[Next Bar Chat…April 16…extensive travel coming up.]
Baltimore Oriole Quiz: [Milwaukee, 1901; St. Louis Browns,
1902-53; Baltimore Orioles, 1954-] 1) What was the first year
for Camden Yards? 2) What was the last year they were above
.500? 3) When was their last World Series appearance? 4) Who
was the Orioles’ last Cy Young winner? 5) Who was the last
batting champ? 6) Who was the last 20-game winner? 7) What
two Orioles were Rookies of the Year in the 1960s? 8) Who
holds the single season stolen base record with 57? Answers
below.
**Congratulations to Zach Johnson for winning the Masters.
This was no fluke and there is little doubt in my mind that,
having won his second overall PGA Tour title, the 31-year-old
will have at least ten victories by the time he’s 40. So don’t fall
for the trap and put him in the category with other recent first-
time major winners who have done little since; golfers such as
Michael Campbell, Todd Hamilton, Shaun Micheel, Ben Curtis
and Rich Beem. Johnson is the real deal, and a great guy to boot.
Eddie Robinson
I had limited time last chat to honor the former Grambling coach
in the manner he deserved so following are some thoughts I’ve
gleaned over the past few days.
Mike Lupica / New York Daily News
“Perhaps the highest praise for a football man came from a
basketball man, John Thompson.
“ ‘He was a hero to me,’ Thompson said. ‘There are so many
African-American coaches now, in basketball and football. To
me, Eddie Robinson was ‘the’ African-American coach. If you
were a young man when I was a young man and had your dreams
and ambitions about being a great coach someday, there was one
name that kept coming up, over and over again, especially if you
were talking to older guys. And that name was Eddie Robinson.”
George Steinbrenner told a story of walking into a bar on
Bourbon St. with his good friend, Robinson, and how the piano
player stopped playing and announced to the room, “The big man
is here.”
Lupica: “The big man has died. Big man out of a small black
college whose name he made the world know.”
James Harris, the first starting black quarterback in the NFL,
played at Grambling under Robinson.
“He represented what America stands for: developing young
people, touching lives, preparing young men for life. He has no
equal.”
William Rhoden / New York Times:
“When Harris was a high school senior in Monroe, La., Robinson
told him that if he came to Grambling he’d make him a pro.
“ ‘I had thought about going to school up North to be on TV, to
have the opportunity to represent my neighborhood,’ Harris once
said. ‘That was appealing – the idea of paving the way for other
kids. But it got hard to say no to Coach Robinson.
“ ‘Coach came by my house one night. He had been to New
York to do a show with Howard Cosell. Grambling had a lot of
players in the NFL and Cosell asked Coach Robinson point-
blank: ‘You’ve produced so many NFL players. Why can’t you
produce a quarterback?’ And that stuck with him. He got off the
plane in Monroe. Came straight to my house. He told me that if
I came to Grambling, in four years I’d be ready for the NFL. He
told me that he knew I could play quarterback. He said, ‘Howard
Cosell challenged me and I’m here to let you know I think you
can do it.’”
Robinson refused to let racism keep him from his destiny.
“You know, I’ve lived so long. I’ve seen a lot,” he once said. “I
have ridden on the back of the bus. I’ve drunk at segregated
fountains. But I ain’t trying to make nobody pay. All I wanted
was an opportunity to prove that I can do what other people can
do. I got that at Grambling.”
Robinson started out earning $63.75 a month when he took over
the coaching duties at Grambling in 1941. His second squad
finished 9-0 and then Grambling didn’t field teams in 1943 and
‘44 due to the war.
Chris DuFresne / Los Angeles Times:
“In 1945 when football resumed, Robinson faced a problem
when the father of his top two players pulled his sons off the
squad because he needed them to pick cotton.
“In one of his first bold coaching strokes, Robinson got the
players back.
“ ‘I got all the boys on the team and we went out there to pick the
cotton and went on to win the championship,’ he once recalled.
