Title Town Quiz: The Wall Street Journal had some data on major American metro areas and titles they have won in the big four…MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL. Includes NFL/AFL titles from 1933-65; World Series since 1903; NBA since 1946-47; NHL since 1926-27. Green Bay is lumped with Milwaukee. New York does not include the Devils or Nets. So…1) Name the five metro areas with 20 titles. 2) Name the two with just one. Answers below.
Steelers vs. Packers
It’s late, I’m tired, and not a happy camper so I’m going to keep this brief. As a Jets fan, of course there is deep disappointment, but not too many teams have given their fans this much to cheer about the past two seasons. The Jets fought back hard from 24-0, showed a ton of character, but Ben Roethlisberger is just a terrific quarterback and he’s one guy where you basically throw out the numbers when dissecting his play…he’s simply a winner…now 10-2 in postseason. And while Troy Polamalu didn’t play a particularly outstanding game, the fact is the Steelers are now 17-4 the past two seasons with him, 6-7 when he’s out.
As for Packers-Bears, what the heck was the deal with Jay Cutler? The truth will come out as to whether he really could have played or not. Meanwhile, despite a poor second half, Aaron Rodgers is a stud.
So we have as attractive a Super Bowl matchup as you could come up with in terms of national fan support (Dallas is nowhere as popular nationally as it used to be). I picked the Packers at the start of the season to win it all. I also have those family connections in Pittsburgh. I’ll just enjoy the game and it will not disappoint.
Lastly, Rex Ryan will be back and the Jets will be in the playoffs a third straight season, whether you all like it or not. Mark Sanchez will finally get his due as one of the top gunslingers in the NFL. Of course that’s assuming there isn’t a lockout.
But now I take off my Jetswear and place it in the drawer, while hoping Dunkin’ Donuts continues to make the cream-filled pastry with the Jets logo on top.
—College Basketball Review
Before I get to the pathetic excuse of a basketball program that is my alma mater, pretty impressive win for No. 11 Texas at No. 2 Kansas on Saturday, 74-63. Not only were the Longhorns down 35-23 at half, only to then blitz the Jayhawks, but the victory broke Kansas’ 69-game home winning streak. Also on Saturday, No. 7 Villanova had a nice 83-72 win at No. 3 Syracuse.
This coming Wednesday, though, it’s San Diego State at BYU. Gonna stay up for that one. At this point in the year, if the Aztecs can split their two contests against the Cougars, SDSU probably locks up a 2-seed, assuming it doesn’t stumble more than once with the rest of its conference schedule. [Everyone else around them in the rankings will stumble at least once as well.]
But let’s start the discussion on my Wake Forest Demon Deacons by looking at their opening five games in ACC play.
Loss…North Carolina State…90-69
Loss…Maryland…74-55
Loss…Virginia Tech…94-65
Loss…Georgia Tech…74-39
Loss…Duke…83-59
This is on top of earlier defeats at the hands of those basketball powers Stetson, Winthrop, UNC-Wilmington and Presbyterian.
We have now lost our first five ACC games by an average 25.6 points, though at least on Saturday we almost beat the spread of 23.
Now I had vowed not to watch another minute of Wake action the rest of the year unless I saw on the Web we had a chance to win with, say, ten minutes left in the game, but on Saturday I was forced to go back on my promise because we were on national TV and I wanted to see how quickly I’d need to peel off the Wake Forest bumper sticker from my car.
The announcers, who for five minutes couldn’t identify J.T. Terrell from fellow guard Tony Chennault, which I know had to be driving Wake fans crazy because it had that effect on me, kept rehashing Wake’s historic 74-39 drubbing at the hands of Georgia Tech on Wednesday night, after I had posted my last Bar Chat. So for the archives here were the damages.
The 39 points for the Deacs was the fewest scored by a Wake team since 1959. The 9 of 26 from the free throw line (34.6%) was the worst performance in the entire ACC in 15 years. Wake shot 26% from the field. We committed a turnover every four possessions.
This was a team that in mid-February of last year was No. 25 in the country with an 18-5 record, 8-3 in the ACC, before the big slide occurred that we haven’t gotten out of. In mid-February of the 2008-09 campaign, Wake was No. 8 in the country. Yes, this season Wake is young, having lost three sophomores to the NBA in the past two years (much to the detriment of those players’ personal development), but this collapse of the basketball program is truly of historic proportions.
