[Posted Wednesday a.m.]
Golf Quiz: Since the official year is over, as some of us await the return of real action the second weekend of January (though, admittedly, aside from the Waste Management Open…the best reason not to watch the Super Bowl pregame show…many of us don’t really care until Riviera), name the top ten in the official World Golf Rankings to close out 2015. Answer below.
NFL
–So I watched the Giants-Cowboys contest on Monday night as New York stays in the NFC East hunt with Washington and Philadelphia, beating the Dolphins in Miami, 31-24. Talk about a two-man team, that’s Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr.
Manning had in some respects his best game ever, statistically, completing 87% of his passes, 27 of 31, for 337 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions, which came out to a 151.5 passer rating.
Beckham caught 7 passes for 166 yards and two scores, including another for the Odell highlight reel. [Beckham has six straight 100-yard games with eight touchdowns over that stretch.]
But aside from these two, the Giants have virtually nothing.
NFC East
Washington 6-7 (2-2 division)
Philadelphia 6-7 (2-2)
Giants 6-7 (2-3)
Cowboys 4-9 (3-2)
Just take it one game at a time. This week, Washington hosts the Bills; Philadelphia hosts the Cardinals; and the Giants are home facing the undefeated Panthers.
–Cincinnati received some relatively good news when it was learned quarterback Andy Dalton will not require surgery on his injured thumb, but he’s likely to be out through the regular season, with a goal of returning for the playoffs.
–So I am taking a bow for being the first that I’m aware of to unequivocally say that Russell Wilson just had the best four-game stretch in the history of NFL quarterbacking when I posted Sunday night. It was confirmed the next day by ESPN’s Bill Barnwell. I didn’t look at anything more than Wilson’s raw numbers to know it had to be.
Wilson has gone 89-for-118 for 1,171 yards and 16 touchdowns without an interception. His passer rating of 145.9 is the best for four games going back to 1960, 10 years before the merger.
Peyton Manning, by the way, had a four-game stretch in 2013 with Denver where he had 16 TD passes with no interceptions, too, but his rating was 138.0.
Tom Brady’s best 4-games were in 2007, 17-2, 138.9.
Wilson is just the fourth in NFL history to have four consecutive games with at least three TD passes and zero interceptions; the others being Peyton Manning, Brady and Aaron Rodgers.
No one except for Wilson has done the preceding while also having a 70 percent completion rate during the streak.
As for league MVP, however, it’s pretty clear Cam Newton is your odds-on favorite, Newton only getting better as the year has gone on for his 13-0 Carolina Panthers; Cam having thrown 17 touchdown passes against one interception in Carolina’s past five games.
–Seattle lost running back Thomas Rawls to a broken ankle and torn ligaments.
–One more Seattle tidbit…receiver Doug Baldwin has caught eight of Russell Wilson’s 16 TD passes during the streak (8 in his last three).
–I have to admit that with my return from Charleston Sunday, I couldn’t keep up with everything and Johnny Mac told me of Oakland linebacker Khalil Mack’s spectacular second half, five sacks (five for the game), which tied a club record set by Howie Long.
Oakland stunningly beat Denver 15-12 despite only having 126 yards total offense. They had minus-12 in the first half, the worst in an NFL game since 1992.
—Kansas City became only the second team in NFL history to win at least seven in a row immediately after losing at least five in a row. Only the 1970 Bengals did that. [Sam Farmer / Los Angeles Times]
–As Kevin Helliker of the Wall Street Journal points out, Week 15 could be the worst ever in terms of the slate of games. There is only one pitting two winning teams against each other: 10-3 Denver at 8-5 Pittsburgh. The last time this happened, according to Stats LLC, was 1995.
That doesn’t mean all the games pitting losing teams against each other are meaningless, however. In the AFC South, the 6-7 Texans travel to 6-7 Indianapolis in a critical contest for both.
Us Jets fans will be glued to the tube Saturday night for the Jets at Dallas affair.
College Football
–This is pretty amazing. Scott Cochran is a strength and conditioning coach at Alabama who is considered by some in the know to be the best at his job in all of college football.
So ‘Bama didn’t want to lose him when there were rumors he was headed to Georgia with Kirby Smart, who is going to be the new head coach in Athens, and on Monday the school announced Cochran had signed a new contract to stay with the Crimson Tide.
