July 2010 Archives
New Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott doesn't have many more details in his attempt to launch a network for his business partners so they can publicize their sporting events and make money. It just seems as if he's got new ideas on how it will come about, most likely in 2012, based on some recent media reports.
"We're not that far along in our planning," Scott told the New York Times this week (linked here).
Yet, in taking his message to the East Coast earlier this week before Thursday's gathering at the Rose Bowl for Pac-10 media day, Scott told the paper that a Pac-10 Network would be similiar to the one the Big Ten started in 2007, but with more "quality" games than those that are currently farmed out to ESPN or Fox Sports Net for bigger paydays and viewership.
Adding Utah and Colorado to the conference next year will automatically increase the TV households from 16 million to 18.5 million.
Scott also told Darren Rovell at CNBC (linked here) that he has has done plenty of due diligence about creating the network, including a visit with Big Ten Network chied Mark Silverman.
"I went through the whole process and understood that it's not as profitable to the partners as people think because you do have to invest in the production and distribution of all the other sports," said Scott.
That said, the Pac-10 network would be more of a marketing tool than something seen as a money maker right away.
"UCLA has had more titles than any other school, Stanford is always competing for the Director's Cup ... A network would create more awareness and understanding of how powerful and balanced our conference really is among all sports, Scott told CNBC.
Scott also appeared on ESPN's "College Football Live" to talk about how Utah and Colorado give the soon-to-be-Pac-12 a time zone closer to the East for many starts.
"We're the only conference that could be late-night East Coast exclusively," he said. "I think you are going to see us willing to play in more different kinds of time windows. That's one step. The other thing we've got to do is obviously get more exposure for the programs outside of USC."
Yup, it always comes around to USC.
Some of the other media notes after today's column (linked here) that are worth packing in:
== Thanks to the Sports Business Daily, here's a roundup of some of the things written right after it was apparent that ESPN.com pulled Arash Markazi's story on the LeBron James Las Vegas party:
Miami Herald columnist Dan Le Batard on ESPN's own "Pardon the Interruption": "The way the relationship is with LeBron James though, and this network's relationship after 'The Decision,' makes it complicated because there is the perception that ESPN is in bed with him. Now you bring more attention to the story when you pull it. You bring more attention than if you had just run it and left it alone because it's a pretty harmless piece."
Boston Globe media critic Mark Leccese: "First of all: Wow. Not 'wow' that James behaved badly. ... It's that ESPN pulled the thing ... (it) "exposes ESPN as a positive publicity machine for James and the NBA and damages its reputation as a news provider. ... It's not a little, dumb thing -- it is a manifestation of ESPN's corporate values. ... Other than fear of libel suit, the only possible reasons to pull the story are 1) the editors don't trust the reporter (doubtful); and 2) to avoid offending James or the NBA."
== Newday's Neil Best: "This was ESPN.com's call. But why? The story was kind of interesting and offered insights into 'Entourage' in real life."
== The Desert News' Jamshid Ghazi Askar: "Color ESPN as officially beholden to Bron-Bron."
== The N.Y. Observer's Zeke Turner: "Unless ESPN.com's editors can show evidence that there are errors in the piece, this was a terrible mistake. Their motives, to say the least, are suspect."
== The Sporting News' Chris Littmann: "Right now I've got to think @ArashMarkazi feels a little bit like William Miller in 'Almost Famous.'" He added: "But isn't this just classic? Like the Jordan Crawford dunk video, the decision to yank/hide this will attract more attention than the story."
== Yahoo Sports' Kelly Dwyer: "I'm sorry, but when Arash Markazi is too edgy and critical of athletes for your taste, it's time to look in the mirror, ESPN."
== Sporting News' Mike DeCourcy: "At least the ombudsman has something to write about next time."
== Fanhouse.com's Bethlehem Shoals: "Iin this climate, Arash's piece was bound to come off as salacious, even inflammatory, and stand their ground accordingly. ... In between 'The Decision' and The Cover-Up, there was, simply, The Mistake. ... (James' reps) "should have known better ... this depiction of LeBron simply reinforces everything nasty said about him this summer."
A story on this in today's New York Times (linked here) goes much more indepth about the timeline of what happened, and how Markazi presented himself.
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== Fox and ESPN have taken custody of the Dodgers-Giants games on Saturday (1 p.m., Channel 11, with Kenny Albert, Eric Karros and Chris Rose) and Sunday (5 p.m., ESPN, with Jon Miller, Joe Morgan and Orel Hershiser). Fox reporter Ken Rosenthal, who will be monitoring all the trade rumors happening on the trading deadline, will be at Fox's Detroit-Boston game (going to 37 percent of the country, with Dick Stockton and Mark Grace). The most seen game for Fox on Saturday is Atlanta-Cincinnati (with Thom Brennaman and Kevin Millar, to 42 percent). TBS's Sunday morning game (10:30 a.m.) goes with the Yankees-Rays from Tampa with Ernie Johnson, Buck Martinez and Dennis Eckersley. MLB Network also has Yankees-Rays on Saturday at 4 p.m.
Meanwhile, the MLB Network plans to air five hours of live trade deadline coverage on Saturday starting at 8 a.m. with Peter Gammons, John Hart, Jon Heyman, Harold Reynolds and Tom Verducci. It leads into a countdown as the "40 Most Memorable Trades in MLB History" documentary starting at 3 p.m.
ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" has a trade deadline show starting at 9 p.m. Saturday with Tim Kurkjian, Buster Olney, J.P. Ricciardi and Eduardo Perez.
== The benefit of catching MLB Network: During Wednesday's "MLB Tonight Live," the "ballpark cam" system that is in place for the "Batting Practice Live" daily shows at all stadiums captured Joel Pineiro warming up about before his scheduled 12:35 p.m. start for the Angels against Boston at Angel Stadium. There was a slight delay as the trainer approached Pineiro at about 12:25 p.m., but then it was live when Pineiro had been scratched and Scot Shields started warming up at 12:29 p.m.
== Jim Lampley, Emanuel Steward and Harold Lederman will call Saturday's HBO PPV bout ($49.95) of Juan Manuel "Dinamita" Marquez's rematch against Juan "Baby Bull" Diaz. It starts at 6 p.m. from Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
== Versus has its second live UFC fight Sunday, 6 p.m., from the San Diego Sports Arena matching light heavyweight Jon "Bones" Jones (in the red trunks) and Vladimir Matyushenko. Versus' first UFC live fight on March 21 averaged 1.24 million viewers. A new wrinkle: At least six commercials presented during the telecast will run split-screen, to not interrupt the coverage over seeing fighters in their corners and in the locker room (they will not air during fight action). It is similar to what Versus does during its IRL coverage.
== Former ESPN head of programming and production Mark Shapiro has been hired by the NFL Network by his old boss, Steve Bornstein, to consult for ways of improving the league-owned network's game-day presentation. Shapiro left ESPN in 2005 to join Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder and run Six Flags amusement parks, and he's currently president of Dick Clark Productions. The NFL Network has already announced this week that Fox's Daryl Johnston and Jay Glazer will be part of its studio shows.
AND FINALLY:
== SI.com's Richard Deitsch (linked here) reports more on the upcoming ESPN book by Tom Shales and Jim Miller -- it has a title. "Those Guys Have All The Fun: Inside the World of ESPN" will come out early next year and goes all the way up to the LeBron James "The Decision" show earlier this month. Miller says in Deitsch's story that of the 472 subjects interviewed over the last two years, there were three different types of people among the current and former ESPN employees.
"The first type is the person who says, 'I love or loved being at ESPN. It was the greatest experience of my life. What can I tell you?'" said Miller. "The second person says, 'It's a great place but it certainly has its challenges and problems and I'll be happy to share both.' Then there's the third person who is resentful and angry and was maybe even scorned.
"I think there are many people there looking forward to the book, and I think there are many people wondering, 'Can we trust these guys? 'What are they up to? Are they out to get us?"
ESPN officials respectfully declined to cooperate with the book.. Said ESPN Senior VP/Corporate Communications Chris LaPlaca: "Two primiary reasons: First, time. Officially devoting company resources to a book of this proportion was a concern. Secondly, our general policy is not to officially 'endorse' any publication."
The last couple of days have been interesting to watch the process by which ESPN has decided not to run a story written by ESPNLosAngeles.com reporter Arash Markasi about a party he attended with LeBron James in Las Vegas.
Within the last hour, ESPN announced it would not run the story after meeting upon meeting about what happened. They decided that Markasi did not identify himself as a reporter at the party, thus, the material was not collected on the up and up.
"ESPN.com will not be posting the story in any form," said Rob King, Vice President & Editor-in-Chief of ESPN Digital Media, in a statement. "We looked into the situation thoroughly and found that Arash did not properly identify himself as a reporter or clearly state his intentions to write a story. As a result, we are not comfortable with the content, even in an edited version, because of the manner in which the story was reported.
"We've been discussing the situation with Arash and he completely understands. To be clear, the decisions to pull the prematurely published story and then not to run it were made completely by ESPN editorial staff without influence from any outside party."
Markazi then offered this official statement: "I have been in conversations with ESPN.com's editors and, upon their complete review, understand their decision not to run the story. It is important to note that I stand by the accuracy of the story in its entirety, but should have been clearer in representing my intent to write about the events I observed."
The story was never posted, either on ESPNLosAngeles.com or on ESPN.com. ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz explained that it was "posted on the server and accessible through searches only during the period it was up. That has also been widely misunderstood."
So, for those who haven't seen it, it's been accessable through various sources (linked here). This draft of Markasi's story, as described by Will Leitch on his New York magazine blog (linked here), "might not have been the most artful thing we'd ever read, but Markazi -- a friendly, competent fellow known for rather cozy relationships with athletes -- had almost otherworldly access, a fleeting glimpse behind the curtain of How Superstar Athletes Live. It's little wonder ESPN spiked it."
It included this excerpt:
"(Maverick) Carter, LeBron's' childhood friend and manager, begins dancing around James like Puff Daddy in a Notorious B.I.G video. A giant red crown-shaped cake is brought over to James while go-go dancers dressed in skimpy red and black outfits raise four lettered placards that spell out, "KING." Carter grabs a bottle of Grey Goose and pours a quarter of it on the floor and raises it up before passing it off."
"Just enough pseudo-embarrassing stuff that it was inevitable ESPN would spike the story," writes Leitch.
Sure, it looks bad. Like ESPN is protecting James, in light of being in kahoots with his "Decision" on their network just a few weeks ago, and so much backlash involved there.
Our take? We're still processing, and will have more about it in Friday's media column.
The fall schedule for ESPN Films' "30 For 30" series includes:
== Tuesday, Aug. 24, 5 p.m. - Jordan Rides the Bus (Ron Shelton): Michael Jordan walks away from the NBA in 1993, joins the White Sox's minor-league Birmingham Barons, with manager Terry Francona, and tries to figure out life. Why did he do it? The man who made the movie "Bull Durham" takes a crack at it.
== Tuesday, Aug. 31, 5 p.m. - Little Big Men (Al Szymanski and Peter Franchella): On August 28, 1982, Cody Webster and friends from Kirkland, Wash., went to the Little League World Series. Whatever happened to them?
== Tuesday, Sept. 7, 5 p.m. - One Night in Vegas (Reggie Bythewood):
On September 7, 1996, WBC heavyweight champ Mike Tyson fought Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Afterward, Tyson was supposed to meet with his friend, rapper Tupac Shakur. But Shakur never arrived. He was gunned down.
== Tuesday, Sept. 14, 5 p.m. - Unmatched (Directors: Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern Winters; Producer: Hannah Storm): Eighty times, Chris Evert faced Martina Navratilova. The first time when only a few hundred spectators saw the 18-year-old Evert face the 16-year-old Czech in 1973. Now they tell the story of their rivalry.
== Tuesday, Sept. 21, 5 p.m. - The House of Steinbrenner (Barbara Kopple): Two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Kopple documents the historic moment of transition for the Yankees as they moved into a new stadium and won the World Series.
== Tuesday, Sept. 28, 5 p.m. - Into The Wind (Steve Nash): The NBA All-Star guard shares the 1980 story of Terry Fox and his fight againts bone cancer by running across Canada.
== Tuesday, Oct. 5, 5 p.m. - Four Days in October (Major League Baseball Productions): With the Yankees leading the Red Sox three games to none in the 2004 ALCS, and up 4-3 in the bottom of the ninth in Game 4 against Mariano Rivera, was there any hope that Boston could come back, then win the World Series?
== Tuesday, Oct. 12, 5 pm. - Once Brothers (NBA Entertainment): Drazen Petrovic and Vlade Divac were two friends who grew up together sharing the common bond of basketball in Yugoslavia, then in the NBA. Then the country split into Croatia and Serbia during a war. Then, on the fateful night of June 7, 1993, Drazen Petrovic was killed in an auto accident before they had a chance to reconcile.
== Tuesday, Oct. 19, 5 p.m. - Tim Richmond: To the Limit (Rory Karpf ): The rock-star NASCAR driver of the 1980s came to grips with AIDS. Although he returned to race in 1987, he was gone the next year and died on Aug. 13, 1989 at age 34.
== Tuesday, Oct. 26, 5 p.m. - Steve Bartman: Catching Hell (Alex Gibney) : Did he curse the Cubs during NLCS Game 6 when Moises Alou couldn't catch the foul ball down the left-field line? He released an apology, but he remains ostracized from a community he lives in and a team he once loved. Oscar-winning documentarian Gibney relates the scapegoat compulsion to his own frustration as a Red Sox fan when Bill Buckner was similarly singled out for letting a fateful ground ball go through his legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Gibney engages Buckner and his story as a means of exploring what has kept Bartman so silent despite highly lucrative offers to tell his side of the story.
== Tuesday, Nov. 2, 5 p.m. - Marion Jones: Press Pause (John Singleton) : The former Thousand Oaks High sprinter, who denied for years speculation of performance enhancing drugs, admitted to doing it in 2007, went to prison for six months and saw her Olympic achivements erase. She takes time to reflect on all that with the Oscar-nominated director.
== Tuesday, Nov. 9, 5 p.m. - Pony Excess (Thaddeus D. Matula): Southern Methodist University had the best record in college football from 1981-84, with the "Pony Express" backfield of Eric Dickerson and Craig James. Then the program came apart, and the NCAA, on February 25, 1987, handed it the "death penalty" for the first and only time in history. No football for two years. How long did it take the program to recover? Not until it won the 2009 Hawaii Bowl, maybe. SMU film school grad Matula documents it.
== Saturday, Dec. 11, 5 p.m. - The Best That Never Was (Jonathan Hock): The two-hour documentary will look at the football career of running back Marcus Dupree, and how he used football later to redeem himself.
So -- not that anyone really has been asking -- but whatever happened to Roy Firestone?
It's a story we've considered pursuing the last few years. For some reason or another, found something better to write about. Not better, as in content. But better, in that, we sort of knew the answer, and weren't that compelled to let you know about it.
We'd see some ads in our own paper publicizing a show he was doing somewhere, and someone would say, "Let's go down and see it!"
Naw.
So, again, what's he been up to? Sports Illustrated to the rescue, in its latest edition.
Time was, you couldn't get enough of "Mr. Saturday Afternoon" -- the nickname I gave him once upon a time. Not quite up to the Billy Crystal character in the movie "Mr. Saturday Night," but an incredible simulation.
The longtime Encino resident turned his sportscasting career into that of a smaltzy nightclub performer, very self-indulgent. He reinvented himself into some kind of pre-karaoke singer mixed in with impressions, stories about himself and motivational talks to corporations looking for a "sports guy" who could really entertain their employees.
"Roy Firestone is one of the nation's most sought after live corporate performers, keynote speakers and lecturers." It says so on his website.
He made it work. Somehow. And still does. Somehow.
Roy, roy, roy ....
(It also begs the question: Whatever happened to Joe Piscopo?)
Stop your crying, Rod Tidwell. Show me the current issue of SI.
The latest "Where Are They Now?" issue includes a piece by Lee Jenkins on how it's a crying shame that Firestone doesn't have an interview show any more.
And Roy, it seems, wants to get back into the game. He wants his own sports show again. He says so, not so subtly, in the story -- which also mentions that his youngest son plays basketball at Harvard-Westlake.
Writes Jenkins: "He was a creation of the explosion in sports media and a casualty of it. While in the '80s fans were still being introduced to players as people, by the mid-'90s there was a sense we knew it all .... That Firestone wants a show and does not have one is less a statement about him than about the industry. Despite the overwhelming demand for access to athletes, no long-form sports interview show exists anymore."
The former KCBS-Channel 2 sports anchor ('77-'85), overlapping with 10 years on ESPN's "Up Close" ('80-'90), where he interviewed about 5,000 athletes -- many of which can be seen on ESPN Classic's "Up Close Classics." He also had that time on the USA Network with "Sports Look," which we can even remember Ira Fistel contributing.
Remember when Firestone was actually a game analyst on ESPN "Sunday Night Football" in the late '80s? Us neither.
If you have an iPad with the SI "Inside Report," you can watch anchor Maggie Gray interview Firestone "about his life and legacy," according to the SI release.
Legacy? That might be two books he's written and a CD he's produced as well.
Easier to access, if you miss him that much, he's got his own website (linked here, with a creepy intro), which reveals he has a performance on Aug. 18, 8 p.m., at the Typhoon Restaurant at the Santa Monica Airport.
And seriously, click on the music and books link and there are 10 songs you can hear Roy sing. Not karaoke. Like "Whenever You Call Me, I'll Be There ... I'll Be Around."
Yup, he's around. Just call him. Please.
Now, it's on to flipping over in the SI issue to the story about the 30th anniversary of "Caddyshack."
KFWB reporter Ted Sobel interviews Tiger Woods after the final round of the British Open on July 18.
Ted Sobel's excellent adventure in Europe last week could have been better.
"If not for getting sick, it would have been really amazing," said the sports reporter for KFWB-AM (980) and KNX-AM (1070), whose recent working vacation included covering the semifinals and finals at Wimbledon in England, the entire British Open golf tournament in Scotland and even filing a report on the Tour de France from his hotel room in Paris during a three-week stretch.
A bad cough he picked up on the first day of his stop at Wimbledon, where he interviewed Serena Williams after her women's title, led to him visiting a hospital in Italy about a week later, which was just two days before he flew to Scotland.
Still, the trip of a sports reporter's lifetime was worth it.
"I'd been thinking about doing this for a handful of years, and one day, after looking at the schedule, then scrambling to get the credentials, it happened," said Sobel, who was gone from June 30 to July 20, using the days in between the sporting events to visit spots in Italy.
The highlight: During the wind delay in the second round of the British Open, Sobel said Phil Mickelson, who had just finished his round, took him aside to talk off the record about how upset he was about the stoppage of play, which could have helped him move up the leaderboard had others been forced to still play through it while he then sat on the cut line.
"It was just so funny how he suddenly started confiding in me for about 10 minutes, just venting," said Sobel. "All off the record."
Sobel paraphrased the story when he did one of four reports to KFWB's morning shows, giving sports anchor Bret Lewis material to work with.
Once Sobel returned to his Sherman Oaks home in the middle of last week, the jet lag kicked in.
"I woke up dizzy on Wednesday morning, and I'm sitting up in the dark, it's 4 a.m., I'm looking around, and I think, 'I'm in France,' and nothing familiar," he said. "Then I stood up, turned on a light . . . wait a minute, I'm home."
And after getting some sleep, he was out at Dodger Stadium that night collecting interview audio for the climax of the Dodgers-Giants series.
This week, Sobel has been filing reports at the ATP tennis event from UCLA -- as well as acting as the court announcer and doing a play-by-play telecast that can be heard by spectators through a local radio feed.
"Nothing much has changed - I've been non-stop ever since," he said.
The San Diego Padres' Triple-A Portland Beavers, a team that's soon without a place to play, will likely move its 2011 home to Lake Elsinore and share the stadium with the Padres' Single-A Storm, according to Baseball America (linked here).
Meanwhile, Padres CEO Jeff Moorad has formed a group that includes former UCLA and NFL quarterback Troy Aikman in hopes of buying the Pacific Coast League franchise from current owner Merritt Paulson and move it closer to San Diego -- with San Marcos, Escondito or Tuscon, Ariz., as possible landing spots.
The Beavers will be without a home after this season -- their long-time ballpark will be converted into a soccer-only facility to house the Major League Soccer's expansion Portland Timbers, which are owned by Paulson.
The city of Portland turned down proposals to build the Beavers a new stadium. So, at Lake Elsinore, the 7,866-seat park awaits.
The Baseball American story says that Minor League Baseball has said the park sharing between the Beavers and Storm in Lake Elsinore can only last one season.
PCL president Branch Rickey, the grandson of late baseball executive Branch Rickey, is quoted: "The situation is something the California League and Pacific Coast League would not consider a long-term solution, but a one-year interim is a possibility."
Moorad told Baseball America he wants his team's Triple-A franchise in California, at a yet-to-be built stadium.
"We've had talks with several municipalities, including Escondido," he said.
Now, just keep the name, and get Jerry Mathers to throw out the first pitch (linked here).
