**JAMES BROWN NOT BURIED…DC FIVE SCREWED**
NFL Hall of Fame Quiz, part II: Name the schools for the
following Hall members. 1) Otto Graham 2) Joe Greene 3) Ted
Hendricks 4) Don Hutson 5) Sonny Jurgensen 6) Leroy Kelly
7) James Lofton. Answers below.
2007 Baseball Hall of Fame…Ripken and Gwynn Selected
Cal Ripken Jr. …98.5% of votes [75% required]
Tony Gwynn…97.6
Rich Gossage…71.2… [64.6 last year…7 more years on ballot]
Jim Rice…63.5… [64.8 last year…2 more years]
Andre Dawson…56.7… [61.0 last year…9 more years]
Bert Blyleven…47.7… [53.3 last year…5 more years]
Lee Smith…39.8… [45.0 last year]
Jack Morris…37.1… [41.2 last year]
Mark McGwire…23.5………Ha!
Tommy John…22.9
Steve Garvey…21.1 [last year of eligibility]
Ripken’s total is the 3rd highest percentage next to Tom Seaver
(98.83) and Nolan Ryan (98.79).
Gossage, though, shouldn’t worry. There are no 2008 Hall-
worthy first-timers coming out so the Goose is in with the next
round of voting. Jim Rice has an outside chance and it will be
interesting to see what kind of lobbying effort he gets.
The Star-Ledger’s Jerry Izenberg, who didn’t vote for Mark
McGwire:
“So there was McGwire, America’s newly-minted hero in 1998,
smiling, thrilling millions and earning a new record for home
runs (70) which will be forever rooted in fraud. The blind and
greedy eyes of Baseball and its union opened the door to better
pay days with longer home runs through chemistry.
“McGwire did not take Andro because of its taste. We knew that
because of his disgraceful non-testimony before a Congressional
committee at the same time that Jose Canseco, of all people,
exposed a dirty secret some of America’s heroes would not face.
Canseco is hardly a role model but face it: without him, the
extent of the truth might never have surfaced.
“Mark McGwire became Popeye in profile and Roger Maris in
production. But he privately knew something. Looking at his
body on television the day of the hearing, you knew he had long
since stopped riding the testosterone highway.
“McGwire’s testimony at that Congressional hearing (‘I am not
here to talk about the past’) was tantamount to taking the Fifth
Amendment. That’s a tactic generally associated with thugs and
organized crime figures rather than with America’s athletic
heroes. He became the poster boy for the Steroid Era, which still
isn’t over, and will forever remain so, although there’s another
guy out there who will soon ascend to its presidency – and you
have a fair idea who that might be….
“If McGwire’s defense is that at the time he hit his 70, Andro
wasn’t banned by Baseball’s myopic commissioner, then why
didn’t he say so instead of taking refuge in a kind of double-talk,
Fifth Amendment approach when Congressmen quizzed him?
“It is not acceptable to pardon him because of some of the bums
already elected to the Hall. I can’t change that. This is not about
him and my respect for my vote. I don’t know if he’ll get in. I
do know some of my colleagues have voted for him. And I will
not. Nor will I vote for anyone I believe was steroid-propelled –
and trust me, they are coming.”
Thomas Boswell / Washington Post
“Perhaps Cal Ripken epitomizes essential human values, like
fidelity to a code of duty and honor. Or maybe he’s just a decent
guy who showed up for work every day, signed a lot of
autographs and didn’t cheat – a very low hurdle for sainthood.
Either way, Ripken always has been exactly what baseball
needed, especially in its darkest times.
“From his first day in the big leagues in 1981 until he was voted
into the Hall of Fame yesterday with the third-highest percentage
ever, Ripken always has been baseball’s perfect answer – even
before the sport knew the ugly question. Yes, he’s at it again. In
an age when jocks show up at midnight in a white Hummer limo,
Ripken will ride into Cooperstown in July on a white horse at
high noon.”
With Ripken and Tony Gwynn being deemed clean long ago, I
found this tidbit from Ripken himself interesting, as told to Mr.
Boswell.
