Kevin Blackistone FanHouse

Video Killed the Officiating Star

Kevin Blackistone — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:30:00 EST

Filed under: MLB

The best thing that ever happened to sports was television -- unless you officiate sports.

Ask the umpiring team that is handling the American League Championship Series and blew two calls in Game 4 on Tuesday night. Ask the SEC football officials who were suspended on Wednesday. The crew was punished after the conference determined the crew was mistaken on Saturday in flagging an Arkansas player for a late hit on a Florida player. The call allowed Florida to continue its final touchdown drive in a game it won 23-20.

Ask the replacement NBA referees who whistled Sixers' Willie Green for a foul on Washington's Mike James on Tuesday night as James attempted a desperation 3-pointer at the buzzer. The instant replay showed Green never touched James, who was given three free throws and won the game at the line.

Replay. It's become the new four-letter word to game officials.

"I'm just out there trying to do my job and do it the best I can," Tim McClelland told the media after the two erroneous calls he made Tuesday in the Yankees' win over the Angels. "Unfortunately, there was, by instant replay, two missed calls."

McClelland graduated to the big leagues in 1983 when he famously disallowed a George Brett home run because there was more than the allowed amount of pine tar on Brett's bat. He is largely considered the best umpire in baseball. But even the sharpest eyes and judgment in the game can't compete with technology, and they shouldn't have to.

We've been living with instant replay in this country for nearly half a century now, ever since the fourth quarter of the Dec. 7, 1963, Army-Navy Game. That was when CBS, encouraged by a director named Tony Verna, showed a one-yard touchdown run by Army's Rollie Stichweh for a second time immediately after it happened. It prompted CBS announcer Lindsey Nelson to famously tell the TV audience, "This is not live! Ladies and gentlemen, Army did not score again!"

That was one replay in one game of one play that was not up for question. At the Angels' stadium on Tuesday night, we witnessed several replays of two questionable calls captured by multiple cameras from myriad vantage points. The Zapruder film hasn't been dissected so much.
When a replay is shown on a big screen and shows the official was wrong, but the game continues on as if nothing happened, we not only have a problem, we have something worse: fraud.

The Angels' fans in attendance saw the replays too on the stadium's giant TV screen. So did the umpire who erred, McClelland, and there was nothing he could do to correct his mistake. He was only left to look the rest of the night like the heel he isn't.

That's as unfair a punishment as the incorrect call is to the team that suffers it, and it is time to bring an end to it. If we can see it and it is wrong, then it should be corrected, plain, short and simple. What's wrong with recall? We're accustomed to it in politics and the car industry.

I don't want to hear anymore about how getting it right can be so wrong because it might take too long and slow down our games and take the human element out of the contests by diminishing the role of officials. We don't live like the Flintstones anymore; we live like the Jetsons, and the second edition of The Jetsons stopped being made over 20 years ago.

I don't want replay restricted to home run calls, which baseball started last season, or possession plays in football or buzzer-beaters in basketball. Leave judgment calls -- balls and strikes, pass interference, etc. -- out of consideration for review and leave everything else eligible for a second look. Bang-bang plays at first. Facemask pulls that aren't caught. If a couple guys in a booth can't figure it out in due time, let's turn to a few guys on a couch with a six-pack in front of a 52-inch HDTV with a remote control at the ready and a DVR. We're not talking about rocket science. We're talking about the innate ability to watch television. Hockey understands

When a replay is shown on a big screen and shows the official was wrong, but the game continues on as if nothing happened, we not only have a problem, we have something worse: fraud.

The time has long gone when bad calls are lore. Now bad calls are lies and the impact can be dramatic. After all, the SEC crew that got suspended for making a call that further video review showed was wrong may have influenced the bogus national championship game that the BCS gives us. Take away the score that resulted for Florida and all of a sudden the polls look different and another school is in line for the national title loot.

Most of us who simply watch games seem to be in favor of instant replay to correct mistakes, according to polls taken over the years like a small one taken recently by The Los Angeles Times. It is management that more often wrestles with the notion, particularly that which represents officials.

"Not only is pace of game an issue but the continued expansion of replay potentially takes away from the spirit of the game," Lamell McMorris, chief negotiator for the World Umpires Association, told Bloomberg.com on Wednesday. "Part of the game is the potential for human error, not just from umpires, but players, that's part of the spirit of the game. It happens."

But with officials, it no longer has to.

Video Killed the Officiating Star originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:30:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Curt Flood Belongs in the Hall of Fame

Kevin Blackistone — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:54:00 EST

Filed under: MLB

There was a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that hung in the living room of his widow, Coretta Scott King. It was painted by Curt Flood. There was a proposal introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr., the Democrat from Detroit, to remove baseball's controversial antitrust exemption. It was numbered HR 21 after the Cardinals' jersey Curt Flood wore for a dozen of his big league seasons.

So Flood, as I've pointed out before, has been remembered by the widow of a Nobel Peace Prize winner and in legislation proposed on Capitol Hill. He doesn't need the Baseball Hall of Fame to validate his contributions to greater society or the mere game.

But the Baseball Hall of Fame needs Curt Flood to maintain its validation as repository of all things of critical importance to the sport. It is the height of oversight that its gatekeepers passed up their last chance to vote in Flood on a regular ballot in 1996, a year before Flood died from throat cancer.

Moore: Flood Owed Apology From Peers | Steele: Greenberg Could Relate
Blackistone: Flood Belongs in Hall | Stradley: Antitrust Meant Just That
Fletcher: Flood a Hero to Today's Players ... Those Who Know Him
Steele: Flood Extraordinary Man of Principle

It is not easy to inflate Flood's accomplishments on the baseball diamond to the size of Hall of Fame members who played his position of center field, even though he was an All-Star and Gold Glove winner many times over. His batting average and on-base percentage and other offensive numbers don't add up as high. His fielding does.

