Chasing the Blues

The Braves Sink

The saddest story in Atlanta these days is the decline of the Braves. After winning a series in Tampa Bay a little over a week ago, the Braves appeared one of baseball's best, but since then have lost eight straight games marked by a series of mysterious maladies, from Brian McCann's "flulike symptoms" that turned out to be the true flu to Freddy Freeman's scratchy eyes.

With Freeman slumping, and now out of the lineup, glimpsed on the bench with huge Clark Kent black-framed glasses he doesn't want to wear on the field, the Braves have lost their offensive punch. Their starters and relievers have been awful, except for Craig Kimbrell, who never has a game to close these days. Tommy Hanson, whose long-awaited breakthrough to pitching stardom keeps getting derailed by horrible outings, has a curious motion, in which he freezes for a moment just before releasing the ball, as if he's trying to guide his pitches.

Outside of Michael Bourn and Martin Prado, and occasionally Dan Uggla, the Braves lineup looks anemic when compared with juggernauts like the Cardinals, now in town. Heralded "can't miss" prospect Justin Heyward displays signs of the Jeff Francoeur syndrome. With his height and long arms, his swing must travel too far to reach the plate, making it tough for him to reach outside pitches.

If the Braves don't rebound, they might turn into one of those clubs that start trading off ballplayers in the heat of summer. It might be a good idea, if they can get a good pitcher.

Vanity Fair Exploits Marilyn Monroe; Facebook Falters

It's reprehensible for Vanity Fair to run nude photos of Marilyn Monroe, a seriously disturbed, long-dead woman. At least when the magazine runs soft-porn photos of today's starlets, it's with their consent. ...Justice rules after all, in Facebook's apparent Wall Street flop. As a writer in Wall Street Journal said today, Facebook really adds nothing valuable to the economy, unlike Google, Microsoft and Apple. ...Miami's coach figures out that to win, Lebron James should take about every shot. ... Gee, I wanted to stop watching the NBA playoffs, but that Lakers-Thunder series is great. It really might be one of those changing of the guard moments, from Kobe to Kevin... I know little about Bain Capital and private equity funds, but I agree with Newark Mayor Corey Booker and the New York Times' David Brooks that the Obama ad about Mitt Romney's former company is off-base. The American steel industry was pretty much dead before Bain tried to salvage that highlighted company. ...Is Bubba Watson ever going to play golf again? He's played in one tournament since the Masters. I understand him wanting to spend time with his family, but the Open is fast upon us. The Open, at San Francisco's Olympic, should be a truly open one, with guys like Watson, Matt Kuchar and now Jason Dufner having strong seasons, along with old warrior Phil Mickelsen. Of course, the media will still buzz around Tiger Woods. ...The SEC's known for football, but what about it's golf prowess? Watson's a Georgia Dawg, and Dufner, winner of two tournaments this year including last week's Byron Nelson, an Auburn Tiger. And, the ACC is also strong, with Georgia Tech's Kuchar winning the Players.

Michael Bourn Boosts Braves

The Braves' Michael Bourn shows that a baseball player with speed running the bases can give as much excitement as a football touchdown pass, a basketball fast break and the 100-meter dash. ... Bourn gives the Braves the true leadoff man they've rarely had, even in their glory years under Bobby Cox. ...With Josh Hamilton's four home runs drawing attention to one of baseball's rarest feats, it's a wonder that one of the steriod boys didn't hit five or six home runs in a game. ...The NBA keeps playing. Quick, can you name all of the teams left? Commissioner David O'Brien must be dreading an Indiana-San Antonio or Indiana-Oklahoma City final. ...I keep trying to get interested in the New York Rangers-New Jersey Devils series, but hockey ramains a tough sell on TV. ...The loss of Chris Bosh stirs panic in the Miami Heat ranks. Apparently in landing all of that talent, Pat Riley neglected to sign a backup big man.

 

Monday Morning March

Jamie Dimon sounds like the Wizard of Oz after the curtain was pulled away.  Discussions of credit default swaps and derivatives, as with explanations of the theory of relativity, I can follow for a while, but then they sound like Professor Irwin Corey's old routines. ...Too bad that Kevin Na endured such heckling at the Players' Championship and its notoriously rowdy fans, but his endless waggles had me yelling at the TV to just hit the ball. ...Good to see Matt Kuchar overcome his rep as a big money winner who cannot win championships...NBC kept hyping the 17th island hole, claiming that it's constantly on the players' minds. The goofy-golf hole has to be the most overrated in the game....If "Mad Men" is supposed to be so authentic, why haven't the men and women's hairstyles and clothing changed? I assume the show is supposed to have moved to about 1966, when the Beatles-style natural look came in for men, and women moved toward less restrictive clothing. All of the Mad Men still have their hair slicked back, and the women seem to be stuck in 1961. ...Jon Hamm's wooden acting seems more annoying this year. ...Please end the fat Betty storyline.

