Billy Paultz Reconsidered

It’s been a slow week, especially in sports….

Don’t know much about soccer. Don’t care much about soccer. So let’s equate this to other sports- Let’s say there was a country (we’ll call it Canada) that was trying to play American football at the highest level, and in the space of a few days Canada’s best football team beat the New England Patriots by two TDs and then had a two-TD lead at halftime over the Pittsburgh Steelers before barely losing. Would anyone see this as anything other than a huge positive for Canadian football? Isn’t that essentially what the American soccer team did last week?

Nah. We choked, according to many in the media, including the normally sensible Michael Wilbon on “Pardon the Interruption,” who said choking is “defined as having a big lead and blowing it to a superior opponent,” suggesting the problem might be more Wilbon’s vocabulary than his judgment. Later this week, Wilbon and his PTI partner that day, Bob Ryan, predicted that there was no way the U.S. would win a major event like the Confederations Cup within the next 10 years.

Yes, it’s easier to beat a superior opponent in soccer than football, which may be a partial explanation of what the U.S. did last week, but is also a reason why it’s foolish to predict when Wilbon/Ryan did. 

Don’t misunderstand. BPR is not rooting for (or against) the U.S. team, nor for the sport finally “taking off,” in America. This is entirely because of the pomposity of soccer lobbyists, exemplified by then-Sports Illustrated columnist Steve Rushin in this senseless and snotty 2006 piece titled, “World’s right, we’re wrong,” in which Rushin contends that our apathy toward the World Cup, “illuminates many of our least flattering qualities as a nation.”

Good God.

Listen, people: Human tastes are of course a product not just of individual sensibility but environment, upbringing, cultural differences, etc, etc. Duh. I cannot imagine the arrogance it would take to tell someone they’re wrong to enjoy something, or wrong not to.

There has been a post-genius Joe Dumars sighting.

Hey, Mark Cuban: Wanna buy a baseball team?

I consider both ends of the political spectrum equally morally and intellectually bankrupt, fraudulent and full of crap, with one exception: The right feels it has to engage Archie Bunker to win elections. Hence Karl Rove, etc.

Consider these tweets (while also considering the unease your correspondent is braving to type the word “tweet”):

JUST HEARD OBAMA IS GOING TO IMPOSE A 40% TAX ON ASPIRIN BECAUSE IT’S WHITE AND IT WORKS.

and, referring to a gorilla escaping from a South Carolina zoo:

I’M SURE IT’S JUST ONE OF MICHELLE’S ANCESTORS—PROBABLY HARMLESS.

Oh, the side-holding mirth I’m sure you’re experiencing now. But consider that these gems did not come from just any jackass mouthing off on the WWW. The first came from one Mike Green, who works for a GOP consulting firm. The second is from Rusty DePass, a prominent South Carolina GOP activist.  These are Republican-for-a-living jackasses mouthing off on the WWW.

People traffic in this kind of junk when they know they can not only get away with it, but profit from it. I’m sure somebody somewhere can come up with an isolated example in rebuttal, but in general there’s no left-wing equivalent to this.

Look at the treatment of the American flag in this photo. Now remove Sarah Palin from the picture and replace her with Barack or Michelle Obama, and consider the mouth-foaming spasms Sean Hannity would be having. 

E-mail of the week:

Subject: of silence, sadness, and unspoken care: the man got killed in that down-train disaster

Body:

the just man kept his course along the man got killed in that down-train disaster but the prolific would cease to be prolific unless the of silence, sadness, and unspoken care:

Nothing to add, really.

I don’t have anything useful to say about Michael Jackson, but Jeff Pearlman does.

The definitive NBA draft diary. Let’s just say Simmons and I disagree dramatically about Tyreke Evans.

Matt Yglesias has a contrarian, but somewhat sensible, take on Minnesota buying point guards like they’re hamburger buns.

Because lists are good fun, here’s one man’s top 50 players in the NFL. This strikes me as a good list, actually, but who knew there was a receiver better than Larry Fitzgerald?

More on that story: From Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders, the 25 most overrated and underrated players of the decade.

Why are people so bent out of shape about Manny Ramirez playing a few minor-league games to get into playing shape? And why weren’t they upset about, say, J.C. Romero doing it? I realize Manny is the enemy now and that’s OK, but this doesn’t really make sense.

The generally lenient Roger Ebert hardly ever gives a flick just one star, but he flat-out hated the new Transformers movie. And my younger son, who loves the idea of Transformers more than he loves PlayStation, didn’t like it either. I’m gonna suggest saving $7 on this one.

Today is a sad one in this building, because it’s the final day of publication for the Lancaster New Era. In honor of which, some things this business might try to save itself.

