Author Archives: Kent Sterling

Chris Collins to Be Hired at Northwestern – First Six Months Key for Collins Era

by Kent Sterling

If this is what brand spanking new Northwestern basketball coach Chris Collins looks like when begging, Northwestern bigwigs should see a lot of it for the next six months.

Bill Carmody can coach. Make no mistake about that. Northwestern is going to find out whether Collins can coach, and Collins is determined to find out whether Northwestern is capable of building a winning program.

CBSsports.com is reporting that Chris Collins has agreed to be the next head coach at the only major conference basketball program to never earn an invitation to the NCAA Tournament.

Collins is a Chicago native who evidently enjoys a challenges, or maybe he’s tired of winning every year as an assistant coach for Duke. Maybe Northwestern offered him a ton of money and guaranteed him the resources needed to build a winning program. That would beg the question, why didn’t they give the same tools to Carmody?

Northwestern isn’t trying to match wits and power forwards with DePaul, Loyola, Northern Illinois, or UIC for Chicagoland basketball supremacy, they are trying to compete with Michigan State, Ohio State, Indiana, Michigan, and the rest of Big Ten. Their head start is substantial, and closing that gap is necessary to make the Big Dance.

Even with a smattering of outstanding players like Kevin Coble, John Shurna, and Michael Thompson, Northwestern threatened the bubble only a couple of times.

What makes Collins believe he will succeed when others fail won’t be known until the press conference announcing his decision, and that won’t come until Duke is done playing, according to reports that he will continue to serve at the pleasure of Mike Krzyzewski through the end of their run in the Big Dance.

For now, we will have to be comfortable that with advisors who have been around the block thousands of times, Collins made the right call. Coach K has been Collins mentor since making his first trip to Durham as a freshman-to-be in 1992, and downstate Illinois hoops legend and longtime NBA coach Doug Collins is his father.

It’s safe to assume that even if Doug and Coach K told Chris that Northwestern is a career dead end, they at least gave him a list of needs that he should demand as part of his deal.

Collins will never be as popular as he is while undefeated, and he should use that leverage with enthusiasm to get whatever he might want while still in that honeymoon period. Once the losses start to pile up, the leash will get tighter and tighter.

Whether Collins is able to win at Northwestern or not will be decided by his actions between now and the start of practice in October. We’ll see if he has the will to get the school to pony up for the recruiting budget and facilities upgrade needed to challenge the big boys.

Advice for Shaka Smart, Chris Collins, and other Coaching Candidates – Go for Happy

by Kent Sterling

Can Shaka Smart’s smile be this wide anywhere else?

VCU head coach Shaka Smart is going to be offered the UCLA job if he wants it. Duke assistant Chris Collins has reportedly interviewed for the Northwestern job. There will be dozens of jobs available this offseason – USC, Minnesota, Ball State, among the many others – and Brad Stevens will be a candidate for many because that’s what always happens. Coaches should be wary before pursuing any of them.

There is something to be said for being happy, being loved, and focusing upon what’s important. The chase for a better job, more cash, more stuff, more prestige, more resources, and more responsibility has driven potentially great men insane.

A serious assessment needs to be made of what is important in a life before changing course and making a serious life alteration that appears on the surface to make sense. Seemingly innocuous shifts in lifestyle can cause mayhem for a marriage, kids, finances, and the ability to sleep. Sure, we all want professional challenges, but at what price.

Two of the hottest young coaches in college basketball also appear to be two of the sanest. Shaka Smart is happy at VCU by all accounts. He and his wife have an 18-month old daughter. Richmond is home, and he is appreciated there. VCU loves him and is working to address his needs for staffing and travel for recruiting. The only potential fly in the ointment is that his old athletic director – the guy who hired him at VCU – Norwood Teague is less than a year into his gig at Minnesota. While UCLA appears to be the best job out there, his prior relationship with Teague might be difficult to resist.

Brad Stevens famously shunned a nice gig at Eli Lilly to accept an unpaid coaching job at Butler. He understands happy. Indianapolis is home, and it always has been. Stevens played ball at Zionsville High School, and then went to DePauw University – less than an hour west of Indy. He and his wife Tracy met at DePauw, and they have two kids.