According to AL.com, Cochran, who has been at Alabama since 2007, received a contract extension through 2017 that raised his salary to $420,000 per year.
So assume over time his salary rises to $500,000. That puts him on par with some Division I-A head coaches. As Dan Wolken of USA TODAY Sports points out, Matt Campbell made $495,000 this year at Toledo. Dino Babers earned $413,000 at Bowling Green.
Wolken adds strength coaches aren’t part of the nine full-time, on-field assistants and thus not subject to a number of NCAA contract rules.
College Basketball
New AP Poll (Dec. 14)
1. Michigan State 11-0 (64 first-place votes)
2. Kansas 8-1 (1)
3. Oklahoma 7-0
4. Kentucky 9-1
5. Iowa State 9-0
6. Maryland 9-1
7. Duke 8-1
8. Virginia 8-1
9. Purdue 11-0
10. Xavier 10-0…Dec. 22 date against Wake in Winston-Salem comin’ up!
11. North Carolina 7-2
14. Providence 10-1
15. Miami 8-1
18. SMU 7-0
21. George Washington 9-1?! Don’t see how…their loss is to Cincinnati, while their win over Virginia was way back in Game 2 and they haven’t played anyone else. Not to take it out on the Father of our country during the holiday season.
—Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan suddenly announced his retirement, effective immediately, after taking the team to back-to-back Final Fours. He is being replaced on an interim basis by associate head coach Greg Gard.
Wisconsin is 7-5 this season with losses to Western Illinois and Wisconsin-Milwaukee one season after setting a school record with 36 wins. Ryan won 364 games in 14 seasons with the Badgers, including the 11 winningest seasons in Wisconsin history.
—Poor Iowa State. Since the end of last season, everything pointed to a Final Four appearance in 2016 with all the big players they had coming back. But they just suffered a huge blow as it was announced senior guard Naz Mitrou-Long will miss the rest of the season with a hip injury.
Mitrou-Long had surgery on his left hip on April 1 and on his right hip a little more than a month later. Nonetheless, he started the first eight games and averaged 12 points in 31.6 minutes before deciding to sit out the rest of the 2015-16 campaign. He is going to seek a medical redshirt so he can play next season.
Iowa State was very thin to begin with, playing just seven players extensively. I’d say this pretty much cooks their Final Four efforts.
—Duke suffered a potentially devastating injury of its own with the loss of senior forward Amile Jefferson to a right foot injury. He’s out indefinitely and you know how these things go…you just don’t know. Duke has had recent similar issues with players such as Ryan Kelly and Kyrie Irving missing significant time with foot ailments.
Jefferson was averaging 11.4 points and 10.3 rebounds and Duke simply doesn’t have a lot of depth up front.
–Eamonn Brennan of ESPN.com correctly notes in his column that LSU is wasting Ben Simmons. The 6-10 superfrosh from Australia is even better than advertised thus far. In eight games he has averaged 19 points, 15 rebounds, 6 assists, 2.5 steals and 1.6 blocks, while shooting .550 from the field. Pretty, pretty good.
But LSU is just 4-4! Hopefully, the return of senior guard Keith Hornsby, who missed the first seven games and then scored 32 in his return on Sunday, will help, but LSU still lost that game to Houston, 105-98, as Simmons chipped in with 13 points, 14 rebounds, and five assists.
What a waste it would be if the Tigers have a player who sure seems like the next Kevin Durant, or the first Ben Simmons, and you don’t even make the NCAAs. I was looking forward to watching him in some meaningful games come March.
—Monmouth University (N.J.) did it again, defeating Georgetown in D.C. on Tuesday night, 83-68. Monmouth, 7-3, has already defeated UCLA, Notre Dame and split with USC. But as I noted the other week, they’ll still have to win the MAAC tournament to get into the NCAAs.
Their bench extended their own national act last night with a very humorous Sistine Chapel celebration following a score. Look it up.
The win over Georgetown was the team’s first ever over a Big East opponent.
NBA
Golden State 24-1
San Antonio 21-5 (13-0 at home)
Philadelphia 1-25
–Sacramento Kings guard Rajon Rondo was suspended by the NBA for one game after officials reportedly heard Rondo unleash anti-gay slurs after he was ejected from a Dec. 3 loss to the Celtics. The league said Rondo was punished for “directing a derogatory and offensive term towards a game official and not leaving the court in a timely manner.”