But it is impossible to find another player whose impact on his fellow players -- the men who make the game what it is -- was greater than Flood's. He staged the singular protest and filed the lawsuit that started the dismantling of baseball's more-than-a-century old policy of keeping its laborers in a sort of servitude somewhere between indentured and slavery.

Flood is the reason there is free agency in baseball and, for that matter, other pro sports. He is the reason athletes can ply their trade for the employer of their choice, pretty much like the rest of us.

Flood in sports means freedom.

It is hard to imagine nowadays, when athletes stand up for little more than their own pocketbooks, that there was someone among them once who stood up for principle. But he was Flood.

It wasn't surprising of Flood. As he once explained, baseball for him, as it was for many other black men of his era, was never just about fun and games.

"What had started as a chance to test my baseball ability in a professional setting," he wrote in his autobiography, The Way It Is, "had become an obligation to measure myself as a man."

It started in the minors in Savannah, Ga., in 1956, less than 10 years after Jackie Robinson broke the game's color barrier and just two after the Supreme Court declared segregated schools were unconstitutional. Flood suffered, and sustained, the same abuse and disrespect as black ballplayers integrating white baseball before him. He was peppered by fans with racial epithets, ostracized by his teammates and, when his team was on the road, forced to retrieve his meals from the backdoor of the restaurants his teammates dined at and take his plate back to the bus to eat in isolation.

"Of the many indignities to which I was subject," he recounted, "few angered me more than the routine in [the] bus."

Then, after a long and very successful run in The Show with the Cardinals, Flood was told he was being traded to the Phillies.

That was the way baseball had always done business. It owned its players and controlled them like heads of cattle. The only way they could get from one place to another was if the team decided so.

"If I had been a foot-shuffling porter, they might have at least given me a pocket watch," Flood said. "But all I got was a call from a middle-echelon coffee drinker in the front office."

Flood then did what every major leaguer before him only dreamed of doing but never woke up to do. He refused to recognize the game's so-called reserve clause and announced that he would not go to Philadelphia. He requested commissioner Bowie Kuhn to set him free.

"I do not believe I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes," Flood wrote in a now-famous letter that echoed the plea of black slaves in the country more than a century earlier.

In that sense, Flood stood for more than even Jackie Robinson. For Robinson's role as guinea pig in the re-integration of baseball was chosen and managed for him. Flood chose his role himself and paid for it.

Kuhn turned Flood down, and fans and media turned on Flood. How dare Flood thumb his nose at a $90,000 salary as a baseball player, they charged. As Howard Cosell asked of Flood on January 3, 1970, a little over a week after Flood wrote to Kuhn, "What's wrong with a guy making $90,000 a year being traded from one team to another? Those aren't exactly slave wages."

Flood responded: "A well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave."

That only incited fans and the media more. But Flood was unbowed. He surrendered his salary to take his stance, not unlike Muhammad Ali had done to his fabulous living in refusing to join the Vietnam War effort. Flood filed a lawsuit and pushed his case to the Supreme Court in 1971, where it lost, mostly on technicalities, 5-3.

Strapped for cash, Flood attempted a comeback with my childhood Washington Senators in 1971. He lasted 13 games before declaring he didn't have his skills anymore and walking away from the diamond for good. That was the last the game saw of him, but it should not have been.

Four years later, pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally successfully challenged the reserve clause and were unshackled from baseball's reserve clause. So too was every player after that.

"Mr. Flood ... risked his career when he challenged baseball's reserve clause," Rep. Conyers told Congress when he introduced HR 21. "We all owe a debt of gratitude for his willingness to challenge the baseball oligarchy."

The lawmaker was talking about the rest of us in this country who believe in freedom to earn a living where we desire, not just ballplayers. That's what the Hall of Fame is missing in Curt Flood.

Curt Flood Belongs in the Hall of Fame originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:54:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The List That Keeps on Giving

Kevin Blackistone — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:45:00 EST

Filed under: MLB

When I find a creepy crawling thing in the house, I reach for something to scoop it up and carry it to freedom outdoors rather than grab a can of Raid or a heavy-heeled shoe. As a kid, I couldn't even zap ants with the sun's rays sharpened through a magnifying glass.

I've just never felt as if I possessed a single sadistic bone in my body -- until now.

Confession: I am enjoying watching what many are describing as the Chinese water torture of baseball -- the drip, drip, drip of names from what was supposed to be a secret list of players in 2003 who tested positive for using performance-enhancing drugs. Big Papi and Manny on Thursday. Sammy Sosa in June. A-Rod just before spring training started. Keep them coming, I say, nice and slow.

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A lot of folks have suggested they can't stand this anymore. Some of my peers are writing that they want the rest of the 104 names from the infamous list revealed all at once. Hall of Fame slugger Harmon Killebrew told The Minneapolis Star-Tribune the other day that "to have the names piddling out there is ridiculous."

I think this IV-like drip of culprits is the medicine baseball deserves.

After all, baseball has mismanaged its reaction to its drug problem just as badly as it did the drug problem in the first place. The whole reason a list exist is because baseball, specifically the union, failed to trash it as it promised. How did that happen? Was the office paper shredder broken that day? Could it not afford to hire a company to erase a hard drive?

As a result, the feds got a hold of the list for its investigation and now so many people have it that all it takes is finding one who is willing to drop a name and another who is willing to confirm it. That's how an intrepid young reporter for Tom Jolly's sports staff at The New York Times uncovered Big Papi and Manny.

