidding?), Lancasterians view the top cyclists in the world coming to their little town as an inconvenience full of traffic jams and clogged streets, rather than something that makes the town special.

But personally, I’ll never forget watching the 1998 race where one rider made his return to the sport after battling cancer for the previous two years. After the race, in which he finished in second place but was clearly the strongest rider, I sat down next to the guy with our backs against the Hotel Brunswick on the corner of Queen and Chestnut streets for a little chat about the race, his comeback and his chances in France later that summer.

Who would have ever guessed that after that ride through Lancaster on a warm afternoon that Lance Armstrong would go on to win the Tour de France seven years in a row?

Maybe not Lancaster County’s Floyd Landis. He knows what pedaling on those roads can do.

Sports capital?
If Landis goes on to win the Tour de France, it will cap off a pretty interesting year in sports for Lancaster natives. On the PGA Tour, Manheim Township High grad and Lancaster native, Jim Furyk, just missed winning his second U.S. Open with his second-place finish. Furyk, the former basketball standout for the Blue Streaks (who can forget that jumper from the corner he hit to beat Lebanon in the 1988 Section 1 title game?), will finish this year rated in the top 10 again and will make another Ryder Cup team.

Must be something in the water there.

Myers departs

2006-06-27T16:48:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

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'

2006-06-13T16:43:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-06T16:42:00.000-07:00

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.

Who's up first?

2006-05-31T16:38:00.000-07:00

As far as controversies go, this one won’t be screaming from the back pages any time soon. Actually, it’s could hardly be called a controversy at all. It’s just a matter of writing one ballplayer’s name higher on a list and moving another one a little further down.

You know, it’s not really that big of a deal in the scheme of things.

But around here we have a way of making things a bigger deal than they really are or need to be. That’s just what we do. It’s especially the case when the brewing controversy in question has been something writers, radio-types and fans have all been talking about for the past few years and it seems as if it has finally come to a point where a decision will be made.

Will Bobby Abreu become the Phillies’ leadoff hitter? Better yet, should anyone other than Jimmy Rollins be the team’s first hitter in the batting order?

Yeah, not exactly a deep, philosophical head-scratcher when one thinks about it.

But, you know, lets just talk about it one more time right here.

As everyone who follows the Phillies closely knows, Rollins has been the club’s primary leadoff hitter since he broke into the Major Leagues in late 2000. Diminutive and as quick as fox in a hen house, Rollins grew up in Oakland, Calif. idolizing Rickey Henderson. It just so happens that Henderson was the greatest leadoff man the game as even known, who would do anything he could in order to get on base. In fact, toward the end of his career when he could no longer get the bat around on a fastball, Henderson still rated amongst the league leaders in walks, and on-base percentage.

Long before on-base percentage was the trendy statistic, Henderson knew that if he could get on base his team had a better chance to win.

But unlike Henderson, Rollins does not possess the attributes that a top-notch, top-of-the-order man needs. Rollins likes to swing the bat and put the ball in play and as a result, the amount of times he gets on base depends on whether or not he gets a hit – that’s something only the most elite players do once every three times at-bat. So because of Rollins’ penchant for swinging the bat and not drawing walks, he and his .317 on-base percentage isn’t very good. Actually, when the first guy in the batting order fails to get on base close to 70 percent of the time, the team suffers.

But manager Charlie Manuel is stubborn. Even though there is an alternative, Manuel remains loyal to writing Rollins’ name at the top of his lineup card. Why not Abreu?

"Sometimes you have to show confidence in a guy, show him you believe in him," Manuel told reporters last weekend, noting that Rollins is the team’s only legitimate base-stealing threat.

Loyalty is an admirable trait. Often, showing loyalty to another person is the best characteristic there is. Yet at the same time, loyalty can also be a detriment. It can provide one with a false sense of security and maybe even apathy when tenacity and the fear of reprisal would be more apt. This isn’t to say that Rollins has become soft or apathetic in his role as the leadoff hitter, it’s just that maybe Manuel needs an intervention to help him cutoff his devotedness.

Perhaps the manager could grow to show that same steadfastness to Abreu?

With his .455 on-base percentage – which rates right up there with the game’s elite – as well as his uncanny patience at the plate, Abreu appears to be the ideal candidate to leadoff for the Phillies.

"The reason I like Bobby third is he is hitting with runners in scoring position and puts up some big numbers," Manuel explained to reporters last weekend. "What does a leadoff hitter have to do? He has to have a good on-base percentage. He has to get on base a lot. But what does the No. 3 hitter do? He's supposed to get on base, too. He's definitely one of our best hitters in the lineup. If my best hitter hits with guys in scoring position and he's a doubles and home run hitter, am I strong enough to put him in the leadoff spot? That's it more than anything."

Manuel’s theory just might be right on. After all, a quick glance at the league leaders in on-base percentage shows that only handful of the top 40 leadoff for their teams. The top guys – Barry Bonds, Abreu, Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera and Jason Bay – all bat in the middle of the order.

Besides, Tuesday night’s game-winning rally was sparked by Rollins – again at the top of the order after a three-game hiatus – getting things started with a single and Abreu bashing a three-run homer.

If the Phillies keep doing that there will be no controversy at all… at least not about the batting order.