In light of having to pay a $50,000 fine for comments he made about one of his players' past drug use, Minnesota Timberwolves president of basketball operations David Kahn has changed his media policy.
According to a report in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Kahn says that all interview requests will go through the team's media-relations department and "no longer are reporters allowed to call or text him directly on his cell phone."
You'd think someone like Kahn, who once covered basketball and other sports for the (Portland) Oregonian upon his graduation from UCLA where he was a sports editor at the Daily Bruin would have figured out media protocol by this point in his career.
Not as the USC AD. As the Notre Dame analyst.
Joe Theismann, Steve Beuerlein, Mike Golic, Rocket Ismail and Aaron Taylor might be the South Bend favorites, but James Lofton, Dan Fouts and former Irish coach Bob Davie are also in the conversation to replace Haden as the game analyst on NBC's Irish football package.
This, according to those throwing out names on sports-talk shows and blogs because there's not much else to talk about this time of year.
Cris Collinsworth, who once did this package in the early '90s, may also be asked to take on the seven-game package in addition to his NFL duties at the network.
Taking it further, some even speculate that Tom Hammonds will take the opportunity to step away after 14 seasons as the play-by-play over the last 17 years, which could open an opportunity for Ted Robinson (Notre Dame Class of '78) to take it.
From SBNation's baseball link (linked here), via VinScullyIsMyHomeboy.com (linked here) is the story of a big Dodger fan named Jimmy Chang who got creative with how he would enter Dodger Stadium the other day.
You know how when you buy a ticket online, then print it out to use for your entrance pass? Jimmy had bigger plans when he went to the Dodgers-Mets game last Friday.
"What would happen if my ticket was 3 by 5 feet," Jimmy wrote to Roberto Baly, who runs the VinScullyIsMyHomeboy site from his home in San Dimas. "Will they accept it?! If they do, will it scan?!?"
The answer: Yes, they'll scan it. Then security will confiscate it.
The ticket-taker thought Jimmy was carrying in a banner, which is prohibited by stadium rules. But it wasn't.
Jimmy explained that he works at a printing company that does movie banners. He took his Ticketmaster printout, gave it to a press man and had him blow it up real good.
"Next time, I might go bigger -- maybe 5 by 8," Jimmy added. "I guess it doesn't matter how bit it is as long as the coder reads it right."
There remains a surreal reality-meets-Hollywood aspect to L.A.'s ongoing stumbling pursuit of an NFL team, one that lately could confuse even those of us who know the difference between right, wrong and broken dreams.
Hopefully, no one at the NFL watches HBO until "Hard Knocks" starts in August. It might cloud their decision to actually bring a team back here -- the first since both the Raiders and Rams changed their addresses after the 1994 season.
Enter the latest episode of "Entourage," where agent-gone-crazy Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) is money-hungry to bring himself fame as he figures out a way to form an NFL ownership group fo L.A. that includes two very real candidates: Casey Wasserman and Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Weren't they already involved in ....
"Billionaire boys club day. I love it!" says Gold in the HBO series' episode "Tequila Sunrise" that debuted Sunday (with several more replays this week).
So Gold has his meeting, with Wasserman making an appearance as well as San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman.
Says Gold: "I want, and everyone in this town wants, an NFL team playing in a brand-new state-of-the-art facility within five years, all right? I think with the power and the money at this table, we can get it done in three. Now is the time for L.A. to have an NFL team and I am the right guy to lead the charge to make this happen."
When asked how Gold would run the team with their money -- he's trying to milk at least $20 million per investor -- he said: "Like I do here at the world's largest talent agency. I bring in the best, I attract the best. I've always done that ... Sign checks -- big ones. And if not, regret not being a part of this for the rest of your lives."
Now match that up to the quotes that appeared in Saturday's Whittier Daily News (linked here), where Ed Roski says he's still committed to building his City of Industry stadium, even if there's a second stadium proposal for downtown in the works.
"It will happen," said the Majestic Reality CEO, even though he says the NFL's labor problems coming up has slowed progress on his proposed $800 million, 75,000-seat stadium, which is fully approved for construction.
"Our expectation was to be further along than we are right now," the 71-year-old said. "Unfortunately for us, the labor contract right after the Super Bowl became a focus for the NFL. So it definitely has slowed the process down."
Is Ari aware of this?
(Does it matter? Ari once had a quote in the series: "Call me Helen Keller because I'm a f---ing miracle worker!")
In real life, Wasserman has said he'd join Tim Leiweke in trying to get a $1 billion NFL stadium built near Staples Center.
Roski declined to talk specifically about the downtown stadium concept, of which few details have been released.
"We are just focusing on our deal," he said. "We think we have the location that services all of Southern California."
In 2003, Roski was working to bring an NFL team to the Coliseum, a similar venture in Carson was revealed -- that was the pet project of agent Michael Ovitz.
Which seems to be the character that Gold is now portraying. We think.
Unless Larry David, as George Steinbrenner, wants to step in and add his two cents.
Highlights of the week ahead in sports, both here and afar:
MONDAY
Tennis: ATP Farmers Classic, UCLA Tennis Center, first round matches, noon and 7 p.m.:
The plan is that Saturday's John McEnroe-Andre Agassi exhibition won't be what this event is remembered for months from now. Thousand Oaks favorite Sam Querrey, with his "Sam's Club" fans, can't afford to miss this one -- he's the defending champ, and winner of three ATP events this season, including the Wimbledon tuneup at Queen's Club when he beat good friend Mardy Fish. This year's field includes a new No. 1 seed, Andy Murray, who replaces Novak Djokovic. Querrey is seeded second, with Fish (who won the ATP event in Atlanta on Sunday), James Blake, Robby Ginepri and Marcos Baghdatis in the field. At tonight's opening night, Jim Courier will be introduced as tournament honoree. We've seen him play. He can still bring it. Even by courier.
MLB: Angels vs. Boston, Angel Stadium, 7 p.m., FSW:
The Red Sox's only visit to Anaheim this year. Bummar. There are conflicting reports that the Angels may start newly-acquired Dan Haren in this game.
TUESDAY
MLB: Dodgers at San Diego, 7 p.m., Channel 9:
Let's revisit the NL West for a moment: The Padres haven't collapsed yet, and the Dodgers haven't made enough of an effort to overtake them. Thus, a standoff, and seven of their next 10 games will be against each other. Maybe the Dodgers can actually climb into second place by the time the series ends.
MLB: Angels vs. Boston, Angel Stadium, 7 p.m., FSW:
John Lackey returns to the hill in Anaheim for the first time since leaving to throw against Jeff Weaver. Lackey, who beat the Angels back in Boston, 3-1, on May 5, took a no-hitter into the eighth inning of Thursday's start at Seattle before having it broken up with a two-out single. Then he got a no decision.
Soccer: Galaxy vs. Puerto Rico, CONCACAF, Home Depot Center, 7 p.m.:
You think the Galaxy are happy about playing this one so close to the MLS All Star game less than 24 hours after this one ends, in Houston? Read below.
WEDNESDAY
Soccer: MLS All Stars vs. Manchester United, at Houston's Reliant Stadium, 5 p.m., ESPN2:
Bruce Arena, the Galaxy coach in charge of the MLS All Star team that will include his own shooting stars Landon Donovan and Edson Buddle, defender Omar Gonzalez and goalie Donovan Ricketts, isn't all the pleased this game is scheduled in the middle of the CONCACAF Champions League, which disallows players from Seattle (who are playing in it today), while both the Galaxy and Toronto FC played the previous night. "We have five players playing on Tuesday, and we don't know the outcome of the games Tuesday on the players, physically," Arena told MLSSoccer.com "Therefore, they'd be an unknown Wednesday in trying to piece together at the last minute the First XI and also the roles of the reserves ... At the end of the day, the bottom line is we want to win this game." Case closed. And any other cliche you may want to add.
MLB: Angels vs. Boston, Angel Stadium, 12:35 p.m., FSW:
The Red Sox's Josh Beckett may make it to this one, but considering his start last Friday at Seattle (98 pitches, 5 2/3 innings, 1 ER, 3 BBs, 5 Ks in a 2-1 victory, where he got no decision) was his first since May 18, and he's been on the DL with a bad back, there could be an alternation to those plans. Against the Angels since 2007, he's just 1-3 with a 4.46 ERA, and 0-2 in Anaheim with a 5.14 ERA. If Dan Haren doesn't pitch in Monday's opener, his first appearance for the Angels could be here. Haren, who started the 2007 All-Star Game for the American League in San Francisco when he was Oakland's ace, was 7-8 with a 4.60 ERA in 141 innings with Arizona.
MLB: Dodgers at San Diego, 7 p.m., Prime:
Until tonight, the Dodgers haven't seen 6-foot-5, 240-pound Padres lefthander Clayton Richard, who had won three in a row before losing 8-0 to Atlanta on Thursday. His ERA in the month of June is north of 7.00. Too bad the Dodgers don't have Clayton Kershaw on call to pitch against him here.
THURSDAY
The 16th Summer X Games, Coliseum and L.A. Live, 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., ESPN:
The Moto X freestyle and Skateboard Big Air final cracks open the opener of the four-day festivities, asking the Coliseum to stay relevant with the kids who'll see a massive ramp built inside where skaters can decide if they want to launch themselves over a gap of 50 or 70 feet to get over to the 27-food quarterpipe. At the event deck at L.A. Live, there's more BMX and skateboarding. ESPN also debuts the latest "30 for 30" documentary project called "Birth of Big Air," which chronicles BMX legend Mat Hoffman and his quest to conquer do what other kids only dream about on his giant quarterpipe in a remote field in Oklahoma City nearly 20 years ago. Tony Hawk and Evel Knievel also make appearances. In the movie, not the X Games.
MLB: Dodgers at San Diego, 3:30 p.m., Channel 9:
They close this important series, with the trade deadline nearing, by roasting in the afternoon sun and seeking some off-track wagering information from Del Mar. Vicente Padilla is scheduled to face Kevin Correia.
FRIDAY
MLB: Dodgers at San Francisco, 7:15 p.m., Prime:
Now what do you think of this Gerald "Buster" Demp Posey III as a vital part of the Giants regular nine? Since he was installed as the starting catcher on June 30 in a game against the Dodgers -- the Giants traded Bengie Molina to Texas -- Posey has hardly been a poser. He extended a 12-game hitting streak to 15 by going 4-for-13 in a three-game series at Dodger Stadium last week. He extended the streak to 18 in the Giants' four-game sweep over Arizona last weekend, going 4-for-5 with an RBI in Sunday's finale. He's hitting .371 this season (66 hits in 48 games, with 8 HRs and 33 RBIs and a .986 OPS). The Giants start Tim Lincecum in the three-game series opener today, while the Dodgers, unless they made a trade for a starting pitcher, may have to throw Carlos Monasterios again. Get ready, Kenley Jansen.
MLB: Angels vs. Texas, Angel Stadium, 7 p.m., FSW:
After sweating out a four-game series against each other last week, where the Rangers won three of four and extended their AL West lead, the two have three more to finish here. So in a round-about way, they keep the rivalry fresh.
The 16th Summer X Games, Staples Center and Nokia Theatre, 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., ESPN:
Staples Center clears out any references to the Lakers, Kings or Sparks by hosting something called the Moto X Best Whip and Best Trick final. The stage at the Nokia Theatre, where they now hold the Academy Awards and the ESPYS, will be transformed into a platform for the Skate Vert Final and Skateboard Vert Best Trick. How tricky.
WNBA: Sparks at New York, 4:30 p.m.:
Some of the latest stats to come out of the NBA's league office on WNBA matters: Through 10 games on ESPN2, the league has upped its ratings by 20 percent. That's a 0.24 mark versus 0.20 a year ago. And they've got four times as many Facebook fans and 15 times more Twitter followers than last year.
SATURDAY
The 16th Summer X Games, Coliseum and L.A. Live, 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., ESPN:
Ever want to drive your car up the peristyle entrance at the Coliseum? Watch it happen as the Rally Car SuperRally returns for a trip. More skateboarding and BMX stuff at the L.A. Live event deck.
MLB: Angels vs. Texas, Angel Stadium, 6 p.m., FSW:
Four words: Rally Monkey Soap Dispenser. But only given away to kids 18 and under. Dang. And we still are looking for our Angels Garden Gnome. It's trading deadline day: Can we swap a clean monkey for a dirty gnome?
MLB: Dodgers at San Francisco, 1 p.m., Channel 11:
Barry Zito, whose team gave him nothing to work with when he faced the Dodgers last week at Dodger Stadium, has a 109-6 record when his team has given him four or more runs to work with in his career with Oakland and San Francisco. That's just one run every other inning, guys. Too much to ask? Clayton Kershaw, coming off his eight shutout innings against the Mets, returns for the Dodgers.
SUNDAY
MLB: Dodgers at San Francisco, 5 p.m., ESPN:
Chad Billingsley, who threw the complete-game shutout against the Giants last week, gets a national stage for his re-appearance.
The 16th Summer X Games, Staples Center and L.A. Live, 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., ESPN2:
The Moto X Speed & Style final returns to the X Games, and it'll be indoors at Staples Center. A crazy way to end this thing.
MLB: Angels vs. Texas, Angel Stadium, 12:35 p.m., FSW:
They still have seven more games against each other, during the last two weeks of the regular season -- including the final four at Texas. This isn't over yet. Right?
Tennis: ATP Farmers Classic, UCLA Tennis Center, doubles final, noon; singles final, 2 p.m., ESPN2:
Five-time tournament doubles champion Mike and Bob Bryan are tied for the Open Era record with 61 titles. You could see history made today. And then the musically-minded Camarillo twins, who last Sunday played at a benefit in Venice and were scheduled to play at Molly Malones in L.A. on Monday, could break out in song afterward.
Above: "Wrestlers," 1899, by Thomas Eakins, oil on canvas, 48 3/8 by 60 inches, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Cecile C. Bartman and The Cecile and Fred Bartman Foundation.
A dual exhibit that opens Sunday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art called "Manly Pursuits: The Sporting Images of Thomas Eakins," next to "Figure And Landscape" by Catherine Opie caught our attention and lured us over for the opening earlier this week.
Put it this way: If the LACMA is trying to shake the foundation of how one can interpret the beauty and power of a sports image, especially with a Southern California flair for the dramatic, it has succeeded in the most unlikely of places for a sports consumer, or connoisseur, to ever venture.
With Eakins' work on 19th Century rowing, sailing, boxing, wrestling, swimming and even one on baseball, it's the kind of sports art you'd expect to see on the walls of the L.A. Athletic Club or the clubhouse at the Bel-Air Country Club - an homage to past athleticism, painted at a time when the modern Olympics were just being revived in Greece.
With Opie, it's a focus through her camera lens on high school football and surfing -- the manly pursuits of athletes from today's world.
Read more about it on Sunday ...
Right: "Dusty, 2007," by Catherine Opie, chromogenic print, 30 x 22 1/4 inches, from the collection of Gerry Rich.
Jack Craig, who wrote the first newspaper media columns for the Boston Globe more than 40 years ago until his retirement in 1996, died last week at 81 after a fall at his home.
"The first TV sports event I ever reviewed for the Globe was an NFL playoff game on Dec. 31, 1967, for a story that appeared Jan. 2, 1968," he wrote in his farewell column nearly 14 years ago. "How could I or anyone else watching that New Year's Eve afternoon know that it would be the most memorable football game we would ever see on TV? It was the Ice Bowl: Packers 21, Cowboys 17.
"I limited myself to several paragraphs, in part because I did not know what to write beyond nitpicking broadcasters and wondering why certain things were ignored. Having more questions than answers betrayed my naivete."
How did we miss Craig's obit? Were we not paying attention? Was it on TV?
Frank Deford, in an National Public Radio commentary Wednesday (linked here), cut us some slack, pointing out that George Steinbrenner news drowned out a lot of other things the last week or so.
Said Deford:
"(Jack Craig's assignment to cover sports TV) was the ultimate certification that the presentation of sports as entertainment was as important as comedy and drama in our culture. Incredibly, though, even as more people watched sports on TV and talked about sports on TV and even made Howard Cosell the pre-eminent voice of the land, other print outlets were slow to follow in Craig's path. ...
"Today, of course, in most major newspapers, the sports TV beat is as obligatory as the betting line. In fact, often the best writer in the sport section is the TV writer. Unlike the legendary columnist, who has to work stadiums and arenas, spend hours in press boxes, and then trudge down to the locker room and try to squeeze an unintelligible quote out of a surly naked athlete, the sports TV guy can just sit on his couch with a clicker in his hand and a disc on his roof, and watch stuff right there in his own man-cave.
"Readers relate to TV sports guys, too, because they're really just like them -- so the sports television writer is invariably popular, unlike other critics who are looked upon as crabby sourpusses.
"It seems impossible to believe that there was ever a time before Jack Craig. It might even be possible to say that sports television is more important than sports. When George Steinbrenner died, the Yankees franchise that he had purchased was estimated to be worth $1.6 billion. The Yankees television network that he started hardly eight years ago was estimated to be worth twice that -- $3 billion."
In the Boston Globe's obit about Craig, Don Skwar, the former Globe sports editor and current senior news editor for ESPN called Craig "the trailblazer for sports TV critics" with his SporTView column.
"Arguably, you could say Jack had as much if not more influence than any of our columnists because he covered the entire spectrum of sports," said Globe writer John Powers, who worked with Craig. "As more and more people got their news about sports from TV, Jack's influence just increased dramatically. ...
"Literally, he had to invent the form. No one knew what was interesting, what was not, what was important."
I've been doing this media-column thing now since 1989 -- more than 20 years, but I'm not really counting. Larry Stewart of the L.A. Times, who recently retired, was the only media columnist I knew about growing up in Southern California, but I knew the other papers in town also had them, and I'd seek them out on Fridays at the newstand (the Daily News, for some reason, had theirs come out on Thursdays).
Then one by one, the newspapers started to drop them, or give them less of importance. Editors who saw them as a way to publicize the competition, and were already grouchy over the way TV and radio were pulling away readers, thought them to be sort of silly. But reader demands seem to keep us coming back.
With consolidation, retirements and other changes, it seems that I'm still doing this for the Daily News (following Phil Rosenthal, John Weisman and Paola Boivin), Daily Breeze (succeeding Dan McLean), Long Beach Press-Telegram (after a long, glorious run by Bob Keisser, who also did it for a very long stretch at the L.A. Herald-Examiner), San Gabriel Valley Tribune and San Bernardino Sun. The Times has used the late Mike Penner and now Diane Pucin on the beat, but seemingly not with as much gusto as in the past. The Orange County Register has dropped it all together -- Michael Lev and Steve Fryer once did it. I'm not sure what the Riverside Press Enterprise did. And the San Diego Union-Tribune had Fritz Quindt and now, the esteemed Jay Posner, whom I consider one of my bestest co-conspiriators left.
By the way, Powers also noted that Craig wasn't power-hungry in his role.
"Jack was very, very low-key, a gentleman, and almost modest beyond what you would think a guy with that influence would be," Powers said. "He was covering a medium where there are very few bashful people, and yet he did not emulate them. Many columnists feel the world is waiting for their every word. Jack didn't feel that way."
That's something a columnist, blogger or Internet writer -- in any department -- should remember.
After today's media column on new USC basketball play-by-play man Chris Fisher (linked here), we have these other notes:
== The whole column that ESPN.com ombudsman Don Ohlmeyer did on the network's coverage of that hour-long "Decision" by LeBron James (linked here). And thanks, Don, for mentioning me. Not that I needed the ego stroke, but recognition is cool.
== HBO confirmed this week that the second season of "Eastbound & Down," with Danny McBride as broken-down and glory-seeking former relief pitcher Kenny Powers, will debut on Sunday, Sept. 26 at 10:30 p.m.
== CBS has the wrapup of the Tour de France to cover on Sunday on tape (10 a.m., Channel 2), including a story on Lance Armstrong's final appearance. Craig Hummer hosts the show.
== As the ESPN X Games in L.A. come closer -- next Thursday through Sunday -- NBC has the Dew Tour live in Chicago this weekend featuring the top BMX freestyle cyclists, Saturday and Sunday from 1-3 p.m. USA Network has coverage Saturday from 9-to-10 p.m. Jamie Bestwick and Dave Mirra join as analysts with Todd Harris, analyst Todd Richards and correspondent Tiffany Simons .
== ESPN has the last 17 (with three going to ABC) of the NASCAR Sprint Cup races, starting with the Brickyard 400 from Indianapolis Motor Speedway (10 a.m., Sunday). Included in that stretch is the Oct. 10 race at Fontana. Marty Reid is joined by analysts Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree. On a conference call with reporters earlier this week, ESPN vice president of programming and acquisitions, Julie Sobieski was asked about realignment in the upcoming schedule that could see the L.A. market lose one of its two annual stops.
"I think those are really NASCAR and track decisions when it comes to the ratings of the events themselves," she said. "There are a few tracks that see a dramatic or significant ratings increase, and we know what those are with Daytona and the Brickyard itself, Talladega being some of the biggest there.