They won't be the last to be identified. There will be more big names dropped too. It is highly unlikely, however, that there will one day be a flood of these names that will cleanse baseball's soul all at once.

Bud Selig would probably prefer that in the best interest of the game. So, too, I suspect, would most of the 1,438 players tested in 2003 whose results were clean. As the Astros' Lance Berkman said during spring training: "The problem with this whole sordid mess is now everybody is questioned."

But the players union won't go for full disclosure, especially after all those years of fighting the exact same thing with the argument that the game wasn't in need of an intervention. Retiring union boss Don Fehr has said as much several times.

Let the names of the guilty continue to trickle out as a constant reminder of how this whole steroids era should not have been handled.The players union, according to Selig's office, is the only baseball organization that has the list, too.

Furthermore, the 97 players who were informed by baseball after the 2003 test that they didn't make the wash certainly don't want their names revealed. Look at Big Papi, the heretofore very likeable David Ortiz. At least twice earlier this year he was all mouth about the need to rid the game of steroids and the like. But Thursday after his name was linked to the list, he went mute. Not talking about it, he told the press, before going out to play (He later released a statement after the game).

That's typical. Forthrightness is not. If Ortiz wanted to be the stand up guy we liked so much he would act like a college caught cheating by the NCAA and impose a penalty upon himself.

The guilty guys don't want to talk, though, or they would have volunteered to do so by now. There are 97 guys out there right now, playing or recently departed from the game, who are living a lie. They are going to fight the truth setting them free. They don't want fans to turn on them. They don't want endorsements to be lost. They want to continue their very rewarding livelihoods. Eventually, they'll be outed, though.

At the rate the list is being divulged -- eight since 2003 -- it'll be almost the year 3000 before the final name comes out. Imagine that? Four generations from now, baseball fans could still be living the lies of the last fifth of the 20th century.

Consider it a curse, not unlike that which haunts the Cubs and even the Red Sox still. Until Thursday, we figured the curse that long hovered over the Red Sox was exorcised after they finally won a World Series again. Now we know the Red Sox succeeded only with juiced hitters in their lineup, Big Papi and Manny. Give them asterisks to go along with their championship rings.

I would rather this not happen to baseball. I like the game. Always have. Proof: I sat through a rain delay Wednesday night at Prince George's Stadium outside Washington D.C., before watching the Bowie Baysox shut down the Connecticut Defenders 6-2. I was in the stands, where I paid $9 for a general admission ducat and downed a couple of Shocktop wheat beers with two slabs of cheese pizza.

But that all this bad news is trickling out about baseball seems to me to be a perfect penalty for all those who brought it about, particularly the union and the players it tried foolishly to insulate for so many years from all the drug-use accusations that have turned out to be true.

Let the names of the guilty continue to trickle out as a constant reminder of how this whole steroids era should not have been handled. Let the slow release be a continuing reminder to all those coming into the game about what not to do. Let it go on long enough so that one day baseball suffers an ultimate embarrassment for its arrogance when the Hall of Fame must remove a player from its wall because he was found to be on this infamous list.

The List That Keeps on Giving originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:45:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Steroids Era Clouds Fehr's Legacy

Kevin Blackistone — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:10:00 EST

Filed under: MLB

Had Donald Fehr played the game from which he announced Monday he was walking from after 30 years, we'd marvel at his accomplishments like a 700- or 600-plateau home run hitter during that span or a pitcher who managed 4,500 strikeouts. We'd talk about him like a multiple MVP winner and as being one of the greatest ever at his position or any position. We'd talk about him as a surefire first ballot Hall of Fame inductee.

Then we'd throw it all in the nearest trash bin. We'd chuck it all for the same reasons we do the accomplishments of so many of those sluggers and strikeout artists and MVP winners during Fehr's reign.

Fehr wasn't one of baseball's drug cheats, but as MLB Players Association executive director the past quarter century Fehr aided and abetted those who were cheats -- or who appear to have been -- in what has become the darkest era in baseball since its half century-plus of playing as a segregated game, which was a form of cheating that proved to be unconstitutional.

If Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro and Roger Clemens can't go to the Hall of Fame because they've been suspected or indicted for using banned performance-enhancing drugs -- or, better still, have admitted to doing so -- then Fehr shouldn't be thought of so highly either.

The accountants of all the players who played during the Fehr era may disagree given that Fehr boosted the average salary for a Major League Baseball player to $3.3 million this season from $289,000 when he took over the players' union from the legendary labor economist Marvin Miller in 1983. The players may disagree, too, for that same pocketbook reality as well as the one in 1985 when Fehr won three collusion cases for players resulting in the owners paying $280 million in damages.

But it shouldn't be forgotten what former Sen. George Mitchell said upon releasing the Mitchell Report a few years ago: "This has not been an isolated problem involving just a few players or a few clubs. Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades -- commissioners, club officials, the players association and players -- share to some extent the responsibility for the Steroids Era. There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on."

Fehr led an entire generation of players down that path of ignominy by refusing not only to recognize the problem the Mitchell Report laid bare, but also by refusing to allow his membership to prove otherwise. Thanks to the latter approach, just about all the players of the last 20 years are guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent.

