NHL Quiz: Name the top ten goal scorers all time. [Hint: None
are active.] Answer below.
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, part II
I flew back out to Kansas City, Saturday, for another hookup
with Summit, N.J., legend Willie Wilson and the 8th annual
Legacy Awards show that honors players, managers, and owners
from the just-completed season. For instance they pass out
awards to the league MVPs, pitchers of the year, as they phrase
it, stolen bases (the “Cool Papa” Bell Award), batting
champions, managers of the year, etc.
The bad part is of 18 recipients at the major league level,
including executives of the year, only four showed up! Pitcher
C.C. Sabathia, Prince Fielder, and managers of the year Eric
Wedge (Cleveland) and Bob Melvin (Arizona).
The rumor for weeks had been that A-Rod would show, but, alas,
he didn’t. Heck, last year Derek Jeter did (along with Ryan
Howard) despite a big snowstorm, which tells you everything
about who has the class on that team. Willie was tabbed to name
all those who didn’t show. We need to get him a better part next
time.
But the theater (which is across the street from the museum in
what is a great complex) was packed and thanks to Willie and
Helen, I was part of the cocktail reception before the awards
show. So I got up close (but not personal) with the likes of C.C.,
who just so happens to be my favorite pitcher these days, a real
throwback, and the great J.R. Richard. I mean to tell you, both
these guys are absolutely huge in person. As for Richard,
baseball fans will recall he was basically left for dead a number
of years ago, living under an expressway overpass, if I remember
right. [I’ll do more on him another day.] J.R. presented the
pitching award to C.C. along with another all-time great…Jim
“Mudcat” Grant.
Remember how last fall I told you how I met the “Toy Cannon,”
Jimmy Wynn, and noted what an immensely classy guy he was?
Ditto for Mudcat. The guy oozes class. Helen (who works with
Willie) told me Mudcat is just the best of them all…and he’s one
helluva soul singer!
Actor Robert Wuhl emceed for the second year and was very
funny. He started by giving a list of all those who were asked to
do the job before he was selected, about fifty in all, that was
hilarious. I think I was one of just a handful, though, that got the
Moms Mabley reference; the younger crowd not having a clue
who this Ed Sullivan fixture was.
Oh, and guess who else presented an award, the slugger
hardware to Prince Fielder? My man….the great Willie Horton!
The poor guy was so nervous, fumbling with his lines, but I have
to tell you it was a thrill to see him. I felt badly I somehow
missed him at the cocktail reception. There’s a lot of adulation I
wanted to foist on him. We all have our great baseball memories
from childhood and many of mine involve watching “The Game
of the Week,” when it meant something, and seeing those great
Tigers of yore.
And the Jackie Robinson Lifetime Achievement Award went to
Minnie Minoso, who still looks great at 82. They showed a
video of his base hit when he was 50 in 1976, a neat baseball
moment. He gave a great speech (though I’d be lying if I said I
understood every word…he’s Cuban, if you don’t know who I’m
talking about). The gist of it was how great America is and how
whites and blacks should get along. He received a well-deserved
standing O.
Back to Willie W., the two of us are doing an event on March 6
in Summit. I’m the sponsor and it’s being billed as “An Evening
with Willie Wilson,” with a focus on his senior year in high
school and the recruiting game.
I know I’ve bored you to tears with this stuff before, but I keep
learning new things concerning how heavily he was recruited for
football before going into baseball. As in I’m doing side
research at the local historical society, reading old newspapers,
and forgot how seriously hurt he was his senior year in the
second game; a back injury that laid him up for a spell. A friend
told me who visited Willie in the hospital but I needed
confirmation, which I got.
So picture this. There is Willie, basically immobile, and in walks
his coach with………….Gale Sayers! The one and only. Gale
was recruiting for Kansas and to watch Willie describe the scene
is priceless….struggling to get out of the bed but he can’t move.
Sayers was his hero, after all. Hell, Sayers was everyone’s hero.
Jim Brown is the best running back of all time, with Barry
Sanders number two, in my rankings, but Sayers was truly
special in his own right.
Willie also told of the time he came home from basketball
practice and there is Woody Hayes, sitting in his living room
talking to his mother. Woody just popped in, unannounced, and
the three went to the Summit Diner for a bite.
There’s a lot more, which I’ll parcel out from time to time. Our
relationship is only going to grow as his is a helluva story. He’s
also good people.
NFL Football
While in K.C. on Saturday, I did manage to catch large segments
of the Packers and Patriots’ games, and then caught Sunday’s
action at home. I picked San Diego the beginning of the season
so I’m pleased thus far. [And what a clutch punt that was at the
end in their win over Indy.]