“Lest he get too much credit for mere honesty, [Ripken] adds: ‘I
never had the options. [When I came up with the Orioles we]
were thought of as a bunch of goody-two shoes. After those
guys in Kansas City had [cocaine] problems, our team
voluntarily agreed to have drug testing. Eddie [Murray] said,
‘Just go along with it.’’”
Kevin Kernan / New York Post
“Take a seat in the corner, Big Mac, and let the baseball world
pass you by – maybe forever. You have all those home runs, but
your honor is lost.
“The baseball writers threw a fastball right past Mark McGwire
yesterday. Good for them. They recognized that Cal Ripken Jr.
and Tony Gwynn stand for everything that’s right about the
game and voted the two single-team-superstar ambassadors into
the Hall of Fame in overwhelming numbers….
“This may be a one-year slap on the wrist, or it could be much
more. It could be the start of a steroid backlash. McGwire is the
first target. What about Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa? Then
there’s Barry Bonds. What does his Hall of Fame future hold?
Bonds could break Hank Aaron’s all-time home run mark on
July 29, the day Ripken and Gwynn are inducted into
Cooperstown.”
As for the odds of McGwire getting in eventually after starting
out at 23.5% of the vote, Rick Hummel of The St. Louis Post-
Dispatch (this year’s inductee into the sportswriter Hall of Fame
wing in Cooperstown), said “It’s hard to jump from 23.5% to
75%. Everybody keeps saying they’re reserving judgment until
everything comes out. Whatever comes out is going to be worse.
It’s not going to make it better.”
John Harper of the New York Daily News counters “I’ve talked
to enough voters to believe the percentage will rise significantly
next year.”
But not all baseball writers are Hall of Fame caliber in their own
right. Take Paul Ladewski of the Daily Southtown in suburban
Chicago who wrote that he submitted a blank ballot because of
doubts he had over performance-enhancing drugs in the sport.
“At this point, I don’t have nearly enough information to make a
value judgment of this magnitude. In particular, that concerns
any player in the Steroids Era, which I consider to be the 1993-
2004 period, give or take a season.”
So Ladewski thus excludes Ripken and Gwynn. That, my
friends, is a jerk.
Ronald Blum of the AP notes that Ladewski isn’t the only jerk
when it comes to ballots cast…or left blank. [I better clarify I’m
the one saying Ladewski is a jerk, not Blum.]
“Paul Hagen of the Philadelphia Daily News was among three
writers who submitted blank ballots the year Seaver came up,
joined by Bob Hertzel of The Pittsburgh Press and freelance
writer Bob Hunter. Retired writers Deane McGowen and Bud
Tucker did not vote for Seaver, either.
“ ‘That was the first year that baseball intervened with Pete Rose
and kept his name off the ballot,’ Hagen said Monday. ‘I just felt
like that was a way of protesting. It had nothing to do with Tom
Seaver.’
“Ty Cobb was left off four ballots,” adds Blum. “Nolan Ryan
wasn’t on six, Hank Aaron on nine, Babe Ruth on 11 and Willie
Mays on 23. Joe DiMaggio needed to appear on the ballot three
times to get in, receiving 44% and 69% in his first two tries.”
Blum quotes Ladewski further:
“What makes Gwynn and Ripken so special that they deserve to
be unanimous selections? Walter Johnson, Cy Young and Honus
Wagner didn’t receive such Hall passes. Neither did Lou Gehrig,
Babe Ruth and Ted Williams…..Is there a neutral observer out
there who can honestly say Gwynn and Ripken should be
afforded an unprecedented honor?”
Oh shut up, you blowhard. And who named you, Paul Ladewski,
guardian of the game’s history? We’re throwing your name into
our December file for “Jerk of the Year” consideration.
Lastly, those saying Gaylord Perry’s spitballs were just as bad as
anything the steroid munchers got away with are nuts.
—
2007 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees
This is truly an abomination. The picks for 2007 were just
announced and they are:
Van Halen, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, R.E.M., the
Ronettes and Patti Smith.
No Dave Clark Five.