“Robinson was more than a winning coach. He taught players
discipline and etiquette; many did not know how to eat properly
with a knife and fork. His players would travel to games dressed
in suits and ties. He kept players in spiritual line by insisting on
handing out weekly laundry stipends at church.
“ ‘He gave us a way of looking at life,’ said Everson Walls, who
played cornerback at Grambling and the NFL. ‘He used to say
first one to cry is a sissy. That was his way of saying there are
no excuses. He always wanted us to look for a way to succeed,
not a reason to fail.’”
Doug Williams, the former NFL quarterback and Grambling star
who became the first black to lead a team to the Super Bowl,
said: “Nobody in America, not even the President – there ain’t
nobody out there that can out-American Eddie Robinson. He
loved to wave the flag.”
James Hunter, Grambling grad and former Detroit Lions
cornerback: “I’ve been in the corporate world for a few years
now, and I haven’t met anyone there who could motivate me the
way Coach Rob did.”
Eddie Robinson once said “I can’t go to a football meeting and
talk all X’s and O’s. We’re talking about drugs. We’re talking
about going to class. We’re talking about studying. It’s hard to
tell what (some) coaches are in the business for. Are you for the
glamour? Are you for the wins? Or are you trying to make the
people with whom you’re working better people for having
participated in the game?”
The Rev. Jesse Jackson wrote in Robinson’s 1999
autobiography, “Never Before, Never Again,” that Robinson
“developed minds before he developed muscles. The
breakthroughs provided by the work of Coach Robinson might
have been less dramatic than the day Jackie Robinson donned the
Dodger uniform. However, they were no less meaningful. Two
men named Robinson changed American life forever.”
Muhammad Ali credited Robinson for “turning boys into men,”
calling him a “credit to his sport as well as a credit to humanity.”
Star-Ledger columnist Jerry Izenberg was the first white reporter
to visit the Grambling campus back in 1964 and later co-
authored a book on the coach. Izenberg wrote the other day:
“He was what America should be all about. He reminded his
players that ‘there are a lot of folks who came to this country
with no more than your parents have. You can make yourself
more than just a football player.’
“A case in point, I remember speaking with a former Grambling
player named John Cristoff the time the Louisiana school hosted
Eddie Robinson Appreciation Day. Cristoff had played on
Robinson’s first undefeated team.
“ ‘He recruited me and he reformed me and he got me to go to
class. I really believe he’s the reason I didn’t wind up in jail,’
Cristoff said.
“Another former teammate jumped in with, ‘You got that right.’
“So what did you become?” I asked. ‘A high school principal.’”
Izenberg writes of a classic story behind the Los Angeles Rams’
selection of Paul “Tank” Younger, the first from an all black
college to play in the NFL.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones was the president of Grambling
back in 1949 and the Rams had a scout named Eddie Kotel who
visited the school and fell in love with Younger.
“(But) Robinson was concerned about what the Rams would
offer Tank, because no player from an all-black school had ever
been signed to an NFL contract. So he and Dr. Jones launched a
little conspiracy. They took Kotel for a ride through the
countryside after Tank’s last game.
“ ‘I’ll give $7,000 if he makes the team,’ Kotel said, ‘but no
bonus.’
“ ‘No good,’ Eddie said. ‘The boy deserves a bonus.’
“ ‘Well, he ain’t getting one.’
“So Dr. Jones drove on…and on…and on, and Eddie kept giving
Kotel soda to drink. The inevitable finally happened on a dark
road outside of Rustin, La.
“ ‘Let me out for a second,’ Kotel said. “I have to urinate.’
“ ‘Can’t do that, man, there’s snakes out there,’ Robinson said.
“ ‘Definitely,’ Dr. Jones said. ‘There’s part of your anatomy you
don’t want to expose. Let’s ride and talk some more.’
“Ten minutes later, Kotel said: ‘Find me a farmhouse. Find me
something and he gets his bonus.’
