My Life in Sports

2010-10-05T10:47:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Having just watched two disgraceful performances by my two favorite professional football teams, I'm ready to declare what I've felt all along: the college game is better. The players may not be as good or as well coached. They're certainly less experienced. Perhaps their game is less nuanced, less full-bodied. But, like a nouveau beaujolais compared to a mature cabernet, it is by far more sprightly. It is, I suppose, a matter of taste and while my palate tends to favor a big red wine, in football give me the saucier version.

Never has there been a better example of the divide between the two games than on the week-end just concluded with the New England Patriots 41-14 whomping of the Miami Dolphins. Saturday was a football fan's delight. I saw my first college football game 63 years ago (Notre Dame 26, Northwestern 19) and I've seen hundreds more since, most of them from a press box as a sports writer for The Chicago Tribune. I've seen some of the most storied games in college football history, from Texas' 15-14 national championship clinching victory over Arkansas in 1969 to Nebraska's 35-31 thriller over Oklahoma in 1971 to Miami's 26-25 win at Florida State in 1987 when Bobby Bowden went for two in the closing seconds and didn't make it.

Since retiring 14 years ago, almost all of my football viewing has been on television. It's not as rich an experience as being there. There's nothing like the feeling on a college campus on a football Saturday. But TV does give you the chance to watch many games on the same day. It's the rare game, especially a game featuring one of the elite teams, that you can't find somewhere on the television spectrum.

A baseball team owner once told me he loved the game because "there's an orgasm in every ball game." What he meant, he explained, was that in even the most one-sided game there comes a moment when one pitch, one swing of the bat, can turn the tide of the ball game. If the same is true of college football, then Saturday ws multiorgasmic. There were more choices for the football connoisseur than you'll find on the menu of your favorite Italian restaurant.

For my antipasto I chose Northwestern vs. Minnesota, a game won by the Wildcats, 29-28, on a last minute field goal by a kicker whose earlier missed extra point had been the reason his team was two points behind (the missed kick had forced Northwestern to try a two-point conversion after its next touchdown). For the second course I passed on Michigan State-Wisconsin, a battle of ranked unbeatens and chose to look in on Michigan at Indiana, mainly to watch Wolverine wunderkind Denard Robinson. The Michigan sophomore delivered a masterpiece, scoring on a 72-yard run the first time he carried the ball, and carrying the Wolverines on his back in the final minute on a 73-yard drive that ended with his 4-yard run for the game-winning touchdown. Somewhere in the post game wrapup I discovered that Tennessee had a 14-10 lead at LSU with a second left to play. I hastily scanned my TV listings and switched to that game just in time to see new Tennessee coach Derek Dooley angrily throw what appeared to be a radio handset to the ground and stalk off the field. That's when I found out that Tennessee actually had stopped LSU's last second try, but was penalized for having 13 men on the field. Since a game cannot end on a defensive penalty, LSU was awarded a play after time had expired. This time the Tigers had hammered it home and, since there were now about 10,013 men--and some women-- on the field, didn't try, or need, the extra point.

After a brief timeout to recharge my taste buds, I ordered dessert. I could have chosen the No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 7 Florida concoction, which came highly recommended, but chose to go with the high-calorie special, Stanford at Oregon. Good choice. After falling behind 21-3 in the first quarter, Oregon stormed back for a 52-31 victory, which not only was highly entertaining, but ultimately pushed the Ducks into the No. 3 spot in both national polls. Those who opted for the Alabama-Florida game were disappointed by a Florida team that collapsed like a soggy souffle. Oh, and did I mention that somewhere in the course of the evening I saw Washington beat Southern Cal 32-31 on a game-ending field goal? What a football Saturday it was !

Now it was the NFL's turn to strut its stuff. It's not that I don't like pro football. I've seen my share of big NFL games, but few of them have been truly exciting. In fact, the most famous game I covered, the Franco Harris "immaculate reception" game, was downright boring until the final two minutes. I covered 10 Super Bowls and only one of them was truly entertaining. I'll admit that in the last few years the Super bowl has produced some thrillers, the lone exception in the last five games being the Bears' humdrum loss to the Indianapolis Colts when the highlight for us Bear fans was the opening kickoff.

I didn't watch any of Sunday afternoon's NFL games, chosing to take my wife to a movie and maintain family tranquility rather than watch the Donovan McNab-Michael Vick showdown. Another good choice. From what I read in Monday's paper the movie (Jack Goes Boating) was better than any of the games and, as a reward for being a good boy, I got to watch the Bears-Giants game Sunday night (with an hour's break for "Dexter" in the first half.) It might have been the dullest football game in history and Bears' quarterback Jay Cutler probably is lucky that his ninth sack in the first half resulted in a concussion that, hopefuly, left him unable to remember the dirty details.

Then, last night brought the Patriots' romp over the Dolphins in which the Miami special teams unit gave away three touchdowns, a performance so awful that a local writer described it as "The Triple Crown of Terrible." I fell asleep in the second quarter of this one and woke up just as Brandon Tate was returning the second half kickoff for a New England touchdown. I soon went back to sleep and so did the Dolphins.

2010-09-15T11:44:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Every so often, like maybe once a century or two, there occurs something so delicious, so right, that even a confirmed atheist might have to admit "maybe there is a God." This kind of near-epiphany happened for me a few weeks ago when I saw Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl blubbering like a baby on national TV. Perhaps Pearl was crying over the $1,500,00 that Tennessee is going to deduct from his paychecks over the next five years. Or was it just a reaction to his being exposed as a liar and a hypocrite? Pearl has admitted to lying and deliberately misleading the NCAA in its investigation of alleged violations in his basketball program.

This is the same Bruce Pearl who, two decades ago, sent a memo to the NCAA accusing Illinois basketball coaches of several violations in the recruitment of Chicago high school phenom Deon Thomas. Chief among the allegations was the charge that Jimmy Collins, then an assistant to Lou Henson at Illinois, had offered the 6-9 Thomas a car and $80,000 to play for the Illini. Pearl, then an assistant at Iowa, also sent a tape that he said he had made during a telephone call to Thomas after the Simeon High star had signed with Illinois.

"What has never been told," says Collins, "is that there were 18 phone converstions and out of all that he sent four inches of tape to the NCAA and the tape was spliced." After 16 months of investigation the NCAA cleared Collins of the charges, but found the school guilty of the dreaded "lack of institutional control," a catchall phrase that means, "we know you did something but we can't figure out what."

Neither Collins nor fellow Illinois assistant Mark Coombs shed any crocodile tears over the plight of Bruce, who, in addition to the lost income will be restricted to on campus recruiting for a year-- and that's just the punishment doled out by Tennessee. The NCAA has yet to conclude its own investigation. "I'm not angry anymore," says Collins, "but for me to say, 'I'm going to take the high road and say I feel sorry for Bruce,' my nose would grow like Pinocchio's." If anything Coombs, who spent the last 13 years of his coaching career as an assistant to Collins at Illinois-Chicago, is even more bitter about Pearl's role in the Thomas affair. "Justice will be served," Coombs says. "You don't want to wish ill on anybody, but what he did had a devastating effect on our program and on my professional career."

The professional paths of Pearl and the two former Illinois assistants were destined to cross again when Pearl became head coach of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which is in the same conference as Illinois-Chicago. In the four years Pearl coached in Milwaukee before going on to Tennessee he and Collins never shook hands after a game." "It was very tense," Coombs remembers. Pearl was immediately successful as a head coach and took Wisconsin-Milwaukee as far as the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament. There his journey ended in a loss to, ironically, Illinois, but it was Pearl's springboard to the Tennessee job.

I was covering Illinois basketball during the recruitment of Thomas and never felt there was any substance to Pearl's charges. Why would Thomas not want to go to Illinois where two of his former Simeon High school teammates already were playing for Henson? I admit I was somewhat biased because I had a personal relationship with Henson. My wife, Leslie, and I played bridge with Lou and Mary Henson and sometimes spent week-ends in their home. Leslie attended the wedding of one of the Henson daughters and I drove down to Champaign for the funeral of their son, Lou Jr. During the investigation, Henson and I often walked together in the morning, going inside the Assembly hall to walk during inclement weather. During one such morning constitutional I asked Lou whether there was any chance there was any truth to Pearl's charges and as best as I can recall, his answer was: "I don't think so. Jimmy tells me there isn't and I believe him." And I believed Lou. To those who don't know Henson the first impression might be, "would I buy a used car from this man?" and the answer is "yes." I have never met a sports writer who didn't like and trust Lou Henson, even the most cynical among us.

During the NCAA's investigation, Illinois hired a lawyer named Mike Slive to represent it. Slive and his partner, Mike Glazier, specialized in representing institutions under NCAA investigation. Glazier is still in the business, but Slive moved into athletic administrtion and is currently the commissioner of the Southeast Conference--of which Tennessee is a prominent member.

Collins says he didn't see Pearl's tear-filled mea culpa on national TV, but "five or six coaches called me right away. It's just ironic how a person who preached integrity and said it was his duty, that he had a calling and a need to turn us in, now says it's not good to tell the truth most of the time. I've known Bruce fo many, many years. He didn't just start doing what he got caught doing. He's a master of deception. I think he's a really good coach, but if you look up the definition of the word 'honesty' Bruce Pearl's picture definitely will not be there."

2010-09-07T06:17:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Like the little engine that could, the Boise State football express is still chugging along. The track ahead is clear and there appears to be nothing to keep the Broncos from high balling into a national championship game. It seems absurd on the face of it to declare any team a sure thing after only one game, let alone hitching a band wagon to a school from an outpost so remote it may as well be in outer space. As a longtime college football writer for the Chicago Tribune, I thought I had been to every campus that housed a football team that mattered, but I've never been to Boise State. In fact, Idaho is one of the four states in the continental United States I've never visited. All I knew about Idaho was that Ernest Hemingway shot himself there and that they grow potatoes in profusion. But since retiring more than a dozen years ago, like a lot of other college football fans, I've fallen in love with Boise State.

What's not to love? The Broncos have overcome nearly impossible odds to put their state, their city, and their blue carpeted football stadium on the map. In the last eight years a Boise State loss in football has been as rare as a Republican alderman in Chicago. They've so dominated the Western Athletic Conference that they might as well be awarded the championship trophy at the end of spring practice. They're 60-1 in conference play in that time, the lone loss a 27-20 defeat at Fresno State in 2005, a year that will live in infamy in Boise. Their record that year was 9-4 and it included the most painful loss in school history. The Broncos had come swaggering into Georgia for the season opener as no one had since General Sherman. This time it was the interloper who got torched. The Broncos took such a dreadful whipping between the hedges that they may still be feeling the sting to this day. Certainly, that 48-13 loss may still be a factor in Boise State's ongoing quest for respect. The not ready for prime time Broncos began burnishing their image the next year when they went 13-0, including a 43-42 thriller over Oklahoma in what many believe was the best college football game ever. Coming as it did in the Fiesta Bowl, one of the BCS venues that had previously been closed to the upstart Broncos, it opened some eyes. When Boise State went 14-0 last season, including another Fiesta bowl victory, the impossible gave way to the merely improbable. Considering that they return 20 of their 22 starters, the Broncos can be forgiven for chanting, "We know we can, we know we can."

And, using their No. 3 preseason ranking and Monday night's 33-30 win over a ranked opponent, on the road, as a springboard, yes they can. They will need to run the table to even get a chance to play for the title. That certainly appears doable, with the toughest test coming up in three weeks against Oregon State. But that game will be played on the friendly blue turf in Boise, where the Broncos have been as untouchable as Elliott Ness. After that it's the usual suspects, all of whom will be huge underdogs. That is not only the Broncos' blessing, but their curse. The strength of schedule issue is not going to go away. If the two teams ranked ahead of them, Alabama and Ohio State, go undefeated, there's no way Boise State gets a sniff of the title game. That's probably fair. Do Alabama and Ohio State face tougher opposition than Boise State? Yes they do. But whether they can weather the tough conference grind is another story. My guess is that they'll both have at least one loss come bowl time. In fact, with Alabama hosting Penn State and Ohio State hosting Miami this Saturday, it's entirely possible that Boise State could be No.1 by Sunday morning. This Saturday, in fact, is a pivotal one for several teams. Florida State travels to Oklahoma in one crucial contest where we'll find out if the Seminoles' 59-6 rout of Samford trumps the Sooners' pedestrian one touchdown win over Utah State. While neither Notre Dame nor Michigan figures to challenge for the national title, their Saturday showdown in South Bend is one of the most important the two bigtime schools have played. It will be a small step forward for the winner, but a huge step backward for the loser.

In addition to the race for the national championship, the race for the Heisman trophy will swing into high gear. The campaign for Boise State quarterback Kellen Moore nearly sank along with the Broncos' title hopes Monday night, but Moore brought it all back when he led his team to the winning touchdown with just 69 seconds remaining. Until then, Moore had been outplayed by Virginia Tech's Tyrod Taylor. Moore was one of the preseason favorites, but the Heisman does not always go to a known quantity. Who had ever heard of Mark Ingram before the Alabama sophomore running back won it last year? With Ingram possibly out for a second week after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery, his hopes for a repeat appear to be fading fast. Stepping forward just as fast could be Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson, who set a school record with 383 yards last Saturday in a victory over Connecticut. Robinson has the quirky habit of never tying his shoe laces. So if he falls flat on his face against the Irish, you'll know why.

2010-08-24T12:45:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

By rights, I should have been in class at the University of Illinois-Chicago. But I had gone instead to my dentist, who also was my cousin, to have an abcessed tooth extracted. Those were not the golden days of dentistry and I was in considerable pain, an ice pack planted against my swollen jaw, as I watched the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants battle for the National league pennant in the rubber match of their three game playoff series.

The Giants had been chasing the Dodgers for seven frantic weeks, having fallen behind by 13 1/2 games in mid-August. There was no way the Giants were going to do it. It was like asking a sprinter to give Usain Bolt a 10-meter head start in a 100 -meter dash. But the Giants went 37-7 over the final 44 games and finally caught up with the hated inter-borough rivals on the final day of the season. Now, it appeared that it was all in vain. Entering the ninth inning, the Dodgers had a 4-1 lead and their ace, Don Newcombe, pitching. I was rooting for the Giants for reasons I cannot now remember or explain and I saw no reason to be optimistic. Newcombe had already thrown 18 complete games and seemed to be in total command. But by the time Bobby Thomson stepped into the batter's box with one out, there were runners at second and third and the deficit was only 4-2. I was beginning to regain hope, because Newcombe was out of the game and even if reliever Ralph Branca handled Thomson, he still had to contend with the ondeck hitter, Willie Mays.

Thomson had beaten Branca and the Dodgers with a two-run homer in the first game of the playoff series, but I was looking only for a single, which would tie the game. Thomson was looking for more and Branca was looking for a place to hide after Thomson poked the ball barely over the short left field fence in the Polo Grounds. It wasn't the longest home run ever hit, but it was the most dramatic and it made legends out of both Thomson and Giants' announcer Russ Hodges, whose call: "The Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant," resonates down through the ages. I can still see Dodger left fielder Andy Pafko slumped against the left field wall, having run out of real estate in his vain chase of the lethal fly ball, I can still see Eddie Stanky jumping into Leo Durocher's arm as the jubilant Giants swarmed the field. It was then and remains still baseball's most memorable moment.

Thomson's passing last week brought back those memories in technicolor, strange, because the game was played in black and white. It got me to thinking: What other single moments will be remembered as long as baseball is played. If you want to walk down that road, however, you'd better beware. As Harry Caray used to say when a tough hitter stepped up to the plate: "There's danger here, Cheri." It is all too easy to get caught up in the moment and image that moment will linger into eternity. I confess I've been guilty of it myself. I remember a game where the Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder, Matty Alou, dropped a fly ball that gave the Chicago Cubs a critical victory late in the 1970 season. Writing for the Chicago Tribune, I said that the play would live in infamy or some such balderdash, but in reality it was long forgotten by the time the Pirates had won the N.L. East by five games over the Cubs. Later that year, while covering my first world series game, I wrote that a pivotal play at the plate, which gave the Baltimore Orioles a 4-3 win over Cincinnati, would be remembered for as long as the world series was played. Except for the players involved, I'm probably the only one who remembers it. But baseball, perhaps because of the nature of the game, the rhythm of the season, probably has more myth-making moments than any other sport. Here are my top 10:

No. 10--Ted Williams hits three-run homer off Claude Passeau with two out in the bottom of the ninth to give American League a 7-5 victory over the Nationals in the 1941 All-Star game. Or, if you prefer, Williams' four hit, two homer performance in a 12-0 rout of the NL in the 1946 game. The second blast came off Rip Sewell's famous ephus pitch.

No. 9--Ozzie Smith's walkoff homer in the fifth game of the 1985 NLCS, made memorable because it was his first ever homer as a left handed hitter after 3009 at bats. Also memorable was Jack Buck's call: "Go crazy, folks. Go crazy."

No.8--Ray Chapman dies after beaning. Chapman, the Cleveland Indians shortstop, was not a run-of-the-mill player. He was a gifted fielder, who batted .300 or better three times and led the Indians in steals four times. He was hitting .303 with 97 runs scored at the time of his death. On Aug. 16, 1920, Chapman, who apparently did not see the ball clearly, was hit in the head by Yankees pitcher Carl Mays. The sound of the impact was so loud that Mays, thinking the ball had contacted Chapman's bat, fielded the ball and threw it to first base. Accounts vary, but Chapman apparently took a step toward first base before collapsing. He was helped off the field, supported by several players, and taken to a hospital, where he died 12 hours later. The Indians went on to win their first ever pennant and world series.

No.7--Gabby Hartnett's "homer in the gloamin'." Trailing the Pirates by 1/2 game, the Cubs entertained Pittsburgh in Wrigley Field on Sept. 28, 1938. Going into the bottom of the ninth the score was tied 5-5. Darkness was closing in and Wrigley, of course, would not get lights for another 45 years. It was obvious the umpires were going to call the game after the Cubs' final at bat and the game would need to be replayed. But Hartnett, the Cubs' catcher and manager, took matters into his own hands when he sent a two-out, two-strike pitch screaming into the gathering dark. The Cubs went on to win the pennant.

No.6--The Merkle bonehead play. Locked in a tight pennant race, the Chicago Cubs and New York Giants met on Sept. 23, 1908, in New York. With the game tied in the ninth and Moose McCormick on first, Merkle, a 19-year-old rookie and the youngest player in the majors, singled McCormick around to third. Al Bridwell's single brought McCormick home with the winning run and thousands of ecstatic fans swarmed onto the field. But, wait. In part to protect himself from the mob, Merkle got halfway to second and peeled off to get to the Giants' dugout. Seeing this Cubs' second baseman Johnny Evers called for the ball. One was produced from somewhere and Evers tagged second base, essentially forcing Merkle at second. Evers appealed to umpire Hank O'Day, who ruled that Merkle was out. The game was ruled a tie and when the two teams tied for first place in the National league it was replayed, again in New York. The Cubs went on to win the game, the pennant, and the world series. Little did they know that 102 years later they'd still be looking for another world championship

No.5--Willie Mays' catch. The Cleveland Indians were heavy favorites to beat the New York Giants in the 1954 world series. But in Game one in the Polo Grounds, Mays made a catch that turned the entire series upside down. With two runners on base the Indians' Vic Wertz launched a drive to dead center field where the wall stood nearly 500 feet from home plate. It appeared a certainty that the drive would easily score both runners, but Mays turned his back to the plate and sprinted in hot pursuit, finally making an over-the-shoulder basket catch a few strides from the wall. The Giants went on to win the game and the series in a stunning four-game sweep.

No. 4--Bill Mazeroski's walkoff homer. It was game seven in the 1960 World Series and the Yankees had just tied the game 9-9 with a pair of runs in the top of the ninth. But the tie didn't last long. Mazeroski, not known as a home run hitter, drove a Ralph Terry pitch over the wall, the first walkoff homer in a world series clinching game. It was a strange series in other ways. The Yankees' three wins were by scores of 12-0, 10-0, and 16-3. The Pirates four wins all were in tight games. Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson had a monumental series, with 11 hits, five of them for extra bases, and 12 runs batted in. But it was the Pirates' second baseman who always will be remembered.

No.3--Babe Ruth's called shot. This one is as close to myth as it is to reality. Did Babe Ruth point to center field in Wrigley field, before launching a titanic homer to that very spot in the 1932 world series? Who knows? Who cares? It may be a made up story, but its such a good story it's not going to die. I once looked up the Tribune sports page for the day after the Ruthian swat and found that of the half dozen writers who had stories or columns that day only Westbrook Pegler referred to the called shot.

No.2--Kirk Gibson's shocker. Gibson was not supposed to play in the 1988 world series, having injured both legs in the NLCS victory over the Mets. That's one reason the Oakland A's were the heavy favorites to win the series. Gibson was just a spectator for eight and a half innings, but in the bottom of the ninth with two out and a man on base, trailing 4-3, Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda called for his MVP. Gibson limped to the plate, ran the count to 3-2 against relief ace Dennis Eckersley, then bashed the game-winner into the right field seats. He limped around the bases, pumping his fist, while Jack Buck screamed into his microphone, "I can't believe what I just saw." Neither could most fans. That was to be Gibson's lone appearance in the series, but it inspired his teammates to a five-game series triumph.

No. 1--Thomson's homer, of course.

2010-08-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Before pronouncing the last rites over Tiger Woods' career, it might be well to make sure that the deceased is really dead. Although we are all aware that Woods shot a career worst 18 over par in last week-end's Bridgestone Invitational, very few of us actually witnessed the ghastly event. So wretchedly did Woods perform that by the week-end, when the majority of viewers are free to watch golf on television, Tiger was relegated to the dawn patrol, seen only in sound bites, having started--and finished--his rounds before the live cameras were turned on. Perhaps it's just as well. Even those who can no longer abide the sight of the once universally admired golfer would not have enjoyed watching his self-immolation. My first thought was of the last words of Edward G. Robinson's character in the movie "Little Caesar." A depression era gangster modelled on Al Capone, the mortally wounded Rico Bandello, chillingly portrayed by Robinson, gasps: "Can this be the end of Rico?

Can this be the end of Tiger? Probably not. Can this be the end of the Tiger Woods who has dominated golf almost from the day he earned his pro tour card? Much more likely. Woods' fall from the pinnacle of his profession to the depths of golfing hell is shocking and unprecedented. I've tried to think of another athlete in any sport who has fallen so far and so fast. I can't. First of all, few athletes have ever risen to the heights that Woods attained. Sure, baseball has had its Steve Blass, a world series hero one year, a has-been pitcher the next, unable to throw the ball over the plate if his livelihood depended on it. Which it did. The Chicago Cubs even now are wondering what happened to Carlos Zambrano, a double digit winner for six consecutive seasons who started going south almost the very minute he signed a mega-million dollar contract.

Likewise the Detroit Tigers, who acquired Dontrelle Willis in a trade three years after the crowd pleasing lefty had won 22 games for the Florida Marlins. The Tigers shuttled the increasingly ineffective pitcher back and forth to the minors for two years before finally shuffling him off to Arizona. Fortunately for Detroit General Manager Dave Dombrowski's sanity the trade with the Marlins also brought them Miguel Cabrera, one of the game's elite hitters. Probably an even better example is another Detroit pitcher from an earlier era, Mark Fidrych, who captivated baseball fans in his rookie year when he went 19-9 with 24 complete games and did it with panache. He won only 10 games over the next four seasons and was out of baseball at the age of 26. But none of those pitchers was even close to being the dominant performer that Woods has been.

The closest I can come to finding a precedent for Tiger's situation is race car driver Tim Richmond, who burst onto the scene in 1980 as rookie of the year in Indianapolis and two months later embarked on a NASCAR career that would see him win 13 races in a six-year span. The last two years of his life would be shrouded in mystery and controversy. He died in 1989 at the age of 34, having lived the life advocated by Nick Romano, the hero of Willard Motley's novel "Knock on Any Door," whose mantra was: Live fast, die young, and have a good looking corpse. I covered the 1980 Indy 500 for the Chicago Tribune and although I knew him for only three weeks, Richmond became one of my favorite drivers. He was the talk of the Speedway in the week leading up to qualifying, but on pole day he crashed during the morning practice. That cost him any shot at the pole, but he qualified with relative ease and was racy enough on race day to earn Rookie of the Year honors. He led one lap, finished ninth and ran out of fuel with three laps to go. The last I ever saw of him he was hitching a ride back to the pits on race winner Johnny Rutherford's front wing. The crowd loved it. A few months later, Richmond switched to NASCAR and I switched to baseball, but I followed his progress as best I could. He mostly was spinning his wheels for the first five years, but in 1986 came a switch to the Rick Hendricks team and a breakthrough year. He won seven races that year and finished third in the point standings. But he missed the Daytona 500 at the start of the 1987 season and already the rumors were starting. He was on drugs. He had AIDS. The official reason for his absence was described as double pneumonia. He came back later in the year to win back-to-back races at Pocono and Riverside, two of his favorite tracks. He raced only once more that year and in September resigned from the Hendricks team. His final days were dogged by continuing rumors. He attempted a comeback in 1988, but NASCAR banned him for alleged drug violations which he disputed until his dying day, Aug. 13, 1989. The cause of death was listed as AIDS, which he was said to have contracted from an unknown woman.

Motor racing at the time was only a niche sport and Richmond was nowhere near to being as famous as Tiger Woods. But his story might well serve as a cautionary tale. While Tiger is trying to sort out his life and his game, and fans wonder whether it's his driving or his putting that that has led to his startling collapse, the answer is obvious. It's the rut iron, as writer Dan Jenkins so succinctly described it. The driving and the putting can be fixed, although it won't be at this week's PGA championship, the last of this year's four majors. For once the venue, Whistling Straits, seems to have Woods overmatched, considering its length and devilish contours and the state of his game. What will be harder to fix will be the damage Woods has done himself with the rut iron. Perhaps he should just keep it in his bag.

2010-07-27T11:34:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

"There was a guy from The Chicago Tribune who. . . ." Before Dean Smith could finish the sentence, the first he had ever spoken to me, I jumped in and confessed, "Yeah that was me." I had gone to Chapel Hill in the late spring of 1976 to do a story on the U.S. Olympic basketball team, which had assembled at the University of North Carolina to begin working out for the Montreal Games coming up that summer. Smith was going to coach the team, which he himself had hand picked. In constructing his roster the Tar Heels coach had leaned rather heavily on Atlantic Coast conference players. Too heavily, I thought. This was a critical year in U.S. Olympic basketball history. The 1972 team had suffered a stunning upset loss to Russia in the Gold Medal game in Munich and Smith was charged with assembling and coaching a team that would restore the United States to its rightful place at the top of the world. Most Americans felt that the Gold Medal had been stolen by the Russians, not earned. After all, an amazing string of foul-ups by the officials had given the Russians three chances to score the winning basket after time had seemingly expired. We wuz robbed, was the consensus opinion. But I had covered the game and the reality was that the U.S. had trailed throughout and took its only lead of the game when Doug Collins nailed two free throws with a few seconds remaining. We might have been robbed, but what were we doing in that neighborhood in the first place?

I put the blame on Coach Hank Iba, whose slow tempo style of play turned a bunch of thorobreds into a collection of dray horses. Now it was up to Smith to make things right again and, looking at the roster he'd assembled, I wasn't optimistic that he could do it. When I approached him in his office I was prepared for a tongue lashing or at least a verbal shot or two, but Smith couldn't have been nicer. He explained to me why he had made certain choices and, as it turned out, they were the right choices. Although this was the first time I had met Smith I'd been aware of him for years. He had played, as a reserve, on the Kansas team that won the NCAA tournament in 1952 and was on the squad I saw play at Missouri my first year in journalism school, 1953. The Jayhawks reached the NCAA finals again that year, but lost to Indiana by a point.

Smith was already a well-known coach by the time I really got to know him. By that time I was no longer writing a column but was The Tribune's national writer for college football and basketball. I had approached him about doing an in depth interview, but he said he didn't want the spotlight on himself. I told him it would be a story about the team and he agreed to meet me in his hotel room before a game at Clemson. I don't recall any of the conversation, but I do recall that it was a good interview. After that, whenever we ran into each other, Smith would call me by name and we'd exchange pleasantries. That's why I was saddened to read last week that Smith has suffered such severe memory loss that he cannot remember the names of some of his players and most certainly would not recall mine.

"There was a guy from the Chicago Tribune who. . . . . " "Yeah, that was me." When you write about sports for 35 years there are going to be times when you'll ruffle some feathers. I was not known as a "ripper," but nonetheless there were more than a few times when I had to steel myself for a confrontation with a player or coach I had criticized. Usually, the converstion would start out just as I have written here. I would introduce myself as Bob Markus from the Chicago Tribune and . . . ."there was a guy from the Chicago Tribune who wrote that golfers are not athletes," said Arnold Palmer when we had lunch together a few months after I had written just that, on the occasion of Palmer's being named Athlete of the Decade. "Yeah," I replied, "that was me." "Aw, that's all right," Arnie said before making a pretty good argument that golfers are athletes.

"There was a guy from the Chicago Tribune who. . . ." said Billy Martin and, "yeah that was me," I replied. Martin then went off on a 10-minute tirade about the column I had written about his role in a brawl after a bat throwing incident in the 1972 American League Championship season. Martin was managing the Detroit Tigers at the time and his pitcher had just plunked Oakland's Bert Campaneris in the ankle in response to Campy's multihit, two-steal performance. Campaneris had responded by throwing his bat at LaGrow, who fortunately ducked it and then the proverbial all hell broke loose. In the aftermath Martin demanded that Campaneris be banned for life and I felt compelled to remind him that he himself had once charged the mound and thrown a punch at a Chicago Cubs' pitcher, who, unlike LaGrow, did not duck and suffered a fractured cheek bone. In spring training of 1973 I was visiting the Tigers camp in Lakeland when Joe Falls, an iconic columnist in Detroit, approached with a twinkle in his eye and asked sweetly, "Have you ever met Billy Martin?" "No," I said. "I'll introduce you." After Martin finally ran out of verbal steam, he patiently answered all my questions and we never had another problem.

"There was a guy from The Chicago Tribune who. . . . "said Don Shula and "Yeah, that was me," I admitted. Shula was referring to a question I had asked at the previous year's Super Bowl. I can't remember how the question was phrased but I recall it concerned Mercury Morris and the way Shula had handled him. Shula's famous jaw became even more pronounced than usual and he bawled me out in front of my peers for a few minutes before turning to other matters. Now, it was the opening day of the Miami Dolphins' training camp and I was there to cover the camp for the two weeks leading up to the Tribune-sponsored College All-Star Game. I had introduced myself to Shula in his room and he had said, "There was a guy. . . . ." I explained to him that the question actually was meant to produce a positive reaction and that I was sorry if he took it another way. That was the last time it was ever mentioned and we became friends. I eventually learned there was little reason to ask Shula any questions, particularly after a game. He was hands down the best postgame interview in football. You'd go into the locker room with a half dozen questions in mind and he'd answer every one of them in his opening statement and even cover a few points you hadn't even thought of.

"There was a guy from Chicago who. . . ."This was Alex Johnson talking, an angry looking Alex Johnson and he was referring to a column I'd written the previous fall after his California Angels teammates had stopped speaking to him and the team had suspended him. I pointed out that he needed help, not punishment. I wrote that he had "a devil inside him" and Johnson interpreted that to mean he was the devil. "Did you write that?" he demanded. Under the circumstances I didn't say "Yeah, that was me," but rationalized that I didn't think I had actually called him a devil, so I answered, "I'm not certain. When I get home I'll look it up and next time I see you I'll let you know." You do that," he said. The first time the Cleveland Indians, his new team, came to Chicago, I made out my will, kissed my wife and kids goodby and went to Comiskey Park. I entered the visiting clubhouse, which was only about half full and instantly spotted Johnson. I went over and began, "I'm Bob. . . . " "I know who you are you %&$. Get out of my face or I'll . . ." I did not wait to find out what . . .meant.

2010-07-13T13:01:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

I think I understand now. I think I know what they mean when they speak of six degrees of separation. They mean that if you take two people, any two people, you can link them together through a chain of association comprising no more than six links. For example: I know Tony LaRussa through covering the White Sox when he was their manager. Tony is good friends with rocker Brian Wilson, leader of the Beach Boys. Wilson undoubtedly has played before someone who knows someone who knows someone who has bought milk from a goat herder in Afghanistan. Therefore there is a link between me and said goatherd, although I've never been to Afghanistan and most certainly never will.

In the past week there have been four men in the news who are separated from me by far fewer than six degrees. It's even easier to connect the dots among the four of them. Don Coryell. Dan Gilbert. Bob Sheppard. George Steinbrenner. Steinbrenner, who was The Boss when Bruce Springsteen had only gotten as far as D Street, died this morning, just a few days after Sheppard, the elegant voice of the Yankees for more than a half century, passed away at the age of 99. Coryell, whom I knew as coach of the St. Louis football Cardinals long before he brought Air Coryell to the San Diego Chargers, died last week. Gilbert, the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, is still with us, but may have committed professional suicide with his impassioned diatribe against the "disloyal" Lebron James. The letter played well in Cleveland, but it might not play so well among future free agent prospects or in a court of law should James decide to sue over allegations he laid down against the Boston Celtics in the NBA playoffs. It's unlikely James will go to court, but Gilbert's wallet is already $100,000 lighter, courtesy of NBA Commissioner David Stern.

Steinbrenner is the most obvious link to the other three. He may or may not have known Gilbert, but they had this in common: Steinbrenner once owned a professional basketball team in Cleveland. Unlike Gilbert's Cavaliers, Steinbrenner's Cleveland Pipers won the ABL championship in their lone season in the league before it folded. Tellingly, the Pipers changed coaches in midseason, although John McClendon was not fired, but resigned. Bill Sharman ended up coaching the team for the rest of that championship season. Steinbrenner grew up in Cleveland, earned his first million in Cleveland, and tried to buy the Indians before ending up purchasing the Yankees for a reported $10 million in 1973. The franchise is said to be worth $1 billion today. Steinbrenner was known as a demanding owner, who fired managers and general managers more often than Reggie Jackson uses the first person singular when discussing great players. In his first 23 years, The Boss hired and fired 20 managers, including Billy Martin five times. In 1981 he replaced Gene Michaels with Bob Lemon and won the American league pennant. The next year the Yankees got off to a bad start and Steinbrenner canned Lemon--and brought back Michaels.

I covered the '81 world series and have two memories of it. Most vivid was Goose Gossage drilling Dodgers' third baseman Ron Cey on the helmet and Cey living to tell about it. The second was sitting in front of Steinbrenner in the press box and listening to the Yankees owner berating right fielder Dave Winfield, whom he had signed to a then-record 10-year $23 million contract. Winfield went 1-for-22 in his first world series, eventually causing Steinbrenner to complain: "We need a Mr. October. Winfield is Mr. May." Nor did relations between the two get any better. Winfield eventually sued Steinbrenner for breach of contract and The Boss responded by paying a petty crook $40,000 to "dig up some dirt" on the outfielder. That earned Steinbrenner a "lifetime" suspension, which was later rescinded. It was the second time the Yankees owner had been suspended, the first coming after he pleaded guilty to making illegal contributions to Richard Nixon's re-election campaign.

Managers and GMs were not the only ones to feel the boss's wrath when things went wrong. Only a handful of employees stayed the whole course with the demanding Steinbrenner. One of them, of course, was Sheppard, he of the cultivated voice who added a touch of class to the Yankee Stadium scene. His classic call: Now batting for the Yankees, number 2, the shortstop, Derek Jeter. Number 2. Jeter was so taken with the presentation that he asked to have it recorded and used whenever he comes to bat.

Steinbrenner's relationship to Coryell is a little more tenuous, but only a little. Steinbrenner spent three seasons as an assistant football coach in the Big 10 before going back to Cleveland to take over the family business, which was shipbuilding. He was a graduate assistant under Woody Hayes at Ohio State, coached alongside B0 Schembechler as an assistant at Northwestern under Lou Saban, and was an assistant in Jack Mollenkopf's first year at Purdue. He may not have known Coryell, but he most certainly knew some people who knew Coryell. I don't remember much about Coryell as coach of the Cardinals, but I do recall that he picked Jim Hart to be the quarterback and I was pretty tight with Hart, having interviewed him in his rookie year when he was a complete unknown. I covered quite a few Cardinals games in those years and they generally put on a good show. Covering the Cardinals in December or January was always a challenge because Busch stadium had an open air press box. This was partly due to Joe Pollack, the Cards' p.r. man who went around in shirt sleeves on the coldest days. I finally learned how to avoid frozen fingers. I would book a room in the Marriott across the street, watch the game on television and beat my feet to the locker room when the game ended. It worked. Pollack was a good friend, having been my sports editor on the Columbia Missourian when I was at the University of Missouri. My beat was Missouri football and Joe and I would travel to road games in his car. I recall a trip to Nebraska where we stopped off to see an old Indian scout who had been recommended by one of my professors. The scout was acquainted with Black Elk, a storied chief and, who knows, somewhere down the road was an intersection with Sitting Bull and therefore Gen. George Armstrong Custer and you can take that as far as you care to, take it to Appomattix and Robert E. Lee or take it to Washington and Abe Lincoln. Six degrees of separation. Get it?

2010-06-30T08:56:00.001-07:00

By Bob Markus

Eddie Stanky, when he managed the White Sox, had a favorite expression he used whenever an opposing pitcher threw a gem at his team. "He's another Walter Johnson," Stanky would say sarcastically. Is it only a coincidence that the newest "another Walter Johnson," pitches for Washington, as did the original.? Stephen Strasburg, of course, cannot hope to duplicate the record of The Big Train, who won 417 games for the Washington Senators in a 21-year career. He pitches in a different era, where pitch counts rule and a complete game is as rare as a Nessy sighting in Scotland. Johnson completed 531 of his 666 starts for the Senators. Strasburg has started only five games in the majors (completing none)and already is being touted as an All-Star game performer. I'll admit I'm as impressed as anyone by what I've seen of Strasburg. His debut against the Pittsburgh Pirates was quite possibly the most eagerly anticipated in major league history. The result was stunning--no walks, 14 strikeouts and a big, fat W alongside Strasburg's name in the box score.

But as a one-time Cubs fan I can't help remembering the excitement caused by Mark Prior's first major league start under circumstances amazingly similar to Strasburg's. Prior, too, had received a then-record bonus for signing with the Cubs as the over-all No. 2 draft choice out of USC. That he wasn't, like Strasburg, the No. 1 selection was largely due to the fact that the Minnesota Twins, with the first pick, felt obligated to take hometown prospect Joe Mauer, a decision that proved to be justified when Mauer became a batting champion and MVP for the Twins. Like Strasburg, Prior's first big league appearance was a much-hyped start against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and, like Strasburg, Prior proved to be the real deal. He struck out 10 in his six innings and got the win. When he dominated National League hitters the next season and led the Cubs to within five outs of their first world series berth since 1945, there wasn't a Cubs' fan in Chicago who would have traded Prior for Mauer or any other big league player. Then came the infamous Bartman affair in which a fan named Steve Bartman caught a foul fly that Cubs' outfielder Moises Alou swears was headed for his glove. I've never believed that to be true. The ball was not in the field of play and in my mind it was doubtful that Alou was going to reach far enough into the seats to make the catch. Had he done so, the Cubs would have led 3-0 with two outs and nobody on in the eighth and quite likely would have been celebrating a few minutes later. As it was, they unravelled completely and not only gave up eight runs in the inning, but got rolled over the next night with their other ace pitcher, Kerry Wood, on the mound.

Wood, too, was a can't miss phenom who, in his fifth start as a 20-year-old rookie, pitched what many consider the greatest game in baseball history. He gave up only an infield single while walking nobody and striking out 20 Houston Astros. After the blown chance in the league championship series, it was all downhill for both young pitchers. Injuries piled on injuries for both. Prior hasn't pitched a game in the majors since 2006 and only today came word that he was going to give it another try by putting his once-electric stuff on display for major league scouts in a session at Southern Cal. Wood is still pitching, but in a relief role, one in which he has had mixed success. The Cubs offered further proof that early success is no guarantee of future stardom just last week when they placed Carlos Zambrano on the restricted list after his meltdown in the dugout at White Sox Park. Zambrano was a dynamic pitcher for the Cubs until they rewarded him with a mega-million dollar contract and he rewarded them by going in the tank.