And how embarrassing, on national TV, to have a home game against Duke with 3/4s of the crowd being comprised of Blue Devils supporters?! Oh yeah, that’s one way to wow a recruit.
But we do have the nation’s best 3-point shooter, Gary Clark, 35 of 54, 65%. Yippee! And we haven’t yet fallen to Cleveland Cavaliers depth, though we’re almost there.
Did you see the Cavs? Post-LeBron, they started the season 7-9. Suddenly they are 8-35. A 1-26 slide of titanic proportions. 16 losses in a row. It’s at this point where management should have the right to withhold the players’ salaries. “Gentlemen, I’m sorry we have to do this but we can’t in good conscience charge $40 a ticket to watch such schmegma and then pay you. If you need any help telling your mistresses, Bob from personnel would be happy to explain it all to them.”
–Speaking of management, there’s increasing talk of lockouts in both the NBA and NFL, despite some of the stories floating out there to the contrary. The NBA’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA) ends June 30 and according to USA TODAY’s Jeff Zillgitt, “the league and players are no closer to a labor deal than a year ago.”
“The chasm between the sides is wide and deep as the league seeks to overhaul the economic model and the union prefers to have tweaks to it.”
A lockout in 1999 resulted in a 50-game season. But today, NBA Players Association executive director Billy Hunter said some of the owners “seem to be a little bit more zealous and rabid” than Commissioner David Stern. “At least that’s been their demonstration in terms of their demands. They don’t appear to be backing down from them, and they’ve threatened a lockout. So I have no choice but to believe that they mean it.”
The league says it will lose $350 million this season, so the owners want a hard salary cap, a significant reduction in salaries and a reduction in guaranteed money. What? No more $10 million per guarantees for the likes of Eddy Curry?! Are you kidding me?!
Of course the players say the current CBA is working, but the union says it is willing to trim the 57% of basketball-related income now guaranteed to them.
Back in the fall, Stern said the league wants a swing of $750 million-$800 million in salaries and benefits going from the players to the NBA, which would equate to players getting about 40% of the basketball-related income.
Seems like a huge gap in the positions, as in it’s not a matter of splitting the difference. Billy Hunter says a key will be if the league acts like it wants to negotiate before the upcoming All-Star game.
As for the NFL, Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times had a piece on the feelings of Steelers owner Dan Rooney. Speaking on Friday, Rooney told reporters:
“We should have a deal. We should not let the disruption of next season happen because of a lockout, a strike, or whatever…It’s in everybody’s best interest to get a deal….
But, Rooney said the owners are united in their determination to scrap the CBA, which in the NFL’s case expires in March. “Status quo is not an option,” he said.
Rooney said he’s most upset at the glacial pace of negotiations, though he adds that were it not for the 2008 death of NFLPA executive director Gene Upshaw, a deal might have already been cut. He also said there is “distrust” on the ownership side when it comes to dealing with current union head DeMaurice Smith, with Rooney going so far as to say, “Maybe dislike is a better word.”
Rooney, though, is one of the few owners staunchly opposed to expanding the regular season to 18 games, which is the paramount issue of the negotiations. The players rightly feel that they will just break down quicker. The average career of an NFLer is only three years to begin with, after all. In defense of them, Rooney says:
“You have a system that works, so why add (the games)? Now the people usually say, ‘The preseason doesn’t work.’ Well, look at the preseason as the preseason and try to work that out. Don’t say you’re going to start messing with the full system.”
Rooney admits, though, he isn’t the one to ask when the issue of playing the preseason at discounted ticket prices comes up, this being the prime complaint of NFL season-ticket holders who are sick of paying full price for meaningless garbage.
“The Steeler nation, they’re wild. They like to see the preseason games to see these kids play and how they’re going to be, start guessing who’s good.”
If I had to guess, I’d say the NFL is definitely headed to a lockout over the expansion of the regular season (though both sides will agree on reducing the outrageous guarantees handed out to top draft picks), while despite the huge gap in existing stances, the NBA reaches an agreement, perhaps just a 2- or 3-year deal.
–Uh oh…the New York Knicks were 22-15 and the Garden was rocking not too long ago. But now they’ve lost six in a row and suddenly the playoffs are no longer a lock.
So Bar Chat once again went to former Knick and Net star, Micheal (sic) Ray Richardson for some comment.
BC: Micheal Ray, what do you think is happening to the Knicks?
–A recent Harris poll found that 27% of Americans consider pro football to be their favorite sport, 14% baseball, 11% basketball, 10% NASCAR and 9% college football.