DYST V3 test

LeBron James #23 of the Cleveland Cavaliers watches as Mo Williams #2 takes a shoe to the face by Kobe Bryant #24 of the Los Angeles Lakers after a steal in the closing seconds of the first half at The Quicken Loans Arena on February 8, 2009 in Cleveland, Ohio. (David Liam Kyle, NBAE/Getty Images)

David Liam Kyle, NBAE/Getty Images

Brazil's Diogo (L) vies for the ball with Paraguay's Hernan Perez during their U-20 South American Championship football match in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela on February 8, 2009.(Juan Barreto, AFP/Getty Images )

Juan Barreto, AFP/Getty Images

A Dalmatian looks at its handler as a judge goes to touch the dog during the first day of the 2009 Westminster Dog Show in New York February 9, 2009.(Lucas Jackson, Reuters)

Lucas Jackson, Reuters

Denver Nuggets forward Chris Anderson touches his head during a time out in the first half of their NBA basketball game with the New Jersey Nets in East Rutherford, New Jersey February 7, 2009. (Ray Stubblebine, Reuters)

Ray Stubblebine, Reuters

Margarita Marbler, of Austria, skis to a bronze medal finish the ladies moguls freestyle FIS World Cupskiing qualification at Cypress mountain in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009. (Jonathan Hayward, The Canadian Press/AP)

Jonathan Hayward, The Canadian Press/AP

West Virginia guard Darryl Bryant (25) is fouled by Providence guard Jeff Xavier (1) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in Morgantown, W.Va. Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009. West Virginia won 86-59. (Don Wright, AP)

Don Wright, AP

Missouri's DeMarre Carroll, top, celebrates the Tigers' 62-60 win over Kansas in Columbia, Missouri, Monday, February 9, 2009. (Rich Sugg, Kansas City Star/MCT)

Rich Sugg, Kansas City Star/MCT

David Clarkson #23 of the New Jersey Devils fights Erik Reitz #4 of the New York Rangers during their game on February 9, 2009 at The Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey (Al Bello, Getty Images)

Al Bello, Getty Images

Driver Patrick Sheltra (60) begins to spin coming out of the fourth turn during the ARCA 200 auto race in Daytona Beach, Fla. Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009.

Darryl Graham, AP

Spain's Nuria Llagostera Vives serves the ball, in this multiple exposure, to Iveta Benesova of the Czech Republic during their Fed Cup tennis match in Brno February 7, 2009.

Petr Josek, Reuters

All of us deserve an accusatory finger pointed our way when it comes to baseball's PEDs scandal. The commissioner, Bud Selig, is guilty for not acting quickly or forcefully enough. The owners for whom Selig works are to be blamed for being seduced by the revenue generated by unnatural record-breaking home run chases that some of them let slip they knew was the case. (Said Rangers' owner Tom Hicks two summers ago when asked by a KTVT-TV reporter in Dallas what decisions he regretted since owning the team, he said: "Juan Gonzalez for $24 million after he came off steroids, probably, we just gave that money away.") The fans are guilty for spinning the turnstiles in record numbers to watch baseballs get belted out of bandbox stadiums like they were softballs in a men's industrial league. Media members like me are worthy of being indicted for following the great home run chase of McGwire, Sosa and Bonds and writing mostly glowingly about it, only occasionally raising a doubting hand after hearing of McGwire's andro use or noticing how really big Bonds had gotten on what was supposed to be natural living.

But Fehr ruled over those hundreds of players who ultimately decided to make the last 20 years the Steroids Era. He was the lead wildebeest in the charge over the cliff. When Selig first feebly raised the specter of steroid abuse in the mid '90s it was Fehr who fended it off. When at one of the first Senate committee hearings in Washington, D.C., in 2002, Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and John McCain (R-Ariz) told Selig and Fehr that a strict drug testing program in baseball needed to be negotiated into the labor contract, Fehr responded by telling the senators that lawmakers needed to look into enacting laws to ban over-the-counter sales of PEDs.

In 2008, when Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.) asked Selig and Fehr at another hearing on PEDs in baseball if they "accept responsibility for this scandal or do you think there was nothing you could do to prevent it?" Fehr responded: "Did we or did I appreciate the depth of the problem? The answer is no. It's a failure that we didn't, and it's a failure that I didn't."

That's two big Fs.

And we won't know for some years to come how exacting the last 20 years or so have been on the long-term health of Fehr's constituents, at least one of whom, Ken Caminiti, an admitted steroids abuser, is dead because of his dalliance with illegally obtained drugs .

At the end of a quarter century of service to baseball players, what Fehr will be remembered for most is the cloud that still hangs over the game, a cloud that he said just this past spring training was gone. It's not, Manny Ramirez reminded us. That's part of Fehr's legacy and it will live a long time.

Kevin B. Blackistone is a panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn, the Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, and a former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News. He currently lives in Silver Spring, Md.

Steroids Era Clouds Fehr's Legacy originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:10:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WBC Deserves Truly Global Presence

Kevin Blackistone — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:30:00 EST

Filed under: MLB

Four of the last 10 MVPs in Major League Baseball have been from countries outside the United States, including one from Canada, Twins' first baseman Justin Morneau.

Three of the last five American League Cy Young Awards went to two pitchers -- Johan Santana, twice, and Bartolo Colon, once -- born in Latin countries.

Half of the last eight American League batting champions were born in foreign countries, including Ichiro Suzuki from Japan.

The origins of baseball may be debatable. Did it come from the Russian game lapta or the English game rounders? Did Abner Doubleday really invent it or was his story just better than Alexander Cartwright's?

But there is one truth about baseball that is self-evident now: Like most everything else these days, it is no longer best made in America - unless you mean, maybe, Latin America. A third of major league players now come from Latin countries and Asia. Forty percent are of color. Baseball has been undergoing a sea change in its make up for some time now that is almost as dramatic as that Jackie Robinson ushered in.

