New York Mets Quiz, Part Deux: [Have to get them all right or you owe the person to your right a domestic…preferably a Rheingold.] 1) Name the only two Mets to play in 162 games. 2) Name the only three to hit 40 home runs. 3) Name the only three to drive in 120 in a season. Answers below.
Bye Bye, Jeremy!
“In a stunning turn of events…the Knicks completed a trade to acquire point guard Raymond Felton from the Portland Trail Blazers on Saturday night, a move that is expected to result in Jeremy Lin ending up with the Houston Rockets.”
The Knicks won’t match the Rockets’ three-year, $25.1 million offer sheet Lin signed on Friday. Originally, Houston threw out a four-year, $28.9 million deal with ‘only’ $19 million guaranteed that the Knicks definitely would have matched.
Here’s the thing. The Rockets shocked the Knicks when Houston included a $14.9 million payment in the third year of the new deal, “which could potentially cost the club $30 million when the luxury tax is factored in.” [Isola]
I even agree with something Carmelo Anthony said in response to the report of the Lin amended offer. Melo called it “a ridiculous contract.”
And the Knicks aren’t matching Toronto’s three-year, $19 million deal for Landry Fields. Good! The guy blows, certainly at that price.
Now Felton played great with the Knicks when he was with them before and has openly expressed his desire to return. He wasn’t in shape last year with Portland but I’m guessing he returns to form once back in New York.
Good for the Knicks…and as for Lin, it is truly amazing what he parlayed all of 25 games or so as a starter into. But this is one Knicks fan who is not crying he’s gone.
Meanwhile…out on Long Island late Saturday night/early Sunday morning…newly acquired Knick Jason Kidd drove his SUV into a telephone pole. Kidd was not hurt, but it’s a DWI for the man.
Joe Paterno…we thought we knew him…
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh, hired by the trustees at Penn State to look into what has become college football’s biggest scandal:
“Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of (Jerry) Sandusky’s child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State. The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.”
After an eight-month investigation, Freeh produced a 267-page report that concluded Joe Paterno, President Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz “repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse.”
Paterno “was an integral part of this active decision to conceal” and his firing was justified, Freeh said at a news conference, calling the officials’ disregard for child victims “callous and shocking.”
School leaders “empowered Sandusky to attract potential victims to the campus and football events by allowing him to have continued, unrestricted and unsupervised access to campus and to affiliate with the football program,” the report said.
Freeh said officials had opportunities in 1998 and 2001 to step in, suggesting it was Paterno’s intervention that kept administrators from going to authorities. “Based on the evidence, the only known intervening factor…was Mr. Paterno’s Feb. 26 (2001) conversation with Mr. Curley,” Freeh said.
“The idea that any sane, responsible adult would knowingly cover up for a child predator is impossible to accept. The far more realistic conclusion is that many people didn’t fully understand what was happening and underestimated or misinterpreted events. If Joe Paterno had understood what Sandusky was, a fear of bad publicity would not have factored into his actions.”
“In 1986, I spent a week in State College, Pa., researching a 10-page Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year piece on Joe Paterno.
“It was supposed to be a secret, but one night the phone in my hotel room rang. It was a Penn State professor, calling out of the blue.
“ ‘Are you here to take part in hagiography?’ he said.
“ ‘The study of saints,’ he said. ‘You’re going to be just like the rest, aren’t you? You’re going to make Paterno out to be a saint. You don’t know him. He’ll do anything to win. What you media are doing is dangerous.’
“Here’s his true legacy: Paterno let a child molester go when he could’ve stopped him. He let him go and then lied to cover his sinister tracks. He let a rapist go to save his own recruiting successes and fundraising pitches and big-fish-small-pond hide.
“Here’s a legacy for you. Paterno’s cowardice and ego and fears allowed Sandusky to molest at least eight more boys in the years after that 1998 incident – Victims, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10. Just to recap: By not acting, a grown man failed to protect eight boys from years of molestation, abuse and self-loathing, all to save his program the embarrassment….