–After completing the Tour Down Under race in Adelaide, Australia, Lance Armstrong said he was calling it quits when it comes to international events. In the Adelaide six-stage race, Armstrong finished outside the top 50. It’s not easy competing without a little help, know what I’m sayin’?
–Kind of fascinating goings on for Yankees fanatics as General Manager Brian Cashman admitted in no uncertain terms that he was totally against the signing of reliever Rafael Soriano to a three-year, $35 million deal just to be Mariano Rivera’s setup guy. The ownership team overruled him, while Cashman said he was simply trying to be realistic and pare down a $200 million payroll. What’s bizarre is that Soriano can walk away from the contract after each of the first two seasons if he feels he can get a better deal from someone else.
—Barry Bonds’ trial on perjury and obstruction of justice charges is set to start March 21. U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston has approved a lineup of former players that will be compelled to testify, players such as Marvin Benard, Jeremy Giambi, Benito Santiago, and Randy Velarde, as well as possibly Jason Giambi who is still active, though as the judge put it, they might not all testify if the evidence presented becomes repetitious. “And then he was injected in the butt…” “And then Barry was injected in the butt…” “And then I saw Mr. Bonds injected in the butt…”
But first we have a big hearing on Feb. 11, at which time Illston will rule on the admissibility of a secretly recorded phone conversation between trainer Greg Anderson and Bonds’ former business partner Steve Hoskins where Anderson supposedly discusses how he had been helping Bonds avoid infections by injecting him in various spots rather than one. Bonds has testified no one injected him except his doctor. And the tooth fairy placed $42,000 under my pillow last night for failure to make good on a promise when I was five (including punitive damages).
–Pretty funny that Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez are headed to Tampa Bay after working out one-year deals of $5.25 million and $2 million, respectively. Manny will DH. Damon will play left field, it seems. I didn’t see if Manny was allowed to bring his medicine bag on road trips.
–79-year-old Willie Mays returned to Harlem on Friday, stopping at Public School 46 to showcase the San Francisco Giants’ World Series trophy and present some memorabilia, like autographed baseballs, to 13 high-achieving students. PS 46, you see, was built on the site of the old Polo Grounds, and this was a rare trip home for the legend.
But I loved this part of the story, as told by James Fanelli of the New York Daily News.
“When Mays got to the last student, fifth-grader Kendryck Taveras, he realized he was one ball short. The quick-thinking Hall of Famer whipped out a money clip and said, ‘I don’t know if I’m supposed to do this.’
“Mays then asked his pal, Major League Baseball analyst Harold Reynolds, to peel off a $100 bill to give to Kendryck.
“ ‘You’re gonna get the ball too,’ promised Mays. A surprised Kendryck said the C-note made his day.
“ ‘I’d rather have the $100,’ the grinning 11-year-old said. ‘I’m going to save it.’”
But imagine a different time, as Mays told the students, when he was a Giant and played stickball with the neighborhood youth. The Say Hey Kid also admits none of the kids in Harlem today know who he is, but he gave them all some advice: cash in on his name.
“The shirts, these balls – if you don’t like them, don’t give them away. Sell them.”
So I was glancing at Mays’ record on baseball-reference.com and one thing always strikes me. At age 40, his last full season with San Francisco and clearly on his last legs, he nonetheless had a career best on-base percentage of .425 to lead the league, with a league best 112 walks. He also stole 23 bases in 26 attempts, his highest stolen base total in 11 years!
And while I was on the site, I couldn’t help but look at Rickey Henderson’s career to remind myself what he did at age 40…hit .315 for the Mets with 37 steals and a .423 OBP. You also crack up when you look at Rickey and his paucity of triples despite his speed and a never-to-be beat 1,406 career stolen bases. Rickey twice had seven triples in a season, the last time at age 24, but in his last 16 seasons never hit more than three!
Of course there was a reason for Rickey always pulling up at second. He wanted to pad his stats by stealing third. Actually, he hit few doubles, as well; the better to steal both second and third.
Yup, Rickey Henderson was one of the top five characters (among great players) in the game’s history. [Stan Musial or Lou Gehrig weren’t characters…Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth were, is what I’m saying. Pete Rose was a character. Don Drysdale was. Sandy Koufax wasn’t. Jackie Robinson was. Hank Aaron wasn’t. Lou Brock wasn’t. Bob Gibson most definitely was. Tom Seaver wasn’t. Reggie Jackson might have been top five. OK, now I’m rambling…moving right along….
