NCAA Basketball Quiz: March Madness is fast approaching. Name the Final Four for both 2012 and 2013. Answer below.
College Basketball…AP Poll
1. Syracuse 25-0 (64)
2. Florida 23-2 (1)
3. Wichita State 27-0…all about VanVleet
4. Arizona 23-2
5. Duke 20-5
6. San Diego State 22-2…mildly surprised this high after loss at Wyoming
7. Cincinnati 23-3
8. Kansas 19-6…then eked out 64-63 win at Texas Tech, Tuesday
9. Villanova 22-3…then survived in double overtime at Providence, 82-79, also on Tuesday
10. Saint Louis 23-2…not sold at all on Billikens
T-11. Louisville 21-4…cliché alert…Pitino’s best coaching job
T-11. Creighton 21-4
14. Virginia 21-5…frankly have seen like 2 qtrs. of them…barely beat Va Tech on Tuesday
25. Gonzaga 23-4
33. VCU 20-6….if you carry out the votes
—North Carolina has suddenly reeled off seven in a row and has thrust itself back into the tournament conversation. UNC (18-7, 8-4) faces Duke in Chapel Hill on Thursday, the make-up game from last week’s big storm, and then Duke has to turn around two days later and host Syracuse.
–Another big turnaround story this season is St. John’s, which with its wins over Georgetown and Butler moved to 18-9, 8-6 in the Big East after starting out 0-5 in conference play. Coach Steve Lavin was feeling the heat. The Red Storm haven’t been to the NCAA tournament since 2011, his first season, despite some stellar recruiting classes. But he held the team together and a bid is looking more and more likely.
—Wake Forest lost again, 71-60 at Maryland, to fall to 14-12, 4-9 (six losses in a row in conference). Under coach Jeff Bzdelik the Deacs are 2-30 in ACC road contests and Bzdelik has an overall 48-71 mark at Wake. Sure seems like he’s a goner with this late-season swoon. Just hope we hold onto our better sophomores.
–Monday was a perfect day for me to have the Olympics on in the background, live, so I caught the ice dancing competition and, have to admit, I was nervous as hell watching Meryl Davis and Charlie White go for the gold, finishing just ahead of longtime rivals Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada; the first Olympic title in the event for the U.S.
Watching stuff live makes all the difference in the world and with the drastic time difference between the U.S. and Sochi, nine to 12 hours, it’s no wonder that ratings for NBC’s coverage are down, a decline of 14% through Sunday vs. 2010 and Vancouver for the 18 to 49 age demographic. Overall, the audience is down 11%.
–Congrats to Steven Holcomb and brakeman Steven Langton for being the first U.S. 2-man team to medal in the bobsled since 1952.
–Slovenia’s Tina Maze picked up her second gold in the giant slalom, as American teenager Mikaela Shiffrin placed fifth in her Olympic debut. Julia Mancuso skied out in her final event so she leaves Sochi with a bronze. Yup, the women, and NBC, missed Lindsey Vonn big time.
–And what a choke job by America’s speedskaters, using their new high-tech suit as an excuse for their initial failure, they kept losing and could leave Sochi without a single medal.
Meanwhile, very cool the Netherlands has won 20 medals thus far, all in speedskating (one of which was short-track).
–America’s Ted Ligity came through in a big way, winning the giant slalom on Wednesday.
–As to the Bodie Miller super-G post-race tearfest, prompted by analyst Christin Cooper’s needless probing into his emotions and the death of his brother. Yes, as Richard Sandomir of the New York Times noted, “Cooper and NBC lacked the sensitivity to know when enough was enough.” For his part, Miller showed class in telling the blogosphere to back off its severe criticism of Cooper.
A Belated Happy Birthday, Hank Aaron!
I honor of Black History Month and Hank Aaron’s recent 80th birthday, it’s a good time to reprise a piece I first did nearly ten years ago. I’m jumping the gun a bit as this coming April 8 will be the 40th anniversary of Aaron breaking the Babe’s home run mark.