“I hope Penn State loses civil suits until the walls of the accounting office cave in. I hope that Spanier, Schultz and Curley go to prison for perjury. I hope the NCAA gives Penn State the death penalty it most richly deserves. The worst scandal in college football history deserves the worst penalty the NCAA can give. They gave it to SMU for winning without regard to morals. They should give it to Penn State for the same thing. The only difference is, at Penn State they didn’t pay for it with Corvettes. They paid for it with lives.
“I tweeted that, yes, Paterno should be fired, but that he was, overall, ‘a good and decent man.’ I was wrong. Good and decent men don’t do what Paterno did. Good and decent men protect kids, not rapists….
“As Joe Paterno lay dying, I actually felt sorry for him. Little did I know he was taking all of his dirty secrets to the grave. Nine days before he died, he had the Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins in his kitchen. He could’ve admitted it then. Could’ve tried a simple ‘I’m sorry.’ But he didn’t. Instead, he just lied deeper. Right to her face. Right to all of our faces.
“That professor was right, all those years ago I was engaging in hagiography. So was that school. So was that town. It was dangerous. Turns out it builds monsters.
“Joe Paterno was a liar, there’s no doubt about that now. He was also a cover-up artist. If the Freeh report is correct in its summary of the Penn State child molestation scandal, the public Paterno of the last few years was a work of fiction. In his place is a hubristic, indictable hypocrite.
“In the last interview before his death, Paterno insisted as strenuously as a dying man could that he had absolutely no knowledge of a 1998 police inquiry into child molestation accusations against his assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky. This has always been the critical point in assessing whether Paterno and other Penn State leaders enabled Sandusky’s crimes.
“If Paterno knew about ’98, then he wasn’t some aging granddad who was deceived, but a canny and unfeeling power broker who put protecting his reputation ahead of protecting children.
“If he knew about ’98, then he understood the import of graduate assistant Mike McQueary’s distraught account in 2001 that he witnessed Sandusky assaulting a boy in the Penn State showers.
“If he knew about ’98, then he also perjured himself before a grand jury.
“Paterno didn’t always give lucid answers in his final interview conducted with the Washington Post eight days before his death, but on this point he was categorical and clear as a bell. He pled totally, lying ignorance of the ’98 investigation into a local mother’s claim Sandusky had groped her son in the shower at the football building. How could Paterno have no knowledge of this, I asked him?
“ ‘If Jerry’s guilty, nobody found out till after several incidents.’
“Paterno’s family continued to insist Thursday via a statement that Paterno’s account was not inconsistent with the facts, and he ‘always believed, as we do, that the full truth should be uncovered.’
“But Paterno was no more interested in the full truth than Walt Disney.
“In his final interview, he played the faux-naif who insisted he had ‘never heard of rape and a man.’ Who hadn’t followed up on McQueary’s report out of squeamishness. Who was wary of interfering in university ‘procedure.’ Who insisted it was unfair to put Penn State on trial along with a pedophile, and that this was not ‘a football scandal.’…
“He was the self-appointed arbiter of character and justice in State College. He had decided Sandusky was ‘a good man’ in 1998, and he simply found it too hard to admit he made a fatal misjudgment and gave a child molester the office nearest to his. He was more interested in protecting a cardboard cutout legacy than the flesh and blood of young men.
“The only explanation I can find for this ‘striking lack of empathy’ is self-absorption. In asking how a paragon of virtue could have behaved like such a thoroughly bad guy, the only available answer is that Paterno fell prey to the single most corrosive sin in sports: the belief that winning on the field makes you better and more important than other people.”
“The whole time, word after appalling word, page after heartbreaking page, one sentence keeps flashing in the memory. It is Jim McKay, the great ABC broadcaster, staring somberly into a television camera 40 years ago this September.
“ ‘When I was a kid,’ McKay said, ‘my father used to say ‘Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized.’
“Then, it was McKay’s preamble before delivering the grisly news that terrorism had invaded the tranquil oasis of the Olympic Games, shattering forever the myth that sport can shield the world from its darker impulses.
“Yesterday, it was the grim reality that Joe Paterno really had acted as a blocking back for his university’s reputation at the expense of the innocence of children. The 267-page report…lays bare a wretched pattern of betrayal by the highest members of that university’s leadership that allowed Jerry Sandusky to roam and stalk and strike for 14 years….
