Since you threw down the gauntlet, I feel obliged to respond. I've attached Torre's career statistics: .297 average, 252 HRs, 1100+ RBIs, a Gold Glove, 1971 MVP, and nine (!) All-Star games. Torre's handicap - with regards to his Hall of Fame credentials - is that he did a lot of things well, but none spectacularly (HR and RBI totals are middling and his average ranks him nearly 200 lifetime). Of course, his recent managerial (and medical successes) may actually sway voters since before the Yankee job, he was a mediocre manager with just one Division title. Another title this year and he'll be passing a few more high profile managers (e.g. Sparky Anderson, Earl Weaver, Billy Martin, etc.). As history has shown, it also doesn't hurt to have a New York connection when HOF voting comes around (will be interested to see Mattingly's vote total in January). Regardless, in a rather jaded age, Torre has been and is good for baseball.

The Bob Arum/Nevada Boxing Commission deal is finished. It turns out to be even dumber than I reported yesterday. Arum issued a statement saying that he used "poor judgment" when he made an "improper payment" of 100 grand to the IBF head honcho in return for IBF sanctioning a championship fight between George Foreman and Axel Schultz. Translating this to another historical event, Jeffrey Dahmer could have said that he used "improper culinary taste" when he ate one of his victims as part of a stir fry. Arum is barred form Nevada events for 6 months but he can continue to promote fights; boy, there is a punishment with teeth in it. And if you read the fine print, Arum pays the Nevada Boxing Commission 125 grand. Only in America; only in boxing.

In college sports, the Tar Heels top basketball recruit for the season was supposed to be Jason Parker. Of course, he was also supposed to be their top recruit last season but he had a bit of difficulty with the tests that would actually allow him to matriculate at the school and so Jason was off for a year of intensive academic prep work at Fork Union Military Academy. It seems that Jason worked hard and took the tests a few times and finally surged through to make not only the levels needed to be admitted to UNC, but he made the grade for playing immediately on the basketball team. Well, now he is not going to play because his test scores have been "invalidated"; it seems that his score jumped a miraculous 50% on that last go-round. Even the gurus that oversee boxing in Nevada could get queasy over that.

In the DC area, we are used to bumbling ineptitude. But at this moment we have two universities under investigation for NCAA violations. Howard University has its football and basketball programs under scrutiny and already some people have been fired and some sanctions have been imposed and the investigation is not done. Now American University is under investigation for academic improprieties in its athletic programs. So what is the bumbling ineptitude, you ask? Neither of these schools fields a winning team in any sport more important than nose hair growing.

Memo to Howard and AU: The reason schools "cheat" is to have winning teams. They don't risk getting caught and getting sanctioned for fun. Wait till you have a few real athletes on your squads before you worry about circumventing the NCAA rules - no matter how dumb those rules are.

In NFL news, Bill Romanowski has been cited in an article in SI for referring to teammates using the "n-word". Romanowski took a polygraph test on this and vehemently told his teammates it is untrue. Supposedly he said to a white teammate that the reason he takes the diet drug he is supposedly abusing is because that is the only way for a white guy to keep his job with all these "n-words" in the league. Well at least he has given Jesse Jackson something to do after the Democratic Convention is over and we won't have to watch Rev. Jackson flail about looking for an excuse to have a TV camera/microphone stuck in his face.

An alert reader responded a couple of days ago to my comments that the Cleveland Browns ought to contact Jim McMahon or Tony Eason as their backup QB. He said that he figured that Jim Druckenmiller would be the guy since Miami was not using Druckenmiller very much and since Carmen Policy and Dwight Calrk were the guys who drafted him in the first place for SF. Well, the first piece of that puzzle fell in place yesterday when Miami cut Druckenmiller. For the record, I think the guy is a stiff who was vastly overrated coming out of college and is probably no more mobile than Jim McMahon or Tony Eason.

In the NBA there was a four team trade and nine players changed teams. Go read your local papers for all the details but suffice it to say that the "gem" of the trade was probably Danny Fortson who has the dishonor to go to Golden State. If that does not entice you to go and see the results of the largest game of "Pass the Trash" in NBA history, two other players involved were Bill Curley and Robert Pack.

Not to be left out of the acquisition of players that do not matter at all, the Chicago Bulls signed Dragan Tarlac. I'll just leave that hanging there as I practice the art of understatement.

Mike Hargrove, however, is truly the master of understatement. He announced that Jason Johnson would be sent back to the bullpen - yet again - because Jason has been "very inconsistent." Not true; Jason has been the model of consistency; he stinks; he stinks every time out!! Jason is 1-9 for the season with an ERA of 7.35. Tuesday night he pitched and gave up 11 hits, 10 earned runs, 4 walks and 2 home runs in 5 innings. In those 5 innings he had to throw 120 pitches. Hargrove said they have told Jason "a million times" that he has to be "aggressive in the strike zone." If that is the kind of coaching he is getting, there is little hope for change here. What does that mean? Is he supposed to walk down off the mound, put his butt in the batter's strike zone and flip the batter the bird?

While the press that covers golf is gearing up for a 96-hour full court press on Tiger Woods, many of you might miss the fact that while the "big guys" are in a place called Valhalla, the guys on the "JV" (playing on the Buy.com Tour) are in Fort Smith Arkansas. I hear that one of the golfers arrived in Fort Smith early on Monday this week so that he could get to the library before the book was checked out.

And the senior golfers are playing in the Utah Showdown. What could that be? I can see one of these geezers throwing down to another of them saying "I'll see your liver spots and raise you a prostate the size of Sally Struthers' butt." Now there is a showdown with some heavy trashtalking.

If you do not scan the agate type, you would miss the fact that Massachusetts-Lowell has just named 5 people to coaching positions for their football team. Isn't that a tad on the late side? Haven't most of the people who have some recognized ability to coach football found positions by this time of the year? Were these guys in the local ankle-biter league?

And finally, Drexel University named some guy "coordinator of athletic equipment operations." What the hell does he do for a living?

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