Henry Louis Aaron was born on February 5, 1934, in Mobile, Alabama. From a young age, once he realized he could play the sport of baseball he seemed to be a man on a mission.
At 18 he signed with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro League for $200 a month. Aaron was a shortstop and batted cross-handed. With the integration of the big leagues, though, the Clowns were a barnstorming team like the Harlem Globetrotters and as Aaron said, “We never made it to Indiana the whole time I was with the team.”
One day in Washington, D.C., Aaron related, “We had breakfast while we were waiting for the rain to stop, and I (was) sitting with the Clowns in a restaurant behind Griffith Stadium and hearing them break all the plates in the kitchen after we were finished eating. What a horrible sound. Even as a kid, the irony of it hit me: here we were in the capital in the land of freedom and equality, and they had to destroy the plates that had touched the forks that had been in the mouths of black men. If dogs had eaten off those plates, they’d have washed them.”
After he was turned down at a Dodgers tryout because he was too skinny, a Braves scout, Dewey Griggs, wrote to management, “This boy could be the answer.” [He also told Aaron to uncross his hands.] The Braves signed him for $7,500. It was still 1952 and he was sent to Eau Claire, Wisconsin where he hit .336 with 9 home runs and 61 RBI. The following season, Aaron, Felix Mantilla and Horace Garner were sent to Class A Jacksonville to integrate what was then known as the Sally League, now South Atlantic, though with many different franchises. [Those of you who collected baseball cards in the 60s can’t help but hear this name and remember, “Dick Stuart once hit 66 home runs in the Sally League!” It seemed to be on the back of almost every card in those days.]
Aaron, despite constant taunts and threats, was MVP, hitting .362 while driving in 125. The next year, 1954, the Braves toured with the Dodgers before the season started and all the black players from both squads had to stay in the same hotel, so Aaron hung out with the likes of Jackie Robinson, Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella. They told him how to handle the big leagues as a black man, advice that Aaron would take to heart.
“There’s only one way to break the color line,” Aaron once said. “Play so good they can’t remember what color you were before the season started.” In other words, either you were good or you were gone. After listening to Jackie Robinson, Aaron knew he had to always prove himself. “If there’s a single reason why the black players of the 50s and 60s were so much better than the white players in the National League, I believe it’s because we had to be. And we knew we had to be.”
Aaron played 122 games in ‘54 for the Milwaukee Braves hitting .280, but then he blossomed in 1955, batting .314 with 27 home runs and 106 runs batted in. It was the start of a streak that saw him have 20 consecutive seasons with at least 20 home runs.
“The thing I had on my side was patience. It’s something you pick up pretty naturally when you grow up black in Alabama. When you wait all your life for respect and equality and a seat in the front of the bus, it’s nothing to wait a little while for the slider inside.”
Aaron didn’t back away from anyone. The Yankees’ Tony Kubek once recalled a time when he was outside a Tampa hotel with Aaron and a bunch of rednecks pulled up and began harassing Hank. One challenged him and Aaron dropped the guy with three good punches.
In 1956, Aaron won his first of two batting crowns and in ’57 was the N.L. MVP (his only selection for this honor) as he led the league in homers and RBI (44-132). It was a breakout season, to say the least, and in a late September game he hit an 11th-inning home run that clinched the pennant for Milwaukee. His teammates all greeted him at home and carried him off the field. Aaron would later say it was the most satisfying round-tripper of his entire career.
The Braves won the ’57 World Series against the Yankees and the team returned to the Series the following year, only this time New York got its revenge. In the two Fall Classics (his only ones) Aaron hit .364.
Milwaukee eventually fell out of favor as the team’s play slipped a bit and the franchise was moved to Atlanta for the 1966 season. This marked a big change for Hank Aaron.
