Wimbledon Quiz: 1) Post-1920, name the four men to win four or more singles titles (yeah, easy one). 2) Name the six women to win five or more singles titles, post-1920. [I’m going to give you one…Suzanne Lenglen, who won in 1919-23 and 25] Answers below.
First off, while it’s easy to be cynical about network sports coverage, major kudos to NBC for their extensive coverage at Bethpage, particularly on Saturday as they dragged us all back into the event after the momentum-crushing weather delays. I hope Lucas Glover proves to be more than one of the many one-shot champions the majors often create, but this year’s Open was still all about Phil Mickelson and, out of nowhere, David Duval.
Poor Phil. He now has a record five second-place finishes; 1999, 2002, 04, 06, 09. But with all that was going on in his life, and with the weight of the world on him to finally close the deal, especially for wife Amy, after Monday’s completion he couldn’t help but still be Phil…the people’s champion.
John Harper / New York Daily News
“As he finished doing TV interviews outside the Bethpage Black clubhouse Monday, Mickelson’s PR person was trying to ease him in one direction, toward a back area where he could exit quietly.
“Except the fans who tried so hard to will him to victory all week didn’t want to let go yet, and hundreds of them were screaming his name from another direction, along the rail out near the parking lot. And Mickelson couldn’t ignore them.
“And off he went toward the rail. He’d already signed more autographs than any other player, or at least it seemed that way, and if anybody needed to go somewhere to decompress, surely it was Mickelson.
“After finishing second by two strokes to Lucas Glover…it was clear that Mickelson was guarding his emotions carefully.
“A couple of times he was asked indirectly to talk about his wife Amy, about coming so close during a week when he had so much on his mind. Each time he avoided the question, perhaps fearing what might come spilling out of him.
“ ‘I just really don’t know where to go with that,’ he said, somewhat apologetically. ‘Just that there’s some more important things going on (than losing the tournament).’….
“Mostly he looked and sounded like a man who was glad the week was over, win or lose, so he could go take care of his wife.
“Yet there Mickelson went, walking toward the screaming masses, setting off one last frenzy among the New York golf fans who had adopted him as their own. OK, so you thought he’d sign a few autographs as a gesture of appreciation and be on his way.
“Instead he signed, and he signed, and he signed, even as bedlam was breaking loose around him. Suddenly Mickelson was surrounded by a total of six cops, who were barking at the crowd to stop pushing as they tried to keep order and slowly move the world’s No. 2 golfer toward the players’ parking lot.
“Through it all, Mickelson kept putting his name to hats, signs, flags, anything people handed to him, all the while making eye contact, smiling and saying thank you as fans consoled him on his near-miss or wished him good luck with Amy’s treatment.
“ ‘I loved you in ‘Entourage,’’ one guy shouted, and Mickelson laughed and said thanks….
“He signed for a solid 20 minutes, and you got the feeling it might have been longer if the cops weren’t getting exasperated with the crowd, and slowly eased Mickelson down the rail.
“Maybe Mickelson figured he owed the fans for the way they treated him here, or maybe he just feels it’s his obligation. Either way, it was a feel-good scene that you don’t see enough of from pro athletes, especially superstars such as he.
“People seemed touched that Mickelson would take the time, considering the circumstances….
“After all, it was clear to everyone how much he’d wanted to win this U.S. Open. Hunter Mahan, who played in Mickelson’s twosome, stood and clapped on the 18th green as the lefthander putted out, a rare sight among pros.
“ ‘I can’t imagine what he’s going through, what he’s thinking right now,’ Mahan said afterward. ‘He played so hard. I don’t think I have seen him that intense. It was inspiring to see a guy work that hard and try that hard for a championship and everything else.’
“It all added up to a reminder that Mickelson is the most compelling figure in golf, even more so than Tiger Woods because Mickelson’s losses in majors are perhaps more memorable than his wins. All things considered, however, this one should be remembered as much for his graceful exit.”
Selena Roberts had some thoughts on Phil, before the Open, in her column for Sports Illustrated.