The Cubs, of course, aren't the only ones who've seen incipient super stars fire and fall back. The Detroit Tigers' Mark (the Bird) Fydrich was the talk of baseball when, as a rookie in 1976 he went 19-9 and enchanted fans everywhere with his exuberance. He was to last only four more years and win 10 more ball games in the majors. He died just this year in a freak farming accident. Then there's the largely unremembered story of Bobo Holloman, who, in his first major league start, threw a no-hitter for the St. Louis Browns. I remember it, because I was a student at the University of Missouri and heard the game on the radio in my dorm room. Holloman who apparently had mediocre stuff, had his at-'em ball working that night. It was the only complete game of his career and before the year was out he was in the minors, never to return.

But the poster child for caution when forecasting a brilliant pitching career undoubtedly is Herb Score. The flame-throwing left hander, whom Stanky most certainly would have called "another Lefty Grove" burst on the major league scene at 21 and for the first two years was, indeed, a potential Lefty Grove. In his first five games he recorded 50 strikeouts, a mark that still stands He led the American League in strikeouts both seasons while posting won-lost records of 16-10, and 20-9. Then came the day early in the Cleveland star's third year when the Yankees' Gil McDougland labelled a fastball "return to sender" and caved in Score's face . Score was never the same after that and eventually left the mound for the broadcast booth. There are few things in life more fragile than a pitcher's throwing arm, which is why when I was covering the White Sox, owner Jerry Reinsdorf would never give a pitcher a long term contract. So, appreciate Stephen Strasburg for what he is--a dynamic young pitcher with a world of talent and a seemingly unlimited future. But don't be calling him another Walter Johnson. There was only one Big Train. With his two big league victories, however sensationally they were achieved, Strasburg is still only a Little Caboose.

2010-06-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Lets see if I've got this right. The Big 12 has 10 members. The Big 10 has 12 members. The Pac 10 has 11 members, but appears ready to make Utah the 12th member. Whose on first? I dunno. Third base! Perhaps Abbott and Costello could make some sense out of what's happening in college athletics. I sure can't. I graduated from a Big 12 school--Missouri. Only, then, it was the Big Seven. It wasn't until a half dozen years after I left school that it became the Big Eight, or, as pundits of the time called it, Oklahoma and the Seven Dwarfs.

It was about to be called "history" until Monday, when Texas came riding to the rescue, like the Lone Ranger protecting the Wells Fargo stage coach, and saved the payroll. Texas is one of the new kids on the Big 12 block, having led a mass exodus from the Southwest conference that changed the landscape of college football forever. Three other SWC schools joined Texas in the stampede, merging with the Big Eight to form the Big 12. The tradition rich Southwest conference, which had produced the likes of Sammy Baugh and Bobby Layne, Earl Campbell and Ricky Williams, was gone, vanished. Poof!

The same thing was about to happen to the Big 12. The Pac 10, spooked by rumblings from Big 10 country that the conference, already up to 11 members with the 1993 addition of Penn State, was planning to expand by as many as five schools, planned a massive preemptive strike of its own. The target of both conferences: The Big 12. The Pac 10 struck first, picking up Colorado, which boasts one of the prettiest--and most party prone--campuses in the country, but not much in the way of athletic heritage. The Big 10 then tossed out its bait in the direction of Nebraska and succeeded in reeling in the Cornhuskers, a longtime national force in football.

From a personal standpoint that shocked me. First of all, I had covered most of the Nebraska-Oklahoma shootouts of the early 1970s and regretted the fact I'd likely never see another one. But , more importantly, it left my alma mater in a potentially untenable position. Missouri had been rumored as one of the schools being considered by the Big 10. It definitely would not be one of the schools coveted by the Pac 10. Had Texas decided to put on its walking boots there would have been a domino effect, resulting in the demise of the Big 12 and Missouri would have been one of the schools looking through a window at the candy jar. The Pac 10 was poised to offer membership to four other Big 12 teams, including Oklahoma, and with Nebraska and Texas already gone, it's doubtful any of the four could or would refuse. With only six schools remaining, none of them a longterm football power, there would have been an-every-man-for-himself scramble to find a new home. Given their lack of universal appeal, the stranded six could not even go back to their original designation of The Big Six. Missouri's best option in that scenario would be to pair up with ancient rival Kansas in a package deal with either the Big 10 or Big East.

No matter what else happens I have a suggestion that I hope both conferences consider carefully. Swap names. Let the 10-school Big 12 be known as The Big 10 and the 12-team Big 10 as the Big 12. Seems reasonable to me. And it wouldn't even be breaking new ground. Back in the 1950s and 60s, there was a pair of auto racing brothers, Jim and Dick Rathmann, who enjoyed varying degrees of success. Dick made his mark in NASCAR, although he did run in nine Indianapolis 500s, once starting on the pole. Jim was the winner of the 1960 Indy 500, considered by many the greatest race ever run at the Brickyard, with Jim and Rodger Ward battling nose to tail for most of the 200 laps. One day, at a party in Indianapolis, I got to talking with one of the brothers. I think it was Dick. "You know," he told me, "I'm really Jim Rathmann. And Jim is Dick." It's true. Back at the beginning of their careers, Dick, four years younger than his brother, was too young to enter a race. So he switched names with Jim. It was only meant to be temporary, but somehow they never got around to switching back. So, now, if you talk to one of the Rathmann's you can't be sure just whom you're talking to. Hey, Abbott!

Dick Rathmann, by the way, was No.16 on my list of best drivers who never won the Indy 500. That's the list I was going to give you in the aftermath of this year's race, but didn't get around to it. So this is as good a time as any, and how do you like that segue? The top 10:

10--Alberto Ascari. The great Italian Formula One racer only ran at Indianapolis once and finished only 40 laps. But he is considered one of the all-time greats in motor racing. He was Mario Andretti's boyhood hero and inspiration. Mario virtually glowed while telling me of the time he stood in a roadside crowd and cheered each time Ascari came by.

9--Ralph Hepburn. Started as a motorcycle racing champion. Finished 2d in 1937, just 2.16 seconds behind Wilbur Shaw.

8--Jackie Stewart. Winner of three Formula one titles, he led his first of two Indy 500s with eight laps to go before retiring with a mechanical failure. He was voted Rookie of the Year over Graham Hill, who won the race.

7--Lloyd Ruby. Winner of seven champ car races, he had his best chance in 1969. He was leading the race until, on a pit stop, he pulled away too soon while the fuel hose nozzle was still attached, ripping a hole in his gas tank.

6--Tony Bettenhausen. Father of racers Gary, Merle, and Tony Jr., started 14 races with one second and two fourth place finishes. Was killed testing a car for a friend at Indianapolis in 1961.

5--Dan Gurney. An American road racing icon and car builder, he ran nine times at Indy. In his last three races he finished second, second, and third.

4--Eddie Sachs. Known as "the clown prince of auto racing," he won 8 champ car races and 2 Indy 500 poles. Finished second in 1961 and '62, died in first lap crash in 1964. Crash also took the life of rookie Dave MacDonald. Also involved: a couple of guys named Johnny Rutherford and B obby Unser.

3--Rex Mays. Finished second in 1940, 41', years in which he won the series championship. Has a race named after him at Milwaukee Mile.

2--Ted Horn. National champion in 1946, '47, '48, died in crash at DuQuoin, Il. in October of 1948. Had incredible nine-year string of top 4 finishes at Indianapolis.

1--Michael Andretti. Won 42 Indy Car races and one championship. Holds the record for most laps led without a win at Indy. Dropped out of race while leading on five different occasions.

Things I've let go by me while missing a week of blogging: Armando Galarraga loses perfect game on ump's blown call. In baseball parlance, a perfect game is often referred to as an El Perfecto. In this case, close, but no cigar.

Johnny Wooden dies at 99. I'm one of few writers who ever criticized Wooden, mainly because of his penchant for shielding stars Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton from the press. I felt it would have served both better to learn how to deal with media. I may have been wrong, since both turned out to be articulte and outspoken. I also changed my mind about Wooden after having breakfast with him one morning in the Dallas Cowboys' training camp in Thousand Oaks, Ca. He was delightful company.

Blackhawks win Stanley Cup. The Blackhawks were my final beat at the Chicago Tribune. Jeremy Roenick was the star and my go-to-guy. I wasn't surprised when he shed tears of joy after the clinching game. He always was an emotional guy and his greatest years came with the Hawks.

Some of you may have noticed I did not write a column last week. I'll probably go to an every-other-week schedule from now on. But if something strikes my fancy in the interim I'll probably give it a go. One of the advantages of writing for yourself is that you don't HAVE to publish every week.

2010-06-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

The Indianapolis 500 is my favorite sporting event of the year. It's the one day that I warn my wife a week in advance not to accept any social engagements. I covered 20 of them for The Chicago Tribune, including the 1988 race when I did double duty, working in Teo Fabi's pit crew and filing a story after the race. It was the most unforgettable day of my professional life. How many times in 36 years of covering sporting events did I stand for the National Anthem? A thousand? Two thousand? Three? And how many times did the singing of "The Star Spangled Banner" move me to tears? Just this once. Standing next to my team's race car just moments before the command to "start yer engines" I felt the tears begin to well up and I just let them go. The day didn't last long for our team. Just 30 laps into the race Fabi brought the Quaker State-Porsche into the pits for his first and, as it turned out, last stop. Using the long-handled stop sign assigned to me, I brought Teo to a tire-screeching halt, then picked up the fire hose with which I was supposed to wash down the fuel cell door after refueling. It was a scary moment for me because my target was located behind the driver's head and I had not been able to practice it. What if I squirted Teo instead of the fuel cell? I thought I had done the job properly, but when I turned my back to hang up the hose I heard cursing and I saw everyone's head turned to the left as in the tennis crowd shots in Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train." "What happened?" I asked. "Teo crashed," came the laconic response. For a tense irrational moment I thought it was my fault, that Fabi somehow had spun the tires in the water I had laid down. When I learned that Teo had been sent out before a rear tire could be secured and had crashed just a few hundred feet down pit lane when the wheel came off, I was relieved. When two or three of my pit crew mates began pushing the car toward gasoline alley I decided to join them and so there I was, a slightly overweight man in his 50s, running nearly a half mile under a broiling sun, wondering if I was crazy or just plain stupid.

Instead of reaping the thrill of victory I had been saddled with the agony of defeat, but what mattered most was that I had, in a small way, competed on the biggest stage in the sporting world. But I was besotted by the Indy 500 long before I ever dreamed I could play a part in it. I remember the first time I was really aware of the Indy 500 was Memorial day of 1946 when, sitting in the grand stand in Wrigley Field watching the Cubs play somebody, the P.A. announcer, Pat Pieper, came out with the news that George Robson had won the first Indianapolis 500 since the war started. After that I usually would listen to the race on the radio, never dreaming I would ever actually see a race, let alone participate in it. I was working as a reporter on The Moline (Il.) Dispatch on Memorial Day of 1955 and had gone to my room at the YMCA, which was virtually next door to the newspaper, where I heard on the radio that Bill Vukovich, winner of the two previous Indy 500s, had been killed while again leading the race. I hustled back to the office and told the city editor the news and they managed to get a few paragraphs on a page one replate. I'm not certain when the race was first televised, but I remember that in 1964 it was being shown in a local movie theater. My wife and I went to see it and that was the day that Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald were killed in a fiery wreck on the second lap. We didn't wait around for the restart almost two hours later. My only other contact with the Speedway was a telephone interview with Jim Clark from his garage in Gasoline Alley just a few days before the Scotsman won the 1965 race. So I really didn't know what to expect when I went to my first race in 1968. I fell in love with it. All of it. The Purdue band playing "On the Banks of the Wabash", Jim Nabors singing "Back Home in Indiana," "Gentlemen, start your engines," the balloons going up, the jets buzzing by and the incredible rush of adrenalin when those 33 cars scream into the first turn. I've had some bad days at the race track, none worse than in 1973 when Swede Savage, one of my favorite drivers, was fatally injured in a flaming wreck that pretty much summed up the entire month of rain and ruin. Yet, like General Patton's feelings about war, I do love it so. Still.

Obviously, it would take a lot to make me miss seeing the Indy 500. This year it almost happened. Instead of watching the start of the race from the comfort of my living room, I watched it from a hospital emergency room cubicle. Before I go any further let me assure you everyone's all right. But for a moment the Indy 500 didn't seem very important to me. My wife, who had opened a cut over her right eye brow in a fall on Saturday night, decided she'd made a mistake by refusing to go to the hospital and when she called her doctor Sunday morning, he agreed. So off we went to the emergency room where, ultimately, the doctor in charge ordered a cat scan--just in case. I waited in the room, with the TV set tuned to the race and, although I wasn't really into it, saw the start. After awhile I heard a nurse across the hall say, rather excitedly, "the patient in 37 has a cervical fracture." That pretty much went by me until I remembered, "this is room 37." When my wife was wheeled back into the room she wore a cervical collar and we both prepared to hear the worst. But a little while later the ER doctor came in and said, "You're fine. You can go home." It was nearly 3 o'clock and we hadn't had lunch, so we went to the McDonald's right in the hospital. I don't know what went on in the race during tht time, but we got it on the radio on the drive home. We had to leave the car for 10 minutes at the pharmacy, so there went another gap. But being the long-running event that it is, there was still plenty of racing to be seen when we got home. I wasn't thrilled with ABC's coverage--too much, side-by-side coverage which makes it hard to follow the action. I don't really know any of the drivers any more, but I do know all the owners. Roger Penske. Chip Ganassi. Michael Andretti. Those are the big three in Indy car racing. I like them all, but Michael is my favorite. I've known him since he was a rookie and I've known his dad Mario since he won the 1969 race. I remember a long one-on-one interview with Mario the morning after the race. He did not appear to be comfortable and he spoke with a decided accent. Since then Mario has become so fluent in English that whenever any one asks me who my favorite interview subject is, I truthfully answer: "Mario Andretti."

So I was hoping one of Michael's drivers would win the race, although they had all looked so bad in qualifying that it didn't seem likely. But both Tony Kanaan and Michael's son Marco put on enough of a charge to make it interesting at the end and even Danica Patrick stopped complaining long enough to motor to a respectable sixth place finish. Under the circumstances it was a good day for Michael's team. Ganassi had the race winner, Dario Franchitti, and Penske would win the World 600 in Charlotte that night, so everyone should have been happy. I know I was.

-0-

Note to my readers: I've always had a strange method of writing a column--or blog if you insist. I don't always know how a story is going to come out. That's why when I used to go into the sports editor's office and he'd ask me what I was going to write about, I'd have to say, "I don't know." Today's is an extreme example. I did three hours of research for a blog that I had intended to be about the ten greatest race drivers who never won the Indianapolis 500. But I never quite got rolling in that direction. So I'm thinking of doing it next week. Or next year. See you then.

2010-05-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

There's no whining in auto racing. Danica Patrick learned that the hard way over the week-end when she was booed by fans on pole day for the Indianapolis 500 after qualifying poorly and blaming it on her race car. She undoubtedly was right. Her race car is a piece of junk. An enormously expensive piece of junk, but nevertheless. . . .junk.

It's all right for me to say that, but when a driver throws her team under the bus, it's bad form. Any one who knows anything at all about the sport knows that the driver is just one of the elements that comprise a great race team. Patrick was just one of five drivers who qualified for the Michael Andretti team and none of the five had a good day. In fact, it's been a bad year for the Andretti team, which only a few years ago was winning championships. Teammate Tony Kanaan, who wrecked two race cars before sneaking into the field in the final hour, gently rebuked Patrick, reminding her that these were the same mechanics who prepared the car with which she became the first woman to drive an Indy Car into Victory Lane two years ago. He advised her to lighten up and start having fun again.

It was not entirely out of character for Patrick to deflect blame for her poor showing. She has been involved in several on track incidents and to my knowledge has never taken the rap for any of them. When Patrick drove to victory in Japan, both Michael Andretti and I predicted it was the first of many. We may have been wrong, but it's too early to tell. My opinion had been formed a few years earlier when, in her first Indianapolis 500, Danica made a couple of absolutely brilliant moves and led the race going into the final laps. Appearing puzzled by the reaction to her comments Saturday, which were aired on the Speedway's public address system, Patrick observed, "they used to love me. I'm the same driver I was five years ago." Indeed, they did love her. Ever since she first came to the speedway, Patrick has been far and away the fans' favorite driver.

It is not in the nature of racing fans to boo a driver. The only other race driver I can think of who has been booed on the race track is NASCAR's Jeff Gordon. Gordon's sin was to be too good. The booing was mostly from fans of the late Dale Earnhardt, resentful of the fact that Gordon was about to pass their icon in career victories. The booing has pretty much gone away now that Gordon is struggling to keep up with his teammate, Jimmie Johnson.

Women drivers are no longer a novelty at the Indy 500. When I first started covering the race in 1968 women were not even allowed in Gasoline Alley, let alone in the seat of a race car. Janet Guthrie changed all that when she made the race for the first time in 1977. It was a monumental achievement. As I wrote at the time, it was not a Billie Jean King beating up on old man Bobby Riggs. It was more like Jacky Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball. Like Robinson, Guthrie heard plenty of gender-based slurs and endured outright hostility from some of her male competitors. The pressure on Guthrie the day she qualified was enormous, although there was not the media attention she would face today. There were perhaps a couple of handsful of reporters interviewing her near the pit entrance after she completed her four-lap run. Later on, I had a one-on-one interview with her in her motor coach that went on for a good hour. That would be impossible in these times.

There have been other women drivers who paved the way for Danica Patrick at Indianapolis. Lyn St. James competed seven times and was Rookie of the Year in 1992 when she finished 11th. Sarah Fisher, who qualified for her 9th Indy 500, was almost as highly touted as Patrick when she made the race for the first time at the age of 19. She had a number of firsts--first woman to win an Indy Car pole, first to make a podium appearance for a third place finish in Kentucky, and first to finish as high as second. But, like Guthrie and St. James before her, Fisher had trouble attracting sponsorship money. That is something that has always mystified me. You'd think there would be plenty of companies that would see the benefit of having a high profile woman athlete as the company spokesman. Didn't happen. Not until Patrick came along and unleashed the power of sex appeal. That is where Danica has the edge. Like the women who came before her, Danica wants to be judged by her performance behind the wheel. Unlike the others, she doesn't mind being seen as a beautiful woman. Some of her spots for her Go Daddy sponsor are border line suggestive.

There were five women who attempted to qualify for Sunday's Indy 500 and four of them made it. Two of them, Ana Beatriz of Brazil and Swiss-born Simona de Silvestro qualified just ahead of Danica, while Fisher qualified 29th. Milka Duno of Venezuela, who made the field three times before, failed to qualify this time. None of the women drivers is likely to be competitive Sunday, although it is possible to come from the back of the pack to the front. In the 1980 race Tom Sneva went from 33d to second and Gary Bettenhausen from 32d to third. If anyone makes that kind of charge Sunday it is likely to be Kanaan, although his luck in the Indy 500 has not been the greatest. Sunday should be an interesting test for Patrick. She has shown what she can do with a good handling race car, but has yet to demonstrate that, like a Rick Mears for example, she can turn an ill-handling car into a winner over the course of 500 miles. If she can, she'll turn those boos back into cheers in a hurry.

2010-05-18T12:05:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Dale Tallon has done just about everything a man can do if he's a hockey lifer--except sip from the Stanley Cup. Now, just as the Chicago Blackhawks, the team he served for 36 years, are likely going to sip the wine, Tallon has gone to the last place you'd expect to find hockey's holy grail. Heck, the Florida Panthers not only have never won the Stanley Cup, they haven't even made the playoffs for nine years. Of course, there's many a slip between the Cup and the lip, and the Blackhawks were still seven wins away going into Tuesday night's Western Conference Final Series game in Vancouver. But they already have seized home ice advantage for the remainder of the playoffs. This is a team that, when Tallon took over as general manager four years ago, had missed the playoffs for six of the seven preceding seasons.

The Blackhawks were my beat for the final two of my 36 years writing sports for the Chicago Tribune. At the time, they still routinely filled the United Center for every home game and had done so for many years. But it also had been 35 years since the Hawks won the Stanley Cup and another 13 seasons have slipped by since then. Now, thanks to Tallon's coup of drafting Jonathon Toews and Patrick Kane in successive years, trading for Patrick Sharp and Kris Versteeg, and signing free agent Marian Hossa, the Blackhawks may be bound for glory. Tallon's thanks for turning the team around in just three years, was to be fired last summer just after signing Hossa, the final piece in the puzzle. Tallon, who was named general manager on Monday, on Wednesday will be bound for Germany to meet with Panthers coach Pete DeBoer. Although he has had no success in breaking the chains of apathy that have bound the Panthers for nearly a decade, DeBoer seems likely to survive, at least until Tallon has a chance to evaluate his work. "I've got to give him some tools to work with," Tallon observed.

While I was covering the Blackhawks I knew Tallon first as a player, then as the color man on the Hawks' radio and TV broadcasts, a job he held for 16 years. He also was a scratch golfer, who won the 1969 Canadian Junior Championship and served as the head pro at Highland Park Country Club in suburban Chicago. Tallon became assistant to general manager Bob Pulford a couple of years after I retired and became the main man in 2005. There are many in Chicago who believe Tallon was undermined by Scotty Bowman, who had been brought in earlier as a "senior advisor." Not too much a leap in logic is required to believe that, given that Bowman's son, Stan, moved up from assistant GM to replace Tallon.

Tallon's task in South Florida will be infinitely more difficult than it was in Chicago, which has a hard core of dedicated fans and a long line of great players, stretching from Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita in the '60s through the likes of Tony Esposito, Denny Savard, Chris Chelios and Jeremy Roenick. The Panthers have one Stanley Cup Finals appearance on their team resume, a team noted more for slap-shotting rats off the dressing room wall than for reaching the door to Valhalla. Their lone super star, Pavel Bure, is long gone. Nor is Tallon the first high profile GM to take on the task of making the Panthers relevant in an area where ice normally is found only at the bottom of a cocktail glass.

First there was Mike Keenan, who had led the Blackhawks to the Stanley Cup finals and the Rangers to a championship among many stops in his peripatetic career. Keenan's main claim to infamy was to trade goalie Roberto Luongo to Vancouver in the worst hockey trade since the Blackhawks sent future Hall of Famer Phil Esposito to the Boston Bruins. When Keenan slunk out of town he was succeeded by Jacques Martin, who had turned around the Ottawa Senators, but could work no wonders for the Panthers.

Now it's Tallon's turn. I wish him well. And if things don't work out on the ice, there are plenty of good golf courses down here.

2010-05-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

There is a scene early in the musical "1776", in which George Washington implores Congress to send him more food, more clothing, more guns and ammunition for his suffering army and, receiving only silence, plaintively asks: Is anybody there? Does anybody care? I think I understand how he felt. I'm into my third year of writing this weekly column and, due entirely to my computer illiteracy, have no idea how many people have read it. I know for sure I have three or four faithful readers. There's Ted, the big noise from Winnetka, where I lived for most of my 36 years writing sports for the Chicago Tribune. Ted's the guy who, whenever I start thinking it may be time to say good night, says "don't do it." There's Charles, my golfing partner, who generally is supportive, always points out my mistakes, and will tell me when he thinks a column sucks. Then there is Paula, my doctor's Girl Friday, who, whenever she sees me, never fails to ask what I'll be writing about next. "Just so you don't write about NASCAR," she says. I try to keep her happy, but this week I'm going to have to at least mention auto racing. Because NASCAR is responsible for adding another reader to my list. That makes four and I know there is a blogger in Chicago who reads me, because he's written a few times to comment and I'd like to write him back but don't have the slightest idea how to do so. See what I mean about computer illiteracy?

The reason I have to mention auto racing this week is that a few days ago I got a phone call out of the blue from Lancaster, Pa. Neither my wife nor I could think of anyone we knew who would be calling us from Pennsylvania Dutch country so we let the call go to voice mail. A little while later my wife listened to our messages and found one from an old friend we hadn't spoken to for years. Back in the early '90s, when I was covering a lot of auto racing for The Tribune, one of the races I usually covered was the Winston Cup (as it was known by then) June race in Michigan. The track is situated in the middle of nowhere. It's official postal designation is Brooklyn, Mich., but the nearest city you've probably heard of is Jackson. There were no really convenient places to stay and we had tried several places when somebody suggested a bed and breakfast right there in Brooklyn. When I called to try to make a reservation for race week-end I was told they were filled up. But they did give me the phone number of a B & B in Homer, some 25-30 miles west of the track. I was able to get a room there and, location aside, it was all you could ask for. The proprietor, Judy, was on the faculty at Michigan State. She couldn't have been nicer. She loaned my wife her car to go antique shopping in nearby Allen while I was at the track. She served terrific breakfasts and when I told her we couldn't have breakfast on Sunday morning because we had to leave early for the track, she got up early to send us off with full stomachs. It was only later that she told us she had hesitated to rent to us because, "I've had trouble with race fans. But I thought I'd try it and see." Evidently we passed the test because the next year Jeff and Wanda Wiker joined us at the breakfast table. They were diehard stock car racing fans from Lancaster, Pa., and we hit it off immediately. In addition to meeting annually in Michigan, I was able to help them get tickets to the brickyard 400 in Indianapolis. But the last time we went to the Michigan race we discovered, to our dismay, that Judy had sold her B & B and moved to Texas.

For awhile we exchanged Christmas cards with the Wikers but, as happens all too often, we somehow stopped communicating and it had probably been 10 years since we had last heard from them. Jeff's message said they were going to go to the Indy 500 for the first time and my immediate thought was they needed help with tickets. Then I remembered that, thanks to Tony George's heavy-handed operation of the world's most famous race, the golden goose had been cooked and tickets were no longer that hard to come by. In fact, Jeff explained, what he wanted was the name of the restaurant the four of us had dined at before the Brickyard 400. He left a number and when I called to tell him he must be thinking of St. Elmo's, he told me that Wanda had discovered My Life in Sports while browsing on her computer and that's how they were able to get in touch. No, he didn't need tickets; a friend had given them his own seats in the grandstand and was going to show them around on race week-end. I hope he'll let me know how they enjoyed their first Indy 500 and that this time we'll stay connected. Under the circumstances I'd hate to lose a single reader.

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Now, as long as we've broached the dreaded NASCAR topic, Paula, I'd like to make a few simple predictions. First, Dale Earnhardt Jr. will win a race this year. He's been in the ballpark a few times and, with his Rick Hendricks backing, he's going to hit one out of the ball park eventually. Second, I think this may be Jeff Gordon's year to win that fifth championship. He hasn't won a race yet but he's finishing pretty consistently in the top five and stands fourth in the standings. He should easily finish in the top 12 and qualify for the Chase. But nothing is ever for certain. Just look at Tiger Woods. How certain are you now that Tiger will catch and pass Jack Nicklaus' record 18 major championships? And have you thought about the similarity in the lives and careers of the two athletes? Both became super stars at an early age. There was a time when it appeared just as certain that Gordon would catch Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, who each won seven series championships, as that Woods would supplant Nicklaus as the alltime majors winner. Both married beauty queens and both marriages failed. I had lunch once with Gordon and his first wife. She was a beautiful girl and seemed nice. But their divorce was a particularly bitter one. Now, Woods appears headed for the same fate. Gordon is remarried and appears happy. Perhaps Tiger, too, will get a second chance. If I were to guess right now, which of these two would have the happiest ending, I'd pick Gordon.

2010-05-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Sometimes you have to look behind the news to find the news. Headline: McIlroy Shoots 62; Wins Quail Hollow. Subhead: Phil Second. Everyone knew that the precocious McIlroy, who was two days shy of his 21st birthday when he fired the shots heard 'round the world Sunday, was going to win a PGA event sooner or later. That he would win it in such spectacular fashion, nobody could have foreseen. McIlroy, who had failed to make the cut in the Masters, had returned to his home town in Northern Ireland in an attempt to freshen up his game. It didn't appear to have done much good for the first two rounds of the Quail Hollow tournament in Charlotte, N.C. Until a late rally on Friday, it appeared that he was going to miss the cut again. With three holes to play, he was two shots away from the cut line--on the wrong side. He took care of that with an eagle, thanks to what he called the most important shot of his season, his second to the par five hole. He made the cut right on the number and shot a 66 on Saturday, which is known in the golf world as "moving day." But even though he had managed to escape the outhouse, the penthouse seemed out of his reach. Then came one of the greatest final round comebacks within memory. His victory margin over Mickelson was four shots. Johnny Miller was the standard setter for final round heroics when he posted a 63 on a Sunday to win the U.S. Open. Miller built an entire career on that one memorable day. McIlroy may never shoot another 62, but he seems destined to be a force de tour for many years to come.

Is this the Messiah that the royal order of Tiger bashers has long awaited? After all, McIlroy on Sunday became the first golfer since Tiger Woods to win a PGA event before his 21st birthday. But before you get too carried away, remember it was only a year or so ago that Anthony Kim was going to be the anointed one. That is, if Camilo Villegas didn't pull Tiger's tail first. Before that there was Justin Rose and before him was Lee Westwood. They're all still young enough to challenge Woods, although Westwood is beginning to take on that unwanted burden of being labelled the best player never to win a major.

Westwood can take comfort in the fact that it wasn't too many years ago that Mickelson was carrying that load all by himself. Now it appears that Lefty may be ready to take on the Tiger taming role himself. Not that he'll ever match Woods for tour victories and majors won. He starts from too far behind and he's five years older than the 34-year-old Woods. But the best story to come out of Quail Hollow might well have been Mickelson's stellar showing just two weeks after his Masters victory. Mickelson shot a final round 68 and had McIlroy been merely brilliant, shot a 66, there would have been a playoff. The kid shoots a 67 and Phil wins. This is the kind of consistency Phil fanatics have long awaited. With the Players' championship right around the corner and Woods coming off the worst round of golf since he was a two-year-old, Mickelson is in position to snatch the World's No.1 ranking out of Tigers' hands.

All of a sudden this is beginning to look like Palmer vs. Nicklaus redux. Like Palmer, Mickelson is the crowd pleasing go-for-broke everyman who never met a shot he wouldn't take. Woods is the mega-talented, aloof shot maker who makes the golf purists swoon, just as Jack was in his day, although Nicklaus was never as stand-offish as Tiger tends to be. Woods vs. Mickelson may well be the face of golf for the next four or five years. But, inevitably, there will be a changing of the guard . Who will be the new face of golf? McIlroy? Kim? Villegas? Goodness, I've forgotten all about Sergio Garcia, haven't I? Well, Sergio is yesterday's news. Tomorrow's news makers likely will come from the trio mentioned above. But keep an eye on Ryo Ishikawa. Ishikawa is even younger (he's 18) than McIlroy and on Sunday he one-upped the Irishman by shooting 58--that's 58, folks--to win a professional tournament in Japan. How do you say "Hold that Tiger" in Japanese?

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Is there a better story in sports right now than that of Calvin Borel? Borel, who worked in obscurity for most of his first 40 years, is horse racing's new super star. His victory on Super Saver in Saturday's Kentucky Derby was his third in the last four Derbies and nobody had ever done that. Not Eddie Arcaro, not Willie Shoemaker, not Bill Hartack, not even that handy little guy named Sande made famous by a Grantland Rice lead. Borel's newfound fame seems well deserved. Before Saturday's race, cameras caught him with tears rolling down his cheeks during the playing of "My Old Kentucky Home." After he'd guided Super Saver to the finish line in his usual hug-the-rail style, Borel could be seen weeping again. Well, after all, the lyric is "weep no more my lady," not "weep no more my jockey." If I had a Derby horse I'd put him--or her--in Borel's hands. Then, after we'd won, we'd all go out and have a good cry.

2010-04-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

The NFL draft has become a cottage industry--except it's gotten so big you'd probably have to call it a mansion industry. There were 45 million viewers for the three-day extravaganza which ended Saturday and here's what they saw. Nothing. No dazzling runs. No crunching blocks. No thunderous hits. Not live, anyway. What they saw was a bunch of guys sitting around a desk and arguing about which player would be taken next and which player should be taken next and then explaining why they all turned out to be wrong. Invariably, whoever was selected, according to the panel, had a lot of "upside" and was an excellent choice. Apparently, Mel Kiper never met a player he didn't like, except Tim Tebow, whom he absolutely hated. Not personally, you understand, but as an NFL quarterback. A lot of people agreed with him, a glaring exception being Denver Broncos' coach, Josh McDaniels, who has gambled his career on Tebow.
My personal view is that McDaniels wins that gamble and if Tebow isn't the next John Elway he at least could be the next Joe Kapp.

So who is Mel Kiper and why should anyone care what he thinks? Kiper is the self-proclaimed draft guru and his greatest talent appears to be the ability to make people believe they should listen to him. Before there was Mel Kiper there was Jimmy the Greek, who was not a draft expert, but an oddsmaker. Actually, what he was was a very good p.r. man for Jimmy the Greek, who made more than a decent living with himself as the only product. Kiper has taken it to the next level. He has been producing a draft related magazine for nearly 30 years and has been a part of ESPN's draft coverage since 1984. He works hard at what he does, appears to have a lot of contacts among NFL scouts and executives and often is spot on in his evaluations. Then again he picked Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen to go fourth in the first round and the Irish star ended up being a second round pick, the 48th player chosen. Maybe what Kiper said was that Clausen would go forth. And he could always point out that, since the Carolina Panthers had no first round pick and they grabbed Clausen at the first opportunity, he was in a sense a first rounder.

Kiper was by no means alone in the high value he placed on Clausen. Just about everyone had him rated much higher than Tebow. So did I. In fact I thought Clausen was the best pro quarterback prospect in the draft, better than Sam Bradford, who was the first man chosen, despite having missed most of last season with a shoulder injury. Presumably, the draft evaluators of the 30 teams that passed on Clausen at least once (the Bears didn't draft until the third round and Clausen was long gone by then) knew something I don 't. In fact, I'm sure they know a lot of things that I don't. It's their business to know. Well, it used to be my business, too, even though I didn't bring the depth of football knowledge to the task that the pro football people possess. Yet I do know this much: the pros can be wrong. Horribly wrong. Think Ryan Leaf, a No.2 pick who ended up being a total bust as a pro quarterback. In fact, Leaf is the poster boy for NFL picks gone wrong, so much so that he was quoted this week as saying he's glad he wasn't chosen No.1 (over Peyton Manning) or the outcries would have been much worse. There is hope for Leaf, yet, however as DeMarcus Russell, the LSU quarterback the Oakland Raiders took with the No.1 pick a few years back, has been, well, not a flameout, more like a slowly dying ember.

I don't expect Bradford to be totally useless, but I don't expect him to become a super star either. The St. Louis Rams obviously do. We'll wait and see but my guess is as good as theirs. Think the NFL teams all know what they're doing? Then how did Tom Brady go til the fifth round before being drafted. Why did Kurt Warner never get drafted at all? In the late 1980s I was covering the Bears for the Chicago Tribune when they made a linebacker/defensive end from Ohio State their No. 1 draft pick. I was shocked. I had covered three or four Ohio State games in my previous role as national college sports writer and I had never seen this man make a tackle. Never heard his name called. But he could run a 4.6 40 and jump through the roof. He just couldn't do it when there was anyone standing in front of him.

For every high draft pick who fails, there's an unheralded late round pick who emerges as a star. Figuring out which is which is the challenge. For instance, I expect Golden Tate, the Notre Dame wide receiver taken with the 60th pick by Seattle, to be a star. The Dallas Cowboys obviously feel Dez Bryant will be better. We'll see. Maybe that's why the draft has become such a big deal. It's a game anyone can play. All you need is a TV set and an opinion.

2010-04-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

This is how cynical we've all become: When golfer Brian Davis called a two-stroke penalty on himself on the first hole of a sudden death playoff Sunday there were fans calling into talk shows scoffing at the notion the Englishman had any credit coming to him for his act of sportsmanship. "He might have been worried that someone taping the tournament at home had spotted the infraction and would report it to the USGA," was one caller's suggestion. If that would have happened and Davis had signed an incorrect score card, he would have been disqualified and, instead of the $615, 600 he earned as runner-up to winner Jim Furyk, would have gone home with nothing but a ruined reputation.

That is possible. In today's world of ubiquitous electronic devices, not only is Big Brother watching us, but a whole bunch of nieces, nephews, and total strangers, too. But Davis would have had to be mighty quick-witted to instantly run through his options and come up with the honorable solution. Having birdied the 72d hole to tie Furyk for the lead, Davis had hit a horrid second shot from just about the same distance he had nailed a six iron to within 15 feet moments earlier. The ball landed in a rock-studded ravine and, although marginally playable, was sitting in a nest of vegetation--grass, twigs, reeds, you name it. By the rules of golf, Davis was not permitted to ground his club nor clear away any of the impediments before striking the ball.

Clearly, he was in trouble. Furyk was sitting two putts away from a routine par, so Davis likely would have to get the ball up and down in two strokes to prolong the playoff. The CBS announcers were speculating that he might be better off taking a penalty for an unplayable lie and hoping to chip in for his par. Instead, Davis went for it and hit an amazing shot that found the putting surface, although he would have had to drain a lengthy putt--or hoped Furyk would three putt--to halve the hole. It would have been a slim chance, but at least it would have been a chance. As it turned out, Furyk never had to use his putter. Davis had barely completed his follow through when he called for a tour official and reported that he thought he might have touched a blade of grass on his back swing. After watching the replay several times, the official ruled that Davis, indeed, had touched a tiny reed as he drew his wedge back. The reed barely moved before settling back in place and the ball didn't move at all. It's highly unlikely a viewer at home would have caught the slight motion without the benefit of a replay. Davis could have kept quiet and possibly have recorded his first Tour victory.

But golfers are taught to follow the rules of golf and most of them do so, without question and without fail. Sometimes golfers cheat whether it be overtly or accidentally. Both Vijay Singh and Colin Montgomerie have been accused of cheating at some point in their careers. Both have denied it. Golf is supposed to be a self policing sport. From their first lesson, whether it be by a golf pro or a friend or relative, golfers are taught to revere the game and respect its rules. Most of us try and most of us fail. In my regular foursome there is one of us who concedes himself five foot putts if he has already taken two or three. Another one frequently forgets penalty strokes. I admit I don't count whiffs if nobody is watching, although I do count them in a sand trap, providing I at least take some sand. I'm not proud of it, but there you are.

Golf is a beautiful game and part of its beauty lies in its adherence to an ethical code that is not present in other sports. Baseball players do not tell the umpire they trapped that sinking liner and basketball players don't tell the referee they stepped in front of their opponent in order to draw a charge. Football players don't tell the officials they stepped on the out of bounds line before coming back to make a catch. Even boxers will climb the ring ropes and throw both arms in the air--the universal victory gesture--in a futile attempt to influence a decision that has already been rendered. Some call-in fans have wondered why Davis is being commended for doing what the rules and mores of the game require. To them my suggestion is: take $410, 400 (the difference between first and second place money in the Heritage Classic) out of the bank and give it to your next door neighbor. Then maybe you will start to understand.

2010-04-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

I'm sitting here trying to think of something different to say about Tiger Woods and all that keeps running through my mind, like the ribbon that runs at the bottom of your screen when you're watching Sports Center, is book titles. When I think about Tiger Woods I think "An American Tragedy" or "Paradise Lost." Portraying Woods as a tragic figure on the face of it seems a stretch. The man, after all, is still a billionaire, and, as he proved once again on Sunday, still one of the world's best golfers. But, as they say, the bigger they come "The Harder They Fall." Woods' plunge from grace was spectacular because of the distance he had to fall. That is the essence of Greek tragedy is it not? The fall of the Gods, the fatal flaw (see Achilles); only the mighty need apply.

Tiger's performance in the Masters was difficult to quantify. For three rounds he did what he always says is his goal: He gave himself a chance. He sometimes didn't look good doing it, but Sunday found him in the next to last pairing, four strokes out of the lead, but with only two men to catch. Even after three early bogeys dropped him seven shots back he wasn't through. An improbable eagle two on the par four seventh hole was the launching pad for one of those runs that used to send chills through his fellow competitors. Not this time. His bid for a fifth green jacket came to an end on the 14th when he turned what looked like a sure birdie into a bogey by three putting from 4 1/2 feet. A god no more, but merely a mortal. Still, he eagled the next hole and birdied the last--and fished his ball out of the cup with a gesture of disgust that told us all we needed to know about his mental state. For most golfers who had gone through what Woods had gone through, a tie for fourth in the Masters would seem to be a positive result. But for Tiger Woods these days there are no moral victories (pun very definitely intended).

