Author Archives: Kent Sterling

Ian Kennedy Suspension Not Enough, and Others’ Are Too Stiff

by Kent Sterling

Yasiel Puig takes an Ian Kennedy fastball in the nose. Kennedy should be done for the year, but received only a 10 game suspension.

Everything on a baseball field should be dealt with by ballplayers, managers, and coaches – except for one thing so egregious and dangerous that it should command a deterrent that keeps it from being an option.

Throwing at a batter’s head is a pitiful move by a pitcher who should be forced to spend a serious amount of time away from the game for that decision. A pitcher who is so ill-tempered he would put another player’s career in jeopardy should be required to ponder that commitment in solitude for a significant period of time.

Men have died as the result of a fastball to the head, and many more have seen their careers derailed or ended. Don Zimmer spent 13 days unconscious because of a beaning. Dickie Thon and Tony Conigliaro suffered eyesight damage that kept from a long way from reaching their potential.

The 10-game rip given to Ian Kennedy amounts to two starts for hitting Dodgers rookie sensation Yasiel Puig in the nose and Pitcher Zach Greinke in the back – only because Greinke turned just in time.

Pitchers who willfully throw at the head of a hitter have no place in baseball at all, and a pitcher who can’t control the ball well enough to throw inside without threatening the face of a hitter is a menace. There is no difference between the two. One is a sociopath and the other is incompetent. Neither should play baseball for a living.

Dodgers infielder Eric Hinske was suspended for five games, and the other suspensions of either one or two games were assigned to Skip Schumaker, Mark McGwire, Don Mattingly, J.B. Howell, Ronald Belisario, and Kirk Gibson.

None did any more but rush the field and shove each other around. Maybe a punch was thrown, but where’s the harm there? I don’t mind a fight once in a while. Baseball is a little like the five families in New York’s mafia of the 1940s and 1950s depicted in “The Godfather.”

Clemenza tells Michael Corleone in the movie that the families need a war every 10 years or so, “These things gotta happen every five years or so, ten years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood. Been ten years since the last one.”

Baseball needs to have frustration turn into a fistfight every now and then, or worse things happen. Since when did ballplayers need to be gentlemen anyway. It’s a man’s game played by men, and if a right cross is needed to allow the pressure to dissipate, so be it.

What baseball cannot tolerate is a fastball to the head. Kennedy should be done for the season for throwing at Greinke’s head. The Puig thing looked like it could have been an errant pitch to discourage Puig from diving in with too much enthusiasm. No excuse for the pitch at Greinke.

The other suspensions are just muscle flexing and posturing. Kennedy’s presence on the mound cheapens baseball.

Polka Boy at Cool Creek Festival Tonight – Jeff Russell Video on the Band

by Kent Sterling

Some of the best times of my life have been at Polka Boy shows, and one of the most charismatic members of the band is accordionist Jeff Russell. The band will be out in full force tonight playing their unique blend of rock and polka. Jeff Russell joined me at Patrick’s in Zionsville to talk about the history of the band and the magic of the squeeze box.

Here is the story about how the accordion chose Jeff, and if you have nothing going on tonight, Polka Boy will be at Cool Creek in Carmel at 7p.

If you have never seen Polka Boy, they guys are spectacular and unique.

NBA Finals – Miami Heat Make Winning Best of Seven very Tough

by Kent Sterling

Yep, last night was a thumbs-up for LeBron James.

The Miami Heat are like Moby Dick and the rest of the NBA is Ahab. Everytime the league thinks they have Lebron and company on the hook, the Heat remind you they aren’t some ordinary trout.

LeBron giveth hope, and LeBron taketh hope away.

The 33 points and 11 rebound from James weren’t any kind of offensive explosion, but they were enough to cripple the will of the San Antonio Spurs – a team that has historically been exceptional at maintaining enough pressure on the throats of NBA Finals opponents to eventually choke them out.

That end could still come for the Heat, but as happened again and again with the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals, the Heat are very good at escaping from the grips of their rivals.

The infuriating thing about the Heat is that throughout this offseason it has been impossible to tell whether the Heat are a good team in ascension or a briefly great team in decline. They are incapable of not letting their opponents off the hook too.

Is the real Lebron the guy who scored a total of 49 points in the first two games of the finals, or is he this splendid beast who destroyed the Spurs last night and guaranteed a return to South Beach?

And what about Dwyane Wade. Maybe more than LeBron, Wade made the Spurs pay last night. After looking either old and tired, or occasionally old and craft enough to contribute, Wade hung 32 points on San Antonio last night on 14-25 shooting.