Barbaro's career ends like Ruffian's

2006-05-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

This was supposed to be a column about victory. It was supposed to be about joy and triumph and promise and all of the things that make sports great.

After all, isn’t that why we watch? Every day life is sometimes filled with hardship and losing battles. Sports gives us a chance to feel invincible.

This was also supposed to be a column about a little corner of the world tucked into the rolling hills and farms just an idyllic country drive away from Center City. There, in bucolic and rustic Chester County, amidst the Amish farms, Mennonite Meeting Houses, and roadside stands selling pies and jams like some sort of anachronism in our world of ozone-zapping SUVs equipped with GPS guides, DVD players and satellite radio, live some of the best race horses in the world.

Imagine that. In a sport filled with sultans, sheiks and blue bloods, it’s puritan Chester County, in the Garden Spot of Pennsylvania, where the top thoroughbreds of the 21st Century are raised.

Who would have guessed?

But surely no one would have guessed that Saturday’s 131st annual Preakness Stakes would have turned out the way it did, either. To say nothing went right would be an understatement of biblical proportions.

Which usually isn’t the way things go for star athletes like Barbaro, the three-year-old colt from West Grove, Pa. who already won the Kentucky Derby so easily that it was akin to a Harlem Globetrotters’ game against the Washington Generals. Barbaro toyed with his competitors in Kentucky. Embarrassed them by 6½ lengths, which is kind of like winning a baseball game 10-0 with the starting pitcher throwing a three-hitter.

So dominant was Barbaro in Kentucky that only eight other horses bothered to show up at Baltimore’s venerable old Pimlico Race Course for last Saturday’s Preakness, making the latest Chester County super horse a 1-3 odds-on favorite and conjuring images of Smarty Jones. The talk was that only five horses were going to bother to show up at the Belmont Stakes on June 10 in New York to attempt to thwart Barbaro’s bid to be racing’s first Triple Crown winner since a young Stevie Cauthen rode Affirmed past Alydar in 1978 in three of the most dramatic horse races ever.

Instead, Barbaro is currently resting down the road from Smarty Jones’s old farm on Route 10 at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center for Large Animals, his prognosis to live to see four still very much touch and go.

No, things didn’t go well in Baltimore. First, in an inconceivable scene in a major stakes race, Barbaro burst through the starting gate in attempt to run away from the pack while the last horses were still being loaded in.

A false start in horse racing? Who ever heard of such a thing?

Then, just seconds into the chaos of the race, something was amiss. Barbaro was nowhere to be found as the TV cameras swept from the head-on shot from the backstretch to the sweeping aerial view of the entire field thundered through the first turn and along the straightaway with the view of the barns and the surrounding clapboard houses in the distance.

But dramatically, a quick shot caught jockey Edgar Prado aside his mount, holding it upward to prevent it from putting any more weight on its rear right leg. And then there was the heartbreaking shot of Barbaro, lifting his shattered leg delicately into the air and not knowing what to do next.

Yes, the race continued, but did it really matter anymore? Especially when the crass oxymoron “humanely destroyed” was bandied about.

So 31 years later, images of Ruffian, the star-crossed filly that so tragically yet romantically “died in the lead,” is conjured as the area’s likely final shot at horse racing glory attempts to recover from an intricate five-hour operation. To save Barbaro, 23 screws were used to repair a broken cannon bone above the ankle, a broken sesamoid bone behind the ankle, and a broken long pastern bone below the ankle.

Dr. Dean Richardson, the veterinarian who performed the surgery, said the pastern bone was shattered in “20-plus pieces” and now they must stave off the possibility of infection from the surgery and laminitis, a potentially fatal disease sometimes brought on by uneven weight balance.

“Realistically, it's going to be months before we know if he's going to make it,” Richardson told CBS’ “The Early Show.” “We're salvaging him as a breeding animal.”

Ruffian, undefeated like Barbaro was, never made it that far. After her 12-hour operation to repair the shattered sesamoids in her right foreleg, a star was laid to rest in the infield near the finish line at Belmont Park.

Don't Ask Rowand 'For Who? For What?'

2006-05-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

”For who? For what?”
-- Ricky Watters, following a 21-6 loss to the Buccaneers on Sept. 3, 1995

In the moment, it seemed like an eternity. A gung ho ballplayer smashes face-first into an outfield wall, crumbles to the ground like… well, a guy who just ran face first into a wall. There was the moment where the centerfielder, almost in slow-motion, gamely held the ball aloft to show that he had, indeed, caught the ball after running full speed into the inanimate, pitiless barrier.

Within minutes, Aaron Rowand rolled over to all fours, bled all over the rubberized track lining the field, and was helped from the field by some paramedics to an ambulance waiting to rush him to Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Center City. In that short time, Rowand went from just the very capable centerfielder that arrived in town as part of the Jim Thome deal to a cult hero.

And all it took was a face plant into an exposed metal bar, a broken nose that required surgery, stitches for his mouth and nose, a plastic splint to protect his still-tender nose, dark violet bruises ringing his eyes and cheeks, and two weeks on the disabled list.