So on March 12 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, yours
truly will be there protesting the omission. I figure if I get
arrested it will be good for traffic anyway, know what I’m
sayin’? I just can’t decide how harsh I want the language to be
on the placard I’ll be carrying around that evening.
And because the DC Five got screwed yet again, long-time
readers will have to indulge me once more as we review….
The Dave Clark Five story
Little Steven, a k a Steve Van Zandt, once said that the DC Five
produced the “most powerful records” of their era. It’s easy to
forget just how good the group was. They had 7 Top 20 hits in
1964, second to the Beatles’ 15 that year. [The 4 Seasons had 6,
Beach Boys 4 and the Stones were just getting started.] Four of
their singles in ‘64 were Top Ten (“Glad All Over,” “Bits And
Pieces,” “Can”t You See That She”s Mine,” and “Because”).
The group’s founder, Dave Clark, was born in Tottenham,
London, 12/15/42. Clark was a star rugby player who found time
for a little drumming and, later, movie stunt work, when he
decided to advertise for a band. The result was The Dave Clark
Five and Stan Saxon, the vocalist.
As with all bands in their early stages, changes were made and
saxophonist Denis Payton* and vocalist Mike Smith were added
(Smith replacing Saxon). Smith and Clark would go on to write
the bulk of the DC Five’s tunes.
[*Payton just died last month, 12/06.]
Initially the group raised funds ostensibly to be used for their
rugby team’s traveling expenses. But by 1963, the band was
becoming a force on the London club circuit, playing mostly at
the Tottenham Royal Ballroom. At one point the owners of the
Ballroom weren’t too fired up about having the boys as regulars
so 300 girls marched to Tottenham Town Hall with 4,500
signatures, petitioning to return the group to their rightful stage.
Late in ‘63, “Do You Love Me” charted in the U.K. and then
things moved fast and furiously, as they did for all the big
groups back then.
In January ‘64 they released “Glad All Over,” which topped the
U.K. charts, replacing the Beatles “I Want To Hold Your Hand.”
The British tabloids had a field day. “London Topples
Liverpool”…and the single sold 870,000 copies in the U.K.
alone. “Glad All Over” was released in the U.S. and hit the Top
40 in March, while the group unleashed a big tour in the U.K.
with the Hollies and the Kinks; one of many such awesome deals
that we all wish we could have been part of (probably cost all of
a pound then, too).
Back in London, the song “Bits And Pieces” was banned by
many ballroom managers because they feared damage to the
dance floors with the song’s “stomping” break. The group was
smokin’ hot, and it’s easy to forget that they were the loudest act
from the British Invasion until the arrival of The Who.
By May 30, 1964, the Dave Clark Five was playing Carnegie
Hall and making their first of what would be 12 appearances on
the “Ed Sullivan Show” the following night. Then they
embarked on a wildly successful, if dangerous, U.S. tour.
Guitarist Rick Huxley suffered extensive facial injuries when he
was mobbed by fans in Washington, D.C. and in August ’65, on
another tour, Smith broke some ribs when fans pulled him off the
stage in Chicago.
By the end of 1967, though, the group was out of chart hits in the
U.S., with some success in the U.K. They retired from touring in
1969 and formally split up in 1970, though Clark and Smith
continued to collaborate for a spell on various projects.
Any retelling of the Dave Clark Five story also needs to discuss
the brilliance of founder Dave Clark himself. To this day Clark
remains the envy of his fellow musicians of that era. Why? He
was smart enough to control the rights to all of the group’s
recordings, going back to 1962. No one else seemed to have the
foresight to do that. But Clark did and it wasn’t a great
surprise that he waited until 1993 to come out with a
definitive CD-compilation, as he made sure all of the various
contracts were just right. [This set is an absolute must for any
‘60s fan. Ask for it next Christmas.]
Clark always said his music aimed to entertain. “Records are for
enjoyment; there’s no message in our music; it’s just for fun.”
Finally, Dave Clark is also known as a class act in music circles
and it should come as no surprise that he was at Freddie
Mercury’s bedside when the great frontman for Queen died of
AIDS on 11/24/91. Mercury and Clark had worked on some
tunes together for Clark’s London musical, “Time.”