Robinson’s beloved wife Doris said in a statement:
“Our love and admiration for Eddie was unyielding, as was
Eddie’s for his immediate family and his extended Grambling
family. Eddie was the consummate husband, father, teacher,
leader, role model, and, most of all, the greatest of Americans.
Words cannot express the loneliness that I will feel without my
beloved Eddie. However, I realize, and the immediate family
realizes, the greatness that Eddie contributed to our society. He
will forever fill our hearts, minds and souls.”
—
Jackie and Branch
With the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut next
weekend, I thought I’d reprise a piece I did a few years ago. A
reasoned look at history would tell you that Branch Rickey is the
key figure as far as the advancement of black athletes in
America. I have this encyclopedia, “Africana,” and it’s a shame
Rickey isn’t in there. Then again, neither is Curt Flood.
Branch Rickey was born in Lucasville, Ohio, 1881. He played
parts of 3 seasons in the major leagues, hitting just .239, and he
was a lousy manager. But as a baseball executive everyone
agrees he was the best in history. Rickey is responsible for the
modern day minor league system and he instituted the batting
cage and sliding pits.
Rickey was a Bible-quoting teetotaler and a sanctimonious
defender of justice and fair play who also used cunning and guile
to make a fortune in the game.
But it was in the 1940s that Rickey was to change the face of
sports (and culture) in America forever. In 1944, Baseball
Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis, who had ruled over
the game since the Black Sox scandal of 1919, died. It was
Landis who had upheld the “gentlemen’s agreement” to keep the
major leagues white only. At the same time the sacrifices made
by African-Americans in World War II led to the hope for fuller
participation in all facets of American society, thus leading to a
burgeoning Civil Rights movement.
The new Commissioner, as selected by the owners, was a U.S.
Senator from Kentucky, Happy Chandler. In a secret vote
shortly after he was picked, all of the major league owners
rejected the idea of integrating baseball; all that is except for
Branch Rickey, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It turns out
Rickey had an ally in Chandler.
After Chandler took over from Landis, a black reporter asked
him “What about black boys?” Chandler had just toured the
Pacific battlefields. “If they can fight and die in Okinawa,
Guadalcanal, in the South Pacific, they can play baseball in
America. And when I give my word, you can count on it.”
But Chandler still needed one of his owners to act and Rickey
did. Branch even tested his plan out by floating a statement to
the press.
“I want to sign the best ballplayers around. Even 15- and 16-year
olds. We do that right away and we’ll have an edge on the other
clubs within 2 or 3 years. So we’re going to beat the bushes and
we’ll take whatever comes out, and that might include a Negro
player or two.”
In 1945, a tremendous athlete by the name of Jackie Robinson
had signed to play baseball with the Kansas City Monarchs of the
Negro League. Robinson hit .345 and proved himself to be an
all-round talent.
At the same time, Branch Rickey quietly began his search for the
best candidate to break the color barrier in Major League
Baseball. Monte Irvin was probably the best player in the black
leagues at the time, but Rickey was looking for someone with
patience and a pride that could withstand the inevitable daily
assault that would follow. Rickey’s scouts told him that
Robinson was his man. On October 23, 1945, he defied the
owners’ vote and signed the college-educated army officer to a
contract with the minor league Montreal Royals, the top team in
the Brooklyn Dodgers farm system.
“When I called Robinson to my office,” Rickey said of the day
he signed him, “he had no idea I wanted him for a white team. I
dramatized six situations I knew he would come up against in
baseball. I called him names. I all but hit him. I had to test him.”
Of course, the move was opposed by coaches, teammates, other
teams and many white fans right from the start. But in the face
of awful taunting, Robinson led the Class AAA International
League in batting in 1946, hitting .349. It was decided he would
be brought to spring training in 1947.
That spring, Dodger players Dixie Walker, Carl Furillo, Bobby
Bragan, Kirby Higbe, and Pee Wee Reese wrote a letter to
Rickey threatening a boycott if Robinson was on the team.
Rickey didn’t back down. [Reese ended up becoming one of
Jackie’s best friends.]
