[Posted Wednesday AM…as your editor prepares to do some last-minute shopping before our next storm. To my friends down south, hang in there.]
Baseball Quiz: With pitchers and catchers officially reporting in a few days, name the two hurlers who threw 376 innings, one in 1971, one in 1972; a level no one has come close to since, but also hadn’t been attained since 1917! Answer below.
Michael Sam
When I saw the story of Michael Sam Sunday after posting my last Bar Chat, my reaction was “whatever.” I really just don’t care that the guy has come out and could become the first openly gay player in NFL history, assuming he gets drafted and then makes the roster. Most NFL draft projections have Sam, the SEC Defensive Player of the Year and a unanimous first-team All-American, as a midround pick, 3rd thru 5th round, with a possible position switch from defensive end to outside linebacker.
But while I may just shrug my shoulders, I do understand this is a big deal for the NFL. Acting NFL Players Association president Domonique Foxworth said in an interview with ESPN’s “Mike & Mike”, “I know that the union will accept him with open arms, as will our players.”
“Everyone’s talking about how this could disrupt the locker room. Some NFL locker rooms need disrupting, to be frank. Coaches go through a lot of different things to try to build a bond between the team, and what’s going to build a bond more than having a player that all the guys know is kind of a target for opposing fans and maybe a target for opposing players?”
Sam said on Sunday, “I just want to go to the team who drafts me. Because that team knows about me, knows that I’m gay, and also knows that I work hard. That’s the team I want to go to.”
“All-American defensive end Michael Sam is one very large piece of gay propaganda – at 255 pounds he might be arrested in Vladimir Putin’s Russia just for stepping on a scale. It’s a supreme irony of Sam’s coming-out that some people in the NFL are afraid to use their own names in talking about him and their Putin-like fears that he might ‘chemically imbalance’ the fragile musky environment of male locker rooms. When is one of those guys going to come out? You got something to say, say it like a gay man.
“Say it like Sam, the 24-year-old projected third-round draft prospect from Missouri, who announced on Sunday to ESPN and the New York Times, ‘I’m not afraid to tell the world who I am.’….
“There are great courageous sports stories being played on the international stage at the Sochi Olympics, yet nothing has resonated like this. Sam’s watershed act has enormous destigmatizing significance, and resonates all the way to Russia, where government-driven anti-homosexuality forces gays to be silent at peril of arrest or a street beating. And where Putin – enabled by the cowardly International Olympic Committee – insists that the Winter Games is ‘not the time’ to discuss their human rights.
“Sam’s announcement moves the world one step toward the point where announcing you’re gay isn’t a ‘political’ statement. It’s a particularly brave one since he made his announcement before the draft.
“He is a walking character test for the NFL and he will put that test to everyone he comes into contact with. He’s going to challenge the locker room norm, going to challenge NFL executive myopia and challenge NFL players’ homophobia. We will find out who the modern Branch Rickeys are. Which players will act more Pee Wee Reese and put an arm around him, and which will show their Dixie Walker side and demand to be traded rather than play alongside a gay man? Which team officials will be so lacking in character that they pass on him despite a legitimate need at defensive end?….
“Make no mistake, Sam will be under pressure from gays, too. The danger with aligning himself with any broad-brushed ‘community’ is that pretty soon some people will be telling him there is a right and a wrong way to be gay. He will find out what all public performers in all fields know, that an audience can be highly proprietary, sometimes in an ugly way. As Jodie Foster once wrote in Esquire, ‘I can be rejected for physical reality, the audience’s perception of who I am. Consequently, I become the property of my judges.’
“But Sam can figure all that out for himself. He is 255 pounds of social courage, the definition of which is the resolve to put your name to something, regardless of possible rejection. It’s a quality there is precious little of in the world, and particularly in the NFL, which supposedly prides itself on valor and values.”
One anonymous GM told Sports Illustrated’s Peter King that his team had known Sam was gay and had discussed it at draft meetings in the past few days.