Certainly within the throes of the situation, Rowand thought his daredevil act was precisely what needed to be done. With two outs and the bases loaded in the first inning of last Thursday’s game against the first-place New York Mets, Rowand chased down a sure game-breaking blast from Xavier Nady. But at the last minute, Rowand reached out as far as he could with his gloved hand, pulled the ball in, took a half step and crashed – nose first – into the exposed bar beneath the green padding near the 398-foot sign.

“I knew I was going to run into (the fence),” Rowand said during a meeting with the press on Monday afternoon in the basement conference room at Citizens Bank Park. “I saw it coming. It was a situation where the bases loaded with two outs and [pitcher] Gavin (Floyd) had been prone to giving up big innings so I knew I had to catch it.

“It's one of those things that happens. I needed to catch that ball in that situation. I've run into a lot of walls in my day, never with this consequence. But I knew I was going to run into it. That's just how I play the game.”

Obviously, the ever contrarian press wondered if such a valuable player like Rowand – who smacked three home runs, 10 RBIs and .333 batting average during a stretch in which the Phillies went 9-1 – should have thought twice before running into the wall. Wasn’t he more valuable to the team on the field than rolled up in a heap on the warning track with blood leaking from his face like water dripping from a faucet?

Shouldn’t a guy who once knocked himself out running into a cinderblock wall in college and separated his shoulder colliding with a wall in Chicago consider some… ahem, restraint?

Well, Aaron?

“That’s why [the critics] are sitting behind a desk or a microphone,” he said tersely with his purple-ringed eyes narrowing. “I enjoy doing what I’m doing and my teammates enjoy it, too. I want to win. That’s how I play. People can call me stupid. I don’t care. I’m sure the fans got a kick out of it and I know my teammates did. Think what you want – I’m here to play and play hard.”

That blood-and-guts style more than wins over the fans in town that often saves its affection for players that display grit than graceful skill. But Rowand is more than a battering ram. According to the number crunchers at Baseball Prospectus, Rowand’s catch certainly did save the game against the Mets. In fact, writes Clay Davenport, “The Catch,” as it’s now known, was equal to Rowand hitting two home runs.

Had Nady gotten a double or triple on that play, the Phillies would have had just a 30.8 percent chance to win the game based on Davenport’s situational data. But making the catch gave the Phillies nearly a 60 percent chance to win, Davenport writes.

In other words, for a team that missed the playoffs by one game a season ago and has not seen post-season baseball since 1993, The Catch could have some long-term effects.

“I think it can be contagious,” Rowand said of his all-out style. “I said it before about last year (when he was with the World Champion White Sox): When you have everybody playing together and pulling on the same end of the rope, it’s easy to win. You create your own bad hops.”

More importantly, Rowand answered a burning question that has plagued the sporting public in Philadelphia since it was first asked more than a decade ago.

“For who? My teammates. For what? To win,” Rowand said without hesitation or wavering. “That’s what it’s all about.”

Was this Bonds' farewell to Philly?

2006-05-09T16:29:00.000-07:00

Road weary and worn out as the clock closed in on midnight and the prospect of yet another all-night, cross-country flight loomed, the 41-year-old ballplayer sat in a room full of people he didn’t really want to talk to following another losing ballgame.

He didn’t want to, but his life has become a bunch of have to things these days. Obligatory kinds of things that normal people have to deal with everyday, only his are a little more high profile, to say the least. Have to fly across the country after midnight; have to pander to the sycophants producing your “reality” show; have to put in the work just to make it through the grind of a season; have to listen to total strangers scream unpleasantries at you ever time you show your face in public; have to answer questions from a grand jury investigation; have to go to work and chase some guy named Babe.

Have to.

“It's draining,” he said. “It is. It's a little bit draining. But I have to stay focused for my teammates.”

So there he was, fulfilling another have to. Tersely answering the inane questions from a few while almost lighting up and becoming engaging at a few queries that seemed interesting. Like the one about which ballplayer has the chance to be chasing the Babe or Hank some day?

“Alex Rodriguez. I don’t know about Albert (Pujols),” he said. “Albert’s going to have to deal with a lot of walks. He’s going to get walked a lot, unfortunately. He’s that good. Unfortunately, he plays in the National League, and when you’ve got pitchers coming up, and in a different league, it’s a little bit different. If he was in the American League, we might be saying something different, but in the National League, if he keeps going the way he’s going, he’s going to be walked a ton.”

That was his longest answer in the 19-minute-and-51-second give-and-take with the press that was beamed worldwide on live television from the tiny conference room in the basement of Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park. But there was more, too. Like the part about the chat he and his mother Pat had before Sunday night’s nationally televised game. For a little while, at least, the conversation rejuvenated him. Made him feel good and forget about have to, and the shouting, accusations, big signs with asterisks and others calling him a fraud and worse. The books and the grand juries and the investigations all went away for a little bit.

“It helped me get my head twisted back on,” he said about talking to his mom, adding that he was missing his dad, Bobby, a lot these days.

“I wish he was here,” he said.

Hearing that and watching his world seem to implode all around him and bear down, like an anvil, onto his coat-rack shoulders and softening eyes and face makes it easy to feel sympathy for him. Human emotion is a difficult thing to ignore when it is truly genuine. It’s hard to judge someone so harshly when they glowingly talk about their mom and want to be able to talk to their dad, who is no longer on this earth.