That official, Bill Kennedy, ejected Rondo after consecutive technical fouls and instead of leaving the court, the star aggressively followed the referee. Referee Ben Taylor, according to a game officials’ report provided to Yahoo Sports, heard Rondo spout off [some real vile stuff that I won’t even print.]
So on Monday, Kennedy publicly came out.
“I am proud to be an NBA referee, and I am proud to be a gay man. I am following in the footsteps of others who have self-identified in the hopes that will send a message to young men and women in sports that you must allow no one to make you feel ashamed of who you are.”
NBA commissioner Adam Silver said he “wholeheartedly” supports Kennedy’s decision to “live his life proudly and openly.”
Rondo’s name has gone into my December file for late-year consideration for “Dirtball of the Year.”
MLB
–The last of the big-name free-agent pitchers, Johnny Cueto, agreed to a six-year, $130 million contract with San Francisco, with Cueto having an option to opt out after two years (assuming he can stay healthy and pitch 200 innings the first two, he could then hit the market again for $30 million a year when he’d be just 31).
Cueto is good, no doubt. 96-70, 3.30 ERA with Cincinnati and Kansas City. You just have these durability issues and he was hardly lights out in the regular season when the Royals traded for him at the deadline…4-7, 4.76 ERA the rest of the way.
According to reports, Cueto had turned down a $120-126 million offer from Arizona, which then signed Zack Greinke (and then traded for Shelby Miller).
Earlier, the Giants signed pitcher Jeff Samardzija to a six-year, $90 million deal as San Francisco builds a new rotation around Madison Bumgarner.
—Commissioner Rob Manfred announced on Monday he has rejected Pete Rose’s latest application for reinstatement.
Rose’s attorneys filed for reinstatement on February 26, 2015. “Mr. Rose’s attorneys stated that Mr. Rose had accepted responsibility for his mistakes and their consequences, and that Mr. Rose was sorry for betting on the game of Baseball,” said Manfred’s decision.
On April 1, 2015, Rose requested a meeting to show “the extent to which he has met and surpassed Commissioner Giamatti’s charge that he reconfigure his life.”
Manfred requested his staff to conduct a “comprehensive review” of the files of Rose’s case kept by MLB, including the Dowd Report, which was the league’s original investigation into Rose’s gambling activity. Plus the league considered new evidence, such as ESPN’s report this year outlining Rose’s gambling during the 1986 season, when he was a player-manager with the Reds.
At a meeting on September 24, 2015, between Manfred and Rose, Rose admitted to the commissioner he bet on games extensively in 1987, as manager of the Reds. But Rose couldn’t remember facts related to allegations of betting on games as a player in 1985 and ’86. Rose “made assertions concerning his betting habits that were directly contradicted by documentary evidence,” meaning the 2015 ESPN report.
Rose also admitted to Manfred he currently bets “recreationally and legally” on horses and sports, including baseball.
Manfred stated his “only concern has to be the protection of the integrity of play on the field through appropriate enforcement of Major League rules… Indeed, in considering Mr. Rose’s application for reinstatement, I, as Commissioner of Baseball, must determine the risk that Mr. Rose will commit a violation of MLB’s rules (most significantly Rule 21) following his reinstatement that will impact the integrity of the game.” Rule 21 covers misconduct.
Manfred said it was not clear Rose grasped the scope of his violations, citing that Rose did not seek treatment and he is not “convinced that he has avoided the type of conduct and associations that originally led to his placement on the permanently ineligible list.” That Rose admitted he still gambles today shows he has not completely rejected the actions that led to the lifetime ban in the first place.
“In short, Mr. Rose had not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life either by an honest acceptance of him of his wrongdoing, so clearly established by the Dowd Report, or by a rigorous, self-aware and sustained program of avoidance by him of all the circumstances that led to his permanent ineligibility in 1989,” wrote Manfred, who concluded Rose’s reinstatement would be an “unacceptable risk” to the integrity of the game.
Rose can continue to participate in ceremonial activities as long as he receives Manfred’s approval ahead of time. [Mike Axisa / CBSSports.com]
Bob Nightengale / USA TODAY Sports
“This is it for Pete Rose.