“For starters, (Penn State) should immediately pledge every penny of profit from the 2012 football season to child-protection charities. It should then trim its 2013 and 2014 seasons to Big 10 games only – no lucrative non-conference games at Beaver Stadium – and turn over all TV revenue to the same operations.
“This wouldn’t kill the program. But it would decimate it, and it should be decimated, as both statement and stigmata. And if these sanctions are self-imposed, even the misguided loyalists – and the no-account students who rioted last fall – would have to understand the real message delivered Thursday.”
“Once the dust settles…Joe Paterno’s statue in front of Beaver Stadium should be taken down.
“As a matter of fact, any reminder of the football coach’s tarnished legacy should be wiped clean from the Penn State campus.
“That would certainly be the first step in the healing process at Penn State…
“If NCAA president Mark Emmert is serious about reforming college athletics, this is his golden opportunity to convince the presidents to draft legislation and send a message to schools everywhere that this kind of behavior is totally unacceptable.
“The NCAA needs to establish a new penalty for moral bankruptcy and make Penn State its first example with – at the very least – a year without football.
“Yes, millions of dollars would be lost, but that kind of thinking is what got Penn State here in the first place.”
“To suggest that Joe and other high ranking Penn State officials would have protected a child predator simply to avoid bad publicity is inconceivable. Like many others who came in contact with Sandusky, Joe did not know Sandusky was a child predator, and he did not interfere with any investigation into Sandusky’s activities. In fact, he immediately and accurately reported the 2001 incident after he was told about it.
“Joe was not perfect. He would be the first one to tell you that he had his share of flaws, just as anyone else. In fact, he was the first person to say that with the benefit of hindsight, he wished he had done more to stop Sandusky. Everyone with any connection to these events must share that wish. But to suggest that Joe did anything to prevent the facts from being known is a deliberate distortion of the truth.”
“Among the most remarkable revelations in the report is the role that (Joe) Paterno played in the scandal. Although e-mails leaked late in the investigation revealed that the coach was influential in the group’s decision not to report Mr. Sandusky after a 2001 incident, it appears that he also lied before a grand jury about whether he was aware of a 1998 incident involving Mr. Sandusky. As the investigation showed, Mr. Paterno was well aware of that incident and took no action, ‘even though Sandusky had been a key member of his coaching staff for almost 30 years and had an office just steps away from Mr. Paterno’s.’
“Unfortunately, that is far from the investigation’s worst discovery. As if allowing an adult to continue sexually abusing children for more than a decade wasn’t bad enough, these officials somehow managed to put Mr. Sandusky’s victims at even greater risk. In 2001, for instance, after an assistant reported seeing Mr. Sandusky in the shower sexually assaulting a boy, the only person these men alerted was Mr. Sandusky himself, the only one who knew the boy’s identity. That Penn State’s administrators and coaches would actively engage in a cover-up is unconscionable, but their ‘striking lack of empathy’ for the victims is horrifying.”
“The Freeh report makes clear that those who rioted after Paterno was fired last year should be even more ashamed of themselves now. Paterno’s legacy is no longer stained or tarnished – it is destroyed. Regardless of how many good things he did during his 62 years as a Penn State employee, the tragedy that he failed to stop overwhelms all the good he did….
“This is an opportunity for presidents to do something other than preen. They should take steps to ensure that no coach can ever again have the absolute power Paterno wielded. They should stop giving coaches multimillion-dollar contracts. They should stop building statues and naming stadiums, arenas and basketball courts for them – especially while the coaches are still active. They should also stop asking them to raise funds. Tell them to coach their teams and try to see to it that their players graduate. Period.”
“King Football must die. It must die a painful and immediate death.
“It must be hanged in the public square to show that now and forever King Football can’t rule a sport, a school, a society. It is time. It is overdue….
“(Sandusky) was aided by an adored former boss who, incredibly, wrote ‘this is not a football scandal.’
“Pathetic. It is a football scandal because football was valued over all in sheltering, protecting and enabling a child molester. That was the epic conclusion of the Freeh Report. Penn State’s top administrators, the boss’ bosses, essentially took their orders from that head football coach….
“Not a football scandal? Ask yourself if Jerry Sandusky had been a chemistry professor, would his acts have been ignored by the dean of the school? Meanwhile, in the Penn State football building janitors were afraid to report a witnessed felony because they didn’t want to lose their jobs.