As such, the World Baseball Classic, where Japan beat South Korea on Monday for the crown, is much truer to its name now than the World Series. For anyone here to dismiss it simply because the red, white and blue didn't field its best team and got walloped by Japan in the semifinals is nothing other than jingoistic gibberish. That was the best slap hitter in all of baseball, Ichiro, coming through on Monday night in the clutch for his country.

That fact reminds me, too: Why is it that U.S. baseball stars that opted not to participate in the second WBC were spared the venom that was spewed at U.S. basketball stars who turned down requests to play for the U.S. Olympic team in Athens in 2004? Why isn't anybody questioning their patriotism? Was it the basketball players' tattoos?

"We have to try to push up the intensity for the U.S. team and have to find ways to get our best players and make sure they're out there,'' Selig said during ESPN's telecast of the WBC. "Everybody who has ever played [in the WBC] loves it ... We have to pick up the selection process. We need, as the other countries do, to get the very best players we have.''

But I digress.

There is nothing wrong with the WBC. True, it is difficult to schedule. Before the season, during the season and after the season are equally tough times to carve out. But that didn't stop a lot of Major League stars for the other countries from showing up and their fans from turning out and tuning in. The MVP of the 2009 WBC was, once again, Red Sox star pitcher from Japan, Daisuke Matsuzake. The Japanese and Korean fans that turned out Monday night in L.A. made that a record WBC crowd of 54,856.

There should've been a lot more Major Leaguers on the runner-up squad from South Korea other than Cleveland outfielder Choo Shin-soo, who tied the title game early with a homer. After all, South Korea beat Japan twice earlier in the tournament and won gold in Beijing after taking bronze in Athens. For whatever reasons, major league teams have been slow to import South Koreans. This WBC should change that.

The South Koreans won't have the Olympics to show off at any more now that the game has been thrown out of the Olympics. So a WBC put on every four years will have to suffice. It should do better than merely survive.

But if not enough supporters among us like it -- be they general managers or players or fans -- then so be it. We don't deserve it. We shouldn't have it. We shouldn't be able to monopolize the WBC anyway.

The WBC shouldn't be changed, and doesn't need to be altered, to satisfy our palate. It should be boosted to the taste of those around the world -- in Asia, the Caribbean, South America, and the Netherlands, even -- who are now longing for our one-time national pastime.

Major League Baseball and American baseball fans should feel a sense of pride about what happened in the just-completed edition of the WBC. It's game has been not only embraced by much of the rest of the world, but celebrated. The NFL, our new national pastime, never fared so well with its across the border skirmishes. Baseball finally beat football at something.

The game shouldn't rest on these laurels, though. After two WBCs, it is time to take the championship on the road where it is already beloved. Early round games shouldn't be pawned off on the real fans overseas, like those in Seoul who skipped work and school on Monday to watch the big game on a jumbotron screen at the city's Jamsil Baseball Stadium. Instead, give them the real thing like last night's classic Classic final from Los Angeles.

Why not reward Tokyo or Seoul or Caracas with the host role for the next edition of the WBC? They deserve it.

And why should Bud Selig be left as a de facto head of the WBC? Spread the honor and share it with the commissioner of Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan, or with the head of the Dominican Winter Baseball League.

The only pie baseball is as American as these days is humble.

Kevin B. Blackistone is a panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn, the Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, and a frequent sports opinionist on other outlets. A former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News, he currently lives in Silver Spring, Md.

WBC Deserves Truly Global Presence originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:30:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sorry, Not Buying Dykstra's Denial

Kevin Blackistone — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:01:00 EST

Filed under: MLB

In 1991, Lenny "Nails" Dykstra hammered his Benz into a tree on a road off Philadelphia's Main Line with a Phillies teammate, Darren Daulton, as a passenger. Dykstra suffered a broken collarbone, broken ribs, broken cheekbone and punctured lung. Dalton suffered a broken bone under an eye. The pair was coming from a bachelor party for John Kruk. Dykstra was charged with driving drunk.

In 1999, three years after he last played baseball, Dykstra was cleared of sexual battery and child annoyance charges against a 17-year-old female employee at a car wash he owned. The Ventura County, Calif., district attorney's office that prosecuted him concluded: "While the district attorney believes that the defendant did engage in the conduct as originally described by the victim... the charges alleged in the complaint cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury."

In 1999, three years after he last played baseball, Dykstra was cleared of sexual battery and child annoyance charges against a 17-year-old female employee at a car wash he owned. The Ventura County, Calif., district attorney's office that prosecuted him concluded: "While the district attorney believes that the defendant did engage in the conduct as originally described by the victim... the charges alleged in the complaint cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury."

In 2007, Dykstra was pinned as a steroids abuser in The Mitchell Report.

Earlier this week, Dykstra dismissed a charge in a GQ article from a former employee at Dykstra's rag-a-zine, The Players Club, that Dykstra expressed racist and homophobic beliefs with impunity only John Rocker could appreciate it. The former employee charged that Dykstra referred to Derek Jeter, Chris Paul, and Tiger Woods as "darkies" and "spearchuckers," and Danica Patrick as "bitch."

Dykstra defended himself a little more eloquently to The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Everything in there is a lie. I'm not going down in the dirt with this guy [accuser Kevin Coughlin]. He's [ticked] off because he got fired."

If Dykstra, who amazingly re-invented himself in retirement as a Jim Cramer-like stock picker, wants to prove he isn't what his former employee charged, he would be wise to file defamation lawsuit post haste and pray that he wins. For his past suggest that the proof is in his pudding.

Dykstra was among the invited celebrants at last season's end for a goodbye for Shea Stadium, where he started his often combative career. It's been reported that he wouldn't mind having a hand in baseball again, as a coach if not a manager.