“His fate, after 26 years of waiting for baseball to change its mind, finally is decided.
“He’s dead to the game of baseball.
“Oh, you might still see him on TV as a baseball analyst. You’ll certainly still see him hawking memorabilia at a Las Vegas casino and showing up on Main Street in Cooperstown, N.Y., selling autographs in July during the Hall of Fame weekend.
“He’ll just never be employed by a major league or minor league organization again in his life.
“He can walk into Baseball’s Hall of Fame as long as he lives, and, although he can see his memorabilia, he’ll never see his plaque….
“Manfred, in a ruling as transparent as possible, unveiled the facts in his case. After reading it, you wonder how anyone in the world could disagree.
“ ‘Really, there is no other decision,’ former commissioner Fay Vincent, whose predecessor, Bart Giamatti, banned Rose from baseball in 1989, told USA TODAY Sports. ‘This is absolutely the proper decision. It came as no surprise at all. Any other way would have presented enormous problems, which Mr. Manfred and baseball do not need.’….
“Rose was caught in more lies, Manfred said, during his face-to-face meeting with the commissioner and MLB attorneys in September. He said he placed wagers as a manager and not as a player. Yet betting records kept by Michael Bertolini, a Rose associate, and uncovered by ESPN revealed he also bet on baseball as an active player in 1985 and 1986….
“The man who is baseball’s all-time hits king will now forever be remembered as one of the sport’s most pathetic figures. As cruel as it might sound, no one might care about Pete Rose again.”
For his part, Rose spoke to the press on Tuesday, saying he merely “wants to be friends with baseball again and that he would “continue to be the best baseball fan in the world” even as MLB keeps him out.
Rose, 74, acknowledged he still gambles on sports. He grew emotional in the end: “You win some, you lose some. You can’t rewrite something that’s already happened. I’m a good guy, to be honest with you.”
Ah, doubtful. What we know is that Pete Rose is an inveterate liar.
I wrote of the solution in this space over ten years ago. Rose should have been told he will get a plaque in Cooperstown when he’s dead. He could die knowing he will be in the Hall. But the rule against gambling on baseball is sacrosanct.
–Barry Svrluga / Washington Post…on choosing baseball over football….
“By any measure, Calvin Johnson is a football star. Since he entered the NFL in 2007, no one has gained more yards receiving, in total or per game. No one has caught more touchdown passes. If his career ended tomorrow, he would be ushered straight to Canton, Ohio, to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, arguably the best wide receiver of his era.
“By some measures, Jeff Samardzija is a mediocre baseball player. Since he became a full-time starting pitcher, in 2012, his ERA ranks 63rd of the 90 men who have thrown at least 500 innings. Last year, as he approached free agency, he allowed more hits and runs than any pitcher in the game. His career record: 47 wins, 61 losses.
“These two, it would seem, have nothing to do with each other. Except in the fall of 2006, they were two of the best wideouts in college football, each voted an All-American by the Football Writers Association of America.
“And one other thing: Through this season, Johnson will have collected $113,816,086 in earnings, making him one of the wealthiest non-quarterbacks in league history. Samardzija, by virtue of the five-year contract he just signed with the San Francisco Giants, is guaranteed to have earnings of $122,725,000 – and have another chance to dip into the till in 2021, when he’ll turn 36.
“So a run-of-the-mill, if reliable, baseball player surpasses a generational football talent in money paid? That’s reality, even in a world in which football has surpassed baseball in almost every measure of popularity.”
–The price for a 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card keeps going up. Sales of the card in the past 12 months have been for between $386,000 to $486,000. But one this past weekend sold for $525,800 at auction, the highest price ever paid for a Mantle rookie card. The buyer, who purchased the card at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, was kept anonymous.
By the way, as Ryan Hatch of NJ.com notes, “The $525,800 price tag for the card is almost half of Mantle’s entire career salary – the switch-hitter earned $1,128,000 in his 18 seasons.”
Just imagine what Mantle would have been making today, taking into consideration modern sports medicine to boot.
Golf Balls
–It seems abundantly clear that the British Open will not be held at Trump Turnberry in 2020, as was the plan. The R&A has chosen venues through 2019, and the rumor had been that Trump’s reworked course and resort would get a return the next year, but now with his comment about banning Muslims the Brits are under major pressure to send the Open elsewhere.