"Outside of a few tracks that see a big increase, the remainder of the tracks all offer something different for the fans. Each racetrack delivers something different week in and week out, and ultimately those decisions on which tracks are in and which tracks are out rest with NASCAR and the tracks themselves."
== Meanwhile, Versus has the last seven IRL races, starting with Sunday's event in Edmonton (2 p.m.), with qualifying on Saturday (3 p.m.)
== Lon McEachern and Norman Chad return to keep us abreast on the new season of the World Series of Poker, with the first event on two hours Tuesday (5 p.m., ESPN).
== Chris McGee and Dain Blanton call the AVP Long Beach event live, with the men's final at 1 p.m. on ABC, and the women's final at 8 p.m. on ESPN2.
== ESPN announced its 2010 college football schedule, which this fall has more than 400 games across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Classic and ESPN3.com, plus ESPN 3D. Of course, the switch of the entire Bowl Championship Series is included, starting with the Jan. 1 Rose Bowl and Fiesta Bowl, the Jan. 3 Orange Bowl, the Jan. 4 Sugar Bowl and the Jan. 10 BCS National title game in Tempe, Ariz. ESPN and its family will carry 31 bowls. The season starts on Monday, Aug. 23.
== The producers of an ESPN "30 For 30" documentary on Colombia's 1994 World Cup team called "The Two Escobars" have been accused of deceiving the family of slain Columbian player Andres Escobar, and a Columbian TV network last week said it would not air the movie.
The Associated Press reported recently that the Escobar family member were never told by producers Michael and Jeff Zimbalist that they intented to pair the story of the soccer player with that of Pablo Escobar, the late drug lord who was said to have funded much of the country's sport with cocaine sale profits.
The two Escobars were unrelated.
Santiago Escobar told The Associated Press that the Zimbalist brothers "deceived my family and also deceived the memory of Andres Escobar" and that relatives and friends of his brother "feel assaulted in our good faith by the makers of this documentary, who sought our testimony to make a report in homage to the footballer. They never told us that it would be parallel with the drug trafficker Pablo
Escobar."
The Zimbalist brothers, who wrote and directed the film, told the AP by telephone from the United States that the family's statement was a misrepresentation of their behavior.
"We have a lot of respect for Andres Escobar and for his family and it's always been
our intention to be as sensitive as possible," said Jeff Zimbalist.
Andres Escobar, the 27-year-old national team captain, was killed 10 days after his own-goal against the United States in a game at the Rose Bowl eliminated Colombia
from the tournament. ESPN aired the film on June 21.
== AND FINALLY:
Dude Perfect vs. Ricardo in long-range pop-a-shot:
== AND FINALLY (FOR REAL):
== As for Jon Miller's induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame broadcaster's wing on Sunday, Duane Kiper, who works on the Giants' TV broadcast, told the San Francisco Chronicle's Bruce Jenkins (linked here) about the master impersonator:
"He does Vin Scully . . . and then he does a profane Vin Scully, which is just priceless, because nobody's ever heard Vin or Jon utter a swear word. I've seen people drop to their knees when they heard that, they were laughing so hard."
Scully, by the way, had some advice for Miller when he has to get up to make his acceptance speech. Miller was in L.A. earlier this week with the Giants facing the Dodgers.
Wrote Chris Haft on MLB.com (linked here):
Scully reminded Miller that listeners on Sunday will expect much from him. Players who become Hall of Fame inductees, Scully pointed out, don't have to be eloquent. After all, they were players, not wordsmiths.
"But a professional broadcaster has to get it just right," Miller said, relating Scully's message.
Not to put too much pressure on yourself or anything.
The Associated Press
The black Mizuno bat that Pete Rose used to get his final hit has been auctioned for $158,776, less than expected for the 32 ounces of baseball history.
Rose used the bat for hit No. 4,256, a single off San Francisco's Greg Minton on Aug. 14, 1986. His final hit stands as the major league record.
Lelands.com auctioned the 34-inch, 32-ounce bat online this month. Seven bids were received.
Lelands.com president Mike Heffner expected the bat to fetch a bigger price. He thinks the tough economy and Rose's controversies -- he's got a lifetime ban for betting on baseball -- held down the price.
"I think Pete Rose memorabilia in general -- you either love it or you hate it," Heffner said in a phone interview Thursday. "There's not a whole lot in-between. I love Pete Rose, but there are people out there who won't touch it because of the problems he had. It does affect the prices that the items sell for."
Rose broke Ty Cobb's record with his 4,192nd hit on Sept. 11, 1985, when he was the Cincinnati Reds player-manager. He played for one more season, batting .219 in 52 games. He had 72 hits in 1986, including that final one off Minton.
Rose was banned from baseball in 1989 for betting on games involving the Reds. He displayed the bat used for his final hit at his restaurant in Boca Raton, Fla. It was eventually bought by Richard C. Angrist, a prominent collector of sports memorabilia. Angrist put some of his items up for auction through Lelands.com.
The Angrist collection included the bat that George Sisler used to get his record 257th hit during the 1920 season. That bat drew 31 bids and went for $152,647.
"It sold for almost as much as the Pete Rose bat, which was well beyond our expectations," Heffner said. "It went for almost six times what we thought it would go for. Auctions are very strange. All it takes is two guys who really want that item."
The record for an auctioned bat is $1.3 million, paid for one that Babe Ruth used to hit his first homer at Yankee Stadium.
And, for another story on another Pete Rose bat, click here.
AP Photo/Andy King
Minnesota Twins baseball fans walk from the light rail stop, left, to Target Field in Minneapolis. Target Field attracts fans who ride bikes to the baseball park as well as riding light rail, which drops fans next to the ballpark.
---------------------------
By Dave Campbell
The Associated Press
Chris Dickerson remembered cringing as he looked at the excess of empty, discarded plastic bottles by his Triple-A teammates in Louisville.
"One guy uses eight bottles a day, whether it's Gatorade or water or juice," he said, "and all of this stuff is being thrown in the trash cans."
The sight of all that waste a couple of years ago was the tipping point for the Cincinnati Reds outfielder.
"Multiply that by a week, by a year, by the 15 teams in that league. You're looking at a tremendous amount," said Dickerson.
In 2008, he helped found the nonprofit organization Players for the Planet to encourage pro athletes to be environmental ambassadors in their communities, proving the possibility that jocks and treehuggers can coexist.
As a Minnesota-based sports marketing agency is banking on, professional franchises -- like any profit-driven businesses -- are finding more ways to go green and make money at the same time.
There is a certain insular, indulgent culture in the sports world that can create hurdles for social causes like this to take hold. Sometimes, they're masked as mere symbolic gestures and goodwill-generating promotions for teams. The sheer enormity of stadiums makes it difficult to keep carbon footprints small. Players can get caught up in the big-league lifestyle.
"It's hard to get just any athlete and even then, they're like, 'I love what you're doing, but I can't really endorse it because I'm driving a big truck and I have a huge house,'" Dickerson said. "So some of the things these athletes do aren't necessarily a green lifestyle. They like the idea, but they're not necessarily that green. I think that's why a lot of them are hesitant to be part of it."
Dickerson praised the use of solar power at Fenway Park in Boston and Progressive Field in Cleveland as progressive ideas he'd like to see replicated more throughout the majors. He pointed to supportive e-mails and letters he has received as examples of momentum. He also insisted real change can be accomplished in easy steps.
"That's the message we're trying to get across: It doesn't have to be a huge shift in your daily lifestyle," Dickerson said. "It's little things like getting a recycle bin, turning off all the lights when you leave your house, trying to cut down on your air conditioning, using compact fluorescent light bulbs."
Dickerson even has a sign above his locker that says, "Trees are for hugging."
Continue reading Update: Reds' Dickerson keeps pushing his green initiative for baseball.
A story coming up on ESPN's "Outside the Lines" (Sunday, 6 a.m.) asks: How safe is the food sold at your favorite ballpark or stadium?
This can never be good.
The show says it pulled health department inspection reports for concessions and restaurants at all 107 MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL venues in the United States and Canada operating in 2009.
Guess how many had "major" or "critical violations" reported? Nealry one in three.
When Outside the Lines requested to shoot video of a health department inspection, every stadium and company asked denied it.
In a piece for ESPN.com that will be posted Sunday, reporter Paula Lavigne quotes one supervisor of food at an MLB park, speaking on the condition of anonymity: "I was taking chowder out of a big container to put into a smaller container to put out in the service area, and as I was spooning it out, I see this puss-filled band aid inside of the chowder. It was red, bright red center with all the yellow puss around the outside of it."
Chowder? Does that kind of limit it to Fenway Park and ... Fenway Park?
"Food-borne illness is more than just a stomachache," says Chris Waldrop, Director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, in the story. "It really could have serious repercussions. Stadiums may be a very overlooked area where public health departments need to focus some resources to make sure that all those vendors are meeting food safety requirements."
With that, I'll go back to reading my copy of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." Not to mention this story by ESPN.com's Patrick Hruby (linked here) from last year about how ballparks hijack your brain into thinking you're hungry for some comfort food.
MLSTalk.com calls this "one of the worst soccer interviews you'll ever see."
Fanhouse.com says this Fox's New York morning show, "Good Day New York" won't exactly be remembered as a high point in U.S. soccer journalism.
Thanks Rosanna Scotto and Greg Kelly:
Jimmy Johnson's career after leaving the NFL and college football sidelines has included a nice run with Fox's NFL pregame show, some college bowl game telecasts, an endorsment deal with ExTenZe male enhancment pills and a scam-leader with the Better Trades "options trading" company.
You could call him a survivor. Depending on his sense of convincing others he's loyal to their needs.
That quality will be tested on the upcoming season of "Survivor: Nicaragua," as the Dallas Morning News reports (linked here) that the 67-year-old Johnson is currently one of the contestants on the reality show shot this summer.
What's next, Charley Steiner as a guest telling others to follow him to freedom?
The filming of the show, which started in June, is scheduled to end in time for Johnson to return to his Fox NFL job this September. That is, if he's not been eaten by canibals, got lost in the woods or can't avoid being arrested upon his return to find out he's been a drug mule.
"Survivor: Nicaragua" will air on Wednesday nights this fall (switching from Thursday) and will go as scripted in past seasons -- a cast of people are thrown into the wilderness with few supplies and food, told to perform tasks and stay around if they're not voted off by their competitors. The winner will have survived 39 days on the trip and win $1 million.
Or enough to invest plenty into male enhancement magic pills.
AP Photo/Frank Franklin II
Retired New York Yankees players applaud as former team public address announcer Bob Sheppard (shown on video monitor) is remembered during Old-Timers' Day ceremonies at Yankee Stadium on Saturday.
Having seen the passing of legendary New York Yankee figures George Steinbrenner and Bob Sheppard in the last 10 days, Paul Olden has had a chance to size up his own mortality.
"There'll be two distinctly different obituaries when that time comes," the 56-year-old said. "I've come to terms with that."
In New York, Olden will be known as the one who replaced the legendary Sheppard as the Yankee Stadium public address announcer. Sheppard's passing on July 11 at the age of 99 came a year and a half after he had already resigned to failing health and gave up the microphone to Olden.
In Los Angeles, Olden's legacy won't be forgotten, either. Aside from a run as the radio play-by-play on the Rams and UCLA football and basketball, he was the radio stringer who, on Mother's Day 1978, asked Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda the question: "What's your opinion of Kingman's performance?"
Lasorda's profane-laced answer can still be heard reverberating around the Dodger Stadium clubhouse after Dave Kingman's three home runs gave the Chicago Cubs a 10-7, 15-inning victory.
(In 2004, SI.com created a list of the top 10 list of the most embarrassing TV/Radio interview moments, and the Olden-Lasorda moment was No. 3, behind Joe Namath drunken interview with Suzy Kolber on ESPN in 2003, and Jim Rome's ESPN2 interview with Jim "If you call me Chris to my face one more time" Everett in 1994. Except, like many, SI.com had the date wrong, citing a June 4, 1976 date when Kingman, then with the Mets, also had three homers and eight RBI against the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium.)
Olden had been taking television productions classes while writing and taking pictures for the school paper at L.A. Valley College, trying to explore new avenues for his career, when the Yankees came calling on him to replace Sheppard two years seasons ago - he compares himself to the Chevy Chase character on the NBC sit-com "Community."
Olden's career had included a long run of doing the public address announcing on the NFL's Super Bowl, so his voice was recognizable in that capacity.
Since pulling up his L.A. stakes and settling in New York, Olden has been apart of another Yankees World Series championship and become the voice associated with the new Yankee Stadium.
We caught up with Olden prior to the Yankees-Angels series that ends this afternoon for an update on how life was treating him these days:
Q: Has it been a pretty emotional week for and the city of New York the last week?
A: Very emotional, very wild but very satisfying with the tributes we've seen. It's just been wonderful. And my role in the proceedings hasn't been that indepth, but with the little I've had to do, there's been a good reaction to it.
With Mr. Steinbrenner's passing coming just days after Bob's, that was a big one-two punch. I had a relationship with Bob on the phone over the last year. I'd call him every couple of weeks, not necessarily to talk about public address things, but topics on life in general, families. Here's a man who would have been 100 this October and a couple of people told me he was really looking forward to making it to 100.
Q: Did Bob ever hope he was going to return to the PA position?
A: I think he realized it wasn't going to happen last year, so he didn't get his hopes up. He never got a chance to see this public address announcer's suite in the new Yankee Stadium. His wife, Mary, on Oldtimers' Day last Saturday, was recognized on the field and she came up to our booth and said, 'He'd love to have worked here.' They've named the press restaurant after him here.
Q: How did listening to Bob Sheppard shape your own delivery of the lineups and announcements? He seemed very precise and nimble but hardly calling attention to himself.
A: I'm just glad management doesn't want a screamer or a carnival barker for their PA person. For anyone growing up in L.A., I was raised on John Ramsey's style - a great voice that just cut through everything, very straight forward, with no theatrics about a player's name, like a Michael Buffer extension of a name. The only one in the Yankees' lineup that lends itself to that kind of introduction is Robinson Cano, who's name is already so lyrical. "Second baseman, No. 24, R-r-r-robinson Cano." That's one I can play with and it's within the template that's acceptable as a Yankees public address announcer.
The first thing I will say before a game is 'Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Yankee Stadium,' and then try to billboard the name 'Yankee Stadium,' because to me, coming here to a new stadium, it's a special place, so you pause when you say the name and the crowd always gives a nice reaction. But those are really the only two things that you might do different. Otherwise we're on the same plane in terms of the desire not to be a showman or anything like that.
Q: Does the Yankees PA job pay enough to sustain as a full-time job?
A: The Yankees take very good care of me and in exchange, I do a lot of other things - spring training in Tampa, which is great since I worked there seven years (with the Devil Rays) and I know my way around there, fantasy camps, public appearances with players at a school. And I've been doing a magazine show on 'Yankees on Demand' for the local cable system that allows me to do a segment with my photography that I continue to shoot during a game, then we pick eight to 10 of them and discuss the photo, along with the game video from that moment.
Q: Do you miss the play-by-play jobs you've had and think you'll ever gravitate toward that again?
A: Not really. I'm happy with what I'm doing, and it seems the less I tried to get jobs the more opportunities would come my way. After spending so much time in my 20s and 30s trying to make contacts, work with agents, make auditions tapes and interviews, I think of how Bob Carpenter has got a job with the Washington Nationals at age 53 - usually if you get past 50 you won't get a major-league job for some reason. I'm thankful someone was interested in hiring me. I tried for the Dodgers' (open play-by-play job) before Charley Steiner got it, I tried for jobs in Oakland and Cincinnati and Pittsburgh and San Diego, but I really wasn't on anyone's 'hot' list. So if something comes along like this, where you can make a nice living and you don't have to travel and I feel appreciated and respected, this is the perfect job for me. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.
I found lately that I really started to enjoy writing - game stories on football or basketball or women's soccer, writing them for the website and the paper (at Valley College). Now on occasion they'll give me a script with bullet points and trust me to write the material that I read (as the PA). Instead of editing it, they allow me to 'sweeten' the script. That underscores they trust my judgment not to do anything stupid. That's appreciated.
Hopefully I can put in half the career that Bob did in his 57 years as the PA guy. I don't think I'll last as long as he did, but then, he was working until he was 97. That's an amazing achievement anywhere.
AP Photo
It doesn't take a phi beta kappa like Pat Haden to figure out that USC's athletic department in general, and its football program in particular, will be in much better hands moving forward with the apparent decision that Pat Haden will be in charge.
The Rhodes Scholar and one of the most respected people in the Trojan family of athletic heritage completely changes the attitude, temperment and vision in one felled swoop of a sword that finally lets Mike Garrett return to solitude and removes him from all that's connected to the school in light of its current appeal of an NCAA sanction that focused a spotlight on institutional self-destruction.
Maybe this move now, rather than later, will be part of the strategy in the NCAA's decision to lighten its punishment -- the cancer, in its eyes, has been removed. If I'm on the NCAA appeals committee and am prepared to grand some leniency to a program where the sitting AD made public statements about how envious the ruling body seemed to be about USC's success, I'm not that receptive to a compromise.
So, all hail Haden, the little quarterback who could back in his day, a two-time Academic All-American who seemed to have it all figured out once John McKay allowed him to run his offense, with his son, J.K., on the receiving end.
We speculated a couple of weeks ago (linked here) that J.K. McKay could make the most sense as the new AD -- assuming that the 57-year-old Haden wouldn't give up his profitable business ventures that included NBC analyst for Notre Dame football games as well as a partnership in an investment firm with former L.A. mayor Richard Riordan.
We suggested, as a compromise, that McKay be granted the head spot and figure out a way to employ Haden as his point man -- fundraiser, public speaker, etc.
Seems Haden was the one to seize the moment and call an audible after huddling up with incoming USC president Max Nikias .
NBC Sports chief Dick Ebersol, who employed Haden the last 12 years on the exclusive Irish package, said that it is "absolutely unsurprising and typical that Pat would want to be there for his beloved alma mater in a time of need. His integrity, his talent and his engaging manner are just what the Trojans need."
And Haden's first move will be to bring McKay on in a role of associate AD for football, to make sure Lane Kiffin has more oversight in his new role as Pete Carroll's predecessor.
Haden and McKay, teammates at Bishop Amat High School before coming to USC, combined on a 38-yard TD pass to give the Trojans a 18-17 win over Ohio State in the 1975 Rose Bowl.
This completion will go much farther in the aftermath of one of the most defelating periods in the Trojan athletic program history.
You can never go wrong with a Nazi reference.
Or is it, you can always go wrong? ...
Fox baseball analyst Tim McCarver used some questionable analogies during Saturday's Yankees-Rays regional telecast to describe how the Yankees have seemed to blot out the accomplishments of former manager Joe Torre, the Sports Business Daily reviews in its edition today.
It cites first a New York Post story (linked here) that transcribes McCarver as saying:
"You remember some of those despotic leaders in World War II, primarily in Russia and Germany, where they used to take those pictures that they had ... taken of former generals who were no longer alive, they had shot 'em. They would airbrush the pictures, and airbrushed the generals out of the pictures. In a sense, that's what the Yankees have done with Joe Torre. They have airbrushed his legacy. I mean, there's no sign of Joe Torre at the stadium. And, that's ridiculous."
McCarver added that "to the Yankees credit, Joe Torre's No. 6 has not been worn since Torre has (left). That has got to be resolved. You just can't ignore a guy who did what Joe Torre did."
The SBD cites a story by Sporting News.com's Adam Hutchins (linked here), who also wrote: "No question that McCarver made an absurdly inarticulate comparison between an authentic tragedy and a dispute between a millionaire and his former employer ... (it) remains to be seen what, if any, punishment McCarver will face."
SportingNews.com also had a clip of the rant on its site via YouTube but has had to take it down because of copyright claim by MLB Advanced Media.
The SBD also includes a blog comment by St. Petersburg Press' Tom Jones (linked here: "Attacking the Yankees over Torre is fine, but we're going to compare this to things that happened in Nazi Germany and the old Soviet Union and during World War II? Really? ... This is just sports, people! Memo to everyone: Let's stop using references to Nazis and slavery and other things such as the Sept. 11 attacks, world wars, Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden and anything in the real world."
And USA Today's Michael Hiestand writes: "(It) should probably go without saying that it's not a great idea to compare sports front office moves with, say, killings in the Nazi and Soviet systems." Hiestand: "Kind of a stretch to compare Torre's fate ... to those of military officers executed by their own governments."
The Yankees-Rays game was not aired in the Southern California market on Saturday -- instead, we saw the Dodgers-Cardinals game from St. Louis with Joe Buck and Eric Karros on the call. McCarver worked that game Saturday with Kenny Albert as his broadcast partner.
Highlights of the week ahead in sports, both here and afar:
MONDAY
MLB: Dodgers vs. San Francisco, Dodger Stadium, 7 p.m.:
An industrious reporter recently pointed out that in the post-All-Star-break schedule, the Dodgers have the toughest road head of any other team -- 58 games on the schedule against teams with records above. 500. And that's after already struggling against the Angels, Yankees and Red Sox in one of the most brutal interleague schedule. They knocked out four of those games last weekend in St. Louis, but buster, they don't get a break with the Giants, thanks to Buster Posey pushing himself all over the lineup. (By the way: The team with perhaps the easiest road the rest of the way: The Cincinnati Reds, who've got to play 25 games against teams with winning records). The Dodgers bring back James McDonald to try to fill a hole with the latest struggles by John Ely.