Reportedly, Brad makes a little over $1-million per year, and while that’s not the $6-million Kentucky’s John Calipari pockets, you can run through

Brad Stevens knows how to work hard and smile.

cash like a fool in Indy without getting anywhere near a million bucks. If he didn’t already know what happy was, he would have bolted for Oregon a couple of years ago.

People wonder what the next generation of our society’s leaders is going to look like, and I think they will be a lot like Smart and Stevens. They are two guys who understand that enough can be enough, and that true happiness has little to do with the difference between $10-million in the bank and $15-million in the bank and everything to do with family and friendship.

That’s bad news for the athletic directors like Dan Guerrero at UCLA who believes all he needs to do is identify the best man for the job and then offer him so much cash that he can’t possibly refuse. Those days might be over, after all how much money makes the headache of unreasonable expectations worthwhile?

Despite winning only one national championship since 1975, the fanbase and administration at UCLA demand banners, and at Pauley Pavillion, the only banners hanging from the rafters celebrate national champions. Ben Howland coached at UCLA for ten years, and the Bruins went to three Final Fours, averaged 23 wins, won the conference championship four times (including this season), and had the #1 recruiting class in 2012. Not good enough?

How in the hell can the coach at UCLA enjoy the challenge of working there when the bar for success is so much higher than reality will allow? This is not 1969. There are hundreds of good players who show up on campuses every year, and projecting their success is nearly impossible. Indiana’s Victor Oladipo was ranked 144th among high school seniors in 2010, and may win the John R. Wooden Award as the nation’s top college basketball player as a junior. Josh Selby was ranked #1 as a high school senior in 2010. Selby spent a year at Kansas before entering the NBA Draft. He was taken 49th in the 2011 NBA Draft by the Memphis Grizzlies, and earlier this month was waived by the Cleveland Cavaliers. He is now playing for the Maine Red Claws of the developmental league.

Will Chris Collins be smiling a year from now if he takes the Northwestern job?

Would you want a job coaching a sport where talent evaluations can wobble so completely out of control? Building a team to win a championship is a crapshoot, and if the only measure of success is a national championship, happiness the way Stevens and Smart understand it is impossible.

Life is too short to shoot at moving targets, or worse, unreasonable targets.

There is a guy running an NFL franchise who told me that the key to evaluating free agents is to find out why their previous employer lets them go. Similarly, the key to evaluating a coaching gig is to find out why the previous guy was handed a giant check to not work there.

An employer’s goals need to be specific, measurable, attainable, and timebound. They need to provide the resources necessary to accomplish them. If not, putting a family through the subsequent mess is bad thinking. Chris Collins needs to ask exactly what Northwestern wants out of its basketball program. “How did Bill Carmody fail?” needs to be his first question. Bad answer, and it’s back to a pretty good life at Duke. You only get to leave Duke once. It should be for the right job. He’s surrounded by some pretty damn smart guys. Mike Krzyzewski is his mentor and longtime NBA head coach Doug Collins is his Dad. He’ll get plenty of good counsel.

Life’s too short to dislike any of it. Stevens and Smart are teaching us that.

Sports Parenting – Just Chill Out About the “Next Level”

by Kent Sterling

Twitter is a wonderful tool for communication. It’s immediate, capable of sending a tightly crafted message to millions, and can be as dangerous as it is helpful. Tonight, I saw this – “Parents take control of the recruiting process as early as 5th grade. Visit a college campus on ur own, plant the seed!” Yikes.

The tweet was sent by a well-meaning guy, who clarified the message. What he meant to say was more like, kids with goals tend to work harder than those who don’t.

Kids dream of playing college basketball, especially during the month of March. Hell, I dream of playing college basketball every March. And the tweeter is right, there is nothing like a dream to motivate hard work. Fifth grade is not too early to spend time working on ballhandling, but it is way too early for a parent to indulge in dreams on behalf of a talented child.