Baseball remains one of our most-troubled sports when it comes to image, particularly with the steroids cloud hovering over its head. The last thing it needs is a renewed association with an apparent lout like Dykstra. Good riddance.

Kevin B. Blackistone is a panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn, the Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, and a frequent sports opinionist on other outlets. A former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News, he currently lives in Silver Spring, Md.

DYST V3 test

David Liam Kyle, NBAE/Getty Images

Juan Barreto, AFP/Getty Images

A Dalmatian looks at its handler as a judge goes to touch the dog during the first day of the 2009 Westminster Dog Show in New York February 9, 2009.(Lucas Jackson, Reuters)

Lucas Jackson, Reuters

Ray Stubblebine, Reuters

Jonathan Hayward, The Canadian Press/AP

Don Wright, AP

Missouri's DeMarre Carroll, top, celebrates the Tigers' 62-60 win over Kansas in Columbia, Missouri, Monday, February 9, 2009. (Rich Sugg, Kansas City Star/MCT)

Rich Sugg, Kansas City Star/MCT

David Clarkson #23 of the New Jersey Devils fights Erik Reitz #4 of the New York Rangers during their game on February 9, 2009 at The Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey (Al Bello, Getty Images)

Al Bello, Getty Images

Driver Patrick Sheltra (60) begins to spin coming out of the fourth turn during the ARCA 200 auto race in Daytona Beach, Fla. Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009.

Darryl Graham, AP

Spain's Nuria Llagostera Vives serves the ball, in this multiple exposure, to Iveta Benesova of the Czech Republic during their Fed Cup tennis match in Brno February 7, 2009.

Petr Josek, Reuters

Sorry, Not Buying Dykstra's Denial originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:01:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Exploitation of Dreams Worse Than PEDs

Kevin Blackistone — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:23:00 EST

Filed under: MLB

This is what a pimp does: He procures the use of one human's body -- usually from someone vulnerable for a variety of reasons -- for another human with promises to the former and a price from the latter, and retains much of the profit for himself.

Or, in short, it is what the FBI is investigating major league baseball talent scouts for doing in the Dominican Republic, which on Sunday led to the resignation of Nationals' general manager Jim Bowden.

Baseball appeared hard-pressed to sully itself worse than it did with a generation-long steroids' scandal, in which scores of its players looking to safeguard their careers and lengthen them illegally siphoned drugs meant to help the infirmed live pain-free and longer lives. But if the FBI probe finds what it is looking for now, baseball has, indeed, found a new depth in which to wallow.

After all, what the FBI is looking into is nothing short of human exploitation. This is what Sports Illustrated reported one week ago:

"Two sources inside baseball say that a long-time scout in Latin America, Jorge Oquendo, 47, is the man who links the FBI's investigations of Bowden and his special assistant Jose Rijo to that of former Chicago White Sox senior director of player personnel David Wilder. Last May the White Sox fired Wilder and two Dominican-based scouts after allegations surfaced that they had pocketed money earmarked for player signing bonuses. Oquendo worked for Wilder in 2006 and 2007, as well as for Bowden with the Reds in 1994 and again with the Reds from 2000 through 2003. Oquendo left Cincinnati in 2005, two years after Bowden was fired [as Reds' general manager]."

Every major league team except the Milwaukee Brewers (Bud Selig did do something right) have what they call academies - I think of them more as baseball plantations - in the Dominican Republic to turn young lads into young, and cheap, major league baseball players. It is a general practice for scouts in the Dominican to pay bonuses to prodigious Dominican kids and then introduce them to the major league academies. The FBI is looking into charges those scouts pocketed some of the money meant for the pockets of prospects.

It's an investment system that pays baseball Bernard Madoff-type dividends, what with a Newsday report last Saturday counting 137 of 1,381 active-roster or disabled-list major leaguers on Opening Day 2008, or roughly 10 percent, as Dominican-born. Better still, the paper found 3,356, or a whopping 47.8 percent, of 7,021 minor leaguers under contract then were born outside the United States, mostly in Spanish-speaking countries like the Dominican.

The Dominican is ripe for what the FBI is investigating. It is poor, one of the poorest countries in the Caribbean and among the poorest Spanish-speaking countries in the world. The gap between its rich minority and poor majority is vast and 42 percent of the country lives beneath the poverty line. Most of the wealth is controlled by the minority, white descendants of Spanish slave-holding settlers. Most of the poverty is in the laps of the majority, the first descendents of the African diaspora. The Dominican along with Haiti make up the island of Hispaniola, which at the dawn of the 16th century became the first stop in the transatlantic slave trade.

It is largely the Afro-Dominicans looking to escape poverty who are so aggressively pursued by major league baseball. Baseball is their proverbial ticket off their half of the island. Who knew that their physical talent and determination wouldn't be enough and that they'd have to pay a kickback to get a chance at a better life?

This is, in part, what Gary Sheffield tried to underscore a couple of seasons ago when discussing the falling numbers of black American players like him and the exploding number of Latin players. Sheffield was unsuccessful because his explanation was inarticulate.

What he meant to say wasn't that Latin players are puppets, but that they are more easily exploited by the economics of baseball than are American players because of the dire straits from which they often come and baseball's ability to secure them by the dozens for the same price as one American player. It would take a revolt of the masses to change this system, not unlike the first slave revolt in the Dominican in 1522 against a sugar grower named Don Diego Colon, son of Christopher Columbus.

Or it would take someone slipping up somewhere and being found out. We will learn whether Oquendo, Rijo, Wilder or Bowden, or someone else, was that person.

