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Bar Chat

06/26/2014

Public Enemy No. 1

World Cup Quiz: The first one was in 1930. There was a gap between 1938 and 1950. Name the eight nations to win at least one title. Answer below.

World Cup...biting drama

--What had been a relatively controversy free World Cup exploded on Tuesday when Uruguay’s star striker, Luis Suarez, bit Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini on the shoulder, which the referee missed, and then Uruguay went on to score the clincher shortly after for a 1-0 win that sent Italy home.

It was understandable that the referee missed it since it occurred well away from the ball, but that is zero consolation for the Italians, who were also playing a man down after a red card.

Now, however, Fifa will act. As every futbol fan knows, this isn’t the first time Suarez, one of the five best players in the world, has bitten an opponent; having been suspended in 2010 (7 games) and 2013 (10 games) for the same act.

So he faces a lengthy suspension that will extend well beyond the remainder of the World Cup, probably six months or at least 15 games. Fifa’s maximum sanction is thought to be two years.

To say the least, this guy has a serious problem. His behavior is criminal and he’s never shown remorse for past infractions.

Suarez did comment afterwards: “These are just things that happen out on the pitch. It was just the two of us inside the area and he bumped into me with his shoulder, and that’s how my eye got like this as well. There are things that happen on the pitch and you should not make such a big deal out of them.”

--No, the U.S. and Germany won’t be colluding to settle for a draw so that both advance to the round of 16. Jurgen Klinsmann, the U.S.’s German-born coach, and former German star and coach, is not well-liked back home, even as the country obsesses over him.

Klinsmann moved to the United States after his playing career ended. His wife is American and his two children grew up in California.

As for the schedules that the U.S. and Germany have had in Brazil, Klinsmann has a good point when he bitched following Sunday’s draw with Portugal:

“We’re already thinking about Germany. We have one less day [than Germany] to recover. They played yesterday. We played today. We played in the Amazon. They played in a place where you don’t have to travel so much. Things are set up for the big teams to move on.”

Greece 2 Ivory Coast 1...late rally sends Greece to Round of 16 and Ivory Coast home

Colombia 4 Japan 1...Colombia 3-0-0...9-2 goal differential

I forgot to note last time Algeria’s historic 4-2 win on Sunday over South Korea, the “Desert Foxes’” first World Cup win since 1982. Now they need to beat Russia on Thursday to advance.

--For the archives, Sunday’s television ratings for USA-Portugal were off the charts, the biggest American audience ever for a soccer game, 18 million; 25 million when you include Univision.

--Colombia’s reserve goalkeeper Faryd Mondragon made World Cup history Tuesday as the oldest man to play in the finals at the age of 43.

Ball Bits

--In Game 1 of the best-of-three College World Series, Vanderbilt got off to a 9-2 lead over Virginia and then held on for a 9-8 win, with the Cavaliers outhitting the Commodores 15-6.

Virginia had a 2-0 lead when co-ACC pitcher of the year, Nathan Kirby, suddenly couldn’t find the plate and ended up walking in three runs and was removed with Virginia trailing 5-2. In the third inning, the sophomore Kirby threw 12 strikes and 24 balls, not exactly Clayton Kershaw-like efficiency. Kirby walked five in the inning, after not walking more than three in any of his previous 18 career starts.

But UVA bounced back to take Game 2 on Tuesday, 7-2, so it’s on to a deciding Game 3, Wednesday night, with both seeking their first national title in baseball.

--The Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw followed up his no-hitter with 8 shutout innings in a 2-0 win at Kansas City on Tuesday, scattering six hits, walking one and striking out 8 as he moved to 8-2, 2.24.

--The Mets much maligned (deservedly so) Chris Young, according to a report about to get cut, responded with two home runs in the Mets’ 10-1 win over first-place Oakland at Citi Field on Tuesday. This while catcher Travis d’Arnaud, who had been sent down to AAA and responded with six home runs there in two weeks, hit a three-run homer of his own in his first game since being called back up. 41-year-old Bartolo Colon moved to 8-5, 3.67, though 6-0, 1.58, in his last seven starts.

--Derek Jeter made two costly mental fielding mistakes in the Yankees 7-6 loss to the Blue Jays on Tuesday. He has made a number of bad plays the past few weeks in particular; stuff he seemingly used to go years without doing.

--Stephen Strasburg is giving up smokeless tobacco following the death of his former coach at San Diego State, Tony Gwynn.

“I think it’s a disgusting habit, looking back on it,” Strasburg said. “I was pretty naïve when I started. Just doing it here and there, I didn’t think it was going to be such an addiction. ...bottom line is, I want to be around for my family. This is something that can affect people the rest of your life.”

--So I failed to mention that when I was at Saturday’s Yankee game, former star Tino Martinez was honored with a plaque in Monument Park in pregame ceremonies, and then the following day the same honor was bestowed on Goose Gossage.

