Posted Sunday evening….our thoughts and prayers are with the
folks of the Gulf Coast region.
NFL Quiz: Granted, football’s career records aren’t as strong as
baseball’s because of a wide discrepancy, percentage wise, in
games played during different eras…but give me the top ten
leaders in passing yards, career. Answer below.
Racism and the LPGA Tour
At the Safeway Classic, Aug. 18-21, here were the top four
finishers.
1. Soo-Yun Kang
2. Jeong Jang
3. Gloria Park
4. Joo Mi Kim
All are Koreans, and therein lies a growing controversy…as
addressed in an editorial by Ron Sirak of GolfWorld.
“One of the dangers of bigotry is that it is usually based on just
enough truth to be plausible. It is the devious nature of the
hateful mind to latch onto a crumb of reality and knead it into a
threatening specter that must be opposed at all cost – even if it
means abandoning reason and reasonable behavior. Never are
people more vulnerable to such exploitation as when they are
racked by the insecurity that accompanies unfamiliarity. Change
is an unsettling thing, and sometimes the search for stability
leads to hatred simply because it is easier than understanding.
Another LPGA leader board dominated by Asians had even the
reasonable asking questions, and the unreasonable reacting with
racism.”
But as you see from the list above, it’s not as if we’re talking Se
Ri Pak or Grace Park, two of the better known female golfers in
the world. Mr. Sirak is touching on a topic that the LPGA is
somehow going to have to deal with. It’s an American tour and
fans aren’t likely to turn out unless there is a U.S. star or two
consistently in contention.
Which is why it’s so important for the tour that youngsters Paula
Creamer and Morgan Pressel, for example, are successful. As
for Michelle Wie, who should be the savior, she has her sights
set on playing with the men. No help there.
Latin Ballplayers
So Major League Baseball is in the process of selecting its Latino
Legends Team, which will be announced before Game 4 of the
World Series. This has stirred up a minor controversy in that
Ted Williams and Reggie Jackson aren’t on the ballot. Huh?
Well Williams’ mother was Mexican and Jackson’s father was
half Puerto Rican. Instead, MLB said the nominees had to have
a direct connection to their Latino heritage. I think any real fan
can identify those that qualify.
Anyway, 60 are on the ballot and it does give me an excuse for
a little quiz. So name the country of origin for the following.
Manny Sanguillen, Tony Perez, Rod Carew, Vinny Castilla, Luis
Aparicio, Jose Cruz Sr., Mike Cuellar, Juan Marichal, and Luis
Tiant.
Answer below.
Stuff
–Shark! 23-year-old marine biologist Jarrod Stehbens was killed
by a great white shark last week off Adelaide, Australia.
The cuttlefish researcher [a cuttlefish is like a mini-squid] and
another diver “were in the water off Glenelg Beach when two
colleagues aboard a boat saw the shark approach. They hauled
one of the men out of the sea, but the shark used its snout to push
the second diver back into the water before his friends could grab
him.”
Justin Rowntree, who was in the water with Stehbens, “said he
felt the shark nudge him before it set its sights on his dive
partner.”
“ ‘I thought it was a dolphin,’ Mr. Rowntree said.
“ ‘It just nudged my side and I looked around (and saw) just a
big white mass. (I saw) Jarrod fight it off initially, then it came
back again and grabbed his leg and just took him deeper.’
“ ‘He seemed quite calm; he was trying to get his leg out of his
mouth.’” [Sydney Morning Herald]
Condolences to the Stehbens family.
–From Seth Mydans / International Herald Tribune
“Hat Khrai, Thailand. The monster fish announced itself with
four resounding whacks of its tail, thrashing against the net that
had trapped it in the pale brown water of the Mekong River.
“It was a fish called the giant catfish and it was the size of a
grizzly bear, taking five boatmen an hour to pull it in and 10 men
to lift it when they reached the shore in this remote village in
northern Thailand.”
It turns out the catch (from this past May) was 9 feet long and
weighed 646 pounds, perhaps the biggest freshwater fish ever
recorded.