Rickey was to have many conversations with Robinson before
the season started (and during it, as well).
“Jackie, we’ve got no army. There’s virtually nobody on our
side. No owners, no umpires, very few newspapermen. And I’m
afraid that many fans may be hostile. We’ll be in a tough
position. We can only win if we can convince the world that I’m
doing this because you’re a great ballplayer, a fine gentleman.”
“A baseball box score is a democratic thing. It doesn’t tell how
big you are, what church you attend, what color you are, or how
your father voted in the last election. It just tells what kind of
baseball player you were on that particular day.”
To the press Rickey said, “The public is not as concerned with a
player’s pigmentation as it is with the power of his swing, the
dexterity of his slide, the gracefulness of his fielding, or the
speed of his legs.”
And Rickey helped to encourage the brand of ball that made
Robinson famous. He told Jackie:
“Take that extra base every time. Make them throw after you,
make them hurry their throws. You’ll get thrown out, sure, but
for every time they throw you out, you will make them hurry and
throw wild later. You will reap a golden harvest of extra bases.”
At the start of the 1947 season, there were problems with various
teams. The St. Louis Cardinals were planning a protest strike.
National League President Ford Fricke laid down the law and
said they’d be suspended. [Fricke had been against integrating
the major leagues just a year earlier.] And Phillies owner Bob
Carpenter asked Rickey to sit Robinson down when the two
teams met. Rickey said he”d be happy to accept a forfeit. The
Phillies played.
Of course Branch Rickey was no fool and he realized that black
Americans were an untapped market. For example, at an
exhibition game in July, 1948, between the Dodgers and the
Cleveland Indians, a crowd of 65,000 turned out; 26,000 of
whom were black. One of every six blacks in Cleveland was at
this game.
Sportswriter Red Smith once said, “To say that Branch Rickey
has the finest mind ever brought to the game of baseball is to
damn him with the faintest of praise, like describing Isaac Stern
as a fiddler.”
And as for Robinson, he proved to be an exemplar of character
and grace, on and off the field, and he kept a promise to Rickey
not to retaliate against racist insults. Both of their positions in
the annals of the game were secure.
[Primary Sources: “Crossing the Line,” Larry Moffi & Jonathan
Kronstadt; “Baseball Anecdotes,” Daniel Okrent & Steve Wulf]
Stuff
–The following is for golf junkies only, but did any of you see
Tom Watson finish up on Friday? Needing just a double-bogey
six on the final hole to make the cut, Watson registered a triple-
bogey seven. But what got me was his total disregard, it seemed,
for his play as he rushed two shots in the greenside bunker and
then three-putted as if he couldn’t have cared less. I love
Watson, but it was very disappointing watching him that day and
I lost a lot of respect for him. I didn’t see anything over the
weekend, however, addressing whether there was an excuse for
his behavior.
–Elsie McLean became the oldest golfer ever to make a hole-in-
one on a regulation course when she aced the par-3, 100-yard
fourth hole at Bidwell Park in Chico, California. Elsie is 102.
Elsie thought she had lost her ball because it was a partially blind
shot. “Where’s my ball?” she asked. Her partners found it in the
cup. McLean has been featured in golf magazines before, though
this was her first hole-in-one.
–Golf junkies will appreciate this. You know that competition
between Orlando’s Lake Nona Golf and Country Club and
Isleworth, the Tavistock Cup? Did you know Tiger Woods won
$500,000 for being low individual? According to Golf World,
each player on the winning Nona team made $100,000 plus
another $100,000 to donate to charity. The Isleworth guys
picked up $50,000 a piece. Goodness gracious.
–Congratulations to Michigan State for winning the Frozen Four,
the NCAA hockey championship, as they defeated Boston
College 3-1. For the Spartans it was their first crown since 1986.
–In a survey of 5,275 high school athletes conducted in 2005 and
2006 by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, 41% of boys saw
nothing wrong with using a stolen playbook sent by an
anonymous supporter before a big game. 37% of boys said it
was proper for a coach to instruct a player to fake an injury.
