Last weekend, I did a topical rant on the goof in California who is suing the Angels because they did not give him a tote bag on Mothers' Day in 2005. The Altoona Curve – Class AA affiliate of the Pirates – have decided to do a promotional night in his honor. On 2 July, 2006, the Curve will host “Salute to Frivolous Lawsuit Night” and here's their blatantly discriminatory plan:

The first 137 men over 18 years old will receive a pink tote bag.

The first 137 women will get a cup of lukewarm coffee so they don't spill it on themselves and burn themselves.

The first 137 children will get a beach ball with warnings not to ingest them.

That promotion is clever as it is, but Todd Parnell – GM for the Altoona Curve – went one step further in a statement about this promotion, “We realize that these giveaways as part of our Salute to Frivolous Lawsuit Night are fairly stupid and serve no real purpose. But if our fans don't like them, then they can sue us.”

The New York Knicks are in the midst of a comic opera at the moment regarding their coaching options. If you are to believe the New York papers, Joseph Dolan is about to write a check to Larry Brown for $25M to get out of town; and then, Isiah Thomas will come out of the dark tunnels in Madison Square Garden to take over the coaching responsibilities. I have no interest in trying to understand motivations here because I think there is an overriding problem with the Knicks that has nothing to do with the coach or what he is paid or anything of that ilk. The New York Knickerbockers are a poorly constructed basketball team; those players could only make the playoffs if four or five of them all had career years at the same time. And – most importantly – it would be next to impossible for four or five of them to have career years at the same time because the team has far too many “me-first” players who would not tolerate anyone else having a career year and basking in the spotlight so obviously belonging to the “me-first” players.

If Mr. Dolan wanted to hear some objective analysis of what the problem is with the team, here are some of the things I'd tell him:

You already have guaranteed contracts with players for next season that total $125.5M. So getting “cap room” to maneuver within ain't happening.

Your best big man – everything is relative you know – is Eddy Curry and he is unsigned for next year. So if you keep him your payroll will go up. And if you don't keep him, then you gave up first round picks to rent him for last year; so, how'd that work out?

Your best young player – David Lee – will make less than $1M next year and won't make $2M per year until 2009/10 while four other guys will pull down more than $15M each next year. That should motivate him to work hard.

Changing the coach is not the answer here; the team has to be disassembled and reconstructed from the ball-boys up and that will mean a couple of years of losing records with no pretense of “a playoff run”. It could mean paying people to go home and not play. The Knicks know what that's all about; they paid Allan Houston, Shandon Anderson and Jerome Williams a total of $32.4M last year not to play for the Knicks. Additionally, the team paid Scott Layden and Lenny Wilkens a total of $10M to do whatever they wanted to do as long as it was “somewhere else”. You did know that was how you spent more than $40M last year, didn't you? The Knicks don't need a new coach; the team needs to find talented and motivated players who can and will play together and then the Knicks need to sign them as they ship the current cast of misfits out of town.

But there is hope for the Knick fans – even if it may not be in the short term. The NBA Executive of the Year for 2006 is Elgin Baylor who has been in his job for 20 years and probably has never even gotten a single vote for that honor even if the vote was cast in complete derision. So, if it can happen to the Clips, it can happen to the Knicks. And maybe it will take close to 20 years to get to that point – especially if the team keeps Isiah Thomas in charge of the personnel and drafting activities. It may not be a comforting thought, but here is one Knicks' fans need to keep in mind:

Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is a gorilla with a flashlight.

The timing of this Knicks' Comic Opera could not be worse. Today is the mid-point of National Effectiveness Week and all the things they are considering at the moment will be supremely ineffective in terms of putting a contending team on the floor.

Every once in a while, someone will mention a name from the past and it will make you wonder whatever happened to that person. Until yesterday, I had no idea what had happened to MC Hammer. If you had told me that space aliens had abducted him, I'd have shrugged my shoulders and wondered how long it would be until they left him on a desolate moon somewhere just to avoid having to listen to his “music”. Well, he's still here on the home planet and he's blogging. Evidently, he thinks that major league baseball is way off base with its decision not to celebrate Barry Bonds' passing Babe Ruth to make it to #2 on the all time homerun list. Fine, everyone has a right to an opinion but MC Hammer had to explain why he thought baseball was off base. He calls this chase “the greatest feat in sports in the last 50 years”.

Memo to MC Hammer: It was significantly less than 50 years ago when Henry Aaron chased down Babe Ruth's record and passed it. Why is Bonds' pursuit better than Aaron's? Where are those space aliens when we need them?

When you can shoot your age in golf, that's pretty good – as opposed to bowling your age on the lanes, which is not good at all. According to Charlie Walters in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, Woody Schilling recently shot a round of 83 from the white tees and Woody Schilling is 93 years old. He shot his age minus 10. I don't think too many folks ever do that.

Finally, I'm feeling nostalgic today. In recent weeks, we've had scandals at Duke with the lacrosse team and now at Northwestern with the women's soccer team. These are fringe sports and upper crust schools. I'm yearning for the good old days when Jerry Tarkanian's boys were sharing the hot tubs with a guy who really had earned the nickname “The Fixer”. Those were the days…

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

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