TUESDAY
MLB: Angels at New York Yankees, 4 p.m., FSW:
After all the drama of George Steinbrenner's passing, and the Yankees' annual Old-Timers' Game, the Angels come into town to play two games in less than 24 hours. Maybe Joe Girardi will allow Alex Rodriguez to play this time.
MLB: Dodgers vs. San Francisco, Dodger Stadium, 7 p.m., Channel 9:
It's James Loney bobbleheads to the "first 50,000 valid tickets." So, who can get into the game with an invalid ticket? James Loney, of course.
WEDNESDAY
MLB: Angels at New York Yankees, 10 a.m., FSW:
The last meeting of the year between the two, unless, like seemingly every year, they meet in the playoffs.
MLB: Dodgers vs. Giants, Dodger Stadium, 7:10 p.m., Prime:
The season series against the Giants is only half over. There's nine more to go in August and September.
Horse racing: Del Mar race track, opening day, first post, 2 p.m.:
In our search for a horse racing track that accepts checks and credit cards at the parimutual window -- hey, we're good for it -- we'll try the opener of the 37-day meeting at Del Mar that runs through Sept. 8. It includes the "One and Only Truly Fabulous Hats Contest" today, plus Friday summer concerts (including ZZ Top, B-52s, Jimmy Cliff, and the ever-popular Super Diamond), and a microbrew festival in late August. Drive, take a limo, a double-decker bus, or walk (start now) -- maybe even go on horseback -- but we'll be on the train, checking out the latest fares and stops at Amtrak (linked here). Meanwhile, the Daily Racing Form says Zenyatta, who won the Vanity Stakes at Hollywood Park last month, is on schedule to race on Aug. 7 in the Clement L. Hirsch Stakes, which she won in '08 and '09. All aboard.
THURSDAY
The Justice League of Mannywood has added this to-do for the do-ragged Manny Ramirez fans -- you still get his action figure in tonight's giveaway even if he's back on the DL. Go figure.
Golf: Senior British Open, first round, 10 a.m., ESPN2:
This year, it's Carnoustie, Scotland, and we'll still put our droons on Tom Watson for the win (he did it in '03, '05 and '07). By the way, the U.S. Senior Open is next week in Seattle, if you're thinking of making that 10-hour flight nonstop after this one ends.
MLS: Galaxy vs. San Jose, Home Depot Center, 7:30 p.m., ESPN2:
Like we need another earthquake scare in these parts.
MLB: Angels at Texas, 5 p.m., FSW:
Seven of the Angels' next 10 games are against the team ahead of them in the AL West. Time to make hay. And intentionally walk Vlad Guerrero every time he comes up. Cliff Lee's spot in the rotation may come up here for the Rangers.
FRIDAY
MLB: Dodgers vs. New York Mets, 7 p.m., Prime:
Did we mention that the Mets are getting Carlos Beltran back from injury, the pitching staff has been pretty hot, and they've got a pretty cake second-half schedule -- easier than the NL East-leading Braves, for sure. The Mets have yet to play Arizona, Houston and Pittsburgh -- the three last-place teams in each division.
MLB: Angels at Texas, 5 p.m., FSW:
Aside from Big Daddy Vladdy, somehow, Darren Oliver and Benjie Molina figure to could play a role in the Rangers' success against their old teammates this weekend.
SATURDAY
MLB: Dodgers vs. New York Mets, 1 p.m., Channel 11:
The stat that Vin Scully likes to bring up when Clayton Kershaw takes the mound: In every one of his starts this far, he's never set the opponents down 1-2-3 in the first inning. He opened the second half of the season pitching in St. Louis last week, and couldn't get over that hump again. We're going to guess that earlier this week against the Giants, it happened again. This will be his scheduled 20th start of the year. Let's go back to this one.
MLB: Angels at Texas, 5 p.m., FSW:
How, again, are the Rangers, a team in bankruptcy, able to go out and make big-name deals?
SUNDAY
MLB: Hall of Fame induction ceremony, 10:30 a.m., MLB Network:
Cooperstown becomes Dawson's Creek on this day. Not an iconic class of those voted in this year -- Andre Dawson, with umpire Doug Harvey and former manager Whitey Herzog -- but just soak in the ceremony as something that's a part of the summer that should never go away. ESPN's John Miller will also be inducted into the broadcasters wing, meaning he'll miss tonight's St. Louis-Chicago telecast from Wrigley Field.
MLB: Angels at Texas, 5 p.m., Channel 13:
Three more meetings next week in Anaheim, and seven more in late September and the first week of October (the last three in Texas) to end the regular season. By the way, on July 28, it marks the 16th anniversary of Kenny Rogers' perfect game against the Angels, while he was still jerking around with the Rangers
MLB: Dodgers vs. New York Mets, 1 p.m., Prime:
Somehow, ESPN didn't pick this one up for its prime-time window? Guess Prime Ticket will have to do.
NASCAR: Brickyard 400, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 10 a.m., ESPN:
Question: How many laps in the Brickyard 400? A hundred sixty, of course. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is 2.5 miles long. Do the math. Another question: Has a woman ever competed in this race? Nope. Shawna Robinson tried, but failed to qualify for the race in 2001. Take that to the brickyard and make dust of it.
Who's this Scott Gordon, and how could he the missing piece to completing the most important transaction in L.A. sports history this young decade?
He's not the backup point guard from Oklahoma City who the Lakers think they sign for the veteran's minimum? The Dodgers' call-up from Albuquerque to replace George Sherrill? On the Kings' radar if Kovalehuk chucks the whole idea of coming here?
Try the L.A. Superior Court commissioner barked loudly from the bench this week at Frank and Jamie McCourt -- he told the current Dodger caretakers that they'd best get this divorce liquidation proposition figured out fast or else "the parties are unintentionally pushing the court toward an interesting position - selling the asset which is being fought over" - but wouldn't it have had more bite if that actually came from the baseball commissioner, Bud Selig, who refuses to have an opinion?
"Take Gordon's remark as, more than anything else, a reflection on how acrimonious -- and, really, tedious -- this entire proceeding has become," writes L.A. native, Minneapolis law student and federal judge intern Josh Fisher on his astute blog DodgerDivorce.com. "While I get the strategic value of having six more weeks before this thing hits trial, I get the sense that most everyone connected to this saga is ready for the endgame to at least, you know, begin."
So, is it game on? Or can either of them afford to risk their non-liquid assets and their battered reps to play this all out before a magistrate?
== So there's this jagged fan in Jacksonville who launched a cartoonish website called NoWayLA.com, objecting to overtures that the Jaguars can be coaxed from their swamp-land paradise to sign up for Fast Eddie's City o' Industry strip mall, trying to cement his case by pointing out that no pro football team has survived here - not the Rams, Raiders, Chargers or Dons.
Then someone at LAObserved.com added in the XFL's Xtreme and the USFL's Express, and, perhaps the 1926 Buccaneers, plus the Dragons of the aborted Spring Football League.
Have we already forgotten the AFL's Avengers, and their predecessors at the Sports Arena, the Cobras?
The point is: If you're up to the task of trashing SoCal pro pigskin, make sure all 10 fingers are free to count on, OK?
And don't forget: We're fourth in line for a UFL franchise . . .
== So this Thierry Henry lad is going to Beckham-ize kickball on the East Coast - by using his hands?
== A major website poses this one: What's better for the growth of United States soccer - Landon Donovan playing in the MLS or playing in one of Europe's top leagues? What about phrasing it this way: What's better for Donovan's on-and-off-and-on relationship with Bianca Kajlich?
== Who needs Raja Bell?
== Can Kobe send his helicopter to the Pacoima In-N-Out drive-thru to snatch Shannon Brown from his summer job and bring him back to the roster? If not, ask his crew manager, Tracy McGrady?
== Why hasn't head-butting caught on sooner in the Tour de France?
"Who else could be a memorable character on a television show without actually appearing on the show?" Jerry Seinfeld said Tuesday, after hearing the news that George Steinbrenner had died at the age of 80. "You felt George even though he wasn't there. That's how huge a force of personality he was."
TBS will run 10 "Seinfeld" episodes for a week starting Monday that feature "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David as the Yankees owner -- always shot from behind, never on camera. David played Steinbrenner on 14 episodes.
The schedule:
Monday:
4 p.m. : "The Opposite" - George convinces Steinbrenner to give him a job.
4:30 p.m. "The Secretary" - George finds out Steinbrenner's secretary makes more than he does.
Tuesday:
4 p.m. "The Race" - George heads to Cuba to recruit baseball players for Steinbrenner.
4:30 p.m."The Wink" - Steinbrenner lists all the people he's fired over the years.
Wednesday:
4 p.m. "The Hot Tub" - Steinbrenner convinces George that a hot tub is the perfect way to relieve stress.
4:30 p.m. "The Caddy" - George's father (Jerry Stiller) confronts Steinbrenner about a traded player.
Thursday:
4 p.m.: "The Calzone" - Steinbrenner gets the idea to put Yankees clothes in a pizza oven.
4:30 p.m. "The Nap" - George's napping habits at work lead Steinbrenner to think he has ESP.
Friday:
4 p.m. "The Millennium" - George does everything he can to get fired, but Steinbrenner loves what he does.
4:30 p.m. "The Muffin Tops" - George's relationship with the Yankees finally ends when Steinbrenner trades him.
There are YouTube clips, of course, of the Steinbrenner episodes, linked here and here.
What about the time Steinbrenner actually appeared on the show?
We abstained from getting into 3D mode during Fox's experiment in covering the MLB All-Star Game from Angel Stadium through DirecTV with the new technology, so we'll have to rely on others to convey their thoughts on it.
Like, for starters, the guy in charge.
"Baseball is definitely one of the top couple of sports in 3D," said Fox Sports President Eric Shanks told the Sports Business Daily. "We see a lot of potential for this sport in this."
Because of the dugout suites at Angel Stadium, Fox and DirecTV were not able to replicate exactly the low camera position directly behind home plate, instead using a spot slightly to the right up the first base side. That shift, in turn, made it more difficult to see the ball coming out of the pitchers' hands, SBD reported.
Yahoo.com Sports' Kevin Kaduk said ESPN's 3D coverage of Home Run Derby was uneven with some shots "jaw-dropping" and outfield shots "unremarkable" and "distracting."
The Seattle Times' Jerry Brewer, reviewing two Yankees-Mariners games in Seattle that were shown on the YES network and FSN Northwest last weekend to test-drive the technology, wrote:
"I have seen the future, and it looks like, well, wow. High-definition television is awesome, but three-dimensional sports viewing is almost beyond description. It's still in the fine-tuning phase, but at its best, watching sports in 3D will allow you not only to see the game better, but also to understand and relate to it on a different level."
Just remember: New 3D TVs run as much as $4,500, plus $150 for a good pair of glasses. And you can't really pass 'em around as you're watching.
So watch out.
Spinning off more notes after today's media column (linked here):
== GQ, because it can, has a Top 5 and Bottom 5 list of baseball TV broadcasters (linked here), which is head surprisingly by ... Vin Scully, who "has a story about almost everyone, on each team, and ... he never comes close to hysterics, or any other cheap broadcasting trick. Listening to Scully has a sedative effect, in the best possible way, and one quickly settles into the game like a lullaby. Broadcasters, pay attention, this is your master's class."
No. 5 on the good list includes new Angels team Victor Rojas and Mark Gubicza, but it says Rojas replaced "the dismissed Steve Physioc, and so far, so good." Except Rojas really replaced the late Rory Markas. Another thought: "The only knock on these guys might be that their attempts at in-game humor usually fall flat, and that Rojas can be snarky. Still, this is a promising pair and they're developing a good on-air relationship."
The bottom 5: Apparently the guy doesn't hear Eric Collins and Steve Lyons much. They missed out.
== SI.com's Richard Deitsch's media power rankings for June and July (linked here) somehow include Jim Gray and ESPN's "The Decision."
But he also includes Emmet Smith, the deputy design director for news at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, who devised this cover:
Deitsch writes: "For those who celebrate the daily elegance of the newspaper front page, it was a gift of genius: LeBron James walking out of the frame, flanked by a single word headline: GONE." With an arrow pointing to his right hand that said: "7 Years In Cleveland, No Rings." Deitsch said that Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post called it one of the greatest front pages in newspaper history.
ESPN.com's Page 2 writer Dave Wilson (linked here) adds:
"The cover has been a huge topic of discussion in social media and sparked the most popular story of the day on USA Today's website. Most feedback has been positive, but there has been criticism that it took too much of an editorial view, which isn't traditionally found in regular news sections."
"'If you look at the wording on it, there's not a thing on it that's not true,' (Plain-Dealer visuals editor David) Kordalski said. 'He's gone. True. He was here seven years. True. No rings? True.'"
== Your MLB weekend card: Saturday's Fox game (Channel 11, 1 p.m.) has Joe Buck and Eric Karros on the Dodgers-Cardinals game from St. Louis (going to 27 percent of the country, including here of course), while 72 percent get the Tampa Bay-N.Y. Yankees game from Yankee Stadium on Old-Timers' Day with Kenny Albert, Tim McCarver and Ken Rosenthal.
McCarver, a former Yankees broadcaster for three years, said in a Fox release about what it was like working for George Steinbrenner, who died Tuesday: "Any employee of George will remember him very vividly. There was more than one occasion that I upset him on the air but I got along with him fine. I'm not too sure that he was real happy with some things I said on air but that's probably the case with a lot of broadcasters with George."
Sunday's Rays-Yankees game will be carried by TBS (10 a.m., Dick Stockton and Ron Darling), while the Phillies-Cubs from Wrigley Field is the ESPN Sunday night game (5 p.m.), which won't be threatened by a delayed broadcast of the ESPY Awards.
== We appreciate the multi-network coverage of the British Open that DirecTV has offered starting with the first round, a free four-screen delivery that includes the live ESPN coverage, a featured hole (the first and 18th), the 17th "road hole," and a channel with the international feed.
== Hurry, before ESPN takes it off YouTube:
== ESPN Digital Media reports that 4.9 billion minutes were spent on World Cup content across multiple platforms during the recent month-long event in South Africa -- that's ESPN.com, ESPN3.com video streaming, ESPN Mobile Web, ESPN Mobile Apps and ESPN Mobile TV. They report an average of more than 110,000 fans per minute used ESPN Digital Media to consume World Cup content during the 31 days. ESPN3.com had 7.4 million unique users. All 54 matches were streamed, with the Spain-Germany semifinal the largest views (355,000).
== AND FINALLY:
== AdWeek.com (linked here), of all websites, has been reporting on how video game players are complaining about too much advertising on EA Sports' new "Madden NFL 11," that will come out next month.
A controversy "has erupted in the blogosphere over how much in-game advertising" included, said the story.
There's a new player feature, for example, called "Swagger," described as "a unique new rating sponsored by Old Spice to quantify a player's personality ... reflected through in-game celebrations."
It means it will weigh a player's tendency to show off in the end zone after a touchdown.
The NFL is "all about sponsorship and co-branding." The league's games "seem to have a commercial interruption every three minutes and sponsors sponsoring sponsors," the story continues. "The "irony here is that the encroachment of a supposedly more subtle form of advertising, branded content, made bloggers so furious that many claimed they would rather watch a plain, old-school interruptive TV commercial in the middle of the Madden NFL game."
About a month ago, on the EA Sports blogs, a screen shot of "Madden NFL 11"'s innovations was inadvertently leaked -- new QB rankings, a new kicking engine, new commentary -- and this "Swagger" element.
Old Spice is "the official deodorant and body wash" of the NFL, and Swagger is the name of one of its product lines.
One blogger wrote: "What's next -- a hot wife rating?"
Sure, if it shows the player has extra swagger.
Jack Dempsey/AP
ESPN's Chris Berman (large one, second from left) does the Captain Morgan pose as he poses with Captain Morgan and the Morganettes, not to be confused with Morganna, during the MLB All Star Game festivities in Irvine at the Marquis Jet party on Monday.
Jack Dempsey/AP
Captain Morgan and some stowaways pose in front of Dodger Stadium for a name-brand exchange that is sure to make Walter O'Malley turn over in his cocktail.
Just catching up with some photos we staggered across, with Dodger players goofing around at Dodger Stadium last week with a guy dressed up as Captain Morgan and promoting the volitale alcoholic drink stopped by to see what kind of trouble he could stir up.
Maybe the kids thought it a promotion for "Pirates of the Carribbean." Yeah, right, son, and those other two are just ... his friends.
Maybe he was Captain Hook from "Peter Pan." Isn't that right, Sparky Anderson?
Some of the shots we found:
Jack Dempsey/AP
Dodgers pitcher Hong-Chih Kuo knows how to deliver a game-saving high-ball-five to the Captain.
Jack Dempsey/AP
Dodgers pitcher Travis Schlichting got the pose, with a couple of hot totties to go along with it.
Jack Dempsey/AP
Same for Dodgers third baseman Casey Blake, who has a good captain beard going himself. Hope the wife has this one signed and up on the mantle.
Don't worry Dodgers. This went pretty much under the wire. Except that it was picked up on TheBigLead.com (linked here), where commenters had a field day.
Bryant Gumbel's signoff commentary from Wednesday night's "Real Sports" on HBO dealt with something that's been causing me to grind my teeth at night -- well, I do that anyway, which is why I need a new mouth guard, but it's for other reasons, really, but this contributes to it ....
Gumbel said:
"Finally tonight, a few words about championship rings.
"Just when did they become the all-important barometer of who does or doesn't count in sports? When did they supersede personal excellence or exemplary character as a standard of greatness?
"I got to thinking about that the other night after the self-anointed chosen one, LeBron James, embarrassed himself as he tried to make his decision to seek rings in Miami sound like a search for the Holy Grail. It's when he essentially admitted to placing a higher priority on winning than anything else.
"LeBron's decision is typical of our immediate gratification era, but it flies in the face of history. Even though he never won a title, Dan Marino is still the biggest hero in Florida. And in Boston, all those Celtics championships are dimmed by the unforgettable brilliance of Ted Williams, who never won anything. In Chicago, Gale Sayers and Dick Butkus have legendary status despite playing on losing teams. And even in the NBA, where guys seem obsessed with being viewed as 'the man', real men like Barkley, Ewing and Baylor are ringless, but revered.
"Despite such evidence to the contrary, LeBron James seems to think he needs a ring to change his life and secure his legacy. Maybe he'll get one, maybe he won't, but it's probable that no amount of rings will ever remove the stench he wallowed in last week. LeBron may yet find that in the court of public opinion, just as putting on a tux can't make a guy a gentleman, winning a ring can't make one truly a champion."
We've got a different spin.
When did athletes start talking about winning a championship ring?
What's so wrong about just winning a championship?
I hear Little League kids today talking about "winning the ring." And college athletes.
It's not a reference to the old "brass ring," a phrase people that age don't even know about any more -- ask your grandparents, it has to do with riding a carousel. It's about the pursuit of a piece of jewelry that most won't even wear because of the fear that it'll be stolen. So they put it in a safe deposit box.
So, then, why is acquiring a ring so important if you don't even show it off? Because that's called modesty. Not calling attention to yourself. And a fear of some crazy guy holding you up and swiping it.
Rings can be used as collateral, apparently. Ask a pawn shop owner. Rings can be resold on eBay. Or maybe they're reproductions. We're not sure.
We turned on the ESPY Awards last night for about 10 seconds -- long enough to hear Seth Meyers tell a joke: Congradulations to Phil Jackson for winning his 11th championship. Eleven rings. One for each finger and we don't want to know where he's going to put this new one.
Great, a penis joke is now associated with winning a ring.
The bottom line: You can't be totally satisfied with knowing you've won a championship. You need the "ring ceremony" to validate it? Ask the Lakers players when they open the 2010-11 season with another big to-do about it. Ring in the new year, the headlines will say.
Satisfaction sure takes a lot of extra work these days.
Ricardo "The Busboy" Reyes. Now there's someone who should have his own TV show.
If you saw the Barney's Beanery legend with his white T-shirt and white apron and blue jeans destroy NBA stars LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Lamar Odom, Charles Barkley and Carmelo Anthony in his speciality - arcade Pop-a-Shot -- during Jimmy Kimmel's NBA Finals special shows on ABC, there's no denying that Reyes deserved the 2011 red Ford Mustang as his prize from the show.
Which drags us sadly to Shaquille O'Neal.
The former Lakers star is all set for another six-episode season of the remarkably dull "Shaq Vs." reality series, still not clear if he stole the idea from former Phoenix Suns teammate Steve Nash or he really is on the up-and-up in making this work as a legit summer programming filler.
What better way to start the show for the 5-foot-7, 148-pound Reyes to step up to the line against possibly the worst free-throw shooter in league history, and take him down like a wet cleaning rag.
Yet, it seems for naught.