As Selena Roberts wrote in the New York Times, even former
Red Sox All-Star Jim Rice told an audience the other day that
cheating was essential to advancing a baseball career, though he
didn’t condone steroids.
“Rules are so yesterday, so uncool,” writes Roberts. The
Josephson study concluded “We have the disease of low
expectations.”
–More on Barry Bonds, because some of us just can’t get
enough. John M. Glionna of the Los Angeles Times writes that
even among his most ardent fans the adulation is waning. But
defender Harry Edwards, the UC Berkeley sociologist says, “Ty
Cobb was a jerk and Joe DiMaggio wasn’t exactly a nice guy,
either. The Hall of Fame is riddled with people with major
character flaws never subjected to the scrutiny that Barry Bonds
suffers.”
That’s missing the freakin’ point, professor. Those two didn’t
defile the record break by cheating!
Glionna:
“In a 1993 interview with Sports Illustrated, Bonds said he was
mystified by fan demands. ‘Why can’t people just enjoy the
show?’ he asked. ‘But in baseball, you get to see us, touch us,
trade our cards, buy and sell jerseys. To me, that dilutes the
excitement.’
“He blasted autograph seekers. ‘When I go to a movie, after the
final credits roll, I get up and leave. It’s the end! But I’m
supposed to stand out there for three hours and then sign
autographs? If fans pay $10 to see Batman, they don’t expect to
get Jack Nicholson’s autograph.’
“Some baseball insiders get similar abuse. Pete Dianna, a former
Pittsburgh Pirates team photographer, still reels from a major
league Bonds snub.
“In 2002, two Pirates groundskeepers died in a car crash on
opening day. Both left their children without health insurance,
Diana says.
“All season, he asked visiting all-stars such as Sammy Sosa and
Randy Johnson to sign mementos for auction to help the families.
Everyone agreed – except Bonds, a former Pirate.
“Players warned Diana not to approach the peevish Bonds. ‘But
I figured he knew both men when he played here,’ he said. ‘But
when I asked for his help, he cursed at me. I tell you, the guy’s
going straight to hell.’
“In his biography ‘Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the
Making of an Antihero,’ author Jeff Pearlman describes how the
12-year-old nephew of Pirates pitcher Danny Darwin once
handed Bonds a baseball card to sign. Bonds ripped it in half.
“ ‘In the most basic sense, he’s not a nice person,’ Pearlman said
of Bonds, who refused to be interviewed for the book. ‘He can
be charming, but it doesn’t happen often. He’s the most despised
athlete in America. In his defense, he’s almost socially retarded.
He doesn’t know how to deal with people on a human level. It’s
the way he was raised.’”
Neil Hayes wrote a 2006 Chicago Sun-Times column describing
his time covering Bonds for a Bay Area paper. “What’s he like?
You don’t want to know.” was the headline. “He can treat you
like dirt but, boy, you still better bow to him,” Hayes wrote.
Glionna:
“At Arizona State, Bonds was so disliked that coach Jim Brock
let players vote on whether to kick his star athlete off the team.
‘The verdict was 22 to 2 – only two guys voted to keep him,’
Pearlman said. For obvious reasons, Bonds stayed on the team.”
When Bonds arrived in San Francisco in 1993, he “installed
himself in a separate bank of lockers that came to be known as
‘Barry’s Kingdom.’ It had a private staff of personal trainers, a
vibrating leather lounge chair and a 32-inch TV angled so no one
else could see it.
“ ‘He stiffed the team pictures, didn’t’ stretch with the other
players, had his own trainers,’ said Brian Murphy, a local radio
sports talk show host. ‘What he was telling everyone on the
team was ‘You’re not as good as me.’”
Geezuz, I loath this man.
–Darryl Stingley passed away. He was just 55.
