I got an e-mail yesterday from a Pirates' fan who is dispirited and maybe a tad angry with the way the team "handed out players" at the trading deadline. He described the Pirates as a "young team with loads of potential". I have to remind him here that a team "with potential" is a polite way of saying that the team hasn't won anything and is probably less than good. I agree that the Pirates were involved in a lot of deals in the 96 hours leading up to the trade deadline, but I don't think they were done maliciously and I don't think they were done solely to save money and line the pockets of ownership.
He did acknowledge that trading away Oliver Perez was probably something that had to be done despite Perez' youth and ability. He asked me whether or not Odalis Perez - traded to KC by the Dodgers - or Oliver Perez was having a worse year. After looking at the stats, this is not a good season to be a major league player named "O. Perez". The Pirates sent Oliver Perez down to the minor leagues recently after amassing a 2-10 record and pitching to an ERA of 6.63 this season. Ouch!
What seemed to upset him the most was the "dumping, giving away for free with gift wrap thrown in" of Sean Casey. He wanted to know how the Pirates could possibly trade him away and not get something more than a minor league pitcher at the AA level. After all, Casey is a career .300 hitter. Here's where I think my e-mailer and other Pirates' fans need to take a deep breath and be a bit more rational. Sean Casey is 32 years old; the Pirates are several years at the very least from contending for anything other than fourth place in their division. By the time the stars align correctly for Pittsburgh, Sean Casey is likely to be a first base coach and not a first baseman. Secondly, the Pirates traded to get Casey last winter and what they gave up was a minor league pitcher, Dave Williams. Rather than be upset with the Pirates' F.O., it seems that they took a shot on Casey and when the team still languished at the bottom of the NL Central, they moved him on. They paid a price for him and they sold him for virtually the same price.
Curmudgeons tend not to be folks who comfort people in their times of sorrow, but let me try to help out this Pirates' fan here. Two weeks ago, the Pirates were a young team that was pretty awful; now they are an even younger team that is still pretty awful. The future glory for the Pirates is still there; it's merely a little further out there in the future…
Another reader reacted to my comment that Joe DiMaggio's first year Hall of Fame snub meant that it would not be a huge slap in the face to Mark McGwire should he suffer the same fate. He gave me some data I would not have thought to go looking for. According to his research, four other players with more than 500 career homeruns did not get into the Hall of Fame the first time they were eligible. Those were Mel Ott (511), Eddie Matthews (512), Jimmy Foxx (534) and Harmon Killebrew (573). With that data in hand in addition to the "DiMaggio data point", I will now say that the election of Mark McGwire to the Hall of Fame next year would be tantamount to an endorsement of the "steroid era" by the Baseball Writers of America.
The last time we saw him, LSU basketball star, Glen "Big Baby" Davis, was taking up loads of room in the paint in the NCAA tournament. According to one report, Davis has been spending more time in the weight room than he has in the cafeteria since March; he's lost 50 pounds. The proud report from LSU is that he is now under 300 lbs. Let me put that in perspective here; that means he now weighs less than 0.15 tons. Glen Davis has a long and lucrative future ahead of him as a professional basketball player if and only if he gets in shape. Otherwise, he's Oliver Miller or Kevin Duckworth. Kudos to Glen Davis for recognizing what he had to do and then acting on that recognition to start to get it done.
I read another report which announced that Jeff Capel - the new basketball coach at Oklahoma - has gotten an oral commitment from Kyle Hardrick who the report describes as a "6-foot-8, 240 lb center/power forward". That's barely noteworthy by itself but Kyle Hardrick is just now beginning the tenth grade. Two things stand out here. Hardrick is still a ninth grader because he has not begun his tenth grade year; I don't know about you, but the people who played basketball on my junior high school team weren't nearly that size - nor did they play against anyone who was. Secondly, Capel scored a recruiting coup on a player in the ninth grade. That ought to give you an idea how actual recruiting - not just scouting and notetaking - has permeated down into the high schools and junior high schools in the US.
In case you think Kyle Hardrick is a unique happenstance, consider the case of football star, Desmond Scott, at South Durham High in North Carolina. Scott is in the midst of summer football training/practice preparing for his sophomore season. Sound familiar? He hasn't committed to any school yet; but according to reports, he already has scholarship offers from Clemson, UNC and NC State. Athletic recruiting will be commonplace in the sixth grade within five years.
A new football league is beginning to shape up, the All-American Football League. Actually, this league is similar to an idea I had right after the USFL folded. The league will play in the spring; it will be for people who have graduated or used up all of their college eligibility and it will be geographically based. Teams will be made up of players who played in various areas of the country. So there could be a team of SEC alums and another team of Big 10 alums and … you get the idea. They'll have a strict and rather low salary cap; they'll provide employment/developmental opportunities for players. I always thought this is the kind of league that could survive - so long as the owners don't get too greedy and try to "take on the NFL". The NCAA will be part of the organizing force behind the league and that presents an opportunity for the NCAA to do something very positive for the "student" part of "student-athlete".
The NCAA needs to find a legal way to require either a diploma from a college or the consumption of all NCAA eligibility on the field as the way into the league. If they can somehow find a way to bar any player who declared for the draft early and hired an agent and then got busted out of NFL camp somewhere, that might encourage some of the marginal players to stay in school.
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Memo to Dr. Myles Brand: Put your legal eagles on this track instead of trying to find fifty-nine new ways to try to keep athletes from getting preferential treatment by your member schools.
By the way, if you do this, expect your first challenge to come from Maurice Clarett and his legal team - unless of course he goes to jail and gets his degree while he's in the slammer…
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"Hey, let's check out the course load for the typical Auburn football player: 1. Introduction to Beer Can Art; 2. Advanced Comic Book Appreciation; 3. Fishing With Live Bait."
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