Then there was Phil Mickelson. For all the hand wringing over poor Tiger's problems and the mental stress they caused, it must not be overlooked that he brought it all on himself. Mickelson's inner concerns ran much deeper than Tiger's, which made his ultimate triumph that much sweeter. While Woods was worrying about which sleeping partner would slither out from underneath the bed next, Mickelson was fearing for his wife Amy's life. The contrast between the two men could not have been any clearer than it was on this magnificent Masters Sunday. While Amy Mickelson, still fighting breast cancer, greeted her husband with an emotional embrace after his popular victory, Tiger's wife Erin was an ocean away, both physically and symbolically, leaving Woods (I hope) alone to deal with what he considered failure. As it turned out, Woods would have needed a 64 on Sunday to even tie Mickelson, who pretty much wrapped up the tournament with his audacious approach through a gap in the trees to within eagle range on the par five 13th. That he missed the short eagle putt is irrelevant.

What is relevant is that Mickelson, at least for now, is Woods' equal. He appears, at last, to have enough confidence in his game to take on Tiger at any venue. He still has to prove it, however. Sunday's victory left him still 10 major titles behind Woods, although his third green jacket is only one fewer than Woods has in his closet. Mickelson quite likely won some of Woods' former fans with his Masters performance. Many of Woods' fans, however, are standing by their man. I have to confess I'm one of them. Does that mean I condone his indiscretions? No, but it's not up to me to condemn them, either. I'm a Tiger Woods fan because he's the closest thing to perfection that we've seen on a golf course. I root for the story. I admire talent. Frank Sinatra was not a very nice man, I've been told, but I'd still rather listen to him sing than to Perry Como.

2010-04-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Maybe it's a good thing that Gordon Hayward's buzzer beating prayer went unanswered. If the Butler star's half court fling had gone in as time expired on Monday night's NCAA championship game, words would have been streaming from sports writers' word processors from here to hyperbole. As it was, the announcing team on CBS's telecast was calling Duke's 61-59 victory perhaps the greatest final in the history of the NCAA tournament. It wasn't. It was ferociously contested and close throughout--neither team ever led by more than six points. But it was missing a few things. One of them was a true super star. Neither team had one. Another missing ingredient was a doubt about which team would be the eventual winner.

I don't know about you but as the final 20 minutes unfolded I never had a sense that Duke was going to lose this game. It might have been tight on the scoreboard, but not as tight as Butler's shooters. Although they never could put the feisty Bulldogs away, Duke's Blue Devils generally kept it a two-possession game. Even when Butler would shrink the margin down to three points or less, Duke would almost always have possession of the ball, effectively making it a two-possession disadvantage for Butler. By now, having been outrebounded by the smaller Bulldogs in the first half--but still leading by a point at the intermission--Duke had seized control of the boards. Faced with a huge height disadvantage, the Bulldogs moved the ball at warp speed, looking for an opening. But too often they would settle for a drive to the basket where two or even three tall defenders were lurking.

The network announcers were on the money when they noted that Butler needed to shoot more from the perimeter. In particular they needed to put the ball in Hayward's hands. The 6-7 junior's game conjures memories of Larry Bird, including the fact that both had subpar performances in a losing NCAA title game. Hayward went only 2-11 from the field. but his slashes to the basket did net him a spate of second half free throws that kept the game close. After center Matt Howard powered in a pair of baskets to cut the Duke lead to one point in the final minute, the Bulldogs finally got the message and looked for Hayward. But Hayward's off balance shot for the lead drew iron with about seven seconds to go. After Duke's 7-1 center Brian Zoubek made the first of two free throws with under 4 seconds to play, he missed the second--perhaps intentionally. Hayward got the rebound and managed to dribble to midcourt before heaving his unanswered prayer. But it was oh, so close and had it dropped in we might be reconsidering this game's place in NCAA basketball lore. Obviously, if only for the presence of Butler, a small school from an unheralded conference, it has to fit in somewhere among the top 10. The fact that Duke Coach Mike Kryzyewski won his fourth title, joining legends Adolph Rupp and John Wooden as the only coaches to win that many, adds a little cache to its claim to eternal fame.

But there have been plenty of other games that equalled this one for excitement. Start with the fact that seven NCAA title games have gone to overtime. Of those, the one that stands out is North Carolina's 54-53 triple overtime win over Wilt Chamberlain's Kansas Jayhawks in a 1957 classic. Not far behind was Loyola of Chicago's 60-58 win over Cincinnati on a tip-in rebound at the overtime buzzer in 1963. That game resides in my personal memory book because it was the first NCAA final I ever covered for the Chicago Tribune. What made the game significant was that Cincinnati was the two-time defending champion, ranked No.1, and considered invincible if allowed to play on the lead. When the Bearcats opened a 15-point lead early in the second half, it appeared they were on their way to a threepeat. But Loyola, which started four African American players a full three years before Texas Western became famous for starting five, scrapped its way back and forced overtime. Demonstrating the enormous growth in media interest since then, Loyola Coach George Ireland conducted his postgame press conference in the hallway outside the Ramblers' dressing room and was surrounded by perhaps a dozen media types.

But not all of the most memorable title games went to overtime. There was Georgetown's Fred Brown throwing the ball away and North Carolina's Michael Jordan burying the game-winner in the Tarheels' 63-62 victory in 1982. The following year saw North Carolina State's Lorenzo Charles slamming the lid on an airball at the buzzer sending the underdog Wolfpack to an unlikely upset of Houston and Coach Jim Valvano on a frantic hunt for someone to hug. Two years after that came my own choice as the greatest NCAA Final, Villanova's 66-64 win over mighty Georgetown. The Wildcats made 9 of their 10 second half shots in a near-perfect display of basketball. And in 1987 came Indiana's 74-73 victory over Syracuse on Keith Smart's baseline jumper in the final second.

So, yes, Monday night's game was memorable. But the best ever? Hardly.

2010-03-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

There's something faintly familiar about Saturday's semi-final matchup featuring Michigan State against a little known school from Indiana. Haven't we seen this game before? Well, almost. With the Spartans reaching the Final Four for the sixth time in 12 years and playing a Butler team that made it for the first time ever, its a pretty simple segue back to 1979 when Michigan State and Magic Johnson beat Indiana State and Larry Bird in what is still the most watched NCAA final game ever. Except that it might be better to compare Butler's appearance in the big dance's last tango with the high school team in the movie "Hoosiers" than with the Bird-led Sycamores. That's not a knock against Butler, which comes into Saturday's showdown with a 24-game winning streak. That's impressive, but keep in mind that Indiana State came into the 1979 championship game with a 33-0 record and was the No.1 ranked team in the Final AP poll. The Sycamores were expected to get to the finals; Butler's Bulldogs weren't.

Similarly, this year's Michigan State run to the Final Four was much more unexpected than the '79 team's great waltz. Michigan State lost four games that year and I covered three of them for the Chicago Tribune. They might have been world beaters the rest of the year but they were 0 and 3 when I saw them. They must have been delighted when they found out I wasn't covering the Final Four. They played their worst game of the year at Northwestern, played so badly that Coach Jud Heathcote benched Johnson and the rest of the starters before the first half was over. The other two games I saw them lose were stunners. Purdue upset the Spartans on a buzzer beater from about 35 feet out. But that was nothing compared to their loss at Wisconsin, where guard Wes Mathews drained a shot from the center circle as time expired. The Purdue game was made even more memorable for me by the circumstances under which I covered it. It was played on a Saturday afternoon, with tipoff scheduled for 4 p.m. if I remember correctly. I decided to take my son, Mike, who was 8 at the time, and we set out after breakfast for the 140 mile drive from our home in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka to the campus in West Lafayette, Ind. There was a steady drizzle the whole way, but the trip was uneventful. But by the time the game was over and I had filed my story, the drizzle had turned to snow and as we started back home the weather reports on the radio were ominous. Dangerous conditions. Don't drive unless you absolutely have to. I thought about checking into a motel for the night. The Tribune would have paid for it. But I thought about it only fleetingly before I remembered that a few weeks earlier I had interviewed members of the Minnesota basketball team, which had been snowbound for two days after a game at Purdue.

Fortunately, traffic was light, mostly a few trucks which helped clear a path for us as we proceeded at about 30 miles an hour. It seemed to take forever before I took a left turn off Sheridan Rd. onto our street, Willow Rd. Just one more left turn to go and we'd be safely home. But I never made that turn. Instead my car buried itself in a two-foot snow bank and it was obvious it was going no farther on this night. I went to the front door and rang the bell. My wife opened the door and said, "Hi, guess what happened?" Remembering the many radio reports of garage roofs caving in under the weight of the near-record snow, I replied, "The garage collapsed." Bingo! I called the police and told them about my car being out on the street and then went to bed at about 3 in the morning. Such are the pleasures of covering college basketball in the midwest.

I covered another memorable Purdue game that year, memorable mostly because neither of the two teams' stars would consent to be interviewed after the game. Purdue center Joe Barry Carroll was one of the silent stars and the other, of course, was Bird. Except for the fact that Indiana State won and the postgame silent treatment I don't recall anything about that game.

There are no Larry Birds or Magic Johnsons in this year's Final Four, just four hard-working teams that managed to survive two weeks of bracket-busting or, as in the cases of Butler (twice) and West Virginia, contributed to the rash of upsets. Only hard core basketball fans or fans of the teams involved could name more than one or two players on the four teams, but three of the coaches are household names--in more than a few households. West Virginia's Bob Huggins has a championship ring from his days coaching Cincinnati and Duke's Mike Kryzyewski has two, along with 11 Final Four appearances. Vastly underrated is Michigan State's Tom Izzo, whose six Final Fours in a dozen years are the most of any coach during that time span. Butler's coach is pretty much unknown to everybody outside the state of Indiana, including me. But, playing in their hometown, the Bulldogs have a chance to change that if they can win just two more games. The first step comes Saturday when they get to answer the question of the day: Izzo is or Izzo not my baby.

2010-03-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Call me a Luddite. I'm not sure that is really the word to use, but I kind of prefer it to "stupid." A Luddite is a person who hates modern machinery, would rather travel in a horse drawn carriage than in a gas guzzling automobile, would rather wash his clothes in a nearby creek than in a spin dry washing machine, would prefer to beat the dirt out of his carpet to using a vacuum cleaner. That's not me. I appreciate modern conveniences even if I did, until quite recently, use my dishwasher only as an air-drying rack. It's just that, somewhere in the last 20 years, modern technology passed me by. I owned a microwave for about five years and never used it until my kids finally took pity on me and showed me how. Even now the only thing I can use it for is to reheat something. I was among the last persons to own a CD player or a DVD and I almost never use either one. I have a cell phone, but don't know how to use it, except to make an outgoing call. I don't even know the number. But of all the modern gadgets, the one that baffles me the most is the computer. I hate my computer and it hates me. Two weeks ago I was composing my blog and was nearly finished when I apparently hit some extraneous key that instantly narrowed my screen to the size of a Band-aid. Fortunately I had prior experience in writing on a small screen. As a sports writer for the Chicago Tribune I learned how to write on a first generation computer--the Teleram. This was a bulky portable machine that weighed about as much as a bowling ball and had a screen that would accommodate perhaps 150 words. Then you had to transmit the screen to the office computer by using a modem, a set of rubber couplers into which you would place your telephone before hitting the send button. The rate of failure to launch was higher than a Sherpa's base camp--and that was under benign conditions. Let there be any noise above a whisper anywhere within 20 yards of your machine and the chances the copy would actually reach your newspaper were miniscule. Among the more dreaded assignments in those days was a Purdue basketball game. Not that the Boilermakers weren't both competetive and accommodating. But the press box for basketball was in the midle of the Purdue cheering section and the only way you had a chance of filing during a game was to hope the opposition went on a crowd-silencing run.

I finally managed to finish my blog and post it, even in its reduced size, but I knew right then that my computer and I were at war. Some of you may have noticed that last week I did not post a blog. I intended to and actually got three paragraphs into it when suddenly the computer let me have it with both barrels. Not only did the incredible shrinking screen manifest itself again, but the cursed cursor froze. No matter what I tried I couldn't unfreeze it. Even two days later the computer was as useless as a Republican alderman in a Chicago city council meeting.

But there really is a silver lining in every cloud. My recalcitrant computer ended up doing me a huge favor. The blog I had started writing concerned the NCAA basketball tournament. More specifically it was my own private selection show in which I revealed who was going to win the national championship. And the winner is. . . .drum roll please. . . . . . .Villanova. This, in part, is what I wrote: "Pay attention now. Trust me. The national final will be a replay of the 1985 classic title game between Villanova and Georgetown, with the same result. Except this time when they cut down the nets the Wildcats will do so as the favorite." How did I come to this conclusion? Beats me. I guess my rationale went something like this: Georgetown and Villanova were both contenders in the Big East, generally acknowledged to be the strongest conference in the land. Georgetown had finished strong, reaching the Big East tournament finals. Villanova had not. But there have been teams that staggered into the tournament and won it and teams that seemingly had momentum going in and lost in the first round (See DePaul circa 1980s.]

Huey Long used to have a saying: Every man a king. This is the time of year when the corollary becomes appropriate: Every man a college basketball expert. There was a time when I considered myself among that number. I was The Tribune's national college sports writer at the time and travelled across the country, seeing most of the top-rated teams in person, catching the rest on television. I hobnobbed with Jimmy V and Dicky V and Coach K and I figured I knew all there was to know about college hoops. Wrong. I might have been able to tell a two-three zone from a man-to-man defense, but, as Bob Knight would gladly tell you, my basketball knowledge didn't go much beyond that. One year I picked Knight's Indiana Hoosiers and Jim Boeheim's Syracuse Orangemen as the most over-rated high seeds in the NCAA tournament and predicted both would exit stage left before the first act was over. That was the year those two teams ended up playing in the national championship game. I should have waited a year. The next year the Hoosiers did exit early, losing, if memory serves, to Richmond in the first round.

I had the advantage in those years of being able t0 pick the brains of some of basketball's brightest minds. Like Denny Crum, the Louisville coach who told me that guard play was the key to winning an NCAA tournament. That would be pretty useful information, if only one were able to determine which team has the best guard combination. Like Dick Vitale with his Diaper Dandies and P.T. Players. Trouble is, just about every player Vitale saw was in one of those categories. The point is, I had advantages the ordinary fan filling out his tournament brackets didn't have, but still some barmaid from Pensacola who picked the winners based on how many times her dog barked when she recited the team names would always outdo me. The second point is that if I couldn't pick the winners when I presumably knew what I was talking about why should you pay any attention to me now when I haven't watched a single game from start to finish? I don't even own a dog. But I do know where I can borrow one.

So, thanks to my balky computer I've been given a rare second chance. Nobody has to know that the two teams I picked to play for the title never made it out of the first week-end. It'll be our little secret. I'm just going to start over and pick the winner from the 16 teams still playing. First, the Final Four. In the South Regional it will be Duke over St. Mary's in the final. I know that Cinderella is supposed to go home once the Sweet 16 begins, but I like St. Mary's to pull one more upset, beating Baylor. But Duke, which should end Purdue's valiant run, will be too strong for the Gaols. The best game of the tournament could be the East Regional Final with Kentucky playing West Virginia. Although the Wildcats are very young I remember well the Fab Five Michigan Wolverines. I didn't cover the Final Four that year, but I did cover one of Michigan's early round games. Michigan not only had an all-freshman lineup, but a freshman coach, Steve Fisher, who had been an assistant to Bill Frieder during the regular season. Frieder had volunteered to stay and coach the Wolverines during the tournament after accepting the head coaching job at Arizona State. I asked Bo Schembechler why he hadn't taken Frieder up on his offer and Bo spat out: "Because I want a Michigan man coaching Michigan." Fisher coached the Wolverines to the national championship. Kentucky will have some trouble against underrated Cornell, but the Wildcats' athleticism will prevail in the end. I also like Kentucky over West Virginia, which shouldn't have too much trouble with Washington in the regional semi-finals.

I originally picked Kansas State to reach the Final Four from the West regional and since they are still alive, prudence dictates that I stay with the Wildcats. But Syracuse has looked so good in the first two rounds that I'm jumping on the band wagon. In the Midwest I'm taking a big leap of faith and picking Northern Iowa, which caught a break when its next opponent, Michigan State, lost its point guard in the victory over Maryland. In the final I'll take Northern Iowa over Ohio State, which will have its hands full with Tennessee in the semi-final. So there's your Final Four--Northern Iowa, Syracuse, Kentucky and Duke--three No. 1 seeds and a No.9. If I had to pick a winner to emerge from that group I'd probably go with Syracuse. I like the Orangemen's chances. And my second chances.

2010-03-09T12:12:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

I haven't watched much college basketball this year, a fact I hope you won't remember in a week or so when I give you my "expert" opinion on who's going to win the NCAA tournament. But this morning I noticed in the radio-TV listings that DePaul's Big East tournament game against South Florida was going to be televised. I knew that this would be my last chance to see the Blue Demons this year inasmuch as they had about as much a chance to beat South Florida or any other Big East team as Alf Langdon had to beat FDR in the '36 Presidential race. Over the last two seasons DePaul had a 1-35 record in regular season conference play. But, given that a year ago the Blue Demons had upset Cincinnati in the tournament opener after going 0-18 in the regular season, there was reason to hope. When I turned the game on it was halftime and DePaul had scored 15 points. That was half as many as South Florida had put on the board. Things got a little better for the Blue Demons in the second half. They got within five points with plenty of time left in the game, but never could get closer than that. Another season over and deeper in the dumper for a team that used to be the toast of Chicago. Now, they're simply toast.

You may wonder why I care, but the answer to that is pretty simple. I covered DePaul basketball for The Chicago Tribune for three years back in the day and in a way they were among the most satisfying years of my 36-year writing career. I came to the beat reluctantly, to say the least. Actually, I came to it angry, ticked off. Not at DePaul and certainly not against Ray Meyer, the iconic coach who was approaching the 700 win mark in what had been announced as his last hurrah. The object of my roiling rage was my sports editor, George Langford, who at one time I had considered a friend. For the first half of that year, 1983, I had covered the Cubs and, at the All-Star break, was scheduled to switch back to the White Sox in keeping with The Tribune's tradition of rotating the baseball beat writers at midseason each year. I was at the All-Star game when I received a message to call the office. When I did, Langford told me that he was taking me off the beat and told me to see him in the office the next day. When I did he told me that the move was instigated by the editor of the paper, Jim Squires, who said he was tired of the baseball writers getting beaten by the rival Sun-Times. I can honestly say that I had not been beaten on a single story that year. On the other hand, Jerome Holtzman, who was covering the White Sox, had been skinned alive quite regularly by Phil Hersh, who, I admit, was, and probably still is, one of the greatest pure writers of sports I have ever read. Further incensing me was the fact that Holtzman was being rewarded by being named the baseball "bigfoot", the national baseball writer, who would cover the World Series and other big events. Taking over my beat was Fred Mitchell, who was moving over from the Bulls beat. Fred is a good guy and a good writer, but the irony here is that he HAD been beaten earlier that year by his Sun-Times counterpart on the story of a Bulls coaching change. Langford then told me that I would be covering Ray Meyer's final year, which I would have appreciated as being the plum assignment it was had the circumstances been different.

It could have been a deadly tedious job had it been any other coach. But Meyer made it easy for me and the Sun-Times beat man, Joel Bierig. In his 42 years as head coach at DePaul, the grandfatherly Meyer had accumulated a wealth of stories and each day after practice he would share some of them with us. Add to that the fact that Meyer's last team was one of his best. That is saying something when you consider that over a three year stretch in the early '80s, his teams went 26-1, 27-1, 26-1--only to be upset in the first round of the NCAA tournament each year. A few years before that he had taken the Blue Demons to the Final Four, where they lost to Larry Bird's Indiana State team. It was Meyer's second Final Four and although he never won The NCAA tournament, he did win the NIT, which at the time, 1945, was considered at least the equal of the NCAA tournament. That squad was led by George Mikan, the 6-10 giant whom Meyer transformed from an uncoordinated hulk into the most dominant player of the first half of the 20th Century.

Meyer's last team took a 26-2 record into the NCAA tournament and, in light of the previous first round fiascos, everyone held their breath until DePaul had dispatched its first round opponent, Illinois State. Next up, in the semi-finals of the Midwest regional in St. Louis, was Wake Forest. Leading the whole way, DePaul had an eight-point lead with three minutes to play, still led by two and had the ball with 26 seconds to play. That's when the dream season turned into a nightmare. Point guard Kenny Patterson had the ball and the game in the palm of his hands. All he had to do was dribble out the final seconds, or go to the foul line and make his free throws. Instead he saw teammate Ty Corbin streaking for the basket and he threw what was meant to be an alley-oop pass for a Corbin dunk. Instead the ball sailed far over Corbin's head. When Wake Forest's Delaney Rudd let go of a 20-footer with the clock ticking down to all zeroes, everyone in the house had the same feeling that Meyer gave voice to the next day. "When he shot it," said Meyer, "I said, 'It looks good.' And it was." That was not the end of it. DePaul led 71-69 in the overtime and, after Wake's Danny Young had tied it again, Patterson went to the free throw line with 19 seconds to play. He missed the front end of a one-and-one and Young finally plunged the dagger deep into Meyer's heart with 2 seconds to play.

After 42 years a man shouldn't have to lay his broken heart out on a table and let the vultures feed on it. But the next day Meyer held an impromptu breakfast press conference and, literally, poured his heart out. "I knew for me it was all over," he said. "I walked down the gauntlet of newspapermen and I saw the lights flashing and I knew it was the last time I would ever make that walk. I lost a good friend. It's sinking in rapidly now. I've lost a real close friend that's been with me for so long. Three quarters of my life I've been in basketball. It will be a sad day for me next Oct. 15 when the boys go out on the gym floor and I do not. I'll sit in the office and I'll hear the ball bounce and wish I were down there to help them."

DePaul's defeat had a trickle down affect on me. During our meeting at the All-Star break Langford had promised me that I would be covering the Final Four and if DePaul had made it to Seattle there would have been no question about it. But Langford was no longer the sports editor and Gene Quinn, who was, called me into his office and said, "I'm sending (Mike) Conklin to Seattle. I still haven't made my mind up about you." A few days later he told me I was going, that Conklin would do the main story and I would do sidebars. Mike and I arrived in Seattle and immediately started looking for something to write about. No press conferences were scheduled, but I knew the Virginia sports information director and I suggested to him that he bring his coach over to the media center. Meanwhile, having nothing better to do, I wandered over to the hotel where all the coaches were staying and took a look around the lobby. I was astonished to see John Thompson, coach of the eventual champion Georgetown Hoyas, giving a long TV interview. I sidled over to a spot where I could hear what was being said. One of the TV crew gestured to Thompson, obviously asking whether he should get rid of me. Thompson indicated it would be all right for me to stay. Just as the television interview ws wrapping up, another writer, who knew Thompson pretty well, came by and the two of us approached the infamously media-disdaining coach and asked if we could talk to him. He nodded his assent and gave us nearly a half hour, touching a lot of bases, including why he kept his players away from the media. The story of the day had been that Thompson was keeping his players--and himself--in some secret hideaway. And here he was right out in plain sight and talking to the media and only the two of us had the story. I don't know about the other guy but my story won the Illinois UPI first place award and Gene Quinn finally made his mind up about me.

I covered Joey Meyer's first two years as DePaul's head coach and then went on to become The Tribune's national college sports "bigfoot. Joey did not have quite the success his father had, but he had his moments, including winning the National Coach of the Year award--an honor his father had won four times--in 1987. Joey lasted 13 years at DePaul and won 231 games. Between them father and son won 955 games for the little school by the el tracks. Then Joey had two bad years and was fired in 1997. DePaul hasn't been to the NCAA tournament since. From the little I saw watching the Blue Demons this afternoon, it doesn't appear they'll get back there very soon.

2010-03-02T10:15:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

Vince Lombardi notwithstanding, history tells us there can be victory in defeat. Dunkirk comes to mind. The United States Olympic hockey team, circa 2010, seconds the notion. Thirty years after a plucky team of amateurs pulled off the biggest upset in Olympic history, a squad of gritty professionals did it again. And this time they didn't even have to win the game.

One of the glorious aspects of the Olympics, winter or summer, is that you don't have to take home a gold medal to be a winner. Sometimes a silver or even a bronze can bring just as much joy. No one who watched Sunday's gold medal game could have come away with any other conclusion than that this was a second Miracle on Ice. The USA's 3-2 overtime loss to Canada might not have brought on as great a feeling of exhileration as did 1980's defeat of Russia's Big Red Army hockey machine. But it came close.

The U.S. team may have accepted its silver medals with bowed heads, but certainly with no sense of shame. I can't help comparing their demeanor with that of another Silver medal winning U.S. team--the 1972 Olympic basketball team. That team was so incensed by the bizarre officiating that gave Russia two mulligans, and ultimately the victory, in the final three seconds of the championship game that it refused to accept the silver medals. I covered that game for The Chicago Tribune and in my lead called it "the greatest three second violation in the history of basketball." I could sympathize with the players, but I could not agree with them. To many Americans it was a gesture of righteous indignation. To much of the rest of the world it was typical American hubris.

Although I consider myself as patriotic as the next guy and was rooting for the U.S. to win the game, I can't help but wonder if Sidney Crosby's game-winning shot wasn't the perfect ending. Certainly, Canada had a far greater emotional investment in its hockey team than did we Americans. It's THEIR game and they feel as strongly about it as we do about basketball. To prove it, Sunday's game was the most watched TV show in Canadian history. A lot of Americans watched it, too, but not as many as watched the 1980 games against Russia in the semi-final and Finland in the finals. Interest in hockey appears to be waning in this country, which is precisely why the NHL closed shop for two weeks to allow its star players to participate in Vancouver. If Sunday's thrilling climax doesn't give the game a boost I don't know what will.

Hockey as a sport has a couple of strikes against it. First of all, if you want to play it you have to know how to ice skate. That eliminates about half the world right there. Then, too, hockey does not translate well to the television screen. The puck, which is hard to see when you attend a game in person, is all but invisible on the screen. In fact, the one advantage the home viewer has over the fan in the arena is the ability of instant replay to show how a goal was scored. Before hockey became my fulltime beat in my final two years at The Tribune, I confess I hardly ever saw a goal being scored. The game is too fast, the puck too small, and my eyes too weak. I found, however, that when I watched hockey 100 nights a year I could train myself to concentrate on the puck and as soon as I learned the proper terminology I could report with some assurance that Jeremy Roenick had gone top shelf on Patrick Roy or that Chris Chelios had slipped one through the five hole on Martin Brodeur.

As often happens in life, a set of circumstances beyond my control led to my getting the hockey assignment. Having already covered most of the major beats at one time or another, I was at that stage of life where my main ambition was to be invisible. I never went into the office because there was no need to do so. If they wanted me they knew my phone number. I spent my days hoping the phone wouldn't ring, especially during Jeopardy. Then one day the phone rang. Wayne Gretzky was in town with the Los Angeles Kings and our beat writer who was supposed to do a story on "The Great One" had called in sick. Although they didn't expect me to talk to Gretzky himself at this late date perhaps I could get out to The Stadium and talk to Blackhawk goalie Eddie Belfour about what made Gretzky Gretzky. Eddie gave me some pretty good stuff and there is some irony in this because after I took over the beat the volatile goal tender and I did not always see eye to eye. It turned out that the beat writer was having some domestic difficulties, with his frequent absences due to road trips at the crux of the situation. So I finished out the season, including the playoffs, as the hockey writer. I soon discovered that hockey players were easier to get along with than some other professional athletes. The other writers on the beat seemed to be good guys, which is important. Most people don't realize it, but, as a sports writer, your best friends are not the guys in the office whom you never see. Rather, it's the beat writers from the rival papers with whom you spend so much time on the road. Sure, I have friends at The Tribune, but none any closer to me than Joe Goddard, who covered baseball for the Sun-Times when I was a Tribune baseball writer. After considering all of this I asked for, and got, the Blackhawk beat. It was a good two years. The Blackhawks were still selling out The Stadium every night and they made the playoffs both years I covered. They got to the conference finals that first year, losing to the Detroit Red Wings in a dramatic series where, it seemed, every game went at least one overtime and Belfour stood on his head nightly in a valiant, but doomed, effort to reach the Stanley Cup finals. By that time Eddie and I were not speaking to each other. When you're covering a hockey team and the No.1 goalie won't talk to you, that's not a good thing. Eddie came around a little bit when we discovered a mutual love for auto racing and we got along O.K. until I interviewed him for a story I was doing on backup goal tender Jeff Hackett. Hackett had been playing pretty well whenever he got the opportunity and my lead suggested that the Hawks now had two No.1 goal keepers and you could call them One and One-A. Belfour went bonkers when he read that and we were back to square one.

Roenick was one of my favorite players, a go to guy, as we say. He was always good for a juicy quote and from what I've read he hasn't changed much. It was strange to see him on Sunday's telecast, rendered nearly speechless by the amazing game taking shape in front of him. But that's what this game was, a stunner, and it doesn't matter who you were rooting for, because there were no losers in this game. Only winners.

2010-02-22T13:41:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

In 36 years of writing sports for The Chicago Tribune, I covered almost every event imaginable, from World Cup soccer to Davis Cup tennis, from Super bowls to Independence bowls (ghastly weather in Shreveport, La. , in December.) NCAA Final Fours, NIT finals, championship games in all the major pro sports, yeah, been there, done that. Not to mention--and I'd really rather not--archery, handball, squash, weightlifting and bowling. But there's one major event I never covered--the Winter Olympics. That one hole in my curriculum vitae never bothered me much, since I never liked winter, anyway, which is why I moved to Florida as soon as it became expedient to do so. My interest in the Winter Games was never as high as my fascination with the Summer Games and I suspect that is the case with the majority of sports fans. I do like to watch the downhill skiing, but speed skating would leave me cold even if it weren't a cold weather sport. If there's anything more boring than watching a 5,000 meter speed skating event, it's sitting in the newsroom and taking the speed skating results over the phone, a chore that befell me every winter until I was lucky enough to get unchained from the copy desk and become a fulltime writer.

There were a couple of reasons why The Tribune had such an avid interest in speed skating. Most importantly, the paper sponsored a competition called The Silver Skates, named after the children's classic "Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates." In case you're wondering, the book was better than the play. Then, too, the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, where I lived for a few years, was a hotbed of speed skating which, under the guidance of Coach Ed Rudolph, supplied most of the USA's Olympians, including super stars Diane Holum and Eric Heiden. Heiden still stands out as the country's greatest Olympic speed skater even if Apolo Ohno, who in the Vancouver games has so far added two medals to his growing total, could end up with nine pieces of Olympic jewelry. But of his seven medals so far, only two have been gold and one of those was an outright gift from a Korean skater who was disqualified while leading a 2002 race. Heiden's five medals are all gold. Case closed.

There's little doubt that the center piece of the Winter Games, at least among women, is figure skating, particularly women's figure skating. Going all the way back to Sonia Henie in the 1920s and 30s, the Olympic women's champion figure skater is one of the most famous and admired women in the world. I find figure skating only a little less boring than speed skating, although the music is nice and if I just close my eyes and listen it's not too bad. I seldom intentionally watch figure skating. But about a week ago I was passing the living room TV set when I happened to look at the screen and saw what I later described to my wife as "the greatest figure skating routine I've ever seen." Turns out it was the greatest routine anybody has ever seen, a world record performance that would propel the Chinese pair of Shen Xue and Hongbo Zhao to a gold medal. Don't expect Xue and Zhao to become household names, even in China where they know how to pronounce those names. For some reason pairs skaters just don't get the same adulation as the individual winners.

Of course you don't always have to win gold in the Olympics to become a star. Sometimes any old kind of medal will do (see Apolo Anton Ohno above). Where is Vince Lombardi when we need him? There have been several compelling story lines for Bob Costas and friends to delve into, including Lindsey Vonn, she of the sore shin and women's downhill gold medal; speed skater Shani Davis, who may be the only athlete in Vancouver and environs who thinks to win a silver medal is to know the agony of defeat; and the U.S. hockey team that defeated Canada for the first time in a half century. But the story of the Winter Olympics so far has to be Bode Miller. When they make the movie it will be called: Redemption. Seldom has an Olympic athlete been so vilified as was Miller after the 2006 Winter Games in Turin. But as Tiger Woods might say, he brought it on himself. Miller went into those games the world champion and favored to mine more gold than a 49er. The only gold he saw in the entire two weeks was Cuervo Gold. "It's been an awesome two weeks," said Miller at the time. "I got to party at an Olympic level." Unfortunately he did not ski at an Olympic level. He further alienated the skiing estblishment a year later when he quit the U.S. ski team and skiied as an independant for two years. A year later he failed to win a race for the first time in his career and early this year sprained an ankle playing volleyball. Not much was expected of him when the Olympics began, but so far he has won three medals, including the gold medal he was supposed to win four years ago.

When I think about it, I have some regrets over never having covered a Winter Olympics. There are some good stories out there and what more could a sports writer want? Except, perhaps, to cover them without having to wear galoshes and a ski mask.

2010-02-16T12:58:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

Frank Thomas a.k.a. The Big Hurt called it a career last week, 18 months after playing his last game in the major leagues as a member of the Oakland A's. Next stop: The Baseball Hall of Fame. When he goes in he'll surely be wearing the cap of the Chicago White Sox, the team with which he started his major league career, even though his departure from the White Sox after 16 mostly memorable seasons, was acrimonious. During his final years in Chicago The Big Hurt really was hurting, physically and emotionally. What hurt the most was that his teammates didn't believe he was hurt. The media took up the cry and, after that, the always approachable Thomas played behind an invisible shield.

Thomas and the White Sox have since reconciled and the team plans to retire his No. 35 unifrom in a ceremony this coming August. For some reason Thomas has been about as unappreciated as a man can be considering his accomplishments. I believe that numbers are often overrated when it comes to rating a player's chances for the Hall of Fame. If all you looked at were the numbers, Sandy Koufax might not be in the Hall of Fame with his 165 big league wins. But Koufax was the greatest pitcher I ever saw and if any of the immortals, the Cy Youngs and the Christy Mathewsons and the Lefty Groves were better they weren't mortal. I've seen all the greats since Koufax's time, your Nolan Ryan, your Tom Seaver, your Steve Carlton, your Randy Johnson and there's not one of them I would rank above Koufax. It was like comparing a matador to a butcher. Both can kill the cow, but one--the matador--is practicing an art and the other is practicing a craft.

I think that when it comes time to judge Thomas, there will be those who deem him unworthy. They will point out that about half of his career was spent as a designated hitter and that even when he played the field--first base--he wasn't very good at it. I'll concede the point. But as a pure hitter, Thomas stands shoulder to shoulder with the greatest who ever played the game. Yes, his lifetime batting average of .301, while it's very good by modern standards, is well shy of the gaudy averages posted by the likes of Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Rogers Hornsby. Yet, of all the players in major league history, only Ruth, Williams, Mel Ott and Frank Thomas have combined a lifetime .300 or better average with more than 500 home runs, 1,500 runs batted in, 1,000 runs scored and 1,500 walks. And he's the only player in major league history with seven consecutive seasons where he batted .300 or better with 100 walks, 100 runs, 100 runs batted in and 20 homers. Those were his first seven full seasons for the White Sox and his lifetime batting average at the time stood at .330. He was the Albert Pujols of the day. By that time he had posted three of his five 40 homer seasons.

Inevitably he's going to be compared with Edgar Martinex, the Seattle Mariners third baseman who, like Thomas, morphed into a fulltime designated hitter. I was criticized recently by some fellow bloggers for leaving Martinez off my Hall of Fame ballot. I'm willing to revisit the subject for future years. Martinez did have a higher lifetime average than Thomas --.312 to .301. He put together seven consecutive seasons in midcareer that, as far as batting average is concerned, matched the seven year output with which Thomas began his big league career. But the power numbers are not even close. Martinez finished with 309 home runs to Thomas' 521 and 1,261 r.b.i.s to the Big Hurt's 1,704. I might, some year, reconsider and vote for Martinez. But not until Frank Thomas is safely in the Hall. Numbers can lie. Early Wynn is in the Hall of Fame because he won 300 games, but it took him five or six starts before he finally got the big one on a five-and-fly performance, then promptly retired. Nothing against Wynn, whom I came to know and like when he became a broadcaster, but it took him 23 years to do it and if he had finished with 299 wins I don't think he'd be in the Hall of Fame today.

Frank Thomas's numbers don't lie. They aren't even relevant. I'd vote for Thomas if his numbers were half as gaudy, because he was one of the most electrifying performers in major league history. I can count on the fingers of one hand the hitters who have made me stop what I was doing to watch an at bat. Ted Williams. Dick Allen. Frank Howard. And Frank Thomas. If the presence of Howard on that list surprises you, I'll only tell you that Howrd, one of the strongest men to ever play the game, hit the hardest ball I've ever seen in almost 70 years of watching baseball. He was playing for the Washington Senators at the time. In those days the center field wall in what was then Comiskey park was 415 feet away from home plate. Howard hit a line drive past pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm's left ear. Wilhelm, whose nickname was "Tilt" because his head was tilted slightly to one side, ducked and the ball continued on a line all the way to the 415 foot sign. I don't know that anyone ever hit a ball that hard without propelling it out of the park.

Wilhelm, by the way, is another case of why numbers can't always be counted on to tell the whole story. Wilhelm didn't get into the Hall of Fame until his ninth year of elibility, yet I could argue that he was the greatest relief pitcher of all time. Wilhelm had 227 lifetime saves, a number that a modern relief pitcher could put up in five or six good seasons. But the save rules were different then. Many of Wilhelm's saves were three innings or more. I can't tell you how many times he came in with the bases loaded and nobody out and got out of the jam by striking out the side. His knuckleball was difficult to hit and, for some, impossible to catch. One night in Cleveland. must have been in 1966, the Sox's regular catcher, J.C. Martin, was out with an injury and manager Eddie Stanky had to employ good hit, no field John Romano. All was well until Wilhelm entered the game. The flutterballer's first pitch went past Romano to the backstop. His second pitch likewise. After the third pitch had escaped him, the dejected Romano started toward the White Sox dugout, where he threw his glove to the ground and started taking off his chest protector. Stanky, who had no other catcher available, had to physically push the reluctant Romano back onto the field.

2010-02-09T13:24:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

Since my last column two weeks ago I've had a birthday. You don't need to know how old I am; let's just say that if I were the writer of the musical "Knickerbocker Holiday," Walter Huston would be singing November Song and the famous lyric would read, "and your friends dwindle down to a precious few." Roger Jaynes, who died Saturday a month before his 64th birthday, was more than a friend. He was a comrade in arms. There were many facets to Roger, but the one I knew best was the auto racing writer, a beat we shared for nearly a dozen years. Auto racing was not Roger's only beat on the Milwaukee Journal. He covered Marquette basketball in the heyday of Al McGuire, including the Warriors' 1977 NCAA championship season, and later wrote a well-reviewed biography of the colorful coach and TV analyst. He subsequently published three Sherlock Holmes novels and was working on three or four more when he passed away. But auto racing was the sport he loved above all others, a passion we shared and one that formed the core of our friendship. When Roger left the Journal after 15 years, he stayed closely bonded to the sport, becoming the public relations director for Road America, the twisty four-mile road racing course in Elkhart Lake, Wis. With that move, our relationship changed, but our friendship remained the same. But now, instead of working together for the entire month of May at the Indianapolis 500, we would generally see each other only on racing week-ends at Road America, when Roger would be as busy as the flagman at a race at Talladega. Still, he would always find time to have dinner one night, along with his wife Mary and my wife, Leslie.

When people ask me what sport I liked covering the most I always respond: auto racing, an answer that usually elicits a puzzled look and the question: Why? The answer is simple. The people. They tell me things have changed, but in our day race drivers were the friendliest athletes in the spectrum of sport. If you were one of the regulars they would call you by name and make time to talk with you. There were exceptions, of course, A.J. Foyt being notoriously difficult. When the mood struck him he could be charming, but the mood struck him about as often as the Andretti family won the Indy 500. But it wasn't just the drivers who made covering motor sports a joy; it was the other writers. The Indianapolis 500 is probably the single most difficult event to cover because of the vastness of the physical plant. Pit road is about three quarters of a mile long and on a typical practice day you might walk from one end to the other a half dozen or more times. It's almost impossible for one man to be everywhere he needs to be at any given time. That's one reason racing writers are willing to share their notes, even their ideas. When I first went to Indianapolis for Pole Day in 1968 I was, like most first timers, overwhelmed by the size of the place and daunted by the challenge to cover an event on such a vast stage. I was quickly brought up to speed by two entities--the public relations directors of the teams and tire companies; and other writers. The Indianapolis writers were particularly helpful, most noticeably Ray Marquette and Dick Mittman. I had barely gotten to know Marquette when he died tragically in a plane crash along with several other staff members of the United States Auto Club. Ray had just recently left his paper to join USAC and I still remember vividly being awakened one morning by the clock radio going on during a report of the crash and although no names were mentioned, I said to my wife: "Ray Marquette."