“You get what you put into Mickelson: a return on your emotional investment. It is rare to find fulfillment in the adoration of athletes when messy endings (Favre) or steroid links (Manny) or bong pics (Phelps) or sportsmanship gaffes (LeBron) complicate the worship. Just because he hasn’t had a major lapse in judgment or a mugshot moment doesn’t make Mickelson perfect – his fondness for taking risks on the course is well-known. But he has shown a consistency of character whether he shoots a 67 or a 76, with a pleasant persona that engenders a vicarious identification from fans who say, ‘Yep, that’s how I’d act if I were playing golf for a living. Happy to be there.’ Some PGA Tour players will whisper that Mickelson is a phony as they pat (John) Daly on the back for being a down-to-earth good ol’ boy….
“(But) the extended public stay that golfers have in our lives gives us a chance to learn more than we want (Daly) or build an ever-deepening connection (Mickelson). Fans like to scream, ‘You da man!’ when a Tour player tees off. To the Phil-o-philes, the cry is more like, ‘You our man!’”
The other day I was reading Harvey Araton’s column in the New York Times and he wrote of Steve Wilstein, the former Associated Press reporter who first “spotted a bottle of androstenedione on the shelf of (Mark) McGwire’s dressing stall and got him to admit to using the then-over-the-counter, testosterone-producing supplement.” Araton brought up Wilstein because he has been nominated for the J.G. Taylor Spink Award and admission to the baseball writers’ wing in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Ergo, “The reporter who doused the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa celebration of strength with a long article that raised a short question – is it real? – has a chance to be voted into the Hall of Fame before either of the now-shamed sluggers.”
I couldn’t find Wilstein’s original piece from July 1998, but did see a report on baseball and steroids in ESPN The Magazine. Summer of ’98 was about the Great American Home Run Chase…McGwire and Sosa.
“After one game in St. Louis, with Big Mac taking his time in the trainer’s room, Wilstein gathered with a dozen other reporters by his locker. As they waited, he began to fill his notebook with descriptions of the scene. He saw a photo of McGwire’s son, a bat boy, on the top shelf of the locker, and sugarless gum – a nice touch: McGwire’s dad was a dentist. He saw a cap from a Roger Maris celebrity golf tournament. Interesting, given that McGwire denied paying attention to the man whose ghost loomed before him. And Wilstein saw a brown bottle labeled with a word he didn’t recognize. He jotted it all down.
“The moment passed, as did the night. After three weeks of tailing Mac and Sammy and Ken Griffey Jr., Wilstein returned home to Palo Alto to write another story about the race. When he came to the name on the bottle in his notes, he called a doctor friend.
“ ‘A precursor to testosterone,’ the cardiologist replied. ‘And it can be really bad for the heart.’
“Wilstein’s own heart skipped a beat. He realized he had a story that was bigger than the one he had been assigned. Andro, he soon learned, was one metabolic step from testosterone and readily converted by the human body. Football’s steroids adviser, John Lombardo, told Wilstein, ‘Androstenedione is a steroid. It has anabolic qualities. Therefore, it is an anabolic steroid.’ The NFL had banned it a year earlier, as had the NCAA and the Olympics. In fact, Randy Barnes, the 1996 gold-medal shot-putter, had recently been barred from competition for life for using it.”
The Cardinals were dismissive of Wilstein when he brought up andro. A team spokesman said McGwire didn’t use it. But then McGwire admitted to the AP that he’d taken it for more than a year.
Wilstein’s piece, “Drug OK in Baseball, Not Olympics,” ran on Aug. 21. Wilstein made it clear, however, that McGwire had broken no laws nor rules of the game.
McGwire, though, accused Wilstein of “snooping.” Manager Tony La Russa was furious.
“A player’s locker isn’t something that you should snoop around and see what you can find out. That’s a clear invasion of privacy.”
The season ended, and McGwire and Sosa were named SI’s Sportsmen of the Year, but many team doctors were warning players to stay away from andro, even as Commissioner Bud Selig refused to ban the supplement. “None (of the talk) should ever diminish from Mark McGwire’s extraordinary season,” said Selig.
[Per last chat, June 22 was the 40th anniversary of the death of the great entertainer.]