There are ways beyond hiring a trainer and getting a kid shoehorned on to an elite fifth grade summer team that parents can help a kid improve. The first is to not take every game so damn seriously. I’ve been there. The weekly tournaments all over Indiana, the persistent critiques, and the investment in the results all contributed not one thing to the development of my son as a basketball player.

What he did get out of that work and play was a group of friends that he still has, a sense of accomplishment in doggedly pursuing his potential, and an understanding of how to take direction and apply it. Now, he helps kids at Cathedral learn to love the game as he does.

None of that has anything to do with the conversations we had in the car after he didn’t play well, or my making it seem like the result of pool play in the Indiana Shootout was more than a silly diversion.

If I had one piece of advice for the parents of kids – regardless of talent level – is to concentrate on the quality of your kid’s character, not his game. The result of a late game jumper is irrelevant. Your response to it can be crucial.

Enjoy the game. Enjoy your kid. Keep everything in perspective. Basketball is a silly game. Getting great at it is a wonderful challenge, but it doesn’t have anything at all to do with a kid’s value. Sit in those uncomfortable bleachers for hours and hours because you love and support your son, not because you are validated when the ball slices through the net.

Encourage your son to live a life of purpose, and if basketball is a part of that, all the better. If college ball is in the cards, that will open doors that might remain shut otherwise, but understand that all of your desires and hopes don’t mean a damn thing to the coaches as they decide whether your son is worthy of their investment.

Relax. Enjoy. Encourage.

Dan Dakich Brings Clarity to My Tom Crean Perspective

by Kent Sterling

Now I know why I didn’t like this guy – and it had nothing to do with him at all.

It’s been almost five years since Indiana University hired Tom Crean to run it’s basketball program, and that is the same amount of time I’ve taken in trying to figure out what it is I don’t care for in Crean. Today, thanks to an on-air intervention by 1070 the Fan host Dan Dakich, I have the answer.

I’ve known Dan for 25 years, and hired him to host 12p-3p on 1070 the Fan in 2008 – roughly the same time Crean was joining the IU family. Dan has always been a guy who asks great questions and holds people accountable for their opinions, so when he got a tweet from a listener as I was a guest on his show that asked me to stop busting on Crean, Dan asked what my problem with Crean is.

Not a tough question for a person with a good answer, but in the past what I came back to were behavioral tics and the opinions of two friends – one of whom worked directly for him at Marquette, and another who was in the media office of a team that played against Crean’s Marquette team annually. I respect both of their opinions, but need to form my own as well. Tics aren’t adequate.

Today, I finally said something that made sense. My issue is not with Tom Crean at all but with the immediate adoration of the students at Indiana who welcomed him to Bloomington like he was the messiah. Crean took Marquette to one Final Four, and agreed to take over an Indiana program that was in the midst of an absolute revolt.

The guy who hired Crean was the same boob who hired Kelvin Sampson, so why in the hell would anyone in their right mind trust that Crean was any better a choice.

Some bad kids recruited by Sampson had been sent packing by Dan while he was the head coach, and then the rest left shortly after Crean was named coach. By the time the following season began, Crean had hosted an open tryout, and filled the roster with some recruits like Matt Roth and Tom Pritchard. Indiana won six games the first season, including one Big Ten game that Roth single handedly shot IU into. Students at IU loved Crean.

Second year under Crean brought ten more wins. Students at IU loved him. The third season – 12 wins. Students loved him ever more.

When I was a college student, we behaved like 20 year-olds are supposed to – with disdain and distrust for all authority figures. Being skeptical is a positive thing for kids who have yet to be squeezed or prodded into compliance by financial needs or professional allegiances. The students at IU appeared to trust Crean without any concrete reason for doing so, and that bothered me.

There are a couple of things I do know about Crean. He is tireless, and is always working. The first time I saw him was at the press event where Eric Gordon announced his decision to forego the rest of his eligibility and enter the NBA Draft. Crean was a whirlwind as he grabbed all the important AAU and high school coaches who showed up. He began building the framework for his in-state recruiting before that, but on this day I watched him waste zero effort socializing. He was a man with purpose, and I would suspect that is exactly how he conducts himself always.

