Sports Curmudgeon 6/10/02
 









  After Lennox Lewis knocked out Mike Tyson on Saturday night, there has been a flurry of articles and columns in newspapers saying that Tyson is now finished and washed up and exposed as a fraud and all that stuff. Lots of people say he should never fight again and so forth and so on… Now, I will be the first to assure you that whatever appears to be true in boxing is rarely if ever the case, but let me assume here that Mike Tyson is indeed in financial hardship as has been reported. Without trying to assign blame for that state to him or to Don King who allegedly stole money from him or to his posse/handlers or any other biped on the planet, there is only one way for Mike Tyson to make any money. And that is to fight.

Mike Tyson will get no lucrative endorsement deals. Think about it; what could he endorse productively given his background and his persona. Prosac? I can see the campaign now. Picture of a smiling Mike Tyson holding a child with a caption that says when I take Prosac, I no longer think about eating someone else's children. I never got a degree in marketing, but I think that one won't make it to the magazines.

Mike Tyson is not going to get a "9 to 5" job because he clearly does not have the combination of intellectual skills and interpersonal skills that would get him a desk job in an office environment. He is not going to be a "meeter and greeter" in a place like Las Vegas because that would be a volatile mix of personality and location. And I do not think that he will set out on a career in a job that will make use of his greatest asset - his brawn; don't look for him on construction sites or logging trees any time soon. And therefore, he will continue to box because there are people who will continue to pay money to see him fight. Even if it is only a local favorite - a tomato can in boxing parlance - promoters can drag out Mike Tyson and conjure up some angle based on his notoriety and make a buck. And if they make a buck, so can Tyson and that is what he will need to do in order to make money to get himself in some kind of financial order. There was one story that said that Tyson owed the IRS more than $10M; obviously, I have no idea if this is correct. If it is, the only way that Tyson can make a deal with the IRS on this would be to develop a payment plan whereby he pays it off at $1M a year over the next decade - for example. And so I pose to you and all those who say he should and will never fight again:

    Where else might he get that kind of money?
Several people have asked why I care if a horse that wins the Triple Crown is a really good horse. The reason is that the ones who have done it in the past are all good ones and it would cheapen the value of the Triple Crown to have a mediocre horse win the three races simply because the competition among three year olds that year was very poor. The Belmont Stakes was won in 2:29 3/5; that is amazingly slow for that race. It is 28 lengths slower than Secretariat; it is 18 lengths slower than the next fastest Belmont in history; lots of Belmont Stakes races have been run in faster times. And so that diminishes the excuse that War Emblem lost the race because of his bobbled start. War Emblem was a comfortable third at the quarter mile and the pace of the race was exactly what the pace was for the Kentucky Derby. He was still in the race at the mile mark and at the mile and a quarter mark and both of those fractions were slower than his Derby times. And then it was over.

Next year will be twenty-five years since Affirmed won the Triple Crown. It was also twenty-five years from Citation to Secretariat. Maybe next year we will have a Triple Crown from a horse that measures up to those kinds of animals? I certainly hope so.

After all the huffing and puffing about a new scoring system for figure skating, here is the sub-headline for a story in the Sunday Washington Post on the new rule changes:

    "ISU's New Judging System May Discourage Cheaters"
Is that the best they could do? After all the scandal and all the hearings and all the nonsense, they come up with something that may discourage cheaters. Not something that will make it extraordinarily difficult for cheaters to cheat; not something that will banish cheaters from the sport for all of eternity if they do it again; just something that "may discourage them". An Australian official said that he saw no problem with the system as it stands; he said it was merely the "extreme pressure on the judges" that caused problems.
    Memo to Aussie Official: It is the judges whose collusion makes the system dysfunctional and reprehensible. Was I clear enough there?
Last Friday night, I joined two of my high school classmates to go see the Orioles play the Dodgers at Camden Yards. We were treated to a game played in 2 hours and 18 minutes. The home plate umpire called strikes - and with startlingly few complaints I might add - and batters swung the bat and fielders made plays. The pitchers did not take time to write their memoirs between pitches and we had the pleasure of a well-played and competitive game that did not take an eternity.

Ken Griffey Jr. is hurt again. He pulled a hamstring running out a ground ball. Either this is a stroke of horrible misfortune for Griffey or he is developing a proclivity for injury that ought to frighten the hell out of the Reds who still have to pay him gazillion dollars over the next several years.

The Nets are all but done in the NBA finals having lost the first three games, but they have not been blown out in any of the games. They will not win the series; they may not win a game; but they have played these games much closer than some people thought they could. And as you watch these games, keep remembering that Jason Kidd was acquired for Stephon Marbury. A grand jury might actually hand down an indictment for grand larceny there.

Finally, the Chicago White Sox just signed a pitcher named Royce Ring. When he gives up a home run, should we say that the runner is ringing the bases?

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

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