Mittman is still a good friend and he and I and Roger Jaynes were like a Rat Pack covering Indy in the month of May. Sometimes one of the three of us would get on to a story and we would tell the other two, share any quotes we might have and divvy up the work that remained. "You go talk to (Roger) Penske and we'll try to get Rick (Mears)," we might say. There was no suggestion of a conflict of interest. Our papers were not competing against each other and neither were we.

I may have told you this story before and if I have, please forgive me. Memory lapses are part of the joy of reaching the golden years. One Sunday afternoon in May of 1978 or '79, I was talking with someone in a garage in Gasoline Alley when Dick and Roger, accompanied by Mario Andretti, burst in, all excited. "We've got this gadget that tests your lung power," enthused Roger. "Mario will show you how it works." Andretti was holding something that resembled a flute with wings. He took a deep breath and blew into the mouthpiece, causing the wings to whirl like propellor blades. "Now you try it," said Mario. I huffed and I puffed but I couldn't get the wings to budge. Mario took the gadget back and once again got the wings to twirl. I tried again with the same result as before. The three of us then walked out to pit road, where Foyt and Bobby Unser, among others, were preparing to get some practice laps. The moment they saw me they burst out laughing. "Have you seen yourself," asked Bobby, passing me a hand mirror. I looked and saw that I looked like Al Jolson in blackface. Andretti then showed me the secret. When he blew into the mouthpiece he had one finger covering a hole in the side of the pipe. If you didn't cover the blowhole you'd get a face full of carbon. I can't imagine another sport where the players and writers interact like that. Maybe they don't do things like that anymore. I don't know. I only know that as I approach the winter years the world grows colder and one more leaf has fallen from the tree. Your race is over, Roger. Rest in peace.

2010-01-26T08:56:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

Where is Bing Crosby now that we need him? Nobody could play a priest like Der Bingle. Well, maybe Pat O'Brien could. But what we're looking for here is a young priest and Crosby defined that role. Going My Way, anybody? Besides, we might need a singing priest here. We could be looking at a musical somewhere down the road. We already have the story. Now we need somebody to write the book and another somebody to produce the movie and a third somebody to adapt the movie into a musical unless Mel Brooks decides to do both. In case you missed it, and I almost did considering that my local paper gave it only two sentences in the daily briefing column, a top minor league prospect in the Oakland A's organization is quitting baseball to become a Roman Catholic priest. Now, it's possible that outfielder Grant Desme was never destined to be a major leaguer. He's 23 years old and played last season in A ball. But he was the only player in the minor leagues to produce a 30-30 season--30 homers and 30 steals--and he finished the year by being named Most Valuable Player in the Arizona Fall League. A second round draft pick in 2007, Desme was ranked as Oakland's 8th best prospect by Baseball America.

Desme is giving up a life that for many young men represents the American dream. If he reached the major leagues and played even for a few years he would be earning a million dollars a year or more in this era of inflated salaries. But he has already informed A's General Manager Billy Beane that he intends to enter a seminary this August and, ultimately, enter the priesthood. Desme said that Beane was "understanding and supportive, but it sort of knocked him off his horse." If so, Beane quickly remounted and issued a statement that must have taken at least 30 seconds to compose: "We respect Grant's decision and wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavors." One reason Desme advanced no higher than A ball in his three years as a pro was that injuries robbed him of a large part of his first two years. He says he spent a lot of time thinking during that period and "those injuries were the biggest blessings God ever gave me." He seemed to be fulfilling his promise as a baseball player last season when, finally healthy, he hit .288 with a combined 89 rbis and 31 homers at Kane County (Il.) and Stockton (Cal.) He hit another 11 homers and knocked in 27 runs in 27 games in the Arizona league. In his final game he struck out twice and hit a home run, "which defines my career a little bit. I was doing well, but I wasn't at peace with where I was at."

Baseball has had its Preacher Roe and Johnny Priest but not since the days of Billy Sunday has it had, to my knowledge, an active player morph into a man of God. And any resemblance between Desme and Billy Sunday is purely coincidental. Sunday was a real life Elmer Gantry and might even have been the inspiration for Sinclair Lewis's novel. An old-time Bible thumper, Sunday made more money as a fire and brimstone evangelist than he ever did in his eight seasons as a major league ball player. A lifetime .248 hitter, Sunday was noted for his speed on the basepaths and in his final year swiped 86 bases in a season split between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Sunday had been discovered by Cap Anson, the legendary Chicago Cubs manager and first baseman (they were called the White Stockings at the time), while playing town ball in Marshalltown, Iowa, Anson's home town. He played most of his career with the Chicago team and it was in Chicago that he accepted a job at the YMCA for $83 a month, turning down the Phillies' offer of $3,000 for the 1891 season. He eventually would make a more than comfortable living as the Billy Graham of his day, but that was several years down the road.

The life that Grant Desme has chosen for himself is far different than the one that Billy Sunday lived, but he could become almost as celebrated. All it will take is someone to write the book and then, the movie, and, let's see, would Johnny Depp or Robert Downey Jr. be the best choice for the title role?

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There was a time when I was pretty good at picking the Super bowl winner and the final score. In fact, as far as I know, I'm the only writer to win the Super bowl pool two years in a row (Games VI and VII). Noted Cincinnati writer Tom Callahan even wrote a column about me before Super Bowl VIII. I'd usually pick the AFC champion to win the game. While most major newspapers, including my own Chicago Tribune, all but ignored the upstart AFL, I had covered the last pre-Super Bowl AFL championship game, in which the Buffalo Bills beat the Chargers in a yawner in San Diego. I also covered the Oakland Raiders' victory over the Houston Oilers before Super Bowl II and the Jets' win over the Raiders the next year in wind blown Shea Stadium. I knew the AFC was getting stronger and was one of the few who did not predict a Colts' blowout of the Jets before Super Bowl III. I didn't go so far as to pick the Jets, but I did refute the prevailing notion that the Jets had no chance. One Chicago writer even called it 73-0, which, of course, was the score of the Bears' 1940 NFL championship game win over the Washington Redskins. It's been a long time since I've made a public selection for a Super Bowl and I'm pretty out of touch. I'm probably going to root for the Saints. I can remember covering a game in New Orleans when Hank Stram was coaching and, noting that the King Tut exhibit was in town, I wrote that Saints fans didn't need King Tut because they already had King Strut. This incensed many Saints fans, who didn't know that Hank and I were good friends and in fact I had dinner with the Strams after the game. But, sentiment aside, I'm going with my old tried-and-true method and picking the AFC team. Colts, 31; Saints, 20. No blog next week. See you in two weeks and we'll see if I still have the touch.

2010-01-19T09:50:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

The time is long past when a man's word was his bond and his handshake his troth. We are now living in an age when even a signed contract, as I once was told by my boss at the Chicago Tribune, "isn't worth the paper it's printed on." Nowhere is this more evident than in college sports, where football and basketball coaches have been known to jump ship more readily than a Shanghaied sailor. There is more loyalty in a street gang than in the play pens of academe. That, of course, is a two-way street. For every coach who leaves his team in the lurch to take his "dream job" there is one who is summarily axed with years left on his contract. In most cases, the fired coach at least gets his money. The jilted school gets to hijack some other school's coach.

That's why I think that, with the year less than three weeks old, David Cutcliffe has already locked up the Sportsman of the Year trophy. There are those, of course, who feel that Cutclifffe himself should be locked up. What sane man would turn down the head coaching job at Tennessee to remain in the same capacity at Duke? We're talking football here, not basketball. Duke football has been mainly irrelevant for the past 45 years, dating to Bill Murray's departure in 1965. Cutcliffe is the 10th Blue Devil head coach since then and only one of the previous nine--Steve Spurrier--posted a winning record. At some point in his three-year tenure, I visited with Spurrier in his office to do a story on the Duke revival and found him a little arrogant and brimming with self confidence. He probably could not be blamed for jumping at the Florida job when it became available. He was, after all, a Heisman trophy winner for the Gators.

Of course, Cutcliffe had some valid reasons to skip to Tennessee after Lane Kiffin's abrupt departure. He was a Vols' assistant coach twice and had the distinction of coaching both Peyton Manning, while at Tennessee, and Eli Manning, during his six years as head coach at Ole Miss. He also mentored Brady Quinn during a brief stint at Notre Dame. As a head coach at Mississippi, Cutcliffe had five winning seasons, culminating in a 10-3 season and a victory in the Cotton Bowl. But after a 4-7 season in 2004 he was told to get rid of his assistants and, in a move foreshadowing his recent decision, refused and was fired. After a stint with Notre Dame he went back to Tennessee and it was from there that Duke plucked him two years ago. He has family in Knoxville and knowledge of the program. He would have been a natural; his hiring would have gone a long way towards salving the wounded feelings of the Rocky Top faithful.

But he turned down Tennessee, one of the top coaching jobs in the country, to remain at Duke, where he went 4-8 and 5-7 in his first two seasons. "The job is not finished here," he explained. In a recent interview with McClatchy newspapers, he referred to Spurrier's three and out: "He came in, threw the ball around, and went on to a job at his alma mater. We're not trying to be a flash in the pan and go on to something else. We're trying to commit to this thing and make it a way of life."

Cutcliffe's approach was 180 degrees from that of Kiffin, who, after going 7-6 in his lone season at Tennessee, stunned the Volunteer nation with his mad dash to the West Coast. The USC job opening, of course, came because Pete Carroll unexpectedly left after nine highly successful seasons to become head coach with the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL. While some Trojan fans may be upset that Carroll left, most of them are pretty sanguine about it. After all, the man left them two national championships, three Heisman winners, and a lifetime of memories. All Kiffin left the folks in Tennessee was the bitter taste of ashes.

2010-01-12T12:30:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

So you thought you could slip one by me. Thought I wasn't paying any attention. The whole football world is up in arms about the Indianapolis Colts pulling their star players in the middle of a game when they still had a chance at a perfect season and you look for my reaction. Might as well ask the Dali Lama what he thinks about American Idol. That's the trouble with writing a weekly column. Some weeks there are five or six big stories and your job then is to decide which is the one that grabs the most readers by the throat. Sometimes weeks go by without a single story that sits up and begs to be addressed. Feast or famine is the name of the game and sports writers have been eating high on the blog these last few weeks. Just look at the pile of tasty treats laid out before us in the past five days alone.

Alabama beats Texas for the national championship in a game that is decided in the first five minutes. That's about how long Colt McCoy lasted before being sent to the infirmary with a shoulder injury. The next day the University of South Florida fires head football coach Jim Leavitt, the only coach the Bulls have had in their 13-year history. His crime: Allegedly grabbing a player by the throat at halftime of the Louisville game, slapping him in the face and lying about it to investigators. Say it isn't so, Jim "It isn't so," Leavitt declares. Leavitt's sacking comes just days after an even higher profile coach, Texas Tech's Mike Leach, is booted out the door under similar circumstances. Leach, who is not the only coach the Red Raiders have had, but is the coach who put the school on the football map, is accused of sending an injured player into solitary confinement for the crime of incurring a concussion. Leach counters that he was fired because he had wrangled too high a salary in contentious contract negotiations last winter. But that's old news. In the meantime, the doors of the Baseball Hall of Fame widen just enough for Andre Dawson to sneak through. Dawson, who played for 21 years, mostly with the Montreal Expos and Chicago Cubs, had been knocking at the Hall of Fame door for nine years before getting the summons. No sooner is Dawson safely inside than the doors slam shut right in the faces of Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar. There are 539 ballots returned by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America and, needing 75 per cent (405 votes), Blyleven, in his 13th attempt, falls five votes shy and Alomar, in his first try, misses by eight votes. Mark McGwire, whose presumed dependence on steroids is about to become established fact, gets only 128 votes, one of them mine.

The week-end brings the wildcard rounds of the NFL playoffs and although three of the games are walkovers, the lone exception makes up for it. The Green Bay Packers and Arizona Cardinals engage in an epic shootout between the grizzled gunslinger, Kurt Warner, and the new kid on the block, Aaron Rodgers. When the dust settles, both are still standing and the score is tied at 45-all. It is obvious to everyone in the stadium and millions watching on television that whichever team wins the coin flip will win the game. NFL playoff rules vary greatly from college rules. In the college game both teams have an opportunity to score and the game can go on for as many overtime periods as is required. In the NFL it's strictly sudden death. First team that scores wins and if it turns out to be the other guy you're out of luck. The Chicago Bears once won a game in Detroit by returning the overtime kickoff for a touchdown. The Lions never even sniffed the ball. Something similar appears inevitable here. Neither defense seems capable of stopping the opponents' offense or even slowing it down. So when the Packers win the flip, Green Bay fans rush to telephone their travel agents to make arrangements for the next round. Then comes the jaw-dropping conclusion. As expected, the Cardinals' offense never does see the ball again. But its beleaguered defense does. On third and six in the first series after the kickoff, Rodgers is stripped of the ball, inadvertently kicks it to Cardinal linebacker Karlos Dansby and, 17 yards later--touchdown. Arizona wins 51-45.

So now everyone is talking about the NFL playoffs, right? Well, maybe for a few hours, until rumors start bubbling out of Los Angeles that USC Coach Pete Carroll is going to take the head coaching job with the Seattle Seahawks. By Monday the story goes well beyond the rumor stage and eventually is confirmed. But by that time everybody is talking about McGwire's confession that he, indeed, took steroids during his glory years.

So what's a guy supposed to write about? Warner? O.K. Many are saying his near-perfect performance Sunday almost assures his enshrinement in the NFL Hall of Fame. I'm saying he didn't need any reaffirmation. He's already a first ballot Hall of Famer. Carroll? How's this? Some are saying he's running away from possible NCAA sanctions against his USC team. I'm saying this: He went for the money (about 6 1/2 million a year) and the challenge. And I'll further say that he will fail this time, just as he did the first time around. And the second. McGwire? Some are saying his confession and apparent contrition will eventually lead him into the Hall of Fame. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I voted for McGwire in the latest election and I'll continue to vote for him as long as baseball sees fit to put him on the ballot. But I'm in the minority and our numbers are shrinking.

So those are some of the things I could comment on this week, but I've got unfinished business to attend to first. Now about those Indianapolis Colts, who pulled quarterback Peyton Manning and several other starters in the third quarter of a game they were leading 15-10 and would eventually lose 29-15. The Colts justified the decision by pointing out that they risked injuries to their star players when they already had secured home field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs. They may have felt justified when the New England Patriots, who did not sit any of their star players, lost receiver Wes Welker to a devastating injury in a game that basically was meaningless. But, hey, listen up. Football is a physical game. Guys get hurt. But there is no such thing as a meaningless game. It's not a meaningless game to the guy who pays $80 a seat, $80 that he probably can't afford, and thinks he's going to see a professional football team. The NFL has rules about hiding injuries. There are deadlines for reporting injuries that might keep a player out of the game. There are substantial fines for failure to honestly report such injuries. I propose this: mandate that any team that intends to keep a non-injured player off the field on Sunday, report it to the league by Thursday of game week. And let the poor sap who paid the 80 bucks have the option of returning his ticket and getting his money back.

2010-01-05T08:29:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

Remember when Slippery Rock was every college football fan's favorite team? In stadiums across the country, fans used to listen for the scores of other teams to be announced and the largest cheer of all would be when the P.A. announcer would intone ". . .and Slippery Rock, 28; Susquehanna, 13." If you asked them, few fans would be able to tell you why they rooted for Slippery Rock. I once went to the Slippery Rock campus in western Pennsylvania and tried to find out. It was a mystery to the folks at Slippery Rock, too.

Boise State is the new Slippery Rock. Except that Boise State is more than just a funny name. Boise State is one heckuva football team and we may never find out just how good it is, this Little Team That Could. I marvelled, along with most college football fans who live outside the state of Oklahoma, when the Broncos beat the smug Sooners, 43-42, in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl in what has to be one of the five best college football games ever played. I took note of their unbeaten regular season a year ago, a season marred only by a 17-16 loss to Texas Christian in the Poinsettia bowl. I was impressed by Boise State's opening night 19-8 victory over Oregon to start this season and rooted for it to go unbeaten again. But last night I was hoping that Texas Christian would do it again, spoil the Broncos' perfect season. Here's why: Because if TCU had added Boise State's pelt to its string of 13 straight victories, going back to last year's bowl game, the Horned Frogs would have had a legitimate claim to at least half of the national championship that now will go, unencumbered, to the winner of Thursday night's Texas-Alabama game. Certainly, Boise State supporters will now make that claim for their own school. But it's not going to happen. Too bad. A little chaos is not necessarily a bad thing and chaos there might have been had TCU prevailed.

There are two reasons that Boise State has no shot at any part of the national championship. One--The winner of the No.1 vs No.2 matchup in the Rose bowl Thursday night is the automatic winner of the BCS championship trophy. Two--Cincinnati. When the bowl season began, there were five unbeaten teams, all with a shot of at least getting the Associated Press i.e. sports writers version of the championship. Sure, the chances were slim that anyone but Texas or Alabama would ascend the throne. That became "none" when Florida blew the 13-0 Cincinnati Bearcats out of the water in the Sugar bowl. The Gators' 51-24 walkover served to remind voters of the gulf between the traditional gridiron powers and the Johnny-come-latelies like Cincinnati, Boise State and TCU. So TCU's hopes probably were crushed even before Monday night's 17-10 loss to Boise State in the Fiesta bowl. Chances are, they probably were gone the moment TCU and Boise State were slated to play each other, leaving neither team the chance to prove they were as good as the teams from the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) conferences.

But going in, the Horned Frogs still had a better chance than Boise State to crash the BCS victory parade. TCU could make a case that it's schedule was every bit as tough as either Texas' or Alabama's. Yes, TCU plays in the Mountain West conference and that's supposed to be playing not only in a different league but a different galaxy from the leagues the Crimson Tide (SEC) and Longhorns (Big 12) preside over. But TCU's schedule included six teams that have won their bowl games this season. And until TCU itself was beaten, the Mountain West had a perfect 4-0 bowl record. Now let's look at Alabama's schedule. Do North Texas, Tennessee-Chattanooga and Florida International scare you? Didn't scare 'Bama fans, either. How about Texas' nonconference schedule. Louisiana-Monroe. Wyoming. UTEP. Central Florida. The Longhorns struggled in the first half before overpowering Wyoming 41-10. TCU beat the Cowboys 45-10.

Boise State, on the other hand, played in the weak Western Athletic Conference and had just one signature victory going into the Fiesta Bowl--the opening nighter over Oregon. But that one was a beauty. The Broncos squeezed the life out of the Ducks, holding them without a first down in the entire first half. That defensive masterpiece looked better and better as Oregon began to not only pile up victories, but massive scoring totals. Had Oregon won its Rose Bowl game against Ohio State, Boise State might yet have had a good argument for its title claim. After holding TCU to 10 points, the Broncos' unheralded defense has now humbled two of the top offensive teams in the country. What that proves is that, if you give them a few weeks to prepare, Boise State can beat any team in the country. Maybe they could do it without extra preparation. We'll probably never know.

SOME QUESTIONS THAT DESERVE ANSWERS:

Can anyone tell me why spiking the ball to stop the clock is not intentional grounding? You're supposed to be penalized if you're in the pocket, throw the ball where there is no apparent receiver, and don't get the ball to the line of scrimmage. And don't tell me the quarterback does get the ball to the line of scrimmage. They invariably take a step backwards before grounding the ball.

Can anyone tell me why they always make the button hole smaller than the button?

Just asking.

2009-12-29T11:05:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

This is the week that columnists wait for all year. Please don't analyze that sentence too closely, because if you do you'll realize how absurd it is. Of course it's the week columnists--and everybody else--wait for all year. It's the last week of the year for God's sake. But what makes it special for columnists and other pundits is that they can look in any direction and find gold. They can look back and make lists of the top this or that of the year. Or they can look ahead and make predictions about what next year will bring. It's so easy a caveman could do it. This year we are doubly blessed since New Year's Eve not only will mark the end of the year 2009, but the end of the decade.

Who's the Athlete of The Year? Of the decade? What were the top stories of the year? Of the decade? The answer to all four questions is the same, my friends. Tiger Woods. The AP sports editors named Tiger the top athlete of the decade and I don't see any reason to argue the point. He's so dominated his sport--we're talking about his golf game here--that the only question I have is whether golf is actually a sport and whether golfers are actually athletes. It is a question I resolved in my own mind many years ago. Or, at least, Arnie Palmer resolved it for me. Palmer had just been named Athlete of the Year or the Decade or some such and I, new to columnizing, had written that golfers were not athletes. I had in mind the fact that a golfer could be as pot bellied as Santa Claus or as skinny as the holes opened by the Chicago Bears' offensive line and still win golf championships. A few weeks later I was invited to a luncheon where Palmer was one of the guests. As it happened Arnie was seated right next to me and after the introductions were made, the golfing great said: "Chicago Tribune. There was a guy from The Tribune who wrote an article saying golfers aren't athletes." "Yeah," I confessed, "that was me." "Aw, that's O.K.," said Palmer. "It didn't bother me." He then went on to refute my case, pointing out the tremendous stress involved in playing 72 holes of tournament winning golf, holding one's swing together through fatigue and pressure, knowing if you didn't play well you weren't getting paid that week."

So, conceding that Tiger Woods is an athlete, he gets my vote for the grand slam--best athlete and best story for the year and decade. As far as story of the decade is concerned, Woods could easily be placed one, two. His miraculous one-legged U. S. Open win in 2008 was leader in the clubhouse until Woods' Thanksgiving night nightmare opened a can of worms that are eating him out of house and home cooking.

However, Tiger Woods isn't really the subject of today's column. What I really wanted to discuss was the other half of the equation--the vote for Female Athlete of the Year. I don't pay enough attention to tennis to know if Serena Williams deserved the honor, especially since I don't know her from her sister Venus. Oh, Serena's the one who threatened an official with bodily harm over what she considered a blown call? What I do know is that the runner-up has always been a model of decorum. There are no neigh-sayers when it comes to Zenyatta, whose victory over the best male thorobreds in the Breeders' Cup electrified racing fans and galvanized at least 18 voters into naming her Female Athlete of the Year.

Why the wing-footed mare, who turns 5 on New Year's day, didn't win the whole frittata is beyond me. Somebody must have a prejudice against horses. All Zenyatta did was score the biggest victory for feminism since Billie Jean King turned Bobby Riggs into an old man in the course of a few sets of tennis. This one might have been bigger. Riggs, after all, was 55 years old and had not been a big hitter even in his prime. It was as much a victory of youth over old age as it was of female over male. Zenyatta defeated the best field that could be assembled, albeit not a particularly star-studded one.

We may never know how Zenyatta feels about the slight, because horses are notoriously close-mouthed when it comes to blowing their own manes. But, although it was four decades ago, I do have some experience in talking with horses. I had received an invitation to meet Governor Max, one of the favorites to win a big feature race at Arlington Park. Max was hoping to become the first Governor to win a race in Illinois and not subsequently go to jail. I was a little uneasy about the meeting because I didn't know the etiquette involved. Do you offer to shake hands with a horse or do you wait until he puts his best hoof forward? Emily Post was no help. apparently she had never met a horse, either. I must tell you that Governor Max's trainer was known as the Joe Namath of horse racing, which might account for the conversation that ensued.

Markus: Hi, Max, glad to meet you.

Governor Max: You a sports writer?

Markus: Yeah.

Governor Max: I don't usually talk to sports writers. They always try to put words in your mouth. What did you want to see me about?

Markus: Well, you know, you're one of the bigs stars of this race. I just wanted to find out what kind of guy, er, horse you are.

Governor Max: Well, you just ask the questions and if I feel like answering 'em, I'll answer, 'em.

Markus: O.K. First, how will you prepare for the big race Saturday? I understand you're regarded as somewhat of a playcolt. Do you plan to spend Friday night in bed with a filly and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red?

Governor Max: Neigh!! I don't drink Johnnie Walker Red. Old Overholt's my brand. We horses are partial to rye, you know.

Markus: And how about the filly?

Governor Max. Don't believe everything you hear. After I win on Saturday I'll have all the fillies I can handle. Mares, too. The older women kind of go for me, you know. After I win this race they'll be coming to me. I'll have to beat 'em off with a jockey stick.

Markus: You really think you can win this thing? Some of these horses have run in better company than you have.

Governor Max: I know I'm going to win it. I personally guarantee it.

But horse talk, like any other foreign language, needs to be practiced. So when I decided to give Zenyatta a call, I wasn't too confident about how it would turn out. I needn't have worried. Zenyatta turned out to be a perfect lady, "and that's more than you can say for that Serena Williams,"she snorted into the telephone. "I take it you're a little unhappy about finishing second?" "I've never finished second before in my life. Fourteen starts, fourteen wins."

"Speaking of going unbeaten, how about that Rachel Alexandra beating the boys in the Preakness. She's unbeaten, too." "Yeah, but she's still just a baby. A 3-year-old. Let her get some more races under her saddle cloth and then she can come see me. Besides, she had her chance to run in the Breeders Cup and she chickened out. She knew she couldn't beat me."

"Her trainer says she didn't run in the Breeder's Cup because of the artificial surface at Santa Anita." "Unh huh, and my name is Man 'O War. Tell you what, mister. I'm going to do this again next year and I'm going to be Female Athlete of the Year. I guarantee it." Now where have I heard that before?

2009-12-22T09:31:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

Christmas brings memories. Memories of childhood and sleepless nights, waiting for Santa. Memories of fatherhood, anticipating the looks on the childrens' faces when they found the gifts piled all around the tree. And for a sports writer who was there, memories of one of the greatest games in National Football League history. It was Christmas day, 1971, and instead of watching my kids open their presents, I was sitting in the press box in Kansas City's old ball park, watching what was, at the time, the longest game in football history. The game had everything: The Chiefs' Ed Podolak producing an individual tour de force that should have been enough to produce a victory; Chiefs' kicker Jan Stenerud, a future Hall of Famer, missing the chip shot field goal that should have won the game in regulation time; and, finally, Garo Yepremian, a balding, 27-year-old Cypriot who had never even seen a football game until five years earlier, kicking the game-winner for Miami 8 minutes into the second overtime.

The game was swaddled in controversy before it was even played, because it was also the first NFL game played on Christmas day. Commissioner Pete Rozelle was roundly criticized for scheduling the game on one of organized religion's two most sacred holidays. He was either Scrooge or The Grinch, take your pick. I didn't see it that way. In a column I wrote before boarding a plane on Christmas Eve day, I pointed out most of the criticism was coming from fans in the two cities involved--the NFC playoffs were opening in Minneapolis the same day--and that nobody was water boarding them to force them to attend the games. The only ones who had no choice were the teams, the officials, and the media. As a member of the last-named group I couldn't find it in my heart to complain. I pointed out there were worse places one could wake up on Christmas morning. Viet Nam, for instance.

Although this was the first year I can recall missing Christmas Day itself with the family, in most years we'd have our gift opening in the morning, have a festive midafternoon meal, and I'd be on a plane to the Rose Bowl or an NFL playoff by Christmas night. Once, in the days when The Tribune not only allowed but mandated that its employees fly first class, I was the only passenger in the front section on a Christmas night flight to Baltimore.

Missing out on holidays is an occupational quid pro quo for a sports writer. I almost never was at home on New Year's Eve. I can recall Thanksgivings in Dallas, covering the Cowboys, and in College Station, covering Texas at Texas A M. , and in Norman, Okla., covering the 1 vs. 2 showdown between Nebraska and Oklahoma. That was especially bitter sweet, because while the game was one for the ages, it came during a week when my wife's beloved aunt Grace died and I barely made it home for the funeral.

When my wife's alma mater, Illinois, went to the Rose bowl after the 1983 season, the whole family flew out to Pasadena. I went early, arriving a few hours after the Illini landed at the John Wayne Airport in Orange County. After reaching the team's hotel I immediately got into a screaming match with an assistant athletic director, who turned down my request for an interview with Head Coach Mike White on grounds that he had given a mass interview at the airport. White happened by in the middle of the ruckus and, obviously upset, grumbled, "Hey, we've got a big ball game coming up here." He eventually agreed to meet with me a few hours later, but the tension he displayed was not a good omen. Illinois, which had won its last 10 games after an opening game loss to Missouri, was a heavy favorite against a UCLA team that went into the game with a 6-4-1 record. What everyone overlooked was the fact that the Bruins, after an 0-3-1 start, had won six of their last seven games. No one expected them to even be in the Rose Bowl game, let alone win it. In fact, on the final week-end of the Pac 10 season, with Illinois having already clinched the Big 10 title, I had gone to Seattle to interview several Husky players for a special Rose Bowl section. After arch-rival Washington State produced a shocking upset on Saturday, I threw away my interview notes, placed a call to UCLA's athletic department and advised them I'd be in Westwood by Monday morning to interview some of their players.

Because New Year's day was a Sunday, the 1984 Rose Bowl was played on Jan.2, a date that will live in infamy in Champaign-Urbana. Illinois was never in the game. In a complete reversal from the 1947 Rose bowl when Illinois (7-2) had dismantled an unbeaten UCLA team that had lobbied to play Army (of Blanchard and Davis fame) instead, the Bruins returned the favor. They tore apart a young Illinois secondary in a 45-9 spanking that gave me the once in a lifetime chance to write: "Illinois has seen 1984 and it is more horrible than anything George Orwell could have imagined."

It's been many years since I last left hearth and home for Christmas. But it's also been many years since the entire family has celebrated the holiday together. I miss the old days. Still, I have my memories. I imagine you do, too. Merry Christmas, everyone.

2009-12-15T12:08:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

As Frank Sinatra memorably crooned: Regrets, I've had a few. One of them is that I'm probably the only baseball writer who didn't vote for Roberto Clemente when he first appeared on the Hall-of-Fame ballot. Since Clemente, obviously, was one of the greatest right fielders of all time, that, on the face of it, appears to be outrageous. No one admired the Puerto Rican born Pittsburgh outfielder more than I did. On the one occasion I met him, in the dressing room after his second home run in two days gave the Pirates a 2-1 victory over Baltimore in the seventh game of the 1971 world series, I found him cooperative, thoughtful, and surprisingly articulate in his second language.

What, then, was my problem? It was this: Clemente was killed in a plane crash while on a mission of mercy after the 1972 season. There was an immediate stampede to place his name on the ballot, despite the rule that a player must wait for five years after his retirement before being eligible for the Hall-of-Fame. My argument was that if we bent the rule for Clemente, there might come a day when we would bend it for someone not so worthy. Besides, as far as I was concerned, Clemente was already in a higher Hall of Fame and he didn't need any writers' votes to validate it. I intended all along to vote for him five years later and I did write his name in on my ballot that year. Which was my second mistake, although not one that I regret.

While pondering this year's list of eligible players, I was reading through the rules for voting as determined by the Baseball Writers Association of America and came upon clause (D) under rule 3--in case of the death of an active player or a player who has been retired for less than five full years, a candidate who is otherwise eligible shall be eligible in the next regular election held at least six months after the date of death or after the end of the five year period, whichever occurs first. Whether that clause was in effect in 1973, I don't know. Reading further I find under rule 4, Clause (B) that "write-in votes are not permitted."

Now comes another player named Roberto and once again I'm torn. I know that some year, if I'm still around, I'll vote for Roberto Alomar. There are 15 players eligible for the first time this year and it seems to me that Alomar is the best of the lot. Some of the first timers can be dismissed without much thought, guys like Kevin Appier, Ellis Burks, Pat Hentgen, Mike Jackson, Eric Karros, Ray Lankford, Shane Reynolds, David Segui, Robin Ventura, and Todd Zeile. If any of these guys gets the required 5 per cent of votes needed to keep them on the ballot next year, I'll be surprised.

But a few names made me pause. Andres Galarraga, one home run shy of 400 and a former National League batting champ. Barry Larkin, 19 years with one team and the first shortstop to hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases. Fred McGriff, 493 homers, 1550 r.b.i. Enough said? Edgar Martinez, .312 lifetime batting average over 18 seasons, all with the Seattle Mariners. And, of course, Alomar. Some people may remember Alomar as the player who spit in umpire John Hirschbeck's face in 1996 and was suspended for five days. But the well-travelled second baseman should be remembered for his 10 Gold Gloves, his 12 consecutive All-Star appearances, his lifetime .300 batting averge and 474 steals..

There are those who feel that the Hall of Fame is becoming diluted, with too many players being voted in who were very good--but not great--players. I tend to favor the exclusionary side myself, but it's awfully hard, sometimes, to define greatness, especially so in these times when ball players are hanging around for up to 20 years, compiling numbers that almost demand inclusion.

Last year I was disappointed that Tommy John did not make it in his 15th and final try. This year I don't think I'll be disappointed even if no one gets the required 75 per cent. Last year I voted for seven players, including Harold Baines. I admitted that I ws only voting for him to help him get the 5 per cent he needed to stay on the ballot. He did that, but from now on he's on his own. As the Hall of Fame is now constituted I don't think he belongs there. At some future date, who knows. I voted for only five players this year, finally deciding that as long as Mark McGwire's name is on the ballot it's not up to me to rule on his character. So he got one of my votes. Lee Smith, the big, hard throwing relief pitcher, whose 478 saves rank third alltime, also gets an "x" next to his name. He definitely belongs. I voted for Andre Dawson, who captured 67 per cent of the votes last year and is the leading returning vote getter, and for Pitcher Bert Blyleven, who got nearly 63 per cent in his 12th try. Obviously his time is running out.

I considered Martinez and probably will vote for him some day, but all his numbers were accrued as a designated hitter and I have a problem with that. Finally, I voted for Alomar. I hope I don't regret it.

2009-12-08T11:18:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

Even when the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) gets it right it can't get it right. The BCS did the popular thing--and the right thing--when, for the first time, it invited two nonmember schools to its postseason bowl party. Most college football fans were rooting for TCU and Boise State to be selected for one of the major bowls, all of which are controlled by the BCS. But not against each other.

The whole idea was to give the Horned Frogs and the Broncos, both of whom went undefeated in the regular season, the chance to prove they can play with the big boys. No one cares whether TCU can beat Boise State. What we want to know is whether TCU can beat a Florida, whether Boise State can beat a Georgia Tech or Iowa. Boise State will be playing in its second major bowl, having upset Oklahoma in the Fiesta bowl a few years back in one of the most exciting college games ever played. The Fiesta bowl once more will be the venue and once again Boise State will be the underdog against TCU. It could be an exciting game, but it is totally meaningless. How much more interesting the bowl season would have been had TCU, for instance, gone to the Sugar bowl to play Florida with Boise State squaring off with Big East champ Cincinnati in the Fiesta bowl or ACC champion Georgia Tech in the Orange.

This, of course, was a strange season, with five teams going undefeated. The BCS was lucky to have escaped another controversy when Texas had to kick a last second field goal to defeat Nebraska, 13-12, in the Big 12 championship game and remain undefeated. If the kick had failed, Cincinnati would have been in the national championship game against Alabama and TCU fans would have been livid. Because Cincinnati jumped over TCU in the final rankings on the basis of a last minute 45-44 victory at Pittsburgh. The Bearcats, of course, also ended up undefeated, and presumably moved up because of strength of schedule. Pittsburgh, which had gone into the game 9-2, was a big prize for the Bearcats no matter how slim the margin of victory.

TCU's schedule, while not overwhelmingly difficult, had a few high hurdles that needed to be negotiated. The Horned Frogs won at Clemson, which played in and almost won the ACC championship game, and handled a respectable conference schedule, which included wins at Air Force and Brigham Young and a home victory over Utah. Utah, by the way, destroyed Alabama in the Sugar bowl last year, making it 3-for-3 in favor of non-BCS teams over the last few years. With the TCU-Boise matchup that streak will come to an end. Somebody has to lose. Besides the fans, that is. TCU quite likely could beat any of the other bowl teams on a given day. Boise State had one given day and it was its opening game of the season when it embarrassed Oregon, 19-8. None of the Broncos' subsequent opponents presented much of a challenge, although Nevada was riding the crest of an eight game winning streak when it played the Broncos, who won, 44-33. If there is a difference between TCU and Boise State it probably is on the defensive side of the ball, although Boise State's defense was sensational in the opener when it held Oregon without a first down until the third quarter. Oregon was to lose only one more game all year and will be the favorite to beat Ohio State in the Rose bowl.

The other significant development over an exciting week-end of college ball, was the whittling down of Heisman Trophy candidates to five. Alabama's Mark Ingram appears to be the favorite on the basis of a good, but not dominating game, against Florida in the Southeast Conference title game. . There are those who feel that Stanford's Toby Gerhart, the leading rusher in the nation is better. Count me in that number although I admit my judgment was formed on too little evidence. The only game I saw Ingram play was the Auburn game, when he was mediocre at best. The one game I saw Gebhart play he tore Notre Dame apart.

But that's the trouble with Heisman voting. The voters may see a lot of games, but many if not most see one game a week, because they are working that game. I probably saw Notre Dame more than any other team because they are always on TV and a few weeks ago I opined that Irish QB Jimmy Clausen would get my vote if I had one. But Clausen did not have a good final game against Stanford and Notre Dame finished with a 6-6 record. Clausen would probably be one of the Heisman favorites next year but has decided to enter tne NFL draft, along with his talented receiver, Golden Tate. With their top two players gone, the Irish are going to need their new coach to be the second coming of Knute Rockne if they are to win as many as six games next year.

Oddly, two of the three quarterbacks who went into this season as best bets to win the Heisman are not generating much happy talk, despite the fact their teams went a combined 25-1. Both Florida's Tim Tebow and Texas' Colt McCoy were less impressive than last year and with Tebow losing his last game and McCoy being sacked seven times and almost letting time expire before the Longhorns kicked their season-saving field goal, it would be a surprise if either won.

The fifth candidate is the most intriguing and the player I now think should--but probably won't--be the Heisman winner. He's that boy named Suh that Johnny Cash used to sing about and I don't know if his name helped make him tough, but I do know that Nebraska tackle Ndamukong Suh played the greatest defensive game I've ever seen on a college football field Saturday night. He should change his first name to Kingkong, because he was flinging Texas players around like the giant ape of movie fame. He singlehandedly, well, actually two-handedly, almost beat Texas all by himself. Look at these stats: 7 1/2 tackles for loss; 4 1/2 sacks. In one game! Draft guru Mel Kiper says that Suh will be the first player chosen in the next NFL draft and calls him "as productive a defensive tackle prospect as I can remember in my 32 years in the business." In all the years of Heisman voting there has been only one defensive lineman to win it--Notre Dame's Leon Hart, who also was a standout tight end on offense. Suh would be the first true defensive lineman to win. He says he plans to come back for his senior year and if he does he'll likely be the Heisman favorite next year.

2009-12-01T10:56:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

In a perfect world, Notre Dame would have waited a week to fire Charlie Weis or Tiger Woods would have settled for a cold shower. As it is I now have two huge national stories to comment on, three actually, if you count the virtual sacking of Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden, whose 34 year tenure at Florida State has taken him beyond the bounds of regionalism and into the national spotlight.

Let's start with Tiger, whose post-midnight prowl on Black Friday gave the newly-minted term for the day after Thanksgiving new meaning. Woods may be among the world's greatest drivers, but apparently that applies only to the golf links. Behind the wheel of his SUV, Woods appears to be a duffer. How else explain his double bogey--a demolished fire hydrant and a bruised tree--at the home hole? Indeed, his failure to explain where he was going at 2:30 in the morning, why he presumably floored it exiting his driveway, why he was wearing no shoes, and just how he lost control of his vehicle is the very crux of a story that has made front page headlines throughout the known world. Who knows what the Martians are using to fill the news hole these days?

By Florida law, Woods doesn't have to tell anyone, including the police, what happened and there are many who believe that he has every right to remain silent. And he does. But he has already discovered that the absence of information inevitably leaves a vacuum that will soon be filled with rumor and innuendo. Surely, even those who most staunchly defend and even encourage Tiger's silence must wonder what did happen. Everyone has his own interpretation of the few facts that exist and here's mine: Tiger and his wife have a violent argument, not in the physical sense, but in the decibel sense. The argument probably has nothing to do with the consistency of the mashed potatoes in the recently consumed Thanksgiving dinner. More likely Elin, his wife, had seen the article in the National Enquirer which claimed that Woods was having an affair with a woman from New York and confronts him with it. He denies it (or maybe he doesn't) but at some point the discussion escalates to the point where Woods is agitated enough to storm out of the house, jump into his car and stomp on the gas pedal. He likely wasn't wearing a seat belt, which would account for the facial bruises and brief period of unconsciousness that has been reported.