I sat at a table with Pat Forde, Rick Bozich, and IU Basketball SID J.D. Campbell as Crean held court. His conversation was focused, and he had a clear agenda of beliefs that he wanted Forde and Bozich to adopt. He wasn’t manipulative, but he again wasted no time nor effort.

Every moment that I have had with Crean, I’ve tried to figure out who the hell he is, and I think he is the coach of the Indiana Hoosiers. That isn’t just what he does – it’s who he is. Every moment during the last almost five years has been spent trying to rebuild this program. He appears to embody the character the quote, “If you never take no for an answer, you’ll eventually get a yes.”

Crean’s players do some other things too. They get their degrees, and they get the most out of their abilities. living life to your potential is each individual’s choice and responsibility, but a coach is employed to help those two things happen. Crean gets an A+ in both regards.

Oh yeah, after winning those 12 games in 2010-2011, they won 27 last year, and 24 and counting this year as the #1 team in America. Indiana is tough, outstanding defensively, and explosive offensively with five players on the floor who can score. What’s not to like?

Today, on Dan Dakich’s singularly superb radio show, I finally figured out that my problem was never with Crean – it was with those who supported him at a time when there was no reason to because if college students refuse to embrace cynicism, who the hell will. That heavy lifting shouldn’t be left to adults, so I took my anger out on Crean.

Now, with my anger properly assigned to the lemming student boosters living in McNutt, Briscoe, Foster, Wright, and Teter quads, I can evaluate Crean based on what’s important – the quality of the kids playing high quality basketball on their road to Atlanta.

Chicago Cubs – Glad the Worst Team in the National League Is Focused on Pregame Music

by Kent Sterling

The Cubs are rebuilding, and that means the unconditional release of Huey Lewis & the News.

The Cubs suck. Fans know it. Ownership knows it. The players know it. While other teams are building a farm system, reaping the rewards of building one, or investing in a free agent that might put a team over the top, the Cubs are busy with other issues, according to a Paul Sullivan post on chicahgotribune.com.

The Cubs have become very adept over the last couple of years at monetizing the only valuable asset in the Cubs catalogue – Wrigley Field. They have hosted an NHL game, a very cramped version of college football, movies, and soon they will host field hockey. Not sure whether money was actually made, but the place has been busy for more than the Cubs 81 home dates.

Now, the Cubs are busying themselves by reassessing their music repertoire. It seems fans are upset with the barrage of hits from the 1980s, as well as the celebrity conductors of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch. It seems fans were upset the Cubs invited nationally renown mopes without a clue what they were doing to come in to reprise the fan anthem that was led by Harry Caray until his death 15 years ago.

Go figure that fans didn’t care to hear Ozzy Osbourne massacre the song, or others with no relationship to baseball, the Cubs, or Chicago stump for the release of their latest movie, song, or show. I remember watching Ann-Margaret and Gary Sandy (Andy Travis from “WKRP in Cincinnati”) sing a few years ago. It made no sense, but the moves being made by then GM Jim Hendry didn’t either.

Now, instead of finding a way to compete with the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds, they are updating the public address offerings for the pregame. One negative for the Cubs is that they will now almost certainly be the worst team in the National League. The Cubs have done nothing to move from second-to-last into the cellar. Chicagoans can thank commissioner Bud Selig for that. He championed the move of the Houston Astros to the American League, and paved the way to the bottom.

But, thanks to this laser focus on fans enjoying the experience at Wrigley before the baseball starts, at least the dwindling denizens still paying top dollar for Triple-A baseball will get to hear something other than Van Halen and Huey Lewis. How can a franchise be expected to change 105 years of misfortune when they aren’t bright enough to turn over a cassette dubbed in Greg Maddux’s rookie year?

