Note: Sunday, 2:15 p.m., Eastern. Due to awful weather in the New York area and the highly uncertain status of my flight to Des Moines in a few hours, I decided I better post what I have, which is before the leaders tee off in the final round of the PGA, and with Dan Uggla hitless in his first time at bat. [Covering all the bases…sports fans!]
NFL Quiz: With the first exhibition games, might as well get started. Name the five quarterbacks who threw for 4,000 yards in 2010. Answer below.
Tiger and the PGA
“Where Does Tiger Woods go from here?
“No one – particularly Woods himself – knows for sure, and that has to be the most daunting, insecure feeling he’s ever experienced in golf.
“Woods left the Atlanta Athletic Club late Friday afternoon after missing the PGA Championship cut by six shots looking and sounding more humbled than he’s ever been on a golf course.
“He left knowing he’s not qualified for the FedEx Cup playoff series, meaning he cannot play in a PGA Tour event for at least the next six weeks.
“He left with a broken game and a tattered public image in need of major repair.”
One thing virtually everyone is in agreement on is Woods’ experiment with swing coach Sean Foley has been a disaster. For starters, as Cannizzaro pointed out, “What happened to his go-to ‘stinger’ shot?” Woods needs to go back to Butch Harmon, but Harmon probably wouldn’t have him.
Woods isn’t playing in next week’s Greensboro, N.C., event because he has “family commitments,” meaning the kids, but there is no reason for him not to play one of the four fall, post-FedEx Cup events.
Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News asked Curtis Strange what happened to the old Tiger Woods, the young version.
“I don’t think he knows who that kid is anymore. I would bet you a beer that he could never get back to being that person.”
Golf Balls…Yes, I’d say Darren Clarke and Rory McIlroy need a little break. Clarke’s last month since his British Open triumph has been a whirlwind of partying and playing, with the latter the victim of the former. After shooting 78-76, a cool ten shots off the cut line in Atlanta, Clarke said, “I need a huge rest. I’m going to get one.” He said he won’t look at a club for 10 days. “I’m mentally tired.” I was exhausted just trying to keep up with his party schedule!
I give Ryo Ishikawa credit, after opening with a brutal 85, in at least coming back with a 72. He could have withdrawn, making up some kind of excuse, but didn’t. Now if he’d just lose his personal traveling stylist.
Tiger was in 22 bunkers in two rounds and hit only 12 fairways. It was just the third cut he has missed in a major, and only the seventh time in 227 tournaments worldwide.
Kind of startling stat on Jim Furyk, who prior to the PGA had just two top 10s this year. In his previous 15 seasons, he had at least seven. Talk about consistency.
Ball Bits
–I’m hating that Dan Uggla is up to 33 games in his hitting streak, but his overall average, which was .173 when the streak began, is still just in the .230s. This blows. Someone stop this guy before he gets to 40!!! [Though his .377, 15 homers and 32 RBI during the run is pretty impressive.]
And as Shu pointed out, when Uggla broke the Atlanta team record of 31 on Friday night, he didn’t know who Rico Carty was (let alone Tommy Holmes, who has the franchise record as a Boston Brave at 37)! How the heck can you not know about Rico Carty?!
Carty, a .299 lifetime hitter, hit .330, .310 and .326 his first three years in the big leagues before slumping to .255 in 1967. Then he suffered an awful leg injury, was out the entire ’68 season, but all he did was come back and hit .342 in ’69 and win the batting title in 1970 with a cool .366 average! Any long-time baseball fan knows that Rico Carty, a la Tony Oliva, would be in the Hall of Fame if modern sports medicine had existed and their careers were more fruitful.
–Is there a bigger jerk/clown in baseball than Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano? The team placed him on the 30-day disqualified list Saturday and said he would receive no pay.