If that is the truth of the matter, or something near the truth, it would serve Woods well to own up to it. Most people could relate to that. What married couple hasn't had a knockdown, dragout screaming match at least once in their lives? I've had more than one myself and my ultimate response has been to walk out of the house with the appropriate slamming of the door (just to make sure she knows I'm leaving) and walk off my anger.

Woods' image, which along with his unmatched golfing brilliance has made him a billionaire, is going to take a hit no matter how this story plays out. Perhaps it will soon be forgotten, as other sports heroes' escapades have gone away. How many people think of his rape trial when they watch Kobe Bryant play for the Los Angeles Lakers? Chances are, Tiger will keep winning golf tournaments and piling up endorsements, but for the short term when you hear the name Tiger Woods, "great golfer" will not be your immediate mental response. Rather, you might find yourself wondering, just why did Tiger's wife have that golf club in her hand when she went out to see what had happened?

-0-

Notre Dame is easy to love and easier to hate. Its football players, by and large, are good kids who stay out of trouble. You rarely hear of a Notre Dame football player being involved in a barroom brawl. But its fans are insufferable. That's why being the head coach of Notre Dame's football program is the second toughest job on earth. Barak Obama has the toughest. The last three Notre Dame head coaches have all been fired, despite posting winning records. None of them lasted longer than Charlie Weis's five years. The longest tenured Irish coach was also, arguably, the greatest--Knute Rockne. The Rock served for 13 years and might have gone on for 13 more had he not been killed in a plane crash.

Since then there have been three more highly successful coaches at Notre Dame. Curiously, they each coached the Irish for 11 seasons and quit while they were ahead. The three of them, Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, and Lou Holtz all had something in common when they took the reins in South Bend. Experience. Frank Leahy was 20-2 in his two years as head coach at Boston College before coming to Notre Dame in 1941, just as America was preparing to go to war. His teams lost only four games in three seasons before he himself went off to war and when he returned he was even better.

His teams went undefeated for four consecutive years, then, after three comparatively mediocre sesons, he ended up with a fifth undefeated season. That one was marred by a 14-14 tie against Iowa in a game that changed football history. The Irish scored their two touchdowns on the final play of each half after faking injuries to stop the clock. His successor, Terry Brennan, had no head coaching experience at the college level and was a Leahy assistant for only a year. Despite four winning seasons out of five and a monumental 7-0 upset of Oklahoma, which broke the Sooners' 47-game winnning streak, Brennaan was fired. Then began the bleakest era in Fighting Irish history and it was Parseghian who came to the rescue. Ara had loads of experience when he took the Notre Dame job in 1964. He had been at Miami (o.), the Cradle of Coaches, for five years and at Northwestern for eight more. He had twice guided the perennial doormat Wildcats to the No.1 spot in the polls, only to see the dreams fade away because of a lack of depth. It was to fulfill his ambition to coach a national champion that he took the Notre Dame job and he almost accomplished it in his first season. The Irish, in a stunning turnaround (they had gone 2-7 the previous year), won their first nine games and led Southern Cal 17-0 in the season finale before losing 20-17. Nevertheless quarterback John Huarte went from obscurity to the Heisman Trophy during the course of that magical season. Parsegian got his national title in 1966, either because of or depite the infamous 10-10 tie with Michigan State. He repeated with an undefeated team in 1973 but in another year, burned out by the pressure, he retired, never to coach again.

Parseghian's successor, Dan Devine, had plenty of experience. I first met him when he was coaching Arizona State in the 1950s. I was stationed in Yuma, Ariz. at an army base where, as public information specialist I had a disc jockey show on Saturday afternoons. There I met Chuck Benedict, the radio voice of the Sun Devils, who took me along as a spotter on several occasions. Later Devine coached at Missouri, my alma mater, and with the Green Bay Packers, where I got to know him fairly well. On the day Parseghian resigned, acting on a tip, I flew to Green Bay, where Devine was getting ready to announce he was leaving for the Notre Dame job. After ending a hastily called press conference in the late afternoon, he crooked a finger at me and said, "Bob, come into my office for a minute." When we were alone, he said to me, "I just want you to know that whoever gets this job here will start with better personnel than I had when I got here." That was typical Dan Devine. In one sentence he had absolved himself of blame and put pressure on his successor, who happened to be Bart Starr.

I covered several Notre Dame games while Devine was head coach, including his only loss, 20-13 to Mississippi, in a game played in Jackson, Miss. That loss came early in the year and Devine's Irish won the national championship by beating Texas, 38-10 in the Cotton bowl. Devine worked for six years in the pressure cooker before resigning. To replace him the Irish turned once again to an untested coach, Gerry Faust, who had a brilliant record as a high school coach in Ohio, but no college head coaching experience. That turned out to be a disaster and, so, the Irish went back to the tried and true, hiring Holtz away from Minnesota. Before that he had seven successful years at Arkansas, where I first met him. You couldn't help liking the man. He spoke quickly, and with a lisp, and performed magic tricks with true dexterity. As coach at Notre Dame, Holtz won a natyional championship with a 12-0 team in 1988 and finished second in 1989 and 1993. The Irish haven't been in serious contention since Holtz left. During Monday night's NFL telecast Holtz commented on the Notre Dame situation, noting that the three coaches who followed him were good men, but lacked experience. Bob Davies and Weis had never been head coaches, he reminded and Tyrone Willingham had only a few years as head man at Stanford. Actually he coached the Cardinal for seven years. Holtz also dismissed the popular conception that it's easy to reruit at Notre Dame. "Notre Dame recruits nationally," he said, "which means when they recruit in Oklahoma they're going against Oklahoma and Oklahoma State and when they recruit in Pennsylvania they're up against Penn State."

I don't know who the next Notre Dame coach will be, but it's likely to be an experienced, successful college coach. Several names have been put out there, but there's one name I haven't heard and I wonder why. How long has Nick Sabin been at Alabama now. Two years, three? Isn't it time for a change?

-0-

Bowden has spent 34 years turning Florida State from an ugly frog into a handsome prince. He didn't deserve the kissoff he was given Monday by school administrators. Their offer to keep him on for a final year with diminished responsibility was an insult. You're either head coach or you're not. Bowden was right to turn the offer down. Bowden not only was a great football coach, but a great guy. I covered his team only once. It was a battle of Titans against Miami and Bowden's team lost it when he went for a two point conversion in the final minute and missed. The next morning he hosted a media breakfst and was charming. I hope he enjoys his retirement. He once said that "after you retire there's only one more big event in your life." I hope, too, that he enjoys many little events before the inevitable big one.

2009-11-17T12:24:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

Whenever I make a new acquaintance I wait until asked what I did in my previous life. I used to respond: "I was a journalist," but that sounds a little pretentious and there are those who wonder whether a sports writer is a real journalist. Many who think that way are "real" journalists who disparage sports writers as members of the toy department. In truth, however, the best writers on most newspapers can be found right there amid the Tinker Toys and electric trains. Was there a better writer on the Los Angeles Times than the late Jim Murray? Red Smith could outwrite any "real" journalist at the New York Times with one hand tied behind his typewriter. As for the Chicago Tribune, where I worked for more than 36 years, I leave that judgment to others. But in my heart I knew I could write with anyone else on the paper.

So, in later years when asked the inevitable question I would answer, "I was a sports writer," an answer which, in addition to being less pretentious, was a good deal more specific. The usual followup question was, "what sport did you cover?" The answer I usually gave was: "All of them." While that was, strictly speaking, not true--I never covered badminton or shuffleboard, although I did once write a column about a shuffleboard game--I doubt if any other writer ever covered more fulltime beats than I did for The Tribune. Oddly enough, my first fulltime assignment was as a columnist. That was almost unheard of at the time, the usual progression being from beat writer, most often the baseball beat writer, to columnist. I didn't expect it at the time, but I was destined to reverse the process. When you start out on top the only direction to go is down. I didn't start out as a sports columnist, of course. I had been on The Tribune for seven years before that happened. Like everyone else, at that time, I started out in Neighborhood News, which produced weekly zoned sections and served as the paper's training ground. I was there, reading copy, for about six months when an opening came up on the sports desk. Although I was last in seniority on the copy desk, the other copy readers were all "real" journalists and wanted no part of the toy department. For me it was the dream job. When I took it, I was told by sports editor Wilfrid Smith that I would be, as Alabama Governor George Wallace might have put it, "a copy reader today, a copy reader tomorrow, a copy reader forever." That turned out to be about as prophetic as Wallace's "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, etc."

Although the paper had a large stable of sports writers, at least enough to cover every major beat and some not so major, from time to time there would come an event that needed coverage and no staff writer was available. Then one of the rim men on the copy desk would be given the assignment. For instance, there was at the time no pro basketball team in Chicago, the Stags having folded and the American Gears, led by George Mikan, moved to Minnesota as the Lakers. Then, all of a sudden, there were two pro teams in Chicago and nobody to cover them. George Strickler, the assistant sports editor at the time and eventual successor to Smith, solved the problem by doling out home games to the copy desk slaves. Strickler, a pro football man (and the Notre Dame publicist who came up with the idea of taking a picture of the Four Horsemen mounted on horseback), hated basketball with a passion. His usual method of assigning someone to a pro basketball game would be to say: "Markus, go out to The Amphitheater and cover the short-pantsed bastards." You'd be given six or at the most seven paragraphs to tell the story.

There was a good deal of competition and even animosity among the desk men, most of whom wanted to be writers. I was gradually given more assignments, occasionally filling in for the baseball beat men and, since The Tribune covered every Big Ten team in football, I worked my way into the rotation to the point where, by my fifth year at the paper, I covered a game every Saturday. My biggest break came in the week before the 1966 Notre Dame-Michigan State "Game of the Century," the one that ended in a 10-10 tie. I was not expecting to be a part of the coverage and was sitting on the rim of the copy desk on Monday or Tuesday when Strickler came out of his office and told me: "Dave Condon's supposed to be at Michigan State, but we can't find him. Go home and pack a bag and get to East Lansing." Condon, the sports department's lone columnist, had attended a Muhammad Ali fight in Houston and hadn't been heard from since.

The only thing I can remember about that week was that Spartan Coach Duffy Daugherty, at one of his daily press conferences, sang a ditty called:"My Sister's a Mule in the Mines." My game day assignment was the Michigan State locker room, but the story was in the Notre Dame locker room where Ara Parseghian attempted to explain why he'd run out the final minute and accepted the 10-10 tie. I did not write a memorable story out of the Spartans' locker room and, in fact, I was disappointed in myself. But on Monday afternoon Strickler called me into his office and informed me that The Tribune was breaking its long standing trdition of having a lone sports columnist and that I was going to write the second column. So now you know how I got the column and maybe in a future blog I'll tell you how I lost it. Meanwhile, getting back to the main topic, my subsequent assignments included: Beat writer for the Cubs and White Sox. Backup writer for the Bears. Beat writer for DePaul basketball in Ray Meyer's last year and Joey Meyer's first. Beat writer for Notre Dame basketball. Ditto for Northwestern. Beat writer for Illinois football and basketball. National college sports--football and basketball--writer. And, finally, Black Hawks beat writer. During the entirety of my stay, except when another beat precluded it, I was the auto racing writer and also covered my share of big fights, including Ali-Frazier I and Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Roberto Duran in Montreal. About eight months after being told I was no longer a columnist, I was assigned to the Ali-Leon Spinks rematch in New Orleans. David Israel, the guy who took my place as columnist, also was assigned to the fight and on our first night in New Orleans we had dinner together and ended up at one of the Bourbon Street joints, drinking Sazeracs. It was somewhere between drinks No. 3 and 4, that Israel, who was, I believe, 26 years old at the time, confided that he didn't intend to stay long at The Tribune. "I may go to law school," he said. I could have used a good lawyer about then because I could barely restrain the urge to strangle him.

-30-

Note to readers: No blog next week in honor of daughter Trish's visit. See you in two weeks.

2009-11-10T11:02:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

Picking a Heisman trophy winner has always been a little bit like going truffle hunting with a pig or panning for gold. The pig may turn up a few of the expensive delicacies and the gold panner may flush out a few nuggets of precious ore, but don't count on it. There is no defined criterion for choosing a Heisman trophy winner, so each elector must use his own set of standards. some look at gaudy numbers and exclaim: That's my boy. Others look to the top ranked team, single out its best player, and pronounce: You da man. Others still look at the award as a sort of national MVP. Which player meant the most to his team?

I had a Heisman vote for a few years when college sports was my fulltime beat at the Chicago Tribune. I took the job seriously and was seriously upset on the few occasions when I felt a gross injustice had been committed. One of those came in 1987 when Notre Dame's Tim Brown was the winner. Brown was the last of the seven Fighting Irish Heisman winners and a case could be made that only one or two of them deserved it. Brown averaged nearly 22 yards a catch for the 8-4 Irish that year, so I'd have to say he was Heisman worthy. But not in that year. That was the year that Don McPherson led Syracuse to a perfect 11-0 regular season, only the second undefeated season in the Orangemen's history. To me, McPherson was the embodiment of what the Heisman is all about. I voted for him, gave my third place vote to Gordie Lockbaum, the two-way star from Holy Cross, and, though I can't really remember, probably gave my runner-up vote to Brown. Lockbaum was a great story, a Galahad of the gridiron whose main virtue was his virtue.

A few years later I got another chance to sulk when the man I voted for not only didn't win, but finished seventh in the voting. That was Jeff Blake, the quarterback from East Carolina, which lost its opening game to Illinois, then ran the table, winning 11 in a row, including its 37-34 win over North Carolina State in the Peach bowl. Blake was a one-man highlight reel that autumn, turning up almost every Saturday night on the postgame score shows, performing yet another miracle. Mine was one of only seven first place votes he received. Michigan's Desmond Howard was the winner.

It's difficult of course for a player to emerge from almost total obscurity to the Heisman in a single season. Unless, of course, you play for Notre Dame (see John Huarte, 1964, a year that included the likes of Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers, who didn't even crack the top 10). The history of the prized statuette is replete with players who sort of sneaked up on the honor, gaining a spot on the ballot for a year or two before winning. Even Army's great Glenn Davis finished second twice before finally winning it in his final year. Doak Walker was third the year before he won as was Johnny Lujack, the one Irish player who undoubtedly deserved the honor in 1947, although Walker, Charlie Conerly, Bobby Layne and Chuck Bednarik were among the future pro stars who also played that year. Of the five, Lujack probably had the least productive pro career, but then, the Heisman is not meant to be a predictor of NFL potential. In fact, going back to Ricky Williams in 1998, only Carson Palmer, the Cincinnati Bengals quarterback, has had a solid pro career after winning the Heisman. The jury is still out on Reggie Bush.

Of all the Heisman trophies that have been presented since Chicago's Jay Berwanger won the first one in 1935, the one that has me most puzzled was the one given to Paul Hornung in 1956. Hornung became a Hall of Fame running back with the Green Bay Packers and also a friend, so I hope he'll forgive me for saying this. But Hornung was the quarterback of a Notre Dame team that finished 2 and 8. Runner-up Johnny Majors starred for a 10-1 Tennessee team and a guy named Jim Brown was finishing his college career at Syracuse.

I no longer, of course, have anything to do with voting for the Heisman, although I probably have about as good a handle on it as the current writers, since they see only one game a week and I can see a dozen of them, or parts thereof, on any given Saturday. When this season began, it appeared pretty certain that the trophy would go to one of the three players who finished one-two-three last year--Oklahoma's Sam Bradford, Texas' Colt McCoy, and Florida's Tim Tebow. Bradford didn't even make it out of the starting gate before his season imploded with an opening game injury. McCoy and Tebow are still alive since their teams are unbeaten and figure to meet for the national championship. But neither has had the kind of season they anticipated. Tebow admits his performance is down from the last two years and nine interceptions thrown by McCoy speak for themselves.

According to an ESPN poll of 15 experts, the current leader is Alabama running back Mark Ingram, who drew 10 of the 15 first place votes. Kellen Moore, the quarterback of unbeaten and unappreciated Boise State got two votes, while Tebow, McCoy, and Houston's Case Keenum got the other three votes. Keenum, the Houston quarterback, has piled up some unreal numbers for the 8-1 Cougars. In his last two games alone he's thrown for close to 1,100 yards and eight touchdowns. He has 28 touchdown passes for the season. Almost matching that is Boise State's Moore with 27 touchdown passes and only three interceptions.

I admit I haven't seen too much of Alabama's Ingram and I suspect he is a candidate because someone on the Crimson Tide offense has to be partly responsible for the defense-oriented team's unbeaten record. Talent-wise, receiver Julio Jones should be the man, but he has underachieved for the most part this year. As for my own choice, I think I'm going to surprise you. After all my Notre Dame bashing, if I had a Heisman vote I think I'd spend it on Irish quarterback Jimmy Clausen. The Irish may be struggling a bit, but without Clausen (and his marvelous receiver Golden Tate) the Irish could be 1-8 and there would be no speculation about Coach Charlie Weis' fate. Clausen has repeatedly brought the Irish from behind and four of their victories and all three defeats have been by seven points or less. I'd probably vote Keenum second and Moore third. But that's just me. What do you think?

2009-11-02T13:22:00.000-08:00

By Bob Markus

As any college football fan could tell you, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has one too many letters in its acronym. It should drop the middle letter and what's left (BS for those of you who are acronymically challenged) would just about describe it. The presumed purpose of the BCS is to ensure that the best two college football teams in the land meet at the close of the bowl season to determine which is truly the No. 1 team in the country. Trouble is, they haven't yet figured out a sure fired way of determining who the top two are. Every year, it seems, somebody is flashing Winston Churchill's famous V sign and insisting: We're No. 2. There are certain instances, you see, when it's good to be Avis. Last year it was Texas, which was left out of the national championship game in favor of Oklahoma, which it had beaten. Another year it was Southern Cal, which had been named No.1 in both wire service polls, but deemed no better than No. 3 by the complex melange of computers and human pollsters the BCS entrusted with the task.

This year there seems to be little doubt about who will play in the national championship game. It will be Texas, the undefeated Big 12 champion which already has defeated its most significant adversaries, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, and the winner of the SEC championship game--either Florida or Alabama. The only other team with even a whisper of a chance is Louisiana State, which, if it can upset Alabama this week-end and win the rest of its games would win the SEC West and play the Gators, to whom they have already lost once. There is a chance that the BCS will actually get it right with this pairing, but there is also a chance you'll run into a flying pig some day. These same three teams have been at the top of the leaderboard since even before the season opened and that is one of the problems.

For a number of years in the mid-1980s I was a voter in the Associated Press poll. While not a total maverick, I did tend to have some ideas that were thought to be, well, a little odd. For instance, I thought a team's performance on the field should outweigh my preconceived notion of who's No. 1. That's why I thought they should do away with preseason polls and wait until the games are played before trying to sort it out. Under the system that prevailed then--and the one that prevails now--many of the voters seemed to think their ballots were cast in stone and could not be dislodged without, as the sportscasters of today love to say, "indisputable evidence." That evidence would not include, say, a team like Alabama beating unranked Arkansas 12-10 by blocking a potential season-destroying field goal. Nor would it include a team like Florida losing at home to Mississippi, which hasn't been a national powerhouse since Peyton and Eli Manning's father was playing there, as happened last year. These voters, and I believe they are in the majority, decide who is No. 1 in August and will not change their minds until that team is beaten and sometimes not even then. I always voted by the theory that my preseason vote was merely my best guess and that changing one's mind is allowed and even ought to be encouraged.

It well could be that Texas, Alabama, and Florida, in whichever order you chose to rank them, are indeed the three best teams in the country. But if I were voting today I'd probably rank two teams ahead of them. Now, don't laugh. Snickering is okay, but please no raucus outbursts of laughter. I think the best team in the country at the moment is Oregon, which dismantled a good, but admittedly not great, USC team Saturday night, 47-20. I mean this was an old-fashioned A No. 1 butt stomping of a team that has ruled its conference for nearly a decade under Pete Carroll and rarely finishes out of the top five. And it was no fluke. Previously, Oregon had walloped California, which at the time was in the top 10 or so in the rankings, 42 -3. The week after that the Ducks quacked all over Washington State, 52-6 and only the week before their demolition of the Trojans had laid the wood to Washington, 43-19

I watched most of the Oregon-USC game and here's what I saw. I saw quarterback Jeremiah Masoli rush for 164 yards and pass for 222 more. I saw halfback LaMichael James run for 183 yards. In all, Oregon rolled up 613 yards against a team reputed to have one of the best defenses in the country. It was simply an awesome display. So I'd vote Oregon No. 1? No, I wouldn't. It's not because the Ducks lost their season opener. I've seen Notre Dame do that and still win a national title. No, it's not the fact that they lost, but who they lost to--Boise State.

That's not a rap at Boise State. Au contraire, the reason I wouldn't make Oregon No.1 is because that's where I'd have Boise State. I know, I know, Boise State has played a one-game season. But what a game! The Broncos literally strangled Oregon in a 19-8 season opening victory. The team that got 613 yards against Southern Cal? It had 14 yards in the first half--and no first downs--against Boise State . Its star runner, La Garrette Blount, carried eight times for minus five yards and those numbers have yet to change, since Blount was suspended for the rest of the season after slugging a Boise State player in the jaw after the game. Blount, with the help of mentors like Tony Dungy and his coach, Chip Kelly, reportedly has tried hard to make amends and there is a good chance he will be reinstated for this week-end's game at Stanford. With or without Blount, Oregon should beat Stanford and everyone else on its schedule. Boise, too, will likely run the table. But finish one-two in the BCS standings? Not a chance. Football writers, no matter what their personal politics, are as conservative as Rush Limbaugh when it comes to voting in the polls. It'll be Florida and Texas in the Rose bowl Jan. 7. Book it.

2009-10-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

They tell me there's more than one way to skin a cat. I've never had any desire to skin a cat and if I ever did, I doubt that I could figure out even one way to do it. Where would I start?
At the head? The tail? I imagine I'd start by calling a taxidermist. What brought about this odd musing was the news that Mark McGwire has been named batting coach by the St. Louis Cardinals. McGwire has avoided the spotlight ever since his non-testimony before Congress four years ago. He has done no interviews. Now it is going to be nearly impossible to avoid them. I'll guarantee you that on opening day of spring training next February there will be a record number of media members flying down to Florida, all wanting to know: did he or didn't he?

How McGwire responds--if he responds at all--could go a long way towards determining if he ever gets in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Because the men asking the question are the same men who vote for or against enshrinement and McGwire at the moment has a long way to go to win the 75 per cent approval he needs. In his first two years on the ballot, the former major league home run single season record holder has garnered less than 25 per cent.

There have been players in the past who have been left at the post in their early years of eligibility. The time honored way to gather support has been to go to the radio or TV booth and mingle with the electorate. It worked for Ralph Kiner; it worked for Lou Boudreau; it worked for Phil Rizzuto, all of whom were voted into the Hall of Fame after years of cozying up to the baseball beat writers. I don't mean to imply there was anything phony about their relationships with their fellow media members. It's just that, try as one might to remain objective, it's difficult to remain objective about someone you know and like.

I can't recall an example of a player gathering Hall of Fame votes by becoming a coach, but the possibility is there, just the same. McGwire will be in daily contact with many of the men who hold his fate in their hands. Whether he takes advantage of the opportunity remains to be seen. If he refuses to answer any questions about his alleged use of performance enhancing drugs, he can forget about the Hall of Fame. If he refuses to talk to reporters at all, he can forget about the Hall of Fame. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying that's the way it is. There are many voters, probably a majority, who believe that any records set while under the influence of artificial enhancement are invalid. To them, McGwire's rookie record of 49 homers for the Oakland A's back in 1987, his 70 homers in 1998 when he beat Sammy Sosa in their epic race to to erase Roger Maris' record of 61, his 583 career home runs all are tainted by his presumed use of steroids.

I personally doubt that McGwire was drugged up all the way back in 1987. There seems to be little doubt that he was using a steroid named androstenodione in '98 during the duel with Sosa. In fact, he left packages of the drug in his open locker where anyone could see them and he has admitted that he took the drug. But at the time androstenodione was neither illegal nor a banned substance in major league baseball. It wasn't until 2004, three years after McGwire had retired, that the United States government declared the drug a steroid and made it illegal.

It seems to me that McGwire's wisest course would be to tell anyone who asks that, yes, I did take androstenodione back in '98, but I didn't know it was a steroid and it wasn't a banned substance. Even if he 'fesses up, he's not going to get into the Hall of Fame within the next year or two. But eventually, if he stays around the game and gets more comfortble with the writers--and they with him--his time will come. Although their cases may all be different, there are three other players who should be watching the McGwire situation with interest. As it stands now, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro share McGwire's plight. All of them are suspected steroid abusers, none has admitted it, and Palmiero explained away his one positive test by claiming he had been given a tainted B12 injection. He passed a lie detector test and never failed another drug test before or since so there is the possibility that he told the truth when he said, "I have never knowingly used steroids. Never."

Palmeiro will be the first of the three eligible for the Hall of Fame and as it stands now, he won't make it, despite the fact he is one of only four players ever to amass 3,000 hits and 500 homers. The other three, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray, are all Hall of Famers. Next up will be Sosa with his 609 career homers balanced against his embarrassing corked bat fiasco, which muddies the water when considering whether he's telling the truth when he denies using steroids. Bonds will be the most difficult choice of all, since many consider him the greatest hitter in baseball history (I'll stick with Babe Ruth), but in the current climate the steroids issue outweighs any statistics, no matter how gaudy.

It won't be easy, but Mark McGwire has been given the opportunity to change all that. Meanwhile there are approximately 100 ball players who have yet to be outed after failing a drug test in 2003. Until we know more about them, I'm throwing the problem back in baseball's lap. As a Hall of Fame voter I don't think it's my responsiblity to determine who is or is not eligible for the Hall. That's baseball's responsibility and if baseball sees fit to put Mark McGwire's name on the ballot, I'm going to vote for him. Bonds, Sosa and Palmeiro, too.

2009-10-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

If the deaths of three runners in Sunday's Detroit Marathon proved anything, it might be that life is a crapshoot and sooner or later you're going to roll snake eyes. There seems to be no logical explanation for the sudden deaths of Daniel Langdon, 36, Rick Brown, 65, and Jon Fenlon, 26, all within a 16-minute span. All three were entered in the half marathon, just over 13 miles, a distance that, while daunting to your average couch potato, is not beyond the imagination of any reasonably fit runner. In my own running days I once ran 10 miles in Los Angeles' Griffith Park and felt I could go farther.

But 26.2 miles? On the face of it that has always appeared to me to be a sure sign of insanity. If it doesn't kill you, it will certainly wreak havoc on some of your body parts, in particular your knees. Actually, the chances of it killing you are minimal, statistically almost nonexistent. A marathoner is more likely to be hit by a car during a training run than drop dead during a race. But it happens. It happens to one in about 75,000 marathon runners. That doesn't include those who die during training, most notably Dr. Jim Fixx, who became a millionaire extolling the health benefits of running in three best-selling books, but succumbed to a heart attack, at 52, just after completing his daily run.

That running a Marathon may prove to be dangerous to your health was proved by the very first marathoner, a Greek named Pheidippides. Shortly before he won the Marathon gold medal at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Frank Shorter was musing about the distance, precisely 26 miles and 385 yards. "The guy who invented the marathon got the distance just right," Shorter told me, "because he knew exactly how much the human body can stand." Actually Pheidippides might have been better off walking those final 385 yards. Because after blurting the glorious news of a major military victory at Marathon to the people of Athens, the swift soldier collapsed and died on the spot.

Shorter won that gold medal in only his fifth marathon. He was basically a middle distance runner, whose finishing kick was good, but not quite good enough . But in the Marathon, he said, there is no finishing kick. "It's a question of who's decelerating the least over the last six miles."

Even for a great champion like Shorter there was a price to be paid. "Pain? Sure there's a pain factor. But there's a pain factor in every race beyond 200 meters, but each race has its own kind of pain. Actually, you can't describe it unless you've done it." But why do it? Probably for the same reason you'd climb Mt. Everest or swim the English Channel. It's a challenge, but one that is more reachable than Everest's 29,000 foot summit or the vast expanse of ocean between Dover and Calais. I'm reasonably certain there is also at least a modicum of addiction involved. I can vouch for that from personal experience.

I came late to running, not starting until I was well into my 30s. I started after a routine visit to a new doctor, Dr. Smith, who listened to my heartbeat for a few seconds and asked me: "What are you taking?" I named a drug meant to revive a comatose thyroid and he advised, "You don't need those pills. Throw them away and start exercising." Until then, I had led a mostly sedentary life except for eight weeks of Army basic training more than a decade earlier. But inspired by Dr. Smith I set a goal of running a mile in 15 minutes. Serendipitously, I was scheduled to go on a two week assignment to the Kansas City Chiefs training camp in Liberty, Mo. The Chiefs, as Super bowl champions, were preparing to play the College All-Stars in the season opening exhibition game sponsored annually by my newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. It appeared to be the perfect opportunity to get myself in shape. Accordingly, on my first morning in camp, I arose early and went to the quarter mile dirt running track and set out to run my first mile. I had just finished my first lap, however, when a short, thick-set man jumped in front of me with his arms in the air.

"What are you trying to do," he asked me. When I told him, he said, "You're going about it the wrong way. Let me help you and I guarantee you'll run that mile." For the next 10 days, Alvin Roy, the Chiefs' strength coach, worked with me every morning. His training regimen consisted of lifting weights and interval running. At no time did he let me run more than one lap until the last day, when he took out his stop watch and sent me out for my final exam. I don't remember what my time was but it was under 10 minutes and I was satisfied with that. From then on, I was hooked on running. I usually ran three miles before breakfast. Often I would run with Andy McKenna, who was on the board of the Cubs, White Sox, and Bears, with whom he had a minority ownership stake. The White Sox were up for sale at the time and rumors were flying all over town, but with my morning runs with Andy I had a pretty good grasp of what was going on. It was especially neat to find good running trails on out of town assignments. I think of all the runs I've had, the one I enjoyed the most was at a park in Syracuse, N.Y. the morning of a Syracuse-Penn State football game. The run was through a woods on a carpet of autumn leaves with a lake on my right hand side. It was an exhilerating moment.

The beginning of the end came one morning in Laramie, Wyo. I had just finished my morning run and sat down on the bed to take off my socks when a jolt of pain shot through my left knee and almost dropped me to the floor. Several cortisone shots and an arthroscope later the knee felt better, but that didn't last. I kept breaking down. Either my knees would get sore or my back would go out and I finally figured somebody or some thing was trying to tell me something. Today both knees are shot through with arthritis and the pain is constant, though bearable. Oddly enough, the knees don't hurt as much when I walk so that's how I get my exercise now. But I do miss running and if you were to ask me: Knowing what you know now would you do it over again, I'd reply, Damned right.

2009-10-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

The Oakland Raiders may have forgotten how to win, but they haven't forgotten how to handle the media--with disdain bordering on contempt. The Raiders are the most p.r. disfunctional organization in all of sports and have been so almost since their inception in 1960. Ever since Al Davis, then a 33-year-old assistant coach with the Los Angeles Chargers, became head coach and general manager of the Raiders in 1963, there has been an attitude of suspicion surrounding the team that makes Georgetown basketball's Hoya paranoia look like glasnost. The latest manifestation was on display last week, when Davis tried to keep Rich Gannon, a CBS analyst, out of his headquarters building, where the network was holding production meetings. Apparently, Gannon, who was the Raiders' quarterback the last time the team went to the Super Bowl, has been too critical of his old team. Of course, there is much to be critical about. The once potent Raiders have suffered six consecutive losing seasons since that 48-21 Super Bowl loss to Tampa Bay, a team coached by Jon Gruden, who had been Oakland's coach the three previous years. They may have reached rock bottom Sunday when they were blown away by the New York Giants, 44-7, in a game in which many of the Giant stars were given the second half off. Davis, once a superb judge of talent--there are 11 former Raider players in the Pro
Football Hall of Fame--squandered the first pick in the draft three years ago when he chose LSU quarterback JaMarcus Russell, who has been beyond terrible. While other young quarterbacks like Joe Flacco, Matt Ryan, Mark Sanchez and Chad Henne are leading their teams to victory, Russell is leading the Raiders on the road to ruin.

There are other indications that Davis is out of touch with NFL reality. He hired Lane Kiffin, a 31-year-old assistant coach at Southern Cal, to be the Raiders' head coach in 2007. Four games into the next season, he fired Kiffin, saying he had made a huge mistake. He compounded that mistake by replacing Kiffin with Tom Cable, whose head coaching experience consists of four years at Idaho, his alma mater, where he delivered an 11-35 record. Cable will finish the season, but he could finish it in jail or a courthouse after one of his assistants accused him of breaking his jaw in a blind side attack a few months ago. "He was screaming, 'I'll f---ing kill you! I'll f. . .ing kill you,'" according to the assistant, Randy Hanson. Hanson said he thought the attack was inspired by something he had said the previous day. While Cable was in a meeting with the Raiders' underachieving defensive backs, Hanson reportedly was telling the other assistants: "You know what's going to happen. Tom's gonna come out of that meeting and say I'm the problem. I'm the one confusing them and blame it all on me." The NFL and the Napa, Cal., police department are conducting separate investigations into the incident. Good luck to them. Prying information out of the Oakland Raiders has always been as difficult as prying the first pickle out of the jar.

My first dealing with the Raiders was pretty typical. I was on the West Coast covering the Rose bowl for the Chicago Tribune and the Raiders were getting ready to play the Houston Oilers for the AFL championship and the right to go to Super bowl II. I flew up to Oakland to cover the game and get a pregame column. After checking into my hotel I called the Raiders' publicity director, Lee Grosscup, a former quarterbacik from Utah who was famous for his white shoes. I told Grosscup I was there to do a pregame column and wanted to go to practice and interview one of his players. "Who do you want to talk to?" Grosscup asked. "Billy Cannon," I replied, referring to the former Heisman trophy winning halfback from LSU, who had made the transition to all-pro tight end. "My God," Grosscup exploded, "you can't talk to Billy Cannon. Nobody can talk to Billy Cannon." I then requested George Blanda, a former Bear and winner of the first two AFL championships as quarterback and kicker for the Oilers.
"No, you can't talk to Blanda," said Grosscup. "Then who can I talk to?" "Jim Otto," replied Grosscup, who added that practice started at 1:30 and gave me directions. When I arrived at 1:30 the practice field was empty and so was the locker room--except for one lone figure staring into his locker. Of course, it was Jim Otto, the Raiders' Hall of Fame center, who obviously had been told to wait for me.

That was the way the Raiders were, controlling, secretive, mistrustful. Recalls Ted Hendricks, the Hall of Fame linebacker who spent the last nine of his 15 pro seasons as a Raider: "The joke around here always used to be that if anyone was in the stands during a practice, he had to be a spy. Of course, everybody assumed Al (Davis) was using a spy, too. " Even though the Raiders usually made life difficult for me, I came to have a grudging admiration for them. In the early years of the AFL, many papers more or less ignored the upstart league, none more so than The Tribune, which was more or less in bed with the Bears' George Halas. But when I went out to cover my first Rose bowl after the 1965 season, the Buffalo Bills were playing the Chargers, who by then had moved to San Diego, in the league championship game. Except for Paul Zimmerman of the New York Post I might have been the only national writer covering that game. Zimmerman, of course, became the famous Dr. Z for Sports Illustrated, but back then he was more known for the elaborate charts he kept of each play, a system I never could understand, and for running the writers' pool at the Super Bowl. I once won it two years in a row and after the second time, Paul informed me that his pocket had been picked in the rush to the dressing room. Nevertheless he ponied up the money without much resistance. For those of you wondering where Dr. Z's predictions have gone, I'm sorry to report that Paul has suffered a series of strokes beginning last October and as far as I know he is still unable to speak. I spent many a night in his company--he was a wine connoisseur and the first one to point out to me the merits of Ridge Zinfandel. I certainly wish him well.

If you covered the AFL in those days you were bound to run into the Oakland Raiders frequently. I covered their loss to the Jets in Shea Stadium, the game in which Joe Namath threw through a biting wind to Don Maynard to send the Jets to the Super bowl. I was one of the few writers who did not expect the Baltimore Colts to blow away the Jets in the Super bowl, although I admit I wasn't brave enough to pick the Jets to win it. I covered the "Immaculate Reception" game in Pittsburgh and remember attending a late press conference the night before in which John Madden, the Raiders' coach, revealed that the team had watched the movie "Jaws" on the flight to Pittsburgh and, "Boy, I wish I could have that guy as a linebacker."

I think my favorite Raiders game was the famous "Ghost to the Post" playoff in Baltimore when Raiders tight end Dave Casper (the ghost), not only set up the tying touchdown with a 42-yard reception, but caught the game-winner in overtime. If that wasn't enough, when I got back to the football press box after doing the locker room interviews there was a small craft airplane lodged in the nearby baseball press box, the dare devil pilot having attempted to fly through the goal posts.

The Raiders in all their arrogance were fun to cover in those days. But those days are gone. Al Davis seems to have lost his way. His famous utterance: "Just win, baby," seems more like a prayerful plea than the unconditional demand it used to be.

2009-10-06T08:37:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria made his millions as an art dealer. I'm sure he can tell a Monet from a Manet and a Pollock from a Picasso. But as a baseball owner he apparently has no clue. Loria's the man who fired Joe Girardi as manager after only one season, a season in which Girardi was named National League Manager of the Year. Now come reports that Loria is considering firing Fredi Gonzalez and replacing him with Bobby Valentine. Gonzales was LAST year's N.L. Manager of the Year and this season led the Marlins to an 87-75 record and had them in playoff contention until the last week. All of this despite having the smallest payroll in major league baseball. I don't know Gonzalez, never met him, but I know his players play hard for him and in many cases overachieve.

Girardi's firing was personal. There are two versions of the reason and you can chose the one you like best. Either Girardi told Loria to shut up after the owner, seated in his box yelled at an umpire over a call or Loria chastized Girardi for not arguing the call, sparking an ongoing feud between employer and employee. If Gonzalez is fired it will be for an even dumber reason. Loria thought the Marlins should have made the playoffs. That's as unrealistic as expecting to buy Van Gogh's Starry Night for a hundred bucks. I know, I know. Early in the season, caught up in the hysteria of the Marlins' 11-1 start, I wrote that the Marlins were contenders. But that was not the prevailing opinion. Of course, they didn't make the playoffs, but the few fans who bothered to come out to support them got their money's worth. They got National league batting titlist Hanley Ramirez. They got rookie Chris Coghlan, who arrived late, but simply tore up National league pitching in the second half of the season. If Coghlan isn't N.L. Rookie of the Year it will be the biggest crime since Willie Sutton pawned his safe cracking tools. They got pitcher Josh Johnson, whose rebuilt arm provided a 15-5 record. But most of all they got a team that would not quit.

Loria appears to be one of the breed of owners who takes a hands on approach. Instead of hiring a baseball man and letting him make the decisions, they take matters into their own hands. That's not necessarily bad. Charley Finley did it and put together one of the all-time best teams in Oakland, although I never could understand how an insurance salesman could do it. George Steinbrenner did it even better, building the Yankeees' second dynasty (after the Ruth-Gehrig-DiMaggio-Mantle era winked off). In his early years, Steinbrenner changed managers as often as he changed his socks, but he knew talent when he saw it and was willing to pay for it. And when he finally found the right man, Joe Torre, he let Torre manage the team. Steinbrenner spent more money on Alex Rodriguez's contract than Loria did on the entire team he handed to Girardi. The Yankees had a general manager, but I can't remember who it was.

Baseball's not the only sport with mettlesome owners. All of them had the right to mettle, but only a few had the background. George Halas was player, coach and owner of the Chicago Bears from their inception in 1919 and remained coach for most of the period until his retirement in 1968. Even then he continued to be the puppetmaster until finally acknowledging that the game was passing him by. He had intended to pass the reins to his son Mugs, but when Mugsy died the leadership passed to Jim Finks, an established football man. The Halas family, through daughter Virginia McCaskey, still owns the Bears, but football men run the team.

Paul Brown not only was coach and part owner of the Cleveland Browns, but the team was named for him. When Brown, who built a post World War II powerhouse on the shores of Lake Erie, was fired as coach by majority owner Art Modell, he simply moved to the southern part of the state and started over with the Cincinnati Bengals.