“ ‘If that’s the culture at the bottom,’ Freeh said, ‘God help the culture at the top.’….
“King Football rules all. The head coach gets his way because he wins. The head coach, rewarded handsomely for his organizational skills on the field, doesn’t take blame when his players get in trouble off it. Can’t watch them 24 hours a day, goes the refrain.
“How about concealing damning e-mails that could hurt your program, Jim Tressel? How about allowing a sleazy booster inside the program, Miami? How about allowing a monster to roam free for 14 years, Penn State? They’re all connected because at some key point King Football was allowed to make the call….
“On Thursday, Louis Freeh said all three men (Spanier, Curley and Schultz) – plus Joe Paterno – allowed a monster to roam free for 14 years.
“In that sense, King Football remained undefeated. The question now becomes, for how long?”
I caught NBC’s Bob Costas on “Meet the Press” Sunday and he quoted Edmund Burke in relation to the scandal.
“It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph.”
I agree with those, like Costas, who say that Penn State must suspend the football program itself. That’s what the NCAA is looking for before it is forced to act.
I also respect the opinion of college football fanatic James Carville, who said on ABC’s “This Week” that it makes no sense to penalize the hundreds whose livelihoods depend on Penn State football (small business owners, for example) by handing down the death penalty for the program.
But you can’t just do nothing (nothing including, say, a 3-year ban on postseason play plus a severe reduction of scholarships for a similar period). The program needs to be shut down for one year….and then a severe penalty involving bowl bans and scholarship reductions imposed on top of that.
As for the Paterno statue, even former Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden said it should be removed.
On this topic, though, I agree with Penn State’s trustees who, at least for this week are saying they will not take hasty action. I’m the ‘wait 24 hours’ guy, after all.
But after a suitable period has passed, I suspect they’ll remove it, though then you have the issue about what to do with Paterno’s name on the library.
Ball Bits
–Baseball’s trade deadline is just 15 days away…Who is a buyer? Who is a seller? Based on past history, it seems the second wild-card will require a minimum 88 wins. On average what is now the first wild-card has required a team to win 93 games.
2006…Carlos Beltran looks at a called third strike in Game 7 of the NLCS
2007 and 2008…September collapses, 2007’s historic until what happened in MLB in 2011.
2009…42-45 at All-Star break…28-47 after
2010…48-40 at All-Star break…31-43 after
2011…46-45 at All-Star break…31-40 after
2012…46-40 at All-Star break…0-3 after following a sweep in Atlanta. Now they head to first-place Washington…actually six against the Nats in the next nine. I officially put a fork in ‘em Sunday afternoon. I’m thinking they win five games the rest of the way.
–And the bloom is off R.A. Dickey’s rose big time. Lucky for him, his record is still 12-1 but in three of his last four starts he has given up five earned runs in each. [‘No decisions’ in all three, however.]
–Speaking of the Braves…here’s my Cy Young Award winner, assuming the Bravos make the playoffs…stopper Craig Kimbrel. 35 innings, 62 strikeouts, 1.29 ERA, hitters batting .118 against him. Lefties are 3 for 56 against the righty! 27 of 28 in save opportunities.
–FOX had Mets-Braves Saturday and Hall of Famer Phil Niekro (who deserves to be in the Hall, Reggie) stopped by the booth for a spell to discuss R.A. Dickey and knuckleballers. After watching Dickey throw his knuckler in the 80 mph range this season, I was reminded Niekro threw his normally in just the low- to mid-60s. [Niekro is a terrific analyst, by the way.]
–Having watched him this weekend in the Atlanta series, you know who really, really sucks? Umpire C.B. Bucknor. Aside from awful behind the plate calls, he missed one at first on Saturday that was beyond atrocious.
–I’ve been watching some White Sox games just to see my man Adam Dunn. Boy, he crushed one 459 feet on Saturday in Kansas City.
Talk about fascinating, as much as his season last year was about the worst in the history of the sport given his prior success, this year is even more fascinating.
.215 batting average, but with 72 walks he has a .365 OBP.