Chipper Jones Painting a Final Masterpiece

Baseball history is filled with stories of great players who stayed too long, embarassing themselves in their final season. The rare scenario is the player who goes out in a final burst of glory, such as the Atlanta Braves' Chipper Jones is accomplishing this year.

Jones, who announced his retirement in spring training, is putting together a magical final season, with several dramatic home runs and other hits and stellar defensive play at third base. He is accomplishing this with two bum knees, which preventshim from playing every day.

I always thought Jones was a good, but not great, player, but I've changed my mind because of his work this spring, as well as recent years. With his bat control and his ability to hit the pitch wherever its location, he will finish with a high batting average. He doesn't have the power he used to, and is unlikely to finish with the 500 home runs that would guarantee his spot in Cooperstown, but he still has a home run stroke. He is the unquestioned leader of the team, looked at as a peerless mentor by his young teammates.

Braves, and baseball fans, are being treated to a rare occurrence, a MVP caliber season in Jones' final chapter of a career marked by unusual loyalty to one team and apparently a shunning of steroids while playing in an era marred by them. Fans should cherish every last Chipper moment. We are seeing one of the greats, a baseball virtuouso.

Farewell to Angelo Dundee, Ben Gazzara

I've reached the age where death takes on more significance. Someone's passing can unexpectedly reveal a passage into my past. Such was the case with two deaths this week: Angelo Dundee and Ben Gazzara.

The death of Dundee, trainer of Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, recalled the era of 1960s television, when I watched ABC Sports boxing telecasts and heard the loved/hated Howard Cosell pronounce his name with his affected Brooklyn accent, Angelo Dun-Dee. Dundee was the Italian American mentor behind Ali, a strong rebuttal to the anti-white claims of Ali's Black Muslim cohorts. He was part of the reason I adored Ali, unlike most people in Baton Rouge.

After Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing to Vietnam, I defended Ali in a debate with one of our neighbors, a very nice man with a gravelly voice who ran the biggest funeral home in the city and later buried my father. He's gone now, of course; on a visit back to our neighborhood, his wife confided to me that he "wasn't well." We stood in his carport, I defending Ali, and he, a very large man, calling Ali a traitor. The death of Dundee brings it all back. 

I loved all of the iconoclasts of the time: Ali, Joe Namath. They gave me hope of escaping Baton Rouge, although I also had a deep love for it, especially the crazy countercultural world of LSU that I entered into. I believed in Joe Namath, the quarterback who repeatedly carried Bear Bryant's Crimson Tide to wins over our Tigers, and so took him at his word when he guaranted a New York Jets win over the Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Superbowl, and I bet on the Jets against my friend Ray, the greatest athlete I ever knew and the most tragic character as well. How triumphant I was to collect my meagre winnings from Ray the Monday after Namath had engineered his famous upset.

And then there was Gazarra, whom I loved on the TV show "Run for Your Life." Again, that show was a glimmer of hope, a vision of a wider world, beyond Baton Rouge. His character was hip, cool, "existential," although I didn't know what the hell it meant. I'd read it somewhere in one of the magazines I picked up every week at the newsstand in downtown Baton Rouge where I used to go when I began playing hooky from Sunday school at First Presbyterian.  Existenialism: It sounded good to say. The show came on in the loved Thursday night lineup of NBC: Dean Martin's variety show also sticks out, a weekly smashup of Hollywood and Vegas show  biz, that also tantalized my muddled adolescence (Ah, Joey Heatherton, you live in my dreams.)

Later, I loved Gazzara in the John Cassavetes movies we caught at Baton Rouge's Varsity, an art cinema house now a very good restuarant. Ah, the Varsity, where I saw Visconti movies, porn flicks (The Wicked Die Slow) and Zappa's "200 Motels" (horrible). 

Dundee, Gazzara. They loom in my memory and esteem. 

The Pack Sent Packing

Watching the troubles of the Green Bay Packers' Aaron Rogers, I wondered how backup Matt Flynn f LSU fame would have done. Aftter all, Flynn threw six touchdown passes in the Packers' final game of the season. Meanwhile, Rogers was given a rest, and with the bye week, looked out of synch with his receivers. It was as if the Packers were the team unused to the cold of Lambeau Field, and the Giants the home team.