But then reality steps in and delivers a cold, hard haymaker to the solar plexus. You remember who it is – who it is that has seen his world turned into something he can no longer control the way he once did an at-bat in a baseball game or turned a crowd of people into slack-jawed wonderment.

Sometimes people have to reap what they sow.

Right?

So after a weekend filled with yelling and screaming, where signs made of old bed sheets were waved for all to see and the anticipation for a milestone in which the regular folks hoped to one day say “I was there,” the old, tired ballplayer answered one more question, posed for one more picture, forced a smile, and walked as fast as his creaky knees would carry him to a bus that would take him to a chartered flight waiting at the airport.

Barry Bonds was on the way out, and it doesn’t look like he’s ever coming back.

Bonds bringing circus (and reality show) to Philly

2006-05-02T16:27:00.000-07:00

The next week is shaping up to be one of the more memorable weekends in Philadelphia sports in quite some time. At least from a national perspective, that is.

Aside from the potential Game 7 for the Flyers in the opening round playoff series against the Buffalo Sabres, as well as the afterglow of a strong draft for the beloved Eagles, the Phillies’ games and Citizens Bank Park could be in the national spotlight.

Huh? A 10-14 team struggling with its relief pitching and nearly every other aspect of the game – how are they going to find anything more than the ire of a handful of folks that call into sports radio shows?

It’s not them, it’s someone else. Like Bonds.

Barry Bonds.

With the dramatic, ninth-inning homer he slugged off former Phillie Billy Wagner last week, Barry Bonds, baseball’s Public Enemy No. 1, stands at 711 home runs in his now checkered big league career. Whether or not Bonds slugged the majority of those homers with the aid of illegal substances remains an issue for former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, commissioner Bud Selig and their steroids investigation. This weekend, Bonds has a chance to tie or surpass Babe Ruth’s mark of 714 career home runs.

Babe Ruth, of course, is one of the most storied and beloved ballplayers to ever live. In the wake of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, it was Ruth and all of his home runs that not only saved the game of baseball, but also became the stuff of legend.

Bonds, not to rehash all of the building controversy, has always been the antithesis of Ruth. According to published reports as well as first-hand accounts from folks who have dealt with Bonds throughout the years, he has been rude, curt, mean and selfish. And that’s to the people who are close to him.

Ruth, according to legend, was always the life of the party. Where Bonds is surly, Ruth was gregarious.

Regardless, Bonds and Ruth could share the spotlight this weekend in Philadelphia.

The Giants have three more games until they arrive in Philadelphia, with only one at home against before the team hits the road, so obviously Bonds will not pass the Babe at the relatively friendly confines of San Francisco’s ballpark (whatever company it’s named for now). Still, after two games in Milwaukee and then the three in Philly, the Giants return home for a week. Therefore, it would not be too surprising if Bonds has some sort of injury when his team comes to Philadelphia even though Sunday’s game is scheduled to be telecast nationally on ESPN.

Bonds, of course, is taping a reality show for ESPN.

Anyway, Major League Baseball has already issued a statement that it will not formally acknowledge Bonds’ 715th home run, which is the correct move since Henry Aaron, not Babe Ruth, holds the record for the most home runs. However, that doesn’t mean the fans in the stands at the Bank won’t acknowledge the deed if it occurs here.

Certainly, the national media will have a field day figuring out how the fans in Philly will react if Bonds passes Ruth, so to take the tired, old Philly fan clichés out of the mix for a change, here’s my suggestion for how the fans should react to Bonds:

Don’t react at all. Don’t boo, don’t cheer, don’t guffaw. Just stand there and be quiet. Turn your back if you feel that’s necessary, but truly respond with no emotion whatsoever.

How cool would it be to see Bonds circle the bases after a milestone homer in total silence?

It’s also worth noting that Babe Ruth's last game was played at the Baker Bowl, the Phillies old stadium that was located in North Philadelphia at Broad and Lehigh Ave. on May 30, 1935. As a player for the Boston Braves, the 40-year-old Ruth struck out in the first inning and then hurt his knee playing first base in the bottom half of the inning.

He walked off the field and never played again.

Dunphy replaces a legend at Temple

2006-04-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

Nearly twenty-five years ago when Temple’s president Peter Liacouras was looking for a coach to turn his school’s middling basketball program back into a big-time, perennial powerhouse, he decided to hire an up-and-coming, 50-year-old man to restore the glory.

A “best-kept-secret,” John Chaney was not exactly a household name beyond the insular world of Division II basketball, specifically, the small school PSAC, where Chaney guided little Cheyney State into one of those teams that just scared the living daylights out of people.

In fact, they still talk about Chaney, who was much more unbridled than during the later years at Temple, putting on shows on the sidelines while his teams took care of business at places like Millersville, Kutztown and Shippensburg. Certainly, no one back then thought Chaney was heading for the Hall of Fame. Count him in that bunch, too, since he has always maintained that he would have never left Cheyney had they offered him tenure.

But they didn’t and we all know how his story turned out.

So 25 years after Temple took a chance on 50-year old Wild John from Cheyney State, Temple announced that it will take a chance on a 56-year-old basketball lifer. This time, though, the choice to take Temple back to its basketball glory days is Fran Dunphy, who has spent the past decade-and-a-half nearby at Penn. It was there that Dunphy won title after title in the Ivy League in very much the same way Chaney did in the PSAC.