Halas and Brown came close to overstaying their welcomes. Some men have the grace to know when it's time to go. Some men don't. Connie Mack was one such, although it hurts me to say it. Mack, after all, was baseball's Grand Old Man, managing the Philadelphia Athletics for 50 years before retiring at the age of 87. Mack holds the records for most managerial wins--3,731--and losses--3,948--and nobody else is even close. Although he was a player himself, once he went to the bench he dressed in civilian clothes. I remember as a teen-ager going to Comiskey Park by myself just to see Mack. And there he was, immaculate in suit and tie, waving his scorecard to position his players. But by that time the A's, who had won nine pennants and five world series under Mack, were a pathetic team. As Wayne Huizenga was to do with the Marlins many years later, Mack sold off many of his star players after his last World Series win in 1931. Starting in 1934, after selling off the contracts of the last of his super stars, slugger Jimmie Foxx and pitcher Lefty Grove, Mack watched his beloved A's finish in the American league's second division 14 years in a row and 16 of his final 17 seasons as manager. There is one big difference between Mack and Huizenga. Mack sold his stars because he needed money. Huizenga traded his because he wanted more money.

The Marlins have gone through two owners who have dismantled World Series winning teams for the want of money and if Loria wants to know why the Marlins were last in the majors in attendance he need only look in the mirror. Fans are afraid to commit to the Marlins because they fear the Marlins won't commit to them. And they're right. Even after getting the domed stadium they had been seeking for years, the Marlins have given no indication they are about to open the purse strings. There is even speculation that Johnson will be traded before arbitration can rear its budget-busting head. If that happens, the Marlins will lose even more of its fan base. Which is a shame, because the Marlins, under Fredi Gonzalez, really are fun to watch.

My advice to Loria: Keep Gonzalez. And in the words of Joe Girardi:"Shut up."

2009-09-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

You've got to play with the small hurts. That is the athletes' mantra. Mine, too. I've always played with the small hurts. Sometimes with the big ones, too. In 36 years of writing sports for the Chicago Tribune I missed one day of work. I was in the hospital that day, undergoing what they told me was "minor surgery." Eight days later I left the hospital, having learned this important lesson. There is no minor surgery.

At the time, I was writing a column five days a week. The only column I missed was that one on the day of surgery. The next day I sat up in bed and watched the Cubs-Phillies game. Mike Schmidt hit four homers and that took care of that day's column. A few days later, Cale Yarborough, at the time the hottest driver in NASCAR's Winston Cup series, visited me in my hospital room. My roommate, who was there for a face lift, was mightily impressed. Actually, I was, too. The rest of the week I just sort of winged it, writing whatever popped into my head. Kind of like today's effort. I finally went home on Saturday and about an hour later Bill Bradley popped in. He was still playing for the New York Knicks at the time and was on the road promoting his book; "Life on the Run," I believe was the title.

When his advance publicist called to ask if I wanted to interview the basketball legend, I said, sure, but I've got a problem. No problem, said the agent, Mr. Bradley will be glad to come to your house. Bradley sat on our sofa while I occupied a matching chair and, although my politics were pretty far to the right of Bradley's, I later found myself wishing he'd become President so I could tell visitors "President Bradley once sat on that sofa."

Several years later, I was covering the White Sox in spring training in Sarasota, Fl., their winter home at the time. They played their games in a park with a rather rickety grandstand that featured a press box reachable only by a set of wooden stairs. The date was April 1, 1981, and I can tell you the date precisely because it was two days after President Ronald Reagan was shot--and Greg Luzinski was traded to the White Sox. On the day of the Luzinski trade, the White Sox were playing an exhibition game in Tampa against the Cincinnati Reds. Two of my three children were staying with me and I figured as long as we were going to be in Tampa, I might as well take the kids to Busch Gardens in the morning and then take them with me to the ball park. Everybody had a great time at the amusement park and my daughter actually wheedled me into joining her on a roller coaster ride, an adventure I would come to regret. When it was time to go, the kids suggested I leave them there and pick them up after the ball game. I actually considered it. For about three seconds. Then common sense finally took charge. In about the fifth inning there was an announcement in the press box that the Sox had just acquired Luzinski, the Chicago-born slugger, from the Phillies and "The Bull" would be available for interview within the hour--in Clearwater.

I hustled the kids into the car and drove to Clearwater, where the Bull babbled like a baby, tears streaming down his face as he recalled his glory years with the Phils. Sitting in the front row taking it all in, were Trish and Mike Markus, 13 and 10 respectively. It was while I was writing the trade story that news flashed on the TV screen in front of me that there had been an assassination attempt on The President. As I pulled in front of our rented condo in Sarasota I took a moment to reflect on what would have happened had I left the kids at Busch Gardens.

Two days later, after my usual morning run, I was sitting on the edge of a sofa taking off my running shoes when, just like that, my back went out and sent me writhing to the floor where I remained until the spasm relented long enough to allow me to get back on my feet.
Damn that roller coaster, I muttered. But you have to play with the small hurts, so I went out to the ballpark and endured a day of hell. It was a day in which the White Sox made three different trades and each time I had to struggle down those devilish stairs to the press room for an interview and back up again to write the story.

Another time I was in Laramie, Wyo., doing a feature story on the Cowboys basketball team when, again after a run, my left knee suddenly felt as if it had been hit by a bazooka. I couldn't stand on it, let alone walk, but luckily, the Wyoming trainer was able to give me some relief and I went about my business. The knee got worse and worse and I recall getting a cortizone shot on the morning of a flight to Paris. Our trip lasted three weeks and so did the shot, which lost its zip as soon as we landed back at O'Hare. Eventually it required arthroscopic surgery, but I never missed a day at work.

I could go on and tell you about the time I was covering the Blackhawks in a game in Dallas and as I walked down towards the ice during ther morning skate I got my first gout attack and hobbled around for the rest of the road trip. But I won't. I'll simply tell you that I went to my dentist a while back and he told me, essentially, "Your teeth are okay, but those gums will have to come out." I had my gum surgery this morning and I'm supposed to be resting for th4e balance of the day. But this is my day to write my blog and you have to play with the small hurts. It's now three hours after the surgery and the novocain, or whatever it was they gave me, is finally starting to wear off. I can hardly wait to find out what's going to happen next.

2009-09-22T09:36:00.001-07:00

By Bob Markus

The sweet bird of youth has revisited Mark Martin's nest and it appears to be ready to stay a spell. At the so-called golden age of 50 Martin is leading after the first of 10 races that will decide NASCAR's Sprint Cup championship. His victory Sunday in Loudon, N.H., was the 40th in his career, but he has never won either a series championship or a Daytona 500. Every geezer, including this one, has to be rooting for Martin, who came out of semi-retirement to race for Rick Hendrick on a fulltime basis this season. Already signed through 2010, Martin recently added a third year to his contract, meaning he should still be racing at 52.

The longtime lead driver for Jack Rousch racing, Martin announced his retirement after the 2005 season. But when Rousch couldn't find a suitable replacement, Martin agreed to race the full series in 2006. He ran parttime the last two seasons before joining the powerful Hendrick team, which already included Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, with seven Cup titles between them, and the popular but apparently over-rated Dale Earnhardt Jr. My most abiding memory of Martin came not at a race track, although I did once have a one-on-one with him in his trailer, but at a theater in New York.

Martin was in the Big Apple to get his slice of the Winston Cup (as it was called then) pie. It was NASCAR's version of the Oscars, although everyone already knew who the winners were. The top ten drivers and their crews were invited to New York to honor the champion and receive their own accolades. Being No. 10 in most sports is synonymous with "loser," but in NASCAR it's a big deal. And Martin, although never the top banana, was one of the bunch on a regular basis. At that time the event was held each December in the Waldorf-Astoria and as the auto racing writer for The Chicago Tribune I went to several of them. On this occasion my wife was with me and Chip Williams, then the p.r. director for Winston Cup, asked me if we would like to go to dinner and the theater with Mark Martin. I don't remember much about the dinner or the show we saw, but I do remember looking at Mark halfway through the production and seeing that he was fast asleep. It didn't surprise me too much, because the play was "The Secret Garden," a musical based on the once popular, but long forgotten children's novel, and I had trouble staying awake myself. It was Mark's first Broadway show and I'd be very surprised if it wasn't his last. Martin is a down home type of guy from Arkansas and he's all business. Long before most drivers were into physical fitness, Martin was an avid workout proponent, which could account for his long career.

Martin is just one of four drivers to win a Cup race after reaching age 50. The other three are Bobby Allison, Morgan Shepherd, and Harry Gant, who did it eight times. Four of those came in succession in September of 1991 and although he was not the champion, Gant was the most sought after interviewee at that year's banquet. Gant was the ultimate late bloomer. He not only was the oldest driver ever to win a Cup race for the first time (he was 42 when he won at Martinsville), but the oldest ever to win a Cup race, period,when he won for the last time at Michigan as a 52-year-old.

Shepherd , who was 41 before he won his first Cup race, was mostly a back marker during a long career that reached its peak when he ran for the legendry Wood Brothers from 1992 to 1995. It was sometime during that period that I talked to him and found out that, among other interesting tidbits, he was closely related to the infamous Tom Dooley of story and song--and that he was illiterate, couldn't read or write. Shepherd's Winston Cup career died a lingering death, but he's still racing at age 67. He ran his own truck racing team for awhile, but was so strapped for money that he actually was his own pit crew at times, climbing out of the truck to change tires and refuel before climbing back in and soldiering on. As long as he pitted under the yellow that wasn't too damaging--at least he didn't lose a lap, but green flag stops were another story. More recently he's run a one-car team in the Nationwide series, NASCAR's version of Triple A baseball. But once again money problems have loomed and he may not be able to finish out the season.

Bobbby Allison was a few months past his 50th birthday in 1988 when he won the Daytona 500 for the third time. His son Davey finished second and it was a spectacular day for the Allison family. It was Bobby's last victory. Later that year he was almost killed in a savage crash at Pocono and never raced again. I remember getting a phone call from Davey Allison's p.r. man several months later. He told me that Bobby for the first time was able and willing to talk about the crash and his recovery and that he could also get me hooked up with Davey. Was I interested? You bet. Davey told me of his feelings when he drove past the accident scene and saw how horrific it was, but Bobby couldn't remember much of anything about the wreck. I asked him how he now felt about the sport and he told me, "Racing's given me everything I have. Racing's good." A few years later his son Clifford was killed in a crash during practice at Michigan and a year after that Davey died in a helicopter crash en route to Talladega Speedway. It was on a Monday and I can tell you that with some assurance because I was just sitting down to dinner at the annual charity golf tournament with which I was involved when I got a phone call from the office. No dinner for me, that night.

In Formula One racing you're an old man at 30, but in other forms of racing it's not so rare to see a 50-year-old still driving competitively. A.J. Foyt ws 57 when he called it a career and Mario Andretti was 53 when he won for the last time in an Indy car. Paul Newman was still driving competitively well into his 70s. But for the ultimate in senior moments I think you have to look at Hershel McGriff, a legendary west coast driver who competed mostly in the Winston Cup West series. McGriff started racing when he was 17. That was 64 years ago. Now 81, McGriff this year entered the race at Portland, the same track on which he'd made his debut--and finished 13th. Mark Martin has some catching up to do.

2009-09-15T09:45:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Through the years, the Chicago Bears have been primarily known for two things--Hall of Fame linebackers and Hall-of-Shame quarterbacks. Oh, you can throw in an occasional Gale Sayers or Walter Payton, but by and large the Bears have been defined by the stellar play of, especially, their middle linebackers and the cellar play of the myriad of mopes who have taken center snaps. This was the year that would change all that, or at least half of that. Brian Urlacher would continue on as the latest in the long orange and blue line of dynamic middle linebackers, a line that stretches all the way back to Bulldog Turner, who strictly speaking was not a middle linebacker--the position had yet to be invented--but a center and middle guard. Turner handed the mantle to Bill George, who DID invent the position of middle linebacker and from there it passed through the brutish hands of Dick Butkus to the fierce-eyed Mike Singletary to Urlacher, who seems almost certain to join his predecessors in the Hall of Fame.

But, no longer would Bears fans have to watch in despair as their rag-armed quarterbacks threw more passes into the dirt or, worse, into the arms of opposing defensive backs than they did to their own receivers. Riding to the rescue like El Cid, to right all of history's wrongs was Jay Cutler, who bore the impressive label "franchise quarterback." Unfortunately, what we got was not El Cid, but Sancho Panza. He even looks a bit like the popular conception of Don Quixote's sidekick, moonfaced with a slightly rounded body.

I don't know what I expected from Cutler's debut as a Bears quarterback, but certainly not this. Not four interceptions, two of which contributed directly to the Green Bay Packers' 21-15 opening night victory. Most of the picks were about as close to the intended receiver as Rush Limbaugh is to Barack Obama. If you could even figure out just who was the intended receiver. There was less communication between Cutler and his wideouts than there was between King Kong and Fay Wray.

But Cutler's performance was not the worst thing that happened to the Bears Monday night. Perhaps it was an anomaly and Cutler would come back next week to carve up the Pittsburgh Steelers. Wait a minute. Did I just say the Pittsburgh Steelers? Aren't they the Super bowl champions? Doesn't matter. Even if Cutler were the second coming of Sid Luckman the Bears aren't going anywhere without Urlacher. And Urlacher isn't going anywhere near a football field for the rest of this season after surgery for a dislocated wrist. Speaking of Luckman, Sid was one of only three quarterbacks who have led the Bears to a championship in the modern era, which he himself inaugurated in 1940 as the NFL's first T-formation quarterback. Luckman won four titles with the Bears, Bill Wade and Jim McMahon one apiece. Wade, like Cutler, went to Vanderbilt, so perhaps there is an omen there. But if Cutler can't cut it, perhaps the Bears could draft BYU's Max Hall next year. After all, McMahon is a BYU product. I doubt there will be any help forthcoming from Columbia, Luckman's alma mater.

There has been an endless string of Bears quarterbacks between Luckman and Cutler, most of them easily forgettable. But not all. There were the three B's--Ed Brown, George Blanda and Zeke Bratkowski. Brown led the Bears into the 1956 title game, Blanda became one of the game's alltime leading kickers and, in his football dotage, the starting quarterback for an Oakland Raiders team that nearly got to the Super Bowl. There were the three L's--Luckman, Bobby Layne, and Johnny Lujack. Luckman you already know about, although you might not know he was one of the nicest men who ever lived. I once asked him for an interview for a free lance piece I was working on. He invited me to his downtown Chicago apartment for breakfast, gave me a great interview and then thanked me for coming. Unaware of what he had in Layne, George Halas traded him and watched the eccentric Texan become a Hall of Famer for the Detroit Lions. Lujack, a two-way player, gave the Bears three decent years and then retired.

Later there were the likes of Jack Concannon, Bobby Douglass, Virgil Carter, and Bob Avellini. The first three were key figures in the most bizarre locker room scene I have ever witnessed. The Bears were nearing the end of their most disastrous season ever, a season in which they would go 1-13 and Brian Piccolo would be diagnosed with cancer. Carter, a record-setting passer at Brigham Young had been given his first start of the season, but at halftime, with the Bears down 3-0 to the Packers, Coach Jim Dooley replaced Carter with Douglass, then a rookie. I don't remember the score, but the Packers won easily enough and the Bears locker room was like a three-ringed circus. In one corner sat Douglass, telling anyone who would listen that he was the quarterback of the future. In another corner sat Concannon, who had not played, laughing and goading Carter, who was standing in the center of the room in a white hot rage and insisting he had played his last game as a Bear and would play out his option. "What if Halas won't let you do that?" I asked him. "I hope he won't be chickenshit enough to do that," Virgil responded in what became infamous as "the chicken bleep speech." Halas fined him a substantial amount and when I asked why, the owner-coach responded, "because he called me chickenshit." I pointed out that what Carter had said was he hoped Halas wouldn't be chickenshit, but the fine stood. Carter went on to lead the Cincinnati Bengals to the playoffs the next season and later returned to Chicago as the quarterback of the short-lived Chicago Fire.. My wife and I were socially acquainted with Virgil and his wife, Judy. We always thought they were the perfect couple, he the star quarterback, she a cheerleader at BYU. So we were stunned a few years later when we heard that the two were divorced. I lost track of him after that, but finally decided to find out what had become of him. I called Lavell Edwards, his coach at BYU, and Lavell said that the last he'd heard, Virgil had become part of a motorcycle gang. He gave me a phone number where Carter could sometimes be reached, but I never tried to call him.

Douglass was totally miscast as a quarterback. He had an arm like a bazooka and was a powerful runner. He could have become another Paul Horning had he been switched to tailback, but it never happened. After his football career ended, Douglass tried to become a baseball pitcher and was given a tryout by the White Sox's Iowa farm team. I went to Des Moines to cover the event. All I remember about it was that Bobby was wild and I had a nice conversation with the Iowa manager, a guy named Tony LaRussa.

The quarterbacks came and went. Mike Phipps, Vince Evans, Avellini, then, finally, McMahon. But the euphoria that McMahon helped bring to Chicago didn't last long, and the qbs kept coming. Doug Flutie and Mike Tomczak and Jim Harbaugh and Erik Kramer, and Steve Walsh and Shane Matthews and Cade McCown and on and on and on. Finally there was Rex Grossman, who got credit for getting the Bears to the Super Bowl a few years back, although it was the defense and Devin Hester who really were responsible.

Jay Cutler may be a cut above many of the signal callers who passed through Chcicago over the past 50 years, but he sure didn't show it in the opener. Now, with Urlacher down, the very heart of the Bears' defense ripped out, it might take more than the second coming of Sid Luckman to save the Bears' season. It would take the second coming of you know who to do that.

2009-09-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

The extended opening week-end of the college football season had everything--the good, the bad, and the ugly--and that was just opening night during and immediately following Boise State's 19-8 victory over Oregon. The good: Boise State's defense, which held the supposedly high-powered Oregon offense without a first down until midway through the third quarter. The bad: that Oregon offense, which performed like a wounded Duck. The ugly: Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount's sucker punch of a Boise State player as the teams were leaving the field. Is that what they mean by "assault with a Blount instrument?" Blount may have been provoked. The recipient of his straight right to the jaw had tapped him on the shoulder and said something to the Oregon runner. So far as I know nobody has yet revealed what was said. Could it have something to do with Blount's pregame statement that Oregon would exact revenge for last year's loss to Boise State, that they were going to "whoop their ass?" Could it have been something on the order of "put your money where your mouth is?" after Blount spent most of the night going backwards and finished with negative rushing yards? ( Would Joe Namath have punched out Johnny Unitas had the Jets lost Super Bowl III?) Regardless, it was about as ugly as it gets in college football and it cost Blount his career and could impact on his future earnings in the NFL.

The game was surprising not so much for the fact that Boise won it, but in the way the Broncos won it. After sitting through South Carolina's stultifying victory over North Carolina State in the first game of the new season, most tv viewers were anticipating a wide open wingding. Boise State is noted for its innovations on offense and the Ducks had hung 63 points on Oregon State and 42 on Oklahoma State in their last two games a year ago. This game was the most important on Boise State's schedule, which is not entirely good news for Broncos fans. There is a pretty good chance that Boise will go undefeated in the regular season, but with that schedule, perceived to be as soft as a whisper, there is no chance the Broncos will play for the national championship. That is not the case with Brigham Young, which pulled off the upset of the week-end, not only knocking off No. 3 Oklahoma 14-13, but sending Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Sam Bradford to the infirmary. Bradford may return at some point in the season, but his bid to become only the second two-time Heisman winner is over. BYU is another team not noted for its defense but the Cougars were containing the high-powered Sooner offense even before Bradford's injury in the second period. On this night the Sooners were not the better. BYU has a tough enough remaining schedule: Florida State , TCU, Utah --all in the preseason Top 25--to make a case for its inclusion in the national championship game should it run the table. All three of those games will be played in Provo, as is the game against Air Force, unranked but dangerous. The Falcons opened their season with a 72-0 scorching of Nicholls State, which might not be very good, but. . . .72-0?

There are some interesting implications to be drawn from the results of the first week-end: The first is that the Atlantic Coast Conference is not very good . Duke and Virginia both lost to Division IAA schools. Virginia Tech, supposedly one of the powers of the conference and ranked No. 7 nationally, lost to Alabama, an SEC power and North Carolina State lost to South Carolina, definitely not an SEC power. In addition, Maryland was overpowered by California, which has hopes of ending USC's reign of terror in the Pac 10. But the ACC did provide THE game of the week-end and possibly of the season. It will be hard to top Miami's 38-34 win over Florida State, which wasn't over even when it was over. The final play was reviewed by officials after both teams declared themselves the winner, kind of like two boxers throwing their arms in the air while awaiting a decision. While Doak Campbell Stadium was wracked with tension while awaiting the decision, it was clear to viewers at home that Jarmon Forston had dropped quarterback Christian Ponder's pass in the end zone on the final play. Florida State players jumped up and down when it appeared Forston had caught the ball, but Miami's players saw immediately that he had not held onto the ball. The officials finally confirmed it. The game made instant stars of both Ponder and Miami quarterback Jacory Harris. Harris threw for 386 yards and two touchdowns and led the Hurricanes back even after a devasting interception return put the Seminoles in front 31-24. So it looks as if Miami may be back on track, although the Canes have as tough a four-game opening stretch as there is in the country.The next three games are against Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, and Oklahoma, which could have Bradford back by their Oct. 3 meeting.

Two other teams that made a statement Saturday are Notre Dame and Michigan, which both won handily and relieved the pressure on their embattled coaches. Notre Dame's Charlie Weis has been under fire for the better part of two years for the simplest of reasons--the Irish have lost 15 games over that period, Michigan's Rich Rodriguez had two strikes against him. Not only was his first year as Wolverines coach a disaster, but just last week he was accused of abusing NCAA rules on the amount of time student athletes can spend being athletes. The two will meet Saturday in Ann Arbor and the loser will go back to being abused. The other big game involving a Big Ten team finds USC visiting the Horseshoe in Columbus, with a true freshman quarterback. But the Buckeyes will have to play a whole lot better than they did last Saturday, when Navy came within an intercepted two-point conversion attempt of taking the Buckeyes to overtime.

The question of which is the best conference in the country was hardly settled by Saturday's events. Alabama came up big for the SEC with its win over Virginia Tech. The Big 12 took a hit with Oklahoma's loss, but Missouri drubbed Illinois 37-9 in a mild upset and Oklahoma State whipped SEC heavyweight Georgia 24-10. As Bette Davis famously said in "All About Eve," "hold onto your seats, boys, it's going to be a bumpy ride."

2009-09-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

I think I'm becoming a junkie. No, not like Frankie Machine, the drug-addled hero of Nelson Algren's novel The Man With the Golden Arm. I don't crave heroin and I'd sooner eat brocolli than stick a needle in my arm. Still, I need my fix. Need it real bad. Here it is Sept. 1 and not a single college football game on TV yet. As far as I know there hasn't been one played yet. I know that back in the day college football used to be strictly an autumn sport. In fact, if you go way back, you'll find that football season didn't start until October. As late as 1982 a college football game in August was as rare as a Chicago Cubs World Series appearance.

Then came the kickoff classic, a game in late August in the New Jersey Meadowlands. I covered the inaugural game in 1983, when Nebraska blew out Penn State 44-6 on Aug. 29. The only thing I recall about that game is I had rented a black compact from Hertz and just as I wrapped up my story and went into the parking lot, the lights were turned off. Ever try finding a black car in an inky night, not even knowing on which side of the stadium you had parked it? The kickoff classic went on for several years, but the only other one of them I covered was the 1986 game when Alabama beat Ohio State 16-10. I have two memories of that one. The first was that I went to Tuscaloosa a few days before the game, less to advance it than to do a feature on quarterback Mike Shula, Don's son. I had made arrangements to talk to head coach Ray Perkins as well as young Mr. Shula, but the day I arrived one of the Crimson Tide players died on the practice field. Under the circumstances, I expected Perkins, not known as a huge fan of the media, anyway, to cancel the appointment. But he went through with it and later, when I saw him in an elevator in the headquarters hotel in New Jersey, he even said "hello." The other thing I remember is that on the morning of the game I awoke with a raging fever. The Alabama medical staff was kind enough to give me some medicine, but it didn't help much. By the time I got to South Carolina for my next assignment, the fever had subsided, but my mouth was so inflamed I couldn't eat. I finally went to a clinic on the afternoon of the Saturday night game and was given a potion which numbed my lips for about 10 minutes, just long enough to choke down a sandwich before going to the game.

The idea of playing football in August seemed to catch on. In 2002 both Nebraska and Arizona State played two games in August, the first against each other on Aug.24. In 1997 Northwestern and Oklahoma played as early as Aug.23. College football was always one of my favorite assignments when I was covering sports for the Chicago Tribune and remains one of my favorites in retirement. I was so hungry for football of the non-NFL variety that I even watched a high school game last Saturday. Of course, it featured St. Thomas Aquinas of Fort Lauderdale, my current residence, and the Raiders, widely acknowledged the No. 1 prep team in America, looked as if they could have taken on a Division one college team in the course of their 52-7 blowout of Upper Arlington (Ohio). Usually on that last Saturday in August there are at least a few college games played, and one or two of them is likely to be an intriguing match-up. Not this year. Mercifully, I have only two more days to wait before getting that nerve calming fix. There are five games scheduled for Thursday night and two of them are intriguing matchups--South Carolina at North Carolina State and, even yummier, Oregon at Boise State. The Ducks, Sports Illustrated's choice as the No. 11 team in the country are 4 point underdogs to Boise State, SI's No.9 team. That game is going to test my dedication to the sport because it starts at 10:15 Estern time and probably won't be over until at least 1:30 a.m. I usually set my alarm for 6 a.m. on Friday to make my regular tee time. Something's got to give .

That's a pretty good warmup act for Saturday, when most of the major teams go into action. There are several early showdown games scheduled for that day and although Alabama vs. Virginia Tech is getting most of the hype it isn't the only premium attraction Saturday. Worth watching: Georgia at Oklahoma State, BYU at Oklahoma, and Illinois-Missouri, for personal reasons, in their annual St. Louis showdown. The Oklahoma-BYU game is particularly intriguing because it features Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford of Oklahoma against the latest in a long line of BYU gunslingers, Max Hall. Should Hall win this duel in the sun, he would become an instant Heisman contender, even in a year when all three finalists--Bradford, Texas' Colt McCoy and former Heisman winner Tim Tebow of Florida--are back to try again.

My love affair with college football began in the war years--that's World War II if you're keeping score--when I'd listen to a game on the radio every Saturday afternoon, then go next door to Maisel's Drug Store for the early edition of the Sunday papers, where I could read about all the Big Ten games. The stories were all told in play-by-play fashion and it wasn't until I started working for The Tribune myself that I came to understand that what I was reading was not the final story, but "running" matter which later would be "subbed out" by the writer covering the game. The first college game I ever saw in person was in 1947, when I was 13. Somebody had given my father a single ticket to the Notre Dame-Northwestern game at Dyche stadium. I took the train by myself to the Central Street station and followed the crowd to the Stadium. I don't remember the details, but I remember the score, Notre Dame 26; Northwestern 19. That was the closest game Notre Dame played in a perfect 9-0 season.

The first college game I covered was Purdue's 31-0 drubbing of Missouri to start the 1954 season. I was a student at Missouri, covering football for The Missourian, the daily paper put out by the school's journalism students. The two things that stand out in my memory were, first, that Len Dawson, in his college debut, threw four touchdown passes to Lamar Lundy, also making his first start and, second, the Friday night press party. In that era it was de riguer for the host school to have a press "smoker," featuring food and drink and, usually, an appearance by both coaches. Purdue's "smoker" was by far the best in the Big Ten. It was held at that time in a downtown hotel and featured a steak dinner and all you could drink--cocktails before, wine during, and brandy afterward. There were perhaps 12 of us sitting at a long table and I was awe struck at being in the company of such famous writers as Dave Condon of The Tribune and Bob Broeg of St. Louis. They all treated me as one of the gang and I was spellbound by the stories they told. Later, when I was covering college football for The Tribune I remember vividly two other press parties involving Purdue Coach Jack Mollenkopf. At that time the Tribune used to publish on Friday a list of the writers who would be covering The Big Ten and Notre Dame games on Saturday. It was called: They'll Be There. One time when I was going to cover a Purdue game my flight to Lafayette was cancelled and we were all piled into a bus and driven to West Lafayette. As a result, the press party was in full swing when I arrived, and there to greet me, a gin and tonic in hand, was Mollenkopf, who said:"I read in the paper that you were coming down. I've been waiting for you. Here, I bet you can use this." A few years later at a "smoker" at Notre Dame, I sat at Mollenkopf's table for dinner. The two teams were ranked 1 and 2 in the polls and there was a great deal of anticipation, but Mollenkopf scoffed: "I don't know why everyone's making such a big deal of this game. We're going to win tomorrow and at the end of the year Notre Dame's going to be ranked ahead of us." He was right on both counts.

Part of the joy of covering college football was in arriving early on a Saturday morning and walking around the campus. I always believed that Indiana and Michigan State had the two prettiest campuses in the Big Ten, because, believe it or not, although I lived less than five miles away from it I never saw the Northwestern campus until after I retired. Having seen it often since then I have to revise my list. I've seen dozens and dozens of college campuses and, with the exception of Pepperdine, which overlooks the Malibu coast, there is no more beautiful college campus than Northwestern's.

Of course, I'll never see another college football game from the same perspective, but I'll never lose interest in it, either. Let the games begin.

2009-08-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Plaxico Burress is going to jail, the Chicago Cubs are going nowhere, and the New York Yankees are going to town. So I am going to have to apologize for ignoring a bunch of good stories and, for the third week in a row, write about golf. Believe me, I didn't want to do it. I love to play golf and I like to watch it, but as a sports writer for 36 years at The Chicago Tribune, it was way down on my list of favorite sports to cover. I promise you I won't write another word about golf after today for at least a month or more--probably more.

But today we have to talk about Michelle Wie. We have to talk about Michelle Wie because she is the future of women's golf in America. That all became clear over the week-end when the 19-year-old led the United States to a 16-12 victory over a team of European stars, to retain possession of the Solheim cup. It was her first Solheim cup and she was magnificent. Actually, it was my first Solheim cup, too. It's been around for awhile, but if I ever thought about it at all, I probably figured a Solheim cup was a plastic drinking vessel that you throw away after using.

Turns out it's the women's version of the Ryder cup and it made for some compelling TV viewing. Most compelling sight of all, was the performance of Wie, who, before she was old enough to vote went from a phenom to a has been. There was a time when Michelle Wie had been seen as the Tiger Woods of the women's game. That was when she was 12 and the youngest girl to qualify for an LPGA tournament. That was when she was 13 and the youngest ever to make the cut in a major tournament, the Kraft Nabisco Championship. That same year she became the youngest to make the cut in the U.S. Women's open. That was when she was 15-16 and finishing in the top three in four of the eight majors played during the 2005-06 seasons. She never won a major. No. Never won any pro tournament, in fact. But she was still just 16 years old, had signed a multimillion dollar contract with Nike, and the golf world was hers for the taking.

That was then. Within two years the male golfer she most closely resembled was John Daly. Tons of natural talent, but no results. Missed cuts, last place finishes, controversy over whether she had an injured wrist or not, controversy over her seeming obssession with playing in men's events, controversy over the way her parents were running her life, ruining her career. No one thought of Michelle Wie as the next Tiger Woods anymore. Nobody thought of Michelle Wie at all. Then she started to get it back. She went to the LPGA qualifying school and finished seventh, plenty good enough to earn her tour card. She still hasn't won an LPGA tournament, but played well enough to be chosen as a captain's pick for the Solheim Cup. She more than justified the selection. She posted a 3-0-1 record in her four matches, including a 1-up singles victory on the final day at a time the Europeans seemed to have the advantage. All you need to know about Wie was revealed on the second hole of that match against the veteran Helen Alfredsson. The second is a par five over water that the longer hitters can reach in two. Both players had drives in the 300 yard range. Alfredsson, hitting first, planted a fairway wood inside of 5 yards from the flag stick for a probable eagle. Wie never blinked. She simply put HER second shot within 3 feet of the cup and eventually won the hole. Although she faltred some at the end, she managed to hang onto the lead.

The LPGA leadership had to be ecstatic over the outcome. Not only did the U.S. retain the Cup, but a new star emerged from the shadows of an old scar. The LPGA has been in some difficulty lately, mainly because it lacks enough U.S. born players. Nearly a third (47) of all the LPGA players are from Korea (where both of Wie's parents were born). Wie, along with Morgan Pressel, another rising star who at 21 already has won two LPGA tournaments, including a major, should be able to compete with the Asians while they await the arrival of the next phenom. That would be Alexis Thompson, who at 14 already has played in three U.S. Women's Opens and made the cut this year. But Thompson has not exhibited the drawing power that Wie wielded at such an early age. Nor, to my knowledge, has anybody thrown millions of dollars at her. That's probably just as well. Let Wie's rise and fall and rise serve as a cautionary tale for all 14-year-olds with talent beyond their years. It was another golfer, Walter Hagen, who said it best: Wherever you're going, stop and smell the flowers along the way.

2009-08-18T07:23:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Tiger Woods wasn't just beaten in Sunday's PGA championship final round--he was Shanghaied. No, there were no British press gangs lurking at Hazeltine, hoping to send the four-time PGA champion on a slow boat to China--unless you count the British newshounds sent to cover the British Isles contingent, i.e. Padraig Harrington, Rory McIlroy, Lee Westwood et al, who played prominent roles in the tournament. The days are long gone when unsuspecting landlubbers who were indiscreet enough to visit the waterfront late at night risked being impressed into duty on an English ship.

In this instance the term "Shanghaied" takes on new meaning. You see, this wasn't the first time North Korea's Y.E. (for Yong-Eun) Yang bested the world's best golfer in a tournament. Nearly three years ago, in November of 2006, Yang won something called the HSBC Champions in Shanghai, China. He won the tournament by two strokes over runners-up Tiger Woods and Retief Goosen. So, on Sunday, Woods was "Shanghaied" again. By whatever name you want to call it, Sunday's stunning result was the most heart-breaking loss of Woods' career. It wasn't just that it was the first time Woods had ever lost a major when leading going into the final round. He had been 14 for 14, but, after all, nobody's perfect. It wasn't just that a 15th major had slipped from his grasp. At 33 he still has plenty of time to win the four more that will tie him with Jack Nicklaus for the all-time lead. That he will win more majors is a virtual certainty. That he will win another PGA is not. There are four major championships a year, four chances to edge closer to his goal. But only one chance each year to win his fifth PGA title, which would tie him for the alltime lead with Nicklaus and Walter Hagen.

Yang, who had but one previous PGA Tour victory, deserves all the credit for doing what no one else has ever done--overtake Tiger Woods in the final round of a major tournament. But Woods contributed greatly to his own demise. His medium range putting, usually impeccable, was, in a word, horrendous. It started on the final hole of the third round the previous day when Woods, leading by two strokes, appeared ready to make it a more comfortable three. He had a birdie putt of under 10 feet, the kind he usually gobbles down like a python swallowing a toad, but this time it stuck in his throat. So, when he lined up a nine-foot putt on the first hole Sunday I said to myself, "if he makes this he's going to run away with this tournament. But if he misses. . . ." He missed and Yang was still only two shots behind and never got farther behind than that. With five holes to play the two were tied and this was the moment Yang was supposed to crack. Instead he hit two magnificent shots over the final five holes, the chip shot for eagle on the short par four 14th, the shot that ultimately won the tournament, and the three iron over the trees from 210 yards out on the 18th, the shot that sapped the last of Woods' iron will. Thus Yang became the first Asian male golfer to win a major, although Woods himself has more Asian blood (50 per cent) running through his veins than African-American (25 per cent). You can bet that there will be more and more Asians coming to the PGA tour. If you doubt it, just look at the women's tour where there are so many Asians--mainly Korean--winning championships that tour officials considered making speaking English mandatory for LPGA tour membership.

The victory by the 37-year-old Yang, who did not take up golf until he was 19 (compared with Tiger, who seemingly started playing in the womb), is being hailed as the greatest upset in golfing history if not the biggest upset in all of sports. Perhaps so. But if Jack Fleck's 1955 U.S. Open victory over Ben Hogan does not top it, at least it runs a very close second. Fleck was, essentially, a club pro from Davenport, Iowa, who, at the behest of some of his golfing buddies, started playing some of the winter tour events, mainly to escape the bitter midwestern winters. He had only been playing fulltime on the PGA circuit for about a year when he qualified for the 1955 Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. Hogan at the time was as revered and respected as Woods is today. He was looking to become the first man to win five U.S. Open titles and appeared to have it in his pocket when he left the 72d green with a par and a one-shot lead over some guy named Fleck. So sure was Hogan that he had won the tournament that he flipped his ball to an official and said, "this is for the Golf House (museum)." NBC, which covered only the final hour of the tournament, went off the air saying that Hogan had won his fifth Open. Bantam Ben was sitting in the clubhouse, sipping a glass of Scotch, when Fleck lofted a seven iron over a bunker and landed it eight feet from the pin. Then he sank the birdie putt, tying Hogan for the lead and setting up an 18-hole playoff for the next day.

It was a foregone conclusion that the battle-tested Hogan, the greatest golfer of his era, and some still say the greatest of any era, would dust off the upstart Fleck as easily as an elephant stomping on a mouse. But Fleck won the playoff 72-69 and nobody yet has won a fifth U.S. Open. Tiger Woods has three of them among his 14 majors and if anyone is going to win five, he's the man. Unless he gets Shanghaied again by some golfer who is unknown, unsung, and unimpressed with going toe-to-toe with the world's greatest golfer.

2009-08-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

The PGA championship is the Rodney Dangerfield among golf's four major championships. It gets little respect. The Masters, U. S. Open, and British Open all seem to have more cache than the PGA, which begins its 91st championship Thursday at Hazeltine. The Masters has magnolias and the ghost of Bobby Jones. The U.S. Open has rough as high as an aardvark's eye and, as its name suggests, is open to anyone good enough to qualify for it. The British Open has tradition and links golf. And the PGA has. . . .what? Well, it used to have match play, which made it distinct among the majors. But that was before television came and pointed out that televising a 36-hole final would provide more dead air than a mausoleum. So now the PGA has. . . .what? Only "the best field we play against," according to Tiger Woods. "Usually 99 out of the top 100 in the world are here. You win this championship and you've beaten the best field in the world of golf." Win this championship, and your name is not Tiger Woods, you've beaten the best player in the history of golf.

I think it's time to say that now. It's always been a given that some day Tiger might claim that distinction. But there was Jack Nicklaus to consider, along with my personal favorite, Ben Hogan. But at age 33, with 70 PGA tour titles in his pocket, Woods has already passed Hogan and needs just three more to catch Nicklaus, who was 40 when he won No. 70. That would leave only Sam Snead, the alltime tour leader with 82 wins, ahead of him. And the way he's playing now Tiger will catch Snead by the end of next season or early in 2011.

Also on his agenda is surpassing Nicklaus' record of 18 major championships. That will take a little longer, unless Tiger, who enters the PGA with 14, comes up with a grand slam next year. "Those numbers are mind-boggling," Woods said, speaking at a press conference after his practice round Tuesday. "I don't think about them unless you guys ask me. It doesn't happen in the course of a single year. To get to 18 and beyond is going to take a full career." But, "I've got a lot of years left," he concluded.

Woods was asked to compare his game today with the one with which he so dominated the field in 2000. That was the year in which he won nine events, including the last three majors of the season and was named Male Athlete of the Year. His U. S. Open win at Pebble Beach was by a mind-blowing 15 strokes. So, if you were to play head-to-head against the Tiger Woods of 2000, he was asked, who would win? "I would," he replied. "I know how to manage my game much better now. I have so many different shots to get me around the golf course now." Despite not winning any of the first three majors this year, even failing to make the cut in the British Open, Woods has to be the heavy favorite to win this week-end. He has won the last two weeks, even though he feels his game is just now rounding into shape after his knee surgery in June of last year. "At first, I was relying on other parts of my game, my pitching and putting," he said, "but now my ball striking is getting better."