He got to the rim, hit some midrange shots, and while not resembling the guy who scored 22 in the first six minutes against the Pacers two years ago in Indy, he was unquestionably a player who could be a big contributor for a championship team.

Even the previously soft and woeful Chris Bosh, who has been the unpopular Shemp to LeBron and Dwyane’s still funny Moe and Curly, dropped 20 and 13 on a night when the Heat shot an awesome 52.9% from the field.

That kind of efficiency was the calling card of the team that won 46-49 before the series with the Pacers began.

The Heat are a machine when motivated. When they aren’t, they can be had. That’s the difference between a good team and a great team. LeBron’s protestation prior to the Pacers series about the Heat being a “great” team will ring hollow regardless of whether they finish the deal against the Spurs, whose Big Three might just be too damn old to vanquish a good team with a great player. after playing 100 games in seven months.

The Spurs looked old last night. How many times did the ball go down low to future first ballot hall of famer Tim Duncan only to have him decide to kick the ball out rather than finish? And for the love of Eva Peron, where the hell has Manu Ginobli’s game been. Last night, Manu was 1-5 from the field for five points. He’s making Bosh look like a scoring machine by comparison.

Since a pedestrian 13 points in game one on 4-11 shooting, Manu has tallied, five, seven, and five points on a combined 6-18 from the field. He’s going to turn 36 next month, and the NBA may have seen the last of the amazing Argentinian who has always been a master at finding a way to get the ball in the bucket.

The Spurs are hardly dead, but they sure looked like a team unlikely to beat the Heat two-of-three with the final two in Miami.

If LeBron wants us to see him and his team as great, they need to bring the Heat every night. They haven’t appeared capable of that over the last 11 games in which they have been 6-5. But they are good enough to win this series and a second consecutive championship.

Cubs Owner Tom Ricketts Photo Gallery – An Everyman Who Is Not

by Kent Sterling

Ricketts watches the Hawks win wearing a jersey over his business shirt.

Okay, so this photo gallery has only two pictures, but that’s alright. A picture is worth 1,000 words, so these two shots of Chicago Cubs head fan/owner are worth more than three times the words in this post.

I’m tired of Ricketts act, and it is an act. If he doesn’t want to act like the descendant of money that he is, then give away the cash and do it for real.

Ricketts’ life is no more similar to the average Chicago sports fan than the educational experience for a student a Lake Forest High School is to a kid at Chicago Simeon.

The only tie between Ricketts and the decreasing crowds at Wrigley Field is that all wonder why they invested so heavily in the Cubs.

And now Ricketts has taken to wearing a Blackhawks jersey to the United Center for the Stanley Cup Finals. It’s part of his schtick to earn relatability points with fans, as though he could ever pass as an attitudinal heir of former White Sox owner Bill Veeck.

Veeck never wore a jersey, and always told the truth, which makes Ricketts 0-2 – just a bad actor who’s dad made enough cash to allow him to buy the team he rooted for as a kid.

That doesn’t mean he’s some schlub suckling at his daddy’s teat. He’s not. Sonny Ricketts is a smart guy who acts on terrible image management advice:

“If you shake hands with every Cubs fan like you’re some deranged politician, they will love you.”
“Tell them the Cubs will be champs if the Wrigley overhaul is approved!”
“If they won’t listen to the championship crap, tell them if Wrigley renovation plans aren’t okayed, we’ll move the Cubs to Batavia!”
“Wear a jersey just like the traders from the CBOT and CBOE. They’ll think you are one of them!”

I can’t tell whether this is idiotic counsel or a cruel hoax!

At what point does this idiocy stop for Ricketts – a guy with an education to kill for, wealth to pine for, and intellect that shames the rabble ticket buyers he woos.

The Cubs are currently a terrible baseball team, and they likely will be for another two years. Ricketts

Ricketts sits among empty box seats assessing the investment that might just pay off for him in 2017.

won’t tell Cubs fans that, but they have eyes. Fans are staying away in larger and larger numbers as they see the endless string of discipline bereft at-bats, and in a bizarre strategy Ricketts is trying to sell himself as part of the Cubs brand.

When Ricketts picks up a bat and takes a slider low and away rather than waving pitifully at it for strike three, Cubs fans will view him as a reason to dig deeply into their pockets for the bank needed to walk through the turnstiles at Clark and Addison.

While fans wait for Javier Baez, Albert Almora, and Jorge Soler to develop the lack of strike zone knowledge to qualify for a chance to strikeout with men on base at Wrigley, they will have to settle for the man who looks less at home in a jersey than the average fan does in a tux.

