Nice to see The Sportsgod’s site back online. Of course, every time the site goes off-line, the archives vanish into the ether like last night’s dreams. Ah, well. Sic transit gloria mundi, or Gloria Steinem, or whatever.
Who’d have thought that sports would lead the way in racial sensitivity in this country? Or maybe, the proper phraseology is, “Who’d have thought that mainstream society would so badly lag behind sports on the issue of racial sensitivity?” Certainly not I, but the evidence is overwhelming.
Just f’rinstance, we have the first African-American EVER running for President, and he’s rock-star popular. We can quibble about Obama’s “authenticity,” and whether the Caucasian ancestry on his mother’s side makes him a “real” African-American. Yeah, just like we can quibble about whether Tiger Woods, the son of a Thai-Chinese mother and an African-American/American Indian/Caucasian father counts as one.
The answer is appallingly simple. Just ask the manager of the military personnel golf course who refused to let Tiger play there when he was a kid because he was “African-American.” Vox populi, vox dei. In the real world that is the U.S. and its sorry history of racial divides, unfortunately, there’s something called the “one drop” rule, as in, if you have a single drop of African-American blood in your ancestry, you’re African-American.
So anyway, Barack is running for President, he’s African-American by the standards imposed by our society’s racial consciousness, and lots of people think he’s the cat’s pajamas. But lots of other people, including lots of prominent people in public life, are aghast at this effrontery, and are insinuating — nay, trumpeting — that he’s “presumptuous,” “uppity” and “doesn’t know his place.” And that’s the nicest thing those people say about his race. I’m just waiting for reruns of the “Ohhh, Harold, call me” ads, featuring a blonde bimbo, that cratered Harold Ford, Jr.’s campaign for the Senate. It’s coming, believe me. And all that, apparently, is acceptable to mainstream society.
Yet, in the sports world, things have gotten so advanced in this country, racial relations-wise, that African-Americans can be head coaches, general managers, team presidents, even team owners. People in the sports world can get censured, suspended or even fired just for claiming that African-Americans “don’t have the necessities” to move into professional teams’ front offices or to take on managerial roles; for calling African-American athletes “monkeys”; for calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team a bunch of “nappy-headed ‘ho’s”; or, most infamously, suggesting that the only way to stop Tiger Woods was to “lynch” him in a back-alley. (Of course the female talking head who made that unfortunate remark was wrong as a matter of fact, not just of common decency; it turns out that the way to stop Tiger is to wait for his body to start breaking down.)
Heck even “drug-addled gasbag” Rush Limbaugh, as Stephanie Miller likes to call him, an 800-pound gorilla if ever there was one — and you can take that any way you want to — can be thrown off an ABC football studio show for a statement critical of an African-American athlete that was stupid, but arguably wasn’t even racist, although it certainly could be construed that way.
Mind you — and this kind of proves the point — that happy consequence is kind of tempered by the fact that Mr. Hillbilly Heroin with a Viagra chaser recently signed a $400 Million or so contract to continue with his enormously influential syndicated radio talk show, paying absolutely no price for his repeated rants outside sports commentary that have been unequivocally, not arguably, racist.
I’m wrong, am I? Where do we even start? With his reference to mistaking L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (or whatever he’s calling himself these days) for a “shoe shine boy,” perhaps? Or his paean to the “peculiar institution” of slavery as one that had lots of good points, in that it built the South, and anyway, the slaves were happier and better off? His references to Obama as a “Halfrican-American” and a “magic Negro,” perhaps? His suggestion to a caller to “take that bone out of your nose and call me back”? Or the offensive, racially demeaning songs by some bozo named “Paul Shanklin” that he likes to play? But why go on?
And Limbaugh is among the LEAST racially offensive of his gaggle of like-minded talk show blowhards. He’s practically an NAACP member compared to Glenn Beck and Michael Savage, both of whom, like the King Gasbag, are more than amply rewarded for their steady barrages of vitriol.