7:00 p.m.- We are live from the sofa for the NBA draft. Everyone in my family is staring silently at a screen right now- but it’s four different screens in four different parts of the house. A real Norman Rockwell tableux.

By all accounts this draft is mediocre or worse, but the dealing of veteran players is making it an interesting night. So far:

The Cavs sent center Ben Wallace and swingman Sasha Pavlovic to the Suns, along with a second-round pick in the 2010 draft and $500,000 in cash, for the love Shaq.

The New Jersey Nets have traded Vince Carter and Ryan Anderson to the Orlando Magic for Rafer Alston, Tony Battie and Courtney Lee.

7:13 - Last year, Jeff Van Gundy and, to a lesser extent, Mark Jackson, seemed lost on this broadcast. This year, perhaps because the big news is more about the current league than draftees, they’ve been on the money, especially in discussing the limitations of the Shaq trade. I’m not sure Vince Carter is “better than Hedo Turkoglu,” though.

Van Gundy: “I have nine teams trying to win right now, the rest are just trying to save money.” Yes, it’s the recession draft.

7:18 - Jay Bilas says Ty Lawson, whom a lot of people think the Sixers have a shot at, is underrated, and “the most efficient player in this draft.” Blake Griffin looks fairly efficient to me. Bilas’ general point is a good one, though- Lawson is a pure point, but still scored on a team of scorers, shot 52 percent from the field, played at the highest college level possible and was the best player in the Final Four. The Sixers could do much worse.

7:22- Fran Frischilla just called Ricky Rubio “Gretzkylike.”  OK, but too much has been made of Rubio’s performance in the Olympics. Solanco grad Sarunas Jasikivicius (pretty sure I spelled that wrong- sorry) lit up the U.S. in the Olympics much more than Rubio did, and had a short, marginal NBA career.

7:31- “Welcome to Madison Square Garden, home of the Knicks and the Liberty.” What, no mention of Ringling Bros.?

No speech necessary, Commissioner Stern. Seriously.

7:34- Mike Dunleavy’s working the phones in the Clippers’ war room. “Clippers’ war room” is like “Larry the Cable Guy’s wine cellar.”

More good stuff from Van Gundy/Jackson on the Clips’ need to trade a big guy.

7:38- Griffin is it. Plain black suit and tie enlivened by a purple shirt and matching pocket square. Not bad. Hugs, etc.

Dunleavy - the league’s only coach/GM, seems almost dour in a brief, succinct interview. Geez.

7:45- Hasheem Thabeet to Memphis at No. 2. Meh. This draft is suppoed to be all about guards, but of course the first two picks are bigs. A candid Bilas: “I’m not sure his offense is ever gonna get there.”

7:50- Mild surprise- James Harden to Okie City at No. 3. He’s wearing a goofy suit, not-quite-matching vest and bow tie. Scott Pera, the former Annville-Cleona coach who had Harden in HS and as an assistant at Arizona State, is at Harden’s table.

We never see Pac-10 guys enough around here, but I was disappointed in Harden when I did see him. After seeing some Pac-10 teams in the NCAAs. I wonder if he wasn’t simply the best player in a bad league. Seemed sort of heavy-legged, not real athletic, the opposite of explosive. Reminds me of ex-Temple guard Mardy Colllins, who’s a marginal pro.

7:56- Tyreke Evans to Sacramento. The NBA is way too much into “upside,” and youth, but this kid, to me, is the exception. No doubt he’s an unfinished product, but he has a chance to be Dwayne Wade. Bigger upside - How does one avoid these awful terms? - than Blake Griffin. Seriously. Great pick.

Has there been a commercial yet? They’ve been on for an hour. I was all prepared to make fun of commercials…

Minnesota has four picks in the first round, including the next two.

8:00- Ricky Rubio to the T-wolves. Latest depressing indication I’m getting old- There has now been an NBA draft pick younger than one of my kids. Does Rubio want to live in Minnesota? Just askin.

I think Van Gundy just said the T-wolves young roster will get its to-be-named coach fired. Geez.

8:07- Now we’re wheeling and dealing- Jonny Flynn to the T-wolves, which must mean more deals are coming, although the ESPN guys are talking as if Flynn and Rubio could play together. I sense that approach could cause some, um, matchup problems.

Flynn is a tough, strong, athletic dude, but I would think T.J. Ford is his ceiling.

8:15- Golden State takes Steph Curry, whom the crowd wanted for the home Knicks. Boo. I’m surprised he measured at more than 6-3. Like him.