All have claimed they've done nothing wrong. Bowden told reporters in Florida on Sunday that he was sorry his name was attached to such a despicable story, which has obvious racial overtones. It isn't a story that fits a man who, after taking over the Reds following baseball's exiling of Reds' owner Marge Schott in the early 90s for several racially insensitive incidents, promoted two black men to executive positions with the Reds when black men were still rare in baseball above the clubhouse.

Whether they or someone else is charged and convicted of this heinous activity shouldn't matter in the short run, though. Baseball needs to intervene immediately and insure that nothing of the sort goes on now or in the future. It needs to set up the most-stringent of rules with the most-severe punishment for anyone under its umbrella who dares to deal in such shameful shenanigans.

Steroids' abuse in baseball is disturbing. Preying on poor people whose biggest dream is being part of the game is absolutely disgusting.

Kevin B. Blackistone is a panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn, the Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, and a frequent sports opinionist on other outlets. A former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News, he currently lives in Silver Spring, Md.

Exploitation of Dreams Worse Than PEDs originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:23:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A-Rod's 'Cousin' Defense a Brilliant Move

Kevin Blackistone — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:15:00 EST

Filed under: MLB

A-Rod graduated from a private college prep high school in Miami particularly renowned for its fine arts and baseball program. Just before he was to go to his first freshman class at the University of Miami, he decided he wanted to become a millionaire instead with the Seattle Mariners, and signed their contract. That by itself was a sign of his intelligence.

He went on, of course, to become the first quarter-of-a-billion dollar player with the help of the savviest agent in baseball, if not all of sports, Scott Boras.

In short, A-Rod was never the country bumpkin he's tried to portray himself as over the past week after fessing up to a report that he used steroids. The ultimate proof: the publication-relations strategy he and his PR team successfully pulled off the past few days without most of us even realizing it.

I'm talking about the "cousin." It is, to quote those two Guinness brainiacs, "brilliant." Genius, really. Mensa-level stuff. A-Rod flipped the script. It is sports' version of the Twinkie defense.

For 24 hours, I thought A-Rod should demand back whatever he paid his long-time personal PR man, Richard Rubenstein, and the Newport Beach, Calif.-based PR agency, Outside Eyes, to handle his crisis. Not anymore.

The key moment from his spring training apology to the world that was once his oyster wasn't when he detailed how, and how often, he used steroids. It wasn't when he suffered that 37-second pause with lip quivering, apparently fighting back tears.

Instead, it was when he revealed that it was some cousin he wasn't going to name who started and facilitated his three-year long drug habit and concluded his mea culpa, part two, with a plea: "The only thing I can ask of the American people is to judge me from this day forward."

That was the set up to throw us all for a loop. We just didn't know it.

After all, A-Rod and his PR team figured correctly that most of us had become so cynical and suspicious about his whole steroids affair that we weren't likely to believe anything of what A-Rod had to say, save that he used steroids for some period of time. He'd already told 60 Minutes a few years ago that he was clean as a fresh needle when, we know now, he wasn't.

Why would we believe what he said now about only using steroids for a three-season period with one guy none of us ever heard of? Why should we believe that he wasn't, as Jose Canseco suggested, using drugs way back in the late '90s? Why should we believe that from here on out A-Rod wouldn't dare dabble with some rogue substance out there that is beyond detection methods that are available?

The answer to it all is "the cousin," identified on Thursday by ESPN as Yuri Sucart, a Miami man.

We haven't seen him. We haven't heard from him. But we know from a woman identified as his wife, and from several other people in A-Rod's personal baseball circle, that he exists.

The cousin has been A-Rod's Man Friday for a number of years. Now he is A-Rod's savior.

A-Rods Controversies

After a report is released that he tested positive for steroids during his AL MVP campaign in 2003, Alex Rodriguez admits to injecting performance-enhancing drugs obtained in the Dominican Republic with the assistance of his cousin during his time as a Texas Ranger. Click through to find out more about A-Rod's checkered past.

Chris Carlson, AP

Former manager Joe Torre's recently released book, 'The Yankee Years', included details of A-Rod's tumultuous stay with the Yankees. In the book, Torre claims A-Rod was known by teammates as "A-Fraud" and paints him as mentally fragile.

Ezra Shaw, Getty Images

Rodriguez's decision not to play for the United States at the upcoming World Baseball Classic put him in the middle of another firestorm. A-Rod chose to join David Ortiz's Dominican squad over the nation of his birth.

Kena Betancur, AP

There have also been rumors that Rodriguez dated pop star Madonna, with numerous reports of the two spending time together.

Jim Rogash, Getty Images

In May 2007, many called this slide into the Red Sox's Dustin Pedroia to break up a double play dirty, as part of the heated Red Sox-Yankees rivalry.

Nick Laham, Getty Images

He filed for free agency during Game 4 of the 2007 World Series, drawing the ire of fans and officials. Some accused A-Rod of trying to grab the spotlight as the Yankees' big rivals were closing in on their second title in four seasons. He later re-signed with New York.

Jim McIsaac, Getty Images

The New York tabloids had a field day after the Yankees star was allegedly caught with a "mystery blonde" at the end of May of 2007. The woman was later identified as an exotic dancer, and his wife filed for divorce from him just over a year later, citing his infidelity.

New York Post

Things have been frosty for A-Rod and Derek Jeter since Rodriguez dissed his buddy by saying Jeter was "never your concern" when facing the Yankees.

Tony Gutierrez, AP

Despite being named AL MVP (48 homers, 130 RBI) in 2005, Yankee fans called out A-Rod by saying many of his homers came in meaningless situations.

Morry Gash, AP

A-Rod's awkward slap that knocked the ball from Bronson Arroyo's glove in the 2004 ALCS enhanced his reputation as a player who folded in the clutch.