Zambrano was ejected from Friday night’s 10-4 loss to the Braves and afterward cleaned out his locker, leaving the team. In an extraordinary statement, GM Jim Hendry said that Zambrano’s actions, including a brush-back pitch to Chipper Jones that led to the ejection, were “intolerable.”
Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster said, “He’s made his bed. Let him sleep in it.”
Zambrano told team officials he would retire. Hendry said, “There’s not much worse than running out on your teammates in the middle of a ballgame.”
What’s extraordinary is that Zambrano had given up homers to Freddie Freeman and Dan Uggla when he brushed back Chipper, which would be normal, but it was Zambrano doing it twice that upset his own teammates and club officials, especially since Atlanta was honoring former manager Bobby Cox that night. Jones said of Hendry’s comments that they were “a class move. I appreciated it.”
Last season Zambrano was placed on the restricted list and sent to anger management after an altercation with then-teammate Derrek Lee. In 2009, he was suspended after arguing with an umpire and then throwing a baseball into the outfield. He is in the midst of a five-year deal that is paying him $91.5 million through 2012.
–Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman lashed out at the press and public for getting on pitcher A.J. Burnett, who as I chronicled last time has totally sucked. Or, as Mike Lupica noted, during Burnett’s time as a Yank, the team is 98 games over .500 and he is two games under .500.
—Stephen Strasburg’s early rehab starts should have Washington Nationals fans drooling. In his second one following reconstructive elbow surgery, he struck out five of 12 he faced and his fastball topped out at 99 mph! Plus his curve and changeup were devastating. This is amazing. Now there’s talk he will definitely be back in the big leagues early September. Said Strasburg, “I know I’m going to be the pitcher I was. It’s just a matter of time.”
Boy, it would be tremendous if he is. But now for the rest of his career, most of us will be watching each pitch with a little sense of dread that it could yet be his last.
But also think about modern sports medicine, and what could have been done for the careers of so many baseball and football players in, say, the 1950s and ‘60s. To go back to the ‘20s and ‘30s just isn’t realistic. Mickey Mantle jumps out at you. Or for old-time Mets fans, how about someone like pitcher Gary Gentry? Joe Namath? Gale Sayers? The above-mentioned Carty and Oliva?
–So much for CC Sabathia’s Cy Young hopes after giving up five, count ‘em, five solo home runs to Tampa Bay the other night in a 5-1 loss.
–The New York Post’s Phil Mushnick is totally in the right when he takes issue with ESPN suddenly changing the starting time of the Sunday night, Sept. 11, Cubs at Mets game from 1:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Mushnick said he is catching heat for his criticism, with many accusing him of being “insensitive to the importance of a nationally televised game played here on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.”
“According to these folks, ESPN’s selection of Cubs-Mets was an act of common sense, common decency and patriotism.
“MLB and ESPN knew 10 years ago this would be the 10th anniversary. Who didn’t? So why wasn’t this game scheduled for ESPN at 8 p.m. last September, when MLB released its 2011 schedule? Or were MLB and ESPN unaware that 9/11 this year falls on 9/11?
“Now it’s a ‘commemorative game?’ But there will be ceremonies throughout that weekend – held at logical times and for the right reasons.”
Of course it was about money, and MLB and ESPN thinking at one point that the Jets-Cowboys, scheduled for that night at 8 p.m., might be a victim of the lockout.
It’s also about two other things. MLB and ESPN constantly changing Sunday day games to night time, thus totally screwing up the father who wanted to take his kids to a day game, not a night contest during school season, and the whole issue of patriotism. I don’t like when the latter is rammed down my throat. You want to be patriotic? Go to Arlington National Cemetery, or one of the national cemeteries in your area. Or get your kids off the freakin’ computer and take them to a good history museum.
“I have just spent four squeamish hours watching children cry, children pout, children squirm, children crumble, children vainly attempt to hold themselves together in a situation that is not meant for children.
“I have just seen a child miserably fail, then weep at that failure while his relatives scream in unvarnished disappointment.