Plus, as Alistair Tait wrote in Golfweek, “The last thing the R&A wants is for Trump, who is leading major polls in a bid to become the Republican nominee for president in the 2016 election, using a British Open as a platform to do what he seems to do best: showcase himself.
“Trump’s style clashes hard with the R&A’s exceedingly measured approach. Once asked what stood out among his achievements as R&A chief executive, former boss Peter Dawson said: ‘We don’t do personal here at the R&A.’
“By contrast, Trump does only personal.”
The R&A is deathly afraid of protests and boycotts by both sponsors and players.
Recall, the R&A caught major heat for hosting the Open at Muirfield two years ago, a place that doesn’t admit women as members. They sure as heck won’t go through a similar experience again.
Plus, Turnberry is the most difficult course in the rota to get to for the masses, but it’s a phenomenal course, so they say, being made only better by architect Martin Ebert, who Trump hired to make changes.
–I forgot to mention last time that when I was in Kiawah, I’m still surprised the Ocean Course is getting the 2021 PGA Championship after 2012’s logistical nightmare for many spectators. It’s just a very narrow island, with one, two-lane road and parking far away, that despite it being a terrific venue, including visually, I thought they’d opt not to go there again. But my man John at the bar on Saturday said they’ll figure it out. I’ve played the course many times and absolutely love it, but didn’t get there this year.
–At the break in the college golf season, Wake Forest has moved up to third in the Golfweek rankings after being ranked No. 18 preseason. The comment next to their A+ midseason grade was: “Three victories, a second and a third in five events.”
As Ronald Reagan would have said, ‘Not bad, not bad at all.’
Auburn is No. 1, Illinois 2, Florida State 4 and Stanford 5.
–I love this story from Golfweek’s ‘Forecaddie.’
“The Forecaddie barely can remember his own phone number these days, let alone that of his club’s first-tee starter. It’s all stored on speed dial, right? But he surely can tell you the address of his old childhood home, even down to the ZIP code. Which makes this Zach Johnson story a true classic.
“You see, the esteemed ‘champion golfer of the year’ had to ship a box to Elmcrest Country Club in Cedar Rapids, Iowa – the golf course where he learned the game – for a charity event that he hosts there.
“Johnson takes it from here: ‘I called the pro shop and told the assistant I needed the address of the club,’ Johnson said. ‘He skeptically asked, ‘Is this really Zach?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s me.’ He said, ‘Are you kidding me?’’
“The address at Elmcrest is, after all, 1 Zach Johnson Drive NE.
“ ‘I just whiffed,’ Johnson said.
“Let’s hope he does better with his anniversary.”
–In an annual Golf Digest survey of the broadcasting scene, Jim Nantz remains the most popular play-by-play announcer with 65% saying he’s their favorite. You were allowed to select as many as apply so Mike Tirico received 33%, while Dan Hicks was the favorite of only 25%. I have no problem with any of them.
‘Least favorite’ with 39% was Joe Buck. Only 8% felt this way about Nantz.
The favorite analyst is now Nick Faldo over Johnny Miller, 58% to 53%.
Favorite hole announcer is Gary McCord over Peter Jacobsen and Ian Baker-Finch.
David Feherty is hands-down the favorite on-course reporter. Peter Kostis second.
As for the question, are you more or less likely to watch a tournament if the following players are in contention?….
83% said ‘more likely’ with Jordan Spieth, 70% with Jason Day, 68% Rory McIlroy, 67% Rickie Fowler, 57% Bubba Watson, 55% Tiger Woods, 44% Dustin Johnson.
Separately, 41% of millennials said being able to bet on golf would increase their viewership of tournaments, vs. 12% of overall participants in the survey who felt a positive correlation between gambling and watching golf.
Millennials also want microphones on all players and caddies in the final groups. I think the increasing use of on-course mikes when players are preparing for a shot is good, but that’s not fair to listen to their casual conversations. Would it be entertaining? Possibly. But the players and caddies would quickly clam up. I mean we aren’t listening to guys riding the basketball pines, or in the baseball dugouts. In each game there would be something said that I guarantee would cause an international political incident.
Then again, sports already has Rajon Rondo and Greg Hardy.