But in a study by the National Geographic Society and the World
Wildlife Fund, biologist Zeb Hogan is attempting to identify the
world’s largest freshwater fish in an effort to protect their
habitat. This includes not just the Mekong, but the Amazon, the
Yangtze, the Congo, the Colorado and Russia’s Lake Baikal (the
deepest lake in the world…and home to the famous Vodka Fish).
In the Mekong alone, there are seven species of “huge fish,” but
all of them are threatened by overfishing, pollution and
development.
[By the way, the biggest catfish caught in the United States was
the 121-pounder bagged last May in the Mississippi. So this
Thai sucker was five times bigger!!!]
Hogan notes, “A lot of people say the arapaima (Amazon River)
is the largest freshwater fish, but there’s no reliable record of any
(approaching the Thai catch).” But he has his candidates, the
Chinese paddlefish in the Yangtze and the giant stingray also in
the Mekong.
“I saw a stingray in Cambodia in 2003 that was 4.13 metres long.
It had a disc 2 meters across 2 meters long, and the tail was 2.13
meters long.” But they couldn’t weigh it.
–Russian bears. Across the nation last week there were a string
of attacks. According to Kevin O’Flynn of the Moscow Times:
“A bear…bit off the foot of an elderly woman who was cleaning
the area near her cage….
“In Karelia, northwestern Russia, a bear attacked a 39-year-old
man in a forest…The man was hospitalized with cuts on his face
and hands.”
But then in the Krasnoyarsk region, “a bear cub wandered
in…from nearby woods on Tuesday…The cub was picked up by
a policeman near some cafes, where it was going from car to car
asking for food. The policeman took it to the police station.”
See, they really can talk!
–Chile is dealing with a plague of mink in the south of the
country, which threatens native species. The mink arrived in
Chile 50 years ago after escaping mink farms in Argentina. So,
if you’re currently looking for something different to do you may
want to head south (except it’s winter there right now). The
Dept. of Agriculture will pay you 3,500 pesos for each mink
carcass. [Santiago Times]
Actually, seems like a terrific premise for one of the Sci-Fi
Channel straight to video horror flicks. Mutant minks…that’s
what I’m talkin’ about.
–Over the next few years, 400 elephants are being shipped from
one overcrowded animal park in Kenya to Tsavo East, where
they will join an existing herd of about 10,000. Goodness
gracious. Over 10,000 elephants is a force that threatens the
political stability of the entire continent! [Or perhaps I’m
reading too much into this development.]
The elephants that are being moved, incidentally, each weigh two
to four tons and after being tranquilized are loaded onto special
trucks.
Sounds like another premise for a Sci-Fi Channel straight to
video flick…..[The editor is dying for a job in the production
dept. of this network. Hey, “Boa I” and “Boa II” probably turned
a profit…why can’t “Mutant Minks” and “Tsavo Nation” do the
same?!]
–Lance Armstrong fought back against the allegations he was
taking red blood cell-booster EPO during the 1999 Tour de
France. “There’s a setup here and I’m stuck in the middle of it…
I don’t have trust in (the) system….This thing stinks.”
But Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, says
the lab used by French sports daily L’Equipe was highly
reputable, “one of the top two or three EPO labs in the world.”
The charges have “to be taken seriously.”
The Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc says Armstrong “fooled”
race officials.
“For the first time – and these are no longer rumors, or
insinuations, these are proven scientific facts – someone has
shown me that in 1999, Armstrong had a banned substance called
EPO in his body.”
Gerard Bisceglia, chief executive officer of USA Cycling
defended Armstrong.
“Lance Armstrong is one of the most tested athletes in the history
of sport and he has come up clean every single time.”
Of course it’s all he-said, they-said, but I have to repeat what I
wrote the other day. Recall that during the 1998 Tour, a vehicle
used by the Festiva team was found with “hundreds” of doses of
EPO.
So I remain convinced Lance used it himself in ’99, but probably
hasn’t since, or worst case the last few. There were no tests to
detect EPO until 2001 and obviously the athletes knew this. As
to Lance’s protestations that he would never put anything in his
body after he had battled his cancer, that rings hollow.