“We talked about it this week,” the GM said. “First of all, we don’t think he’s a very good player. The reality is he’s an overrated football player in our estimation. Second: He’s going to have expectations about where he should be drafted, and I think he’ll be disappointed. He’s not going to get drafted where he thinks he should. The question you will ask yourself, knowing your team, is, ‘How will drafting him affect your locker room?’ And I am sorry to say where we are at this point in time, I think it’s going to affect most locker rooms. A lot of guys will be uncomfortable. Ten years from now, fine. But today, I think being openly gay is a factor in the locker room.”
King asked the general manager: “Do you think he’ll be drafted?’
“We already see how the men who pull the NFL’s most important strings are trying to play this.
“Eight of them were quoted anonymously on Sports Illlustrated’s website Sunday, in the hours after Missouri linebacker Michael Sam announced he is a ‘proud, gay man,’ eager to become the first openly homosexual player on an NFL active roster when he’s drafted this spring.
“None of them wanted to come across as Paleozoic in their own right, of course, so they pawned this off on their players: ‘It’s still a man’s-man game,’ said one; ‘some players are going to look at you upside-down,’ said another; ‘there are guys in locker rooms that maturity-wise cannot handle it or deal with the thought of that,’ said a third.
“Sure. Blame it on the knuckleheaded players rather than the knuckle-dragging executives. That’s a sound plan. Except Michael Sam came out to his teammates at Missouri this year, and would you like to know how much of a horrific distraction that was?
“Missouri had its best season in more than 40 years. The Tigers went 12-2. They beat Oklahoma State in the Cotton Bowl. And by all accounts were as tightly knit and close as any team in America.
“Yeah. That must have been one torn-to-pieces locker room.
“Here’s the thing: Most of the men who populate college and professional football rosters are between the ages of 19 and 29….all of them have grown up in the first truly tolerant age of sexual orientation…..
“Whatever notions used to rule in professional locker rooms, things are different now. It is not the players’ sensibilities that will be most affected here. It’s the coaches. It’s the executives. It’s the owners. It’s the old school, not the new age. So it’s wrong to assign blame, 15 minutes after Sam’s announcement, on player proclivities.
“Will teams back away from drafting Sam? They may. And the thing that will be impossible to know about his ultimate destination will be similar to the questions still attached to Jason Collins, the veteran basketball player and former Net who came out last year.
“Collins has yet to find a job since making his pronouncement, and thus far there hasn’t been a groundswell of resentment because anyone who saw Collins play the past few years knew his career was nearing an end. It is certainly plausible – probable, even – he is out not because he is Out but because he simply can’t play anymore. [Ed. that was also my point with regards to Collins all along.]
“Sam? He was the best defensive player in the best college football league in the nation, the SEC, but even before this he was pegged as a puzzle, an undersized defensive end whose 11 sacks and 19.5 tackles for loss are canceled out by his more relevant numbers: 6-foot-2, 260 pounds. And he spent his year playing in the Eastern half of the league, a significant drop from the West of Auburn and Alabama and LSU and Texas A&M.
“ ‘His numbers are inflated,’ one of the scouts quoted in the SI.com piece said. ‘You’ve got to see through that.’
“That is a fair concern whether a player is straight, gay or celibate, and that should be the lone concern of the men who will determine Sam’s fate at the draft. Is he good enough? Will he help you win games? ….
“One who checks ‘yes’ to both and still chooses not to pick him because he believes his locker room has set all its clocks back to 1947?
College Basketball…AP Poll
1. Syracuse 23-0 (all 65 first-place votes0
2. Arizona 23-1
3. Florida 21-2
4. Wichita State 25-0…advanced to 26-0 on Tuesday vs. So. Illinois
5. San Diego State 21-1*
6. Villanova 21-2
7. Kansas 18-5…then lost to Kansas State, Monday, 85-82 in OT
8. Duke 19-5
9. Michigan State 20-4
10. Cincinnati 22-3
12. Saint Louis 22-2
17. Virginia 19-5
23. SMU 19-5
*The Aztecs (21-2, 10-1) suffered their second loss of the season Tuesday, 68-62, at the hands of Wyoming (15-9, 6-5) in Laramie as Player of the Year candidate Xavier Thames was held to 3 of 16 from the field.
–On Monday, No. 11 Iowa State (118-5, 6-5) was blasted by West Virginia (15-10, 7-5) 102-77. Melvin Ejim followed up his 48-point effort against TCU with a whopping six points on 1 of 9 shooting from the field.