Obviously, there is a quite a difference between the Ivy League and the state schools of Pennsylvania. And certainly Dunphy is not quite the “unknown” that Chaney was when he arrived at Temple despite being tabbed with such a label.

“He’s one of America’s best-kept secrets,” Chaney said.

That in itself is quite a feat. Dunphy had taken Penn to 10 NCAA Tournaments, and compiled over 300 victories all without offering a single scholarship to any of his players. In the history of the city’s Big 5, Dunphy is one of just six coaches to win more than 300 games at the same school. Yet with four starters returning from last season’s team that cruised to the Ivy League championship before losing to Texas in the first-round of the NCAA Tournament, Dunphy could have very easily relaxed for the rest of his career, earning tournament bid after tournament bid while cultivating his legendary status at 33rd and Walnut.

But there is something kind of boring about that for Dunphy. Having spent his entire life with basketball programs that were almost big time, but not quite as an undergrad and assistant at La Salle before taking over at Penn, Dunphy, deep down, knows he will never get to the Final Four with the Quakers.

Yes, of course there are many challenges remaining at Penn for Dunphy. After all, it’s hard work to get to the top and stay there year after year. But if George Mason can go to a Final Four with Jim Larranaga as the coach, why can’t Dunphy do it?

Then again, Chaney never got to the Final Four at Temple, one of the winningest basketball programs in the country, though he came awfully close five times. Plus, recruiting kids to play for Temple is a lot different than at Penn. That’s not a knock on either school, it’s just the way it is.

So with his dreams and wanderlust, Dunphy will dig in on North Broad Street where his teams will play in a fancy new building complete with all of the modern amenities that coddled college basketball studs expect. Those things come with bigger expectations and more pressure, but it seems as if the unflappable Dunphy, seemingly rejuvenated by the switch, can handle it just fine.

He just seems like the man Temple was looking for.

“It’s as I once said, you want to stay your course,” Chaney said. “That means when you have made a decision on who you want to come into our high-profile program, you want to be sure you’re bringing in a great person.”

New Season begins with old streak

2006-04-04T16:23:00.000-07:00

Part of the allure of baseball’s Opening Day is the idea of renewal. For at least one day every team is in first place and every team has a chance to win the World Series. It’s that baseball-as-a-metaphor-for-life wispiness that pervades public radio and Roger Angell’s dispatches from The New Yorker. All baseball fans get caught up in that saccharin sweet romanticism at one point or another.

It’s hard not to.

But this year’s Opening Day for the Phillies was marked by the notion of continuation or extension rather than rebirth. Actually, the baseball world had its eyes trained on the Phillies opener against the Cardinals to see if something that began last season could break the invisible force field of a new season in an idea that flies in the face that everything Opening Day represents.

We’re talking of the streak, of course.

Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins coolly carried his epic, 36-game hitting streak that was momentarily halted for five months only to pick up right where he started. With a flair for the dramatic, Rollins dramatically added on to his streak by lacing a double to right field on a 3-0 pitch in his very last at-bat of the day to make 2005 morph into 2006. In fact, the build up to that final pitch offered to Rollins was so mind numbingly exciting that it made nearly everyone in the park forget that the Phillies lost by eight runs.

Think of it: Rollins’ streak could have ended if the pitch was just mere inches away from home plate. Rollins could have drawn a walk – a very good thing for a leadoff hitter to do – but his chance at making a run for immortality would have vanished into thin air faster than the trot from home to first base. He could have done his job yet been penalized for it.

Of course, it didn’t happen that way, but Rollins, unselfishly, says he would have taken the walk.

“If he would have thrown one I couldn’t get, I would have taken it,” Rollins said earnestly. “I wasn’t going to give the at-bat away. Luckily, he gave me something to hit.”

Do you believe him?

No, me neither.

Yes, we believe Rollins’ goal is to help the Phillies win games so they can finally advance to the playoffs. And yes, we believe that he is sincere in this sentiment. But if reliever Brad Thompson kept the 3-0 offering anywhere in the vicinity of the 215 area code, Rollins was going to swing.

Believe that.

That’s not a knock on Rollins. Au contraire. The very idea that Rollins is just as excited about his streak as the fans are is quite refreshing. Want to talk about it? Just walk up to Jimmy and ask him about it, he won’t be hiding in the training room to dodge the questions and attention. This is a once-in-a-lifetime feat. Why shouldn’t it be fun?

“It’s fun to talk about it,” Rollins said. “It’s brought a lot of attention to the team, which is the best part. As far as the streak goes, I’m not any more excited about it now than I was. I was blessed to be in this position and you have to be willing to accept that if you are in this position. That’s one thing I think I’ve been doing. You have to be willing to talk about it.”

Better yet, Rollins said if the streak becomes the focal point of the game and helps brighten the looming dark cloud brought about by the Barry Bonds steroid controversy, then bring that on, too.