Garland was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., June 10, 1922, the youngest of three daughters of Frank Avent and Ethel Marian Gumm. Her parents billed themselves in vaudeville as Jack and Virginia Lee.
Garland was Judy’s mother’s maiden name and when the family moved to Hollywood in 1936, the 14-year-old, who had been doing some singing, billed herself as Judy Garland, making her feature film debut in “Pigskin Parade.”
Garland was compared to another young performer at the time, Deanna Durbin, but M-G-M lost Durbin to a rival studio and Louis B. Mayer was determined to give Garland a major build-up. In her third film she was a big hit as a gawky adolescent with a crush on Mickey Rooney in “Love Finds Andy Hardy.”
At 17, she landed the role of Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz,” singing “Over the Rainbow,” and she rocketed to stardom, earning a special Oscar.
The next year she was making $150,000 a picture, but also already seeing a psychiatrist. She would write later of this experience: “No wonder I was strange. Imagine whipping out of bed, dashing over to the doctor’s office, lying down on a torn leather couch, telling my troubles to an old man who couldn’t hear, who answered with an accent I couldn’t understand, and then dashing to Metro to make movie love to Mickey Rooney.”
Around this time she also began taking stimulants and depressants. “They’d give us pep pills,” she wrote. “Then they’d take us to the studio hospital and knock us cold with sleeping pills…after four hours they’d wake us up and give us the pep pills again…That’s the way we worked, and that’s the way we got thin. That’s the way we got mixed up. And that’s the way we lost contact.”
By the time she was 28, Judy Garland attempted suicide. But by 1948, with performances alongside Gene Kelly in “The Pirate” and Fred Astaire in “Easter Parade,” she was indisputably the leading musical star in films.
The next year, though, she failed to report for work on three successive films and suffered a nervous breakdown. Then in 1950, she slashed her wrists after M-G-M suspended her contract.
After this, she had a bitter breakup and custody fight over her two children, Lorna and Joseph, as her 13-year marriage to Sid Luft, the third of her five husbands, collapsed. [Daughter Liza was the product of Judy’s second marriage to Vincent Minnelli.] Sid accused Judy of having attempted suicide on at least 20 occasions. And all this time Garland began to lose her voice during various appearances, as it became an endless series of comeback, crash, comeback, crash, comeback, crash.
In reviewing a performance at the New York Palace, Vincent Camby wrote in the New York Times, Aug. 1, 1967, “that the voice – as of last night’s performance, anyway – is now a memory seems almost beside the point….Judy is great…let’s not worry about her voice.”
Another described a typical Garland performance as “more than a concert…it is a tribal celebration.” The crowds often screamed during her frenzied finales for “More! More!” and began the ritual chants of “We Love You, Judy!”
As the New York Times noted in her obituary, “When she left the stage for the intermission, Miss Garland often staggered to her dressing room, sometimes gasping, panting that she could not possibly finish the show, that she was exhausted or that her throat ached. But back she went.”
“A really great reception makes me feel like I have a great big warm heating pad all over me. People en masse have always been wonderful to me. I truly have a great love for an audience, and I used to want to prove it to them by giving them blood.”
Harold Arlen, who composed the score for “The Wizard of Oz,” said Judy Garland felt most deeply about the song “Over the Rainbow.” Upon her passing, Arlen quoted from a letter she had sent him.
“As for my feelings toward ‘Over the Rainbow,’ it’s become part of my life. It is so symbolic of all my dreams and wishes that I’m sure that’s why people sometimes get tears in their eyes when they hear it.”
Judy Garland’s funeral was in Manhattan, June 27, 1969. Jack French, her musical accompanist, ended the service with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which the mourners sang. Outside, fans broke through the barricades as the funeral ended, clutching flowers. “I have nothing else to do right now,” said one.
Garland is buried in Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York. [Source: New York Times, June 1969]
–Hi-yoh! RIP, Ed McMahon. As Conan O’Brien said of McMahon, who died at the age of 86, “Ed’s laugh was really the soundtrack to (The Tonight Show). For 30 years Ed played his part perfectly, he played it with effortless joy.”