“I was tired of being invisible. I was the equal of any ballplayer in the world, damn it, and if nobody was going to give me my due, it was time to grab for it.” Aaron hit 44 home runs his first year in Atlanta and 39 the next, but then in 1968, the year of the pitcher, Hank saw his production slip to 29 HR and 86 RBI. He was now at 510 home runs but he had also just turned 35 as he approached the ’69 campaign. Aaron began to think of retirement, but the noted historian, Lee Allen, convinced him that he could leave his mark on the game in many different ways.
Aaron proceeded to blast 44 dingers that year in leading the Braves to the N.L. West crown (only to then see the club get swept by the Mets in the league championship series), but after following up ’69 with 38 and 47 home runs (the latter a career best at 37) his next two seasons, he was suddenly at 639 lifetime and the talk of breaking Babe Ruth’s mark was picking up. Aaron signed a 2-year contract that made him the first player to earn $200,000 a year.
But approaching the Babe wasn’t a real popular thing. Atlanta police assigned a bodyguard to him and Hank began to talk of the hate mail he was receiving. In 1973 alone, Aaron got 930,000 letters as he finished the year at 713 home runs, one shy.
[One typical letter read, “You can hit all dem home runs over dem short fences, but you can’t take that black off yo’ face.” But to be fair, as Aaron got closer to the Babe the vast majority of the mail was overwhelmingly positive.]
As the ’74 season began, the Braves opened up in Cincinnati for a three-game series. Braves management wanted Aaron to break the record in Atlanta, naturally, but Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ordered Atlanta to play Aaron in 2 of the first 3 games in Cincinnati. [The reasoning was sound if flawed at the same time. How could you say you were putting your best product on the field if the soon to be home run king wasn’t in the lineup?]
In his first at bat of the season, Aaron hit #714 off Cincinnati’s Jack Billingham. He then sat out the second game and went 0-for-3 in the third.
So we go to Atlanta, April 8, 1974. The Dodgers are the opponent and they have Al Downing on the mound. Aaron walked in the first and then in the 4th inning, at 9:07 p.m., he deposited a 1-0 fastball into the left-center bullpen for #715.
Meanwhile, Braves announcer Milo Hamilton had been preparing for this moment all winter. At some point he knew he would be describing history. On #714 he decided on “Henry has tied the Babe!” For #715 he practiced, “Baseball has a new home run King! It’s Henry Aaron!” Hamilton thought anything more ornate would sound forced. [In the excitement of the actual moment, it came out “home run champion.”]
Braves reliever Tom House caught the ball and sprinted across the field to hand it to Aaron.
“In that great crowd around home plate I found him looking over his mother’s shoulder, hugging her to him, and suddenly I saw what many people have never been able to see in him – deep emotion,” House said. “I looked and he had tears hanging on his lids. I could hardly believe it. ‘Hammer, here it is,’ I said. I put the ball in his hand. He said, ‘Thanks, kid,’ and touched me on the shoulder. I kept staring at him. And it was then that it was brought home to me what this home run meant, not only to him, but to all of us.”
By the way, supposedly Hank Aaron never saw one of his 755 home runs clear the fence – he always kept his head down until he reached first base to make sure he touched the bag, figuring that “looking at the ball going over the fence isn’t going to help,” he would say.
And to close this out, Aaron scored 100 runs 15 times, including 13 consecutive seasons, he racked up 3,771 hits, #3 all time, is #1 all time in RBI with 2,297, 3rd in game played, 1st in total bases and extra base hits, tied for 4th in runs scored, won 4 Gold Gloves, stole 240 bases, and, something he himself is most proud of, never fanned 100 times in a season, an amazing feat for a power hitter.
[Sources: “Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947-59” Larry Moffi & Jonathan Kronstadt; “Talkin’ Baseball” Phil Pepe; “Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia” from the editors of “Total Baseball”; “Baseball Anecdotes” Daniel Okrent and Steve Wulf.]