So stay tuned, sports fans. March 12.
Stuff
–It is kind of a shame that James Brown hasn’t been buried as of
this writing due to a fight over his estate, including where the
Godfather of Soul is to be laid to rest.
Right now the body is lying in his home in South Carolina,
supposedly in a temperature-controlled room. According to the
AP, the house has been locked up since his death to protect his
memorabilia, furnishings, clothes and other personal effects.
Said Buddy Dallas, an attorney for the singer:
“Just imagine what would have happened. Items of James
Brown would have left there like items off the shelves of Macy’s
in an after-Christmas sale.”
Pretty lousy commentary on our society, actually. Humans drop
another notch on the “Top Species” list to #99.
–Boise State finished 13-0, the only unbeaten Division I-A
football team this year. But Florida’s performance on Monday
was no doubt rather special.
Michael Wilbon / Washington Post
“It’s not often the No. 1 team in the country, undefeated and
decorated, gets punked the way Ohio State did. The only thing
that got dotted here Monday night was the Buckeyes. The
Florida Gators, in their wildest dreams, couldn’t have fantasized
about dominating the BCS title game the way they did.
“As impressive as the University of Florida basketball team was
in its march to the NCAA championship last April, the Florida
football team was even better in its march through the Buckeyes.
These Gators forced Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith into the
worst game of his career and moved the ball up and down the
field as if the Buckeyes’ defense was a video game. A sweeter
year for big-time athletics no school has ever seen.”
And Florida is my pick to repeat in basketball. It’s the Bar Chat
Guarantee!
Final polls
AP
1. Florida
2. Ohio State
3. LSU
4. USC
5. Boise State
12. Rutgers
17. Wake
USA Today
1. Florida
2. Ohio State
3. LSU
4. USC
5. Wisconsin
6. Boise State
12. Rutgers
18. Wake
Personally, I can’t complain about Wake’s ranking. [Louisville
finished 6th and 7th in the two polls, incidentally.]
Back to Boise State….that really is a special story. 30 years
from now, when people are looking through college football
history and rankings, this will be like the years when Toledo
cracked the Top 20 decades ago.
Meanwhile, USC would appear to be loaded (outside of wide
receiver) and is odds-on favorite to be ranked No. 1 next fall.
–Just how far will Ohio State’s Troy Smith fall in the NFL draft
after his hideous performance? I’ll say he’s taken in the third
round, quite a comedown for a Heisman Trophy winner.
–Tiki Barber’s last words of advice to Giants quarterback Eli
Manning, as Barber now heads to the broadcasting world, were
for Eli to open his mouth, as in ‘say something…take charge.’
That’s always been the knock on Eli in his first three years as a
pro. So often he looks lost out on the field, befuddled, and
hardly a leader.
So I don’t know how I missed this article for last chat but Dr.
Bortrum told me of a piece in last Sunday’s Star-Ledger reported
by Kevin Manahan concerning Eli’s childhood. Sitting down
with Eli, Manahan reports:
“As Manning recalls those days at Isidore Newman School and
the fragile emotions of a 6-year-old, he fidgets in his chair. As if
he is back in class, his eyes avoid a direct glance.
“ ‘Those were tough times,’ he says in a meeting room at Giants
Stadium. ‘Kids laughing at you, making fun of you. Snickering.
You don’t forget that. I’m probably a little more shy because of
it, but I think I’ve come out of my shell a little.’”
You see, Eli, despite being a great athlete as a kid, was not only
painfully shy, he hated being called on in class and the other kids
made fun of him when he stammered. Not that this is necessarily
unusual, but for a future NFL quarterback it is, I think some of
you would agree.
“(Today) he (still) dreads public speaking, so he doesn’t make
speeches before games, and he doesn’t make them in the huddle
before key drives. Publicly, teammates say they’re okay with his
personality. Privately, some wish for more emotion from their
quarterback.”
When Manning is confronted about his lack of fire, he says:
“I don’t know what people want. Maybe they want me to be a
yeller or screamer, but I think we have enough of those people on
this team already.”