“I have just seen a child brilliantly succeed, but under such a spotlight that he also weeps, then attempts to pull his shirt over his face to hide the tears.
“I have just seen an adult verbally insult the abilities of a child, and a child gesture and glare to insult an adult.
“You know what I want to see now? I want to see whoever decided to put Little League baseball on television be placed in a permanent timeout….
“Allowing the public viewing of pubescent angst under the guise of a baseball game is opportunistic, offensive and just plain wrong.
“The 69 Little League World Series and qualifying games that are currently being shown on ESPN and ABC are the worst sort of reality television, turning 11-to-13-year-olds into adults, turning adults into kids, turning my stomach.
“I don’t blame the networks, and this isn’t because I do some work for one of them. If ESPN and ABC don’t cash in on these midsummer ratings, somebody else will. It is incumbent upon the Little League bosses to stop this, or at least slow it, protecting their children by returning to the game’s humble televised beginnings, more than 50 years ago, when only the finals were shown and only on tape delay on ABC’s ‘Wide World of Sports.’”
You might be surprised to read this, but I would venture in the past 35 years I’ve watched maybe two hours of the LLWS, total, and that would have been when New Jersey’s Toms River won it, years ago.
Of course I played Little League myself (though my home town didn’t have a formal organization, to be accurate about it), as I did all sports. Sports was all I cared about when I was a kid. But you just won’t catch me watching a bunch of 11- and 12-year-olds on television, as in for what reason?
It’s like a running joke I have with a friend of mine… “Hey, Editor, have you watched a single minute of a WNBA game yet…ever?” To which I reply, “No. Why would I?”
College Football
ESPN’s Top Ten
1. Oklahoma
2. Alabama
3. LSU
4. Oregon
5. Florida State
6. Boise State
7. Stanford
8. Texas A&M
9. Oklahoma State
10. Arkansas
Sporting News’ Top Ten
1. LSU
2. Oklahoma
3. Alabama
4. Stanford
5. Oregon
6. Boise State
7. Florida State
8. Oklahoma State
9. Nebraska
10. Wisconsin
Sporting News’ All-American team features everyone’s preseason favorite quarterback, Andrew Luck of Stanford, who is a lock Heisman winner assuming Stanford goes at least 10-2 and he’s healthy.
As for the running backs, SN has Oregon’s LaMichael James, still just a junior, and South Carolina super soph Marcus Lattimore. The receivers are Ryan Broyles, senior, Oklahoma, and Justin Blackmon, junior, Oklahoma State.
There is no one from Wake Forest on the list. [Or on the All-ACC preseason team, for that matter.]
James and Lattimore would be expected to challenge Luck for the Heisman.
But over the weekend there was all kinds of talk about schools rushing to the SEC. This is absurd, but today’s reality. There was the story Texas A&M is bolting, and then a report Florida State was abandoning the ACC, and then Clemson, and then Missouri. The SEC supposedly wants a 16-team league. Both Florida State and Clemson have denied the stories. [And, for starters, Florida and South Carolina may not be too happy about the prospects of adding in-state rivals; think recruiting.]
Texas A&M’s board of regents is expected to approve the move to the SEC on Monday. SEC commissioner Mike Slive is looking for a bigger television package with ESPN to rival those given the Pac-12 and Big Ten.
Meanwhile, Liz S. passed along a note that I should be watching Texas this year because Mack Brown’s squad hired Bryan Harsin as offensive coordinator. Harsin drew up the offense at Boise State under coach Chris Petersen with huge success.
Speaking of Boise State, they fired the athletic director, Gene Bleymaier, after a career of 30 years at the school due to the school being in violation of NCAA rules in football and a number of other sports. The NCAA has yet to rule whether Boise will suffer more than its self-imposed sanctions for violations in the football program from 2005-2008
But back to the first games coming up, I keep forgetting Wake opens Sept. 1, not the originally scheduled Sept. 3, against Syracuse and we’re a 6-point underdog. This could be the highlight of our season, a decent shot at beating the spread. [17-14 loss, is my prediction.]