My point is that even though Sen. George Allen, the sadistic son of the late, great football coach may have lost his 2006 Senate seat to Jim Webb in part because he was caught on video calling an (East) Indian questioner “macaca,” which apparently means “Macaque monkey,” the sad reality is that few people outside the sports world pay any kind of price for publicly expressing racist sentiments.
It sure doesn’t happen in politics — not on the Republican side of the aisle, anyway — where “respectable” talking heads so easily get away with race-baiting that they no longer even think about it. Heck, Richard Nixon finally won the Presidency by creating a “Southern Strategy” that equated African-Americans’ very existence with “crime in the streets.” Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms kept getting reelected despite prior Klan membership and consistent racist positions and statements. Trent Lott managed to keep his Republican Senate Majority leader status despite some truly vile statements, like when he praised Strommie baby, who’d run for President in 1948 as head of the splinter “Dixiecrat” party, the ONLY platform of which was segregation of the races, by opining that had Thurmond been elected President, the U.S. “would have avoided all these [nudge, nudge, wink, wink] problems.” And the ever-ineffable Barbara Bush, channeling Marie Antoinette, condescendingly asserted that the African-Americans who crowded into the Superdome in appalling conditions had no grounds for complaint, since the Superdome post-Katrina was way better than their regular homes.
Ironically, it’s easier for public figures to say racist things and get away with them now than it used to be a while back. I remember when Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz — there’s a sports connection here; he was the uncle of long-time Redskins “Hog” lineman Dave Butz — had to resign because he told a PRIVATE gathering that “the only thing [unacceptable word for persons of color] are looking for in life are tight pu***, loose shoes and a warm place to s***.” He deserved to get sacked for that, and Nixon, of all people, actually did the right thing. Not likely that Dubya would do the same these days, and equally unlikely that the mainstream media would even report it. In fact, these days, Butz might get his own syndicated talk show, instead of infamy.
But it’s not just politics. Comes now Toby Keith, noted Country Music star and avowed redneck (not necessarily the same things, given that Brad Paisley and Hank Williams III — oh yeah, and the Dixie Chicks — are also Country stars), to prove that this Teflon immunity extends into the entertainment world, as well. Or perhaps you’ve been asleep for the past few weeks, as Mr. Keith has made the media promotional circuit, playing his newest pro-lynching hit song (I’m not making this up), “Beer For My Horses,” on all the mainstream, big-audience TV shows. And has suffered zero consequences in sales or negative publicity. I guess the Nazi Party’s “Horst Wessel Lied” could rise to the top of the charts, too, if only somebody gave it a good back-beat. The media’s “liberal,” is it?
It amazes me that I’m even saying this, given the sports world’s antediluvian attitude to such subjects as homosexuality (unless it involves two totally hot Playboy-quality babes going at it, in which case, could you burn me a copy?), civil and human rights, and the like. But the sports world, in this the 21st Century after the birth of JC Superstar, may well be the only place these days where Americans CAN’T say unspeakably hateful things about people of other races with impunity. Anyone pulling a Toby Keith in today’s sports world would be gone faster than you can say “John Rocker.” I knew there had to be SOME reason why I still like sports.
So the Red Sox got rid of a “cancer” by trading Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers, who just coincidentally are owned by a Boston native and lifelong Sox fan. I have no problem with the trade from Frank McCourt’s perspective. Notice I didn’t say “from Ned Colletti’s perspective.” With his reckless, economically ruinous Jason Schmitt and Andruw Jones deals, as well as several other duds, he’s dead man walking, as far as I, and I suspect the McCourts, are concerned.
No matter what kind of a screwball, me-firster ManRam is, he can’t possibly make that sorry Chavez Ravine team worse. Anyway, Boston was so happy to see Manny’s iron ass hit by the door on his way out that it’s picking up the rest of his salary for this season. And Manny certainly has delivered during his first few games here.