But how about the much-maligned Eli Manning? I’ve been as
hard on him as anyone, but he has a free pass here for the next
year, regardless of what happens against Green Bay. I’m also
happy for Tom Coughlin. Good job, Coach.
After the Giants defeated his Cowboys, Terrell Owens broke down
and cried in a pitiful display.
“This is not about Tony (Romo). You guys can point the finger
at him, you can talk about the vacation (with Jessica) and if you
do that, it is really unfair. It’s really unfair. That is my
teammate. That is my quarterback. And if you guys do that, it is
unfair. We lost as a team. We lost as a team, man.”
Oh shut up. As for Jessica Simpson, she called Romo after the
game to say she was leaving him for Philip Rivers.
Sir Edmund Hillary, RIP
[With his passing at the age of 88, I reprise a piece I did back in
May 2003.]
As we approach the 50th anniversary of Hillary’s great feat, May
29, 1953, we take a look at some aspects of his assault on Mount
Everest.
But first, Hillary had a rather non-descript upbringing in New
Zealand. “A reader and a dreamer,” in his own words, he was
most comfortable alone, with nature. He took an interest in
mountain climbing, scaling the glorious peaks of his native land,
and by 1953 he found himself part of a Commonwealth
expedition to Nepal.
Sportswriter Richard Hoffer did a piece for Sports Illustrated
back in December 1999 wherein he described the allure of
Everest.
“Mount Everest was the last in the geographical set that made up
the goals of what had been known as the Heroic Age. The Poles
had been reached, the mouth of the Nile found, the deepest
oceans marked, the wildest jungles trekked.” No one had
climbed Everest, which was thought to be 29,002 feet back then,
now 29,035.”
By the 1950s, the British Empire was fading rapidly. Britain
itself was finding it very hard to recover from the devastation of
World War II, and Everest would supply a real shot in the arm.
The leader of the ’53 expedition was Colonel John Hunt, a
distinguished mountaineer and one of General Montgomery’s
staff officers during the war. Hunt handpicked Hillary and
Sherpa Tenzing Norgay as one of his two assault teams. But I
bet you forgot that there was another team that went before these
two (because I never knew this), that being Tom Bourdillon and
Charles Evans. Both Hillary and Norgay were jealous as hell,
especially as Bourdillon and Evans closed on the peak.
But the two had to turn back just 285 feet from the summit.
Upon returning to camp, Evans told Hillary, “I don’t think you’re
going to get to the top along that ridge.”
Hillary didn’t believe this. Heck, he had scaled the Alps of New
Zealand and didn’t see anything particularly unusual, or difficult,
about the last few hundred feet of Everest. And he had Norgay
by his side, the former yak herder, incidentally.
As Hoffer writes:
“At 11:30 on the morning of May 29….Hillary took one last
stride up a gentle rise and found himself, first ever among
humankind, standing and looking down at all the world beneath
him.
“He and Norgay shook hands, and then Hillary took photographs
of the Sherpa. ‘It never crossed my mind to give Tenzing the
camera to take my picture,’ he said. ‘Why did I need a
photograph? I knew I’d been there, and that was good enough
for me.’”
Upon their return to camp, Hillary exclaimed, “Well, we
knocked the bastard off.”
News of the accomplishment didn’t reach Britain until June 2,
which was ironic because it was the same day Queen Elizabeth II
was being crowned, making the event all the more special.
Ironically, the Sherpas weren’t fired up at the fact that Hillary
was first. Everest, after all, was a god to them, but the modest
Hillary agreed to change the story and had Norgay and him
reaching the summit simultaneously. Later on, and to this day,
Sir Edmund dedicated his life to helping these poor people and
they grew to love him for his good works, just as the people of
New Zealand do to this day.
Tragically, Hillary’s wife and his youngest daughter died in a
plane crash in Katmandu in 1975, an incident he never fully
recovered from. It didn’t help that someone had neglected to
free the ailerons on the small craft (which meant it couldn’t
bank).
But even to this day, you can find his name in the Auckland
phone book, or so I’m told, and his face is on the country’s five-
dollar bill. Hillary does, however, have a major problem with
the amount of climbers who have journeyed to Everest over the
last 50 years, some 10,000, all of whom are leaving their garbage
(and 70 aluminum ladders) on the face of the mountain. About
2,000 have now made it to the top.
Who was the first American? James Whittaker in 1963.
Marion Jones / Roger Clemens
Jones was sentenced to six months in prison for lying to
investigators about her use of steroids and involvement in a
check-fraud scheme. Throughout it all, Marion never once
admitted to using the substances, insisting it was flaxseed oil.
Truly pitiful, and sad.