It was on Aug. 12, 1978, during a preseason game between
Stingley’s New England Patriots and the Oakland Raiders, that a
pass to Stingley fell incomplete. Jack Tatum, a Raiders safety
known for his hard hits, slammed into Stingley with his helmet
anyway. Two vertebrae in Stingley’s neck were broken and his
spinal cord was severely damaged. Stingley would only regain
limited use of his hands and arms.
In 1998, Stingley told the AP: “I have relived that moment over
and over again. I was 26 years old at the time and I remember
thinking, What’s going to happen to me? If I live, what am I
going to be like? And then there were all those whys, whys,
whys.’”
Stingley and Tatum never met or talked about the injury. In
1983, Stingley said: “He has not contacted me, not even a
mystery postcard. The bottom line is that I feel sorry for him.”
Tatum, one of the true dirtballs in the history of the game, and
not just because of this one hit, defended himself by saying,
“This is the way the game is played.” In 1980 he wrote his
autobiography and titled it “They Call Me Assassin.” Stingley’s
1983 autobiography was titled “Happy To Be Alive.”
The New York Times’ Dave Anderson commented on Tatum
back then, after the safety said he was just trying to intimidate
Stingley and that if the NFL wanted to do something about hits
like his, it should outlaw quick slant-in patterns like the one on
which Stingley was hurt.
“It’s almost as if John Wilkes Booth’s autobiography glorified
his murder of Abraham Lincoln while suggesting that thereafter a
president be prohibited from attending the theater.”
But in a piece by Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times,
Stingley recalled in 2003, for a story on the 25th anniversary of
the collision, that he wondered whether the immediate response
to his injury might have contributed to his condition.
“If you look at pictures [taken on the field], someone took my
helmet off, and that helmet was on tight,” he said.
“That field at the Oakland Coliseum was watered down too. And
it looked like a bunch of amateur golfers had come through there
– there were so many divots. When I was rolled across the field,
my head was like a bobble-head doll. Ask a physician or
anybody how important it would be to stabilize the patient’s
head. When I hear about the Dennis Byrd story [the Jets’
lineman], how he was a quarter-inch from being paralyzed, it just
makes you think.”
–Holy cow. New Jersey is under attack from a vicious killer.
The Fisher has returned.
“Dark and weasel-like, the fox-sized creature long ago
disappeared from much of its vast North American territory,
retreating to the remaining old forests from California to Maine
and Canada. But it’s back.” [Star-Ledger]
Someone had the brilliant idea to reintroduce the beast in
Pennsylvania and West Virginia and the fishers clearly hitched
rides on the Pa. Turnpike and then Route 78 East to get back into
Jersey after being absent since about 1900.
Fishers eat anything, including porcupines. So it’s possible I
won’t be mauled by coyotes, but ambushed by fishers as I trudge
through the alley from the parking lot to work.
–In “For Better or For Worse,” it appears Dr. Patterson is
meeting with his drug dealer on Monday. The truth is about to
come out.
–Bob Huggins, who coached at Kansas State a whopping one
season and went 23-12, has returned home to coach West
Virginia. Huggins was born in Morgantown, site of the school,
and played his last two college seasons there and was later a
graduate assistant.
But given Huggins track record when it comes to his players and
academics, one is left with little doubt where the Mountaineers’
priorities lie.
–Since 1990, only two African-American pitchers have won 20
games in one season and in the history of the major leagues, only
13 have accomplished the feat. Yes, this will be a future quiz so
start preparing.
–Three climbers were killed when they fell about 2,500 feet in
the French Alps. All were roped together as they attempted to
scale the face of 13,173-foot Dome des Ecrins.
–Ian Tapson, a lieutenant in the South African Air Force and one
of the last survivors of a team of World War II soldiers who
planned and executed a breakout from a German POW camp
later immortalized in the film “The Great Escape,” has died at
the age of 84. From the AP:
“Before an alarm was raised, 76 men managed to escape, but
only three reached safety. Fifty of those recaptured were shot in
a field by the Gestapo.