Wrigley Field is little more than a living museum for fans these days. They go the ballpark because it’s where their memories can live. It’s like taking your kids to the Museum of Science and Industry to visit the U-505. That was the coolest when I was seven, and taking my son there was wonderfully nostalgic. Same thing with Wrigley. There is no reason to visit other than to remember my Dad catching a foul ball Jesus Alou hit, or when he asked me to get an autograph from one of the Cincinnati Reds. There were two Reds signing, and instead of Pete Rose I got Fred Whitfield to sign my scorecard.

The relevance of Wrigley is in its generational connect points, not in the Cubs putrid present.

Maybe one day, the detail work for the on-field product will measure up to the marketing staff energetic enough to burn a new CD.

Indiana Basketball – Tom Crean Continues to Build IU Basketball the Right Way

by Kent Sterling

Weird on a day that saw the Indiana Hoosiers lose to Butler to write about what a great job Tom Crean is doing in Bloomington as the architect of a reclamation project that the programmers of HGTV wouldn’t touch with a ten foot support beam.

The truth is that kids are developing as basketball players in Bloomington faster than anywhere else in the country. The work being done in Cook Hall is taking the ordinary, and preparing them for a chance to earn huge dollars in the NBA.

Players like Victor Oladipo, Will Sheehey, Christian Watford, and Jordan Hulls were not considered pro prospects coming out of high school. But they are now, and that is a testimony to the work Crean and his staff do every day to help these kids reach their dreams.

When I interviewed Jordan Hulls as a sophomore, I asked what his plans were after college. He said that he was interested in becoming an athletic trainer. Those plans are likely on hold. Scouts talk about Hulls being a Travis Diener type NBA guard. Diener made $5.9 million in a five-year NBA career. Sure, I thought he was a new intern at 1070 The Fan when he was in-studio, but he banked a lot of cash for a baby-faced assassin.

Victor Oladipo is an interesting kid. There is a fine line between confidence and hubris where greatness can emerge, and Oladipo nests very nicely in that sweet spot. He wants to be the best he can be, and knows that requires an honest assessment of his weaknesses, and a dogged pursuit of addressing them through hard work. Check and check.

It helps that Oladipo can jump out of the gym and is long, but Crean can claim credit for finding Oladipo, assembling a dedicated staff, and putting together a plan that Oladipo can use to make the most of the hours of effort he is willing to invest each day.

Sheehey and Watford are in the same boat. Dilligence is contagious, and the culture of hard work at Indiana can turn the hyperactive, laconic, selfish and/or indifferent into motivated and tenacious teammates who can get closer to their potential at Indiana than any other program they might choose.

That is Crean’s foremost job as a coach, and he is doing it extremely well. The reward for building that culture is already being reaped as the recruits agreeing to come to Indiana continue to be better regarded each year.

My hope is that Crean continues to look for the right kind of kid, rather than the best pure players, and that he helps them become the best they can be. I hope he continues to recruit Indiana heavily, allowing this program to represent the state’s game well, and be the destination of choice among Indiana’s youth.

Winning appears to be more important than anything else as coaches are evaluated, but the more important legacy is in teaching kids the lessons available through competition at the highest level – importance of hard work, balance in life, and unity in purpose.

Especially on a day Indiana lost to a Butler team that also embodies the best in student-athletic pursuits, fans need to remember that football and basketball programs are for the players.

Crean appears to understand that very well, and the players in the candy-striped warn-ups are very lucky to have him as their guide.

A Solid First 10,000 Days Is a Great Start for a Relationship

by Kent Sterling

Every day for 10,000 days my wife and I have spoken – sometimes in laughter, sometimes sorrow, and very occasionally in anger, but always honestly, and without exception – daily.

10,000 days ago Julie and I dancing frenetically and repeatedly to side one of Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” album at aq party in her Walnut Knolls apartment at Indiana University. 9,990 days ago, I asked her to marry me. She said yes, defying logic, prudence, and reason.

Today seems like as good a day to look back as any at a marriage as strange and silly as it is solid and productive.

Julie Purcell was simply the best person I had met when we danced, and she remains that. Each of the 10,000 days seemed to improve her somehow.