–It’s been 25 years since the last year a major leaguer stole 100 bases in a season, Vince Coleman’s 109 in 1987. Rickey Henderson stole his record 130 in 1982.
But in the minor leagues this year, one of the big stories is Cincinnati Reds farmhand Billy Hamilton, a shortstop, who had 104 stolen bases in 82 games at Class-A Bakersfield and had 5 more in his first four games at Double-A Pensacola after getting promoted. So 109 in 86 contests. Hamilton is thus on track to obliterate Coleman’s baseball record 145 set in 1983 while he was in Class-A.
Last season Hamilton had 103 in 135 games for Class-A Dayton.
Of course way back there was another Billy Hamilton, a Hall of Famer who is third on the all-time steals list with 914.
–The other side of baseball is represented by Shaq Green-Thompson from Sacramento. Steve G. alerted me to this one. Thompson, age 18, was Boston’s 18th-round selection in the draft, a 6’2”, 225 lb. outfielder who it seems is destined to play college football sooner than later. You see, in his first 26 at-bats through Saturday he struck out 25 times. The only ball he has put in play was a groundout to first base.
–I love it…each week a new story on Alex Rodriguez, the contract and his lack of production. Yeah, he hit No. 14 on Sunday but it’s safe to say A-Rod isn’t going 30-100 and after watching the Mets suck wind I flipped on the Yankees in time to see A-Rod pop out with the bases loaded in the ninth to give the Angels a 10-8 victory. Nothing warms the cockles like A-Rod failing in the clutch.
Mike Lupica / New York Daily News [prior to Sunday’s contest]
“Here are the numbers on Alex Rodriguez for the season. He is earning $30 million, he turns 37 in less than two weeks, he had a double and an infield hit Saturday. He is now hitting .268, with 13 home runs, 38 RBI, 11 doubles, one triple, a slugging percentage of .435, an OPS (on-base plus slugging) of .789. If you are keeping score, just on the baseball numbers, not the age or the salary numbers, he now has a total of 25 extra-base hits in 84 games….
“You want to look at a statistical comparison, just in New York, the season we’ve seen so far? Scott Hairston of the Mets, in just 72 games and 191 at-bats, has these numbers: 12 doubles, two triples, 12 homers, 35 RBI, a slugging percentage of .524….
“No wonder the Yankees had to make Reggie Jackson look like the bad guy for things he said about A-Rod and his steroid use in Sports Illustrated, as if Reggie had somehow committed the pinstriped crime of the century. Are you kidding? The one thing they don’t need as they wait for Rodriguez to start hitting is for anybody to hurt his feelings.
“Should Reggie have stopped himself short of talking about Gary Carter and Kirby Puckett and whether or not they belong in the Hall of Fame? Sure. …But when it comes to A-Rod and tainted numbers, he got sent to the penalty box for telling the truth.”
Jackson continues to apologize “to those within the Hall of Fame community that I offended, and to the Yankees’ organization for any disruption that I caused in the clubhouse.”
–Last Bar Chat I noted that former pitcher David Cone, he of the 194-126 career mark, was worthy of more respect than the Hall of Fame voters gave him his only year of eligibility. Johnny Mac reminded me I should have added he had an 8-3 postseason mark, including 2-0 in the World Series. We demand a recount!!!
–Pssst…we really want PED poster boy Ryan Braun to pull a hammy so that the Pirates’ Andrew McCutchen can win the Triple Crown. The only thing potentially holding McCutchen back is Braun being five home runs ahead as of this writing.
I’m thinking of going to a Pirates game….Just kidding, Pittsburgh fans!!!
A 24-year-old man from Perth, Australia, was killed by a great white on Saturday, the fifth person to die from a shark attack in Western Australia since September last year. Ben Linden had a passion for surfing, according to his long-time girlfriend, Alana Noakes, who posted on his Facebook wall.
“I’m devastated to let everyone know that my beautiful man, Ben Linden, was the surfer who was taken by the shark at Wedge this morning…
“Ben was the most amazing man, he lit up the lives of all who knew him…
“He was the love of my life, my best friend, my rock and my soulmate.”
An official with the Fisheries Department said the victim was a friend when the attack occurred. Two other surfers, one on a jet ski and the other being towed came over to help when they saw a commotion in the water.