Federal Judge Kenneth Karas said up front the harsh sentence
was designed to serve as a deterrent. Jones, in his words, told a
“worldwide lie” and as to her pronouncements of innocence:
“That is very difficult to believe, that a top-notch athlete,
knowing that a razor-thin margin makes the difference, would
not be keenly aware of what he or she put in their body. It was a
troubling statement.”
Flip Bondy / New York Daily News
“Jones has until March 11 to show up for jail in Texas. One of
the most adored Olympic athletes in American history was
bundled into a black Lincoln Town Car Friday, for a police
escort out of town. Clemens should have been there to see it all.”
Speaking of Roger, his hearing before Congress has been
postponed to Feb. 13.
Christine Brennan / USA Today
“In his words and actions, Clemens is telling us that he knows his
reputation is ruined. He knows that unless McNamee, the man
who says he injected Clemens with steroids, dissolves into a
blubbering ball of goo at a congressional committee hearing Feb.
13, recanting all his charges against the seven-time Cy Young
Award winner, it’s over. Clemens will never be able to prove he
didn’t take performance-enhancing drugs, so, whether he did or
not, the public perception will be that he did, and that’s that.”
And I loved this bit by the above mentioned Richard Hoffer of
Sports Illustrated.
“Clemens is a known workout hound and would not be the first
athlete to have made a fetish out of his conditioning. And
attention to detail surely accounts somewhat for the longevity of
his career, which found him pitching at a high level, and high
income, well into his 40s. While nobody doubts that Clemens,
now 45, would have required some salve along the way (he now
wonders if the painkilling Vioxx he was eating ‘like Skittles’
might revisit him with side effects), doctors nevertheless find it
strange that a trainer would administer a prescription drug like
lidocaine or that anybody needs to inject B-12. That, by the way,
has become one very notorious vitamin; Rafael Palmeiro said he
was mistakenly dosed with steroids during a routine B-12 shot.
The question remains: Can’t anybody just grab a handful of
Flintstones and be done with it?”
Hoffer adds:
“The public blowback was slow building, but it’s finally arrived.
Clemens will get no slack, no understanding, not much room to
maneuver here. A nation that’s been duped for so long has
become predictably vengeful, not much given to tolerance, on the
lookout for scapegoats, philanderers and rogue vitamin monsters.
Heroes, treated to vast reservoirs of trust, must now drink from
briny puddles of skepticism.”
Now that’s a piece of writing, sports fans. Wish I came up with
it.
Stuff
–The hero of the 1955 World Series, pitcher Johnny Podres, died.
He was 75. Podres pitched two complete game victories in the
Brooklyn Dodgers’ only world championship, including a Game
Seven shutout against the Yankees. For his career, Podres was
148-116 and in four World Series for the Dodgers was 4-1 with a
2.11 ERA.
–We note the passing of flamboyant figure skater Christopher
Bowman, 40. As of this writing, cause of death has not been
determined but it was well known he had problems with drug
abuse.
For those of us who only follow figure skating every four years,
this guy was certainly entertaining. He won the U.S. men’s
figure skating titles in 1989 and 1992, won a bronze and silver at
the world championships, but finished seventh and fourth in his
two Olympics, 1988 and 1992.
–Larry Scott, the head of the Women’s Tennis Association, told
the BBC that the Russian mafia could be involved in fixing
matches.
“One has to assume that people running organized crime would
be involved in trying to gain an advantage by corrupting the
competition. We have to be prepared for the possibility [of
Russian mafia involvement] but we have no proof.”
–The Indianapolis Colts cheerleaders are vastly underrated. And
speaking of attractive women, at the Negro Leagues function
Wendy Raquel Robinson was a presenter (she’s on a television
show I’ve never seen called “The Game”). Goodness gracious.
–So I’m reading an interview in Golf Digest with Padraig
Harrington and I think the following tale says it all about the
kind of person he is.
Fellow Irishman and golfing rival Darren Clarke’s wife had a
well-publicized bout with cancer from which she succumbed in
2006. Clarke takes his two boys to visit Heather’s grave
frequently and on one of the trips he found a bouquet of flowers
and a note from Padraig and Caroline Harrington. Geezuz,
almost makes you want to cry.
–For the archives I have to note the Saint Louis Billikens’ effort
on the basketball court the other night against George
Washington. Saint Louis scored 20 points, the modern Division
I record for futility, as they hit just 7-for-48 (14.6 percent) from
the field, including 1-for-19 from 3-point range. They trailed 25-
7 at the half on the way to the 49-20 loss. Saint Louis is coached
by Rick Majerus, in his first year there.
–So I’ve been a good boy in not mentioning the surprisingly
strong start of the Wake Forest basketball team because I didn’t
want to jinx them. I needn’t worry now…as in they lost on
Saturday to a mediocre Boston College squad, 112-73. Wake
had been showing signs of learning how to play defense, after
years of shirking this facet of the game, but BC shot 13 of 19
from downtown and over 60% from the field for the game.