Am I nuts? There still hasn’t been a commercial…

8:20- The Knicks take Jordan Hill. Boo. Another Pac-10 guy I didn’t see much and wasn’t overly impressed with when I did. Name a big who left college without a post-game and later got one. I can’t either. Hill proves to be a Moses Malonesque interview. Welcome to the Big Apple.

8:26- DeMar DeRozan to Toronto. Similar to Tyreke in every way, but not as good in any way, IMHO. Ought to eventually be able to guard perimeter players, at least.

Commercial break. Let’s all towel off.

8:31- The Bucks, coached by gutty, gritty Scotty Skiles, just took a PG who averaged like six a game off the bench in the Italian League last season and weighs 169 pounds. Of course, Frischilla likes him.

This is taken to mean, of course, that Brandon Jennings’ experiment - blowing off college to go to Europe - worked. It worked because the NBA doesn’t value actual performance and productivity. Congratulations.

8:37- Terrence Williams to Jersey. He’s no Brandon Jennings, but I like him a lot. Remember Alvin Robertson? There you have it.

Whatever happened to Stephen A. Smith? That’s not a rhetorical question, actually. What happened to him? Not that I’m missing Stephen A, but you’ve got to admit, this broadcast is missing some over-the-top weirdness.

8:44- Michael Jordan takes a Dukie- Gerald Henderson to Charlotte. Henderson might be able to take some of his bosses’ cash on the links.

8:49- Indiana takes Tyler Hansbrough, a surprise. It’ll be really interesting to see how he turns out. Never saw a player get beat up every time he touched the ball for four college seasons the way Hansbrough did. The NBA is going to be much less physical than college for this kid. If he learns to shoot the three, he’ll be a good pro. I really think it’s that simple.

8:54- Stunning news from the real world- Michael Jackson is dead of a heart attack. Wow. Forgive the myopia but, again, your correspondent’s getting old- Jackson was within a couple weeks of my exact age.

8:56- Earl Clark, the new Nazr Mohammed, to Phoenix.

Reaction to Michael Jackson’s death apparently blew out Google. Didn’t think that was possible.

9:02- Austin Daye of Gonzaga to the Pistons. This is a guy I liked a lot the few times I saw him, but he has a soft rep.

Excellent rant from Dickie V- “You hear about potential, about these guys who averaged six points a game, 12 points a game, and they’re supposed to be great. They get coaches fired.”

I’ve said this before, but you get Vitale away from an actual basketball game and thus from the Pavlovian urge to yell like a loon, and he’s pretty decent.

9:06- James Johnson of Wake to the Bulls. Borderliner. Sixers are next. Lawson is still out there.

Suns’ GM Steve Kerr pretty much admits, in an interview, that his club won’t be trying to win in the forseeable future. It’s the recession NBA.

9:11- The Sixers take… Jrue Holiday. Saw him up close vs. Nova in NCAAs. Looked like about the fifth-toughest guard in that game. Was clearly the second-best guard on his own college team, and the best, Darren Collison, is in this draft. He’s being picked to play a position he’s never played above the high school level. The Sixers have proved me way wrong with their last couple first-round picks, but this makes no sense to me.

9:17- I was about to suggest, very jokingly, that Minnesota would take Lawson here. Except they took Lawson here. For real. The T-wolves have had three picks so far, and they’ve taken: an 18 year-old point guard, a 5-11 point guard, and another 5-11 point guard. Trade coming, of course. Isn’t it?

9:20- Yes, it is. Lawson’s apparently going to Denver for a 2010 pick Denver was getting from Charlotte. Something like that.

Let’s see- if Charlotte makes the playoffs next year, then the pick they’re getting for Lawson will be about the same as the one they just used to get Lawson with, unless the Wolves think next year’s draft will be much better than this year’s. Except that they stood on their head to get extra picks in this draft. I just don’t know what to tell you.

9:22- Jeff Teague of Wake to Atlanta. Like it. Very athletic, and can really score.

9:25- Eric Maynor to Utah. A terrific pick at No. 20 for a team on which he won’t have to be a savior. Three picks in a row, all guards,  I’d rather have than what the Sixers got.

9:32- Darren Collison to the Hornets. Four straight.

9:39- Portland takes a Spanish dude. A 6-9 small forward. Frischilla: “They’ll put him on ice for a while.”

9:40- Just when this was starting to feel as scintillating as an insurance conference, let’s all welcome Shaq: “I haven’t had any verbal conversations with Lebron, but I’ve has many mental conversations with him.”

9:44- The Kings take a player from… Israel. He’d be the first Israeli to play in the league. This seems right down Jon Stewart’s alley.

9:49- The Mavs take a 7-footer who didn’t start for Ohio State in his only college season and has no post game. How did he stay out of the lottery?