David Letterman commented, “Ed McMahon’s voice at 11:30 was a signal that something great was about to happen. Ed’s introduction of Johnny was a classic broadcasting ritual – reassuring and exciting.”
McMahon was a veteran of both World War II and Korea, and served as an announcer for Carson back in 1957 for Johnny’s game show Who Do You Trust? before the two ascended to the Tonight Show.
Robert Lloyd / Los Angeles Times
“An uncharitable or undiscerning critic might say McMahon had an easy job: Laugh at the boss’ jokes, read a few cue cards, sell a little dog food, cheerfully absorb whatever cracks are made at his expense, slide further down the couch as the evening’s guests arrive. (Phil Hartman’s ‘Saturday Night Live’ impression of him – the over-hearty laugh, the booming ‘You are correct, sir’ – has replaced the actual McMahon in the minds of a couple of generations of viewers.) But the way McMahon told it, that was the point: ‘My role was to make him look good while not looking too good myself,’ he wrote, and ‘to get Johnny to the punch line while seeming to do nothing at all.’ Carson, for his part, left the air saying, ‘This show would have been impossible to do without Ed.’
“There is a kind of genius in knowing how to live with a genius. Did anyone want to grow up to be Ed McMahon? Maybe not. But they also serve who only sit and laugh – and cry ‘Hi-yoh!’ once in a while. Of all the things Ed provided Johnny, continuity was perhaps the most meaningful: Guests came and went; wives came and went; the world turned. But where there was Johnny, there was always Ed, the witness, the audience, one of us.”
–The executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Donald Fehr, announced he is stepping down after 26 years next March. Ask any ballplayer and they’ll sing his praises. Ask the vast majority of fans, however, and you’ll have quite a different reaction.
Columnist and baseball fan, George Will: “The union was unquestionably the most long-lasting and biggest impediment to a timely imposition of a (performance-enhancing drugs) testing regime. Don’s a big figure in the last quarter-century of the union, and his legacy has many facets and that will be one of them.”
Bob Costas notes that Fehr was a “brilliant negotiator” who “won more battles than he lost and did incredibly powerful things for players and the game. But, when it came to steroids, he and the union were 100 percent wrong.” [Michael S. Schmidt / New York Times]
Of course the players would point to the fact that under his tenure (since 1983), the average player salary increased from $289,000 to $3.24 million this season.
But for another side of the man, Howard Bryant of ESPN.com commented:
“He is not an easy man to like. He is wary and suspicious, yet confident in his positions. He is fearless, unafraid to challenge people to look at baseball without the witless nostalgia that can turn very smart people into mushy 8-year-olds pounding their fists into their first baseball mitt. He does not hesitate to teach the hard history lessons of labor relations going back long before Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in 1981, two years before Fehr became the union’s executive director. He has no intention of pandering to the crowd looking for concessions ‘for the love of the game.’….
“And on so many issues, he has been correct. Baseball reflects society at large, and we live in a society where a pill exists for everything, whether it is obesity, high cholesterol or erectile dysfunction. And yet, society expects baseball players – or any professional athletes – to be immune to the same impulses that have created today’s culture of pharmacology.
“The juicing of the game, he once told me, was no different in baseball than in any other sport. Whether in hockey, basketball, football or the Olympics, each sport attempts, usually through rule changes, to manipulate the game to create more offense. Baseball, through stadium construction, pitching rules and the vexing issues of performance-enhancers, has undergone similar manipulations.
“At this level of discussion, Fehr is at his best. He demystifies the great sanctity of baseball and reduces it to its most obvious form: It’s just another business in which people make critical, often incorrect decisions. And he grows frustrated when the conversation disintegrates into noise.”
–The NBA draft is 7:00 p.m. ET, Thursday, and, for some of us with fan interests, it will be pretty interesting, though the draft itself is thin. Shu and I have been comparing notes on Tyler Hansbrough, and I agree with John Delong of ACC Sports that should Hansbrough drop to, say, 20 in the first round, he’s probably going to a good team, and it’s a good team that he could benefit most in being able to contribute right away.