–Golf Digest had an interview with Phil Mickelson’s brother, Tim, and sister, Tina, on what it was like to grow up with Phil, and after. Here’s a cute story from Tim:
“During a recent family ski trip, these kids are coming up to Phil during the day and saying, ‘You’re Phil, right? You’re going down tonight!’ And Phil is answering them with, ‘Yeah? Bring it.’ Turns out that the night before, Phil had snuck down to this area of the resort where these kids are playing dodgeball. And he gets into the game with them. I couldn’t get over the picture of this 45-year-old man mixing it up with a bunch of 10-year-olds, bombing them with the ball and getting bombed in return. But that’s Phil.”
Oh, you can’t help but love the man.
FIS Alpine 2015/16 World Cup Season
Every two weeks or so I’ll try to sum up the season.
For the men, with 8 of 44 races complete, Austria’s Marcel Hirscher and Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway have each won 3 of the first 8, with Hirscher leading Svindal in the overall.
On the women’s side, with 9 of 41 complete, Lindsey Vonn leads with 4 wins (2 downhill, 1 super-G, 1 giant slalom), while teammate Mikaela Shiffrin has 2 slalom wins. But Shiffrin injured her knee this past weekend and her return is uncertain. Overall, Vonn leads Frida Hansdotter of Sweden.
Stuff
–While I wanted American Pharoah to be selected as Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsman of the Year,” I am not going to raise a stink over Serena Williams being tabbed for the award.
Except, as I noted over a month ago in breaking down the potential winners, why the heck wouldn’t you have Novak Djokovic as a co-award winner?!
Williams won three of the four Grand Slam events, as did Djokovic, with Novak in the finals of the French Open in the fourth.
I mean this just makes no sense, unless you are also rewarding Serena for her body of work, which isn’t exactly the spirit of the deal but that has become part of it.
And I have to reiterate an observation of mine from a while back that it’s just kind of funny that no matter what kind of career Jordan Spieth goes on to have, at age 22 he may have missed his best opportunity to win SI’s award.
Should, for example, Golden State repeat as NBA champions, Steph Curry is already odds-on favorite to win it next December.
Back to Serena, that’s a helluva cover photo. She must love it.
–We note the passing of Phil Pepe, longtime New York sportswriter. He was 80.
Pepe was as popular as they come for his profession, working for two decades at the Daily News, while writing dozens of books and delivering radio commentary for WCBS radio for many years, which is where I learned to like the guy in my youth and early adulthood.
For years and years he covered the Yankees, which was actually the hated team of his youth, starting with the Yanks in 1961, a rather important year in franchise history. He would later become the Daily News’ lead baseball columnist, writing the lead article for every World Series game from 1969 to 1981.
In August 1979, after Thurman Munson died in the crash of a plane he was piloting, Pepe wrote:
“He was the most misunderstood athlete I have ever encountered, misunderstood because he wore his irascibility like a badge of honor, using it as a façade to hide his true feelings, to camouflage the real Thurman Munson. Down deep he was a pussycat, a man of compassion and understanding and great humanity, a devoted family man who hated being away from home, from his wife and children; who hated it so much, it eventually killed him.
“It was his desire to be with his family that made Thurman Munson take up flying, and he flew home almost every night and flew back the next night, much to the concern of Yankee officials.” [Ed. I didn’t know Munson flew that much.] [Bruce Weber / New York Times]
–472 bears were taken out during New Jersey’s bear hunt, which had officials extending it four days because it was so successful.
That’s a lot of bears! But the Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the bear data, wants to see the overall estimated population of 3,500 reduced further. It was less than a 100 in the 1970s.
Granted, the bruin population is none too pleased and I’ve been receiving threats from their leadership. To which I tell them, too late. My running days are over until next spring and I’ll be indoors the next three months.
By the way, last year there was a 52% increase in sightings and nuisance reports in New Jersey over 2013.
–Finally, I didn’t have a chance to honor Frank Sinatra on his 100th birthday this past Saturday, Dec. 12, 1915, in Hoboken, N.J.
Columnist George Will recently wrote some of the following on the man we remember.
“Frank Sinatra should be celebrated for his craftsmanship. Of geniuses, we have, it seems, a steady stream. Actual craftsmen are rarer and more useful because they are exemplary for anyone with a craft, be it surgery or carpentry. Sinatra was many things, some of them – libertine, bully, gangster groupie – regrettable. But he unquestionably was the greatest singer of American songs.