The guy on the jet ski told ABC that he tried to retrieve the man.
“I was towing my mate on the back of the jet ski and in front of us I just saw a guy get attacked by a shark and I just took my mate straight to the shore and went straight out and there was just blood everywhere and a massive, massive white shark circling the body,” he said.
“I reached to grab the body and the shark came at me on the jet ski and tried to knock me off and I did another loop and when I came to get back to the body the shark took it.”
I see in one of the reports that “A sea kayaker narrowly escaped the jaws of a great white last month (in the same area) after a friend managed to pluck him from the water when he was rammed by one of the marine predators off Perth’s Mullaloo Beach.
“That attack came just hours after another great white, thought to be 16-feet long, lunged from the water at a crab fisherman at a dive park south of Perth.” [Sydney Morning Herald, London Times]
–Good stuff in golf on Sunday. Roger Chapman, the lad from Britain who won all of one European PGA Tour event, has suddenly, at age 53, become just the fourth to win the U.S. Senior Open and the Senior PGA in the same year. The other three? Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Hale Irwin. As Ronald Reagan would have said…with a twinkle in his eye…not bad, not bad at all.
And Zach Johnson won the John Deere Classic, his hometown tournament, in a playoff with Troy Matteson after both double-bogeyed the first playoff hole. Johnson, on the second, then proceeded to hit one of the great ‘minor’ tournament shots you’ll ever see out of the sand to clinch his ninth PGA Tour victory. Helluva career for a very good guy.
The upcoming British Open is going to be fascinating. I’ll go with Padraig Harrington!
—Blake Griffin is having surgery to repair a torn meniscus and will miss the Olympics, though he’s fortunate it’s arthroscopic surgery and the Clippers say he’ll be ready for training camp, this after he just signed a five-year, $95 million extension. Looks like No. 1 draft pick Anthony Davis will replace him on the U.S. roster.
—Kevin Garnett agreed to a three-year deal with the Celtics.
–New Orleans reached agreement with Drew Brees on a stupendous five-year, $100 million contract that includes a $40 million payment in 2012…$60 million guaranteed overall…an NFL record.
Brees has been bitching and moaning that the team wasn’t treating him fairly. At least he said upon signing the deal that “Now I need to go earn it.”
No kidding. The $40 million, by the way, breaks down to a $3 million salary and $37 million bonus.
–The drumbeat on the London Olympics’ potential to be a washout is getting louder and louder as the country deals with truly historic rainfalls. On Friday, sprinter Tyson Gay won a 100-meter race in London “with the rain lashing the track during the evening and the temperature plummeting to almost winter levels.” Former world record holder Asafa Powell pulled out, not wanting to risk aggravating a groin injury in the weather. Gay, by winning in 10.03, had to gain a lot of confidence.
–I’ve written that at least track and field has been doing the right thing on the steroids front. If you’re dirty, they’ll catch you. And so American 400 meter runner Debbie Dunn has withdrawn from the Olympics, where she would have run the 4X400 relay, owing to a positive drug test. Dunn chose not to contest her position on the team while she tries to clear up the matter; which actually shows some class, even if she proves to be dirty.
“I do not want any issue like this to distract from my teammates’ focus for the biggest meet of their lives. I wish Team USA best in London as I work toward resolving this matter.”
–Deadly summer for mountain climbing in the Alps this summer. Nine died, two others missing, in an avalanche on Mont Blanc. Those killed were all Europeans. A climber caused a slab of ice to snap off which sparked the avalanche. 28 climbers in all were then involved in the rush of snow and ice. I don’t know what would be worse. Seeing an avalanche about to sweep you hundreds of feet over a cliff, or being killed by a shark. I mean you’re living in both cases for more than a few seconds.
[Two other climbers died on Saturday in the Mont Blanc area, part of a separate team.]
–Big controversy in European football as England star John Terry was let off after making racist comments in a match last October. The Chelsea captain admitted to using deeply offensive language, but the judge ruled there was sufficient doubt over the precise context of the words. Anton Ferdinand, whom Terry was cleared of abusing, had received death threats before the trial and his mother had threatening correspondence sent to her.