This is getting beyond absurd. So much for the Yankees only honoring the greats. I mean Paul O’Neill is getting a plaque on Aug. 9, Joe Torre on Aug. 23 and Bernie Williams next season. The Yankees are also going to retire Torre’s No. 6.

And as the New York Times’ Tyler Kepner notes, Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada will be getting plaques, Rivera having had his uniform already retired when he left the game last season. It’s possible Rivera and Jeter could receive monuments.

The existing monuments are only for Miller Huggins, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio (and one for George Steinbrenner). 

As Kepner points out, yes, other teams have walls of fame. The Brewers have more than 50 players on theirs. The Minnesota Twins inducted Eddie Guardado into their Hall of Fame last season.

Then again, because it’s the Yankees, what do I care?

[I also forgot to add that after Saturday’s game, I was with part of my group and we were waiting for an elevator when broadcaster John Sterling came up, having clearly spent all of about two minutes gathering his things after the last pitch. No, Suzyn wasn’t with him. Guess she was more involved in the post-game. But I had a brief exchange with him and he was extremely polite, allowing all of us to get on the elevator before he attempted to jam in. So that was the first, and last, time I’ll ever be next to the ‘great’ Mr. Sterling.]

--Jerry Ronzasky / The Weekly Standard...on Tony Gwynn:

“The Hall of Famer Greg Maddux once explained his pitching success by pointing to a road a quarter-mile off. At that distance, he observed, you couldn’t tell whether a car was traveling 55, 65, or 75 miles per hour. So it was in pitching. Unless the batter is tipped off by a hitch in the delivery or an anomalous spin, he’s left guessing at whether the ball will come at 80, 85, or 90 miles per hour. ‘You just can’t do it,’ Maddux explained, ‘except for that [expletive] Tony Gwynn.’

“Indeed, Tony Gwynn got more hits off Maddux over the course of his career than off any other pitcher, compiling a .415 average and never striking out. Maddux can be forgiven the career blemish, for Gwynn was the greatest hitter of his era....

“Hitting was Gwynn’s obsession and vocation. There are two great contradictory myths we like to tell ourselves about sports. One is that the great ones are simply naturals. Beyond the way it corrodes meritocracy, such a view is flat wrong: Most of the greats are obsessive workers. But its opposite is wrong too: Greatness does not come to every hard worker. Gwynn’s greatness was in making the most of his natural gifts. A star point guard at San Diego State, he had exceptional hand-eye coordination and quick wrists. But he also spent the last half of his career with what he called ‘a body by Betty Crocker.’ Gwynn had small hands, compelling him to use a smaller, swifter bat, good for singles but not for home runs. Gwynn nicknamed his slender bat ‘Seven Grains of Pain,’ but he couldn’t use it against power pitchers, otherwise it’d snap. When Ted Williams first saw ‘Seven Grains,’ he snarled that he could pick his teeth with it....

“When George Will needed a subject for the chapter ‘The Batter’ in Men at Work, he chose Gwynn. Will recounts a story of Gwynn pleased by an out and distressed by a home run. He explained to Will that even though he’d made an out, he kept his shoulders square just long enough and swung with his hands leading the barrel of the bat by the right number of inches. On the home run, he complained, he had come forward with the barrel of the bat and had swung a millisecond too soon. Repeating the same swinging action several times a game over a 162-game season means a ballplayer must rely on muscle memory....

“Late in his career, a reporter compared his statistics favorably to some of the greats. ‘I don’t care what the numbers say,’ Gwynn retorted. ‘Am I better than Hank Aaron? Stan Musial? Frank Robinson? Not a chance. The only thing I want people to say about me is that I played the game the way it should be played. What I’ve always wanted to do is be a complete player. This is as close as I’ve ever come to it.’ He displayed a boyish wonderment at the chance to play at Yankee Stadium for the first time in the 1998 World Series. Without the pretense that he deserved his fame and success, he could not help but be generous with interviews and autographs.

“Most of all, Gwynn will be remembered as San Diego’s own....

“San Diego is the largest city without a championship in one of the four major sports leagues. It’d be as pitied as Cleveland if not for the weather. The Padres are possibly the worst franchise in baseball history. They’ve been to the World Series only twice, and Tony Gwynn was there both times. He endured a fire sale of virtually every valuable Padre other than himself. He played a team game and he played it well, but the rest of his team was never quite good enough, and was very frequently terrible.

“But we remember more about sports than the outcomes, otherwise we wouldn’t go to the games. We go to see how, through a combination of intense, unseen work at self-mastery and ineffable, God-given brilliance, a great hitter can hold back on a dropping curve ball and then hold back an extra split-second, all before dipping a seven-grain-wide bat, hands well in front of the bat’s barrel, toward the falling curve. With the echo of contact, everyone in Jack Murphy Stadium knew where the ball was going: It’d loop just past the infield, between short and third, and no one could catch it. It happened thousands of times.”