Of course, the rigid NFL "book" says to always stay wih the quarterback deemed the starter, no matter how badly he performs. Back in the day, teams would play two guys, a la Sonny Jurgensen and Billy Kilmer at washington. And, old George Blanda would come in to relieve Darryl Lamonica for the old Oakland A's. That added a level of excitement ot the game.

What's with all of the dropped passes? Max McGee and Boyd Dowler never dropped so many in their entire careers. 

With the losses of Green Bay and New Orleans, the model of high-scoring, sleek offenses and mediocre defenses took a big hit. All season, it appeared as if a new paradigm was taking control in the NFL, but the games this weekend, with the exception of New England's blowout of Dever, showed that defense still matters.

Eli Manning looks like the best QB in the league at present. No one throws so accurately, not even Drew Brees, and he's the closest thing the league has to a classic pocket passer. Some of the blows he took made me shudder, but Eli kept bouncing up. Guess it helps to have grown up as the baby brother in the Manning family.

Watching the Patriots destroy Denver, I could only wonder how in the Broncos beat a team like the Steelers, even if the Steelers missed key guys on defense and Ben Rothliesberger had a bad ankle. So much for the genius of Dick LeBeau.

Well, the mystery of why a penalty wasn't called on the 49ers' Patrick Willis' helmet to helmet hit on the Saints' Pierre Thomas  has been cleared up. According to the rules, such a hit is allowed on a running back who has the ball and is going down field. The penalty is called when a defenseless qb is standing in the pocket, or a receiver is crossing the field without the ball. Small consolation for Thomas.

Manning and Willis give the Ole Miss Rebs two players in the NFC champsionship game. Hard to imagine now the Rebs getting such talent. 

 

When the Saints Go Marching Out of the Playoffs

A few weeks ago, NBC's Chris Collingsworth, one of the many overly talkative commentators who build a longing for John Madden to come back, said Louisiana could have two football titles. Chatty Chris underestimated Louisiana football teams' propensity for shooting themselves in the cleats.

Following LSU's BCS meltdown, in which Les Miles returned to his former frozen-daze on the sidelines, the Saints again failed on the road in the playoffs, committing five turnovers and unable to stop Alex Smith and the 49ers in the last-second drive. How can a team that looks so invincible in the Super Dome look so bad on the road? 

While Drew Brees is the main Saint, Pierre Thomas runs a close second. The Saints are a different team without the hard-running Pierre, who was knocked out of the game early in the first quarter on a vicious hit. By the way, that appeared the type of "helmet to helmet" blow that has received penalties throughout the year, but no flag came down Saturday. I actually prefer games like Saturday's when the refs didn't mar the game with constant penalty calls, in fact not a single one was called against the Saints, but I wondered why an obvious helmet to helmet, resulting in a head injury to Thomas, didn't warrant a penalty. With a penalty call, the Saints would have kept the ball and likely scored, changing the tenor of the game.

Well, no excuses, the 49ers deserved the victory. No team that makes five turnovers should win. The Saints have some young talent with running back Mark Ingram, although his late season injury is troubling, and Jimmy Graham, but the rest of the team is growing older. The disappointing loss left me wondering how many more years of top play are left for Brees and his receiving corps. Climaxing with the great Super Bowl win of now three years ago, this team has been together for quite some time now. 

Leave it to the San Francisco fans to show some admirable wit. Despite the loss, I salute the fan who had the sign, "Who dat? We dat."

In the other Saturday game, The Patriots blowout of the Broncs should dampen Tebow mania for a while. With the Broncs falling behind early, the Broncs' John Fox would have been justified in yanking Tim, but the Tebow tempest prevented that from happening. Despite the loss, the kid is still praiseworthy — he was still playing hard late in the game, jumping up and down after a meaningless gain. And, he was still smiling after the game. As an LSU fan, I hated the kid when he was at Floriday, but now I hope he advances his passing technique during the off season and establishes himself further as an NFL QB. If nothing else, his success would help show that Mel Kiper Jr. along with Collingsworth, should shut up.

The Saints, and Saint Tebow

A lovely winter Saturday, waiting to see if the Saints can whip the 49ers. After the LSU BCS debacle, I would love the healing of a Saints win. As usual, the Saints-49ers game holds SEC ties, with Ole Miss' Patrick Willis leading the '49er defense. I remember him almost single handedly beating LSU on a game I heard over the crackling radio signal from WWL. Only a four or five years ago, unlike today, every game wasn't televised.