As for the two biggest games on opening Saturday, Sept. 3, the early line has Boise State by 3 over Georgia and Oregon by 1 over LSU.
Big loss for Arkansas, a consensus top 20, as running back Knile Davis is out for the season with an ankle injury. Davis was the SEC’s leading rusher last season.
Dakota Meyer, MOH
Next month, Meyer, a former Marine corporal, will become only the third living veteran of the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts to be awarded the Medal of Honor for actions he took in Afghanistan’s eastern Konar Province on Sept. 8, 2009.
“Meyer charged multiple times into a Taliban-held area near the eastern village of Ganjgal after learning that three fellow Marines and a Navy corpsman were missing after being attacked by a group of insurgents. Under heavy enemy fire, he located the four Americans – all of them dead – and extracted their bodies with the help of Afghan government troops.
“ ‘Sergeant Meyer embodies all that is good about our nation’s Corps of Marines,’ said Gen. James F. Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps in a statement.”
Meyer and a small team of Marine advisers were embedded with an Afghan unit when they were ambushed. Aside from the four American servicemen, eight Afghan soldiers and an interpreter were killed in the fight.
“The Marines called repeatedly for help, but an Army unit stationed near the site of the battle was slow to respond with supporting artillery fire, resulting in a U.S. Army major receiving a career-ending letter of reprimand.
“Meyer charged into enemy fire five times to recover the bodies of his fellow Marines and the Afghan soldiers.”
Meyer later told a Marine Corps journalist that the Afghan soldiers “were just as close to me as those Marines were. At the end of the day, I don’t care if they’re Afghans, Iraqis, Marines or Army; it didn’t matter. They’re in the same [expletive] you are, and they want to go home and see their family just as bad as you do.” [Joby Warrick and Greg Jaffe / Washington Post]
Bing West, combat adviser in Vietnam, described Meyer’s heroics in his book “The Wrong War.”
“For a man to charge into fire once requires grit that is instinctive in few men,” West wrote. “To do so a second time…requires inner resolve beyond instinct; to repeat a third time is courage above and beyond any call of duty; to go in a fourth time is to know you will die; to go in a fifth time is beyond comprehension.”
–We note the passing of former New York Giants and Green Bay Packers punter/kicker Don Chandler at the age of 76. Chandler played 12 seasons, nine with the Giants and three with the Packers; winning a title with New York in 1956 and then three with Green Bay (1965-67). In Super Bowl II, Chandler kicked four field goals against the Raiders, tying him with San Francisco’s Ray Wersching for most in a Super Bowl.
On Dec. 26, 1965, though, Chandler was involved in a controversial overtime win by Green Bay over the Baltimore Colts. Chandler had the winning 25-yard boot in OT, but it was an earlier 22-yard effort that was ruled good, but which Baltimore insisted was not, that forced the NFL to make the goal posts taller the following season. It’s kind of funny to look back and wonder how many kicks were misjudged in the old days.
As a punter, Chandler made the NFL’s all-decade team for the 1960s, retiring with an outstanding 43.5 yard average.
—Scott LeDoux died at the age of 62 from Lou Gehrig’s disease. LeDoux, a heavyweight boxer known as the Fighting Frenchman, was in the Chuck Wepner mold, though a legitimate contender for the heavyweight title in the mid-1970s to early ‘80s. Bert Sugar, boxing historian, said of LeDoux, “He had the linebacker physicality and fought the same way.” He had a record of 33 wins, 13 losses, 4 draws.
“LeDoux’s championship fight against Larry Holmes in July 1980 was stopped when he took a near-blinding blow to his left eye. In his post-fight interview, he complained that the fight should not have been stopped. When reporters pointed out that the ring doctor had said he could have lost his vision, he replied, ‘What’s an eye when you’ve given your heart?’”