Amy Sancetta, AP

He is A-Rod's savior because A-Rod needs for two things to happen right now. He needs us to believe he didn't use drugs before 2001, and he needs us to believe he can be trusted from this season on. He needs us to grant him enough credibility to, at best, be considered what he was -- arguably the best baseball player of his generation -- and save his induction to the Hall of Fame.

So he and his PR team decided to volunteer a cousin who we all figured was like "the friend" Michael Irvin said owned the drug pipe found in Irvin's car that Irvin said he possessed only with the intent of disposing to help his friend beat a habit. Irvin produced the friend under agreement that his identity not be revealed. Or maybe A-Rod's cousin was like "the friend" Chris Webber said left drugs on his person once that wound up getting him busted.

We've heard these defenses enough on COPS to know they don't stand up. Unidentified cousins and friends are like a fire alarm on the wall for the suddenly compromised -- break glass in emergency.

But A-Rod's cousin, it turns out, does exist. And his existence gets A-Rod not more steroids this time, but some old credibility back.

A-Rod said all he wanted from the public was their trust in him from here on. He produced the co-conspirator for his fraudulent years in the game. He does exist. There is reason, therefore, to believe in A-Rod for this season and beyond, if not the 2000 season on back.

A-Rod the A-Rube he is not.

A-Rod's 'Cousin' Defense a Brilliant Move originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:15:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Steroids Scandal Too Much to Swallow

Kevin Blackistone — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:25:00 EST

Filed under: MLB

Publishers Row still hasn't warmed to Jay McGwire's proposed expose on his estranged brother, retired home run slugger Mark McGwire, who Jay claimed was a steroids abuser. A second tell-all by baseball's most-important chronicler of its steroids' generation, Jose Canseco -- Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball - sold just 22,000 hardcover copies last year, less than a sixth of what his first book, Juiced, sold. One publisher told The New York Times a few weeks ago that the public appeared fatigued by baseball's steroids' tales.

Consider me corroborating evidence.

I am trying my best to summon a visceral reaction to Alex Rodriguez's admission that the Sports Illustrated scoop saying he tested positive for steroids six years ago is true. But it is like trying to heave on an empty stomach. I can muster nothing.

I fear I've lost my ability to care about the biggest scandal in American sports. I think I'm in need of a steroids overdose in order to go into a rage about the people who've used them to pollute a game I'm still trying to like again.

When the lethargy began to settle I'm not exactly sure. For what has been going on in baseball has been going on now forever it seems, with recriminations, convictions and mea culpas coming, one after another after another, like balls being fired from a batting cage pitching machine. It's as if I've been sensitized to it all, not unlike Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who doesn't even flinch at a press conference when yet another explosion erupts somewhere outside the door.

This baseball steroids scandal has been going on for so long -- 20 years if you believe Canseco, an admitted steroids user who has been right about everyone else all along -- that there are twentysomethings among us, an entire generation, who think this is the way it's supposed to be.

The other day, we were reminded that Roger Clemens, the greatest pitcher of the last generation, was being investigated to determine if he lied to Congress about using illegal substances. This week it is A-Rod, arguably the greatest baseball player of his generation, who confessed to pharmaceutical cheating. Next month, the fellow who became the most-prolific home run hitter ever, Barry Bonds, goes to court to defend himself against perjury charges related to his testimony about using - or not using - performance-enhancing drugs.

Will the last baseball player on steroids please turn off the Bunsen burner?

There are more, of course - at least 103 more on what was supposed to be a confidential list of names, from which A-Rod's was leaked, of players who tested positive for 'roids in 2003. There must be more superstars; some roster fodder; some cups o' café players. As A-Rod told Peter Gammons on ESPN on Monday: "I got caught up in this everybody-is-doing-it era."

It was an era, kind of like the drug-addled disco period was an era, but A-Rod was not the young, stupid and naïve victim of osmosis he suggested he was. I was there with the Texas Rangers during A-Rod's years. He was sophisticated beyond his years. He was mindful of every utterance he made. He knew full well what he was doing. He knew no less than any of the others who've been busted or accused or even suspected. He should just count his lucky $250 million that he didn't deny his dirty doings in front of congress as Clemens is suspected or before a grand jury like Bonds is accused.

A-Rod was, is, an active and longtime participant of that era, not a mere sea turtle unluckily snared one day in a giant tuna net. He can't anymore divorce himself from it than baseball itself can cleanse itself of the seasons and seasons of stain.

What baseball has gone through the past 20 years is the most-significant era in sports since its segregated years that lasted about half a century.

There continues to be great hand wringing going on about what to do with all the drug cheats in baseball that have been outed now. Baseball officials and writers and fans are wrestling with whether to overlook their criminality (steroids are a controlled substance) and admit them to the Hall of Fame if their on-the-field accomplishments are worthy. It seems that a lot of people want to forget that the word museum is part of the name of baseball's Hall of Fame.

The only thing worse for baseball, than having its head buried in the infield for so long about what was going on with its players, would be to pretend for generations from now like the late '80s, 1990s and early 2000s didn't happen, to pretend that Canseco, McGwire, Bonds, Clemens, A-Rod and all the others were figments of imagination.

If their numbers are worthy they should be housed in the Hall of Fame for posterity with their plaques, maybe their entire wing as well, explaining all that they did, especially the bad and the ugly. Kind of like the bottled pathological curiosities tucked away here in D.C. in a museum at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Kevin B. Blackistone is a panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn, the Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, and a frequent sports opinionist on other outlets. A former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News, he currently lives in Silver Spring, Md.

Steroids Scandal Too Much to Swallow originally appeared on Kevin Blackistone FanHouse on Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:25:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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