The first night was ridiculous. Not many people dance to “Rock and Roll Never Forgets”, and our performance on that first night is Exhibit A as to why. Fifteen minutes into the marathon, a friend named Freddy pulled me aside. He said, “She’s the one. Don’t fuck this one up.” Freddy was the same guy who three months later maxed out his new JC Penney’s card by buying a VCR that for days that turned into nights played an almost endless run of porn selections from Full-o-Pep Rental. He was prescient in his wisdom that night though.

Out of every 100 couples who meet as we did, certainly 99 fail to remain together. Our ability to overcome those stiff odds is almost entirely due to Julie’s incredible appetite for mayhem and belief that at some point I would wake up and assume the behavior of a functional adult. I get marginal credit for seeing through the haze of immaturity to see Julie as a beacon that can always make me embrace my own humanity.

Where there is love, there is hope. Julie kept telling me that I would find the thing that made me happy, and as I searched for that thing, Julie worked, earned, and paid. Eventually, I stopped looking for my own happiness, and started trying to find it in Julie and our son Ryan. Then, life became easier.

I’ve always listened to people talk about giving their lives over to God, and then enjoying some harmony. To focus making family happy makes more sense. Julie taught me that roughly one-third of the way through these 10,000 days. You’re thinking, people become brain surgeons in less time. You are right, and I’m not a brain surgeon. For some lessons, being a slow learner is good enough if the instructor is willing to wait.

Each and every morning, Julie put me on the short bus to adulthood hoping that when I returned, the all grown up Kent would get off, and they would settle into a normal quiet life. But I wasn’t quiet, and I’m sure as hell not normal.

Julie is a master at humanity. She consistently sees the world as a place that can be more fair for the people she meets. She laughs loudly. She gives generously. And she loves deeply. Her only flaw is a lack of tolerance for my trying to deliver her more quickly by car than she finds necessary.

For 10,000 days, I have had the brains (sometimes barely enough) to understand how lucky I am to have had my belief confirmed by Freddy that Julie is indeed the one.

Through odd nicknames, persistent laughter, and arguments about Julie’s preoccupation with cooking shows, we have shared challenges, nights of madness, and days of dreams. We raised a son who has done nothing but make us proud, and reaffirmed Julie’s wisdom.

Through thick and thin, Julie has always believed that she did the right thing by dancing to Bob Seger for hours with an oddly dressed boob in a black hat. And now we hopefully have another 10,000 days that will be as filled with love as the first 10,000.

No one could have predicted that on January 16, 2012, Julie and I would celebrate a seldom recognized milestone like this. My greatest contribution is in providing a consistently vexing series of challenges for a girl who has always loved them.

Finally! Indiana Posts Signature Win Over Kentucky as Good Triumphs

by Kent Sterling

Indiana Basketball beat their neighbor to the south 73-72. You know, the one that keeps kids around for nine months and turns them loose to the NBA. Yeah, those guys in blue and white.

This is THE win that fans in Bloomington have waited for since disgraced former coach ran the SS Hoosier into a reef of illegal phone calls that almost claimed the program for good. Kelvin Sampson was fired, and a majority of the players left as well.

Rebuilding seemed to take forever – the last three years have seemingly lasted forever – and while the Hoosiers occasionally mustered the energy and faith needed to battle obviously more talented opponents, it was clear that more was needed to get over the hump and beat someone real.

Today, Indiana beat someone real. Kentucky continues to benefit from the asinine age restriction rule that prohibits high school kids from being drafted despite being ready to play in the NBA, turning its basketball program into little more than a one year basketball academy like IMG in Bradenton, Florida. Indiana recruits kids who play and study, and hopefully will earn degrees. And they work hard.

The Hoosiers battled back to win on a three-pointer from Christian Watford as time expired after blowing a double digit lead. Threes rained through the hoop seven straight times after Indiana started 0-for-4, and they survived turnovers caused by Kentucky’s great athleticism.

For kids who have worked their asses off for years, this win was a sweet and well-earned reward. Anyone who has spent any time at all covering Indiana Basketball has seen the sweat equity players invested without any promise of return at all, and over 60 losses that validated any cynicism.