And in honoring Hammerin’ Hank, I just have to note this story by Red Smith from March 27, 1960. Smith was down in spring training, where he talked to Dewey Griggs, the scout who discovered Aaron. Griggs told Smith of the day he signed him.
“It was in Buffalo,” said Griggs, “where Aaron was playing shortstop for the Indianapolis Clowns against the Kansas City Monarchs. I had two days to make up my mind on him because Sid Pollock, who owned the Clowns, was going to sell him and there were a lot of other guys looking at him.
“Well, they were playing a double-header and here was Hank just kind of loafing over to pick up ground balls and giving it the big, easy toss to first base, throwing them out by a short step. When he ran he ran lazy-like on his heels, and in that first game I never saw him go over into the hole for a ground ball.
“At the plate, though – well, they threw one high right up here on him, and he powered it over the wall and out of sight. He reached out for another one low and outside and pulled it over the wall, across the street and on to the roof of a building.
“To make a long story short, he got seven for nine in that doubleheader, but between games I went to Pollock and told him I wanted to talk to Aaron before the second game.
“I told the kid, ‘Hank, you haven’t showed me anything. I don’t know if you can run. I haven’t seen you field, I don’t even know if you can throw. You’re not putting out.’
“He said to me, ‘I kin run and throw all right. My daddy told me never exert yourself if it ain’t necessary.’
“So in that second game he got up on his toes and he went over in the hole to field ground balls and he threw bullets to first base. He wanted to show me he could run so he dropped a bunt down and beat that out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him bunt once since he got to Milwaukee, but he can bunt as well as anybody if he wants to.
“As I say, he went seven for nine in that doubleheader, hitting a couple out of sight.
“After the game I grabbed Pollock on the field and I said, ‘I’ll give you five thousand right now.’ Pollock said to me, ‘Turn around, just turn around and look up there behind you.’
“ ‘Those are three guys from the Giants,’ he told me, ‘and they’re going to be coming down here talking.’ I said, ‘All right, ten thousand.’ ‘It’s a deal,’ he said, and we closed it right there on the field. Then I phoned Milwaukee.
“ ‘You like him?’ they asked me. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I don’t know anything about baseball, but, if I had ten thousand dollars I’d pay it just for his hitting, even if he couldn’t do anything else.’ So we got him, and I don’t think anybody is going to get another Aaron right away.”
Red Smith writes, “There was a brief, respectful silence.”
“Funny thing, though,” Dewey continued, “there was a shortstop playing for the Kansas City Monarchs that day and I bet I could have got him for nothing. I think he made four errors. Probably you’ve heard of him since. A shortstop named Ernie Banks.”
[Source: “Red Smith on Baseball.”]
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Ball Bits
–One of the last big free-agent pitchers available, Ubaldo Jimenez, signed a four-year, $48 million deal with Baltimore. Jimenez, 82-75, 3.92, lifetime, was 13-9, 3.30 for Cleveland last season.
–I forgot to mention this last time but it really was kind of tragic what happened to former All-Star hurler Mark Mulder. From 2001-05, Mulder was 88-40 for Oakland and St. Louis, 103-60 for his career, but due to injury pitched just three games in each of 2007 and 2008 and hadn’t appeared in a big league training camp in six years.
But last fall, after toying with a new pitching motion he had seen, he decided to attempt to make a comeback with the Angels. But then in his first day in camp, during a simple agility drill, he was backpedaling at an easy pace when he stopped and planted his left foot in the grass so he could move forward and heard a loud pop.
Mulder explained, “I fell forward, almost like you slip, and I was confused. I didn’t know what happened. I actually thought my shoe broke. I thought the heel popped off. I stood and lifted my left foot. I put my foot down and had this weird feeling, like the ball of my foot wasn’t attached to my foot.”
Yup, ruptured Achilles’ tendon. Comeback attempt over for this year and he’s not sure he’ll be able to give it a go next season.
