April 6 - "Welcome to Moving Day"

The 2005 College Basketball season is now in the can and that only means one thing: Its Masters week. And boy what a week it is shaping up to be down in the Georgia Pines. Look at all the subplots we have working. First, we have Phil Mickelson, coming off a win last week in Atlanta, trying to defend the green jacket he stole last year from Ernie Els with a historic bender on 18. There is the Big Easy trying to right things after a 2004 campaign that produced four top-10’s in the majors but no championship hardware. Then you have Vijay Singh, coming off a magnificent 2004, trying to win his second green jacket and place a stranglehold on the world’s number one ranking. Also, you have Tiger Woods trying to end a ten major drought and prove he is still the one to beat on Augusta’s torturous greens. If that isn’t enough, we have Reteif Goosen out to prove that he deserves mention as one of the game’s best and who is to say this cool customer won’t be rolling them pure come this weekend. Then we have the young guns – guys like Sergio and Chris Riley - gunning for their first major, desperately hoping that they won’t someday be mentioned as “the best golfer in the world who has never won a major.” The Masters is just great stuff and I will be glued to my television right up until Jim and Hootie present the green jacket at Butler Cabin on Sunday around 6:50 EST. And as in year’s past, there is only one thing you can be sure of this year and that is when CBS picks up coverage around 3:30 on Saturday, Jim will open up with his signature: “WELCOME TO MOVING DAY AT AUGUSTA.” I get chills just thinking about it.

So who do I like this year? Well, it is always a crap shoot picking a golfer out of a field like this, but I am going to take Goose. Yep, the Goose is loose down in Georgia and I say he picks up his third major and first green jacket. Why the Goose? Well, there is simply not a cooler customer out there than South Africa’s favorite slinger. Tiger can intimidate and be lights out, but for my money, the Goose is the guy I want holding the putter with the tourney on the line. Based on what I saw from Goose at Shinecock last year, this is my guy. He is Fast Eddie Felson, Annie Duke and Adam Vinaterri all rolled into one. That is how clutch he was during Sunday of last year’s open. Reteif started the year slowly, but he has an 8th at Doral, a 4th at Bay Hill and a 12th at The Players since the tour headed east. My only concern with Goosen is he hasn’t played that well in his six appearances at Augusta. He has some top-25s, but he only has a single top-3 and that was in 2002 when he crapped the bed with a 74 on Sunday and finished three back of Mr. Woods. Perhaps he learned from that and come Sunday, he sticks it back in Woods face. That is something I would love to see.

So Goose is my guy this year, but I would be remiss if I didn’t throw out some other bones. Hell, I wouldn’t mind seeing Phil repeat and it is not out of the question. Phyllis Diller comes into the tourney as the tour’s leading money winner and there is no question he has the game to win this week. I also think the time may be right for Sergio. He has been fairly close a couple times and perhaps this is the year he gets it done. He certainly has the game to get it done. Other foreigners I like for the office pool include Darren Clarke and Stu Appleby even though neither has really done much Augusta over the years. As for the Americans – what about Tom Lemon? He has been playing very good gold since Labor Day and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him with a top 10. He is a great value pick in the office pool. If you are looking for karma – what about Davis Love? His Heels won the NCAAs on Monday night and Davis could make two in one week for the boys back in Chapel Hill. Another good value pick is Chris Riley. I know he is young, but he is a great putter and that is what the Masters is all about. Lastly, I will throw a plug to the old man on tour – Jay Haas. Augusta’s greens are probably too much for Haas nerves, but nevertheless, he must love playing the Masters. Why is that? Well, he is paired on Thursday with Jack, meaning this is the only tourney he plays where golfers, other then himself, can remember where they were when Alan Shepherd orbited the Earth.

Do you want to know how long it has been since Tiger last won a major? Well, it was so long ago that Worldcom was operational, the White House still claimed Saddam Hussein had big old 30 megaton warheads, Serena still cared about playing Tennis, Chick Hearn was still calling games for the Lakers, and Sox fans were still living under an 84 year old curse. That is a long, long time ago. In that time, Tiger has played in ten majors and has only been in the top-10 three times. These top-10’s occurred at the 2002 PGA (2nd to Jim Beem), the 2003 British (4th behind some dude named Curtis) and the 2004 British (t-9th behind Tad Hamilton). In the grand scheme of things, this is not the end of the world, but we are talking about Tiger here. And in case you care, Jack never had this kind of slump. In fact, if you look at Jack’s major slump in the 70s, it doesn’t even come close to comparing with what Tiger is going through. You want evidence? Jack had a ten major slump beginning with the 1976 Masters that went through the 1978 British. During that time, his worst finish was 11th and he had six top-5s. That is a run and not a slump if you ask me. Moreover, if Tiger goes winless in the majors this year, he will have fallen behind Jack’s pace. The moral to this story is Tiger has to stop playing xbox with Elin and get back to work. The clock just began ticking on the big cat’s run to immortality.

