Jack’s Blog

Way back when I was a major baseball fan, I remember being so bummed out when my beloved Dodgers had a perfect game thrown against them.  I was absolutely beside myself (as any 8-year-old would be), making excuses, placing blame and taking my frustrations on on any and all within ear shot.

Considering my next door neighbor and best friend (as well as his two older brothers and dad) was a die hard Yankees fan - and had had to listen to me all year - about the Dodgers’ World Series conquest of (even back then - and maybe moreso back then) the Evil Empire in ‘55 (the first one is always the sweestest), it was crow eating time for yours truly. 

It didn’t really help when my father said to me, “Look, I know you’re disappointed” (not to mention eight years old), “but you should really appreciate what Don Larsen just did.  Games like these don’t happen very often” (yeah, like never before or since) and someday, you’ll be able to tell people you got to see someone pitch a perfect game in the World Series” (even if it was on a black-and-white TV).  Although my father’s words were said in a sincere father-to-son way, the main reason they fell on deaf ears probably had something to do with the fact that my dad was a fan of the guys in the pinstripes too.  I got my love for the Dodgers because my mother’s side of the family was from Brooklyn.

Here it is more than 50 years later (excuse me for a moment while I let that stat soak in) and we got to witness history as Cliff Lee threw, although not perfect, a similar masterpiece last night against the Yanks.  Granted, it wasn’t like Larsen’s perfecto, i.e. no one had ever done it, but the last time a pitcher in a World Series game struck out a minimum of ten batters without walking anyone (a la Lee last night) was, get this for a major time lapse - the first World Series game ever played - in 1903!

Phillies’ manager Charlie Manuel gave an in depth analysis why Lee was so dominant: “Cliff has four pitches and all four were working tonight.”  That’s about as in depth as Charlie gets.

That noted baseball afficianado Voltaire gave the perfect quote on last night’s performance- especially for Philly fans:

“Appreciation is a wonderful thing.  It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”Â

There’s a story in my book, Life’s A Joke, in the chapter entitled, Humbling Experiences.  that happened during the one year I spent at Robert Morris College in Pittsburgh, PA.  The gist of the story is that the year in question, 1976-77, was the first year of Robert Morris being in Division I.  Not only was that move difficult, but the year prior, RMC was a junior college!  This story about that transition begs the question, “Why?”

To make this incredible undertaking all the more difficult, we were an independent, i.e. no conference affliation and had to play something like 18 of our 26 games on the road.  Even our home games were played at three different sites - the band box on campus (which, if packed - something we never did get to see - and the fire marshall looked the other way, might have had a seating capacity of 1,000), the Beaver County Auditorium (a nice 4,000 seat facility about 20 minutes from campus) and the downtown Civic Arena (a 17,000 seat monstrosity where we played a couple games, including our home opener).

The one thing they did know at the Robert Morris was marketing.  Being in the Pittsburgh area, it was a real struggle for any kind of identity because 1) the Steelers, in their true glory days - Chuck Noll, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Mean Joe Greene, Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert and Super Bowls - were there and their season didn’t usually end until January, followed by a minimum of two weeks of either celebration or postmortem; 2) the Pirates of “We Are Fam-i-ly,” led by Willie Stargell were fan favorites; 3) the Penguins were there for people wanting a hockey fix; 4) that year, they even had Team Tennis, an experiment that the locals seemed to think was more exciting than watching our Colonials play, and 5) add to the fact that we had to battle head-to-head on the college basketball level, Pitt (who won the National Championship in football in ‘76 behind Coach Johnny Majors and Tony Dorsett) and Duquesne, which was much more of a basketball power then than they are now (having boasted of players like SiHugo Green and Norm Nixon).

Well, we were opening the season at home against Delaware State (hey, who else could we get to open with?) in the Civic Arena and we made our entrance to the game (all media, naturally, alerted well in advance) in helicopters!  After we finished our warm ups, the guys came over to the bench and prepared for the pregame introductions.  First, Delaware State’s starters were announced - and then the big moment, announcing the starters for Robert Morris’ first game as a Division I squad (it had been a national powerhouse under legendary coach Gus Krop, one of the greatest human beings I ever had the pleasure of knowing, and who had just retired as coach but remained in his full time job as head of campus security).

The guy on the microphone screamed (before a crowd of about 800), “And now, the starters for . . . Phillip Morris!  I think this guy can say without a doubt, that tobacco was harmful to his health - and career.

The reason I am including this story in today’s blog is because Isiah Thomas, one of college basketball’s best ever point guards and voted one of professional basketball’s 50 greatest players, but someone who, recently, has been, as the saying goes, ridden hard and hung up wet, has faced humiliation once again.  His trials and tribulations date all the way back to being the leader of the Detroit Pistons’ Bad Boys, a big-time winner, but also the team who, after they were beaten by the Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Phil Jackson-led Chicago Bulls, refused to shake hands with the new champs - a scenario allegedly organized by “Zeke.”

This show of low (or no) class was followed by his aborted takeover of the CBA (the NBA’s “minor league”), only to be trumped by his being handed over the reins of the most storied franchise in the NBA (c’mon, I’m from Jersey) and totally ruining the entire organization - from making horrific personnel decisions, be they draft picks or giving Allan Houston a seven-year contract for a guaranteed zillion dollars and having him play just two years of it (don’t even mention “Starbury”) and losing as big as his college team at IU and the aforementioned Pistons won (a college National Championship and two NBA World Titles), to being sued for sexual harassment by a young, female employee of Madison Square Garden, to a botched (take your pick) suicide attempt or the home version “Throw Your Daughter Under the Bus.”