Now the fear is that players who have been racially abused will be afraid to step forward. The Football Association had been conducting its own investigation but shut it down once criminal charges were filed against Terry. Now the FA said it will “seek to conclude its own inquiries.” Their conclusion will be quite telling.
–“Man” strikes again…for the wrong reason…as he struggles to avoid plummeting to the bottom of the “All-Species List.” “
Two Manhattan jewelers pleaded guilty Thursday to illegally selling a ton of ivory-based goods valued at more than $2 million – a crime that is rare in New York but which underscores a sharp uptick in a global black market for the tusks of endangered elephants.” [Tamer El-Ghobashy / Wall Street Journal]
So Mukesh Gupta and Jung-Chien Lu are thrown in the December file for “Dirtball of the Year” consideration.
–And we put Terrell Owens in the December file as well. It seems Mr. Owens, the second all-time receiver in NFL history for yardage and touchdown catches, is $20,000 behind on his child-support payments and could face jail time. Owens may have sealed his fate when he failed to show up for a hearing on Thursday.
You know, baseball has its issues when it comes to their Hall of Fame and all the guys coming onto the ballot with a history of steroids, suspected or admitted. What will the NFL do with Owens when he comes up for consideration? Just musing.
–Chimps aren’t exactly building a good case for the All-Species List either these days. Two chimps escaped a Las Vega backyard and rampaged through a neighborhood, before police shot one dead and tranquillized the other.
“No people were hurt, but police said they had no choice but to kill after the agitated animals escaped their enclosure and started running through yards and opening car doors in a neighborhood of horse pens, palm trees and tile-roofed, landscaped homes.”
One of the chimps jumped on top of a police car, with the officer inside, lights flashing, before the animal ran away, later to be killed.
But this is a complicated story and I feel sorry for the couple that was caring for the chimps. From Ken Ritter of the AP:
“Poker pro Lee Watkinson put up the money and girlfriend Timmi De Rosa gave her heart to an effort to rescue two adult chimpanzees that had outgrown their youthful cuteness in a northwest Las Vegas neighborhood.
“ ‘We wanted to build a sanctuary,’ Watkinson said Friday. ‘We found them in a bad situation. People have them and play with them for five years and then someone has to come and rescue them. That’s what we tried to do. We failed.’
“On Thursday, after three straight days of stifling 110-degree days, the chimps burst through one door of their outdoor pen, opened a secondary door with two dead bolt latches, and escaped.”
After the two chimps had become unmanageable for their prior owner, Watkinson and De Rosa took over and “spent $100,000 of Watkinson’s winnings from the 2006 World Series of Poker on a sturdy double-fenced enclosure of 800 square feet, about the size of two big-rig trailers, this in the backyard of a home in a horsey neighborhood…Building codes in the area and Nevada state law allow people to keep exotic animals as pets.”
Buddy, the chimp that was killed, was 4-feet-7 and 150 pounds. Authorities believe the second door wasn’t secured properly.
By the way, regarding that U.S. student who was recently attacked in South Africa, I just saw the extent of his injuries as he remains in serious condition there… “head wounds and the loss of a testicle and fingers.” Yikes.
–When I was in Oregon the other week, I wrote of spending a night on the coast in the town of Newport. So I got a kick out of a story in USA TODAY this week titled “10 great places to snack at a seafood shack.” It notes places like The Clam Shack in Kennebunkport, Maine, and Alabama Jacks in Key Largo. But also in the top ten is the original “Mo’s” in Newport. I mean I always go to Mo’s and was there this trip. Mike Urban, the expert on lobster shacks, noted of Mo’s… “He likes the halibut fish and chips, oyster stew and creamy clam chowder. ‘These chowders are distinctive from the flavor you’d get in New England. They’re putting in different types of clams. It’s worth a special visit.’”
Man, he nailed it. The chowder is outstanding and this time I indeed had the out of this world halibut. The only problem is I felt rushed. Only had one beer as a result.
–I don’t watch “American Idol,” but I would, at least once, if Charlie Sheen becomes one of the judges to replace J. Lo, Steven Tyler or (probably) Randy Jackson. I haven’t seen his name floated but you know who might work? Magic Johnson…though he’s probably too busy for this.
