Sports Then and Now

It’s been a strange year for sport. A team of Geriatrics made the NBA Finals, taking the defending champs to 7 games. Two teams who had never won a World Cup played for the championship. A team (avert your eyes, Bostonians) with a 3-games-to-zero playoff series lead melted and lost in Game 7 on home ice. At baseball’s all-star break, 3 teams who didn’t finish last year with a winning record lead their divisions. The once-unflappable Tiger Woods flapped and, ultimately, folded. A tennis match lasted over 11 hours, spanning 3 days. The Miami Heat built a basketball franchise that promises to be hated by all.

But when the year is over and Time Magazine writes its Person of the Year issue, these instances will all be asterisks, if that. Sport in 2010 will be marked neither by tragedy nor travesty, but rather by life running its course. Not 40 days after John Wooden – The Coach – passed away, so, too, did The Boss.

George Steinbrenner was, no doubt, a polarizing figure, but nowhere more than in the Bronx. What he represented drew the ire of eyes in Boston, Queens, Atlanta and Los Angeles, to be sure, but it wasn’t until twenty years into his ownership of the Yankees that his own fans warmed to him – and then, only after a three-year, league-imposed hiatus from the game.

Steinbrenner, Guliani and the World Series trophy in 2001 during an Esquire Magazine photo shoot.

But this is not a history lesson. No, this writer prefers to leave history to those more historically inclined. Steinbrenner’s passing happened at a fitting time; it was, after all, the one day of the year in which there is no sports news for ESPN or any other outlet to break. And, let it be known – even in the opinion of one who often criticizes ESPN for capitalizing on narcissistic moments in sport – that ESPN covered the passing of The Boss admirably, devoting an entire morning and early afternoon of coverage to Steinbrenner, his friends, once and former co-workers and the rest.

I am a Boston fan. I grew up in Upstate New York, with the exception some instances during my childhood in which I was transplanted in Massachusetts’ South Shore. That was enough to sell me on the Red Sox and Bruins and Celtics and Patriots, despite the fact that for most of the year I was surrounded by a majority of Yankees, Rangers, Knicks and Bills fans.

That does not make me immune to feeling the same chills that so many others probably felt this morning when Bob Knight, during a phone interview on SportsCenter, broke down crying not once, but twice while talking about Steinbrenner. Or when Dave Winfield got choked up on camera. I’m almost afraid to watch Derek Jeter’s interview, when it comes.

Baseball is the one sport whose season takes place without much competition. Sure, there is the occasional major golf or tennis tournament and every other summer, the World Cup or Olympics take center stage for a few weeks. But really, baseball goes from April to September without rival – it is only its postseason that is really challenged by other, regular sports. So to say that Steinbrenner was almost single-handedly responsible for making baseball what it is today might seem like an overstatement.

It’s not. Read the rest of this entry →

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.
And so it is with…

George Steinbrenner passed away on Tuesday morning in Tampa, Florida, after suffering a massive heart attack, ESPN is reporting. The bombastic and often boorish owner of the New York Yankees had recently turned the reins of the franchise over to his sons and had been in failing health the last few years, preventing him from making more than a few appearances at Yankee Stadium.

Steinbrenner passes away with the true love and admiration of the Yankee fan base. It must be said, in all fairness, that George Steinbrenner did everything within his power to make the Yankees winners during his tenure. No other owner in any sport has exhibited the fervor, an almost psychotic obsession with excellence, much less delivered on the premise. He took perhaps the most famous franchise in sports history and actually made it exponentially bigger and better. His $10 million investment in 1973 is now worth over $1.3 billion!

"The Boss", circa 1997.

As with so many great leaders of men, Steinbrenner’s success was not without its negative side. When you mention “The New York Yankees”, people think domination, 27 World Series titles, dynasties, and pinstripes. On the other hand, when you say “George Steinbrenner”, most people conjure up very different images. Public rants and fights with managers. Involvement with shady business characters. There were suspensions by the league and, most prevalent in the memories of baseball fans, it was George Steinbrenner who ushered in free agency, turning baseball into something very different than it had been up to that point. Read the rest of this entry →

Kauffman Stadium

Wednesday evening in a live event at Kansas City’s Kauffman Memorial Stadium, home of the Royal’s, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig announced that the 2012 All-Star game would be played there.

Standing at a podium located at home plate, Selig awarded Kansas City it’s third All-Star game since the Mid-Summer’s Classic was introduced in 1933. That inaugural game, played at Comiskey Park in Chicago, began one of the most beloved traditions in all of sports.

Back in 2006, Selig had told KC that, should a tax referendum for stadium renovations get passed, an All-Star Game would land at Kauffman Stadium between 2010 and 2014. Many expected KC to have to wait until a bit later, as 2012 marks the 100 year anniversary of Boston’s Fenway Park. Fenway would have been an obvious choice, but Selig is anything but predictable. Read the rest of this entry →

Is baseball still America's favorite pasttime for young fans?