You know who I was thinking of the other day, in conjunction
with this story? The great distance runner Lasse Viren. Some of
us of a certain age will never forget him as he won both the 5000
and 10000 meter races in the 1972 and ‘76 Olympics. What a
machine he was.
Well, it was later proven that Viren was blood-doping the whole
time.
–Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling on Rafael Palmeiro.
“(Palmeiro) obviously sat next to me in Washington [before
Congress] and lied, so I don’t know there’s any way to prove that
anything he did was not under the influence of performance-
enhancing drugs.
“I think growing up, being a fan of the game, watching Steve
Howe, watching Darryl Strawberry, watching the things that
happened to Doc Gooden. I think I had just gotten to the point
where I finally realized that liars and cheaters and criminals exist
in all professions and baseball doesn’t absolve us from being
human beings and we’re going to have the same kind of people
that play this game that do anything else in the world.”
In other words, erase Raffy’s records; though Curt needs to focus
on his pitching these days. Basically, he’s a shell of his former
self following his ankle surgery.
–As for Dwight Gooden, did you see the tape of him in the
courtroom the other day? Most of us stopped feeling sorry for
him and sidekick Strawberry a long time ago. What a waste.
And with his recent arrest on assault charges involving his
girlfriend, what an ugly, awful person he’s become. Lock him
up for life.
–Back to what baseball is supposed to be about, strategy and
stats, here’s some interesting stuff courtesy of a piece in the
Washington Post by David Sheinim on the sacrifice bunt.
“Using data from the 2003 season, (researcher James) Click
found that a team with a runner on first base and no outs
subsequently averaged 0.919 of a run per inning. But with a
runner on second and one out – which is to say, following a
hypothetical sacrifice bunt – a team averaged 0.706 of a run per
inning. That means a bunt in that situation actually ‘costs’ a
team 0.213 of a run each time it is deployed.
“Similarly, with a runner on second and nobody out – another
potential bunt situation – teams averaged 1.177 runs per inning,
while a situation with a runner on third and one out yielded only
1.032 runs.”
Now debate amongst yourselves…preferably at your favorite
watering hole.
–The great Gary Player, 69, on today’s golfers and modern
technology.
“They’re driving six par 4s (at St. Andrews in the British
Open)!” he exclaimed. “It was the most shocking statement I
had heard in a long time when one of the leading manufacturers
of a golf ball said the other day that the reason the ball is going
farther is these guys are better athletes than in the past… Let me
tell you something, Arnold Palmer would have beaten Tiger
Woods in an arm wrestle. When Arnold was young, he lifted a
gold bar (at a gold mine) in South Africa that no human being
had ever done.
“If you gave George Bayer (the late long hitter from the 1950s
and ‘60s) the equipment today with the ball we have, he would
have hit it over 400 yards. I watched him in a long-driving
competition in Australia once, and he averaged 320 yards with a
lousy wooden head and a steel shaft…. I am a tremendous Tiger
Woods fan, but in 30 years’ time they’ll turn around and say,
‘Tiger Woods was a marvelous golfer, but he was a pea-shooter
off the tee.’ They’re going to hit the ball 60 yards farther than
they are now.” [GolfWeek]
Of course the debate over technology heated up at the WGC-
NEC Invitational at Firestone two weekends ago when Stuart
Appleby registered three drives on the downhill 667-yard, par-5
16th hole that measured more than 400 yards, including one that
went 427. [Appleby ranks 20th on the PGA Tour in driving this
year at 299.2 yards.]
–Golfer Darren Clarke had been struggling with his game and
before the NEC Invitational he sought out Vijay Singh. You
hear stories all the time of how generous Vijay is with his fellow
pros.
–As opposed to Phil Mickelson, who as I noted a while back is
despised by those he plays with. Here is what tour pro Paul Gow
said, as quoted in GolfWorld.
“He’s an arrogant person. What you see on television is totally
different to what he is around the clubhouse…He has done some
great acting classes in Hollywood and they’ve worked out for
him.”
Meanwhile, Mickelson is drawing increasing heat for his use of
metal spikes, which are still allowed on tour. There is a petition
circulating among the players to ban them, just as they are at
your club.