TVWeek.com reports that the new series, starting Tuesday, Aug. 3, will have O'Neal going up against retired NBA star Barkley (in flagging down a hooker?), Tyson Gay (really, in a sprint?), Sugar Shane Mosley (we saw what Shaq didn't do against Oscar de la Hoya), Joey Chestnut (some sort of eating contest) and Dale Earnhardt Jr. (probably driving go-carts). Shaq is also expanding it since he's run out of ideas, and also wants to hang out with singer Justin Bieber, compete in a cook-off with food nut Rachel Ray, try to trick magicians Penn & Teller and then go all alphabet on Spelling Bee champ Kavya Shivashankar.
O'Neal showed up at last month's Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. and told the 14-year-old Shivashankar: "Keep in mind, I have a bachelor's and master's, and I'm ready to go."
That's what he told Michael Phelps, Lisa Leslie, Misty May Treanor, Kerry Walsh, Albert Pujols and Ben Rothlesburger last year.
"I'm out to prove that I can compete beyond athletics," O'Neal says in a statement. "I've spent all year sharpening my skills and I want to win. There's no challenge bigger than me."
Except, maybe this guy we know in West Hollywood ...
Too bad it's not one of those "Forever" stamps that the U.S. Postal Service suggests we buy to buffer the regular rate increases for a first-class stamp.
Instead, a 44-cent stamp that honors those associated with the old Negro Leagues will go on sale Thursday, dedicated in ceremonies at the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City.
In the two-pannel first stamp issued, one shows a close play at home plate, while the other commemorates Andrew "Rube" Foster, founder of the leagues that operated from 1920 to 1960.
The stamps are designed by the brilliant San Diego-based artist Kadir Nelson (linked here), whom we featured in a story when his book, "We Are The Ship" came out in 2008 (linked here).
A story about how Nelson came to do these special stamps is on the USA Philatelic website (linked here), including a first draft of how the stamp could appear.
The official U.S. Postal Service site offers a special edition "Ship" book (linked here) that comes with a sheet of stamps as well.
The USPS site also has a commemorative 30-by-11 1/4 inch special print of the first two stamps (linked here), a digital color keepsake (linked here), a ceremony program (linked here), a baseball cap with the stamp on it (linked here), a cultural diary (linked here), a commemorative folio (linked here) and special framed artwork (linked here).
There's no more information about whether the collection will include stamps honoring other legends, such as Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, James "Cool Papa" Bell, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks and Jackie Robinson.
Associated Press photo
Amber Riley from the Fox TV show "Glee" performs before the All-Star game Tuesday.
To strike a balance somewhere between remembering "The Boss" and marveling at the strikeouts racked up by baseball's radar-busting throwers -- all while popping the cast of "Glee" and cramming in another "Dinner For Schmucks" commercial -- Fox's production team had a wisk of past, present and promotion during Tuesday's MLB All Star game telecast from Angels Stadium.
Thankfully, things didn't get too schmucked up.
The overlaying news about the passing of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner did not weight down the game's enjoyment, but it was hardly ignored in classy ways.
In the pregame ceremony, Fox play-by-play man Joe Buck read from a script that asked the crowd to "pause to remember the life and legacy of one of baseball's most iconic figures," as a photo montage of Steinbrenner was shown.
During a moment of silence, the Fox cameras captured the quiet reactions of Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter and manager Joe Girardi.
Buck and McCarver brought it up again during a live interview with Girardi from the dugout in the top of the fourth inning, and reporter Chris Rose had more in a live chat with Jeter during the top of the seventh.
That was the inning when the NL started chipping away at the AL's 1-0 lead, putting the focus back onto the contest. All for the better of the telecast.
Buck waited until Fox signed off in the postgame before saying that the network dedicated the telecast to Steinbrenner, with touching video clips of him.
What else smoked, choked or otherwise spoke to our need for documentation:
Continue reading Your All Star review: Fox keeps it in the park.
"We made mistakes along the way. But we didn't make mistakes that would take a program down with the facts that they hold -- I would be ashamed for the NCAA."
== Pete Carroll, to HBO's Andrea Kremer
The Associated Press
Pete Carroll, as he appeared Monday night in an interview with The Associated Press during a book signing.
Because of the ongoing appeal process with the NCAA, USC officials -- particularly athletic director Mike Garrett -- have not talked much at all about the sanctions levied on the football program last month. Garrett's only comments recorded in the media seem to be at the booster club meeting in San Francisco that night, when he claimed that the NCAA had "nothing but a lot of envy" about the program.
Pete Carroll, the former head coach heading into his first season with the NFL's Seattle Seahawks, seems to be one of the few who can talk about it -- even if he doesn't necessarly want to. His legacy is most at stake here, aside from Garrett's, so this interview he has done with HBO for Wednesday's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" is another opportunity for him to shed some light on what happened, what he did or didn't know, and how this will all wash out.
It also allows him to promote his new book.
From a released rough-cut preview of the interview that reporter Andrea Kremer did, Carroll shows a range of emotions -- apologetic, remorseful, but also aggitated, exasperated with raised eye brows. His body language seems to say he knows something wrong happened, but he didn't know about it -- especially as much as the NCAA says the school is at fault, Carroll is hardly marked.
Leading into this interview Kremer did with Carroll is a revisit to a piece Bernard Goldberg did with Lloyd Lake, the San Diego-based aspiring agent who worked with Bush's step-dad, Lamar Griffin, to essentially give Bush money for his new car (which he posed with on a magazine cover), his parent's home, trips -- everything that the NCAA says you can't do. The piece originally aired in 2008, and Goldberg says "if Lake had stayed silent, USC wouldn't be in the mess it is in today." Lake was only coming public, he said, because Bush owed him thousands of dollars, which could have been paid back with Bush's new New Orleans Saints contract.
With that context for the viewer all laid out, Kremer has two sit-down interviews with Carroll, both in Seattle. One focuses more on his USC past, the other on his Seattle future.
She asks:
== What did Carroll think the first time he saw Reggie Bush driving a new car on campus:
Kremer: "Reggie drives a pickup truck. Now, all of a sudden, in his sophomore year, he's driving this supped-up, bigger time ..."
Carroll: "Have you ever seen the car?"
Kremer: "Yeah. So, you saw ... him in the car..."
Carroll: "It was a Chevy (he says defiantly)."
Kremer: "Did you ever ask him about it, though? Did you ever ask him where he got the money for it?"
Carroll: "I think I could recall kidding him about the kind of car he ... he chose to buy, at the time. 'Cause it was kind of an old-fashioned nice looking car."
Kremer: "But the bottom line is still, how did he get it?"
Carroll: "That was all worked out. They took care of that. There's a process that the school has to go through to meet compliance standards. And they did that. They did it."
"They" meaning the USC internal investigators. Kremer reports that according to the NCAA, "they" did nothing. No investigation. No paperwork filed for months. Bush left blank the key question -- where the car was purchased -- and no one followed up.
Carroll: "At that time, there might have been one person running the compliance office. I think there's seven now."
== Carroll gets aggitated again when asked if he knew of Bush's family's new, improved living conditions:
"Of course not. When you are growing up, Andrea, did you have any idea of your parents' mortgage situation? Think about it. None of us knew. We don't know. I couldn't tell you now how my mom and dad paid for their house."
Kremer: "But this is your best player with the most to lose."
Carroll: "It's easy for you to ask these questions in this manner right now. Matt Leinart was our best player. He was the Heisman Trophy winner. This was Reggie just emerging. He started for the first time regularly his junior year. He was sharing time. He was another one of the guys."
Kremer points out that even as a sophomore, when the NCAA says he started receiving gifts from sports agents, USC's own media guide called him "college football's most exciting player."
Kremer also says in the voiceover: "Bush's success should've led USC to heighten its compliance efforts, and as far as the NCAA was concerned, that never happened."
Kremer: "Did you wanna know? Did you think you turned a blind eye to anything?"
Carroll: "No, you have to want to know because that's what the world is all about. Compliance runs your life in college sports. you screw it up, you lose it. "
== The reaction to Carroll during recent visits to L.A. since the sanctiohs have been mostly cordial -- but he has two book signings coming up Friday in Orange County and Monday in the South Bay:
"People are pretty kind in general. There's guys ... yahoos ... who get out there and yell. I wish I would've been able to prevent all of the ill feelings that came out of this thing. I apologize for not knowing that it was going to be this bad, 'cause I was hoping it was going to be much different. So, it's just too bad."
Pete Carroll says he does "feel responsible being connected" with USC's latest NCAA problems, but he is "very proud of those years," telling an Associated Press reporter in New York at the start of his two-week promotional tour for his new book that his conscious is clean.
"It's been most difficult to watch everybody have to deal with it, whether it's the players or the coaches or the fans who support the university," USC's former head football coach said tonight as he began promoting his book, "Win Forever," which comes out Tuesday.
Carroll, who left USC three months ago to take the job with the NFL's Seattle Seahawks, will be at Barnes & Noble in Huntington Beach at 7 p.m. on Friday, and at Borders in Torrance on Monday, July 19, at 7 p.m. to sign copies.
The recent NCAA sanctions, punishment directly related to former tailback Reggie Bush's connection to a fledgling sports agent, could lead to USC's 2004 BCS title being vacated along with Bush's 2005 Heisman Trophy.
"There's nothing I can do about that now," Carroll said. "The games were won. The challenges and accomplishments are all in the books. We stand behind all those efforts."
Carroll has found a way to channel defending himself and his program into getting the word out about his book.
"We spent so much time working to do things better than it's ever been done before in all of our ways," Carroll told the AP reporter. "Not just in coaching and in the Xs and Os part of it, but in recruiting and evaluating and dealing with the image we projected.
"I'm really happy to be out talking about the issues and the book gives me a great opportunity to bring back the principles so people can understand better what we're all about.
"The message is giving the reader a chance to connect with their potential and then also trying to take them where they can learn how to perform. That is part of everything we do in football. We have to figure out how good we can be and then we have to try to get there.
"Hopefully, people from all different walks will be able to take something from that."
Wednesday, HBO airs an episode of "Real Sports" where reporter Andrea Kremer sits down with Carroll in Seattle to discuss the USC situation.
Kremer told us about the interview: "The audience can draw their own conclusions. From my perspective, the majority of the interview was spent talking about USC, and even what you'll see in the finished story will be the most robust discussion he or anyone else has had on the topic. We didn't speak in generalities.
"I read the entire report and did a lot of background. What I try to do really is, 'What do people really want to know?' He's got the book, the new job, and then this USC news came out, so you want to ask everything and find the best material -- and (USC) dominated it and quite a bit.
"There's no question he cares about everythign that happened; questioning his legacy is important to him. I asked if he was mad at Reggie Bush, and he said that he felt bad for him and still loved him. He equated it to a kid screwing up.
"You want to believe him, and when you talk to him, he's so charismatic and energetic and lights up and is passonate."
Kremer said she also interviewed former USC (and current Cincinnati Bengals) quarterback Carson Palmer and former New England quarterback Drew Bledsoe, both of whom played for Carroll.
Jim Gray has now been put into a position to explain who actually paid him for working on the ESPN hour-long "The Decision" telecast last Thursday where LeBron James announced his intention to sign with the Miami Heat.
The Washington Post (linked here) quoted Gray in a story Saturday, allowing him to deny a Darren Rovell CNBC story that claimed James' camp essentially paid him to toss the softball questions at their star client.
"I didn't take a penny from LeBron or any entity connected to him," Gray said, calling the CNBC story last week that has since been updated today (linked here) "100 percent inaccurate, wrong, totally false" and "irresponsible. . . . I would never take a nickel from somebody I'm interviewing."
No one said anything about nickles. It was all about dollars.
As we heard in interviews prior to the Thursday show, Gray admits to coming up with the idea for the one-hour special. He admitted the same to the Post, but added that "the subject of money never once was even mentioned to me" in discussions with Team LeBron.
That's not being a very good business man, is it?
Gray contends ESPN paid his airfare from L.A. to Connecticut and he plans to submit a bill of several hundred dollars for incidental expenses, though he said he is unsure whether the network or some others connected with the telecast will cover those costs.
Nice story. We're not buying it.
The L.A.-based Fox Sports en Espanol, aka FSE, is soon to be no mas.
Pero, don't fret.
This fall, the channel launched in 1996 that hits 18 million homes is being rebranded as Fox Deportes.
Why? Just listen.
"As the No. 1 Hispanic sports brand, we are 100 percent fan focused and therefore always seek to listen and serve our audience," said Vincent Cordero, the network's exec VP and GM in a press release. "We recently conducted extensive audience research in which the majority of the respondents referred to the network simply as 'Fox Deportes.' Changing the name recognizes that fact, and established greater consistency with the better-known Fox Sports brand and allows for easier cross network promotion and marketing."
Maybe they considered it Fox Deportes because a) the previous name seemed too long and b) it's Fox's version of 2004-launched ESPN Deportes (linked here), aka. El Lider Mundial en Deportes.
So el fuego, right DP?
Fox says that "other viewer research" reveals that Fox Sports and the Fox Deportes brands "embrace each other in key areas: viewers expect both to carry the best events; both networks provide excitement that everyone can experience; and both offer a fun and professional atmosphere to enjoy the best in sports. Clearly, these strong connections demonstrate how the two brands reflect and reinforce each other, and it would be a service for the Hispanic sports fans to rename the channel Fox Deportes to complete the link."
Bueno. We're sold. Now where's our soccer?
A story on ESPN.com (linked here) notes in a graphic up now (but may be to be updated to fix the name of the AL manager):
All-Star lineups:
The Rays' David Price and Rockies' Ubaldo Jimenez were named the starting pitchers for Tuesday's All-Star Game. A look at starting lineups for Joe Torre (AL) and Charlie Manuel (NL):
NL
Ramirez, SS
Prado, 2B
Pujols, 1B
Howard, DH
Wright, 3B
Braun, LF
Ethier, CF
Hart, RF
Molina, C
Jimenez, SP
AL
Ichiro, RF
Jeter, SS
Cabrera, 1B
Hamilton, CF
Guerrero, DH
Longoria, 3B
Mauer, C
Cano, 2B
Crawford, LF
Price, SP
In announcing that their popular "College GameDay" will expand to three hours this fall (the first hour starting on ESPNU), the World Wide Leaders in Press Releases also note that Erin Andrews' new contract calls for her to increase in stature as well.
We skip to paragraph three, sentence two:
"Also, Erin Andrews will join the College GameDay lineup, anchoring several segments during the first hour on ESPNU, and contributing reports, interviews and features during the ESPN portion of the show.
"As part of her role, Andrews will also work as the sideline reporter on the game from which College GameDay originates from, if the game is on an ESPN network (ESPN, ABC, ESPN2, ESPNU, etc.). In addition to her responsibilities across ESPN platforms, Andrews will provide select reports on ABC's Good Morning America throughout the year.
"Millions of fans can start their college football Saturdays an hour earlier and the ever-expanding ESPNU offers the perfect home for more award-winning College GameDay," said Norby Williamson, ESPN executive vice president, production. "As part of the new lineup, we're thrilled to announce an enhanced role for Erin Andrews that includes GameDay, while some of our most prominent college football personalities will have new and expanded responsibilities."
USA Today had the big scoop on all this in today's issue (linked here). Dang it.
It included this:
"The biggest reason I wanted to stay was because they'd expand my role," Andrews said Sunday in her first interview about her new contract. "It's time for me to try new things. ... The hosting stuff is what I'm really looking forward to."
First interview? Who was the sideline reporter interviewing her?
On her "Good Morning America" gig pieces: "Some will be fun and light-hearted," she says. "I don't take myself too seriously and like to have a good time." But having been a victim of stalking, which resulted in a videotape surfacing online a year ago, she also wants to report on crimes against women: "With what I've been through, I want to talk to women who are victims. ... And people haven't seen I can have a serious tone. We feel it's important to start off with serious issues so people take me seriously."
Andrews, who says she got "lots of offers to work in entertainment" before re-signing, might be best known to many GMA viewers for her recent run on ABC's Dancing with the Stars. "I got on (Dancing) thanks to ESPN. And then I got exposed to a completely different demographic."
EA will be at the ESPN "Home Run Derby" coverage tonight. Because it's very important.
That's it?
In more pressing matters:
Yes, GameDay will start at 6 a.m. PDT now (maybe they don't expect any trips to USC this fall), and end at 9 a.m. starting Sept. 4. The first site hasn't been figured out. Chris Fowler, Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit and Desmond Howard will be asked to do extra work as well.
More changes that make a bigger impact:
== Rece Davis, still anchoring ESPN's daylong Saturday studio coverage with Lou Holtz and Mark May, will do play-by-play on Thursday night games (instead of Fowler) with Craig James and Jesse Palmer. Jenn Brown will be that sideline reporter (instead of Andrews).
== Fowler will host ESPN's midday "College Football Live" on Mondays and Tuesdays during the season, because days off are optional now. John Saunders, who does the Saturday pregame, halftime and postgame stuff on ABC with Palmer, will do "College Football Live" on Thursday.
Highlights of the week ahead in sports, both here and afar:
MONDAY
MLB: Home Run Derby, 5 p.m., ESPN:
Chris "Carnival Barker" Berman, who continues to refer to Angel Stadium as "The Ed" (it was once called Edison Field), will most likely call this "Muscle Beach" or go off on a "back, back, back, back to the beach" reference before we're settled into our seats. So why do we watch this instead of, say, "Celebrity Rehab?" Baseball doesn't need to dress up steroid-riddled sluggers on a parade of longballs. The days of the Sosa-McGwire-Bonds muscle flexing are over. It's all about pitching now. Unless ... you bring in aluminum bats and BP guys throwing golf balls to David Ortiz, Robinson Cano, Matt Holliday, Albert Puljos , Miguel Cabrera, Torii Hunter, Chris Young, Ryan Braun, Nick Swisher, Josh Hamilton, Veron Wells, Andre Ethier, Vlad Guerrero, Corey Hart, David Wright, and Hanley Ramirez. Jeez, is Von Joshua available? Why not just show some of the old "Home Run Derby" black-and-white shows from the early '60s. This one is followed by something even more lazy: A celebrity softball game. Where they'll be rehabbing their injuries Monday night.
TUESDAY
MLB: 81st All-Star Game, Angels Stadium, 5:40 p.m. first pitch, Channel 11:
Where Joakim Soria, Matt Thornton, John Buck, Ty Wiggington, Evan Meek, Arthur Rhodes, Martin Prado, Michael Bourne, Omar Infante, Marlon Byrd and Matt Capps -- but no Stephen Strasburg -- come to celebrate the greatness of themselves. With the help of a Rally Monkey. And Cliff Lee in a Texas Rangers uniform. We predict a scoreless game heading into the 12th inning when Bud Selig realizes he again has to change the rules to accommodate the fact that there are no fans left in the stands. That's why this one counts. Again. The pregame starts at 4:30 p.m. (right after "Judge Alex"), and the post-game is supposed to end about the time the delayed version of "The Kilborn File" airs after 9 p.m.
WNBA: Sparks at Tulsa, 4 p.m., ESPN2:
In her WNBA comeback attempt, former world-class sprinter and Thousand Oaks High star Marion Jones is hardly the greatest female athlete on Earth. She's only been averaging about seven minutes a game off the bench, with a scoring average of 2.0 to go with 0.5 assists and 0.7 rebounds a contest for the Tulsa Shock, which is the only team keeping the Sparks from being last in the Western Conference. Shocking. "Just the opportunity, the fact that I'm busy, the fact that I'm doing something just really positive I think is worth all of the sacrifices and everything," Jones, the oldest WNBA rookie at 34, told USA Today. "There could be a lot of other places that I could be. I'm not complaining at all." The Sparks' road trip continues Friday in Chicago and Sunday in San Antonio, before Tulsa comes to L.A. to play them at Staples Center in a rare noon midweek game.
WEDNESDAY
The ESPY Awards, 6 p.m., ESPN:
Wikipedia (linked here) deftly defines this as "an annual awards event created and broadcasted by American cable television network ESPN to celebrate their legacy as a sport channel. Athletic awards are given as well. ... Given the fact that the ESPYs are promotions of the sports network ESPN, and were named such that the acronyms are so similar, the awards are generally regarded as a celebration of the power of ESPN." Brilliant. And it's referenced. Seth Meyers, the "Saturday Night Live" Weekend Update anchor and the show's head writer, says he's very comfortable that this year's 18th edition -- but who's counting -- is back on live at the Nokia Theatre in L.A. Live and not tape-delayed to air on Sunday night. "Sports are live, so not doing a sports award show live seems wrong," Meyers said. There's a lot wrong with this, but at least there is money raised for the Jimmy V Foundation. And don't forget the two-hour red carpet show leading in, where celebs entering have the sun in their eyes. Presenters include Kenny Chesney, Brooklyn Decker, Zac Efron, Will Ferrell, Danica Patrick, Samuel L. Jackson, Tracy Morgan and Shaun White; attendees are supposed to include Reggie Bush, Landon Donovan, Evan Lysacek, Dara Torres and Jorge Posada. Kobe Bryant? Probably still vacationing in South Africa.