Indianapolis Colts Minicamp Concludes on High Note – Chuck Pagano Video

by Kent Sterling

The Indianapolis Colts got done what they came to town for, according to coach Chuck Pagano, although we won’t know exactly what that is until the season starts. Whether they are going to take a step forward or back is for keener eyes than mine to decide because until the players are in pads, I don’t know what the hell I’m looking at.

One thing for sure is that enthusiasm won’t be a problem. There was chirping, cheering, and a very appreciate outburst when practice ended an hour early after a made field goal from 53 yards.

Here’s Chuck Pagano on what he saw this week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltpnX6J8h_A

Hey Gregg Popovich – You’re a Great Coach, But Stop Being an Ass

by Kent Sterling

Gregg Popovich is an Indiana guy who coaches a style of basketball I love, so I should like him, and I would like to. But he makes it impossible because he has no interest in treating people like human beings.

ESPN has worked hard during the NBA Finals trying to make him appear entertaining by building bits where his abrupt and incomplete answers are punchlines, but there is no denying that Popovich is an ass.

Let me define “ass”, so there is no confusion. An “ass” is a person in power who treats people poorly because it’s unimportant to him to do otherwise. Success is all that matters, and the people who cannot provide assistance toward achievement are discarded or ignored.

In Popovich’s world, people represent distraction. Questions from the media are annoyances. As a coach, he wins, so the media helps by turning his abrasive personality into entertaining bits. The other option is to show Popovich as the boor that he is.

Popovich has been the head coach of the San Antonio Spurs for 16 full seasons and part of a 17th, has never lost one of four four NBA Finals series, never missed the playoffs in a full season, and has never failed to win 50 games while playing an 82-game schedule. His overall record is 905-423, and he has been the NBA coach of the year twice. That’s a track record that portrays Popovich as a great coach, and helps justify his behavior as part of that successful leadership recipe.

That success has been possible because the Spurs have always had great players, and that makes Popovich a great executive too, as he runs the franchise.

Popovich might be the best coach in the NBA, and that’s his job. He’s not paid to be gracious and smile all the time, and that’s a good thing for him. He would be a pauper.

There was a time when Bob Knight was celebrated for being cantankerous, and then when the wins came less frequently, the media couldn’t wait to help bring down the curtain on his career at Indiana.

Popovich appears to be less manic than Knight, and much less likely to throttle players by the throat, but by being a jerk – which he is in the halls of the Spurs offices as well as to the media, according to people who’ve worked there – he makes himself someone whose failure will please most fans outside of San Antonio.

I’m a little conflicted about Popovich (by the way, can ordinary folks stop referring to Popovich as “Pop”? It’s way too familiar for a stranger) because a few years ago I would have been a big supporter of this caustic banter – or lack of banter – with the media. The media has a haughtiness that can be every bit as annoying as anything Popovich might do.

I’ve had moments when I treated people with less respect than they might have been due for the sake of a laugh. Back in the day, that was the core trait of my personality, but oddly, being a nice guy requires less effort and is more rewarding, so I choose not to indulge my caustic side.

Being nice isn’t a job requirement, but it makes work no more difficult to smile, take an interest in people’s lives, and treat almost everyone with respect.

There used to be a great sign in every Wendy’s restaurant. It had a picture of Dave Thomas with a quote, “Just be nice.” Popovich couldn’t work at a Wendy’s.

Conversely, being a dick doesn’t prevent anyone from being a success, and some people just don’t give a damn how they are perceived as long as they win.

People who find a way to succeed while also being a pleasant human being are far more interesting than those who treat others with indifference or worse.

That makes Popovich a member of an unfortunate club who will win, but never use that success to enhance the human condition. That’s not his job, but it is his (and ours) responsibility as members of a society.

Let’s stop treating this cantankerous oaf like an amusing sideshow. We should expect more of leaders.

University of North Carolina’s Mary Willingham is My New Hero

by Kent Sterling

People who tell an uncomfortable truth are the best society offers, and that’s why you should know who Mary Willingham is.

Honesty is powerful – especially today as so few people bother to tell the truth. Yesterday, the assistant director of the center for student success and academic counseling at the University of North Carolina told some truth.

UNC-Chapel Hill has immersed itself in a boiling cauldron of corruption involving grade fixing and other varieties of academic fraud, and the NCAA has acted as it always does – too slowly and softly to make a correction necessary, or even wise.

Sure the football coach, athletic director and chancellor are gone, but they are easily replaced as long as practical rewards continue to flow to the campus because of the role athletics plays in branding a university.