“How should an artist’s character and private life condition our appreciation of his or her art? How, say, should knowledge of T.S. Eliot’s anti-Semitism condition one’s admiration for his poetry? With Sinatra, tune out the public personality and listen to his music as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Gerry Mulligan and Oscar Peterson did. They all, according to the culture critic Terry Teachout, named Sinatra their most admired singer.
“For decades he was, Teachout says, ‘the fixed star in the crowded sky of American popular culture.’ It speaks well of Sinatra, and reveals the prickly pride that sometimes made him volcanic, that he refused to adopt a less Italian name when ethnicity was problematic in the waning days of America’s Anglo-Saxon ascendancy. Anthony Dominick Benedetto (Tony Bennett) and Dino Paul Crocetti (Dean Martin) adjusted. Sinatra was an unadjusted man.
“In spite of the spectacular vulgarity of Sinatra’s choices of friends and fun, he bequeathed to postwar America a sense of style, even male elegance. His Las Vegas cavorting with ‘The Rat Pack’ (Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford) was an embarrassing manifestation of 1950s arrested-development masculinity – adolescence forever. But never mind his toupees and elevator shoes, his loutish flunkies and violent bodyguards, his many awful movies and public brawls, his pimping for Camelot. And never mind that the comedian Shecky Greene was not altogether joking, when he said: ‘Sinatra saved my life in 1967. Five guys were beating me up, and I heard Frank say, ‘That’s enough.’’….
“But you must remember this: In a recording studio, Sinatra, who could not read music, was a meticulous collaborator with great musicians – including the Hollywood String Quartet – and arrangers.
“For Sinatra, before a song was music, it was words alone. He studied lyrics, internalized them, then sang, making music from poems. His good fortune was that he had one of the nation’s cultural treasures, the Great American Songbook, to interpret. It was the good fortune of that book’s authors – Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Johnny Mercer and many others – that Sinatra came along to remind some Americans and inform others of that book’s existence….
“(Sinatra’s) reputation is preserved by the short-term memory loss of a nation that will forever hear the Sinatra of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s….
“(According to legend), Sinatra’s casket in a Palm Springs-area cemetery contains some Jack Daniel’s and Camels. If so, even in death, Sinatra did it his way.”
Top 3 songs for the week 12/15/84: #1 “Out Of Touch” (Daryl Hall and John Oates) #2 “The Wild Boys” (Duran Duran) #3 “Like A Virgin” (Madonna…no comment…wouldn’t be prudent…after all, my future employers will be reading these columns and if I said something stupid here, it could hurt me big time. This is all on my permanent record, boys and girls…)…and…#4 “I Feel For You” (Chaka Khan…Chaka Khan Chaka Khan…actually, pretty good song for this otherwise incredibly crappy era…) #5 “Sea Of Love” (The Honeydrippers… whatever…) #6 “No More Lonely Nights” (Paul McCartney) #7 “Cool It Now” (New Edition) #8 “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” (Wham! Oh gawd…I’m getting sick and it’s not because I went to Chipotle…) #9 “We Belong” (Pat Benatar) #10 “All Through The Night” (Cyndi Lauper…eegads….gotta get back to the Sixties right quick before I hang myself from my fake mini-Christmas tree…which admittedly would be quite an athletic feat…).
Golf Quiz Answer: Top ten World Golf Rankings….
1. Jordan Spieth 12.01
2. Jason Day 11.45
3. Rory McIlroy 11.40
4. Bubba Watson 8.34
5. Henrik Stenson 7.53
6. Rickie Fowler 7.50
7. Justin Rose 7.35
8. Dustin Johnson 6.45
9. Jim Furyk 6.00
10. Patrick Reed 4.80
11. Adam Scott 4.69
12. Sergio Garcia 4.58
13. Zach Johnson 4.58
Well, you can see from the above, there really is a Big Three these days. Can a Brooks Koepka (No. 16) or Justin Thomas (No. 37) join them in 2016, let alone an obvious candidate like Fowler? Personally, I’d love to see D.J. win a major, like The Masters….a tradition unlike any other…on CBS.
Next Bar Chat, Monday.