–Well, it appears that the Miss America pageant is history,
perhaps as early as next year. Most Americans are of an age
where this won’t be a big deal and even though I watched it
myself, I’m not going to shed any tears if it’s snuffed out. [A
few cities may try to host it, such as Orlando…I just think they’ll
decide ‘who needs it?’]
But for many places across the U.S., the pageant was
monumental. I’m talking about the small towns from which
some of the champions hailed from. For example a few years
ago in this very space, 10/18/00, I noted how I drove through the
town of Laverne, Oklahoma and there was a big billboard
honoring Miss America 1967, Jane Jayroe. You can imagine the
excitement there when she was crowned. And I picked out some
others, in looking over the list of past winners.
1957: Marian McKnight – Manning, S.C.
1959: Mary Ann Mobley – Brandon, Miss. [She was hot]
1972: Laurel Lea Schaefer – Bexley, Ohio
1973: Terry Meeuwsen – De Pere, Wisc.
1980: Cheryl Prewitt – Ackerman, Miss.
1996: Shawntel Smith – Muldrow, Okla.
[And of course the lovely Vanessa Williams, Miss America 1984
from Millwood, N.Y. ….at least for ten months before the
Penthouse flap boiled over.]
–I first mentioned New Jersey high school senior Derrick
Caracter (sic) back on 7/5/01 in this space when he was in 8th
grade. Last week Caracter, a real jerk by the way, committed to
Louisville. Ordinarily, the 6’9”, 270-pounder would apply for
the NBA draft next spring but now he can’t since the league
raised the eligibility age to 19 and he doesn’t turn 18 until May
2006.
Top 3 songs for the week of 8/25/73: #1 “Brother Louie”
(Stories…controversial tune for its time) #2 “Live And Let Die”
(Wings…Trader George’s favorite) #3 “Touch Me In The
Morning” (Diana Ross….ahem…ahem….)….. #4 “Let’s Get It
On” (Marvin Gaye) #5 “The Morning After” (Maureen
McGovern…about a cruise ship, not the abortion pill)
**So I caught some of the MTV Video Music Awards. What a
disgrace. As a dear friend wrote me during it, “How is all this
hip hop stuff mainstream entertainment now?”
I caught 50 Cent during the pre-show and he was asked to
comment about his performance. “We’re going to do a melody.”
[Ahem, he meant ‘medley’…but no one said these guys are
smart. The dumbest jerks our country has to offer.]
NFL Quiz Answer: Top ten, passing yards.
1. Dan Marino…61,361
2. John Elway…51,475
3. Brett Favre…49,734
4. Warren Moon…49,325
5. Fran Tarkenton…47,003
6. Vinny Testaverde…44,475
7. Dan Fouts…43,040
8. Joe Montana…40,551
9. Johnny Unitas…40,239
10. Drew Bledsoe…39,808
Latino Legends Quiz Answer:
Manny Sanguillen – Panama
Tony Perez – Cuba
Rod Carew – Panama
Vinny Castilla – Mexico
Luis Aparicio – Venezuela
Jose Cruz Sr. – Puerto Rico
Mike Cuellar – Cuba
Juan Marichal – Dominican Republic
Luis Tiant – Cuba
By the way, in looking at the ballot here is my selection for the
squad.
C – Ivan Rodriguez (though the probable steroid use in his case
should disqualify him, I guess)
1B – Albert Pujols
2B – Rod Carew
SS – Alex Rodriguez
3B – Vinny Castilla (weak position)
OF – Vladimir Guerrero
OF – Roberto Clemente
OF – Tony Oliva (leaving off Sammy Sosa, for obvious reasons,
and Manny Ramirez for not so obvious ones….I just loved Oliva
and if modern sports medicine had been available to take care of
his various injuries, he’d be in the Hall of Fame)
Starter – Juan Marichal
Reliever – Mariano Rivera
Back to Reggie Jackson, the New York Times’ Murray Chass
had this quote from quirky Mickey Rivers, a teammate of
Reggie’s about 30 years ago.
“Reginald Martinez Jackson. You got a white man’s first name,
a Puerto Rican’s middle name and a black man’s last name. No
wonder you’re so messed up.”
Next Bar Chat, Thursday.