On the athleticsvsacademics.com website, Willingham wrote this:

Protecting our (UNC’s) image has become the most important factor, sadly, this appears to have done more harm than good. As an institution of higher education where learning should be taking place each and every day, what is the lesson in all of this? Yesterday was the lowest day on campus – ever. As yet another new bright eyed group of first year students meet up in the pit, we, the adults continue to cover up the truth about our mistakes. One dark cloud hangs in the otherwise blue sky, and we could make it go away – if we were honest. Educational inequality is fed by a machine on our campus and campuses everywhere – the college sport system – until we own it and make the proper adjustments, the cheating will continue. Waiting for the NCAA is a joke, the sky over Indianapolis is full of dark clouds, thunder and lightening. They have failed miserably as a regulatory body. Bogus systems of eligibility along with secrets, silence and our own vulnerabilities win, our students lose. Protecting the brand at all costs – worth it? Lesson learned? Not yet.

That’s pretty good, and posting it takes guts. Calling out an employer – and many potential employers – on a website takes stones.

UNC has wobbled like many schools because of the desire to please donors and increase branding among candidates for college admission. They were penalized, and a new regime was installed, but it sounds like Willingham is unimpressed, and who would know better?

The NCAA is a total mess that is ill-equipped to handle its job of maintaining some measure of justice in collegiate athletics. The very schools who belong to the NCAA continue to make its oversight role impossible to execute.

This isn’t the first time Willingham has told the truth publicly. She spilled a significant amount of beans to the News & Observer (the newspaper the services the Research Triangle area in North Carolina). She detailed the depths of academic fraud in that piece and claims to have voiced her concerns internally to UNC officials two years before the cheating scandal broke in the media.

Willingham detailed no-show classes that were popular among men’s basketball players, but ended when a new academic counselor took control in 2009.

She also told the paper about student-athletes who told her they had never read a book or written a paragraph. As a result, they were placed in no-show classes that required only the completion of a 20-page paper, and received “grades of B or better.”

What happened at UNC is the rule rather than the exception if that makes Willingham feel any better, but I like her craving for justice where virtually none exists and is impossible to achieve.

Keep tilting at windmills, Mary.

Beanball Wars – Dodgers and Diamondbacks Square Off; Ian Kennedy Should Be Suspended

by Kent Sterling

The Dodgers trainer takes a look at Yasiel Puig’s nose after an Ian Kennedy pitch hit him.

There is everything right with drilling a guy in the back as retaliation. That’s baseball. Going after a head is the act of a coward, and Arizona Diamondbacks starter Ian Kennedy should pay a significant price for doing that last night in a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers – twice.

Dodgers starter Zach Greinke retaliated appropriately last night to Miguel Montero in the top of the seventh after Kennedy clipped rookie sensation Yasiel Puig in the nose during the bottom of the sixth. Benches cleared, but calm heads prevailed.

Then, in the bottom of the seventh, Kennedy hit Greinke near his head. That’s not baseball. The head is where bad things happen. Houston Astros second baseman Dickie Thon’s career was derailed by a pitch to the eye. Don Zimmer was unconscious for 13 days after being beaned. Tony Conigliaro might have been a hall of famer if not for taking a fastball to the face.

I’m all for in-game consequences. Baseball is a game played by men, and men are capable of solving their own problems in an Old Testament way. But Kennedy crossed a line – twice.

Buying that Kennedy was trying to move Puig off the plate isn’t that tough. Pitches get away, and Kennedy appeared upset after Puig went down. The second pitch that nearly hit Greinke in the head left no doubt that baseball needs to issue its own corrective measure against a rogue pitcher who went headhunting.

The brawl was a ridiculous exercise in posturing, as is almost always the case. I saw nothing that resembled a punch, other than Puig banging on a Diamondbacks player’s back. Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson and Dodger hitting coach Mark McGwire squared off and yelled at each other before McGwire and Diamondbacks coach Matt Williams danced a bit, but the fight that might have defined baseball fights for a generation never got untracked.

I don’t want baseball to go all UFC, but watching Gibson and McGwire go at it would be a singularly fantastic spectacle.

But back to baseball.

You hit mine, and I hit yours is a time tested method of problem solving, but heads are sacred.

Kennedy lost his right to play last night coming upstairs on Greinke, and baseball should act decisively.

Here’s the video of the Kennedy beanball to Greinke and the resulting fight, accompanied by descriptions by the great Vin Scully:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG1eCAYa5uI

LeBron James vs. Michael Jordan in Finals – Not Even Close

by Kent Sterling

“Hey, Dre, I gotta finish getting my ass kicked by the Spurs.”

Talk radio hosts need to talk about something during the off-season, so there are inevitable discussions comparing players of different eras, because LeBron James is the best player since Michael Jordan, those two are examined.