The final chapter of “go ahead, throw another pie of shaving cream in my face” may have happened at the press conference announcing his latest job (this guy must have some agent), being named the head basketball coach at Florida International University.  Vice President and Provost of FIU, Ronald Berkman, proudly standing in front of a crowd, composed of several hundred fans and media members, uttered the words that are bound to be replayed hundreds, if not thousands of times: “I’d like to personally welcome Isiah Thompson as the new FIU basketball coach.”  He would have done better if he had said, “And now, I’d like to present a man who needs no introduction,” and then sat down.

When it comes to the height (or depths) of being a charter member of the School of Total Humiliation, Isiah Thomas must feel like Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in Godfather II when he said:

“Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in!”   Â

Back from the (final) weekend high school basketball tournament of the summer.  It was in Walnut Creek, CA and there can’t be too many better places to be (on the mainland anyway) for better weather this time of the year.  Near the end of this week, I’ll be off to Michael Jordan Flight School and when I get back from Santa Barbara - another beautiful weather destination (c’mon, you didn’t think MJ would hold a camp where you’d have to suffer through heat and humidity), there will be some pretty funny blogs about the goings on there (especially if it’s like any of the past MJ sessions - see the 8/15 entry and the second one on 8/14 from last summer).  As for today’s entry:

September 7, 1979 marked the birth of ESPN, the brainchild of Bill Rasmussen.  Shortly after being fired by the New England Whalers on Memorial Day Weekend in 1978, Rasmussen set his sights on what to do next.  He felt the nation’s sports fans were being shortchanged by having the capability of only viewing sports on television on the Big Three networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS for you youngers readers who think KG, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce when you hear the term, “Big 3″).

Sports on TV all the time seemed like a sure fire winner, as well as a logical idea for a country of 1) sports-obsessed fans and 2) a group, growing daily in numbers, of couch potatoes.  Needless to say, it worked out quite nicely for Bill - and the rest of us.

One problem: how can a network fill 24 hours each and every day with sports?  The first live televised sporting event on ESPN was a Kentucky Bourbons vs. Milwaukee Schlitz Slo-Pitch Softball World Series game.  I can’t tell you who won (and not because it occurred before Tivo).  His next brilliant move (after thinking up the concept of ESPN, not televising the softball game) was buying up every available second of NCAA March Madness, owned by NBC, a station that, in no way, quenched the college hoops fans’ unquenchable thirst for the greatest televised spectacle in the country.  (I say that with no hint of prejudice, although I did spend the greatest thirty years of my life - thusfar - as an NCAA intercollegiate men’s basketball coach).

No one can begin to argue with the success of Bill Rasmussen or ESPN but some of the ideas that are televised are either a test of the limits of super-fandom or are a joke in the back offices in Bristol, i.e. “Hey, let’s try to think up something completely idiotic and see how many people will respond” (the ability for someone to “voice” their opinion by voting on their computer only adds to the jocularity at ESPN).  

And so was born the “Question of the Day.”  Example: Which do you think is most likely: a) MJ really wears Hanes, b) Tiger really drives a Buick, c) Shaq really uses Icy Hot or d) Peter Griffin really eats at Subway?  Vote online and we’ll have the answer for you by the end of SportsCenter (because there’s no other reason to watch the rest of the show since if something significant happened, you already know the outcome).

Each year, the staff comes up with whackier promotions/contests.  The answer to the trivia question, “What are the only two days of the year that none of the top four professional leagues (NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB) play a game?” is, I believe, the day before and the day after baseball’s All-Star Game.  MLB is off during the days surrounding the All-Star Game, the NFL has yet to start and the NBA and NHL have recently completed their Finals (give them time, though - either of the last two will soon have their Finals stretch to where it’s competing against “Home Run Derby”).  Something needs to be televised and, although there will undoubtedly be some lawsuit, accusation of wrongdoing, etc. during that time, ESPN needs something that’s on the calendar, something concrete (just in case everybody decides to behave).

This year’s burning hot question is “Where is Titletown, USA?”  There were nearly 150 cities nominated, including New Lothrop, MI (somehow, Detroit and Ann Arbor made the group of finalists, depressing many of the New Lothropers), Woodstock, GA (I went to college in the late ’60s and if a Woodstock were going to be considered Titletown, it wouldn’t be the one in Georgia), Bemus Point, NY (once again, the citizens of BP take a back seat to those millions in NYC), Saint Paris, OH (if Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton and Toledo couldn’t make the cut, did the people of St. Paris really think they could sneak in?), Montezuma, KS (revenge factor?) and Watertown, SD (sorry, South Dakota, but if you want to be taken seriously as Titletown, the home of the Terry Redlin Art Center shouldn’t get the nod over Mt. Rushmore). 

The finalists range from Williamsport, PA (the home of the Little League World Series), to Massillon, OH (for high school football) to college campus towns like Ann Arbor, MI and Columbus, OH (can’t have one without the other), Gainesville, FL and Knoxville, TN (representing the SEC - and don’t think Lexington, KY; Baton Rouge, LA and Tuscaloosa, AL aren’t a hootin’ and a hollerin’); Chapel Hill, NC (ACC rep), Lawrence, KS (reppin’ the Midwest), Palo Alto, CA (to prove there’s no East Coast bias); New York, Detroit, Boston, LA, SF, Chicago and Pittsburgh (the power cities), and not to be outdone by the “big boys and girls,” Valdosta, GA and Parkersburg, WV).  Throw in Green Bay, WI because they need some love, what with all that Brett Favre thing going on and Louisville, KY for U of L and the ponies (further upsetting Lexington) and you have your twenty finalists.

How can any sane person even begin to argue which city on that list should be called Titletown, USA?  That’s not the point.  It gets people watching, even though that was probably the farthest thing from Bill Rasmussen’s mind when he conceived ESPN.  The lesson he learned was to take heed of Alexander Graham Bell’s advice:

“Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.”

         ¼/p>