NBA Fever

--No surprise...LeBron James opted out of his contract as he was allowed to do and becomes an unrestricted free agent on July 1.

But it seems pretty clear that unless he is angling to return to Cleveland, he’s applying pressure on Heat team president Pat Riley, ownership, and his running mates, Chris Bosch and Dwyane Wade, to change things up, including Wade taking far less than the $20 million he is due for next season in order to help the Heat bring in another quality player.

James had two years and about $42.7 million remaining in his deal and was scheduled to make $20 million next season. Much more next chat.

--And as noted last time, Carmelo Anthony opted out and while he is saying all the right things about how much he likes New York and how he wants to remain, six or seven other teams are gunning for his services.

After free agency begins July 1, the Knicks can offer Anthony up to five years and $129 million, while any other suitor can offer him a max of four years and $96 million. But clearly Phil Jackson is not about to offer a max deal when he’s been trying to get Melo to stay just one more year to see how things work out, for all parties, while accepting less in order for the team to have more flexibility in bringing in better players.

The Bulls are seen as the frontrunner for Anthony’s services but, boy, if I’m Melo I go elsewhere. There is way too much uncertainty over Derrick Rose’s knees.

The Rockets are clearing the cap space for Melo, but would you want to play with Dwight Howard?

Atlanta is said to be a sleeper team in the sweepstakes. 

Knicks legend Walt Frazier said he thought Anthony would wise up and stay in New York (assuming Jackson offers up some cash), because there’s nothing more valuable than winning a title with the Knicks, so taking some $30 million less to attempt it elsewhere doesn’t make a lot of sense.

“You look at today’s players – they just want to win a championship and stack the cards to win it. I don’t admire that in guys. Like LeBron, if he goes to the Clippers, c’mon man. You should stay in Miami. You guys started it, now finish it. Sure the fans will look at it that way [with Anthony]. But today there’s no loyalty.”

--Meanwhile, Tim Duncan exercised his option and will return for an 18th season with the Spurs at $10.3 million. So the core three, including Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, will be together one more season; all three entering the final season of their contracts. Obviously, as long as they’re healthy come playoff time, and with an ever-improving Leonard, and Pops working his magic, they’ll be right there again.

Then...Timmy D. and Manu ride off into the sunset. Parker may easily opt to return to Paris.

--As for Thursday’s NBA draft, the Sixers and Cavaliers are still talking about a deal involving Cleveland’s overall No. 1 selection in exchange for the Sixers’ pick at No. 3.

According to Chad Ford of ESPN, despite his foot injury, the Cavs want center Joel Embiid (dumb), while Philly is fighting for the No. 1 to take Embiid’s Kansas teammate, Andrew Wiggins.

Golf Balls

--Aside from USA-Germany, Thursday is a big day in the sports world with Tiger Woods’ return at Congressional. Tuesday he said he was planning on playing the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool. He added he is pain-free for the first time in about two years. 

“I healed extremely fast, thanks to my physios, and all my nutrition and all the different things that we did and the protocols and the MRIs, and all the different steps that we have done along the way have allowed me to get to this point,” he said.

But he added his explosiveness hasn’t returned yet. ‘That’s going to come in time.”

Tiger tees off Thursday at 8:12 ET alongside Jason Day and Jordan Spieth.

--According to Pellucid, a consulting company specializing in the business of golf, the number of U.S. golfers has dropped 24% from its peak in 2002, to about 23 million players last year, with the game losing 1.1 million players alone in 2013. And as a piece in BloombergBusinessweek put it, given the costs and inherent difficulty, let alone the huge time commitment, “that slide is unlikely to end anytime soon.”

According to researcher Golf Datatech, U.S. golfers played a total of 462 million rounds last year, the fewest since 1995. As one expert put it, “All the people under 35 are leaving the game.”

--It would appear Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, N.J., will be the site of the 2017 Presidents Cup, an announcement expected in July or August. Liberty National hosted The Barclays, the first of four FedEx Cup playoff events, in 2009 and 2013. With shots of the Statue of Liberty and the New York City skyline, it certainly plays well on television.

--This really sucks. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed a ban on sports betting in New Jersey to stand, failing to comment on a lower court ruling that struck down New Jersey’s sports betting law because it conflicts with federal law that allows state-sanctioned gambling only in Nevada and three other states.

Gov. Chris Christie had led the appeal to the highest court, arguing New Jersey was attempting to curb illegal sports betting and bring in some revenue it had lost because of it. A Democratic co-sponsor of the legislation vowed to keep battling.