–The Mets are honoring Ralph Kiner on Opening Day and will wear a patch on their uniforms this year, as well as place a logo on the left field wall in his honor. Nice gestures. I still like the idea of a statue honoring the three original broadcasters; Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy and Kiner.
–I like the NBA. Heck, every Friday and Saturday night in my youth, during the winter, was spent watching the Knicks and Nets (of ABA days). I’ve obviously remained a Knicks fan, number one, but picked the Nets this year to go all the way and have watched a number of their contests.
That said….why would anyone watch a single minute of the NBA All-Star game? I can assure you I did not. I also haven’t watched a second of the NFL puke fest, nor the NHL’s contest. And baseball’s mid-summer classic has hardly been that in recent years.
But I did read Michael Potter’s column, he of the Star-Ledger, the poor soul having to watch the contest as part of his job.
“I’ve tried exactly to remember when the All-Star Game started on its road to becoming an insult to competitive basketball, when every other basket became a lob and a dunk, when defenders almost injure themselves getting out of the way of anyone driving to the hoop.
“I wonder what the legendary Bill Russell, 80 years young and sitting at courtside Sunday night, thought watching West forward Blake Griffin score 18 first-quarter points with defenses glued to the floor watching Griffin’s dunks.
“The competitive level of an NBA All-Star Game has sunk to the level of an And1 Live Tour. All that’s missing is a screaming P.A. announcer and nicknames.”
–Hours after I posted last Sunday came word that Augusta had indeed sustained some damage in last week’s ice storm and that, contrary to earlier reports, there was a major loss…the 65-foot-tall Eisenhower tree on No. 17, which had to be removed after suffering “irreparable damage,” according to Augusta National Golf Club chairman Billy Payne.
The Loblolly Pine was said to be 100 to 125 years old and located about 210 yards from the 17th tee and was on the left side of the fairway, making tee shots more difficult.
Payne didn’t say if the club would make changes to the hole now, and/or replace the tree.
–Bye-bye Dan Marino and Shannon Sharpe from the “NFL Today” pregame show on CBS. The network hired Tony Gonzalez on Tuesday and another new cast member is to be announced by next week, joining holdovers James Brown, Bill Cowher and Boomer Esiason.
–Hey, at least Wake Forest landed the top golf recruit in the class of 2015, Cameron Young of Scarborough, N.Y. Coach Jerry Haas also has a big class coming in next fall, including a kid from Dublin, Ireland.
Q. Any truth to the rumor that, having withdrawn his lawsuit against Major League Baseball, Alex Rodriguez has begun training for the Tour de France? (Bob D., Arlington)
Q. Is it true that Atlanta has applied for the 2018 Winter Olympics in hopes that the curling teams could sweep the ice off the interstates? (Jim M., Lapel, Ind.)
Q. If someone is hurt playing Russian roulette in Sochi, are they covered by ObamaCare? (Jack O., Fairfax)
You, too, can enter Chad’s Ask the Slouch Cash Giveaway. Email asktheslouch@aol.com and if your question is used, you win $1.25 in cash!
Top 3 songs for the week of 2/13/71: #1 “One Bad Apple” (The Osmonds!…proud of Marie and Weight Watchers…but stock cratered on poor earnings guidance…) #2 “Knock Three Times” (Dawn) #3 “Rose Garden” (Lynn Anderson)…and…#4 “I Hear You Knocking” (Dave Edmunds) #5 “Lonely Days” (Bee Gees) #6 “My Sweet Lord” (George Harrison) #7 “Groove Me” (King Floyd) #8 “Your Song” (Elton John…one of my faves…) #9 “If I Were Your Woman” (Gladys Knight & The Pips) #10 “Mama’s Pearl” (The Jackson 5)
NCAA Basketball Quiz Answer: Final Fours….
2012: Kentucky 69 Louisville 61; Kansas 64 Ohio State 62. Kentucky 67 Kansas 59.
2013: Michigan 61 Syracuse 56; Louisville 72 Wichita State 68. Louisville 82 Michigan 76.