A year ago," he recalled, "I was just coming off crutches and trying to learn how to walk. It usually takes awhile to come back. I'm happy with how consistent I've played." Yet, Woods has struggled at times while winning the Buick Open and Bridgestone Invitational in consecutive weeks. In the Buick he had trouble finding the fairways over the last two rounds, but played several brilliant recovery shots to save the day. He fell far behind over the first two rounds at Firestone this past week-end, then posted back-to-back 65s to win by four strokes. Not that it was as easy as that sounds. He started the final round three shots behind Padraig Harrington, but was two shots ahead by the time the final pairing made the turn. When Tiger Woods seizes the lead in the final round he hangs onto it with the ferocity of a rottweiler defending a meaty bone. But, to his credit, Harrington snatched the bone away--borrowed it temporarily--and went back ahead by a stroke going onto the 16th tee. The view from there does not include the green, which is 667 yards away. That's when time would not stand still. As the two contenders were preparing to drive, a PGA official warned them that they were on the clock, being timed because of slow play. Neither player hit a good drive or a good second shot, for that matter. Then Woods hit what might have been the shot of his life, cranking an eight iron to within tap-in range for a birdie four. Harrington went in the opposite direction, hitting his third shot over the green, then pitching it back into the water, resulting in a triple bogey eight.

Woods was glad to have the win, but unhappy with the way he got it. He was critical of PGA official John Paramor for ordering the hurry-up. "He (Harrington) was in control of the event," Woods said. "When we were put on the clock it changed everything. The thing I don't understand is we were the only two players in contention. The winner was not going to come from any of the groups ahead of us. We were having a great battle and we weren't that far behind. If Paddy doesn't hit the ball in the water we're right behind the group ahead of us." There were reports that Woods was fined for his remarks, but Tiger said, "I've heard from the tour and there is no fine. That was an erroneous report."

Harrington, who preceded Woods on the press room podium, said he had not read anything about the contretemps so he couldn't comment, but later, when a reporter filled him in, he remarked: "We were having a great battle. I was enjoying it and I think he was enjoying it. I reacted poorly to the situation. Having won the tournament he (Woods) can take the moral high ground. I lost the tournament so I"m going to sit back and take it on the chin."

Ironically, Woods and Harrington will be paired again for the first two rounds of the PGA. They will be joined by Rich Beem, the winner in 2002 when the tournament was last played at Hazeltine. In a sense they all three are defending champions. Beem, because he won on the same venue, Woods, because he won the last two before missing last year's PGA after his surgery, and Harrington because he won last year's event in Woods' absence. It's Tiger's last chance to win a major this year, but his game is sharp and he's taking Wednesday off "to spark up my game" even further. That's bad news for the rest of the field. It's Tiger vs. the Tiger-proclaimed
"best field we play against." Take the Tiger.

2009-08-04T13:55:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Love's more comfortable the second time around. That's what the song tells us and I think it might be true. As some of you know, my lifelong love affair with the Chicago Cubs ended last October with the Cubs' craven three-game surrender to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National league playoffs.

I didn't have to look very far for a new team to love. I've lived in Ft. Lauderdale more or less fulltime the last 10 years and I already had developed a fondness for the Florida Marlins, a team that is constantly looking for love in all the wrong places. As far as the majority of sports fans down here are concerned, the Marlins are just an entr'acte, something to fill the time between the Heat's final loss in the NBA playoffs and the opening of the Dolphins' training camp. This despite the fact the Marlins, extant only since 1993, have won two World Series titles since the Dolphins last appeared in the Super Bowl, while the Heat has just one NBA title in its much longer history.

The local media seems to be even more indifferent to the local baseball franchise. Most of the South Florida columnists have opposed the new stadium the Dolphins finally managed to convince local politicians to approve. The Dolphins had page 1 coverage almost every day for the two weeks before training camp actually opened Sunday. And it isn't as if there was any news coming out of Dolphins headquarters. One day most of the front page was taken up with a Dave Hyde column. Hyde is generally a fine columnist, but on this occasion he took a thousand words, more or less, to tell us that it was anyone's guess where the Dolphins will finish in the AFL East this season. The rest of page 1 was devoted to a feature story on a rookie wide receiver.

Meanwhile, the Marlins and Cubs were engaged in one of the gretest midseason series I've ever seen and you could read all about it on page 3. The Marlins won two of the three games and in the one they lost they rallied from 6-0 and 8-5 deficits to tie the game in the ninth on a two-out three run rally against the Cubs' closer, Kevin Gregg. That wasn't too much of a surprise to anyone who had watched Gregg last year, when he was the Marlins' closer. Derrek Lee's homer leading off the 10th gave the Cubs their only win of the series. They thought they had anoter one wrapped up Sunday when they took a 2-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth. But the thing I love about these Marlins is they don't quit and they have enough thunder in their lineup to be dangerous. Just ask the Mets, who two years in a row have been kept out of the playoffs by the spoiler Marlins. Or the Washington Nationals, who earlier this year lost ninth inning leads to the Marlins three days in a row.

Anyway, Gregg was on the mound again, ready to close out the feisty Marlins. This time he got only one out before Dan Uggla and Cody Ross walloped homers on consecutive pitches to give the Marlins the game, 3-2, and the series, 2-1. This was the most meaningful series these two teams have played since the 2003 N.L.championship series when the Cubs blew a three games to one lead and the Marlins went on to win their second World Series championship. The Marlins haven't sniffed postseason play since, while the Cubs, under Lou Piniella, are working on a third consecutive Central division title.

I don't think either team will win it all this year. The Marlins have a good, young pitching staff headed by starting pitcher Josh Johnson. They have a marvelous player in shortstop Hanley Ramirez and some pop throughout the lineup with the likes of Ross, Uggla, Jorge Cantu, and the just acquired Nick Johnson. They have two of the best pinch hitters in the game in Wes Helms and Ross Gload. But although the relief pitching has been fine of late they don't have a proven closer and they are a little too young. The Cubs have a couple of super stars in Lee and Aramis Ramirez and a couple of faut super stars in Alfonso Soriano and Milton Bradley. They have sufficient starting pitching. But their fate probably rests in the shaky hands of relief pitcher Carlos Marmol, he of the electric stuff. Marmol is so overpowering that few can hit him. But he is also wild, sometimes Steve Blass wild and if he doesn 't regain the command of his pitches, the Cubs aren't going anywhere. But I'll say this: If the Marlins get to the post season they've got a better shot to win it all than do the Cubs.

As I write this the Marlins are five games behind the Phillies, in second place in the N.L. East while the Cubs are in a virtual tie with the St.Louis Cardinals for first place in the Central division. But the Marlins were only three games behind the Cubs/Cards in the wild card race. Both of the Marlins' world championships have come as a wild card team. They have never won a division title and have never lost a playoff series. The Cubs, meanwhile, have lost their last nine playoff games as they continue their 101-year quest to add a third World Series victory to the two they won in 1907-08.

The just-finished three game series served as a test of my conversion from Cubs lover to Marlins admirer. I think I passed the test. I found myself rooting whole-heartedly for the Marlins. Friends told me it is impossible to stop loving the Cubs once you're hooked. But they're wrong. It's not that I hate the Cubs. I don't. This was not an acrimonious divorce. I didn't ask for alimony. I still have some feelings for the Cubs and wish them well. But I won't live or die with them.

It's not that I'm madly in love with the Marlins, my new flame. But I do like them a lot and when I have a choice between watching the Cubs or Marlins on TV--which I often do, given WGN's national reach--I choose the Marlins. I'm comfortable with that.

2009-07-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Let the punishment fit the crime. It sounds like a lyric from a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. Instead it is the leit motiff running through a week in sports that, for talk show hosts, was the stuff that dreams are made of. First came Michael Vick's "conditional" reinstatement by the National Football League. Then came the rumor that Commissioner Bud Selig was considering lifting Pete Rose's lifetime ban, the sole impediment keeping baseball's alltime hits leader out of the Hall of Fame. That turned out to be untrue and Rose remains as far from reinstatement as he was 20 years ago when he agreed to the lifetime ban.

It's a close call as to which super star committed the greater transgression. It's closer yet as to which paid the steeper price. Vick spent nearly two years in jail, lost millions of dollars in his cancelled contract with the Atlanta Falcons, millions more in endorsements, and even after his conditional reinstatement by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodall will miss at least five paychecks (about one-third of what figures to be a minimal salary), provided there is a team out there willing to take him at any price. All of this for promoting illegal dog fights and assisting in the killing of some dogs deemed too placid for pit duty. Not that his crimes were not reprehensible, but the former quarterback hardly qualifies as the most sadistic monster since Vlad the Impaler. He didn't murder his wife, after all, and if he did he might not have had to serve any time at all (see Simpson, Orenthal James)

But dog lovers everywhere apparently feel that Vick hasn't suffered enough. They apparently feel that a more appropriate punishment would be to put Vick in a pit with a dozen or so of the more vicious varieties of canines, say a couple of Dobermans, a Rottweiler or two and maybe a few pit bulls thrown in for good measure.

Personally, I'm having trouble getting too worked up about Vick's crimes. I don't condone them but I don't understand the universal rage they inspired. These were not your cuddly lap dog or pet poodle that were involved. They were attack dogs, bred and trained to provide protection. Vick could have put on a suit of lights and carved a bull into cube steaks and be applauded for his efforts. He'd probably receive two ears and a tail. Instead he received two years and a ruined career. I understand that dog fighting is illegal, but other then that I can't see where it much differs, morally, from bull fighting.

(Full disclosure: I have been to several bull fights in Mexico and Spain and probably would go again if the opportunity was presented.) I concede that there is none of the pageantry and drama of the bull ring in a dog fight, but the result is the same. An animal dies.

Dog fanciers claim there are no bad dogs, only bad owners. Hogwash. Dogs are, to my knowledge, the only animals that will attack without provocation or to satisfy hunger. I've been bitten by dogs four times in my life and, believe me, I was not provoking any of them, unless you call attempting to share the same road a provocation.

The first time, I admit, was an accident. I was 6 or 7 years old and playing in the park with an uncle when a huge German shepherd came cantering by and I shied away from him. My uncle assured me there was nothing to fear and proposed we play with the nice doggie. Accordingly, he threw the tennis ball with which we were playing catch as far as he could throw it. The dog happily bounded after it and returned it to my uncle, who repeated the process two or three times. Then he turned to me and said, "You try it," flipping the ball to me. The dog, of course, didn't know the game was between innings and the ball and the dog's teeth reached my hand at the same time. I still have the scar although it has faded considerably over the nearly 70 intervening years.

Many years later I was staying in Orlando Cepeda's house in Puerto Rico while collaborating on the baseball star's autobiography (High and Inside," still available, I believe, at Amazon.com although I don't particularly recommend it). Orlando had three or four dogs, which had the run of the house, and were constantly yapping underfoot. They seemed to take no notice of me and after awhile I forgot about them. Then one morning, late in my one week stay, I was finishing my morning run when one of the little rascals ran over and bit my ankle.

The last two (so far) dog bites I suffered both came while visiting a friend's farm in Michigan. In the first instance I had run past a rather large German shepherd on the outbound leg of my morning jog and the dog had simply barked and stared at me. I was hoping the dog would be somewhere else when I went by on my return trip, but there he was, standing in the middle of the road. With his owner standing a few yards away and saying, "Duke, don't do that Duke," Duke did it. He took a nice chunk from behind my right knee and I had to spend my Sunday afternoon in a hospital. A few years later, same place, different road I was running facing traffic and not even noticing the little dog across the road. He noticed me, however, and bounded gleefully across the road to nip the back of my leg.

Like people there are good dogs and bad dogs. There are dogs that rescue babies from burning buildings and there are dogs that maul babies to death. I don't advocate killing dogs willy-nilly, but I also don't think what Vick did merits punishing him for the rest of his life. But that's what's going to happen unless some NFL franchise will take a chance on him. That seems unlikely, although some one would be getting a multimillion dollar talent for a fraction of that price. The downside, of course, is that whoever hires Vick may be as reviled as much as if they were harboring Dr. Mengele. There will be outrage and there could be boycotts of the team's games and its TV sponsors. The only team I can think of that would risk that much heat is the Oakland Raiders. The Raiders have a history of taking on troubled--and troublesome--players and I imagine Al Davis would enjoy the fuss.

But harsh as Vick's penalties have been I think Pete Rose suffers more. His lifetime banishment from the game he loves for betting on the Cincinnati Reds to win games while he was managing the team is like a death sentence for Rose. His whole life is baseball and he desperately wants to get into the Hall of Fame, where he belongs. But it now appears that will never happen. Although there are some Hall of Famers, most notably Hank Aaron, who are lobbying Commissioner Bud Selig to reinstate Rose--at least to the extent where he would be Hall of Fame eligible, there are even more, with Bob Feller being the most adamant, who insist Rose should never get in.

Rose has spent 20 years pleading his case and at 68 may go to his grave still knocking futilely at the Hall of Fame's door. Rose has his talking points. He is, after all, baseball's alltime hits leader and he played the game with unparalleled passion. He argues that, while he did bet on Reds games, he never bet on them to lose. If he were strictly a player, that might be a mitigating factor. But as manager he was entrusted with decisions that go beyond today's ball game. Supposing he has a closer who clearly needs a night off, but Pete has a bet on tonight's game and he needs that closer, even with a tired arm, to nail it down. I doubt that Rose would succumb to the temptation, but the temptation is there. This issue goes to the very core of the game,the public's assurance that every game is on the up-and-up. Ever since the Black Sox scandal, the game has protected its integrity with the vehemence of a mama bear sheltering her cubs (that's cubs with a small c). Betting on baseball, in the eyes of the game's keepers, is a sin far worse than doctoring a baseball with spittle or doctoring the player himself with steroids. The former will get you tossed from the game, the latter will cost you 50 games. But placing bets on your own team? That will get you a life sentence with no chance of parole.

Does the punishment fit the crime? Probably. But if I had a vote I'd still put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame. I don't know, the place just doesn't seem complete without him.

2009-07-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

In the heyday of the Chicago Stockyards, the public used to be able to tour the slaughterhouse and watch how cows and hogs became steaks and ham, both of which could be ordered at the adjacent Stockyards Inn. Once you got past the smell, it made for an interesting outing. What I remember from my last visit to the stockyards, about a half century ago, was the sight of muscular men, mostly black men, bare to the waist and wielding heavy sledge hammers, which they used to bludgeon the cows as they were led to their inevitable demise.

Tom Watson wore that same stunned look as those doomed cows throughout his four hole playoff with Stewart Cink in Sunday's British Open. It would be easy to label Cink as the villain of the piece, the Grinch who stole the story of the year from Watson and golf lovers everywhere. I'd be surprised if, outside his immediate family and coterie of friends, there was a person in the universe who was rooting for Cink to win the tournament. But don't blame Cink for destroying the 59-year-old Watson's dream of becoming the oldest man, by nearly a dozen years, to win one of golf's four major championships. Cink, like one of those old time cattle bashers, was simply a man doing his job. Kind of like the guy who lopped off Anne Boleyn's head. It was a job that any competent golf professional could have handled at that point. Because as soon as Watson missed that nine-foot putt for par on the 72d hole at Turnberry, it was clearly evident the dream was over. Watson had given the last full measure of his talent and tenacity over the 72 holes and it wasn't enough. He had nothing left to give and hacked his way around the playoff holes as if he were an eight-handicapper on a Sunday outing with his golfing buddies.

Any golfer, even the great ones, is going to lose more tournaments than he wins. But there are losses and there are losses. This one was of historic proportions. For 71 holes Watson had seemed headed for the biggest miracle since the parting of the Red Sea. Indeed, it appeared that Watson would not have needed heavenly intervention to cross the sea. He was a man who looked as if he could walk on water.

When the week began, with Watson shooting a lights-out 65 in the opening round, it appeared unthinkable that a man his age could beat all those young guns over four days in the oldest and most prestigious golf championship in the world. Hadn't Greg Norman proved that only last year when, at 53, he shared the lead going into the final round but finally, inevitably it appeared, bowed to the pressure and disappeared?

Not so Watson. He did not play his best golf on Sunday, but neither did anyone else and despite the constant ebb and flow and the inherent drama of the situation it was not a scintillating day on the links. Watson was in and out of the lead all afternoon, but one by one the other contenders dropped out. Finally, as he strode down the 18th fairway with a one-shot lead, Watson knew that the tournament was his. The only other man still standing was Cink, who had not been on top of the leader board all day. The only times the average TV viewer would be aware of Cink was when the leader board was flashed on the screen and there, near the bottom of page one, was Cink -1. He finally got on the screen by holing a birdie putt on the last hole to finish at two under par. That tied him with Watson, but Watson still had the 17th, an easy par five, to play and seemed certain to at least birdie it to regain the lead. Which he did.

Now it was all there for him. Just one more par and it was all his. Not only would he have defeated the ravages of time, he would have turned back the clock to that glorious day in 1977, when, on this very same golf course, he defeated Jack Nicklaus by a single stroke to win one of his five British Open championships. This would be his sixth and it would tie him with the legendary Harry Vardon for the most in Open history. What happened next was as troubling to watch as a dog fight. Watson appeared to have it wrapped up when his second shot bounced onto the green, seemingly leaving him two putts from sporting immortality. Everyone watching had the sense of being an eye witness to history. Many were calling it the greatest sports story ever. Then the ball rolled off the back of the green barely into the rough and stomachs around the world began to clench. Now victory was a chip and a putt away, but Watson, once one of the best chippers in history, opted to putt on his third shot. When it went left of the hole and slid to nine-feet away the sense of impending doom was palpable. I don't know about you, but I expected him to miss the putt. He knew from the instant he hit it that he had indeed missed it, jabbing it off to the right where it never had a chance.

He must have known, too, that it was all over. His body language said so and his poor play on the first playoff hole confirmed it. By the third hole, which he absolutely butchered, Watson appeared to be fighting back tears, just as he had the previous afternoon when he appeared to be overcome with emotion at the waves of love that were radiating fgrom the gallery as he came to the final green tied for the lead. Watson has always been loved in Scotland and there were more fans cheering for him than for British golfer Lee Westwood. This was not surprising if you understand the history of Scotland's relationship with England. It was obvious now that there would be no miracle. It was still a good story, maybe even a great story for a few days. But it could have been a story for the ages.

But wait! Upon further review there was a miracle at Turnberry Sunday. Tiger Woods didn't play and nobody noticed. Never heard his name mentioned. That in itself should tell you what a compelling story was unfolding--and ultimately unravelling-- before our eyes.

2009-07-14T15:29:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

There is a famous scene near the end of the movie "Sunset Boulevard" where Gloria Swanson, portraying the delusional and faded silent screen star Norma Desmond, is slowly descending a staircase when she hears a reporter say:"That's Norma Desmond; she used to be big." "I am big," asserts Desmond. "It's the pictures that got small."

The same may be said of the All-Star Baseball game. Except the game is not quite as big as it used to be. And it's the players who've gotten small. While everyone acknowledges that baseball's midsummer classic is the best of all the All-Star games and the only one in which the averge fan cares who wins, the game has long since lost its place among the elite sports happenings of the year. In my view there are several reasons for this. One is interleague play. One of the All-Star game's basic appeals was that, the world series aside, it provided the only opportunity to find out how a Willie Mays would do against an American league pitcher like Billy Pierce or Camilo Pasqual or how Sandy Koufax might fare against Mickey Mantle or Al Kaline. Now the cloak of mystery has been lifted. With interleague play Albert Pujols has battled, in qames that count, all or most of the pitchers he was likely to see Tuesday night.

A second reason is expansion. Back in the days of two eight-team leagues, a fan quite likely would know the starting lineup of every team and he certainly would know the super stars. Now there are 30 teams and unless you are a die-hard fan or have a brain like Einstein's you are unlikely to know more than a few players on most teams. It was much easier to keep track of players back in the day when they didn't move around more than a belly dancer in a Greek restaurant.

Although I've been a baseball fan all my life, I have to confess that I could not have told you who Adrian Gonzalez was, what team he played for, or even that he played at all. In short, I had never heard of Adrian Gonzalez. Likewise, until he started this season as hot as a Florida summer, I had never heard of Kansas City pitcher Zack Greinke. There were several "All-Stars" in Tuesday's games with whom I was only vaguely familiar. I know that most of you readers are probably more up on the modern game than I am. But it isn't as if I had stopped following baseball completely after retiring from my job as a sports writer. I do still read the sports pages every morning and I follow both the Marlins and Cubs on TV whenever my wife isn't watching Turner Classic Movies or re-runs of "Dexter." Still, there are simply too many players to keep up with. In addition--and please don't interpret this as being racist--there are so many Hispanic named players that I can't keep them straight. I have trouble distinguishing Carlos Beltran from Carlos Delgado. As for all the Rodriguezes, Ramirizes, and Gonzalezes, fuhgedaboudit.

I once entered a sports-themed quiz contest on a cruise and could tell you that Roberto Clemente was the only player in big league history who ended up with exactly 3,000 hits. I easily answered questions about Jack Nicklaus and Martina Navratilova. But when asked to name that season's Philadlephia Phillies starting infield, I could come up with only one.

With the rule, introduced in 2003, that the winning league in the All-Star game gets home field advantage in the World Series, the All-Star game should be more relevant than ever. Somehow, it doesn't seem that way. Still, despite all the above, the All-Star game somehow retains the power to provide enthralling baseball. In fact, two of the games on my list of the top 10 alltime All-Star games were played in the last three years.

The list: No. 10--1995. The N.L. gets only three hits, but all three are solo homers by Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza and Jeff Conine, giving the N.L. a 3-2 win in Arlington, Tex.

No.9--1971. There are six home runs in the A.L.'s 6-4 win in Detroit but the one that is still remembered is Reggie Jackson's epic blast off the light towers in right field off Dock Ellis. The other homers are by Johnny Bench, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson and Harmon Killebrew, Hall of Famers all.

No.8--1946. How in the world, you are asking, could a 12-0 blowout by the American League be on this list? There's a two word answer. Ted Williams. The returning war hero, playing before his hometown Red Sox fans, had four hits, including two homers. The home run that's remembered to this day is the second one, off Rip Sewell's famous Ephus ball. For you youngsters, the Ephus ball, a.k.a. the blooper pitch, came to the plate on a high, slow arc and dropped down over the plate like a pitch in a slow-pitch softball game. According to legend, Williams challenged Sewell to throw the pitch and the veteran Pirates pitcher obliged. Williams whiffed on it, but Sewell then announced that he was going to throw it again. This time Williams launched it into orbit.

No.7--1955. Stan Musial's walkoff homer in the 12th gives the N.L. a 6-5 victory. The game is the first All-Star gme played in Milwaukee's County stadium, following the Braves' move from Boston.

No.6--1934. In only the second All-Star game, Giants pitcher Carl Hubbell strikes out a murderer's row of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin in succession. All five were future Hall of Famers. Despite Hubbell's sensational turn on the mound, the N.L.loses, 9-7. Losing pitcher is Van Lingle Mungo, a fact that I mention solely because it is my favorite baseball name and how else would I get to use it?

No.5--2006. With the N.L. leading 2-1 in the ninth and seemingly on its way to breaking a long All-Star game losing streak, Trevor Hoffmman is called upon to seal the victory. He retires the first two batters easily on comebackers to the mound. Then, a Paul Konerko single, Troy Glaus double and Michael Young triple make the A.L. 3-2 winners.

No.4--2008. Michael Young does it again, this time waiting until the 15th inning before driving in the winning run on a sacrifice fly. The 4-3 American league victory is its 12th in a row and takes a record 4 hours, 50 minutes to complete.

No.3--1950. Ralph Kiner ties the game with a ninth inning homer and a more unlikely source, Red Schoendienst, wins it for the National league with a homer in the 14th. Unfortunately, Ted Williams suffers a broken elbow catching a fly ball against the wall in Comiskey Park.

No. 2--1970. Pete Rose knocks the ball out of catcher Ray Fosse's glove with a vicious rolling block to score the winning run for the N.L.on Jim Hickman's single in the 12th. There is still debate on whether Rose went too far in his quest for victory. It is a seminal play in Rose's career.

No. 1--1941. Ted Williams, that man again, hits a walkoff three run homer off Claude Passeau to give the A.L. a 7-5 comeback victory in Detroit. The Pirates Arky Vaughan earlier had hit two home runs.

There have been other epic events along with some oddities. In 1961 diminutive relief pitcher Stu Miller was blown off the mound in Candlestick park by a sudden gust of wind. In 1981 the game was held a month late, Aug. 9, because of a players strike that had begun in June. The All-Star game, played in Cleveland, was the first game following the settlement of the strike and attracted a record crowd of more than 72,000. When Derek Jeter was named MVP of the 2000 All-Star game in Atlanta, he became, believe it or not, the first Yankee to be so honored. In 2007 Ichiro Suzuki hit the first inside the park homer in All-Star history.

What about Tuesday's game? By the time you read this you likely will know the result. Know this too. The All-Star game like the old gray mare may not be what it used to be. But for baseball fans--even ones who don't know which team Carlos Pena plays for (or Tony Pena for that matter)--the All-Star game is still must see TV.

2009-07-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

The most extraordinary sports result over the week-end was not Roger Federer's epic five set victory over Andy Roddick at Wimbledon. Nor was it Tiger Woods' one shot victory over Hunter Mahan at the Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C. Sure, Federer's hard-earned triumph was his record-setting 15th Grand Slam win, reigniting the controversy over whether he is the greatest tennis player ever. And Woods' workmanlike triumph was his third of an abbreviated season, one which catapulted him into the lead for the FedEX Cup.

But these were expected results. What was totally unexpected, like a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky, was Dale Coyne's first victory as a race car owner after a drought of almost Biblical proportions. As a driver and car owner Coyne had never won a race in 25 years of trying. For most of that quarter century of endless, grinding defeat he never even came close. He was like a Christian thrown into the arena with the lions, a guppy standing up to a shark. The gap between Dale Coyne Racing and the elite teams like Penske, Ganassi, Newman-Haas and Michael Andretti was bigger than the gulf that separates Woods from a two handicapper.

As a driver-owner Coyne raced for almost nine years in the CART series and scored a total of 3 points on the basis of three 12th place finishes. The owner of a landscape company in Plainfield, Il., a distant suburb of Chicago, Coyne would work all spring to earn enough money to race in the summer. Things improved a little financially when Hall of Fame football player Walter Payton became a partner in what was called Payton-Coyne Racing. Payton had dabbled in race car driving himself after his retirement from the NFL and I was there in 1993 at Road America when he swerved into the woods, his car turning upside down and catching fire. Payton was lucky to suffer only minor burns, but the incident cooled his passion for speed. He never raced again. But he still loved the sport, hence his partnership with Coyne. Two years later, Payton was dead, victim of a rare liver disease, and Coyne was on his own again.

Each year became a battle for survival. "Our budget then was the size of our tire budget today," says Coyne, speaking from his race shop in Plainfield Tuesday morning. "It was tough. You're trying to find sponsors. Drivers spend all winter wondering if they're going to have a ride. Owners do the same thing, wondering if they're going to find a sponsor."

And so it went on, year after year of scuffling, sending his drivers out in equipment he knew was not competitive with the elite teams. But, he says, he never thought of quitting. Long before Jim Valvano made the phrase famous, Coyne was telling himself, "never give up. The measure of a man is not what he does on a good day. The down years made you come back stronger." Coyne has come back more years than all but two of the owners in what is now the Indy Car series. "Look at all the teams that have come and gone," Coyne says. "We're the third oldest team. There's Penske and Carl Haas. Haas started one year before us."

Coyne knows that the Penskes and Ganassis of the world have an enormous advantage over him. "We're not in that league," he acknowledges. The first eight races of the current season had been won by a driver from either the Penske or Ganassi stables. Coyne had gone 558 races without a win until his latest driver, Justin Wilson, gave him an early birthday present (Coyne turns 55 tomorrow) by winning convincingly at Watkins Glen, pulling away from Ryan Briscoe (Penske) after a late restart. "That's what makes it even more satisfying," says Coyne. "We didn't win it on fuel strategy or tires. Justin just outdrove them."

"To dominate like we did is fantastic," Wilson had said after his second career victory. "It just felt so good to do that for Dale." Wilsom's previous victory, also on a road course, came last year when he was driving for Newman-Haas, as part of a two-man effort with Graham Rahal. With Paul Newman gone, "They were going to cut back to one car," Coyne says. "So Justin was available. We ran Bruno Junqueira the last two years and Bruno came very, very close for us a couple of times."

In fact, Junqueira scored three straight podium finishes for Coyne back in 2007. Included was a second place finish in Zolder, Belgium. Until Sunday that was Coyne's best finish ever. Coyne went into Sunday's race "cautiously optimistic." Wilson had qualified in the front row, but pole sitter Briscoe "was so strong in qualifying," Coyne says. "We thought if Ryan could run that pace in the race it would be very, very difficult to beat him."

But early on, Wilson, who is, "very good under braking," according to Coyne, passed Briscoe and remained in front the rest of the way. But Coyne had one more heart stopping moment before taking his first trip to Victory Lane. Earlier this year, in the season opener at St. Petersburg, Wilson had qualified second , "and he took the lead in the first corner and just dominated the race. Then there was a late yellow and he had a bad restart and finished third." So when a late full course yellow caution came out, "Yes, tht did give us a sense of deja vu going back to St. Petersburg," Coyne acknowledged. "We got on the radio two laps before the restart and reminded him of what had happened. All he said, very quietly, was 'Yeah.'"

When the green flag was unfurled, "he disappeared," Coyne said. So did a lifetime of disappointments and defeat. "This was a victory for anyone who ever touched the team," said Coyne. A victory for Walter Payton and drivers like Paul Tracy and Oriol Servia and Bruno Junqueira and Roberto Moreno and all the scores of men who have changed tires and fueled the car and sent it on its way to seemingly endless defeat. But above all it was a victory for a man who never stopped trying, who kept getting knocked down and always got back up. After all, what else could he have done? "The down years make you come back stronger," he says. "If you have a passion for what you do, you'll come back stronger."

"

2009-06-30T07:33:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

When things go wrong, as Humphrey Bogart noted in The Maltese Falcon, "somebody's got to take the fall." In the case of the Chicago Cubs, the fall guy turned out to be hitting coach Gerald Perry. Nothing too unusual about that. When teams with high expectations don't perform, it's usually either the hitting or pitching coach who pays the price, inevitably followed by the manager. In this case the manager, Lou Piniella, is virtually sack proof, having led the Cubs to division championships in each of his two seasons at the helm. Going into this season the Cubs were the consensus choice--along with the New York Mets--to be the National league representative in the world series. How anyone could be so presumptive, at least as far as the Cubs are concerned, is a mystery that Sam Spade himself couldn't solve. With apologies to W.H. Longfellow, hardly a man is now alive who remembers the Cubs of '45, the last Cubs team to reach the world series.

One of the reasons this was supposed to be that mythical "next year" Cubs fans have yearned for for more than a century was an offense that had scored the most runs in the National league a year ago--under the aegis of Gerald Perry. Now they were supposed to be even more potent since general manager Jim Hendry had signed Milton Bradley to a free agency contract. Bradley, who carries more baggage than a hotel bell hop, was coming off a season where he'd hit .321 and a career high 22 home runs. To make room for Bradley, Hendry had traded the versatile Mark DeRosa, who had 21 homers, also a career high, and played three infield positions plus the outfield for the Cubs. He also drove in four runs during the Cubs colossal choke job in the division championship series against the Dodgers. That was four more than the combined number of the Cubs four biggest sluggers--Aramis Ramirez, Derrek Lee, Alfonso Soriano, and Geovany Soto. The two moves, whether related or not, have turned out to be a massive mistake and if it had not been for Hendry's previous record of solid moves in building the team into a contender, it might have been his head that rolled instead of Perry's.

Perry was replaced by Von Joshua, who had performed a similar role for the crosstown White Sox from 1998-2001. More recently, Joshua had been the Cubs minor league hitting instructor, where he had tutored some of the current players like Ryan Theriot and Mike Fontenot. Both, while expressing regret at Perry's dismissal, said they felt comfortable with Joshua and gave him credit for some of their success. Of course, just how important a hitting coach is on a major league team is a matter of conjecture. Certainly they are changed more frequently than Imelda Marcos changed her shoes.

Very few men have made much of an imprint on the game in the role of hitting instructor. Probably the most famous was Charlie Lau, who first made his mark with the Kansas City Royals, where George Brett gave him much of the credit for Brett's becoming a Hall of Fame hitter. Lau's underlying principle was to hit the ball to all fields. Brett reached the 30 mark in home runs only once in his long career, despite possessing enormous power. I once saw him hit a ball almost to the roof of Yankee Stadium. Lau later came to the White Sox during a period when I was covering the team on a daily basis. After a while I could see Lau's influence in the way a hitter swung the bat, with a level stroke, releasing the top hand at impact. Lau himself was only a .255 lifetime batter in 11 major league seasons.

That is fairly typical of hitting instructors. Perr was a .265 hitter over 13 seasons with 59 total home runs. Merv Rettenmund, a well-regarded hitting coach, had just 66 career homers. Tommy McCraw, a classy first baseman for the White Sox when I first covered him was a lifetime .246 hitter with 75 home runs, never more than 11 in one season. Yet, he, too, became a highly regarded batting instructor.

One man who broke the mold, to an extent, was Lew Fonseca, who had a lifetime average of .316 and led the American league in 1929 with a .369 average for the Cleveland Indians. But he, too, was a spray hitter with only 31 lifetime homers, although he did knock in 103 runs in his breakout season of '29. Fonseca was one of the most interesting men I ever met. Born in San Francisco, he vividly recalled the 1906 earth quake. He was a pioneer in the use of film in baseball, the first producer of world series and All-Star game films and among the first to use film study as a batting instructor. He was still coaching Cubs hitters at the age of 82, Rick Monday and Bill Madlock among them. And they listened to him, too.

When he was managing the Washington Senators, Ted Williams was his own hitting coach, but nobody could coach the ability to follow the ball to impact with the bat, nor did Williams have a surfeit of patience. Joe DiMaggio was a spring training instructor for the Oakland A's when I first met him and he was one of the first to spot Reggie Jackson's enormous potential. Whether or not he ever actually coached Jackson, I don't know. "I don't help anyone unless they ask me," he told me. That, I came to understand, was DiMaggio's abiding principal. When I wondered aloud what he was doing in an Oakland uniform instead of the Yankee pinstripes he answered succinctly: "They never asked me."

2009-06-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Golf is unique among major sports in two ways. First, it's the only sport--except perhaps bowling--where the week-end warrior can, for one hole or one shot, compete with the pros.

I could stand at home plate from now until the Cubs win a world series and not get a hit off the softest tossing pitcher in the major leagues. I could run the football with Bronko Nagurski leading the way and never gain a yard against the NFL's most porous defense. Did someone mention the Detroit Lions? I could play quarterback behind the Seven Blocks of Granite and never complete a pass, even if the opposition was the Four Pillars of Salt. I could never score a basket against Michael Jordan or even Barack Obama and I doubt I could even get a shot off against most NBA players. As for hockey, I can't even skate let alone try to stop a Bobby Hull slap shot or score a goal against the worst net minder in the NFL.

I am, if not the world's worse golfer, at least somewhere in the bottom ten. Yet, one year playing in a sports writer's orientation round at Crooked Stick near Indianapolis, I played in the foursome right behind one headed by Nick Price, the previous year's PGA champion. On a par three hole, perhaps 150 yards over a small creek, I watched Price put his tee shot 12 feet from the pin. I don't know what club he used, probably an eight or nine iron. But when the green cleared, I pulled out a four wood and put it within eight feet. One shot in a lifetime of shanks and topped drives and total misses. But on that one shot I was better than the PGA champion.

The second thing that makes golf unique among sports is that most golf fans will never root for the underdog. How many fans were rooting for Ricky Barnes or Lucas Glover to win the U.S. Open? About as many as wanted Goliath to swat away that pebble and crush the little twerp who slung it.

It's always been that way. Outside of the state of Iowa did anyone want to see Davenport club pro Jack Fleck beat Ben Hogan in their 1955 playoff?

Did anyone who didn't attend Clemson want to see Lucas Glover beat Tiger Woods? Or even Phil Mickelson? Outside of a few thousand crazed New Yorkers how many golf fans would rather see Mickelson win his first U.S. Open than watch Tiger Woods win his fourth? Even counting the sympathy vote inspired by Amy Mickelson's bout with cancer, I'd wager that Tiger would be the people's choice.

I'm as guilty as the next guy. I've been a Tiger Woods fan ever since he won his first Masters by demolishing the field. Why? Because he's the closest thing to perfection the golf world has ever seen and every golfer yearns for perfection, even if it's just one hole or one swing. With Tiger you know that the perfect swing, the perfect hole, the perfect round are right around the dogleg and heading your way.

Even when he was 11 shots behind the leaders entering the fourth round late Sunday night, Tiger fans did not give up hope. Not until he missed birdie putts on the last two holes Monday did most of us count him out. As it was, he fell only four shots shy of forcing a playoff, with a chance to join the short list of four-time Open winners. Bobby Jones. Ben Hogan. Jack Nicklaus. And, inevitably, Tiger Woods.

Woods actually lost the tournament in the first round when he was even par after 14 holes and went four over on the four closing holes. For the rest of the tournament he played Glover dead even. He may even have lost the tournament before it started when he drew an early morning tee time for the first round. He played his first six holes in weather so miserable anyone tuning in would think he was watching a re-run of an old British Open. Most of the field, including Mickelson, Glover and Barnes, did not start play until Friday, a day made for scoring.

After Woods finished his 72d hole and it was clear that only the total collapse of the half dozen or so golfers ahead of him would get him into a playoff, the attention turned to Mickelson. If Tiger couldn't win, let it be Phil. And Phil had his chance. A brilliant eagle on the 13th jumped him to the top of the leader board. As it happened, all he had to do to force a playoff was to par out. But, as usual, he flubbed his big chance, missing makeable par putts on 16 and 17.

With Phil out of it, the focus went to David Duval, once the world's No. 1 player, but ranked No. 882 in the world heading into the Open. Who's No. 883? Your uncle Maury? How the high and mighty Duval fell so far and so fast following his 2001 U.S. Open win is a mystery deeper than why John Daly continues to be so popular after continually throwing an amazing talent into the nearest garbage bin.

Duval bounced into the picture with a run of three consecutive birdies on holes 14 through 16, then immediately bounced right out with a bogey at the par 3 17th. That left Glover, who had only one birdie all day, albeit a timely one at 16, with a two-shot lead going into the final hole. There was no one left except Glover's playing partner, Barnes, who had distinguished himself by falling off the face of the earth after starting the day at seven under and tied for the lead. But wait! What if Barnes, two shots behind, but surging a little, should birdie the 18th while Glover bogeyed? That would force a playoff and wouldn't that make a good story?

Yes it would, but it didn't happen, and so we are left with Lucas Glover, an almost unknown pro with one previous tour victory who has somehow, including the $1,350,000 he earned by winning the Open on Monday, mined about $10,000,000 out of golf's mother load in the last five years. So that's your story. Live with it.

2009-06-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

It's just as well that Joe Buck will have to wait three months before hosting the next "Joe Buck Live" show on HBO. It may take the popular sports caster that long to recover from the sneak attack that nearly derailed his debut early Tuesday morning. I don't make a habit of watching TV after midnight unless there's a boxing match on, so I was just about to turn the set off when up popped Joe Buck on one of HBO's many channels. I don't know Joe Buck, although I knew his dad, Jack Buck, the beloved long-time voice of the St. Louis Cardinals post Harry Caray.

I probably would have hit the off button on my remote except that Buck revealed that his inaugural guest was going to be Brett Favre, making his first public statements since the start of his most recent brouhaha. I was mildly interested in what Favre had to say, although I don't know him, either. The only time I ever interviewed him was at the Green Bay Packers training camp before his first season with the Pack. I had been assigned to do a story on the Packers for The Chicago Tribune's preseason pro football guide. I first talked with Mike Holmgren, who had just gotten the Packers' head coaching job after a successful career as an assistant with the San Francisco 49ers. The big story in camp, other than Holmgren himself, as it is in many training camps, was the battle over who would be the starting quarterback.

The three candidates were Don Majkowski a.k.a. The Majik Man, who had been a starter for the Packers before suffering a serious injury two seasons earlier; Ty Detmer, a Heisman Trophy winner from BYU, who, deemed too small to play quarterback in the NFL, had been drafted in the ninth round that year; and Favre, who had thrown exactly four passes in his one year with the Atlanta Falcons, completing none, before being traded to the Packers that spring. I talked with all three quarterbacks, but frankly don't recall much of what any of them said. I did get the impression that Favre was confident of his ability despite his lack of experience. He had not been Falcons Coach Jerry Glanville's choice and the feisty coach once was quoted as saying it would take a plane crash before he'd put Favre in a game. When he did finally call Favre's number, it was more like a train wreck. The future Hall-of-Famer's first pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Nevertheless, Favre, who had played his college ball at Southern Mississippi, was regarded well enough for the Packers to give up a first round draft choice. Smart move. By the time that 1992 season was three games old, Majkowski had been injured twice and Favre became the starting quarterback. He would start 269 consecutive games, one of his many NFL records.