Series: "Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel," HBO, 10 p.m.:
A sit-down interview that Andrea Kremer conducted recently with Pete Carroll will be of greater interest to this TV audience. The former USC coach now running the show for the NFL's Seahawks doesn't shy away from the tough questions about his knowledge of recent problems that got the Trojans' football team put on NCAA's watch list.
THURSDAY
Golf: The British Open, first round, 2 a.m., ESPN:
Tom Watson gave the 2009 Open Championship a hole-by-hole thrill when he nearly pulled off a victory before coming up short against Stewart Cink in a four-hole playoff. This one back at St. Andrews could be the last Open for Watson, we presume. Tiger Woods is also somehow a story, and on the Open official website (linked here), it notes that Woods is "looking forward to playing Champions' Challenge on (his) 'favourite course.'" Learn to spell, eh. This can't be Tiger's favorite place to be with London tabloids following him around, either. ESPN has the event all four days, going on a 2 a.m., 4 a.m. and 3 a.m. for the final three rounds. Bring a stiff cup o' tea.
MLB: Dodgers at St. Louis, 5:15 p.m., Channel 9:
Manny Ramirez should be back in the lineup for the Dodgers unless he's really enjoying those trips to Lancaster. And if the Dodgers learned anything recently, it's to allow the Cardinals to take a comfortable lead into the ninth, then jump all over Ryan Franklin. See: Rockies, July 6, nine-run 9th.
MLB: Angels vs. Seattle, Angel Stadium, 7 p.m., FSW:
Come early and buy up all the left-over All Star Game memorabilia at discounted prices. Including the Player of the Game trophy left in the NL trainer's room. Really, fans who buy a ticket get a free All-Star banner (shown here).
FRIDAY
MLB: Dodgers at St. Louis, 5:15 p.m., Prime Ticket:
These four in St. Louis are the only road games for the Dodgers during an 18-game stretch.
MLB: Angels vs. Seattle, Angel Stadium, 7 p.m., FSW:
Instead of Cliff Lee, the Angels have to worry about how to pitch to Justin Smoak this series.
SATURDAY
MLB: Dodgers at St. Louis, 1 p.m., Channel 11:
Maybe this is where Jeff Suppan drops in for another visit against the Dodgers. He's 0-3 with a decent ERA since joining the Cardinals in early June. He just isn't getting much run support.
MLB: Angels vs. Seattle, Angel Stadium, 6 p.m., FSW:
Kids aged 2-to-18 get a free mesh Angels jersey. Just like what these two female models are wearing. They're 18?
SUNDAY
MLB: Dodgers at St. Louis, 11:15 a.m., Channel 9:
It's Joe Torre's 70th birthday. To put that into perspective, Ringo Starr turned 70 on July 7. And the Dali Lama turned 75 on July 6. All marching to the beat of their own drum.
MLB: Angels vs. Seattle, Angel Stadium, 12:35 p.m., Channel 13:
Wouldn't it be interesting if the Mariners asked Ken Griffey Jr. to wake up from his nap and try a few more swings for them again?
MLS: Galaxy at D.C. United, 4:30 p.m., Fox Soccer Channel:
Almost as spine-tingling as a Holland-Spain World Cup final. Without the world-wide attention.
Ceremony: Baseball Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals inductions, 2 p.m., Pasadena City Library:
Pete Rose and Casey Stengel are two of the inductees into what's called "The People's Hall of Fame" for baseball stardom. Rose, however, won't make it. He's got a baseball card show to attend and make a little scratch instead. Seriously. At least we know Pete won't be at closing day at Hollywood Park. Probably.
Just remember the "This Is SportsCenter" commercial that LeBron James taped at Bristol, Conn., with anchor Scott Van Pelt two years ago ... it kind of laid the groundwork to last Thursday's one-hour "The Decision" special:
The excerpt from our column today (linked here) on the LeBron James announcement on ESPN included this about one of our favorite interviewers:
"Jim Gray ... somehow continues to believe he's a conduit to important news, having been shoved into this situation before as a sideline (Pete Rose) and ringside (Mike Tyson) microphone holder in previous situations. This time, however, Gray has admitted he brought the spotlight to himself. By begging.
In an interview with KSPN-AM on Wednesday, Gray said he approached James and handler Maverick Carter a month ago during Game 2 of the NBA Finals at Staples Center and asked them if he could be part of James' announcement "and they agreed."
Gray embellished on Dan Patrick's radio show Thursday morning by saying he suggested to Carter: "I got a better idea ... why don't we buy an hour of television time and do the announcement and interview on television," and they all agreed it was "brilliant" because he could raise a lot of money for charity.
The joke continues to be on the wimpish Gray, a tool of choice by athletes who want their message delivered filter-free. Somehow, he's still naïve enough to think his fraudulent career is one crafted by trustworthiness."
Maybe I was too easy on him.
The Sports Business Daily today had this roundup of criticism about Gray's involvement in the show:
== "(The questions) defied logic, reason, drama and journalism ... (the) inane and extended foreplay was excruciating and tortured, and the veteran journalist was destroyed on social media," wrote Sports Illustrated's Richard Deitsch.
== "(Gray's) deliberate, four-corner teasing cynically dragged out a now-annoying drama ... Was this in the script? If so, shame on ESPN. If Gray winged it, shame on him," wrote the New York Times' Richard Sandomir.
== "(He) shamed himself and every professional interviewer on the planet," wrote the Los Angeles Times' Mary McNamara, "(by asking) five solid minutes worth of such blatantly time-killing" questions such as "How's your summer?" "When did you decide?" and "Are you still a nail biter?"
== "Shame on Jim Gray and ESPN for asking 16 questions -- 16! -- before asking James the only one on anybody's mind," wrote Barry Jackson of the Miam Herald. "(The answers) would have been more substantive, more meaningful, if he had revealed the winning team first."
== "(ESPN) gave up whatever shred of credibility it had with Jim Gray milking this moment with question after question before asking the only one that mattered," wrote the Newark Star-Ledger's Steve Politi.
== "Shame on Jim Gray. He lobbed two dozen softball questions LeBron James' way Thursday night without bothering to ask a single follow-up ... (ESPN delivered) kid-gloved questions and a giant plug for one of James' sponsors," wrote the Dallas Morning News' Barry Horn.
== "(Gray) proceeded to the aural equivalent of a full inning of slow pitch softball, lobbing verbal floaters at James for five minutes before getting to the point," wrote the Houston Chronicle's David Barron.
=="How any 'journalist' sits there and goes along with a script without asking the only question anyone cares about for what seemed like hours was shameful. The bottom line: Gray was not a journalist but a pawn for ratings, stretching out the made-for-TV event as long as he could," wrote Ben Grossman of Broadcasting & Cable.
== "(Gray) either had no sense of the moment whatsoever, or had complete understanding that this could be his next great moment in journalism and was milking every last second out of his own relevance," wrote TheSportingNews.com's Dan Levy.
== "ESPN probably glad they are not paying for Jim Gray," wrote the L.A. Times' Joe Flint.
== "Jim Gray, my pal, I am about to retroactively take Pete Rose's side," wrote MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.
== (Sources say James' handlers selected Gray) "because of his 'special sales relationship' with" (the University of Phoenix, one of the telecast's presenting sponsors)," wrote the New York Post's Phil Mushnick.
Surprisingly, ESPN, and James, didn't use Gray's forehead for more advertising space.
Again, some yahoo at Yahoo! once listed Gray in the Top 50 of the greatest sportscasters of all time (linked here).
Gray appeared on "CBS This Morning" and defended the way James presented his one-hour "The Decision" as a new show:
"I'm not offended by it at all, so you're probably asking the wrong person. I thought it was terrific.
"(James) commanded it and he was able to do it and tens of thousands of kids are gonna benefit from it. It was a huge financial success for the Boys & Girls Club (n Greenwich, Conn., where the show was held). They're gonna do very well.
"So, yeah, what's wrong with it? I mean, would you rather the guy do it by fax, by Twitter, on the Internet? I mean, really, I find nothing wrong with it.
"He's a once-in-a-lifetime player. Yes, the process did go over-the-top, but it's a players' league. And when you have somebody the caliber of LeBron James, you saw what was going on.
"For crying out loud, President Obama commented on this seven times. We've got oil spills, we've got wars, we've got a lot going on, but he certainly was very interested. I don't mean to be frivolous or flip. He was having a good time. But he wanted to see LeBron James play in his hometown of Chicago, so everybody was interested, from the fans all the way up to the top of our country."
Keep defending, Jim-Bob, and it only keeps getting you deeper into non-usable territory.
ESPN.com's Gene Wojciechowski laid out a couple of weeks ago about changes he'd make in the MLB All Star Game, all for the better (linked here).
Aside from the use of instant replay and metal bats, plus ditching the mandatory team representation and, World Series home-field advantage, Wojo added a simple suggestion that seemed almost too easy:
Nothing against the Fox TV or ESPN Radio crew calling the All-Star Game, but how about reserving three innings each year for some of the great play-by-play and/or analysts from the local markets?
The game is in Anaheim this year, so you'd have some sort of combo of Angels broadcasters (Mark Gubicza, Terry Smith, Victor Rojas and Jose Mota) doing an inning.
What a neat way to let them honor the longtime voice of the Angels, Rory Markas, who died during the offseason.
Have Vin Scully call an inning. Or Pat Hughes and Ron Santo. Or Jerry Remy. Or Hawk Harrelson and Steve Stone. Or & well, you get the idea.
We have all-star players. Why not throw a bone to all-star broadcasters?
Everything, except for Terry Smith, sounds grand.
But it won't happen ... because?
After today's column on the LeBronathan finally ending (linked here), we move on to other interesting ideas and pieces of info:
== Thirty-eight percent of the country will get Fox's coverage of the Dodgers' home game against the Cubs on Saturday (1 p.m., Channel 11, with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver), while 46 percent see Braves-Mets (with Kenny Albert and Kevin Millar) and 15 percent get Twins-Tigers (with Dick Stockton and Ron Allen).
== McCarver, on the one thing he remembers from playing in the 1967 All Star game at Anaheim as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals: "I remember Tom Seaver got a save in that game after Tony Perez hit a solo home run in the top of the15th to win for the National League. Seaver threw harder than any pitcher than I've ever caught in that game. I caught a lot of Bob Gibson's start and he threw awfully hard. Gibson is particularly responsible for my deformed thumb on my left hand. But when I took my glove off after catching Seaver, my left hand was swollen. I don't think I've ever had a swollen, black and blue hand under my index finger. I was doing pretty well the first half of that season and I went in the tank in second half. I've told Tom he ruined my left hand with that inning of work."
== More of Fox's plans for the All-Star Game: The Angels' Torii Hunter will give Leeann Tweeden some VIP access to the All Star festivities during a one-hour show Tuesday on FoxSports.com (11 a.m.) ... Fox will use 21 cameras and 80 microphones in its coverage as it occupies a 10,000-square-food area under Highway 64 next to Angels Stadium ...
== The MLB Network's plans include 11 hours live starting Monday at 9:30 a.m. with Kevin Millar, Sean Casey, Barry Larkin, Al Leiter, Harold Reynolds, Matt Vasgersian, Tom Verducci, Peter Gammons and Bob Costas. The network also has the red carpet show on Tuesday at 1 p.m. live, then one edited down at 4:30 p.m.
== A special treat: Sunday at 5 p.m. (head to head with ESPN's coverage of the Dodgers-Cubs game), MLB Net will televise the NBC 1965 All Star game in Minnesota for the first time since its original airdate. The National League's 6-5 win featured Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, game MVP Juan Marichal, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Roberto Clemente, Bob Gibson, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Willie Stargell, Billy Williams, Al Kaline, Harmon Killebrew, Mickey Mantle, Brooks Robinson and Carl Yastrzemski. Hall of Famers Jack Buck and Joe Garagiola are on the call.
== ESPN's plans for Monday's Home Run Derby (Monday, 5 p.m.) include Chris Berman, Joe Morgan and Bobby Valentine chirping away, in 3D with Dan Shulman, Aaron Boone and Nomar Garciaparra and, as only it can be enjoyed, on ESPN Radio with Jon Sciambi and Dave Campbell.
== ESPN's Baseball Tonight will be live from Dodger Stadium, with Karl Ravech, Garciaparra and Valentine on Sunday at 4 p.m. leading into ESPN's coverage of the Dodgers-Cubs game (5 p.m., Jon Miller, Joe Morgan and Orel Hershiser). TBS has Braves-Mets at 10 a.m. on Sudnay with Brian Anderson and Buck Martinez.
== Martin Tyler, who'll call the World Cup final for ABC on Sunday with Efan Ekoku, has already agreed to do the 2014 World Cup in Brazil for the network, said Jed Drake, the ESPN senior VP and executive producer of event production. An hour-long pre-match show starts at 10:30 a.m. with Bob Ley and John Harkes joining the usual crew of Mike Tirico, Alexi Lalas and whomever else is around the pitch. JP Dellacamera and Tommy Smyth call it on ESPN Radio (heard locally on KSPN-AM 710).
== Said Drake of the ESPN/ABC coverage of the tournament the last four weeks: "The passion that the U.S. viewers have shown, clearly with the U.S. team when it was still in play, the numbers were extraordinary. But, since then, the numbers have held up quite nicely. I think that we've achieved what we set out to do, with two games to be played, in that we've served knowledgeable football fans very well with our breadth of coverage. Not just with number of hours but with analysis and insight we brought to it...I think perhaps in some measure due to the U.S., and how they played initially, U.S. viewers were drawn to this event itself. Even when the U.S. ended their run, that halo of this event has captured them."
== The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that ESPN is using the World Cup as a "living laboratory to test how people consume sports" by having the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Interactive Media Initiative act as one of 15 "research vendors" looking at different aspects of the "increasingly complex interrelationships among media forms." The school is using research to predict ESPN online-viewership patterns, which can help ESPN deploy staff, select better broadcast times and choose prices for advertisers. Says ESPN VP/Integrated Media Research Glenn Enoch: "We operate on the idea that viewers will use the best available screen, depending on what time of day it is."
== Antonio Pierce, the linebacker from the New York Giants who announced his retirement after nine seasons, has jumped on to ESPN as an NFL analyst for various shows, radio programs and websites. Pierce appeared on ESPN's "NFL Live" Thursday to make the announcement with Trey Wingo at his side. Pierce, a Long Beach native who spent his first four season with the Redskins, prepped at Paramount High went two years to Mt. SAC before going to the University of Arizona.
== Terry Gannon, Carolyn Peck, Heather Cox and Rebecca Lobo call Saturday's WNBA All Stars vs. USA Basketball exhibition from Connecticut (ESPN, 12:30 p.m.). The USA team includes reigning WNBA MVP Diana Taurasi (Phoenix Mercury), Sue Bird (Seattle Storm), Swin Cash (Seattle Storm), Tamika Catchings (Indiana Fever), Tina Charles (Connecticut Sun), Candice Dupree (Phoenix Mercury), Sylvia Fowles (Chicago Sky), Angel McCoughtry (Atlanta Dream), Renee Montgomery (Connecticut Sun), Maya Moore (University of Connecticut), and Cappie Pondexter (New York Liberty). With Candace Parker injured, there are no Sparks competing for either team.
== Versus says it has avraged 484,000 viewers (up 16 percent from last year) and a 0.5 rating (up 25 percent) for its first four days of live morning coverage for the Tour de France, calling it the best start to race coverage in the network's 10-year history.
== A college home run derby? Why not. CBS taped one this week at the site of the College World Series in Omaha and will have it on tape Sunday (10 a.m.) with eight competitors, including USC junior first baseman Ricky Oropesa as the only local. Oropesa led USC with 20 homers, 67 RBI and a .353 batting average this year.
== DirecTV will offer four days of British Open coverage on its four-channel feed on a mix channel that incorporates ESPN's live coverage, plus a featured hole (the 1st and 18th), the "Road Hole" No. 17 and the international view channel with European broadcasters.
== Episode description for Sunday's latest installment of the new season of "Enterouge" (HBO, 10:30 p.m.) goes this way:
"In the midst of a public relations crisis over Vince's movie, Ari has a face-to-face with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and other top NFL figures, and gets unexpected help from black-sheep agent Lizzie Grant (Autumn Reeser). At Vince's behest, Eric agrees to help Drama find the perfect script. Turtle ends up with egg on his face when he accuses Alex of maxing out his corporate credit card. Sporting a bold new look, Vince takes his risk-taking proclivities to new heights."
== AND FINALLY:
The only ESPN-type employee we could find who's gone on the record by saying something negative about this whole situation was Kevin Blackistone, the FanHouse.com writer who appears regularly on "Around the Horn."
"It's kind of disturbing, as a journalist, how ESPN, from whom I garner a check, has gotten into bed with LeBron James to do this deal. They've allowed him to choose the sponsors for the show . . . They've allowed him to choose who will interview him on the show. And I think it's a really bad trend."
Blackistone, however, made the comments on National Public Radio (linked here) - far removed where most of ESPN's listeners, or employees, would even venture.
UPDATE at 3 p.m. Friday: In today's Los Angeles Times, columnist Bill Plaschke blames James and "his team of young sycophants" the direct problem with this hour-long show.
"It wasn't about a lack of journalstic ethics, but human ethics," Plaschke wrote.
Plaschke, of course, is a regular member of ESPN's "Around The Horn." He may truely believe what he wrote, but the conflict of interest sure hangs over every sentence, like it or not.
On today's "Pardon The Interruption," Michael Wilbon, who was part of the LeBron special on Thursday, said in the lead story about James that "LeBron is being widely criticized for the way he came off and ESPN is being widely criticized for its partnership in the hype."
Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan, filling in for Tony Kornheiser, stammered through a preamble that seems to have said: "As far as the whole idea of the production itself, it was a good idea for only one entity, and that is ESPN, who had the eyeballs to justify it from their point of view, which is not your point of view or my point of view or the fans' point of view, but it's there point of view and we can argue that to kingdom come ..."
But they didn't.
"I will say this: I think we wasted a lot of time with Jim Gray (asking) questions before he got to the real question," said Wilbon. "And I probably should have asked some questions as well. ... We can agree on this -- it was a specticle."
Indeed.
The Amazing LeBronathan, enabled by the line-crossing strength of ESPN's world-wide hype machine, will snatch a prime hour of our summer's leisure tonight at 6 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time to announce something that will probably take approximiatly six seconds. With Jim Gray by his side.
New-age ethics, protocol, narcissism, arrogance, ego, control freakishness, grandstanding and creating a situation where your own reporters have to work against your own pimping aside, what's wrong with this picture?
ESPN's Michael Wilbon, who will interview James a day after he did the Dwayne Wade-Chris Bosh interviews live for the network, said it Wednesday on "Pardon the Interruption" in defense of him and the network: "Any network executive that says he or she wouldn't try to get this for his or her network is a liar, plain and simple ... My problem with what the network has done is sort of putting it out there 48 hours early. ... I understand you want to build viewership and there are different things in the new media age, but I would say I don't want to undermine the reporters trying to get a scoop ... though apparently, those reporters have not been stopped or in any way hindered from doing their work in reporting stories. But this thing is now more controversial, which will attract viewers, will it not?"
Hope not.
The Boston Herald's Steve Buckley has written that "The Decision" is ESPN's "own version of WrestleMania ... (but) the difference between WWE and ESPN is that Vince McMahon has long since admitted that what he does is contrived, scripted and fake. ESPN, on the other hand, wants you to believe that they're just there to cover breaking news."
We'll observe and comment later .... brace yourself. As long as it doesn't pre-empt "Jeopardy!" on KABC Channel 7.
You know things are screwy when ESPN runs a scroll across the bottom of the screen during the Tuesday night "SportsCenter" that started with the red "LeBRON ALERT" logo and continued: "LeBron James plans to announce decision on free agency Thursday @ 9 p.m. ET on ESPN during 1-hour special, independent sources tell ESPN's Chris Broussard."
Uh, what's that again?
It follows: "ESPN would confirm only that discussions for LeBron James special are ongoing."
ESPN can't confirm its own story on its own network? Or is it referring to itself in the third person?
More: "Sources say ESPN has agreed to proposal from James' representatives to sell sponsorship for special with proceeds going to Boys and Girls Clubs of America."
Sources from who? ESPN? The network needs to create a source to report a story that it is going to do something?
So, how did this all go down? Broussard tells his boss: I've heard this from one of LeBron's people. His boss goes to his boss, who says, no, we can't report that. But go back and tell Broussard that we're talking and that's all we can say about it. Then let him clear it through a second source.
Then the ESPN scroll guys says: Well, what can I report? His boss goes to his boss who interrupts a meeting with his boss, they form a statement through the press department, create a source, and spit it back to the scroll guy: This is how we want it presented. For now.
Or something stupid like that.
On today's ESPN scroll -- including one that has been running during Michael Wilbon's interview with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh as they say they're heading to Miami -- there's no more "sources" cited, the Thursday announcement seems to be set.