After the Saints, I won't be able to hold myself away from watching Tim Tebow and the Broncos take on the Patriots. Saint Tim vs. cool Tim a week after Saint Tim vs. Randy Ben. Now Tebow's really receiving the big media attention, with a front page feature Saturday by The New York Times' Dan Barry and a sidebar by Richard Sandimor, and pieces in the Wall Street Journal.

Funny, Barry used a Jim Thorpe reference about Tom Brady, when I see Tebow as a throwback to the old NFL guys of the 1920s. The way he plunges forward, not sliding to the ground to avoid being hit like other NFL qbs (such as Brady) brings to mind Bronco Nagurski. The kid had some pretty good throws against the Steelers, and it looks as if the Broncos have come up with some plays going left to help him with his southpaw throws. Tebow also reminds me of old guys like Billy Kilmer and Bobby Layne who weren't the greatest passers in the world but just knew how to win. 

The Journal even had a thumb-sucker about whether Tim's wins are divinely inspired. That seems ridiculous, but who knows? In most cases, I would be put off by someone who makes as big a show of religion as Tebow does, but I find his "Tebowing" and praise of Jesus something new and different. It looks like honest emotion, something all too rare in America these days. With all of his modesty and affirmation of his virginity, Tebow does endorse Jockey shorts. I was amused to see that Jockey has posted a photo of Tebow on its web site, wearing Jockeys with no shirt. Hmmm, there is something gay about the way Tim talks. And what's with that beard?

Along with old-time NFL players from the Red Grange era, Tebow recalls a much older tradition, the medieval virtuous knight. His popularity/notoriety proves the power of even ancient cultural icons.

The NFL always succeeds in capturing the public's imagination. Major League baseball and the NBA can't ever find anything as dramatic and controversial as Tebow. God might not be backing the Broncs, but the NfL surely may be. If the Broncos win tonight, will we start to suspect that the games are rigged to get Tebow to the Super Bowl? I generally eschew conspiracy theory thinking, but sometimes I wonder. Just imagine the Saints vs. the Saint. 

Houston Astros Going to the American League

My years as a Houston Astros fan will enter a new stage in a couple of years, when the 'Stros head into the American League. From reports, Major League Baseball bribed the new owner, whose name I don't recall presently, by greatly reducing the purchase price for the team, which might have been the worst in baseball history last year. As an Astros fan, I had the unpleasantness of watching former Astros players on almost every playoffs team this fall. Perhaps the new guy can use the payoff money from MLB to rebuild the franchise, just recently quite competitive.

I guess it won't make much difference to me seeing the Astros in the American League, although ever since I was a child I've thought of the Astros as a National League team. Long before the days of interleague play, which will become more common when the Astros leap to join the Texas Rangers in the A.L. West, the 'Stros played the Giants, the Dodgers, the Cardinals, the Braves. Now they'll be playing the Red Sox, the White Sox, the Yankees, etc. 

Gee, my first major league game was seeing the Cardinals play the then .Colt 45s, when the Astrodome was a rising skeleton seen from our seats in the brutally hot, open air Colt stadium. There I was with my late father, my late grandfather and a neighbor, Richard. We had made the trip from Baton Rouge to Houston on U.S. 90 through Jim Bowie and Cat Doucet's Opelousas and Lake Charles and Orange; I-10 had not yet beeen completed. The young Bob Gibson was on the mound for the Cardinals, and the aging Stan Musial in the dugout, although Stan the Man did play in the second game of the twi-night double header. While the Cards had Lou Brock, Bill White, Dick Groat, etc., the 'Stros had the likes of Turk Farrell, Bob Aspromonte (LA Dodgers farm club product) and the 19-year-old Rusty Staub, fresh out of Jesuit High in New Orleans. 

Over the years, I spent many a sultry night on a front porch in Baton Rouge, listening to the 'Stros, slowly shifting over the years from iced tea to beer to bourbon, back to iced tea. The names: the Rooster, Doug Rader; the Flea, Bob Lillis;  the Toy Cannon, Jimmy Winn. The 'Stros. Trading away Rusty Staub because owner Judge Hofeinz got pissed when Staub refused to play on Vietnam Moratorium Day. Trading away Joe Morgan. Trading away Mike Cuellar. Cesar Cedeno. The killer Bs. Roy Oswalt. Nolan Ryan. Fat Elvis, Lance Berkman. (Speaking of Fat Elvis, I once saw him perform in the Astrodome, but that's another story). Yes, the 'Stros had some great years, before wrecking the franchise again.

Well, once again, as with the college conference realignments, tradition goes by the wayside in the interests of money. The 'Stros in the American League. Sure, I'll buy it.