–As for the two remaining undefeateds, Wichita State has a piece of cake conference schedule the rest of the way and is likely to become the first team to go unbeaten in the regular season since St. Josephs in 2003-04. The problem is the Shockers have played to the 90th-ranked schedule in the country, with no major nonconference opponents (Saint Louis wasn’t ranked when the Shockers faced them Dec. 1). The Missouri Valley Conference also sucks this year and Wichita State should win the M.V.C. tournament, which would take them to 34-0 and a No. 1 seed.
Meanwhile, Syracuse has a very tough road to finishing undefeated. Aside from a road game at No. 25 Pitt on Wednesday night (after I’ve posted), they are at Duke (2/22) and travel to Charlottesville to face Virginia (3/1). Then the Cuse will have the ACC tournament.
—Wake Forest is in freefall after an 82-67 loss to North Carolina State in Raleigh on Tuesday. The Deacs have fallen to 14-10, 4-7 in ACC play and now I’m wondering where we’ll get four more wins for my originally hoped for 8-10 conference mark.
–On the issue of Oklahoma State’s Marcus Smart, who received a three-game suspension for shoving Texas Tech fan Jeff Orr, while Smart did and said the right things in apologizing for the incident, as Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com noted:
“Lost in the debate about what Orr did or did not say to provoke Smart is the reality that reacting physically to a verbal taunt will land you in some kind of trouble in pretty much every walk of life. We see it weekly with celebrities and paparazzi. Each time you watch an incident on TMZ, rest assured the celebrity – Sean Penn, Kanye West, Alec Baldwin, whomever, – was provoked and, given context, I’m confident you’d understand why he smashed a camera or threw a punch. You might even be on his side. But guess what? The celebrity is still usually forced to deal with consequences because we live in a civilized country, and ‘that dude said something inappropriate to me’ is rarely a legal rationalization for initiating a physical confrontation with another human being….
“The video clearly showed Smart commit a foul, fall down, get up and shove a fan in the front row. That alone was worthy of a suspension. So the Big 12 got this right on Sunday.
“ ‘My actions last night were inappropriate and do not reflect myself or Texas Tech – a university I love dearly. I regret calling Mr. Smart a ‘piece of crap’ but I want to make it known that I did not use a racial slur of any kind.’
“That’s part of the statement released Sunday by Orr….
“I suppose we’ll never know for sure exactly what Orr said to provoke Smart. But it’s only fair to note that Orr denied using racial slurs, and nobody is on record contradicting that version of events. So, for the sake of this conversation, let’s assume all Orr did was what he said he did, which is call Smart a ‘piece of crap’ while the All-American was lying in front of him.
“Honest to God, I can’t think of another public place where an old white man calling a young black man a ‘piece of crap’ is mostly considered acceptable behavior, and yet something like that happens at basketball games on a regular basis….
“So perhaps that’ll be the good that comes from this mess. Maybe schools will start paying attention to verbal abuse, fans will start being less aggressive, and the next idiot who has convinced himself it’s fun to taunt college athletes on a personal level will start instead treating players with a degree of human decency.
“But Marcus Smart isn’t the only one who needs to learn from this deal.”
Speaking of Jeff Orr, he is an air traffic controller in Waco, Texas, who travels thousands of miles a year to root on Texas Tech basketball. According to reports, he has a reputation for being a total a-hole in the stands. At least he volunteered not to attend any more games the rest of the season.
Ball Bits
–Tuesday morning, many of us in the New York area were talking about the Yankees new acquisition, Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka, who after signing a $155 million contract, traveled to the U.S. in style.
Tanaka reportedly spent $195,000 to charter a Boeing 787 Dreamliner for the flight from Tokyo to New York, with just five other people on board and his toy poodle. [The jet normally holds 200 for that kind of haul.]
What’s funny is Tokyo was hit by a rare snowstorm and it took him 8 ½ hours to get to the airport from his hotel in town.
—Albert Pujols dropped his defamation lawsuit against Jack Clark on Monday after Clark issued a statement retracting his comment last summer that Pujols had used performance-enhancing drugs. Pujols has consistently maintained he has never used PEDs.