–Carl Karcher died, age 90. Carl took a single hot dog pushcart
and turned it into a burger empire of more than 1,000 fast-food
restaurants bearing his name. At one time he was said to have a
net worth of $100 million, but ill-advised personal investments,
insider-trading allegations, tussles with the board, and the
backlash from his rather controversial political leanings led to his
downfall in the 1980s and 90s.
But according to an obituary in the L.A. Times by Eric Malnic:
“In 1941, Karcher borrowed $311 against his new Plymouth
sedan, kicked in $15 of his own and bought a hot dog cart, which
he set up at Florence and Central avenues in South-Central Los
Angeles, across from the old Goodyear plant. According to the
Orange County Business Journal, sales that first day totaled
$14.75.
“Business picked up, and, within months, Karcher owned several
other hot dog carts. After a stint in the Army during World War
II, he returned to Southern California in 1945 and opened his
first full-service restaurant, called Carl’s Drive-In Barbeque, in
Anaheim. In 1956, he opened two more restaurants, one in Brea
and the other in Anaheim. Smaller versions were called Carl’s
Jr.”
By 1975 there were 100 Carl’s franchises. In 1980, the 300th
opened. By 1993, it was 600. But it was at that time that profits
were drying up, for a second time, and Carl Karcher was ousted
as chairman. He ended up returning but his role was drastically
reduced, though he did spearhead the introduction of the
successful green burrito, if I remember correctly.
–A final word on the incident involving Golf Channel anchor
Kelly Tilghman, who was suspended for two weeks for saying
young players who wanted to challenge Tiger Woods should
“lynch him in a back alley.” It needs to be said that Tiger
himself accepted Ms. Tilghman’s immediate apology. Tiger’s
agent, Mark Steinberg, said “Tiger and Kelly are friends, and
Tiger has a great deal of respect for Kelly. Regardless of the
choice of words used, we know unequivocally that there was no
ill-intent in her comments.”
Good for you, Tiger.
–Sports Illustrated’s Top 10 for the 2008 College Football
season.
1. Georgia 2. Ohio State 3. Oklahoma 4. USC 5. Missouri 6.
West Virginia 7. Florida 8. Kansas 9. LSU 10. Wisconsin
Barring preseason injury, I’m going with Georgia myself next
fall.
–Oh yeah…I’m watching “The Wire” this year. But I’m happy I
didn’t meet Sarah Connor in high school, know what I’m sayin’?
I mean she seems like kind of a sexy girl and all, but she’s also
pretty creepy.
–SI’s “Sign of the Apocalypse”:
“Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis is marketing an energy
drink called Slump Buster, ballplayer slang for an unattractive
groupie.”
–This is cool….according to Fred Aun of the Star-Ledger, New
Jersey now has 64 bald eagle pairs, with 219 total.
–I like Seal’s music…it’s certainly a change of pace from what I
normally listen to, so I was impressed by his five favorite
albums, as listed in the Wall Street Journal.
Dionne Warwick, “Here I Am” (1966)
Jimi Hendrix, “Axis: Bold as Love” (1967)
Crosby, Stills and Nash, “Crosby, Stills & Nash” (1969)
Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On” (1971)
Stevie Wonder, “Innervisions” (1973)
Not bad, Seal…not bad at all.
Top 3 songs for the week 1/18/64: #1 “There! I’ve Said It
Again” (Bobby Vinton) #2 “Louie Louie” (The Kingsmen) #3
“Popsicles And Icicles” (The Murmaids)…and…#4 “Forget
Him” (Bobby Rydell) #5 “Surfin’ Bird” (The Trashmen) #6
“Dominique” (The Singing Nun) #7 “Hey Little Cobra” (The Rip
Chords) #8 “The Nitty Gritty” (Shirley Ellis) #9 “Out of
Limits” (The Marketts) #10 “Drag City” (Jan & Dean…this
week was literally the last gasp before the British Invasion as the
Beatles entered the top ten the following one with “I Want To
Hold Your Hand”…and the rest was history)
NHL Quiz Answer: Top ten goal scorers all time –
1. Wayne Gretzky…894
2. Gordie Howe…801
3. Brett Hull…741
4. Marcel Dionne…731
5. Phil Esposito…717
6. Mike Gartner…708
7. Mark Messier…694
8. Steve Yzerman…692
9. Mario Lemieux…690
10. Luc Robitaille…668
* As of 1/9, Brendan Shanahan was 11th at 642 and Jaromir Jagr
was 13th at 633.
Next chat, Thursday. The Coors Light/Bar Chat All-Species List!
