Sports fodder for a Friday morning . . .
What, exactly, did Bud Selig hope to accomplish with the Mitchell Report? The baseball commissioner obviously just wanted to show the world that he tried to do something about performance enhancing drugs in the sport. Well, he did something all right. He made a horrendous wound even deeper. The only thing that the Mitchell Report will accomplish is to scar baseball forever by embarrassing one of its greatest stars (Roger Clemens). It's time Selig steps away before he kills the sport.
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Clemens looked like a sneaky, whiny baby this week, letting the media listen to a recording of a private phone call he had with trainer Brian McNamee and then telling everyone that he couldn't care less if he is ever elected to the Hall of Fame. Clemens needs to talk to Goose Gossage and other members of the Hall what it means to be a Hall of Famer. The moment Gossage received the phone call and was told he had been elected to Cooperstown was priceless. That 30 seconds of video is all the proof that you need to know that the Hall of Fame is the greatest moment a player could ever experience.
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Clemens was more angry with the media on Monday than he was with McNamee in the famous tape recorded phone call. Why is that? All the media has done is report the findings of the Mitchell Report. Major League Baseball, through the Mitchell Report, has labeled Clemens a steroid user. Did Clemens expect the media to ignore that fact? McNamee is the guy who put Clemens' name in the report. Why wasn't Clemens furious with McNamee in that phone call? Is it because he knows McNamee told the truth in the Mitchell Report?
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We might never find out for sure whether or not Clemens used performance enhancing drugs. A court case won't even prove Clemens' innocence. Remember, O.J. Simpson and the 1919 White Sox were found innocent of all charges. Baseball had better hope this all just fades away. No more reports, no more congressional hearings, no more Hall of Famers made to look like fools. Enough is enough. Thanks, Bud. Nice work. What are you going to do next to try to clean up the game? Order a report on why Little League managers play their own sons more than other kids? Get on it, Bud.
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June Jones leaving Hawaii and going to coach SMU has to help the Wolf Pack football team. Hawaii became a force in the Western Athletic Conference because of Jones' offense. Then again, the new coach might actually build a defense and a running game. On second thought, maybe it's not such a good thing for the Pack.
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Judging by Hawaii's deer-in-the-headlights performance in the Sugar Bowl, maybe Jones should have spent more time preparing for Georgia than he did worrying about his next job. Just a thought.
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The inconsistencies in the baseball Hall of Fame voting boggle the mind. If Gossage is a Hall of Famer, then why isn't Lee Smith? Smith's earned run average was 3.03. Gossage's was 3.01. Gossage had 310 saves. Smith had 478. Smith had 1,251 strikeouts in 1,289 innings (8.7 per nine innings). Gossage had 1,502 in 1,809 innings (7.5 per nine innings). Gossage had just two 30-save seasons. Smith had 10. Oh, here's the difference. Gossage was a star for the New York Yankees. Smith never played for the Yanks.
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Jim Rice received 392 votes, missing the Hall by just 14 votes. Harold Baines received just 28 total votes. Rice hit 382 homers. Baines hit 384. Rice drove in 1,451 runs, scored 1,249 and hit .298 on 2,452 hits. Baines drove in 1,628, scored 1,299 and hit .289 on 2,866 hits. Rice played his entire career in a park (Fenway) perfectly suited for his talents. Baines played a huge portion of his career in a park (old Comiskey) where it was 352 feet down the lines. Why did Rice get 364 more votes than Baines? Oh, here's the reason. Rice played for the Boston Red Sox. Baines didn't.
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It's time the baseball writers change their voting process. The biggest problem is that voters are not required to completely fill in their ballot or even vote at all. This is a simple problem to fix. They need to just require voters to vote for the maximum 10 players each year. If they don't vote for 10 - and if they don't vote at all - they lose their vote forever. Problem solved. We would have gotten at least four new inductees - Gossage, Rice, Andre Dawson and Bert Blyleven - this year with that simple change in the process.
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Why do we care about baseball's Hall of Fame so much? By the way, the goofball who voted for Travis Fryman needs to have his or her voting privileges taken away and also be banned from major league ballparks for two years. We care about baseball's Hall because we care about the players. Nobody cares about who gets in other sports' Halls of Fame. Football doesn't even care about its own Hall of Fame. They announce their inductees a day before the Super Bowl, as sort of a throw-in event to serve as the appetizer before the main course. It's the same reason why we get so worked up over steroid use in baseball while other sports (namely track and football) announce a steroid user every week and hardly anyone pays attention for more than five minutes. So don't tell me that baseball isn't our national pastime anymore. We care about baseball. Baseball is family. Other sports are merely blondes sitting by themselves at the end of the bar at closing time.
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OK, when are they going to play the LSU-USC bowl game? Just asking.
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The Ohio State Buckeyes are fast becoming the Buffalo Bills. The Big Ten used to have a rule that one school couldn't go to the Rose Bowl two years in a row. The BCS should have the same rule for its championship game.
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Here is who we want to win this weekend in the NFL playoffs: San Diego, Jacksonville, New York and Seattle. We're sick of hearing about Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, Tony Romo, Jessica Simpson, Brett Favre's toughness and Cheeseheads.
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Mike Martz will be a nice addition to the San Francisco 49ers coaching staff. Is Martz going to bring with him the 1999 version of Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, Tory Holt and Isaac Bruce, too?
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The biggest question is now what happened to the NBA's popularity. The biggest question is why we seemed to care so much in the 1980s and 1990s. Was it only because of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson? That couldn't be it. The league has plenty of amazing players now. In fact, there are more incredible players than ever before. The phenomenon of the NBA in the 80s and 90s had to be because we were manipulated by the media and the hype machines, the two areas that just exploded during that era with ESPN, USA Today, the internet and the shoe companies. The league's popularity has flat-lined because we have seen it all before.
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In about five or six years, baseball's greatest home run hitter and all-around player (Barry Bonds), its greatest pitcher (Clemens) and its all-time hit champ (Pete Rose) all might not be in the Hall of Fame. But somebody will still vote for Todd Stottlemyre and Travis Fryman.