“Hopefully, I can be a major part of what's going on in baseball," Rollins said. “Barry Bonds is going through a situation. He's from the Bay Area, which is my hometown. Two stories are running together. Barry's trying to accomplish something. I'm trying to accomplish something. He's in a controversy. Right now, I'm on everybody's good side. Hopefully, I can keep that going and going, and everybody can concentrate on what's good about baseball.”

Certainly that can never get old.

Wright will return

2006-03-28T16:20:00.000-08:00

Even with the vision of missed jump shot after missed jump shot chipping away the paint from the rim, and the sting of defeat still working its way down the solar plexus, it’s easy to imagine Jay Wright finding himself back in the same point of the NCAA Tournament in the not too distant future.

It’s also not too difficult to imagine a different result than the 75-62 defeat to Florida on Sunday afternoon just one game shy of the legacy-making Final Four.

You see, Wright, just 44, is built to last at Villanova. Just this year he was rewarded with a contract extension that lasts until 2013 and will compensate him well enough to keep him in those sharp-looking, single-breasted suits. More importantly, Wright seems to have received the extension for doing something that is often rare in sports these days:

He paid his dues.

Aside from the long car rides beating the recruiting trail as an assistant at Rochester, Drexel and Villanova, before taking over at Hofstra, Wright has restored the luster to ‘Nova that was lost during the angst-filled final days of Rollie Massimino’s run on the Main Line. He has embraced the Big Five series instead of brushing it aside as a trite hometown obligation, while turning his program into a bona fide powerhouse that isn’t going to tiptoe up and surprise any one.

Better yet, Wright’s first group of players to go through a four-year run won more games during that span than any other in school history, all while the coach did all the little things that he prodded his kids to do.

Sure, in the end coach is only as good as his players, but special talent like Randy Foye and Allan Ray always seems to wind up playing for the right coach. And they really seem to make it hard for all of us ‘Nova haters.

More tourney talk
Since Villanova won the 1985 tournament, the Big 5 is 0-8 in regional semifinals. ‘Nova has gone down twice, St. Joe’s nipped by Oklahoma State two years ago and Temple has lost five finals under John Chaney.

But even though the local team has finally been sent home, the early word on this year’s tournament is that it’s the best one in a long, long time. Forget about 11th-seeded George Mason making it to the Final Four for a minute, in 60 games the underdog team has won 20 times, while only three games were decided by 20 or more points.

Add in the five overtime games and the fact that no No. 1 seed made it to the final weekend and it’s hard to argue about how compelling this tournament has been.

Then there is George Mason. A diverse, yet regional school that was only founded in 1957, George Mason not only put together one of the greatest upsets in tournament history when knocking off UConn in the regional final, but also strung together one of the most impressive runs to become the highest seeded team to make it to the Final Four.

Not bad for a team that some of the experts said shouldn’t even be in the field.

Certainly there weren’t too many people who thought Mason would beat Michigan State in the opening round, let alone defending national champion North Carolina to get to the Sweet 16. Then with the victory over Wichita State and the No. 1 team in the country, it seems as if the Patriots are a legitimate contender to win the whole thing.

Now all we need to do is find someone who can name a player on the team.

The T.O. Circus takes its act to Dallas

2006-03-21T16:18:00.000-08:00

The news came fast and furious on Saturday morning, and with it the not-so shocking reports that Terrell Owens had signed a three-year deal with the Cowboys.

Seriously, how apt is that? Sometimes sports really do mirror a bad soap opera, and as we all have learned here in Philadelphia, the circus that is T.O. travels with its own big top and ringmaster.

Surely, the fans in Dallas must be pretty excited to get one of the game’s top receivers, but as the folks around here now know, the honeymoon will be short. In fact, people in San Francisco went out of their way to warn us about what was going to happen.

“Sure,” they said. “Things are going really well now. But just wait. Something will happen.”

Who would have known how right they were.

So as a public service to the football fans in Dallas, we’re going to offer the same warning the San Franciscans gave to us.

Just wait. Yes, at first T.O. will look good. He’ll say all the right things and dance appropriately atop the star in the middle of the field. He’ll entertain and charm everyone right up until that moment when someone else gets an accolade or attention that shines the spotlight away from him. Really, it’s only a matter of time before the big top is blown over and all good will blows up in everyone’s face like one of those phony cigars in the cartoons.

So enjoy it while it lasts. Who knows, T.O. may even take the Cowboys to the Super Bowl and he could even last a few years down there before anything really bad occurs. But if history is any indicator of the future, it will end badly with Terrell Owens. It’s just that inevitable.

Alive (barely) and kicking
The great part about the NCAA Tournament is the notion that teams like Wichita State and George Mason can dream about going to the Final Four. Of course we all know that Villanova in 1985 is the only team seeded as high as eighth to win it all, but hey, what does it hurt to dream a little. Right?

But in the opening rounds of this year’s tournament, George Mason, Wichita State and Bradley have kept dancing long enough to at least get fitted for the glass slipper. Better yet – discounting reality and Las Vegas-type odds – there is a 50 percent chance that either Wichita State or George Mason could make it to the Final Four, and that’s really cool.

Luckily for the rest of us, the fact that the trio of Cinderellas have emerged from the opening weekend shouldn’t have much of an effect on the all-important office pool. Oh sure, there are a lot of wounds and a few, “what was I thinking” sentiments, but with 15 total games remaining in the 2006 NCAA Tournament, everyone should still have a chance.

