Before the NFL season started, it was chic to suggest that the Arizona Cardinals might be this year's breakout team. Everyone thought they had improved themselves on offense and they had a decent if not great defense and so they might have a shot at the NFC West - - which is hardly a fearsome division. The Cardinals have reverted to form however and started 0-3. Remember, this is the franchise that has participated in one playoff game in the last 57 years. If they ever decide to change their name, it should become the “Arizona Reindeer” because their work is always done by Christmas time.

Dennis Green was the coach that was going to turn this sorry-assed franchise around and set it on a winning course. Perhaps, the honeymoon is over in Phoenix between Green and the local scribes. Here is what Dan Bickley of the Arizona Republic had to say about Green, the team and the 2005 NFL season; it leaves little room for “deconstruction”:

“His ego was a beast, and now the beast is dead. Dennis Green has been trumped, thumped and drop-kicked into last place. And if a humbled coach can't perform CPR on his fractured football team, the Cardinals will struggle to win a game in 2005.”

These Cardinals are now preparing to play a “home game” in Mexico City next weekend against the less-than-awesome San Francisco 49ers. Ticket sales there are a lot slower than had been expected but this is one of those glass half-full/glass half-empty situations. The glass is half-full in the sense that the Cards will still play in front of a larger crowd in Mexico City than they could possibly draw in Arizona for a game against the 49ers – even if they handed out tickets on the street corners with hundred dollar bills stapled to them. The glass is half-empty because it seems as if the Mexican sports fans have sufficient knowledge of the NFL to recognize that the league is pawning off on them a match-up that belongs in a sewer. Whatever.

Just when I thought that Martha Burk had seen her shadow and crawled back into her hole yielding six more years of public sanity, she returns to the public eye with yet another protest. This time, she is outraged by an ad for the NHL in which a partially clothed woman helps a partially clothed hockey player dress before he hits the ice. Burk calls this ad exploitative because it contains “gratuitous sexual innuendo”. She told the Toronto Sun that “the NHL is trying to portray itself as family entertainment and this ad doesn't support that very well.” Excuse me, but I really don't think that the NHL has any intention of positioning itself as family entertainment; it markets violence.

Of course, the NHL pooh-bahs had to chime in and give Burk's commentary a level of credence it does not deserve. Had they kept their mouths shut, this would have been like ”the answer blowing in the wind”. A spokesthing for the NHL claimed – with a straight face no less – that the partially clothed woman is “a spiritual and physical trainer for the warrior and his mentor.” Thus, the NHL thinks this ad is highly respectful towards women. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to think up something that would make any random Martha Burk utterance sound logical. But the NHL has done just that.

Memo to Burk and the NHL: Please, just shut up.

Whenever I hear an athlete or a rock star of a movie star make some kind of political statement, my first reaction is to look around to see if I can figure out who asked them for their opinion because I know damned well it wasn't I. In fact, I would not be horribly opposed to disenfranchising anyone who based his or her voting decision in large part on the endorsement of an athlete or entertainer – but that's just me. Having said that, Mayor Michael Bloomberg in NY has picked up two athletic endorsements that he could not possibly have sought out. Rod Strickland has endorsed Bloomberg. Strickland has been a malcontent and a source of irritation on lots of losing basketball teams in his career and has had more than a couple of run-ins with the law. The second athlete to endorse Bloomberg may be even worse in NYC. Mo Vaughn – lovingly known as Moo Vaughn for his less than fully athletic condition – was supposed to be a home-run machine for the Mets. Instead, he became a $50M mistake. Whom might the mayor's political advisors seek out next?

Hideki Irabu?

Michael Milken?

Eric Lindros?

Remember a week or so ago when the San Diego Padres lost a game to the Colorado Rockies by a score of 20-1? Woody Williams started that game and gave up eight runs in the first inning. That was bad enough but the story gets worse. That start was Williams' 25th of the year and reportedly, that kicked in an escalation clause in his contract. Williams makes $3M this year and was scheduled to make $4M next year. However that start – the one in which he gave up eight runs in the first inning – means that his salary next year will jump to $5M. So he got a 25% salary increase for that game. That also means it just got 25% harder for the Padres to find a way to trade this 39-year-old pitcher who is 8-12 so far this year with an ERA just north of 5.00.

Greg Maddux starts for the Cubbies today. Maddux is 13-13 for the season; he has had 15 or more wins for the last 16 seasons in a row. After today's start against the Pirates, Maddux will get one more start against the Astros over the weekend. Suppose the Astros need to win that game in their quest for the wild card slot in the playoffs and Maddux needs the win to extend his streak. That would give the Cubs a meaningful game to be played in October. That doesn't happen often.

Finally, an observation from Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Tommy John deserves credit for submitting to the first surgery now named after him and for the use of his simple name, because the procedure would be less popular were it named after, say, Mariners' pitcher, J. J. Putz.”

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...

<< Back to the September Archives

= Home = Recent = Topical = Wagers =
= Archives = Pros = Scores = Contact =