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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.