In a statement Pujols said, “I have accepted Jack Clark’s retraction and apology to resolve my lawsuit against him and clear my name.”
Clark’s statement read in part: “I have no knowledge whatsoever that Mr. Pujols has even used illegal or banned PEDs.”
–Pitcher Roy Oswalt retired. Had he stayed healthy, he would have put up Hall of Fame-type numbers. Oswalt finished his terrific career 163-102 with a super 3.36 ERA. The two-time 20-game winner finished in the top five in the Cy Young balloting five times. He was a 23rd round draft pick by Houston in the 1996 draft.
–That really was remarkable Tina Maze of Slovenia and Dominque Gisin of Switzerland tied for the gold medal in the women’s downhill at 1 minute 41.57 seconds; the first tie ever for a gold medal in Alpine skiing at the Games.
–The Nets are 14-6 with reserve Andrei Kirilenko in the lineup, 9-20 without him. Exactly as you expected it to be when the Nets picked him up in the offseason. He has all the intangibles, especially in being one of the better defensive players in the league.
If the Nets stay healthy, they will surprise in the playoffs. If the likes of Deron Williams and Kirilenko are not available, they’ll flame out. Depth is their primary strength, it’s why I picked them to win it all. But if they’re on the end of the bench in street clothes, that doesn’t help.
–During an appearance at the Canadian Motorsports Expo in Toronto, Richard Petty said Danica Patrick only gets attention because she’s a woman, but added the publicity is good for NASCAR.
“If she’d have been a male, nobody would ever know if she’d showed up at a racetrack. This is a female deal that’s driving her. There’s nothing wrong with that, because that’s good PR for me. More fans come out, people are more interested in it. She has helped to draw attention to the sport, which helps everybody in the sport.”
Patrick had a poor rookie year, averaging a 26th-place finish in her races and finishing 27th in the final Sprint Cup standings.
But she’ll be there at Daytona where she won the poll and finished eighth last year, her best finish all season.
“That’s where I have a problem – where fans have bought into the hype of the marketing, to think she’s a race car driver. She can go fast, and I’ve seen her go fast. She drives the wheels off it when she goes fast. She’s not a race car driver. There’s a difference. The King (Richard Petty) always had that stupid saying, but it’s true. ‘Lots of drivers can drive fast, but very few drivers can race.’ Danica has been the perfect example of somebody who can qualify better than what she runs.”
Patrick’s co-owner, Tony Stewart, a three-time champion, called Kyle Petty’s comments “way out of line and very inappropriate.”
–I’m going to be commenting on the passing of Shirley Temple Black, 85, in my “Week in Review” column to celebrate her career as a public servant and role model for women. Growing up, I admired the hell out of her and it had nothing to do with her movies.
But it is remarkable to think she made 40 films before she turned 12, including her four most memorable ones with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, a legendary black dancer 50 years her senior. Heck, Shirley matched him step for step.
Yes, Shirley Temple supplied a nation suffering from the Depression with a little relief in her films during the 1930s. President Franklin D. Roosevelt marveled “that for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles.”
Shirley Temple made $millions, but as Valerie J. Nelson writes in the Los Angeles Times, “At 22, she discovered that all but $28,000 of her $3.2 million income from the movies had vanished because of her family’s lavish lifestyle and bad investments made by her father, George Temple, a bank manager who left his job to oversee her career.”
Shirley says she was never bitter the funds had dried up.
“A tiger prowling near villages in northern India has killed its 10th person in six weeks, a day after eluding a trap set by hunters using a live calf as bait.”
Yup, just a few days ago we were talking victim No. 9. Now it’s ten, a 45-year-old man who was collecting firewood in the forest.*
“The animal ate parts of the man’s leg and abdomen before being scared away by villagers waving shovels and metal rods.”
Since the tiger’s killing spree began on December 29, it has crossed several major national highways, a river and moved through villages on the prowl. One of India’s leading tiger conservationists believes the tigress could be injured because the paw prints were uneven, suggesting it may have a limp.
The hunters hired to kill the animal are having trouble tracking it in the dense forests; plus only three of six showed up for work.
By the way, the other day I mentioned that the attacks were taking place in and around Jim Corbett National Park. He was a legendary tiger hunter turned conservationist. Back in his day, it’s said he pursued some tigers that were responsible for up to 400 deaths! Too bad Bar Chat wasn’t around back then, the 1920s and ‘30s. Ratings would have soared with so much activity.