Some more than others, of course. In that regard, we need everything to go perfectly in order to win it. In fact, if either Gonzaga, Boston College, Duke or UConn slip up, we’re done. And surely there are a more than a few Villanova fans out there that want to see that happen.

Excuse Chaney while he disappears

2006-03-13T16:14:00.000-08:00

I'm just a blue-collar guy that goes to work ... In any job I've ever had, I've never thought about a time when I would leave. I just go to work.
-- John Chaney

A few years back, an old college friend was stopped at a red light heading down North Broad after a summer school class at Temple when John Chaney rolled up in the lane next to him. But instead of waving hello, Chaney started right in needling the guy all while gathering information.

“Where are you off to?” Chaney asked between cracks about driving as if the old friend were fleeing the scene of a crime.

My friend told Chaney that he was off to visit a friend who had just undergone surgery and was in the hospital. In a conversation that lasted the length of time it takes a signal to turn from red to green, Chaney somehow deciphered the name of the friend and which hospital he was in.

In fact, my friend wasn’t even sure if he gave Chaney any revealing information until he was getting up to leave the hospital room. That’s when a package filled with Temple Basketball shirts, posters and a handwritten get-well card arrived.

“Who does that kind of thing?” my friend asked when re-telling the story.

John Chaney, that’s who.

“It took me a while to realize that everything he did, he did for me,” said NBA star and Temple alum, Eddie Jones, a few years ago. “It was all for me, never for him.”

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As long as I'm in this city, I'm a lightning rod. People don't like me for a lot of reasons and I create all of them. I love it when they hate me. All my closest friends hate me.
-- John Chaney
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On a day that everyone knew was looming, the 74-year-old Chaney finally decided to take a cue from the last line from one of his favorite old Frank Sinatra standards and begged a full house in a conference room at the university’s Liacouras Center on Monday to, “Excuse me while I disappear.”

Fortunately for the people close to him – which seems to be just about half of the city – Chaney will not disappear. We won’t let him. Oh sure, he might sleep in to 6 a.m. now, or he might turn up on TV here and there or find a seat in the stands “with some peanuts and a beer, telling lies.” He just won’t be stalking, ranting and cussing along the sidelines looking like an unmade bed with his tie off-center, top two buttons undone and a sweater vest hanging on for dear life. That’s all over.

But he’s not going anywhere. There are just too many stories to tell.

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A blind man ain't got no business at a circus.
--John Chaney
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Like the one where he tried to keep Ramon Rivas out of a huddle during a timeout so that his brawny center would not hear the play after his teammates ignored the coach’s plea not to pass him the ball even though he was wide open.

“There's a reason why a guy's open, you know what I'm saying? He's always going to be open if he can't shoot. There's a reason. They leave him open.”

During Monday’s announcement, Temple’s president David Adamany told of how Chaney donated money to the school’s plea for funds for the library. Adamany revealed the story as if it tales of Chaney’s generosity was a new thing, which is hardly the case. In fact, Chaney dipped into his own pocket to help pay for the new basketball arena and he was renowned for taking sponsorship money from the likes of Nike and turning it over to the school and the underprivileged.

“If you’re going to reach the ceiling, you have to lift the floor up,” he said Monday. “If you can get a youngster to reach that ceiling, he’ll reach back and pick somebody else up.”

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Winning is an attitude.
-- John Chaney
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Surely, generosity from the well-heeled isn’t really a big deal and it’s not anything people should celebrate. It’s a duty, according to Chaney.

“I remember an old poem by a man named Walt Whitman who once said, ‘I celebrate myself.’ I didn’t come here to celebrate myself. I came here to recognize people and recognize this university for giving a 50-year-old man a chance to come and coach,” Chaney said.

Oh, but Camden’s Uncle Walt could have been writing about Chaney in his epic Song of Myself. After all, it’s the line following, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,” that tells the story:

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

So Chaney should celebrate himself. After all, his allure and the reason why so many people love him has nothing to do with basketball.

Read this column on CSN.com

Primeau contemplates his future

2006-03-07T16:12:00.000-08:00

Keith Primeau is one of those athletes that one watches when they want to learn about the nuances of sport. Tall and sinewy like a forward in basketball, it’s plain to see that Primeau will do almost anything if it means that his hockey team will win one more game. Whether it’s his off-ice preparation spent with hours on the stationary bike in the team’s training room, or with lap after monotonous lap up and down the bleacher steps in the Wachovia Center after a game, count on Primeau doing the work.

Don’t exclude the team-bonding grunt work, either. As the Flyers’ captain, Primeau takes on the responsibility of helping a new teammate find a place to stay and showing him around his new town. He also organizes the team parties, gauges the team’s mood and acts as an intermediary with the coaches and team brass, and has the thankless task of being front and center for the press every day.

“I learned a long time ago that my job is not just to perform on the ice,” Primeau said in an interview a few years ago. “So much more goes into your professional being as a hockey player. Media relations, public relations – I accept this. If I can deflect some of the attention away from the younger guys and allow them to play, I’ll do that.”