–Great trade by the San Antonio Spurs to acquire Richard Jefferson from Milwaukee, with the Spurs sending the Bucks Bruce Bowen, Kurt Thomas and Fabricio Oberto. Jefferson gives the Spurs quite a quartet with Tony Parker, Tim Duncan, and Manu Ginobili.
–Hall of Famer Ryan Sandberg said that with the recent disclosure that Sammy Sosa is one of 104 testing positive for steroids during MLB’s testing in 2003, Sosa doesn’t belong in the Hall.
“They use the word ‘integrity’ in describing a Hall of Famer in the logo of the Hall of Fame, and I think there are gonna be quite a few players that are not going to get in. It’s been evident with the sportswriters who vote them in, with what they’ve done with Mark McGwire getting in the 20 percent range.”
–How bad is Alex Rodriguez playing? Aside from hitting .143 in June (thru Tuesday’s play), he has just two multi-hit games in his first 41.
–I liked Ken P.’s observations on MLB TV’s presentation of Game 7 of the 1965 World Series on Monday.
Vin Scully was incredibly understated. He said very little for such a crucial game. Dick Tracewski tried a suicide squeeze on a 3-2 and Scully quickly moved on to the next batter after he fouled for the strikeout, without raising his voice. I only saw one replay the whole telecast.
The players were understated. At the end, Sandy walked off the mound and shook Roseboro’s hand. The players congratulated each other as if they had won a hard earned July victory.
The speed of the game was unbelievable. The umps called the high strike. The players swung at everything in the zone. There was little time between pitches.
One thing I noticed that will ring true – the umps were very liberal in allowing checked swings. There was no look down for help from the base umpire.
The game lacked excitement. There was no offense. But while the era wasn’t the greatest, it still produced some of the best players the game has ever known.
[The final scores in the seven games of the ’65 Series, start to finish, were 8-2, 5-1, 4-0, 7-2, 7-0, 5-1, 2-0….not exactly scintillating. And Game 7 actually took 2:27, not super speedy for a 2-0 contest in those days, but very fast for today’s game.]
–Pirates fan Shu is all fired up over Andrew McCutchen’s start…five triples in his first 18 games in the big leagues…but it’s too late to dream of exceeding Owen “Chief” Wilson’s major league mark of 36 triples in a single season, including a record five games in a row. Wilson’s mark was set way back in 1912. But maybe next year.
—1969 Mets, continued…we pick up our story with the Mets at 33-27
June 20…St. Louis comes to town. The Mets win, 4-3, as they jump on Bob Gibson (9-4) for the four runs in the first two innings. Gibson then settles down to go the distance, but the Mets prevail behind Nolan Ryan (3-0), 6 innings, 1 earned run, 3 strikeouts, and Tug McGraw. McGraw hurls the last 3 for his 5th save. Cleon Jones drove in 2 for the Mets. Gibson homered for St. Louis.
June 21…Mets lose to the Cardinals, 5-3, as Nelson Briles (6-5) goes all the way for St. Louis. Briles, like his fellow pitcher Gibson the night before, homers. Jack DiLauro (0-2) gave up 2 runs on 8 hits in 6 as the Mets starter.
June 22…Sunday twin-bill. Mets win opener, 5-1, as Gary Gentry (7-5) goes 8 1/3 and Cal Koonce picks up his 4th save. Cleon Jones, Bud Harrelson and Jerry Grote have 3 hits apiece, and Tommie Agee drives in 2, as New York roughs up Steve Carlton (7-5) for 5 runs on 8 hits in just 3 1/3. Carlton does fan 7. And the game is noteworthy for another reason. Ron Swoboda becomes the 13th in baseball history to strike out 5 times in a 9-inning contest.
June 22…With 55,000+ in the stands, the Mets win the nightcap, 1-0, as Jerry Koosman (5-4) outduels Mike Torrez (1-4). Kooz scatters 7 hits while striking out 9. Tommie Agee drives in the lone run in the 7th.