Welcome back Smoltzie - we missed you! Did anyone catch John Smoltz and his much hyped return to the Braves starting rotation yesterday? It wasn’t pretty and that is being pretty damn generous. For those of you who did miss the Braves season opener. Smoltz gave up six earned runs while recording five outs. He faced 13 hitters and threw 65 pitches before manager Bobby Cox had seen enough and lifted him for Jorge Sosa. I know its early and only baseball phonies reach for the panic button on opening day, but Braves fans better hope they didn’t see the real John Smoltz yesterday. After all, the Braves made Smoltzie’s return to the starting rotation a cornerstone of their off-season and this experiment must succeed if they are going to compete for the NL East crown. Granted, yesterday was just one start, but you must realize that there is no guarantee this media darling can come back and be a dominant starter. To suggest otherwise is a bit foolish since he is trying to do something that has never been done with any real success. As such, there is some risk here. In fact, there is huge risk because number 29 is being counted on give the Braves 200 plus innings and 17-18 wins. Based on yesterday’s sterling outing, Smoltz will need to make 130 starts to get to that 200 inning mark.

I didn’t think it was possible, but I found a crew of announcers that is harder to absorb than those magnificent crews in New York and Atlanta. I was surfing the baseball package the other day and settled on a pitching dual between Cleveland and the White Sox. Ken Harrelson and Darren Jackson announce ChiSox games and let me tell you – this pairing is an abortion that survived. With this being my first palehose game, I am not sure which guy was which, but on countless occasions, this duo was flat out cheering for the home club. At one point, there was a comment that the "good guys" led 1-0, and on another occasion, one of the guys was begging for a long ball to “STAY FAIR!” It seems both cruel and unusual to plug South Siders with both a losing team and a laughable broadcasting crew.

Speaking of bad broadcasters, the Yankee TV crew was in rare form this week as the Sox came to town. This is a special occasion and that means Paulie O’Neil was flown in from Ohio to offer his two jaded and worthless cents. O’Neil was a nice ball player but he is nothing short of a pinstripe propagandist in the booth. He is a modern day Joe Goebbles, who in case you forgot, was the spokesman for the twentieth century’s other evil empire. O’Neil just cannot help himself from praising his old Yankee mates and apologizing for any and all of their mistakes. When Mariano Rivera blew a save yesterday, O’Neil nearly choked as he was coughing up excuses for the gimp. Paulie basically calls a game much like a thirteen year adoring kid would call a game. His comments are so laden with adulation that you might think the comments were coming from an autograph seeker and not a former player. Not only that, but he cannot compliment a single player in baseball without parsing it with some sort of deference for a Yankee. Case in point, Paulie could never talk up Miguel Tejada too aggressively since that could be construed to mean there is a MLB shortstop that may be better than Mr. Jeter. It is bad enough that we have to stomach Mike Kay’s senseless banter and thinly veiled barbs for 130-140 games a year, but O’Neil is just too much for my stomach lining to absorb. I guess if could be worse though. If Steinbrenner really wanted to kill me he would bring that other right-fielder into the booth. You know the guy – he wore number forty four.

This comes to us straight from the selective amnesia file. North Carolina Senior Forward Jackie Manuel was quoted in USA TODAY yesterday talking about UNC’s miserable 2003 campaign that ended with a loss in the NIT. “It was miserable. It was a long season. It was a frustrating season. It was something I really didn’t expect. The year before (we) went to the Sweet Sixteen so I thought we were going to pick up where they left off.” Say what Jack? Mr. Manuel sure needs a history lesson because his facts are a bit off. In case anyone forgot, UNC went 8-20 in 2002, which is the year that Manuel refers to above. Okay, I am not going to jump on Jack because it appears that the reporter who wrote the story placed his quote in the wrong context. I will give Jack some latitude and assume he was really talking about UNC’s success in 2001, which is the year before he arrived in Chapel Hill. Okay, given that concession, Manuel is still off because the 2001 Tar Heels never sniffed the Sweet Sixteen. That team got knocked off by Penn State in the second round. Manuel is obviously no historian, but the real fault here lies with USA Today reporter Malcolm Moran. Rather than embarrass Manuel, Moran should have left the quote out or double-backed and asked Manuel to clarify his statement. He did neither and that makes him a lazy journalist or a prick – or perhaps both!