The same goes for the intangibles on the ice, as well. In that regard, Primeau is one of those players whose true worth is not seen in the every day box scores. Maybe he’ll block a goalie’s view by positioning himself just so in the slot so that Simon Gagne can blast one. Maybe he can deliver a check that pries the puck loose in the offensive zone to set up a goal.

Or maybe he can sense that the team needs a pick-me-up and gets into a fight.

One instance of Primeau picking a fight that stands out more so than any other was the little tête-à-tête with the Devils’ Randy McKay in Game 2 of the 2000 Eastern Conference Finals. During the second period where New Jersey was skating circles around the Flyers and were on the verge of taking a 2-0 lead in the series, Primeau took the bumping with McKay as an invitation to do something. So before the crowd at the First Union Center (that’s what the building was called back then) knew what happened, Primeau dropped his gloves, rolled up his sleeves, checked to make sure his helmet was fastened and called McKay out.

It wasn’t important whether or not Primeau beat McKay. The message was loud and clear.

“I thought our team needed a spark,” Primeau said at the time.

But that scrap came barely a week after Primeau suffered a concussion in a game in Pittsburgh. Though he was carted off the ice on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital after taking a big hit from Pittsburgh’s Bob Boughner, Primeau missed just one game and envisioned his wife sitting in the stands with her head in her hands as he brawled with McKay.

“I realize it may not have been the best thing to do,” Primeau said before telling me that he had three prior concussions that he knew of before the one in Pittsburgh. “I’m a father and a husband, but at the same time I’m a hockey player… “

Maybe that’s why Primeau has merely decided to put his career on hold six years and at least three head injuries later. He is a hockey player. In fact, Primeau still had not decided whether he was going to shut it down for the season just a day before his emotional press conference last Tuesday.

Primeau says he is sitting out with the hope of prolonging his career, which is a great. It’s hard not to root for a man like Primeau. But when he admitted that he still had post-concussion symptoms from the head injury he suffered last Oct. 25, maybe the writing is on the wall. In fact just the term concussion softens what the affliction really is – medical people call them traumatic brain injuries.

Needless to say, multiple brain injuries could result in the most of dire circumstances.

Still, we hope that Primeau can recover in time for training camp next September, and we hope to see him back out there on the ice real soon.

But not at the expense of being a father and a husband.

'Nova making a run

2006-03-01T16:06:00.000-08:00

It was nearly 21 years ago when a friend’s big brother came home for spring break from a Big 5 school that will remain nameless. With the big national championship showdown between the upstart Villanova Wildcats and the fearsome Georgetown Hoyas only hours away from tip-off, I was excited to gain some insight from someone who had been in Philadelphia during ‘Nova’s magical run.

“It must be crazy in Philly, huh?” I asked. “How exciting is it to see a local team go on such a remarkable run?”

The response to my question floored me. Certainly my naiveté was never more evident than it was at that moment. Everyone, especially someone going to school in Philadelphia, had to be rooting for ‘Nova.

Right?

“Exciting?” my friend’s brother said. “I hope Georgetown destroys Villanova. I hope it’s the biggest blowout in NCAA history.”

As it turned out, that Big 5 student – and many others like him – didn’t get his wish that April night in 1985. But better yet, the most important lessons learned was that anything can happen in a sporting event, and there’s something about Villanova that elicits extreme feelings. Like the New York Yankees or Dallas Cowboys, there is no in-between with the Wildcats. You either love ‘em or hate ‘em.

And depending on whether one attended a Big 5 school, those feelings could take on a furious ardor.

So as the days start to get a little longer and the leaves return to the trees, ‘Nova haters will have plenty of chances to exercise their bile. The ‘Cats, you see, are going to make a run to the season’s final weekend. You can book that trip to Indianapolis now because these ‘Cats are legit.

Sure, they lost going away to UConn in Storrs in a game that can’t-miss contenders figure a way to pull out, but not before showing something. You see, playing UConn on their home court is like walking across the mouth of a Venus flytrap – it’s only a matter of time before you get sucked in and are never heard from again.

But it wasn’t like that for Villanova. Coming off a dramatic win at Cincinnati in the equally dreadful Fifth Third Arena, ‘Nova jumped out of the proverbial frying pan and into the fire in the midst of a stretch in which it plays on the road against five big-time opponents. Then comes the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden.

Talk about tough.

“We're learning that teams are playing to another level against us. We're learning how to handle that,” coach Jay Wright said last week.

‘Nova handles it by sticking to a rock-solid foundation of basketball basics. Like Novocain, Villanova is so sure its game plan will not fail. Just keeping pounding until it works. In the win in Cincinnati, ‘Nova set the stage for the game-winning shot – which came on a basic pick and cut play – by taking a charge in the lane as the clock was ticking down.

Against UConn on Sunday, the Wildcats’ four-guard offense overcame a sub-par shooting effort by challenging an interior defense that lead the nation in blocked shots for the past four seasons. Sure, ‘Nova had eight shots blocked in the first half, but when it took a lead with a little more than 10 minutes remaining in the game on a shot by Allan Ray, well, that was a moment that resonated in defeat.

More importantly, the loss provided many lessons from which to draw from during the upcoming post-season run.

“We will learn from this,” Wright promised afterwards.

As much as it might be painful for some to admit, Wright’s club will likely be doing a lot of the teaching, too.