But why did Boston do the deal? I know Ramirez doesn’t always — make that doesn’t usually — try very hard; that he’s concerned only with his own stats, not team success; that he won’t play hurt — and has a definition of that term broader and more all-encompassing than even J.D. Drew’s; and that he’s about as graceful as a hog on ice while in the field, and still has no clue about the basics of baserunning or hitting the cutoff man. I know he’s absolutely infuriating for any manager he has — and for most of his teammates. So we’ve established conclusively that he’s a weirdo, an a-hole and a possible major locker-room distraction.
I also know that the Sox won exactly zero World Series championships in 88 years after The Babe was traded to the Yankees, but two in the past four years. All the World Series losses came with rosters that didn’t include Mr. Ramirez. Both World Series wins came with him on the team.
I’m not saying there’s a true cause-and-effect relationship there, but he was after all the MVP of the 2004 Series. And 274 homers and 868 RBIs in 8 years — admittedly, in a hitter-friendly park — are pretty impressive numbers, no matter how infuriating the guy who hit them. Especially when the guy they got to replace him, Jason Bay, may be the best teammate in the world, and is certainly better in the field (who, this side of Rob Deer, wouldn’t be?), but averages 153 strikeouts per season in the NATIONAL league, for Pete’s sake, and was hitting .216 with men in scoring position at the time of the trade.
Of course, it’s easy for people like me, who don’t have to live with the guy day-in, day-out, to say that the Sox maybe should have risen above Manny’s increasingly irritating quirkiness and put up with him for the sake of his more often than not frighteningly productive offense. I mean, in the real world, people don’t put up with craziness unless they absolutely have to. I certainly don’t.
Most men love sex, and plenty of it, above all other things; but even perpetually priapic men have been known to divorce volcano-hot women who are great in the sack but crazy, when the downside of the craziness starts to overshadow the sexual benefits. Nutty, demanding, intermittently committed employees are fired from office jobs all the time. If Manny had a “real” job, he’d now be either on the street or on his 20th employer. Nobody in the business world puts up for long with an antisocial, narcissistic, psycho weirdo with anger issues, unless he’s the boss, the boss’s son, or has some really great polaroids of the boss “in flagrante” with a kid from the mailroom.
But baseball isn’t the real world. It’s part of the entertainment industry — which as we know has more than its share of strong personalities and bat-s*** loonies, who are catered to as long as they put butts in the seats. What makes sports different from the rest of the entertainment industry is that the entertainment isn’t just play-acting. Teams play games head to head, they keep score, and the entire point of playing the games is to win, not just look good doing it. It just seems to me the Sox almost always had a better chance to win when ManRam, with all his baggage, was mashing.
Heck, Ulysses S. Grant’s fellow generals weren’t exactly enthralled with his bibulous habits, either, and pushed for him to be replaced with someone whose personal habits were less distasteful. Instead President Lincoln, who wanted and needed to win the War Between The States, suggested that they just get the Hell over it and added that if being an alcoholic was the way to win battles, every other general should drink a barrel of whatever Grant was having. Let’s just call Manny baseball’s General Grant.
It’s not as if there hasn’t been plenty of precedent for baseball teams to hang onto disruptive, egocentric nut-jobs who can produce, as long as they can help a team win. Charlie Finley’s Athletics, who won three straight World Series in the ‘70’s, come to mind right away. Everybody hated everybody else on that team — the only unifying theme being that they also all hated the tight-fisted, mercurial owner — but winning trumped everything else.
And the Yankees kept Mr. October — who, come to think of it, was also one of the major divisive forces on Finley’s Athletics — despite the fact that nobody on the team liked him, for some of the same reasons that many of the Sox players could no longer stand ManRam. All Jackson did was help destroy the Dodgers in the 1977 and 1978 Series, and that was reason enough to keep him, warts and all.
Speaking of egotistical, disruptive head-cases, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Brett Favre, who can’t even pronounce his own surname, as Ben Stiller proved at the end of “There’s Something About Mary.” His entirely self-absorbed, drama-queen performance, played out on a national stage populated in the main by his ass-kissers, is the second coming of “Sunset Boulevard,” except that there was no dead man floating in the swimming pool. I half expected Favre to say something like: “I’m still big; it’s the Packers that got small.” He almost did.