The most incredible attribute of these kids and coaches is the dogged belief that motivated that work ethic. People outside the program have asked why they kept working, but it never appeared that question was asked by anyone inside Cook Hall. Loss after loss was met with hour after hour of dedication, arduous hours of shooting and lifting, and a faith that hard work would yield a positive result.

What a positive result this afternoon’s 40 minutes of play brought.

And for Kentucky? I suppose all talk about abandoning this series in favor of scheduling someone else will cease. After today’s game, they would look puny and intimidated by pulling the plug on the Hoosiers.

There are three more months of hooping left for these gifted soon-to-be pros, and this loss might be the best thing that could happen. This loss to Indiana is going to smart for awhile, and might get the attention of those who played with marked indifference at Assembly Hall.

For Indiana, the players will be fueled by having their faith validated in such a profound way. Later in the season, when the Big Ten (12) season gets tough, they’ll be able to look back at this game to fuel more work, faith, and mayhem.

This was one game of 30-plus games for both teams, but what a game it was. And what an afternoon for Indiana Basketball fans, who have been waiting, hoping, pining for, dreaming of, and wanting more than anything else to see electricity and significant victories return to Assembly Hall.

To the team, coaches, and administrators – congratulations. To the student body – leave Showalter Fountain alone. Scattering the statues around campus is for NCAA Championships only.

And to Kentucky fans – Shut the hell up, and pay off all those bets. I await your checks, or feel free to use Paypal.

Ron Santo Elected to Baseball Hall of Fame By Heartless Asshats

by Kent Sterling

One year and two days after his death, former Chicago Cubs third baseman Ron Santo’s dream finally came true. The Golden Era Committee in charge of the key to the gates of Cooperstown relented, welcoming Santo 37 years after his retirement from his beloved game. Shame on them.

Santo spent countless years being mostly ignored by the Baseball Writers Association of America. The high water mark of his candidacy for traditional admission was a paltry 43.1% of the necessary 75%. In his first year, Santo received 3.9%. The Veteran’s Committee wasn’t much kinder. Every other year, Santo waited by a phone that would not ring – at least not with the news for which he hoped.

Then he dies, and the Golden Era (don’t ask me the difference between the Veteran’s Committee and the Golden Era folks) calls. It bears mention that I hold am dealing harshly with the Golden Era people as though no changes were made from the Veteran’s Committee. I don’t care enough about this gaggle of misanthropes to distinguish one group from the other. It’s possible this is a kinder and gentler group of committee members, and they have simply corrected a wrong done by Joe Morgan and the other crank cases that punished Santo because he was a bit of a hothead and pain in the ass as an opponent.

If Santo is deserving of enshrinement now, he was certainly deserving two, four, six, and eight years ago. He hit his last home run in 1974, and made his last out in the same year. He’s like a guy who applied for a position more than 30 years ago, his resume’ remains unchanged after all that time, dies still praying to get the job, and only then is invited to join the staff – and the reason he gets it is principally because he died.

Make no mistake, I’m not a supporter of Santo’s candidacy. But the way in which this was handled is exactly why so many people loathe so many other people. This whole Santo election makes me sick to my stomach. He doesn’t belong in the Hall, but if these tools were going to enshrine him, it should have been done while he could enjoy it.

There is no denying Santo’s enthusiasm for baseball and the Cubs, but the committees that determine entry had it right for 32 years after his eligibility. The Baseball Hall of Fame should be reserved for the men who achieved unquestioned greatness. If there can be a debate as to whether a retired player belongs in Cooperstown, he doesn’t. Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Johnny Bench, Carl Hubbell, Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Ty Cobb, and Henry Aaron are beyond argument. Nellie Fox, Bert Blyleven, Richie Ashburn, and Bobby Doerr? All very good, and now Santo is in that midst of the good who have been asked to play among the great.