ESPN finally issued a press release at 9 a.m. today that said: "The Decision" to be Presented Live on ESPN Thursday at 9 p.m. ET
It included:
Proceeds from "The Decision" will be donated to Boys & Girls Club of America in support of James' vision to construct basketball courts for youth across the country. The program will be co-presented by University of Phoenix and Bing. vitaminwater® and McDonald's will also sponsor the program. In addition, Nike and Sprite are making contributions in support of this charitable initiative. LeBron James and his marketing company, LRMR Marketing, were responsible for securing the sponsors for this unique event.
Maverick Carter, CEO of LRMR, said: "LeBron has a longstanding commitment to giving back to the community and has worked with Boys & Girls Clubs in cities across the country. With the unprecedented attention and interest surrounding LeBron's decision, we decided to make this announcement on national television and donate the proceeds to Boys & Girls Clubs. We very much appreciate the cooperation and generosity of our sponsors."
Roxanne Spillett, CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of America, added: "We were thrilled to hear from LeBron's organization over this past weekend with this most generous gesture. Taking time out of what I am sure is a most difficult decision, and creating an opportunity for our Clubs and members to benefit, is just tremendous."
ESPN's Stuart Scott will host "The Decision," and will be joined by ESPN NBA analysts Michael Wilbon and Jon Barry. Freelance reporter Jim Gray will conduct the first interview with James in which he announces his decision. Wilbon will also have an extensive interview with James.
ESPN's 6 p.m. ET SportsCenter will expand to three hours leading into the hour-long "The Decision" at 9 p.m. Following "The Decision," ESPN will televise an expanded SportsCenter from 10 p.m.-midnight (9 p.m. PT).
SportsCenter's coverage throughout the evening will provide news and information associated with the decision, an overview of the NBA free agency landscape, and a recap of the other sports news of the day. ESPN will also have reporters at the team headquarters of several teams which have been most active in free agency.
What's not revealed here: Where will James be doing the show?
The debut of a new documentary on Pete Rose's career called "4192: The Crowning of the Hit King" will get a red-carpet treatment at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood on Wednesday night, and the former Cincinnati Reds star, who lives in Sherman Oaks, is scheduled to attend.
Tickets ($20) for the event can be purchased online at the film's official website (linked here).
The synopsis from the producer's Barking Fish Entertainment website (linked here):
"On the evening of September 11, 1985, before a sellout crowd of 52,000 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, Pete Rose was poised to collect hit number 4,192 of his long brilliant career, passing Ty Cobb as the all-time career hits leader. Rose came up to bat in the first inning against the San Diego Padres Eric Show and on the fourth pitch lined a clean single to left center. As he reached first base, thousands of camera flash bulbs fired off rapidly, his teammates mobbed him, fireworks exploded above the stadium and the crowd overwhelmed him with an unprecedented nine-minute standing ovation.
"Pete Rose was perhaps the most versatile player in Major League Baseball history, having played five hundred or more games at five different positions in his twenty-four year career. He holds numerous major league records including most hits, most games played and most at-bats. He was the 1963 NL Rookie of the Year, the 1973 NL MVP, 1975 World Series MVP, won two gold gloves, three World Series rings, and appeared in seventeen All-Star games among other notable achievements. From Pete's first hit to that immortal September evening where history was made, "4192" traces the Hit King's rise as one of baseball's greatest and most controversial stars."
So, is that accurate?
A review by John Klesewetter of the Cincinnati Enquirer (linked here) includes the term "two-hour love fest" and notes that it "doesn't mention gambling, greenies, corked bats or other controversies."
Klesewetter also notes that the final version of the documentary doesn't a Rose quote from the April movie trailer, where he does admit to making mistakes: "I never cheated the fans. Everybody knows that. Sure, I made mistakes, but they knew I was never going to cheat them, as far as when I played the game."
Klesewetter adds on his blog: "If you want a balanced, complete look at Pete's life, you won't find it here."
The timing of the documentary, which is scheduled to come out in DVD form by September, is to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Rose breaking Ty Cobb's career hit mark on Sept. 11, 1985.
Before Sept. 11 was known for other notorious things.
Rose does most of the narration, but there's also contributions from his biggest supporters: Former teammates Tony Perez and Mike Schmidt, and Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman. No Joe Morgan or Johnny Bench.
Aymie Majerski, who is the co-producer, would not tell the Enquirer how much Rose was paid or if he's given credit as a production partner, and they all agreed to focus only on Rose's on-the-field accomplishments.
Rose will also be in Newport, Kentucky, for the film's screening on July 14. Four days later, Rose is to be inducted into the Baseball Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals in Pasadena, but he won't be present. Rose's contacts have told Terry Cannon, the Reliquary's executive director, that he has a prior commitment -- a baseball card show in Chicago, before he heads off to Cooperstown where he'll do more signings leading into the July 25 annual Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.
Rose has asked that his good friend, Greg Goossen, accept the honor for him.
Anyone hear about the All Sports Los Angeles Film Festival?
Anyone up for it?
Until we were asked to come to the premiere of a Pete Rose documentary, "4192," that'll be at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood on Wednedsay night, this event wasn't on our radar.
The reason this Rose doc is debuting here rather than in Cincinnati, is because the filmmakers want to network at this two-day film festival in hopes of getting a cable network to air it near the 25th anniversary of Rose breaking Ty Cobb's all-time hits record on Sept. 11. They also want to push it around at the ESPY Awards that come to L.A.'s Nokia Theatre next week, the day after the All Star Game in Anaheim.
That said, why don't we know more about this sports film festival tailor-made for L.A. sports fans?
A search of the Internet turned up this website (allsportslafilmfest.com, linked here), which explains that this will be the second year of its existence, trying to help filmmakers and screen writers who specialize in movies about sports and competition get some publicity.
Most of it will take place at the Raleigh Studios in Hollywood on Saturday and Sunday.
The festival will be held at the Pickford, Chaplin and Fairbanks Theatres on July 10th and 11th, and the site says that its "jury and judges are well respected people in the film and sporting industry." Including T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times, former WNBA star Rebecca Lobo, ESPN sideline reporter Holly Rowe and someone named Ty Jones from CAA.
Judging from that, it's still a pretty lay-low operation.
"Having your film or screenplay in the festival may open doors that may not be available to you," they say on the site. "We can't promise sudden fame and fortune but we'll do our best to get you noticed."
But not really their best to publicize this thing.
There are tickets to 36 events in this starting Saturday at 10 a.m. through Sunday at 8:50 p.m. (linked here).
Some of the movies scheduled to be shown are called "Jackie Robinson: My Story," "The Wayman Tisdale Story," "Florence Fight Club," "Ballhawks," "100 Miles to 40," "Stronghold: The Grip of Wrestling," "Salam Rugby," "Inside the Legends: 2009 Notre Dame Japan Bowl," and "Pinned." Tickets are $10 per showing.
The description of the Robinson story: "(It is) a 'first person docudrama' that blends a powerful and dramatic portrayal of Robinson by actor Stephen Hill with historic and archival footage, interviews and newsreels to tell Jackie Robinson's story as it's never been told before."
Last year's winners included Michael Murphy's "The Knuckleballer" for best screenplay, Joe Evans' "Dunkball" for best micro documentary, G.R. Kearney's "Handicapped: A Documentary About Bad Golf" for best comedic doc, Rick Cohen's "Faded Glory" as the audience choice for best feature documentary and Christopher Jewitt's "Home Field Advantage: Alabama" as the audience choice for best short documentary.
First place awards in the screenplay and audience choice for feature, documentary and short includes a "cool bobblehead trophy."
You take what you can get, apparently.
The Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission's annual "NFL 101" event -- which is said to be the only officially-sanctioned NFL event in Los Angeles -- is set for Monday, July 19 from 5 to 9:30 p.m. at the Coliseum.
Some of the participants slated to attend:
== Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll
== San Diego Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers
== New York Jets receiver Jerricho Cotchery
== ESPN NFL analyst and former NFL head coach Herm Edwards
== Fox and NFL Network analyst and former NFL head coach Brian Billick
== "The Blind Side" director John Lee Hancock
== Former Oakland Raiders linebacker Rod Martin
== Mike Pereira, the former NFL Vice President of Officiating and current NFL Rules Analyst for Fox
== Oakland Raiders chief executive officer Amy Trask
== Sports Illustrated writer Peter King
== NBC Sports reporter and event emcee Andrea Kremer
Among the activities:
== On-field coaching from current and former NFL players and coaches
== A locker room tour hosted by Green Bay Packers equipment manager Gordon Batty that includes a full locker/uniform set up representing all 32 teams.
== A memorabilia celebration of both Super Bowl history and NFL football in Los Angeles
== A panel discussion on an agent's role in the business of the NFL.
Tickets run $500 each. More info: Aubrey Walton at (213) 236-2347 or awalton@lasec.us
Because we get all our hot tips from the Internet machine, and most of the information we receive are from force-fed emails, we don't throw any of this way, because it might come true, and we could have it there as a reference to show our own sources -- see, you were wrong. Or right.
On this LeBron James where-does-he-go story, we've checked into the usual sources.
On what appears to be the shell of a James' official website, www.lebronjames.com -- and he hasn't had a site in three years -- there's the phrase "Getting Closer" on a single page that asks you for your name, email address and cell phone number. Once that's filled out, you get the message: "You'll be the first to know."
He has also finally launched a Twitter account: www.twitter.com/kingjames, which already has more than 100,000 followers by midday and nearly 200,000 just nine hours in existence.
Kind of reminds us when the Obama campaign was in full force, and those who had signed up on his site were the first to know that he committed to a run for president.
On his Nike official page, http://nikelebron.net/, it says the Chicago Bulls are taunting him by trying to see if he's going to fill Michael Jordan's shoes.
Again, it doesn't matter.
We already know.
This was sent out as a press release on June 28, for immediate release, with the headline:
FOX SPORTS RADIO'S STEPHEN A. SMITH TELLS THE WORLD WHERE LEBRON JAMES WILL BE PLAYING NEXT SEASON
It continues:
LOS ANGELES - It's the question that the sports world has been buzzing about, and FOX Sports Radio host Stephen A. Smith gave the answer this morning: Sources tell him that LeBron James, along with Chris Bosh, will be heading to Miami to join Dwyane Wade as members of the Miami Heat. Smith said after talking to numerous sources over the weekend, the three Olympic teammates and All-Stars will be signing with the Heat once the free agency period begins this Thursday at 12:01 a.m. ET.
Below is a transcript of Smith's statement from The Stephen A. Smith Show today. To listen to the audio clip, click here.
Stephen A. Smith: "You're only as good as your sources, as a journalist, and from what I'm being told, after hearing what everybody has to say, LeBron James will agree to team with Dwyane Wade, he's going to South Beach. LeBron James and Chris Bosh are going to South Beach; they are going to play for the Miami Heat."
How could this still not be true? It's SAS.
Brian Windhorst of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, parked outside James' camp in Akron, Ohio, this morning, was on with Dan Patrick this morning for his radio and DirecTV show and said it's impossible right now to know how James will release the information, or what the decision will be, no matter who you want to believe.
"Right now, I gotta tell you, there is so much counter-information going on in the league," said Windhorst. "There are general managers and agents and people that journalists have been around -- I've been covering the league for seven years and we have sources that we trust -- and there are national guys who are great at what they do, but we're all getting let down. We're all missing. And it's not necessarily because we're fools, but there's so much counter-information out there.
"Teams are grasping at straws, spreading rumors. A rumor will pop up on Twitter that a team will believe and react to it. It's just one big, giant free for all. Right now, you're almost scared to report anything. But at the same time, there's everything to report.
"Last night, I got a good vibe from two or three people who said LeBron was undecided. That's really not big news. I'd much rather have him lean one way or another. But the fact he's 'undecided' is big news. This real pressure from the public that just voraciously wants to know -- not just in Cleveland, but some of the biggest cities in the country (New York, L.A., Chicago, all potential landing spots) -- so this story because the current media makeup is different than what we're used to, it's really unlike any other story.
"And it goes to what is America now -- people are more in love with transactions. They do transactions all the time in fantasy sports. They care more about drafts and free agency and trade deadlines than actual games. It's why LeBron was getting so much attention during the NBA Finals when the most important games were being played. If America is fascinated by transactions, here you have the ultimate transaction involving the biggest markets.
"So, really, if I was a sociology professor I could write a hell of a thesis right now. But unfortunately that's not my role."
And in the upcoming issue of Sports Ilustrated, writer Ian Thomsen says that it's more the new long-term contracts Joe Johnson and Rudy Gay just signed that'll probably trigger a lockout after the next season.
Writes Thomsen: "(Commissioner David) Stern has predicted $400 million in losses when the books are reconciled this summer, and he has promised to create a new structure that reduces salaries and contract lengths to reward players less for potential and more for performance. And yet Stern's owners are fighting among each other to offer max deals to lesser lights such as (Chris) Bosh, Johnson, (Amar'e) Stoudemire and potentially (Carlos) Boozer. The divide between the owners' actions and their demands makes a lockout next summer very likely."
Thomsen adds that James has "shunned the attention by spending last week behind the tinted glass of his fleet of vehicles, unrecognized by fans who prematurely tossed baby powder in the air as his aides' cars preceded him into a parking garage on Saturday for the last of his two-a-day meetings with the Nets, Knicks, Heat, Clippers, Cavaliers and Bulls. The closed-door nature of these presentations demonstrated that he was making a sober decision.... His refusal to go on the road also showed that James has an unrivaled understanding of less-is-more--that by remaining out of sight he was creating more speculation and intrigue than he would have by opening his mouth."
SI also has a new iPad app: A "LeBron Planner" that has a "blow-by-blow account of his activity over the past week." So that's why everyone's standing in line for the gadget.
How's this for small-town news: A scoreboard sits outside the National Baseball Hall of Fame updating each day's Major League Baseball games, looking more like a grave stone of Abner Doubleday.
One last look around the town that novelist James Fenimore Cooper's father founded -- and where the man who wrote "The Last of the Mohicans" is buried -- as we tour the city looking for more clues as to who belongs and who doesn't:
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Look up and down Main Street to try to figure out where the original Hall of Fame was located when it was opened in 1939, on the 100th anniversary of the major leagues. Ten players were inducted on that day the Hall opened -- Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Christy Matthewson, Honus Wagner and Walter Johnson (elected in 1936, with Cobb garnishing the most votes), Nap Lajoie, Cy Young and Connie Mack (voted in '37), Grover Cleveland Alexander (in '38) and George Sisler and Eddie Collins (in '39). So where was it? Left of the current entrance. A red door is there, the former windows were bricked over, and a plaque was put there to remind us where it happened. So even the Hall has plaques commemorating historical places of interest on its own site.
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This is part of the exhibit on race in baseball, although its autenticity seems to be in question (or it's held up well over the years):
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At least two places inside the Hall of Fame have this disclaimer about how performance-enhancing drugs have shaped the story, stats and memories of baseball over the last 20-plus years. One is on the third floor where list of the top 10 current players statistics are compared to the top 10 all-time lists.
Again, the Hall may not include a bronze plaque of Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa or Jose Canseco, but there is plenty of mention in photographs and memorability of anyone whose accomplishments made an impact on the game.
At least this gives a kid something to think about and talk with his dad -- if he's able to read and understand what these signs mean.
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Houses line the outfield wall at Doubleday Field, about a two-block walk from the Hall of Fame. And without fences dividing the property lines, there's access to the backyards, where, in some cases, you can camp out and shag balls from batting practice, home-run hitting contests or actual games.
That is, if you have permission.
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Another disclaimer -- for legal reasons? -- that you'd find if you were to play a game at Doubleday Field. The dugouts are barely big enough to seat a dozen players. And there's no protective railing or screen. Built in 1939 (as the cornerstone shows), the field is a testiment of a time when maybe the game was less worried about preventing serious injury.
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In the first-floor hall of plaques, two signs caught our attention. First, the one above again is a disclaimer that whatever information encrusted into bronze could be wrong. The second, left, seems to point out that they've already exceeded the limit of players honored. To date, there are 292 -- 203 former major league players, 26 executives, 35 Negro leaguers, 19 managers and nine umpires, with three more coming in July. Don't tell the local fire marshall.
_______________________________________________________
The restroom on the third floor sort of make it clear which is which if you can't read English. The women's door has a photo of some former All American Women's League players. We're not sure what's going on in this men's room, so we don't care to speculate based on this photo.
Oh, one other thing: Our friend Chuck found a baseball card while canvasing one of the Main Street stores. It's Billy Martin ... checking his batting stance ... in his underwear .... got any doubles?
_______________________________________________________
One more for the road: The only place in town we found for Chinese food. Across from the two local bars. Go ahead, yuk it up. (For those who haven't figured it out, the last four letters of the phone number also spell something naughty. Not that we knew that by looking at 'em).
Our previous Cooperstown collection of blog posts:
== Introduction (linked here)
== Dodgers and Angels memorabilia (linked here)
== The Cooperstown brewers (linked here)
== A visit from former Dodger Tim Leary (linked here)
== A ruthless pursuit of the truth (linked here)
== More of the unseen stuff from the basement (linked here)
Here's a pitch for a new TV series, maybe on the MLB Network. Call it "Outside the Box."
Each week, curator Tom Shieber goes into the basement artifacts room of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, opens three boxes, and explains the story not only behind what the item he's displaying, but also how they came upon adding it to their collection.
During our recent tour of the HOF basement, where Shieber led a group of us around and seemed to have story for nearly everything down there -- such as the recent blog post (and today's column, linked here) about the Babe Ruth-Walter Johnson myster photo from 1924 -- the idea came to find a way to expose as much of what's there for all to see.
One-fourth of all the Hall's collection is on exhibit -- a very large slice when compared to most museums.
"But it's not like we're keeping hidden all the good stuff," Shieber said. "We try to bring things out that have something related to a specific date or time in history, with an exhibit we have on a certain project.
"Really, it's just a matter of space available more than it is time or staffing (to get it all presented."
The archive room is kept at 70 degrees, with 50 percent relative humidity. The photo room, for comparison, is kept from 52-to-55 degrees with 30 percent humidity, while the glass negatives in storage are kept in a separate room at 47 degrees with 20 percent humidity.
Boxes and boxes and boxes, all alphabetical, line the rows of shelves that go up to the ceiling -- a ceiling that looks like the crawl space you might have in a large building. They either have a player's name on it with contents of his donations, or they are lettered ("B" stands for "baseball") and numbered ("256.95" for example, is the 256th item acquired in 1995) accordingly.
When a new box is added, all the boxes are eventually shifted to put it back in alphabetical order.
And don't even try to get there without an escort. Bags are checks in the small lobby. Security cameras are everywhere.
"West of the White House, this is the most secure archive you'll find," Shieber said as he wheeled out a few carts with several pieces of baseball history.
Some of the things we were able not just to see, but actually handle with the white gloves:
== A bat that Babe Ruth used during the 1927 season when he hit the record 60 home runs. What's special about the bat -- there are 28 notches marked around the label. Shieber said after every home run Ruth hit with that bat, another notch was made, kind of like a cowboy notching his six-shooter handle.
== A bottle of Gray Eagle Whiskey Sour, that belonged to Tris Speaker, known as the "Gray Eagle." There's a tax stamp on it from 1933, so it's post-prohibition. The bottle is sealed, but only half full because of the evaporation of the liquor.
== The bat Jeff Kent used to pass Ryne Sandberg for most home runs hit by a second baseman. Sorry, but that didn't pique our interest much.
Among the boxes we spied while we stood and marveled at the shelves: One containing a two-fingered glove from 1928, a Johnny Evers model (from "Tinkers to Evers to Chance" fame, labeled "B.253.2001."
A box or two away, a six-fingered glove worn by Greg Harris, the former pitcher out of Orange County who made it 15 seasons in the big leagues with the ability to throw left and right handed (linked here). Freakish.
There's a glove used by the late Ken Hubbs, who won the 1962 Rookie of the Year awared with the Chicago Cubs but was later killed in a plane crash. It was donated in 2003.
There's the glove Bucky Dent had from 1978. Was that important as this one over here used by Ty Cobb, there on the left?
"When we accept a donation, we have to feel good about what we're saying it us, so we have to do all the research on it before we display it, which is one reason why some of these things haven't been put out yet," said Shieber. "We have to be comfortable saying, 'This is what we say it is.' Sometimes we take a leap of faith, but only as small of one as possible to be reasonably good about what we have, so the roof won't cave in on us years from now when someone discovered it's not what they said it was."
There's a glove Randy Velarde used to complete an unassisted triple play. It's near a box that contains DeWayne Wise's glove that he used when playing in Mark Buerhle's perfect game for the Chicago White Sox in 2009. And Jason Kubel's batting glove that he used to hit for the cycle on April 17, 2009.
Someone must really need to keep this stuff in a safe place?
Eventually, when prompted by Ken Meffert, the Hall's Senior Director of Development, Shieber brings out a box what contains a sweater that Ty Cobb wore, probably in 1938, covered in white tissue. The heavy wool looks like it's nearly brand new.
"We have to know how we can store things," said Shieber. "For example, with the Curt Schilling bloody sock (from the 2004 playoffs, see this link). We have a lot of experience with things that have blood on them over the years, but we were worried that if it was sent to a cleaners, the blood would come out. But if we left it as it was, the iron in the blood could eat away at the cotton. I guess in that case, we just have to hope he's anemic."