“Mr. Tapson was not among those who escaped…
“ ‘The prisoners of war selected those who were going to enter
the tunnel by drawing lots. He was very lucky he didn’t draw
one of the lots to escape,’ said a South African historian. Tapson
then survived in the camp until its liberation.
–Two bald eagles have hatched in the wild on Santa Catalina
Island for the first time since DDT and PCBs killed off the
population and damaged coastal fisheries and seabirds. The last
time a bald eagle egg hatched in the wild there was in the mid-
1940s.
But the chicks belong to an 8-year-old female and a 21-year-old
male introduced under a program aimed at restoring the island’s
bald eagle population. Oh, don’t you know there’s a story there.
Certainly the other eagles are screeching about the age
difference.
–What a sad story, the tragic death of film director Robert Clark
and his son at the hands of a drunk driver in Los Angeles. But
Clark left all of us with the classic “A Christmas Story” and we
can be thankful for that.
–And we note the passing of cartoonist Johnny Hart. His strip
“B.C.” was first launched in 1958.
–Boy, CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo can’t buy a break, and I’m not
about to give her one. Saturday’s New York Post Page Six ran
the following.
“Maria’s Mantra: Do It Again!
“Maria Bartiromo must be a man-eating tigress in the bedroom,
based on her eye-popping quotes about getting ahead in life in a
new book on personal growth by veteran TV personality Bill
Boggs.
“ ‘Stamina, for me, is just coming back and coming back and
doing it again and again,’ the steel-clawed CNBC ‘Money
Honey’ pants in ‘Got What It Takes?’ out next week from
Collins Books. Bartiromo – who weathered a flap over her rides
with a male Citibank exec on the bank’s corporate jet by refusing
to talk about it – also shares the mental tricks she uses to stay
strong. ‘You have to be mentally tough,’ she says. ‘You must
keep the finish line in focus…You call this emotional
endurance.’”
–Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are looking to adopt a 5th child,
this one from Chad, and as the New York Post reports, the
tabloids are ready to pounce, those tired of People getting the
exclusives, that is.
“Jolie – who recently adopted a 3-year-old Vietnamese boy she
renamed Pax Thien – also has a Cambodian son, Maddox, and an
Ethiopian daughter, Zahara, plus her biological daughter with
Pitt, Shiloh.
“ ‘Angelina and Brad want to make sure Zahara doesn’t feel
alienated as the only black face in their family,’ a source told
London’s News of the World. Jolie herself recently said,
‘Should you balance the races, so there’s another African person
in the house for Zahara, after another Asian person in the house
for Mad? We think so.”
Oh brother.
–Pattie Boyd, the former wife of both George Harrison and Eric
Clapton, has written her autobiography, “Wonderful Tonight,”
wherein she writes of her 10-year marriage to Harrison before
Clapton stole her away. The real story is:
“One day, I got a letter in the mail. It was written on a piece of
paper torn out of a copy of the novel ‘Of Mice and Men,’” writes
Boyd. “In tiny, scrawly, little handwriting it said, ‘Dear Pattie, I
have always loved you and this is breaking my heart. All I want
is to be with you.’ So I showed it to George, who just dismissed
it. Early that evening, the phone rang and it was Eric. He said,
‘Did you get my letter?’”
Boyd then launched into an affair with Clapton and eventually
dumped Harrison to marry Eric in 1977. That marriage lasted 11
years. Boyd was of course the source of the songs “Something”
by Harrison and Clapton’s “Layla.”
Incredibly, Clapton and Harrison remained good friends until
Harrison’s death.