“This is a disappointing decision, but our fight is not over,” said Raymond Lesniak.

“I expect that the U.S. Justice Department will refrain from intervening, as they have with Colorado and Washington when those states legalized marijuana,” he said.   “I plan on placing my first bet at Monmouth Racetrack on Sept. 8 for the Giants to beat the spread against the Lions on Monday Night Football.”

The NCAA, MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL all sued to block New Jersey from legalizing betting, saying it would harm the integrity of their games, which is a freakin’ joke.

The sports leagues argue the law violated the 1992, Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, enacted by Congress to restrict betting on sports to a four states: Nevada, Delaware, Montana, and Oregon.

A trial judge ruled against the state and that ruling was upheld by a divided panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

--I like this one from “Ask the Slouch” (asktheslouch@aol.com), aka Norman Chad of the Washington Post.

“If Redskins owner Daniel Snyder doesn’t understand the writing on the wall regarding the offensiveness of his team’s name, would smoke signals help?” (Bill Holmes, Alexandria)

A. Pay the man, Shirley. Send Couch Slouch a question and if he picks it you win $1.25! Cash!

--Medical files purporting to relate to F1 legend Michael Schumacher are being offered for sale, according to his management team. Manager Sabine Kehm said it was unclear whether the documents were genuine, but she said they were “clearly stolen” and warned criminal charges would be pressed if such “confidential files” were bought or published.

Schumacher has been moved from Grenoble, France to Lausanne university hospital in Switzerland.

--We note the passing of Steve Rossi, 82. Rossi was a singer in Vegas when Nat King Cole convinced him to join up with bug-eyed comedian Marty Allen to form one of the most successful comedy teams of the 1960s.

Allen and Rossi were reminiscent of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, though Allen and Rossi were strictly verbal compared to the physical comedy of Martin and Lewis.

Most of the routines of Allen and Rossi were in an interview format, with Allen (whose catchphrase was “Hello dere!”) portraying characters like a boxer, astronaut or politico, and Rossi asking the questions.

Oh, I saw Rossi and Allen countless times, especially on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” where they shared the bill twice with the Beatles in 1964.

The duo broke up in 1968, amicably, they insisted. They reunited in the 1980s and worked together on and off until 1994.

Steve Rossi became a frequent guest on Howard Stern’s radio show, where he genially endured Stern’s questions about his personal life. Rossi had learned to have a thick skin, as he recalled in a 2011 interview.

“In the early ‘60s, Marty and I opened for Sinatra. I went to his dressing room. I said, ‘Frank. We’re very nervous. Can you give us some advice?’ He said, ‘Yeah, kid. First: Do the best you can. Second: Give ‘em all you got. Third and most important: Remember, they didn’t come to see you in the first place.’” [Peter Keepnews / New York Times]

--Yet another great white shark video of one off the New Jersey coast the other day. It ripped a basket of bait off a 35-foot boat. I’m expecting about 42 swimmers to lose their lives to Whitey and Co. over the Fourth of July weekend.

--The great actor Eli Wallach died. He was 98. While his portrayal of bandit chief Calvera in “The Magnificent Seven” is seen as his definitive role, I’ll always think of him first as Tuco in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Among his other films was “How the West Was Won” and “Lord Jim.”

--A four-page draft of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” written in pencil on hotel letterhead and complete with revisions, notes and doodles, sold for more than $2 million; according to Sotheby’s a world record for a popular music manuscript.

Top 3 songs for the week 6/21/80: # “Funkytown” (Lipps, Inc. ...do do do do do...do do do do do...) #2 “Coming Up” (Paul McCartney & Wings...not his best effort...)   #3 “Biggest Part Of Me” (Ambrosia...bad memories with this one...)...and...#4 “The Rose” (Bette Midler) #5 “Against The Wind” (Bob Seger) #6 “It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me” (Billy Joel) #7 “Little Jeannie” (Elton John) #8 “Steal Away” (Robbie Dupree) #9 “Cars” (Gary Numan) #10 “She’s Out Of My Life” (Michael Jackson... OK, I had just graduated from Wake Forest a month earlier and I would spend the summer playing the ponies and just goofing off until Labor Day, when I got off my butt and got a job...and that’s when the music scene truly deteriorated beyond comprehension...as we’re about to find out...)

World Cup Quiz Answer: Winners...8 nations...

1930 Uruguay
1934 Italy
1938 Italy
1950 Uruguay
1954 West Germany
1958, 1962 Brazil
1966 England
1970 Brazil
1974 West Germany
1978 Argentina
1982 Italy
1986 Argentina
1990 West Germany
1994 Brazil
1998 France
2002 Brazil
2006 Italy
2010 Spain

*Other nations that were runners-up, never winners...Czechoslovakia (2), Hungary (2), Sweden, Netherlands (3).

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