The article goes on to point out what an incredibly slow learner
he was as a kid, though by the time the NFL combine rolled
around after his time at the University of Mississippi, he scored
the highest among quarterbacks that year on the Wonderlic IQ
test.
But we’ve now observed him for three years here in New York
and it’s troubling. His receivers constantly show him up when
he misses them with a pass and Eli never fights back. Boomer
Esiason told Manahan:
“There are times you wish Eli would get some guts and confront
the guys who are showing him up. He should tell them, ‘If you
continue to act like a jackass, I’m not throwing you the ball.’
But you wonder: Does he have the guts to do that?”
It comes down to this. Just why the hell did the Giants make a
special trade for this guy on draft day in the first place? He’s a
bust.
–Nasty, nasty goings on in Jason Kidd’s household. The Nets
superstar finally has had enough and filed for divorce from wife
Joumana. Now to be fair, about five years ago Jason pleaded
guilty to spousal abuse, was fined $200 and ordered to take anger
management classes. But there are two sides to every story.
As reported by the New York Daily News:
In filing court papers on Tuesday, “Kidd insisted he was the
victim of an ‘increasingly jealous and paranoid’ woman who
bugged his computer and car – and used their son to steal his
cellphone from the Nets locker room.
“ ‘Since the inception of marriage, defendant’s [Joumana’s]
method of displaying anger, or dealing with frustration, has been
to hit the plaintiff [Kidd], punch the plaintiff, kick the plaintiff,
or throw nearby household objects at the plaintiff,’ says the
filing.”
The Daily News:
“Two days after Christmas, Kidd said [Joumana] sent their son
into the locker room to ‘rummage through the plaintiff’s
belongings.’
“ ‘After finding [Kidd’s] cellphone…[Joumana] left the locker
room to investigate the names and numbers on the cellphone,’
the papers state.
“Leaving the boy in the locker room, Joumana Kidd then ‘took
the front-row seat in the arena and proceeded to shout personal
insults at…[her husband] throughout the game,’ the papers
state.”
[By the way, this is a startling statistic….84% of married
professional athletes get a divorce after their playing careers are
over.]
–Some of us football fans love to kick back with some beer and
Chex Mix while watching the NFL playoffs, and what makes it
all the sweeter is if the weather where the game is being played is
awful…snowy, record cold, that kind of thing.
So now we’ve had the warmest winter since the dinosaurs
roamed the North American continent and, frankly, it’s been a
real drag. It didn’t help, of course, that Denver failed to make
the playoffs.
Last weekend was a bust, for example, and this coming week, of
the four games on the plate one is indoors (New Orleans), one is
in San Diego (lovely), and in Baltimore on Saturday it’s looking
65 degrees with maybe a few showers. It’s January, for crying
out loud!
But thank goodness it appears the weather will truly suck in
Chicago on Sunday for the Bears’ contest…mid-30s with snow
and freezing rain. That’s more like it. And we want the Bears to
win so they get to host the NFC title game a week later as well,
at which point we can pray for a blizzard and 15 degrees. It
wouldn’t get any better than that. [Unless you live in Chicago,
of course, but that’s what snow days are for the following
Monday.]
–Remember Division III Emory & Henry out of Emory, VA?
It’s the school whose hoops team is known for throwing up a
gazillion 3-point attempts and Phil W. passed along a 2006-07
update.
Thru Jan. 7, E&H is 7-4 and has attempted 619 field goals from
downtown (making 29%) vs. 401 of the more conventional
variety.
–I have to tell you, Jeff B. nailed the script in “For Better or For
Worse,” though it was too late for mention last time. Here I
thought Cop Paul was stuck in traffic for four weeks and it not
only turns out he was back in Mtigaki, but he’s been shacking up
with Susan. As we go to post (following Wednesday’s strip), Liz
is just learning this.
So now some of us are wondering who wins out in the battle for
Liz’s affections…Chopper pilot Warren or Pitiful Anthony?
But first…we have to deal with Paul and it’s the hope here it gets
ugly. Children may want to turn away.
–Last time I noted I was going to have something on Rasputin,
but I’m running out of time, as we say in the Web business.