Top 3 songs for the week of 4/7/73: #1 “The Night The Lights
Went Out In Georgia” (Vicki Lawrence…she was hot…can I say
that?) #2 “Neither One Of us (Wants To Be The First To Say
Goodbye)” (Gladys Knight & The Pips…can’t stand them) #3
“Killing Me Softly With His Song” (Roberta Flack…Gladys
Knight should have taken a lesson from Roberta…dump the
Pips)…and…#4 “Ain’t No Woman (Like The One I’ve Got)”
(Four Tops…simply the best…and blows Gladys and the
freakin’ Pips away) #5 “Break Up To Make Up” (The
Stylistics…yet another that put the Pips to shame) #6 “Tie A
Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree” (Dawn featuring Tony
Orlando) #7 “Sing” (Carpenters) #8 “Danny’s Song” (Anne
Murray…my mother couldn’t stand her) #9 “Also Sprach
Zarathustra (2001)” (Deodato…Aagghhhh! Just the other day I
mentioned this was one of the worst tunes of the century!) #10
“The Cisco Kid” (War…now this is one baddass song…great car
tune)
Baltimore Orioles Quiz Answers: 1) Camden Yards opened in
1992. 2) The last time they finished over .500 was 1997, 98-64.
3) The last World Series appearance was 1983, when they
defeated the Phillies, 4-1. 4) The last Cy Young winner was
Steve Stone, 1980. 5) The last batting champion was Frank
Robinson, 1966. 6) The last 20-game winner was Mike
Boddicker, 1984, 20-11. 7) The two Rookies of the Year in the
60s were shortstop Ron Hansen (1960) and outfielder Curt
Blefary (1965). 8) Luis Aparicio stole 57 in 1964. If you got
six or better, pour yourself a cold frosty.
And now…your EXCLUSIVE baseball projections for the 2007
season, based off the first week of play. Our crack staff slaved
all Sunday evening (after watching “The Sopranos” and
“Entourage” of course) to give you what you’ve come to rely on
all these years….the Bar Chat Advantage.
The Phillies Ryan Howard, homerless in his first six games, will
finish with 8.
Aknori Iwamura, an off-season pickup from Japan by Tampa
Bay, is off to a .529 start and we can now project he’ll hit .398.
Ichiro, snowed out in Cleveland all weekend, is nonetheless 4 for
10 in his first three games and we now see Ichiro hitting .425.
Florida’s Miguel Cabrera, hitting .500, will finish the season at
.404.
A-Rod, with four homers and 11 RBI in his first five contests,
will finish with 87 HR and 243 RBI; but the Yankees will finish
62-99 [one rainout not made up] and A-Rod will have a nervous
breakdown on Sept. 29.
Barry Bonds, with just one homerun in the team’s fist six games
will NOT…repeat NOT…break Aaron’s record as he throws a
tantrum over the Giants’ awful 2-56 start, tears up the clubhouse,
and is booted off the team. [The following day he’ll be indicted
for income tax evasion.]
Minnesota’s two-time Cy Young award winner Johan Santana,
off to a 2-0 start, will win all 33 of his efforts, becoming the first
30-game winner since Denny McLain in 1968.
Derek Jeter, with three errors in his first five games, will end up
with 74; this from a guy who hasn’t had more than 15 in each of
his last six seasons.
The Mets’ Jose Reyes, with three triples in his first six games,
will end up with 89.
The Mets, incidentally, originally penciled in for 148 wins, will
instead win only 139.
The Washington Nationals, on the other hand, will indeed finish
14-148.
The Pirates, off to a flying 4-2 start, will shock the world and go
133-29.
And lastly, we have the mystery of the Mets’ David Wright.
Now I did some real research on him last night and this is a guy
who hit 20 homers in his first 87 games last year, participated in
the homerun derby at the All-Star Game, and proceeded to suffer
the curse, a la Bobby Abreu, for doing so. Wright then had only
7 homeruns the next 77 games, including one in ten playoff
contests, and has followed that up with zero in his first six in ’07.
We can thus confidently project that Wright, despite hitting .295,
will end up with 2 HR and 23 RBI in 154 games for the Mets.
The reason why the Mets will still win 139 is that Reyes, aside
from 89 triples, will bat .388, drive in 156, steal 99 bases, and
score 234.
And, of course, you can take all of the above to the bank.
Next Bar Chat, Monday…April 16 from Hong Kong. I promise
some good stories.