June 24…Another doubleheader at Shea, this one against the Phils. In the first contest, a 2-1 Mets triumph, Tom Seaver (11-3) goes all the way, fanning 9, while Cleon Jones and Buddy Harrelson drive in the Mets runs off Woody Fryman (6-4). Larry Hisle hit his 9th homer of the season for Philadelphia’s lone tally.
June 24…In the nightcap, the Mets complete their second sweep of a doubleheader in three days, winning 5-0, as Jim McAndrew (1-2) goes 8 and gives up just 2 hits, walking none. Ron Taylor picked up his 6th save. Tommie Agee had 3 hits, including his 10th home run.
June 25…Philadelphia defeats the Mets, 6-5, in 10 innings. Nolan Ryan goes 6 1/3 in allowing 3 runs while fanning 10. Ron Taylor (3-2) takes the loss. Cleon Jones and Al Weis drive in 2 apiece for New York.
June 26…Phils win 2-0 as Grant Jackson (8-6) scatters 4 hits while striking out 10. Don Cardwell (2-8) took the loss for the Mets, giving up the 2 runs in 7 1/3.
–Awful story from the PGA Tour as golfer Chris Smith’s wife, Beth, was killed in a car crash, while her 16- and 12-year-old children were listed in critical condition. 16-year-old Abigail was driving their SUV when she lost control on Interstate 69 near Angola, Indiana, and collided with a bus carrying the semi-pro London (Ontario) Silverbacks football team. Chris Smith wasn’t with his family.
–Remember the $147 million jewelry heist at a Harry Winston shop in Paris? 20 were just arrested and some of the loot recovered. The police discovered a suspected fence had come to France from abroad and was about to try and sell the stolen jewels.
–Oh baby. I’m reading Crain’s New York Business and a review of DBGB Kitchen and Bar (2 ½ out of 3 stars). The reviewer, Gael Greene, is “wild about The Piggie, (a burger) topped with Daisy May’s BBQ pulled pork, jalapeno mayonnaise and Boston lettuce on a cheddar-cornbread bun with mustard-vinegar slaw.”
A burger topped with pulled pork?! It can’t possibly get any better than that. I’m drooling…somebody hand me a napkin.
–Speaking of drooling, Transformers star Megan Fox, who most guys would probably vote the sexiest woman on the planet (nay, universe), was distraught after learning she accidentally snubbed a 15-year-old boy at the premiere of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” Fox ignored the kid who was desperately trying to give her a yellow rose. After seeing the photos of the boy’s forlorn look, Fox said, “I feel so sad for him. That’s so terrible. That kills me. There were, like, 80 million people everywhere. It’s dark, all I see are flashes. Everyone’s yelling different things…and I didn’t know that was happening.”
As noted by Us Magazine, though, “The star is promising to make things right with the boy.” But she doesn’t know the kid’s name.
Well, no doubt the kid will eventually step forward, if he hasn’t already. I would just hasten to tell him, “This is as good as it gets for you, you understand. All downhill from here.”
Top 3 songs for the week 6/23/73: #1 “My Love” (Paul McCartney & Wings) #2 “Playground In My Mind” (Clint Holmes) #3 “I’m Gonna Love You Just A Little More Baby” (Barry White…we miss you, Barry!)…and…#4 “Will It Go Round In Circles” (Billy Preston) #5 “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” (George Harrison) #6 “Pillow Talk” (Sylvia) #7 “Kodachrome” (Paul Simon) #8 “Daniel” (Elton John) #9 “Long Train Runnin’” (The Doobie Brothers) #10 “Right Place Wrong Time” (Dr. John)
Wimbledon Quiz Answer: 1) Four men to win four or more, post-1920 – Pete Sampras, 7; Bjorn Borg and Roger Federer, 5; Rod Laver, 4. 2) Five women, aside from Suzanne Lenglen, to win five or more, post-1920 – Martina Navratilova, 9; Helen Wills Moody, 8; Steffi Graf, 7; Billie Jean King, 6; Venus Williams, 5.
*Note to Allen H. You were close. It’s Olde Frothingslosh, “the pale stale ale with the foam at the bottom of the pail.” [This came about as we traded notes on how Iron City is making a big mistake in moving its operations out of Pittsburgh, even if it’s but 40 miles away.]