My favorite sport has been disparaged, criticized and unjustly hated on ever since the 1994 strike initiated the decline of baseball into an exclusively older man’s game—the new fly fishing, if you will.

The sport lacked the caché of football, lacked the flair of basketball and more recently, lacks the recurring Renaissance that soccer experiences when Americans are patriotically aroused by the notion that we’re actually pretty decent at soccer—a sport typically associated with Europe and Latin America.

Baseball is routinely cast aside as a fading sport, no longer America’s pastime, and a sport more apt to be found on television screens in old folks’ homes than sports bars.

With a resounding smack into Pudge Rodriguez’s catcher’s mitt—courtesy of Stephen Strasburg’s 101 mph gas—that’s all changed.

The game is undergoing a drastic makeover: Think David Gest suddenly waking up one morning and looking like Taylor Lautner.

No longer is baseball associated with men who look dangerously close to popping. The younger stars of today—Strasburg, Jason Heyward, Ike Davis, etc., are revered because they are talented at baseball, not necessarily because their pecs are listed on Moh’s.

The game is “smart” now. With statistics being kept that would make Newton blush, baseball is increasingly becoming a technical game, a refreshing change from the “me-smash-ball-try-dismember-22-year-old-sitting-three-rows-up” game from the late ’90s and early 2000s. Read the rest of this entry →

Umpiring is just one (well...two) of the things that need changed in MLB.

Most fans don’t care about ratings or polls. When you sit down at the ball park with your son, the last thing you’re thinking about is whether the NFL or MLB has the bigger fan base. When you clear your evenings in October to watch the playoffs, thoughts of revenue sharing and rookie signing bonus ceilings are not on the menu for conversation. Aside from the geeks (of which I am one) who listen to sports talk radio all day long, these topics are marginal issues at best. Instead, what the real fans car about – game-wise, that is – has to do more with the legacy of the game and its heroes than of the television ratings. Kids want to see their favorite player in the All-Star Game and everyone looks to watch baseball (as opposed to posturing and argument) between the first and last pitch.

With those desires (and those who desire such) in mind, the following is a list of five things that Major League Baseball could change to make their fans much, much happier. Read the rest of this entry →

Padres catcher Yorvit Torrealba has weighed in on Arizona's proposed immigration law.

A new Arizona law being proposed that would require all individuals suspected of immigration violations to produce identification has been garnering much attention in the last few weeks. A lot of that attention has been from Major League Baseball, more specifically the Players Association and its members. It isn’t as though another reminder was needed of why politics and sports should remain separate was necessary, with the not so distant memories of steroid hearing before congress and threats of the same over tobacco use. Yet, here is the issue of immigration, adding a negative weight to baseball’s buoyancy, meant to help us float happily through the summer.

Immigration is certainly a polarizing issue, more so in areas such as Arizona where its proximity to Mexico make the issue extremely relevant. As such, while this proposed law seems sort of like a non-issue to the outsider: You have to show identification when the police stop you? Well, sure. Don’t we all? (Also, the law only applies to non-citizens. If you are a US citizen, all you must do is assert so. Lying about such is another, Federal charge.) For the residents of the area and for MLB players, especially Hispanic individuals, the legislation is anything but simple or appropriate.

If you click on a link to read articles at your favorite sports news site, you’re probably looking for scores, statistics, race results, and so on. Chances are that readers who are interested in the immigration debate are heading to sites like CNN or MSNBC to find information. Lately, though, if you read baseball news, you have had a steady diet of your favorite fare, peppered with numerous mentions of this Arizona bill.

Players like Venezuelan born Yorvit Torrealba, catcher for the San Diego Padres, was quoted in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “Why do I want to go play in a place where every time I go to a restaurant and they don’t understand what I’m trying to order, they’re going to ask me for ID first? That’s bull.” It’s not clear what this proposed law has to do with menus in restaurants or the wait staff – work visa is a legitimate form of identification – but when you consider the fact that in 2008 Arizona’s population was over 30% Hispanic (double the national average), Yorvit should be able to find restaurants with Spanish menus and staff.

Torrealba’s comments are indicative of why we don’t go to ESPN for political news. His comment is obviously based on an overarching view that immigration laws are unfair. Never mind that the laws only deal with those individuals here illegally, the details don’t matter. At least they don’t seem to when you talk to folks whose time is (and should be) occupied with other pursuits.

The Players Association is involved as they are whenever there is anything with a perception of affect on its members. Some players are reportedly considering boycotting the Arizona Fall League as a form of protest.   There is a push for Bud Selig to weigh in, to add an official position for Major League Baseball to the mix. All three should keep their figurative noses out of things. This law affects no MLB players directly because they are all here legally.

There are folks who really enjoy heated debates about issues like immigration, abortion, same-sex marriage, and so on. There are others who avoid them like the plague and focus instead on less stressful pursuits like sports. As much as taxpayers would like their senators to spend their time on something better than whether baseball players chew tobacco, so would sports fans be happier if the athletes, teams, and leagues would focus all their considerable energy on their respective sports and stay out of the political arena.