Did anyone notice that this year’s inductees to the Basketball Hall of Fame were announced this week and Dominique Wilkins and Joe Dumars were left out while two ass clown coaches got the invite? What the hell is going on here? To leave Dominique out of the Hall while handing out a ticket to Jim Boeheim is tantamount to leaving Pol Pot off history’s “great villain” list yet giving the nod to Henry Kissinger. Heck, both were pretty villainous, but one was clearly a monster while the other was merely an unintelligible jerkoff. The same goes with basketball. How can Wilkins not be in the Hall? The guy is ninth on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with almost 27,000 points. He was a nine-time all-star who was the mainstay of a pretty decent Hawks team that made the playoffs in eight of Wilkins first eleven seasons. The Human Highlight averaged thirty points on a few occasions and there was nobody in the game who could stop this guy in the open court. Now some may say that Wilkins was a scorer who played in a high octane era and therefore his numbers should be looked upon with a jaundiced eye. I disagree strongly. I saw this guy play and he dominated, certainly more so than Alex English - who is already sitting in Springfield. I understand that some may want to keep the bar for Hall entry high, but this is a gross oversight, made more glaring by the fact that two college coaches, Jim Boeheim and Jim Calhoun, were voted in this year. Since when did coaches become more important than the players they coach? Both of these men have had great careers, highlighted by 700 college wins apiece, but do they deserve to be immortalized? Boeheim has won one NCAA tournament in 59 years of coaching and Calhoun has been to exactly two Final Fours. And as far as Boeheim is concerned, is that 700 win total all that impressive when it contains eight home victories a year over teams like St. Bonaventure, Cornell, Marist and some Brooklyn night school that teaches English to recent immigrants? As far as I am concerned, at least 200 hundred of Boeheim’s 700 wins don’t count since they came against patsies that even the BCS doesn’t recognize. I understand that Basketball writers may want to keep the Hall a sacred place reserved for only the best of the best, but this is ridiculous. Wilkins was the best unless you use the most restrictive definition possible. And under such a definition, Boeheim’s induction is a travesty.

I have a second big criticism with Basketball’s Hall of Fame and it stems from the lack of respect the museum shows for the college game, and great college players in particular. Unlike football, there is only one Basketball Hall of Fame to honor college and professional athletes. Football has it right since they have a museum that honors those who were great as collegians but less than immortal at the professional level. Basketball and Baseball have no such option. Instead, basketball has a single repository where the greats of the game are honored. But here is the catch – in recent times, the basketball hall of fame has never honored a PLAYER solely for his contributions as a collegian. This is odd since there are a handful of coaches who have been honored even though they have never spent a day walking the sidelines of the NBA. So what gives here? We honor guys for coaching college basketball yet we don’t have a single minute for those guys who played college basketball? Now some might argue that I am off base here since many inductees were great as both college and professional players. That is true, but over the last 25 years, not a single guy has been inducted solely based on his college resume. If this were not the case, David Thompson, Ralph Sampson, Christian Laettner and Wayman Tisdale would all be enshrined. To make matters worse, a few women – Ann Meyers and Denise Curry – have been inducted based entirely on careers played at UCLA. If this isn’t a double standard, I don’t know what is. It is time for the Basketball Hall of Fame to do one of two things. Preferably, they should open up another wing to honor college basketball’s elite players and coaches. The second option is for the Hall to start throwing out all these college coaches. Such an option would mirror what goes on in baseball. Hell, you don’t see college coaches like Rod Dedeaux, Cliff Gustafson and Mike Marquess with plaques in Cooperstown. As such, what are guys like John Cheney, Jim Boeheim and Jim Calhoun doing in Springfield? It is time for the Basketball Hall of Fame to decide whether to recognize the college game or not. If it’s the former, it is time to start sending out the invites because there are plenty of great collegians that deserve recognition. But it it’s the latter; the Hall’s custodian should break out his industrial strength broom because a lot of crap needs to be swept out the door.