–We note the passing of Maria Cole, 89, the widow of legend Nat King Cole and the mother of Natalie. Just the other day I said I still missed Nat, even though I was but 7 when he died of lung cancer in 1965. My parents were huge fans, you see. I can still remember sitting around the family radio when word came he had died. Cole doesn’t get enough credit for being a true pioneer. “The Nat ‘King’ Cole Show,” after all, 1956-57, was the first network TV program hosted by an African American and his music, to state the obvious, is timeless.
In 1989, Maria Cole said in an interview with the Boston Globe, “I miss the closeness of my marriage to Nat. I loved hearing his key in the door. I loved preparing his meals. I loved being married to him.”
–Marc Myers of the Wall Street Journal had a piece on the writing of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” 48 summers ago. “Today, the song is No. 1 on BMI’s list of most-played songs on radio and TV since the royalty-collection agency’s founding in 1939.”
The tune was written by the songwriting duo of Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. They were summoned by Phil Spector to Los Angeles to write a song for the Righteous Brothers, whom he had just signed.
Weil: Barry and I started a draft. We loved the yearning of the Four Tops’ “Baby I Need Your Loving.” Barry came up with our opening line: “You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips.”….
Mann: But we were stuck for a bridge and an ending. We called Phil and played him what we had. He said he had tears in his eyes when he heard Cynthia’s line, “Something beautiful’s dying.”
Weil: At Phil’s the next day, he added the “whoa-whoa-whoa’s.” As a lyricist, I cringed. They sounded like filler.
Mann: For the bridge, Phil experimented on the piano with a “Hang On Sloopy” riff. It was brilliant. I built a melody on the riff while Cynthia shouted out lyrics: “Baby, baby, I get down on my knees for you” and so on. When we met the Righteous Brothers a few days later, we were nervous they might not like it.
Well, after Barry and Phil played and sang it, Bill Medley said, “Sounds good – for the Everly Brothers.”
Mann: Phil wanted Bill to sing the verses alone, with Bobby (Hatfield) joining on the chorus.
Weil: They had always sung together, and Bobby wasn’t happy. He said to Phil, “What am I supposed to do while the big guy is singing?” Phil snapped, “You can go to the bank.”
It took two days – four hours each day, before Phil Spector had the sound out of Medley that he wanted as they did one verse after another, over and over until Medley got it right.
Mann: Several weeks after we returned to New York, Phil called to play us the finished record. I yelled over the phone to get Phil’s attention: “Phil, you’ve got it on the wrong speed.” The song we had written had been about three ticks faster and a tone and a half higher. Phil came on and said, “Barry, that’s the record.”
Weil: At first, we were surprised the song was a hit. It ran 3:45 – which was an eternity on the radio back then. But Phil loved it. What he did was change the time on the label to 3:05, so deejays would think it was shorter.
Mann: One night in early ’65, our phone rang at 3 a.m.
Weil: It was Brian Wilson calling from L.A. He said, “Your song is the greatest record ever. I was ready to quit the music business, but this has inspired me to write again. I want to write with you guys.” Half asleep, all I could say was, “Now?”
Top 3 songs for the week 7/13/63: #1 “Easier Said Than Done” (The Essex) #2 “Surf City” (Jan & Dean) #3 “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” (Rolf Harris)…and…#4 “So Much In Love” (The Tymes) #5 “One Fine Day” (The Chiffons) #6 “Sukiyaki” (Kyu Sakamoto…best they could do after losing the Big One…that and produce Godzilla movies shot in bath tubs and using erector sets) #7 “Memphis” (Lonnie Mack) #8 “Blue On Blue” (Bobby Vinton) #9 “Hello Stranger” (Barbara Lewis) #10 “Wipe Out” (The Surfaris…rumblings beginning to be heard from across the pond…America was about to be wiped out musically but we were hopelessly naïve)
New York Mets Quiz Answers: 1) Felix Millan, 1975, and John Olerud, 1999, are the only two Mets to appear in 162 games. Both had fine, albeit short, Mets careers. 2) 40 HR: Carlos Beltran, 41 (2006); Todd Hundley, 41 (1996); Mike Piazza, 40 (1999). 3) 120 RBI: Mike Piazza, 124 (1999); David Wright, 124 (2008); Robin Ventura, 120 (1999).