Last night, as I watched the San Antonio Spurs destroy the Miami Heat, I thought about two things – how LeBron James looked ordinary in a Finals game in a way Jordan never did, and whether LeBron pays any attention to how badly he’s portrayed in the new Neon Power Beats commercial when he puts Dr. Dre on hold while he finishes a workout.

Click here to follow Kent on Twitter (I’m sure he’ll appreciate it)

Not only did LeBron James score 15 points with no free throw attempts last night in a passive effort that hung his team out to dry in a pivotal game three, his record as a scorer in 18 NBA Finals games pales in comparison to Jordan’s in 35 games.

Here are some statistics:

James has never scored more than 32 points in a finals game. Jordan scored more than 40 six times, and 55 once.
James has scored 30 or more points two times. Jordan scored more than 40 six times, and 55 once.
James has never scored more than Jordan’s NBA Finals average of 33.6 ppg, and Jordan never scored less than LeBron’s average of 21.6 ppg.
James has tallied 10+ assists five times in 18 games. Jordan averaged 11.4 in his first NBA Finals.
James has scored under 20 in seven finals games, including all three games during this series. Jordan never scored less than 22 points in a Finals game.
James worst game was in Game Four of the 2011 Finals against Dallas, scoring eight on 3-11 shooting. Jordan’s worst finals performance came in Game Four of the Utah series in 1997 when he scored 22 points on 11-27 shooting in a 78-73 loss.

Jordan played in his last NBA Finals 15 years ago, so no one under the age of 20 remembers seeing him play under the bright lights. Not only did Jordan have great moments that made him an icon, he almost never failed to exceed expectations when the pressure was on.

Jordan’s Bulls went 6-0 in finals, while LeBron’s teams are 1-2 with a very real chance of being 1-3 this time next week.

While ESPN drools over a simple James’ block on Tiago Splitter’s attempted dunk in game two, Jordan’s excellence was routine on both ends of the court.

If a youngster starts an argument in a bar about the comparative excellence of LeBron James over Michael Jordan, you have two choices, ignore him as an idiot not worth your time, or dominate him with a flurry of numbers and attitude that leaves him dazed.

There is no debate. There is no question. Jordan was a singular talent who put his stack of chips on the table in every game. No one ever got a competitive advantage on Jordan. James is a great player who has shown an occasional willingness to quit.

That’s the difference.

Another difference is that the Jordan vs. Bird game of horse for McDonald’s was an infinitely smarter branding effort that this weirdness with LeBron working out alone, answering a call from Dr. Dre, and then puts him on hold for an undetermined period of time. When he returns to the call, James says, “Talk to me.” Other than Saul Goodman on “Breaking Bad”, who says that?

By the way, I welcome new Twitter followers. No spam, just passionate sports stuff @kentsterling

Kentucky Hires NCAA Enforcement Official and Further Eviscerates Investigatory Staff In Indy

by Kent Sterling

Kentucky has hired the NCAA managing director of enforcement for development and investigations, and what I smell isn’t the fragrance of Bluegrass, it’s what horses drop on it after they eat that Bluegrass.

This isn’t the first school to hire someone who worked in the NCAA’s compliance office. After the fallout of the University of Miami investigational fiasco swept Abigail Grantstein, Ameen Najjar, and Julie Roe Lach – the vice president of enforcement, Maryland, South Carolina, and Auburn hired other investigators to work in their compliance offices.

NCAA President Mark Emmert declared that he was going to bring its member’s athletic departments under control. Ending the treachery and corruption was a priority, Emmert has said repeatedly. More staff was hired, and the work began.

The schools got nervous, and reverted to a tried and true strategy that can be traced back to the beginning of time. The sheriff has you worried, hire his deputies. The sheriff can’t do all the work himself.

I have zero evidence of schools conspiring to hire enforcement officials in an attempt to subvert the NCAA’s judicial process, and I am not prone to conspiracy theoretical blather, but if I were worried about the NCAA bringing change that would cost my school both cache and cash, a plan like this would come to me in my dreams if I were very fortunate.

Maybe Kentucky hired Rachel Newman Baker because they are determined to run a squeaky clean athletic department. Maybe they believe the effort to sanitize their compliance is best accomplished by someone who used to make a living by investigating schools herself.

Maybe Maryland and Auburn and South Carolina thought the same thing.

Maybe not.

With millions and millions of dollars and the careers of wealthy men who enjoy a lavish lifestyle to which they and their families have become accustomed, alternately hiring and destroying investigators one after another until the NCAA is left with investigators who dream not to end corruption but to be hired by the school whom they are paid to investigate.

Personally, I don’t think people in academic administration are bright enough to follow through with this level of deviousness – this level of graft.