[Which really means it’s almost happy hour.]
Anyway, what I meant is that I missed the 90th anniversary of his
assassination, Dec. 30, 1916.
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (1872-1916) was certainly one of
the weirder characters in the history of mankind. He was a
peasant mystic who found his way into the court of Russian
tsarina Alexandra, of Nicholas and Alexandra fame. It was said
that Rasputin, the “mad monk,” was able to cure crown prince
Alexis’s hemophilia through hypnosis.
But Rasputin proved not to be too popular in some circles
because of his advocacy of sexual ecstasy as a means of religious
salvation. He ended up being a notorious lecher and drunkard,
and created all manner of scandals through his alcoholic and
sexual excesses, even as he gained the power to dismiss
government ministers. You see, in the early years of World War
I, while Nicholas II was away waging war, Rasputin was having
his way, shall we say, with the tsarina.
So a group of nobles, led by Prince Felix Yusupov, first tried to
poison the bastard with tainted wine, but when this failed,
Yusupov shot him. However, this was not one of those “Down
Goes Rasputin!” moments. He was alive. Yusupov fired two
more shots. Rasputin still wasn’t dead. Finally, the killers
tossed him in the Neva River and he drowned. But there are
some who say to this very day he remains alive and is bagging
groceries at Safeway.
As it turned out, however, Rasputin’s death was an important key
to a chain of events that led to the Bolsheviks’ seizing power ten
months later in 1917. In late Feb. of that year, the arctic winter
suddenly turned spring-like and demonstrators poured into the
streets of Petrograd (St. Petersburg, Russia; not St. Pete, Florida,
former home of the New York Mets before they stupidly moved
to Port St. Lucie, but I digress), calling for peace, bread, land,
and freedom. On February 26, a company of the Imperial Guard
fired the first fatal volley. The next day 160,000 peasant
conscripts mutinied and before you know it, the Russian Empire
was on the verge of collapse, with Tsar Nicholas II abdicating a
few days later and the Bolsheviks eventually taking over in
October (or November 1917…depending on which calendar
you’re using).
And now you know…the rest of the story. The bar chat version,
that is.
–When I was in Romania this past fall, I told you about visiting
Bran Castle, best associated with Vlad the Impaler, the original
Dracula. Turns out the owners (a fellow and his two sisters) live
in Westchester County, NY, and while I knew the castle was on
the block, the descendants of Romanian royalty are seeking $78
million for the 14th-century structure. This is true…I didn’t
realize the man’s name is Dominic Habsburg.
–From Paula Froelich and Todd Venezia of the New York Post:
“Donald Trump lowered the boom on Rosie O’Donnell yesterday
– telling the corpulent commentator that ‘The View’ boss
Barbara Walters has been saying nasty things behind her back
like a high-school drama queen.
“In a ‘Dear Rosie’ letter, the big-mouthed building baron claims
Walters has been ‘lying’ to Rosie – and she told The Donald the
decision to hire O’Donnell was like getting ‘into the mud with
pigs’ and that working with her is like ‘living in hell.’”
Ya gotta love it.
–Legendary Italian film producer Carlo Ponti finally kicked the
bucket at 94, meaning his wife, Sophia Loren [StocksandNews
“International Babe of the Century”….Peggy Fleming was the
American honoree] is back on the market.
Top 3 songs for the week of 1/9/65: #1 “I Feel Fine” (The
Beatles) #2 “Come See About Me” (The Supremes) #3 “Mr.
Lonely” (Bobby Vinton)…and…#4 “She’s A Woman” (The
Beatles) #5 “Love Potion Number Nine” (The Searchers) #6
“Goin’ Out Of My Head” (Little Anthony and the Imperials) #7
“She’s Not There” (The Zombies…..great year, eh?)
NFL Hall of Fame Quiz Answers: 1) Otto Graham –
Northwestern 2) Joe Greene – North Texas State 3) Ted
Hendricks – Miami 4) Don Hutson – Alabama 5) Sonny
Jurgensen – Duke 6) Leroy Kelly – Morgan State 7) James
Lofton – Stanford
Next Bar Chat, Monday p.m.