I had covered many Packer games in the past and was quite familiar with Bart Starr and Lynn Dickey, two of Favre's predecessors, although they usually aren't linked in the same sentence. I had even covered Dickey in college, after he led Kansas State to a stunning upset over Oklahoma and I was sent to cover his next game, at Missouri, which he nearly pulled out, too. The point is that Dickey was no Bart Starr, but he was no Bart Simpson, either. However, by 1992 I was in the twilight of my Tribune career and no longer covering even the occasional pro football game. But I was well aware of Favre's brilliant career and was watching live from my hotel room in Hongkong the day he led the Packers to a Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots.

Lately, Favre has been more roasted than toasted. His brilliant 16-year Packer career had ended sadly. The last pass he threw as a Packer was intercepted, in overtime, setting up the winning field goal for the New York Giants in the NFL championship game. Then, after a tearful retirement speech, Favre changed his mind and wanted to come back to the Pack. By that time the Packers had already decided on their new quarterback and offered Brett only the chance to compete for a backup role. The rest of the story is well-known. The trade to the Jets, the fast start, the ugly finish; another retirement, another comeback. Maybe. Despite all the reports circulating that Favre would come back once more and play for the Minnesota Vikings, there was no confirmation--or denial--from Favre. Now he was going to open himself up to questions and I was curious to hear the answers, curious, too, to see if Joe Buck would be a hardball or softball interviewer.

I thought Buck did a professional job with Favre, who confirmed that he had spoken with the Vikings, revealed he'd had surgery on his torn right biceps from noted orthopod James Andrews, and said his final decision was more or less out of his hands. It all depends on how and when his right arm heals. "If it's like it was last year," he said. "I won't play." Favre admitted he'd played the last half dozen games when he probably shouldn't have. "I could throw the ball," he said, "but instead of throwing it here," gesturing to his left, "I'd throw it there (about five yards further right)" Later, while discussing the reaction of fans to his ongoing saga, Favre postulated that there are those who will love him no matter what he does, those who will hate him no matter what he accomplishes, "and a lot of guys who don't give a shit." After a moment of silence Favre added: "This is HBO; I've wanted to do that for a long time."

The scatalogical remark was a mere prelude of things to come. After a dual interview with former Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin and current Bengals pass catcher Chad Ochocinco, during which Buck continued to ask the hard questions, the show blew up in his face when he brought in three comedians. I'd never heard of any of them, but I'll remember one of them--Artie Lange--for a long time. This may be HBO, where sex and crude language are staples, but I haven't heard so many F bombs since my golfing buddy hit three balls out of bounds on the same hole. He also insinuated that Buck might have something in common with his namesake, the boy toy character played by Jon Voight in the movie "Midnight Cowboy." Buck tried to steer the conversation back to a more civil discourse, but Lange, in essence, hijacked the remainder of the show.

In his preamble, Buck said the show would be produced only four times a year. That gives him until September to line up his next subjects--and to recover from the after shock of his debut show. Should you watch it? If you're a sports fan, definitely. But if you're a parent, please make sure that the little ones are out of earshot.

2009-06-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the prettiest one of all. First it was the Wicked Queen, then it was Snow White. But who knows which celebrated beauty came after that. Snow White, after all, must be a little long in the tooth by now. Is she still lovelier than Jean Harlow? Brigitte Bardot? Marilyn Monroe? Elizabeth Taylor? Bo Derek? We know the magic mirror was inclined to be fickle, apparently giving its blessing to every rosy-cheeked ingenue who came along.

In the immediate aftermath of Roger Federer's French Open championship Sunday, there were those who would swear they saw the young swiss star's face in the magic mirror. Roger Federer, they said, was the greatest tennis player of them all, having tied Pete Sampras' record of 14 Grand Slam titles and claiming, at long last, the career Slam.

But when I look into the magic mirror, the reflection is fuzzy. Is that the face of Rod Laver I see? The left-handed Aussie, nicknamed The Rocket, after all won all four Grand Slam events--the Australian, French, Wimbledon, and U.S. Opens--in the same year twice, once as an amateur, once as a professional. He won 11 in all and who knows how many he might have won had he not been banned for five years after turning pro in 1962 immediately after claiming his first Slam?

But wait. could it be Bjorn Borg's face I see? Borg has neither an Australian nor a U.S. Open on his resume, but he won on the clay at Roland Garros six times and on the grass at Wimbledon five times, demonstrating sufficient versatility to squeeze into the picture. Only Sampras, with his seven Wimbledon titles, has won more times there than Borg. And what about Sampras himself? He never won the French Open, but in addition to his domination at Wimbledon won the U.S. Open five times.

Looking deeper into the mirror I think I can see, just barely, the face of Bill Tilden, winner of a record seven U.S. Opens and three Wimbledon titles. He was considered the alltime greatest during his time, a time when the Australian and French Opens were not a factor and there was no Grand Slam, only the Double Whammy.

The mirror reflection gets murkier yet. Can that be who I think it is? Yes, it's clearing up now. And there seem to be two of them. Why, it's Jack Kramer and Pancho Gonzales. They don't have the multiple major tournament victories of the other claimants, but they have a good excuse. They didn't play very long as amateurs and they played in an era when professionals were barred from playing the major tournaments. Kramer won the U. S. Open back-to-back in 1946 and '47 after serving three years in the military in World War II. Then he turned professional, leaving him ineligible to play either Wimbledon or the U.S. Open (a name that lives in irony since it was open only to amateurs). Gonzales won the next two U.S. Opens before, he too, turned pro.

Professional tennis in that period was nothing like it is today. There were no tournaments per se, merely a series of matches between the top players. It should come as no surprise that Bobby Riggs promoted the first big money match long before anyone ever herd of Billie Jean King. It featured a cross-country barnstorming tour against the powerful Kramer, who easily dispatched the soft-balling Riggs, 69 matches to 20. Strengthening his claim to being the alltime best, Kramer then annihilated Gonzales, 96 to 27. Kramer retired and took over promotion of the pro tennis tour and Gonzales became the biggest star. He was the No. 1 ranked professional player for eight consecutve years in the 50s and 60s and in 1970, at 41, was still good enough to beat Laver in five sets in a heralded winner-take-all match in Madison Square Garden.

Ten years ago, Sports Illustrated magazine ranked its 20 favorite athletes of all time and Gonzales placed 15th. "If earth was on the line in a tennis match," the magazine noted, "the guy you'd want serving to save mankind is Pancho Gonzales."

Tony Trabert, who was decimated by Gonzales on one tour, once said of his tormentor: "Gonzales is the greatest natural athlete tennis has ever known. The way he can move that 6-foot 3 inch frame around the court is almost unbelievable; he's just like a big cat."

But Frank Sedgman, one of the top stars of their era, called Kramer the greatest of all time, ranking Gonzales second. But that was then and this is now. Tennis in the Kramer-Gonzales era was dominated by players from the United States and Australia, with an occasional Frenchman in the mix. The game has since gone global, with Ivan Lendl of Czechoslovakia, Ilie Nastase of Hungary, and the Swedish born Borg among those bridging the gap to the present day international array of stars that includes Federer, Spain's Rafael Nadal and Marat Safin of Russia. The United States, which had pretty much kept pace with the rest of the world when the likes of Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, and John McEnroe were waving the flag, has fallen out of the picture. Why? Perhaps the few legitimate U.S. hopefuls like Andy Roddick will have to look at themselves in a mirror. But they might not like what they see.

2009-06-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

I'm a little like the Robert Duvall character in "Apocalypse Now" who exults, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." I've never smelled napalm at any hour and I doubt that a sniff of the lethal stuff would send me into peals of ecstacy. What I love is boxing and a good many people think that's just as bad. I know it's not politically correct to enjoy watching two men trying to club each other senseless. But I can't help it. I've loved boxing since I was a small boy and I love it still. I know that boxing is brutal. I've seen two men die in the ring, one on television and one up front and personal. I've sat at ringside often enough to know it's not a good idea to wear your best clothes because there's a good chance they'll be blood-spattered before the night is over. Yes, boxing is brutal, but apparently not brutal enough for some. By all indications, the so-called sweet science is losing out to the more pungeant sport of mixed martial arts, in all its forms. Personally, I can't watch it. Whenever I inadvertently tune in a bout where the contestants are barefooted I immediately switch channels. Sharon Robb, the boxing writer for my local paper, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, does an excellent job, especially considering the fact that in addition to boxing she covers participant sports in all its permutations. There are days when her byline fills out half the sports section. But increasingly, her Sunday columns are more about kung fu style fighting than classic boxing. That may be because the martial arts shows are consistently outdrawing the local boxing cards. Perhaps that is just the natural order of things in these times when movies and television dramas assault us with ever increasing violence. On the other hand I have to admit that despite the bloody mayhem that characterizes MMA and ultimate cage fighting, there have been far more fatalities in the ring than in the cage. In fact I'm not sure if anyone has ever died as the result of an MMA fight. There is some hope for us boxing fans. Legendary promoter Don King, he of the electric hairdo, has joined forces with a local tribe of Indians to try to revive the dying sport in South Florida. His most recent effort drew a near capacity crowd to the Seminole Hardrock Hotel and Casino and was televised live on HBO.

Put a boxing match on TV, any boxing match, and I'll watch it. I'll watch the Friday night fights on ESPN2, the sporadic live boxing shows om Showtime and HBO; I'll even watch reruns of fights that were held months ago. Since I've never heard of any of the fighters involved and don't know who won the fight, I'm perfectly content. I'm not sure how this passion for boxing came about. Most likely it's because my father and I used to watch televised boxing matches together. It was one of the few things we shared at that time of my life. He even took me to some live fight shows and I can remember seeing local Chicago favorites like Johnny Bratton (who briefly was a world champion) and Bob Satterfield, a light heavyweight who had a punch like a mule and a chin like rare crystal. When you went to a Satterfield fight you knew somebody was going down. That was the golden age of boxing. There were televised bouts every Wednesday night and every Friday night, one sponsored by Gillette, the other by Ballantine's beer. And the best fighters of that era were featured. Willie Pep and Sandy Saddler squared off four or five times for the featherweight championship, nasty fights all. A welterweight championship fight between Bratton and Charlie Fusari remains one of the best fights I've ever seen. There was Sugar Ray Robinson vs. Jake LaMotta several times. Robinson vs. Bobo Olson, Robinson vs.Carmen Basilio. There were Tony Zale, Marcel Cerdan, two Rockys, Graziano and Marciano (but not Balboa). Unfortunately Joe Louis was past his prime and I never saw him at his best. Back then the most recognizable voice in boxing was that of Don Dunphy, the ringside blow-by-blow announcer. Today it's Michael Buffer, whose ubiquitous, throaty "Uh, let's get ready to r-u-u-u-m -m-m-b-l-e" is more famous than most of the fighters he introduces. There were only eight world champions back in the day and I knew who they all were, with the possible exception of the flyweight champion, who was usually from some exotic place like Thailand.
Today there are at least twice as many divisions and an infinite number of sanctioning bodies and I probably couldn't name more than three or four legitimate champions. I know that the most recognized heavyweight champion and the next four highest ranked heavyweights are all from the former Soviet Union. Since two of the heavyweight title holders are brothers who refuse to fight each other I doubt there will be a unified heavyweight champion in my life time.

2009-05-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

There were tears (mine)at the beginning and tears (Helio Castroneves's) at the end and in the middle more wrecks than you'll see at the diciest intersection in your town. I cried because I always do during the ceremonies that lead up to the Indy 500. I'm not sure why, but by the time the cars are lined up in their precise rows of three abreast, 11 rows in all, and some pseudo celebrity sings the National Anthem I can feel the mist beginning to form in the corners of my eyes. When they play taps, in memory of former race drivers who are with us no more, a few drops of moisture will find their way onto a cheek. And when Jim Nabors sings "Back Home Again In Indiana" I almost lose it altogether. Of all the events I covered in 36 years of writing sports for The Chicago Tribune, the Indianapolis 500 was by far my favorite event, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway the only place I wanted to be on, originally, Memorial Day (May 30), but laterly the last Sunday in May. When I die I'd like Mario Andretti to scatter my ashes at the Speedway. I haven't told Mario yet.

Helio Castroneves had a different reason to cry. In the course of a month he had redeemed his Get Out of Jail Free card and ended up on Park Place. He went from facing a 35-year prison sentence to winning the world's most famous race quicker then Marco Andretti could be punted off the course by a 20-year-old rookie. Helio was not the one I wanted to see drink the milk in victory circle, although I have nothing against him. He seems to be an engaging young man and there is little doubt he is a talented driver and dances a mean cha cha cha.. You don't win three times at Indianapolis without talent, even if you are driving for Roger Penske. But driving for Penske does help. The victory was Roger's 15th as a car owner and nobody else comes close to that. Penske is the most organized and success-driven man I know. He is precise and analytical in everything he does. I first met him when he was still a driver. He hasn't changed much except he's a lot richer. I have seen him flustered only once in all the years I've known him. That came in 1987 after he had hired Danny Ongais to be one of his drivers It was a monumental break for Ongais, a man with a ton of talent who was his own worst enemy. He could do anything with a race car except make it talk. Danny was almost as silent as his race car. So it came as no great surprise to me that when I went into his garage hoping for an interview, he declined. I found him sitting in a corner of the garage, eating an orange and said, "Danny, can I ask you a few questions?" "I'd rather not," he politely replied. As I left the garage I serendipitously ran into Penske and told him what had happened. "Let me talk to him," Roger said. He went into the garage and ws back out in under a minute, wearing a quizzical look on his face. "He says he doesn't want to talk," said Roger. I went ahead and wrote the Ongais story anyway and was just about to hit the button sending it to The Tribune when the claxon that signals an accident on the track went off. Looking up at the TV monitor I saw that, as I had feared, it was Ongais in the wall. He was out of the race, Al Unser took his place and won his fourth Indy 500, and I managed to save my story by simply writing a one paragraph insert that said something about his pentient for self destruction biting him again.

I fell in love with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from the day I first drove up Georgetown road past the half mile of grandstand and entered through the back gate. The Tribune had not covered the race for several years and opposed it editorially. I finally managed to convince the sports editor, George Strickler at the time, that we were going to make it the lead story on the morning after the race so why not have one of our own reporters, namely me, write it. I knew something of the history of the Indy 500 and had done a few columns by telephone; the one with Jimmy Clark after he won in 1965 comes to mind. But I really knew very little about the sport itself. I soon found out something about the Indy 500, something that makes it special. There is an "We're all in this together" attitude at Indy that I found nowhere else in the world of sports. It was to be expected that the public relations people for the teams, the track, and the tire companies would be helpful to an awestruck newcomer. In fact, the Speedway itself offered little guidance outside of the program they gave you with the names and numbers of all the drivers. But the tire company representatives more than made up for it. On my first day at the track the late Dick Ralstin of Goodyear took me around the garage area and introduced me to all the significant players, whether they drove for Goodyear or Firestone. John Fowler of Firestone was equally helpful. What surprised me, however, was how helpful the other writers were, especially the writers for the Indianapolis papers. Guys like Dick Mittman and the late Ray Marquette (pronounced Mar-kwet) were happy to point you in the right direction. As it turned out, Ralstin was the one who saved my bacon, as Roger Penske would put it, that first year. Not knowing any better at the time, I sat in the press box and the view was spectacular and so was the racing. The press box was the place to be--as long as the race was going on. But when I tried to get to the post-race interview room, I had to fight 200,00 other people who were going in the same general direction, utilizing the one narrow tunnel that leads from the main grandstand to the infield. An hour later I reached the interview room just as race winner Bobby Unser was leaving, followed by a mob of admirers. I was in a panic until I spotted Ralstin bringing up the rear of the group. I explained my plight and he said "Don't worry; come on into our office. Bobby's doing some phone interviews and then you can talk to him." So I had a one-on-one interview with the Indy 500 winner, who would go on to win it twice more.

The really great thing about covering Indy is--or at least was--the accessibility of the drivers and their ability to deliver quotes that you could put down on paper unfiltered. There was a good deal of interplay between writers and drivers. One year, I think it was somewhere in the late '70s, Dick Mittman and I were in somebody's garage when Mario Andretti came in holding a curious looking object that appeared to be a pipe with a propeller behind it. "We're using this to test your wind power," explained Mario, who proceeded to blow into the pipe, causing the propeller to spin wildly. "Now you try it," said Mario, handing me the gadget. I took a deep breath and blew as hard as I could. Nothing. "Try it again," urged Mario. Still nothing. Presently the three of us headed for the pits and when we got there, Bobby Unser and A.J. Foyt nearly keeled over from laughing so hard. I didn't get the joke until Bobby handed me a mirror. My entire face was blackened. I looked like Al Jolson. The secret of Mario's success and my humiliation it was revealed to me was that there was a hole on the bottom of the pipe that you had to cover with a finger. Otherwise you'd be blowing black carbon back into your face.

Although I tried not to show it in my writing, I had my favorites among the drivers. Mario and Johnny Rutherford for sure. Rick Mears, Scott Brayton, Tom Sneva. Teo Fabi, certainly, after I spent a month on his pit crew. But, in reality, they all were pretty good guys, even Foyt, who could be cantankerous, but also utterly engaging. It seems a little strange now watching the race and realizing there were only two drivers--John Andretti and Paul
Tracy, who I knew. So I was rooting for them and for Marco Andretti because I knew his dad and grandfather and Danica Patrick because she's Danica. I've never met Castroneves or Dan Wheldon or Tony Kanaan or Danica for that matter. I haven't been to the Indy 500 for seven or eight years now, but it still sings to me. The song is sweet and sentimental and that's why it still has the power to bring me to tears.

2009-05-19T07:23:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

When new acquaintances find out that I used to be a sports writer, they almost inevitably ask me one of two questions: What was your favorite sport to cover; what was the single most memorable event you covered? Those were not easy questions to answer, particularly the first one. In 36 years writing sports for The Chicago Tribune I covered every major beat and found something to like in most of them. Aside from writing a daily column, which I did for 11 years, the most fun I had was in being the national college football and basketball writer. Not only did I get to cover some of the most famous games in college sports history--Villanova's upset of Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA tournament final, Texas' victory over Arkansas in the 1969 shootout in the hills, Nebraska's 35-31 win over Oklahoma in one of the many "games of the century"--but I got to see an estimated 100 college campuses, from the University of Washington in the far Northwest to the University of Miami, which is nearly as far Southeast as you can get. One of the best parts of the job was walking--and sometimes running--through the various college campuses on a Saturday morning. On a run through the LSU campus one morning I was brought up short when I came face to face with the live tiger mascot. At Mississippi there was The Grove, the most sophisticated tailgate setting in the country, where the girls wear designer dresses and the men jackets and ties and watch the football team parade by on the way to the stadium. My vote for most beautiful college campus--Pepperdine, which sits high atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Malibu. So I could have answered: college football and basketball--but I didn't.

Covering baseball fulltime was another beat I found enjoyable--perhaps "satisfying" would be a better word. The baseball beat is hard! It's seven days a week from the middle of February when the pitchers and catchers--and baseball beat writers--report to spring training until the end of October when the World Series ends. Even when the players have all gone home there is work to do for the beat writer, winter meetings to attend, possible trades to be discussed and, generally, in January, a goodwill tour to the hinterlands with the manager and some of the key players. But the beat has its compensations. Although there is a lot of travelling, there is not the frenetic Cleveland today Denver tomorrow ratrace of the NBA. In most cases you stay two to four days in a given town, long enough to send your laundry out and get it back. You're staying at the team hotel, which is usually a four star or better and if you manage your meal money well, you can indulge in the occasional gourmet dinner. Although some people find baseball dull, I agree with the minor league executive who once told me, "the thing I love about baseball is there's an orgasm in every ball game." Think about it. In even the most mundane of games there usually comes a point when a single at bat can change the complexion. The slow pace of the game, while perhaps irritating to some, gives the baseball writer time to plan his story well before the final out and the slow unwinding of the season lets him settle into a rhythm that no other sport permits. But baseball was not my favorite sport, either. In fact, the two sports that I loved covering the most were not fulltime beats.

They are boxing and auto racing. I loved them both for the same reason. The people. I never met an inarticulate boxer or race car driver. Both sports operate under an almost palpable canopy of dread, the danger inherent in each always lurking somewhere beneath the surface, never spoken of, but also never entirely out of mind. A race driver will answer your question if you speak of the life and death aspects of his profession, but he will not dwell on it, nor will he bring up the subject himself. Race drivers are the most honest athletes of all. They never fail to run out the grounders. A driver can be hopelessly out of a race, but he will never stop trying to get his car around the next corner as quickly as possible. Boxers share this trait. The distinction between the two sports is that the race driver knows in the back of his mind he could be hurt, while the boxer knows for an absolute certainty that he is going to get hurt at least to some extent.

Now that you know the answer to question No. 1, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out my answer to question No. 2. Whenever asked about my most memorable event I always come up with a three-part answer. In no particular order they are: The first Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden; The 1972 Munich Olympics; The 1988 Indianapolis 500 when I spent the whole month of May working on Teo Fabi's pit crew and filing a daily story about it. Since this year's Indy 500 is just around the corner I'll focus in on that one. It started with a phone call from Michael Knight, the public relations man--one of the alltime best--for the new Quaker State Porsche team that was bringing the iconic German sports car back to Indianapolis. Knight told me that as part of their p.r. effort they were going to let one writer work in the pits on every race day. He asked me if I'd like to do it for the Indianapolis 500 and I answered, "does it have to be just on race day? Could I do it for the whole month?" He, of course, was delighted at the prospect of having a daily mention of his team in the midwest's largest paper. My sports editor, Gene Quinn, was not quite so sanguine about it. "You can do it on two conditions," he said. "No. 1 you won't do anything to get yourself hurt and No.2 you won't do anything that makes the Tribune responsible for affecting the outcome of the race." I crossed my fingers behind my back and agreed. There's no way I could guarantee either of those demands. Danger is inherent to the sport. I had been in the pits when Wally Dallenbach's car burst into flames not six feet in front of me. In 1973 I had been running from my seat in the stands behind the pits toward the fourth turn where Swede Savage had just crashed--fatally, as it would turn out, when I heard a loud "thump" which I later found out was the sound of a crew member being fatally struck by a fire truck racing the wrong way up pit road. I didn't expect anything like that to happen to me, but I couldn't guarantee it.

My main job during the week before qualifying was to time driver Teo Fabi's speed on the front straightaway. My first radar gun was flawed and so the first day's effort was wasted. As the week went along it was obvious that the new Porsche--actually a March chassis with a Porsche engine--was underpowered and was in danger of failing to make the race. On the eve of the first Saturday of qualifying--pole day--there was an emergency meeting in our garage and one of our consultants mentioned that there was a way to cheat the popoff valve and gain a little extra speed. Did team general manager Al Holbert want to try it? This presented me with a serious dilemma. On one hand I was a newspaperman who had promised to tell all. On the other hand I was a member of the racing team. I solved the problem by walking out of the garage. Knowing the late Al Holbert, I doubt that there was any cheating the next day when Fabi qualified the car, albeit at a speed slow enough that we all were on pins and needles until the final second of qualifying on the following
Sunday. It meant just as much to me as it did for anybody else because if Teo didn't make the race, there went my story. Race day was the most exciting of my life. When I stood behind our car at the starting line during the prerace ceremonies, for the first time in my life I was overcome with emotion at the playing of the National Anthem. Then, after the firing up of our engine, I joined the rest of the crew in the mad dash back to our pits, probably a quarter of a mile sprint.

I had two jobs for race day. One was to hold the stop sign and lower it in front of Fabi to mark his stopping point whenever he entered the pits. The second was to man the water hose and squirt water on the fuel cell after each refueling. This was to prevent any chance of a fuel spill from igniting. I was nervous about this job, because the fuel cell was located behind the driver and with the open cockpit it was possible I could hit Fabi in the face. Teo would not have liked that. I had had no chance to practice, so the first pit stop was a source of great anxiety. Teo came in a little hot, but stopped in time. When the fueler pulled the hose from the cell I managed to wash it down with no problem; then Teo sped on his way. Seconds later I heard a roar and everyone in our pits was looking down pit road. A wheel had come off our car and Teo had crashed in the pits. I put on my writer's hat and ran down to join in the interview with Fabi, then went back to the car and helped push it all the way down pit road and into our garage in Gasoline Alley. My career as a pit crew member was over, but I'll never forget it. And Sunday, when 33 cars come thundering into turn one of the world's most famous speedway, I'll have a pretty good idea of the emotions beating in each competitor's chest, from the drivers to the lowliest crew men. Bless them all.

2009-05-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

Like trying to decide whether to select the Porterhouse steak or the grilled veal chop for the main course--or perhaps even the char-grilled salmon--this week's sports news has provided me with an embarrassment of riches. Unlike some weeks, when I struggle to come up with a timely subject, there is no end to the possibilities.

I could, for instance, comment on the Players' championship in golf, an event which was notable not only for Henrik Stenson's superb final round on a course with greens so sun-slicked they might have been mistaken for a series of giant greased griddles, but for Tiger Woods' stunning failure to mount even the slightest challenge. Even though he entered the final round five shots behind leader Alex Cjeka, those of us who have followed Tiger's career figured the world's No.1 ranked player had Cjeka right where he wanted him--as playing partner in the final group on Sunday. Had any of us known that Cjeka, whose driving had been metronomically near perfect for three days, was going to start hitting the ball to places few humans had ever visited before and wind up shooting a 79, we'd have conceded the trophy to Woods and started channel surfing for something a little less mundane. At the very least we expected Woods to come down to the final hole with a chance to win. But it became clear from the outset that this was not Tiger's day. Or Tiger's week. Or Tiger's venue. He couldn't drive the ball in the fairway. He couldn't snuggle his iron shots close enough to the diabolically placed pins. He couldn't putt. But he still finished eighth. Think of that. This man is so good that even when he plays poorly he's a miracle shot or two away from winning. There are 150 or so players who start out each week hoping to conquer a given golf course. And every week, whether he plays well or poorly, Tiger Woods is among the top 10. I don't have the data to prove it, but I suspect no golfer ever has played to that level of consistency.

Another angle I might pursue is the revelation that Los Angeles Dodgers super star Manny Ramirez has been suspended for 50 games for failing a drug test. Ramirez reportedly took a female fertility drug and since it is unlikely that the carefree slugger is trying to get pregnant, big league officials could only conclude that he took the banned substance because it is a masking agent for steroids. It no longer surprises me when a baseball player is pinched for a drug indiscretion. Not when megastars like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez have been accused of, and in A-Rod's case confessed to, using performance enhancing drugs. I'm not completely convinced that taking steroids enhances performance all that much. For a body builder or weight lifter, yes. But no matter how juiced up a slugger is, he still has to make hard contact with a little white ball thrown by some hulking hurler who might himself be on steroids for all we know. Drugs of some sort have been around baseball almost since its infancy. I've been told, although I've never seen it, that many clubhouses had jars of "greenies" or "uppers" lying around for players to dip into. Considering the length of the season and the constant daily grind of a baseball campaign, it would be surprising if players did not look for something to get them through the dog days. What about so-called energy drinks? Should they be banned, too? Just asking.

A third intriguing story is that Kentucky Derby winning jockey Calvin Borel is giving up his ride on Mine That Bird, forfeiting an admitedly slim chance to ride a Triple Crown winner. Once it was announced that Rachel Alexandra, the filly who romped home 20 lengths ahead of the field in the Kentucky Oaks, was going to challenge the big boys in the Preakness, it would have been surprising if Borel had not decided to switch. Borel had been aboard the filly for the rocket ride in the Oaks the day before his masterly ride on Mine That Bird in the Derby and, asked which of the two horses was the better, unhesitatingly had named Rachel Alexandra. Although it was not 100 per cent guaranteed that the filly would be in the Preakness, she was the early line favorite. Fillies have won Triple Crown races before and as recently as two years ago Rags to Riches won the Preakness. The shortest of the Triple Crown events, the Preakness is probably the least likely venue to produce a calamity, although try telling that to the owners of Barbaro, who broke down at the outset of that 2007 race. Still, there is always an injury concern when a filly challenges male horses. Only last year, Eight Belles had to be destroyed after finishing second in the Kentucky Derby, but going down with two broken front ankles. But the one race that still is the elephant in the living room when it comes to boy-girl horse racing, is the fateful match race between Ruffian and Foolish Pleasure in 1975. Ruffian was the Wonder Woman of horses, undefeated and winner of the Filly Triple Crown. As beloved as any race horse before or since, Ruffian was giving a good account of herself until reaching the mile pole at Belmont Park, where she broke her leg, but attempted to keep running. Emergency surgery was performed in an attempt to save her, but in the end she had to be euthanized.

But I'm not going to write any of those stories this week. Instead I'm going to concentrate on an event that has personal meaning for me. My last fulltime beat as a sports writer for The Chicago Tribune was the Blackhawks. I had been a Hawks' fan since the late forties, a time when there was so little interest in hockey in Chicago that a 13-year-old boy could go the The Stadium by himself on a game night and, when asked if he was by himself, be given a seat in the front row of the balcony, squarely on the red line. By the time I started writing for The Tribune, things had changed. Tommy Ivan had been brought in from the Detroit Red Wings to put together the team that, in 1961, would win the Stanley Cup, ironically over Ivan's former team. Although they have not won the Cup since then, by the time I started writing a column for The Tribune, the Blackhawks were the hottest thing in town, filling the Stadium nightly with their charismatic stars like Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and goalie Glenn Hall. I got to know Hull and Mikita fairly well. Hull in particular was a dream to cover, always willing to spend time with a writer, often to the dismay of his teammates who were waiting on the bus for the Golden Jet to join them. In the old Stadium the press box was behind one goal at mezzanine level and one night Mikita rocketed a slap shot that skipped off a stick and flew into the press box, where I reflexively tried to catch it. Afterwards in the dressing room, Stan looked at me and said, "are you crazy?" It had never occurred to me that he would follow the puck all the way to its final resting place. After I was replaced as a columnist in the winter of 1978, I lost touch with hockey until one day about 15 years later I got a call at home from our sports editor, who told me to get out to The Stadium because the beat writer had some domestic problem and would not be back for awhile. And, by the way, give us a feature story for Sunday on Wayne Gretzky. So I covered the Blackhawks for the final month of that season and found out I liked it. Hockey players seemed to be more accessible and more congenial than the other athletes I had been dealing with. Besides, at the time, I was at the mercy of an assistant sports editor who kept giving me assignments that made me want to throw up. One I recall was about the Korean-American Olympics, a story that required me to head for the Korean-American enclave on Chicago's North side and throw myself on the mercy of the event's p.r. man. I asked him to get me an interview with any athlete who spoke English. He gave me a bowler who was almost inarticulate. That is the only time in my career that I just mailed it in. Didn't give a damn. So, when the hockey beat opened up I asked for it and got it. It was a good decision. The Hawks were coached at the time by Daryl Sutter, a good guy if a little sardonic. Their best players were Jeremy Roenick, Chris Chelios,and Tony Amonte, all fairly easy to get along with. Roenick, in particular, was a "go to" guy and remains so to this day. Only goalie Ed Belfour gave me any problems and that was only sporadically. Once he stopped speaking to me for weeks after I wrote a story insinuating that he and backup goalie Jeff Hackett were near-equals. Then, out of the blue, he called me at home and asked if I needed anything from him. The Blackhawks got all the way to the conference finals that year, but lost to the Red Wings in a tough series. After one more season I left The Tribune and forgot about the Blackhawks along with most of their fandom. A building which used to be alive with 20,000 screaming fans, became almost tomblike when the fans deserted them. They had not even been in the playoffs since 2002. Then last night (Monday) I realized that the Hawks were playing in the Western Conference semi-finals and had a chance to wrap up the series on home ice. I knew none of the players, but I got wrapped up in the game. The Hawks were leading 2-1 when I tuned in in the second period. Then another Chicago goal made it 3-1 and I thought it was going to be a lock. But two quick goals by Vancouver tied the game and the Canucks went ahead twice in the third period before the Blackhawks, led by their young guns, Patrick Kane and Jonathon Toews, scored three quick goals to wrap up a 7-5 victory and advance to the conference final, where they expect to play their longtime antagonists, the Red Wings. I'll know at least one of the players in that series since Chelios, who was a graybeard when I was covering more than a dozen years ago, is still performing for Detroit. I like Chelly and wish him the best, but my heart will be with the Blackhawks this time.

2009-05-05T11:28:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

What's in a name? That is the question. Having, quite neatly I think, tied together two Shakesperian soliloquys by two different characters from two different plays, I have to admit I don't know the answer. I've spent the last three days wondering what in the world his owners were thinking of when they named the 2009 Kentucky Derby winner "Mine That Bird." Surely, had they known their horse was going to become world famous one day, they'd have named it something a little more fathomable. But who knew? Certainly if you or I had any inkling that Mine That Bird was going to win the Kentucky Derby we'd have at the very least put a couple of bucks on his nose.

Most race horses' names are pretty easy to figure out. You just look at the names of the sire and the dam and find a combination that makes sense. War Admiral was the son of Man 'O War, for instance. Granted that naming a foal of Birdstone-Mining My Own is a bit of a challenge, surely they could have come up with something that makes sense. Something like Birdsong. Or Stone Mountain. Or Etched in Stone. Or Bye Bye Birdie. Or even Charlie Parker. (You jazz fans will get that one, I'm sure)

But Mine That Bird? What could it possibly mean? The only thing that springs to mind is that it is a command to send a canary into a coal mine in order to detect any toxic particles in the air. When the canary stops singing, the miners had better be looking for the fastest way out.

Mine That Bird's jockey, Calvin Borel, certainly was looking for the fastest way out when he found himself trailing the entire 19-horse field at the head of the stretch. He found it where he usually does, on the rail, and he produced one of the most astonishing finishing kicks in the history of horse racing. I'm not a racing expert. During my 36 years writing sports for the Chicago Tribune I probably covered a dozen or fewer horse races. A couple of Kentucky Derbies, one Preakness, a few Florida spring races and a handful of major stakes at Arlington Park. But it doesn't take an expert to know that what we saw Saturday was something extraordinary.

I watched the race with some friends who live downstairs from us in a condominium apartment. The scratching of I Want Revenge, the prerace favorite, had made an already cloudy picture almost unreadable, not to mention that it screwed up a lot of Derby pools. So there we were watching some horse with no name leading from the start to the head of the stretch when out of the corner of my eye I saw a blur streaking through an opening no larger than a broom closet door and passing horses left and left. It was as if Jeeves the Butler had opened the door and held it ajar for a visitor. I knew immediately that the race was over and tried to yell, "look at that horse on the rail," but by that time everyone in the room knew the horse was going to win. What none of us knew was the name of the horse.

Ebullient jockey Calvin Borel, who had won two years earlier in almost identical fashion with Street Sense, said what must have been obvious to anyone who watched the second biggest upset in Kentucky Derby history. "At the end, mine was the only horse still running," he said. Mine That Bird is a small horse as race horses go and that, explained Corel, was why he was able to glide through such a narrow opening. "He's such a small horse," Corel added, "that he just skipped along the track where I thought some of the other horses were digging into it."

The unexpected victory by the little horse that could sent racing writers, who had completely ignored Mine That Bird in the week preceding the race, scrambling for information and what they found made a pretty good yarn. The horse had been purchased for $9,500 at a yearling sale. His only two races as a 3-year-old had been run in New Mexico and he hadn't won either of them. His trainer, Benny "Chip" Woolley, had driven the gelding in a pickup truck all the way from New Mexico to Louisville, a 21-hour journey. Woolley looked as if he'd inherited his wardrobe from Johnny Cash and, after answering a few questions for a TV interviewer, stomped off the way that other Man in Black, Dale Earnhardt, once did when I asked him a question he thought was stupid.

It all made for a good story, but it was not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. True, the horse was sold as a yerling for $9,500, but the man who bought him won four races and more than $300,000 racing him in Canada, where he was proclaimed 2-year-old champion. That owner then sold him for $400,000 to two men from Roswell, N. M. The new owners entered him in the Breeder's Cup Juvenile, where he rewarded them by finishing 12th in a 12-horse field. Then came the two losses at Sunland Park, N.M. So, obviously, there was nothing to do but enter him in the most famous race in the world. It will be interesting to see what the betting odds will be at The Preakness, where the Kentucky Derby winner usually is among the favorites
and often is regarded as a potential Triple Crown winner. Mine That Bird a Triple Crown winner? Not likely. The name doesn't resonate like Whirlaway or Citation. Yet Mine That Bird's 6 3/4 length was the largest margin in the Kentucky Derby since Assault in 1946. Assault later became the seventh Triple Crown winner. So go ahead. Take a chance. Put a few bucks on the Derby winner to capture the Preakness and Belmont, too. Maybe that's the way to mine that Bird.

2009-04-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

By Bob Markus

A long time ago, when I was the only guy, to my knowledge, ever to serve two years in the Army without advancing past the rank of PFC, one of my buddies was a big, good looking kid from Fresno, Cal., who had a favorite expression that never failed to amuse me. "I used to be conceited," he would say, "but now I'm perfect." Well, I used to be perfect, but now I'm embarrassed. I've been writing this weekly blog for a little more than a year and, to my knowledge, have not made any factual errors. Errors in judgment? Plenty. Big Brown to win the Triple Crown, comes to mind. The Arizona Cardinals to win the Super Bowl. Memphis to win the NCAA tournament.

I haven't had much feedback from readers, but the few who have responded to a column or two have generally been kind. But last week a reader with the moniker T.J. sent a reply to my blog announcing my new born fealty to the Miami Marlins after more than a half century of being a Cubs fan. "What would be worse than dying before the Cubs winning a world series?" he asked. His answer: "Swearing off the Cubs only to see them win a World Series, taking the pennant at the expense of your new favorite team." Fair enough, and I'll address that a bit later. It was the next sentence that bothered me, not that there was anything unfair about it. In fact, it was justified. "Also," T.J. wrote, "it was Will Clark, not Jack Clark whom Cubs pitchers could not retire in '89." Right you are, T.J., and wrong I was.

So I apologize not only to T.J.,but all of my readers who have the right to expect a guy who wrote for newspapers for more than 40 years to at least get his facts right. Location, location, location may be the watch word for realtors and baseball pitchers, but for a journalist the first principle is accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. After reading T.J.'s comment I did what I should have done in the first place. I looked it up in the Baseball Encyclopedia, which I consider the greatest reference book ever published, and was reminded that Jack Clark played for the Giants from 1973 to 1984 before being traded to the Cardinals, and Will Clark came up with the Giants in 1986. So it was Will Clark who had his way with the likes of Greg Maddux in that 1989 National League Championship series.

Although I recognize Maddux as a Hall of Famer and will vote for him if I'm still around when he becomes eligible in five years, I've always resented the way he left the Cubs, claiming he wanted to pitch for a team that had a chance to win the World Series. The fact is he was already on a team that had a chance to win the World Series and he was one of the main reasons they didn't. In his two playoff starts he never got into the fifth inning. In the series opening 11-3 loss he was torched for eight runs in four innings, including a Clark grand slam. He was tagged for four more runs in 3 1/3 innings in game four and didn't get the loss only because the Cubs tied the game after he left, before eventually losing, 6-4. The other thing that ticked me off was that three years later the Cubs had gone out of their way to help him reach 20 wins for the first time, giving him extra starts down the stretch. The result was his first Cy Young Award, which undoubtedly was a bargaining chip when he became a free agent after that 1992 season. Showing all the loyalty of a sea slug, Maddux signed with the Braves for the same salary the Cubs had offered.

Getting back to T.J.s message, I'm much more upset by the discovery of my factual error than I am at the prospect of the Cubs winning the World Series in the same year I jumped off the band wagon. In fact, if they get that far I'll probably root for them. I doubt they'll get that far, however, and don't much care. As for my new love, the Marlins, as the song goes, love's more comfortable the second time around. I'll probably never root for them with the passion I felt for the Cubs. But I see most of their games on television and, for the most part, I like what I see. As I write this they're on a seven-game losing streak and not much is going right for them. But they're a young team and I feel confident they'll be back in the race (in fact they were still in first place going into Tuesday night's game.) If it doesn't happen this year, I'm perfectly willing to wait until next year. Now, where have I heard that before?