*Another report I read said Victim No. 10 wasn’t collecting firewood, but rather had gotten out of his vehicle and “walked into the forest to relieve himself.” [London Times]
–Uh oh…Denise D. passed along the story that last Saturday a 10-foot long tiger shark was spotted off Kaimana Beach, near Diamond Head in Honolulu. I didn’t realize local biologists have been tagging tiger sharks and two dozen are having their movements monitored. Kind of like the NSA.
–Then we have the situation at the Copenhagen Zoo where a young giraffe was gunned down in a hail of bullets. Well, a single shotgun blast.
You see, Marius the giraffe was in good health and had been born in captivity at the zoo, where there are already seven reticulated giraffes, a species native to Africa, but the zoo’s scientific director, Bengt Holst, a reticulated Holstein, said the zoo decided Marius was a surplus animal in Copenhagen and chose not to send him to another zoo because it would have opened the door to inbreeding, plus giraffes are social animals and could not be kept in isolation.
Anyway, not sure if Marius was given his favorite last meal and then blindfolded, but the zoo proceeded to carve him up, following an autopsy, in front of visitors, and then fed Marius to the zoo’s big cats; which is why it was death by shotgun, rather than injection, so that the meat would be safe to eat.
Well, as I always say, guns don’t kill giraffes, people do.
Needless to say, Mr. Holst is under a bit of heat and there have been death threats. The zoo’s lions, tigers and leopards, though, are most grateful and have put their breakout plans on hold.
–The Washington Post’s Norman Chad on the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, courtesy of his “intrepid Siberian husky Chuchi Yuki” who is once again keeping an exclusive journal for Couch Slouch.
“One of the beagles has a painting of dog owners playing poker….
“I love the Garden, but it’s hard to miss the stench the Knicks leave behind….
“Late at night, some of the Irish terriers try to sneak into St. Patrick’s and drink the holy water….
“I hate when I pee and then step in it – nobody’s fault but my own….
“Truth be known, I had a one-night stand with this mangy mutt the day after I graduated from obedience school….
“Take away Central Park, and where is a pooch to poop in this concrete jungle?….
“So glad to see they used union dog actors in those Budweiser Super Bowl spots….
“I thought Peyton Manning had a great season, considering he’s 259 years old….”
Top 3 songs for the week 2/15/69: #1 “Everyday People” (Sly & The Family Stone) #2 “Crimson And Clover” (Tommy James and The Shondells…should be in the Hall of Fame) #3 “Touch Me” (The Doors)…and…#4 “Build Me Up Buttercup” (The Foundations) #5 “Worst That Could Happen” (Brooklyn Bridge…great tune) #6 “Can I Change My Mind” (Tyrone Davis) #7 “You Showed Me” (The Turtles) #8 “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” (Marvin Gaye) #9 “Hang ‘Em High” (Booker T. & The MG’s) #10 “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” (Diana Ross and The Supremes & The Temptations)
Baseball Quiz Answer: Wilbur Wood threw 376 2/3 innings in 1972 for the White Sox and the Tigers’ Mickey Lolich threw 376 in 1971. [I thought Wood was a layup for old-time fans, but not necessarily Lolich.]
Hall of Famer Grover Alexander threw 388 in 1917.
I do have to also note Bob Feller. Of course any time I have an excuse to talk about “Rapid Robert” I’ll take advantage of it.
Imagine, Feller was heroically serving our country in World War II, missing the entire 1942-44 seasons, and then appearing in only 9 games end of 1945.
So after all this time off all Feller does in 1946 is go 26-15, 2.18 ERA, 371 innings, 348 strikeouts, 10 shutouts, and only 11 home runs given up! Plus six relief appearances, four saves. And, get this, 153 walks!
You want some good Bar Chat? Bring up these stats at your neighborhood watering hole and try and figure out how many pitches he threw that year. I wish we knew. It would make our brains hurt.
[Nolan Ryan’s 1974, and other seasons of his, would be up there as well on the pitch count front, that’s for sure. 332 innings, 367 Ks, 202 BBs!]