Back in the archives part of the library, Shieber explains that not everything donated to the Hall is accepted. First, they have only so much room. Second, once the Hall accepts it, it has to keep it.
Some of the things they find donated aren't really that relevant. Sure, someone may have a glove that Willie Mays used -- and the one he had on to make the catch in the 1954 World Series is proudly on display -- but if there's no real piece of baseball history attached it to it, "we end up writing a letter back, thank the person for their interest and the offer, but politely decline it," said Shieber. "If you think about it, we have to think hundreds of years ahead from now. Is what we have now worth keeping that long -- the amount of time and money we have to put into keeping it. We don't throw things away."
The amount of money an item might be worth really doesn't come into play with the Hall's decision to keep it.
"We're not in the business of buying or selling, and I don't know the market prices for anything really," said Shieber. "To me, the value of an item is in telling a story. That's our responsibility. That, and the space it will take up."
Point in fact: About 100 bankers boxes of material from the Detroit Tigers were recently accepted. Why? It had records of all kinds of transactions, bills, concession records, ticket sale receipts, etc. In essence, it told the story of the team from the 1950s, '60s and '70s. During the last ownership change, all these records were found and someone had to decide what to do with them.
Shieber said after the Hall's weekly meeting of discussion about each thing donated, it was decided to keep this one because of how it documented the day-to-day operation of a major-league team.
"It's really a unique snapshot of how a team operates," he said.
As a result, the Hall has some three million documents on file. What info do you need?
"Everything we have here is to help researches -- some working on a graduate thesis, or someone from the President's office who wanted to make a baseball reference in a speech," said Shieber. "We'll even get someone at a bar in Utica who calls in to try to win a bet. Sometimes, we give them the wrong answer just to mess with them."
In the archives are hundreds of file cabinets containing hundreds of folders -- more than one for the more-than 17,000 major league baseball players since 1876. The first file cabinet is also an indication of what's kept there: This one contains references to baseball that have been made by comedian Woody Allen.
One of the items Shieber pulled out to show off was a large green, hand-written book from 1947 that's referred to as the "day-to-day sheet." From each game that year, the official scorekeeper would call into the league office to have the statistics kept in the official record book. Since there were no computers, it was done by hand up until about the 1960s.
On this page, the first game ever played by Jackie Robinson with the Brooklyn Dodgers. According to this page, Robinson's breaking the color barrier of major league baseball wasn't official until it was recorded in this exact book -- showing he played first base, went 0-for-3 and scored one run.
"We're always trying to give context to everything we have here -- and this for example, is something that's really a part of American history," said Shieber.
Because there are discrepancies in some of the numbers logged in the day-by-day sheets and those of other historical books, Shieber said the Hall has to be careful in giving out information by making specific note of where it came from.
"Sometimes an interpretation of a statistic is changed, so if we state a record, we have to say 'according to ...' to differentiate any discrepancies," said Shieber.
One last thing: A book sat on the counter. The title: "Baseball As Seen by A Muffin." From 1867.
Shieber moved the tour to another part of the archive and didn't have time to tell the story of this piece of history.
I asked Meffert if he knew the story behind it.
"That's really interesting, actually," he started. "Have you ever heard the term, 'He muffed the ball?'"
Of course.
Meffert said that came from the term, "muffin," which was used back more than 150 years ago to describe what amounted to a fourth-string player. Players who were on the first- and second-string were often on contract and were paid well. By the time you were a fourth-stringer, you rarely got into a game.
"So if they did get in, and made an error, they'd say, 'He muffed it,' because he was one of the muffin players," said Meffert. "And that's how the term came into use."
Somewhere, there's got to be a glove used by a "muffin" we can bring out and use in our new TV show.
News doesn't travel slowly from Portland. We just took too much time to pass this on:
The Los Angeles Lightning got 25 points, 15 rebounds and seven blocks from center Chris Ayer, but couldn't overcome 21 turnovers in a 112-94 loss Friday to the Bellingham Slam, eliminating the defending champs from the International Basketball League playoffs in the semifinals of the American Bracket.
Playing at Warner Pacific College in Portland, the third-seeded Lightning finished the season 14-6 after a 13-2 start.
The Lightning made just 41.5 percent of their shots, including 15.4 percent from 3-point country (4 of 26).
"When you get to the playoffs and you come out and don't have a good shooting night, you're going to lose," said L.A. coach Ron Quarterman. "We couldn't sustain a run, except for that one in the second quarter."
"We had a lot of defensive breakdowns and we sputtered on offense," said Ayer, a 6-11 center from Loyola Marymount. "This was our lowest output of the season. We had a lot of little mistakes that added up and hurt us really big."
Former UCLA standout Billy Knight added 23 points and six rebounds for L.A. while Tyus Edney had nine points, six rebounds and 13 assists.
Fred Vinson, the Lightning's top 3-point shooter at 42.6 percent, made only 4-19 from the field and 3-13 from long range. He arrived on a plane flight from L.A. just two hours before the game.
"I'm not a big excuse guy," said Vinson. "I didn't make shots I normally make. It's been a long week for me. Flying in today made it a little tougher but there's no excuses."
Trayvon Lathan, the third-leading scorer in the IBL at 27.5 per game, had 10 points and 10 rebounds in 20 minutes. Juaquin Hawkins contributed 12 points, 10 rebounds and four steals for the Lightning, who were outshot 48 to 37.5 percent in the second half.
"I'm disappointed but I understand why we lost, how we lost," said Quarterman. "Next year, we have to come back and be in a better position to finish it out."
== More on the Lightning (linked here)
Highlights of the week ahead in sports, both here and afar:
TODAY
MLB: Dodgers vs. Florida, Dodger Stadium, 6 p.m., Prime:
Hang onto that hangover. This one starts an hour earlier than normal, so they can blast some more fireworks that you may have missed last night. And remember: Most of you have to go to work tomorrow, so don't get fired.
MLB: Angels at Chicago White Sox, 4 p.m., FSW:
It's a legal holiday in the Second City, too. The start of a week-long roadie starts for the Angels with trying to keep Juan Pierre off the bases four days in a row. Unless we're really off base here.
TUESDAY
FIFA World Cup semifinal: Uruguay vs. Netherlands, 11:30 a.m., ESPN
The Dutch victory in the quarterfinals was huge, sending five-time champion Brazil to a devastating exit. If the Netherlands keeps this up, they may even get a better seed in the World Baseball Classic. Hear that, Blyleven? Watch out for the windmill kick.
MLB: Dodgers vs. Florida, Dodger Stadium, 7 p.m., Channel 9:
The last change up Vicente Padilla threw against the Giants just landed in Russell Martin's mitt. So Padilla's ready for another turn in the rotation.
MLB: Angels at Chicago White Sox, 5 p.m., FSW:
Jake Peavy, the '07 NL Cy Young Award winner with San Diego, is a mere mortal again at 7-6 with a 4.70 ERA for the White Sox as he comes into this game, following a loss to the Royals. Jeff Weaver is the Angels' thrower.
WNBA: Sparks vs. Phoenix, Staples Center, 7 p.m., ESPN2:
Before their game against the defending league champion Mercury, the Sparks will host a meet-n-greet with Bill Walton, starting at 5:30 p.m. Tickets to this reception and the game run $25. We know what you're thinking. No, Bill doesn't have a daughter that plays for the Sparks.
WEDNESDAY
FIFA World Cup semifinal: Germany vs. Spain, 11:30 a.m., ESPN:
The Germans haven't looked this focused on world domination since . . . we won't even go there. Spain should feel the pain. ESPN's stat of the day: Germany has made it to a World Cup final every year that a German club has been in the European Cup final - 1974, '82 and 2002. Since Bayern Munich was in the recent Champions League final, you figure out the history.
MLB: Dodgers vs. Florida, Dodger Stadium, 7 p.m., Prime:
Marlins All-Star pitcher Josh Johnson draws the start here against the Dodgers, and may just hang out in SoCal the rest of the weekend before next Tuesday's exhibition in Anaheim.
MLB: Angels at Chicago White Sox, 5 p.m., FSW:
Andruw Jones still has a job in the White Sox outfield? Amazing.
THURSDAY
MLB: Angels at Chicago White Sox, 11 a.m., FSW:
Get out of town day. Make it snappy.
MLB: Dodgers vs. Chicago Cubs, Dodger Stadium, 7 p.m., Prime:
On the back end of the L.A.-Chicago doubleheader, it's Andre Ethier Action Figure Night. Beats another night of vegging out in front of ABC's "Wipeout."
Golf: Women's U.S. Open, first round, noon, ESPN (Round 2 on ESPN; Third and final round on Channel 4)
Michelle Wie, Paula Creamer, Morgan Pressel, Natalie Gulbis and Burbank's Emily Tubert, the newest U.S. Amateur Public Links champ. They're no Cristie Kerr.
The recent winner of the LPGA Championship, the ladies' new No. 1-ranked player, the first American to ever hold that title . . . what do we really know about this gal who won this Open event three years ago? How does she mark her balls? How does handle her woods? Does she even know Jamie Farr? Will she ever kiss a trophy better than, well, you know the picture. At Oakmont, Pa., we find out more about what Kerr's made of. Of course, on a course that has been host to 17 majors -- the last, the 2007 U.S. Open. For Men.
FRIDAY
MLB: Dodgers vs. Chicago Cubs, Dodger Stadium, 7 p.m., Prime:
Former Dodgers GM Fred Claire, on his MLB.com blog the other day, said he called Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks to see what his advice he'd have these days for his old team. "Relax. That's what these players have to do, relax," he said. Then play two?
MLB: Angels at Oakland, 7 p.m., FSW:
When do they start digging that new stadium for the A's down in San Jose?
SATURDAY
MLB: Dodgers vs. Chicago Cubs, Dodger Stadium, 1 p.m., Channel 11:
When Milton Bradley was a distraction, the Dodgers traded him. Then the Cubs traded him. Now, Carlos Zambrano is a distraction. Maybe the Cubs trade him to the Dodgers?
MLB: Angels at Oakland, 6 p.m., FSW:
For the upcoming film "Moneyball," based on Athletics GM Billy Beane, the buzz is that Brad Pitt (as Beane), Robin Wright, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jonah Hill have been confirmed. They're still trying to get Abe Vigota to play the role of Charley Finley.
MLS: Galaxy at New England, 4:30 p.m., Prime:
You say you want a revolution? What do we make of these rumors that the Galaxy are still interested in locking up David Beckham's AC Milan teammate and former FIFA World Player of the Year Ronaldinho? Sure, if Kobe Bryant was a season ticket holder and funding the roster. And why was he left off Brazil's World Cup squad again?
SUNDAY
FIFA World Cup final, 10:30 a.m., Channel 7:
The latest Nielsen numbers indicate that 34 percent of all U.S. viewers -- 99.2 million -- have watched at last part (last least six minutes) of a World Cup game, in either English or Spanish, over the last three weeks. Those who can endure more than six minutes must have the mute button on to eliminate the buzz of them horns.
MLB: Angels at Oakland, 1 p.m., Channel 13:
During a game last week in Baltimore, the A's Mark Ellis was ruled to have stolen home when he scored in the fourth inning of a 9-6 loss. The official scorer later changed it to a fielder's choice. The A's are appealing to have the scorer change it back. That's about as exciting as it gets in Oakland these days. Even when Dallas Braden is taking the mound.
MLB: Dodgers vs. Chicago Cubs, Dodger Stadium, 5 p.m., ESPN:
Go to the WrigleyNation.com blog on Aug. 25, 2009 (linked here): "A shocking moment at Dodger Stadium when the scoreboard camera captured Jim Belushi literally strangling his seat-partner!!! No doubt it was a television critic. I grabbed my camera and snapped this which will no doubt be used in court because the other guy is still wanted by his loving family. Belushi, by the way, was boo-ed by the Dodger crowd. Some might say it was the green hat and the Cubs heart on his sleeve -- I say it was a rare show of discerning Dodger-fan television acting taste." If the Cubs are in town, and the game's on national TV, Belushi is there like Tom Arnold on a pile of mustard-covered pretzel wrappers. Just a warning.
On the discussion /debate/ diatribe in today's media column (linked here) over whether there's network pressure to put on Major League Baseball to get Stephen Strasburg included in the July 13 All Star Game in Anaheim, Fox play-by-play man Joe Buck says:
"This guy is one of the best pitchers in the game, he's dominant. He's already set the record for the most strikeouts over his first four Major League starts with 41. I compare this to LeBron James and tuning into NBA games to watch him play, if he's injured I'm probably not going to tune into the Cavaliers."
You see, somehow it all circles back to LeBron's world.
And other stuff we think you'd like to know:
== ESPN2 decided Thursday to add the Galaxy's game Sunday (7:30 p.m.) against Seattle to its schedule, trying to cash in on viewership interest on Landon Donovan (and teammate Edson Buddle). Glenn Davis and Kyle Martino will call the game.
== NBC has the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Oregon (Saturday, 1:30 p.m., Channel 4) with Tom Hammond, Ato Boldon, Lewis Johnson and Dwight Stones. Sunday, the network has Paul Sunderland and Dain Blanton calling matches from the FIVB World Tour beach volleyball event in Norway (1:30 p.m., Channel 4)
== No real surprise that TNT rehired Steve Kerr as a game analyst in the weeks after he resigned as general manager of the Phoenix Suns. A multi-year agreement includes putting Kerr on the TNT Thursday night doubleheaders and its NBA All-Star weekend and playoffs. Kerr was at TNT four seasons (2003-07) before leaving to join the Suns.
== Not to be confused with the ESPN theatrical project where Robert De Nirois on tap to play the role of Vince Lombardi that'll be out in 2012, HBO has been working with NFL Films to produce a documentary called "Lombardi" that will debut on Dec. 11, the network said. Interviews include Lombardi's son, Vince Lombardi Jr.; daughter Susan Lombardi; brother Harold Lombardi; John Madden, biographer David Maraniss and former NFL players such as Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, Willie Davis, Jerry Kramer, Bart Starr and Sonny Jurgensen.
== Starting with Thursday's Montreal game at Saskatchewan, the NFL Network has decided to do 14 regular season Canadian Football League games. There will be three games on Saturdays this month. NFL Network commitments to air every NFL exhibition game in August means moving CFL games to Fridays in September, October and November. The games will be produced by TSN in Canada.
== NBC's John McEnroe, with Wimbledon winding down (Channel 4 has the women's and men's final on Saturday and Sunday starting at 6 a.m.), on how this year's event will be remembered: "Well certainly that Isner-Mahut match is something that will never happen again. That was free multi-million dollar advertising for our sport about how fit we are and how tough we are, physically and mentally, so that was a great thing. That will long be remembered despite the fact it was a first round match. If (Andy) Murray were to win this that would be huge, and if (Rafael) Nadal were to win it, doing it for him to be able to get back after what appeared to be life-threatening injuries would be really important for our sport. There are a lot of good things still to come. The unpredictability of what's gone on in this event is something that I haven't experienced in the 33 years that I have been part of this tournament."
Asked to recall his epic five-set final against Bjorn Borg, McEnroe said: "That match has stuck with me my entire career. It changed me as a person. It gave me respect among the players, the press, the fans. I felt like for one of the few times in my life I was a part of something historic. I knew what was happening.
"It was like when Isner was playing Mahut, they knew that this is the same thing that will always be in the record books. I'm proud to say that that match is still talked about. A couple weeks ago Bjorn and I got a chance to go out and play on Court 18, which ironically is where Isner played Mahut, and play in sort of an anniversary match. It certainly brought back a lot of memories and I look forward to seeing Bjorn in a couple days."
== John Isner didn't need 11 hours to do a Top 10 list on CBS' "Late Night" with David Letterman earlier this week:
== AND FINALLY:
Pssst: Lakers forward Lamar Odom and spouse Khloe Kardashian are getting their own spin-off reality series with E!, according to a gossip website.
The network already follows Kardashian and her sisters on "Keeping Up with the Kardashians," but this one will drag on about Odom and Khloe "trying to get pregnant, being a stepmother to her Los Angeles Laker hubby's children and then furnishing their new home," according to something called GossipCop.com (linked here).
Compelling.
As a follow up, a story on BleacherReport.com (linked here) makes it clear that Odom, who married Kardashian last September, is doomed.
"Many Hollywood insiders believe the Kardashian clan plants their own salacious tabloid rumors to keep their names in the headlines.
The latest with Kardashian and Odom have centered around a quickie divorce and a baby on the way.
The pair have both said the divorce rumors are a hoax.
As for the baby, Kardashian said Tuesday that she actually took a pregnancy test and there's no bun in the oven.
That's good news for Lakers fans, who are hoping that Odom sheds the E! reality star over the summer and comes back focused on finishing his career by finally living up to some of the promise of his early days."
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
There's Babe Ruth, third from right. And Walter Johnson, third from left. And is that Douglas Fairbanks Jr., in the catcher's gear?
Tom Shieber was stumped, but that comes with the job. And why he loves it.
The senior curator for the National Baseball Hall of Fame had come across a photograph that grabbed his attention -- Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson, pictured together. With a bunch of strange Persian palaces in the background. And a few other people in the frame who probably weren't baseball players.
And there's the famous actor of the 1920s, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., in catcher's equipment.
What's the deal? Why did it happen? How did these people get put together?
What has Shieber gotten himself into now?
"I had to find the story behind this," he said as he lifted the photo out of a stack of other things he'd pulled that day during a behind-the-scenes tour of the Hall of Fame's basement, leading a group through a series of unmarked doors behind the first-floor gallery of plaques and across from the museum bookstore.
Shieber led the group deep into the libraries' archive section, and hadn't even made it over to the really cool stuff -- the artifacts room. Here, in the photo storage facility, where humidity-controlled coolers are vital to the preservation of some half-million prints, Shieber raised the temperature a little as he described the process of a typical resourceful pursuit of the truth.
Like, with this 1912 panoramic view of Fenway Park. There's no Green Monster, but instead, what's called Duffy's Cliff out in left field, where extra seats were put in the World Series. There's a 1949 shot from Chattanooga Stadium in Tennessee. Two years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier in the major leagues, this minor-league facility clearly still had a section for African-American spectators only.
Shieber lifted a team picture from an All-Star Game predating by more than 20 years the first official one held in 1933 in Chicago. Here, in 1911, there's Tris Speaker, Home Run Baker, Smokey Joe Wood, Cy Young, Nap Lajoie and Ty Cobb -- the later wearing a Cleveland Indians road uniform, because he didn't have one from the Detroit Tigers. The event was held after future Hall of Famer Addie Joss had died from meningitis at the peak of his career, age 31. Over opposition from the owners of the American League, an All-Star game was assembled to benefit the Joss family.
And there's this one, with Ruth and Johnson. So bizarre.
The Hall of Fame had been given a scrapbook from Ruth's former press agent, Christy Walsh, and through a grant called "Saving America's Treasures," a national trust for historical preservation (site linked here), Shieber was put in charge of disassembling this collection and identifying why they were worth archiving.
First strange thing: Ruth is wearing an odd "New York" jersey, capital letters across the front that is more like what the current Mets wear instead what his "NY" Yankees uniforms would have had him in. Johnson is in street clothes.
In the background, there's a bunch of Persian-style buildings.
"Maybe they're attending the World's Fair," Shieber reasoned.
He knew that Ruth often went on barnstorming tours to the West Coast every fall. Since Johnson was present in this one, Shieber narrowed it down to 1924.
He also knew of a game that Ruth and Johnson played against each other in the city of Brea, on Halloween, 1924 -- the only time they did such a thing on all of Ruth's tours. Local historians recall how Ruth homered twice off Johnson -- one purported to be 550 feet -- and also pitched a complete-game victory. Not a nice way to treat Johnson, an Orange County native who prepped at nearby Fullerton High.
Look closer. Go deeper.
Shieber pulled more photos the Hall had already of Ruth and Johnson. One of them was with Fairbanks, a donkey cart, with the words "Thief of Bagdad" written on the side.
(In further research, we found this shot offered by Senatorscollectables.com -- It was taken by the Keystone Photo Service, linked here) and is part of the Hall of Fame collection.
"So now I'm thinking, this must be a movie set," Shieber said.
With more research, Shieber puts the date at Nov. 1, 1924 -- a day after their Brea exhibition -- Ruth and Johnson ventured over to Fairbanks' United Artists Studios in Hollywood, where he was filming "Thief of Bagdad."
Shieber felt good that he'd put all the pieces of the puzzle together. But something was still nagging.
This time, he went to an unlikely source -- his personal Netflix account -- and rented the movie "Thief of Bagdad." He studied it. Stopped and paused it.
"There was a scene I found that matched the picture perfectly," Shieber said with a sense of sleuthing success.
Simply ruthless.
Shieber, who maintains a blog about his researching adventures called "Baseball Researcher" (linked here), will be in Anaheim next week. He's coming along with a 100-plus-artifact display from the Hall of Fame that will be included in the Anaheim Convention Center's All Star Fan Fest from July 9-13.
Perhaps, Shieber's visit will include a side trip to Brea. Or a nearby Hollywood studio. Just to get to the truth.
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