I remember his title fight against Ken Norton, which was a draw and highly controversial because LeDoux knocked Norton down twice in the final round. LeDoux also faced title holders George Foreman, Gerry Coetzee, Frank Bruno, Mike Weaver, Greg Page and Leon Spinks. He drew against Spinks, just two fights before Spinks would beat Muhammad Ali for the title in February of ’78.
—Idaho is taking aim at wolves, with a new state law blaming them for disrupting business and “dramatically inhibiting” Idahoans from going on picnics. But as The Economist reports:
“Under the Endangered Species Act, the federal government reintroduced wolves to the Rocky Mountain West in the mid-1990s, reversing the efforts of ranchers and farmers who had spent decades killing them with guns, traps and poison. Wolf numbers have since increased far beyond the original goals, to an estimated 1,700 in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. In the process, returning wolves have become more than just an unwelcome varmint. To many, they are a snaggletoothed symbol of big government gone mad.”
Idahoans, though, are unreasonably ticked off. The state Fish and Game Commission authorized a hunt and trapping season that could kill up to 85% of the 1,000 wolves believed to be in Idaho. In Montana, hunters will be allowed to kill 220 out of the state’s estimated 566.
But this is bulls—. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says there have been no wolf attacks on people in Idaho, nor anywhere in the continental United States, since the grey wolf was reintroduced. “The number of wolf attacks on Idaho’s 2.2m cattle has been low. According to the Dept. of Agriculture’s Wildlife Service, there were 75 confirmed kills in 2010, giving a typical Idaho cow a .0034% chance per year of being killed by a wolf. (Idaho ranchers claim that last year wolves killed about 2,600 cattle, though experts doubt this).”
So there is no “wolf disaster.” It’s the damn state politicians and some dang ranchers. Go wolves! It’s payback time.
–Huge controversy involving Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific after photos of a pilot and flight attendant having oral sex in a cockpit appeared online and in print. The incident did not happen while the plane was airborne, but needless to say, both have been dismissed.
–I totally forgot to note the passing of Marshall Grant, 83. Grant was none other than Johnny Cash’s bass player, helping to create the Tennessee Two’s “boom-chicka-boom” sound. Grant played with Cash from 1954 to 1980 and was road manager for the group. It’s Grant providing the thumping sound on tunes like “Folsom Prison Blues,” “I Walk the Line,” “Ring of Fire,” and “The Man in Black.” Luther Perkins was the other original member of the Tennessee Two, playing lead guitar. Then when they added drummer W.S. Holland, Cash’s backup became the Tennessee Three.
Top 3 songs for the week of 8/12/78: #1 “Three Times A Lady” (Commodores…and multiple personalities) #2 “Grease” (Frankie Valli…did it for the money) #3 “Last Dance” (Donna Summer…dreadful…I mean are you thinking on a Saturday night, hey, let’s put on this disc?) …and…#4 “Miss You” (The Rolling Stones…have a real problem with Stones after about ’69…doesn’t make me a bad person) #5 “Hot Blooded” (Foreigner…really sucked, looking back) #6 “Boogie Oogie Oogie” (Taste of Honey …whatever) #7 “Love Will Find A Way” (Pablo Cruise… eh) #8 “Copacabana” (Barry Manilow…tune has held up well) #9 “Magnet And Steel” (Walter Egan…good effort on the part of Mr. Egan) #10 “An Everlasting Love” (Andy Gibb…you know what? This wasn’t all bad for this genre)
NFL Quiz Answer: The five QBs who threw for 4,000 yards last season are: Philip Rivers (4,710), Peyton Manning (4,700), Drew Brees (4,620), Matt Schaub (4,370), and Eli Manning (4,002). [Carson Palmer had 3,970; Aaron Rodgers, 3,922; and Tom Brady, 3,900.]