Santo’s career was cut short by the effects of his diabetes. No doubt his career statistics suffered because he was unable to play beyond age 34, but during his prime, it wasn’t all roses either. Not once did Santo finish in the top three in MVP balloting. He led the National League in a major offensive category only once – triples in 1964. There were good numbers, but none that were great. Nine all-star games, five Gold Gloves, hit .300 or better four times, drove in 100 runs four times, and hit 30+ home runs four times. No trips to the postseason.

Sad to say, that’s not enough. I wish it was. I grew up loving the Cubs, and watched Santo for the last six years of his career on Chicago’s North Side. I earned Bs for speeches in high school and college trumpeting Billy Williams hall of fame credentials – Bs because the poster boards I used for my corroborating materials were crudely rendered, and re-used because why the hell would I do new ones when nothing had changed. Anyway, I digress. I chose Williams instead of Santo because Williams belongs in Cooperstown.

That Santo’s career is not Hall of Fame worthy doesn’t diminish the level of profound stupidity and heartless buffoonery of these old farts who have conferred the honor Santo dreamed of since his retirement 367 days after his death. People who do the right thing at the wrong time, or the wrong thing at the right time are everywhere. Those who do the right thing at the right time for the right reason are almost never in a position to do that. Power is generally wasted on those who have no idea what to do with it.

Jim Hendry Out as Chicago Cubs GM – It’s Mardi Gras Times New Year’s Eve at the Sterlings!

by Kent Sterling

Maybe these two knuckleheads can play pinochle together in Tampa now that neither are trusted to bring a winner to Chicago's northside

Being fired is unpleasant, and because I am a man of great empathy, I always feel a little pain when I hear about the professional demise of any and all. Except today!

The firing of Jim Hendry as the general manager of the Chicago Cubs is the best news I have heard in years. For me, and anyone who loves the Cubs, this is like the resignation under duress of President Nixon. Our long national nightmare is over!

Hendry by all accounts is a good guy – very personable and decent. None should have anything against him personally. I hope he happily plays golf for the rest of his life, laughs loudly every day, and revels in the beauty of every sunset. As Warren Zevon advised during his battle with terminal cancer, “Enjoy every sandwich.”

Now that the niceties are out of the way, I am thrilled that this man who rewarded mediocrity with many millions, and left fans disturbed by the incessant coddling of malcontents and fools, is gone.

Yes, I sent Hendry moving boxes in May. It cost me $50 to have them delivered, but it made me feel good. Maybe he kept them around, and will use them today as he crates up his stuff.

The roster of over-the-hill, oft-injured, bipolar, and indifferent players who have cashed checks Hendry authorized is as long as the trail of tears shed by Cubs fans. Carlos Zambrano ($18 million), Milton Bradley ($10 million X three years), Aramis Ramirez at $14.6 million per, Alfonso Soriano ($18 X 8), Kosuke Fukudome ($14M per), and on and on have taken the Cubs to the depths of the spend a lot, achieve nothing pile.

The hire of the woefully ill-equipped Mike Quade was immaterial because there was no way that the Cubs were going to achieve anything this year, but showed Hendry to be as inept at measuring the potential of a leader as he was in evaluating talent given tens of millions of someone else’s money.

The Cubs may never win a World Series, but at least the sacking of Hendry gives Cubs fans hope that a new day is dawning. There is now reason for optimism.

Cubs owner Tom Ricketts might be bright enough to find the right guy. At least now fans know he has the brains to recognize the wrong guy when he’s sitting across the table from him.

That is took Ricketts almost two full years to know Hendry was a silly man who couldn’t deny his insatiable hunger for additional toys at steep prices.

I don’t know Hendry. Feeling a sense of loss or pity for a man who has cashed checks worth millions over the past ten seasons as the Cubs chief potentate is not emotion well spent, but I know the sense of immediate loss being fired brings. I’m sure Ricketts sent Hendry away with enough money to pay off the homes of a dozen recently unemployed men, so let’s save the weeping.

This is a great day for Cubs fans because whoever follows might be better suited to build the winner long suffering Cubs devotees deserve.

There is a reason to smile today – just not for Jim Hendry. Wish I had sent packing tape with the boxes.