My distaste has nothing to do with whether or not he can still play. He’s lost more than a step or two; he’s become ever more willful and self-indulgent in his play-calling on the field as he’s aged; and he’s developed a deplorable tendency the past few seasons to treat footballs like hand grenades and get rid of them haphazardly. Even so, I suspect that, even at his advanced age, and with really only one good season in his past three or four, he’s still better than Aaron Rodgers is now, or perhaps ever will be. Judging solely on football skills and an ability to help a team have success in the short term, it should have been a no-brainer for the Packers to take him back, despite the way he publicly and embarrassingly jerked them around, not just this year, but for the past few offseasons.
Again, it’s not as if there were no precedent. Roger Clemens, another consummate egotist lost in the strange world of his own twisted psyche, held the Astros, and then the Yankees, hostage from 2005 – 2007. Each year, he claimed that this time, he was retired for good and just wanted to spend more quality time with his family. (Based on Brian McNamee’s testimony to Congress, I guess “quality time” in the Clemens household meant matching “his” and “hers” HGH injections, but I digress.) Each year, after accepting all the kowtowing and begging as merely his due, Clemens graciously agreed to be lured out of “retirement” for ungodly sums of money, paid for less than a full season’s work, and with no need to accompany the team(s) on the road.
Mind you, Clemens kind of delivered — for Houston in 2005 and 2006, at any rate. Maybe he was worth all the money and aggravation just for his clutch performance in the 15th through 18th innings of Game 4 of the 2005 NLDS. He, or his synthetic testosterone, helped get the ‘Stros to their first World Series, after all. But the point is that, just as with Green Bay and the uncertainty created by Favre’s selfish behavior, the teams Clemens figuratively sodomized were so paralyzed and distracted by the process that they were unable to make the appropriate long-term plans and roster moves while they waited, twisting slowly, slowly in the wind, for him to make up his mind.
It’s not Favre’s refusal to stay retired that’s put a hair up my fundament about his behavior, though. Football management has been screwing football players royally ever since the NFL came into existence. A little payback from a player with a bit of clout is just what owners deserve, as far as I’m concerned. Please God, let there be more of the same.
And anyway, I understand how hard it can be to let go of the thing that you love best, and that you’re best at, especially when there’s still a little somethin’-somethin’ left in the tank. I still say that MJ retired too soon, and that even when he came back a shadow of his former all-world self, he was STILL a darn good player and would have had his team in the playoffs had he merely traded the draft rights to Kwame Brown and landed Elton Brand and a couple of solid backups.
But does Favre have to be such a sanctimonious, self-righteous peckerhead all the time? When any of his teammates was at odds with management, desiring a few more bucks, Favre was quick to spout pious homilies about “loyalty,” “team-first,” and “honoring a contract,” as he did when Javon Walker was trying to renegotiate. When it comes to HIS OWN words and actions, though, the rules apparently fly out the window. Diva, thy name is Favre.
I hate it when Jon Castro is right. Actually, I don’t. I just hate it when he’s right and I’m wrong. A few columns ago, Jon remarked that for all the homers and RBIs Alex Rodriguez amasses, he’s still waiting for A-Rod to hit one that means something. Curse you, Castro. You’re right, darn it. A-Rod currently has the second-best batting average in the AL, the second-best OPS, the best slugging percentage, the fifth-most homers, the 12th-most RBIs, and he still hasn’t managed to get a hit that really counts. Last season, to be fair, the Yankees rode a couple of A-Rod hot streaks into the playoffs, where he once again underperformed. This year, though, his homers and RBIs all seem to come in the middle of blowout wins or losses. When the team REALLY needs a hit from him, it’s not forthcoming.
By the way, for all those aghast at the idea that any baseball team might pick up that evil, prickly juicer Barry Bonds for a prorated league minimum salary that he’d already agreed to donate to charity, why would that be so bad, when all sorts of OTHER juicers are still in the league, and being paid a lot more money for what I’m betting is a lot less production, on a per-at-bat basis, than Bonds could provide? How would signing Barry Bonds be a desecration of the holy sepulcher that is baseball, when it’s already peopled by decidedly less productive talents who’re also tainted?