–…But kind of staying on topic…The current issue of GQ has an article titled:
“The 25 Coolest Athletes of All Time”
“The icons we remember and revere are not always the guys with the best stats or the slickest end-zone dance. They’re the ones who played the game like it was an expression of who they were and taught us how to be big-time with grace, style, and swagger. They’re the guys we never got tired of watching. And never will.”
In no particular order, GQ lists the following…and it’s a good group. But this is a list about cool, as you’ll see, as opposed to my above comments on great characters.
Joe Namath, Mario Andretti, Allen Iverson, Bjorn Borg, Arthur Ashe, Pele, Walt Frazier, Evel Knievel, Jean-Claude Killy, Pete Maravich, Tom Brady, Muhammad Ali, Julius Erving, Bob Gibson, Bo Jackson, Arnold Palmer, George Best (Irish soccer player), Tim Lincecum, Derek Sanderson (great to see his name), Kenny Stabler, Michael Jordan, Gary Player, Ted Turner (think America’s Cup and his Courageous), Jim Brown, and Kelly Slater (surfer).
Now I wrote my comments on characters before seeing the GQ piece and I haven’t gone back and edited my own remarks, but I have to note the comments on Gibson, which are Joe Torre’s.
“There were guys who wouldn’t talk to the opposition – Drysdale was like that. But Bob wouldn’t talk to anybody who wasn’t on the Cardinals, ever. [When I was a Brave] I caught the ’65 All-Star Game, and Bob closed the game out with a one-run lead. After the game, we were the last two in the shower, and I congratulated him. He didn’t acknowledge I was even in the neighborhood. When I came to St. Louis in 1969, Bob was the first to welcome me; we became friends. But baseball was war for him.”
And I love the inclusion of Walt “Clyde” Frazier, though there was never any chance a publication like GQ would exclude him. Frazier himself commented:
“My car was synonymous with New York. It was part of the scene. Now the guys are in Westchester. They don’t experience the city like I did. I used to start on the East Side – First Avenue, Maxwell’s Plum – and end up uptown, because in Harlem they went to four, five in the morning. You’d just walk from one club to the next. I saw Miles Davis, all these great jazz guys. There was one night I was out late during the playoffs, the night before a game, and [Willis] Reed reprimanded me. He comes in and he goes, ‘Clyde, what are you doing? Get your butt to bed. You’re messing with my money.’”
I heard Frazier the other day on a sports talk show and he was asked who the greatest basketball player of all time was and without hesitation he said, “Wilt Chamberlain.” Why? Not Jordan? Bird? Kareem? Magic?
Consider that in Wilt’s third season he averaged his out-of-this-world 50.4 points per game. For a full season. No. 2 that year in the NBA in scoring was Walt Bellamy at 31.6. I mean Wilt was a full 19 points per game better than the next guy! You will never, ever, see anything like that again. Plus that same year Wilt led the league in rebounding, 25.6 per game.
Clyde also said the most difficult player for him to guard was Earl Monroe, “because even ‘the Pearl’ didn’t know what he was going to do next. He just made everything up as he went along.”
–You know what? I was going to honor Wayne Gretzky on his 50th birthday next time (it’s this Wednesday), but the discussion about Wilt and his total dominance of his sport is the perfect time to bring up The Great One.
Gretzky had an astounding 894 goals and 1,963 assists in his NHL career…970 points ahead of No. 2, Mark Messier. 970!
1979-80…51 goals – 86 assists…137 points
1980-81…55 – 109…164
1981-82…92 – 120…212
1982-83…71 – 125…196
1983-84…87 – 118…205…Paul Coffey, 126*
1984-85…73 – 135…208…Jari Kurri, 135
1985-86…52 – 163…215…Mario Lemieux, 141
1986-87…62 – 121…183…Jari Kurri, 108
1987-88…40 – 109…149
1988-89…54 – 114…168
1989-90…40 – 102…142
1990-91…41 – 122…163
*I threw these four up just to give you an example of how Wilt-like the difference between Gretzky and second in the league in scoring was; only Gretzky was doing this every single season!
[1987-88 and 1988-89 were the only two in the above run that Gretzky did not lead the league, Mario Lemieux being his own bad ‘self during part of this time as well.]
Source: Hockey-reference.com…just like baseball-reference, a terrific site.
–This just in… “World number one Caroline Wozniacki has apologized to media after making up a story that she had been attacked by a kangaroo during the Australian Open.
“Wozniacki, 20, called it a ‘blonde’ moment after she convincingly told journalists she was scratched by the native Australian animal during a visit to a wildlife park.”
Wozniacki later owned up that she had walked into a treadmill and wasn’t attacked. Pathetic.
So it’s time to take down all the Caroline Wozniacki pictures from the walls of StocksandNews. Peggy Fleming goes back up in her place.
“High winds and whiteout conditions Saturday stalled a Minnesota man’s attempt to become the first person to make a solo summit of Mount McKinley in January. Lonnie Dupre spent Saturday camped at 17,200 feet, waiting out unfavorable weather, according to his expedition manager.
“If conditions improve, he’ll make a push for the 20,320-foot summit today.”
I gotta tell ya, sports fans. This isn’t exactly my idea of a fun weekend.
“Burglars snorted the cremated remains of a man and two dogs in the mistaken belief that they had stolen illegal drugs, Florida sheriff’s deputies said on Wednesday.
“The ashes were taken from a woman’s home in the town of Silver Springs Shores on Dec. 14. The thieves took an urn containing the ashes of her father and another with the ashes of her two Great Danes, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said.”
Whoever ends up handling my ashes, please safeguard the urn until you sprinkle them over Lahinch golf course in Ireland, please.
–I glance at the World Cup standings from time to time and this weekend at Kitzbuehel, Austria, Bode Miller finished second in the downhill, the only American among the top 20 finishers. After five downhills, Miller is fifth in the standings. Didier Cuche of Switzerland won the Kitzbuehel race and is first overall. [If you knew this and you’re not a European, you’re damn good.]
As for the men’s World Cup overall standings, Ivica Kostelic of Croatia is 1st and America’s Ted Ligety is 9th.
On the women’s side, Lindsey Vonn won two Super-G races in three days (with a 3rd in a downhill sandwiched in between) in Italy but her buddy, Germany’s Maria Riesch, maintains her overall World Cup lead. Vonn now has 39 career triumphs.
And that’s your ski report for Jan. 24. 8 inches of fresh powder and all 60 trails are open to the top.
–So I told you a week ago I was going to watch MTV’s “Skins,” but it turns out I was watching a college b-ball game and forgot it was on. And now it seems advertisers are already leaving the program in droves because of the salacious material, with one group, the Parents Television Council, saying it verges on child pornography through its graphic displays of sex. I’ll have to watch tonight to see what the big deal is.
–Hey, Mark R. I was reading a New York Times story on Philly restaurants and saw this on the establishment “Fish” (1708 Lombard Street).
“(The) unanimous favorite was a crisp skate wing atop melt-in-your-mouth truffled spaetzle and a dizzyingly aromatic Parmesan broth. The waitress said the dish is so universally adored that it’s the only permanent fixture on the otherwise seasonal menu.”
Oh, baby…truffled spaetzle. I’m buying. Mark, I’ll give you your six-pack of premium on the Steelers bet at that time as well.
–Yikes. Did you see that the band Cake’s sixth album, “Showroom of Compassion,” was the No. 1 selling album but with only 44,000 units sold last week?! That represents the lowest total to top the Billboard 200 album-sales chart since accurate tallies first became available in 1991.
—Will.i.am told the New York Times the Black Eyed Peas won’t be playing “My Humps” during the Super Bowl halftime show…just sayin’.
Top 3 songs for the week 1/22/72: #1 “American Pie” (Don McLean) #2 “Brand New Key” (Melanie) #3 “Let’s Stay Together” (Al Green…his best)…and…#4 “Sunshine” (Jonathan Edwards) #5 “Day After Day” (Badfinger) #6 “Scorpio” (Dennis Coffey & The Detroit Guitar Band) #7 “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing” (The New Seekers) #8 “Clean Up Woman” (Betty Wright) #9 “You Are Everything” (The Stylistics) #10 “Sugar Daddy” (The Jackson 5)
Title Town Quiz Answer: 1) Five with 20 or more titles. New York, 52; Boston, 33; Chicago, 23; Detroit, 22; Los Angeles, 20. [Philly is next with 16.] 2) Phoenix and Atlanta have just one each. Boston has the best percentage…33 titles in 366 seasons, or 9.0%. New York is next with its 52 in 616 seasons, or 8.4%.