I’m not talking about Andy Pettitte, who namby-pambily admitted to taking HGH “to heal faster from an injury,” and I’m not talking about Jason Giambi, who sort of, kind of apologized in some incoherent fashion for doing something he’s ashamed of, the specifics of which he won’t admit but that we are led to believe had something to do with performance-enhancing substances.
But, last I checked, Miguel Tejada, who not only pretty clearly juiced but also lied about his age, was still playing. Tejada got a king’s ransom from the ‘Stros just before the Mitchell Report hit. Nobody made a move to void his contract or to take back so much as a penny. He’s currently got a stinking 11 homers, and a piss-poor OBP of .317 — in a hitters’ park. Bonds had a crappy season last year, and STILL managed 28 homers in a pitchers’ park, to go with an incredible .480 OBP and a 1.045 OPS. No team could use this guy? Like Tejada, a malcontent anywhere he’s been, is suddenly a way better teammate?
Or how about Tejada’s former teammate, and fellow accused juicer, Eric Chavez, who barely hits above the Mendoza Line these days, now that there’s testing?
Funny, isn’t it, how so many of those juicers have in some way been associated with the Oakland Athletics? Kind of adds some depth, texture and backstory to the term “Moneyball.”
Or how about Eric Gagne, who’s getting 7 figures to serve up puffballs to Brewers’ opponents? Or, heck, Troy Glaus, or Rick Ankiel, or Gary Matthews, Jr.?
I guess my question is, what, exactly, is it that makes Bonds’s former juicing so unconscionable, when the league has made it clear that NO juicer mentioned in the Mitchell Report will face sanctions of any kind? (I say “former” juicing because there’s testing now, and Bonds never tested positive last year or the year before that — for any of the substances for which MLB tests, anyway.)
Sure, Bonds is ten kinds of a creep and maybe even a sociopath, and he wasn’t nice to media types when he was riding high. How does that make him different from most of the other creeps and sociopaths who populate our present-day sports landscape? Does anyone seriously doubt that he can still rake, especially as a DH?
What IS it with NBA players and their utter inability to shoot free throws consistently? I mean, they get paid unthinkable sums of money to do only two things: play basketball as well as they can, and do whatever it takes to maintain or improve their conditioning and skills. Yet even some of the best of them can’t even be bothered to do that.
There has to be SOME time in between shopping for tricked-out luxury cars, buying ten or so new, unnecessary tailored suits, groping groupies and visiting strip clubs to spend a paltry few minutes a day learning how to shoot a decent percentage of free throws. Yet, year in, year out the past several years, our best and brightest can’t find the net from the line in international competition. It doesn’t matter how fast or athletic the U.S. players are, or how dazzling their dunks. If they can’t sink the free throws they get, it can, and almost always does, come back to bite them in the ass.
Sure, we can laugh off the abysmal 60.1 percent this year’s edition shot from the line in the pre-Olympics tune-up game against Lithuania, because they still won by 30 points or so. But against an Aussie team that didn’t even play its top big man, Milwaukee underachiever Andrew Bogut, their 61 percent from the line almost did them in, although their 17 percent clip from beyond the arc didn’t help much, either.
It can only get worse if they don’t start canning the gimmes. There are better teams than Australia out there. Team USA’s top competition may not be as quick or as athletic, but they sure as Hell can sink open shots from the line and from the floor. Since the winning team in basketball is determined by who scores more points, rather than by who has the more artistic dunks, that’s more than a little worrisome.
I originally thought that Team USA’s big problem would be its lack of height, given the way a couple of undermanned Latin American teams easily outrebounded them in last summer’s otherwise triumphal Tournament of the Americas. Now, I’m afraid that they’ll be able to overcome that disadvantage, only to lose the gold because they’re still “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” Luckily, I have a pathetic record as a seer, so you’d be safe betting against whatever I predict. Still . . . .
Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.