9:54- Okie City takes a guard from, yes, Guadalupe. Pretty sure he’s be the first Guadalupean (?) to play in the league. Bucher says they’re trading him to Dallas for the Ohio State 7-footer. I’m just transcribing now, really. It’s been a mediocre draft for basketball and for TV, quite frankly.

9:59- Question for Jay Bilas: Does anyone have a wingspan less than their height?

The crowd seems thoroughly drunk now, and not just the kid who thought (correctly) showing up in a Memphis Grizzlies’ jersey was the best approach to getting on camera. Good times.

10:04- Stu Scott tries to get some nonsense from Van Gundy about how the Grizzlies can win back the city of Memphis. Not happening. Van Gundy: “They’ve got to get good.” Bless you.

10:10- The T-wolves take Wayne Ellington. Not a point guard, so I have no idea what they’re thinking. 

10:20- Things are winding down now, and Van Gundy/Jackson are into an involved discussion of what Cleveland should do next. In essence- they have to get more versatile up front, maybe a 4-man who can shoot it. Obviously, they’re not getting that with the No. 30 pick, the last in the first round.

They take a swingman from Congo who plays on Ricky Rubio’s Spanish team’s JV team, or something. Frischilla tends to gush over these overseas players because he’s the only media person who sees them play, but the best he can come up with here is “if he was in college now, he’s be a really solid player.” He’d be a really solid college player? DuJuan Blair, Jodie Meeks and Sam Young are still out there, and a really solid college player is a first-round NBA draft pick.

Wait: Somehow the Knicks got Darko. It’s not gonna get better than that.

Thank you, and good night.

Just because it’s an obvious idea doesn’t mean it’s not a good one: “Remembering Harry Kalas - Wonderful Stories from Friends Celebrating a Great Life” is a new book I’d recommend even if Friend of BPR Gordie Jones wasn’t involved in the project. It includes remembrances from everyone from Harry’s kids to a frat brother from college to Lancaster Barnstormers’ braintrust Van Hayes and Tom Herr. Best chapter title: “Cultural Learning of the Bullpen for Make Benefit of Glorious Kalas Nation.”

It’s available at Amazon, but can also be had for just 10 bucks where literary types hang out. I’m referring, of course, to Wawa convenience stores.

Ryne Sandberg is right. Sammy Sosa is not a Hall of Famer. He’s the one Steroid-Era candidate I’m most sure I wouldn’t vote for.  There may not be enough evidence to convict Sammy is a court of law, but there’s more than enough for the court of common sense. Unlike Bonds, McGwire, Palmiero, Clemens, etc., before Sosa’s body changed, he simply wasn’t a good player. Sosa hit 33 homers in 1993, and then hit that many or more in each of his next 11 full seasons. Before 1993, he had 41 homers in his career, nearly 500 major-league games over five seasons. And the same is essentially true for his overall numbers (’93 seems to be a line of demarcation; check Bonds’ stats that year and before).

There’s also his ridiculous explanation of the corked-bat incident; pretending to be unable to speak English to Congress; and vowing to be tested for juice anytime, then backpedaling like an NFL cornerback when SI’s Rick Reilly called him on it. I don’t enjoy saying this. Sosa’s agent is a good guy who happens to be an old friend of mine. Sosa was once the kind of guy you wanted to root for, and not only because Dubya traded him. But the guy’s a fraud, pure and simple.

Yesterday’s horrific event in Iowa shows something I’ve been struck with again and again over my career- the incredible impact coaches have on adolescent lives. High school coaches have no choice but to make decisions about kids - whether to play them, whether to cut them, how hard to push them - that have huge and long-lasting impact on the way those kids are perceived by their peers, their families and themselves.

Please don’t misunderstand. I am in no way, shape or form defending or justifying the actions of the obviously disturbed kid who killed Ed Thomas, and I’m not suggesting coaches ought to walk around in bulletproof vests. This is of course an isolated, crazy, indefensible incident. But I wonder how often longtime coaches hear from ex-players who never fully recovered from, in their mind, being wronged.

So Shaq is apparently a Cavalier, meaning NBA draft-day fun has already begun in earnest. This can’t be a bad thing for the Lebrons, especially since they gave up so little, and Shaq has just next season left on his contract. He is at very minimum a body to lean on Dwight Howard and a personality to crawl inside Howard’s head.

The suspicion here is it’s not a great thing, though. I thought Lebron could have been used more creatively by his team, as a back-to-the-basket guy once in a while, and/or as a run-off-screens-and-catch small forward, etc., instesad of just handing him the ball and letting him go over and over and over.

None of that’s likely to happen now, though, with Shaq monopolizing the paint. It’s clear that Cav management is in full keep Bron-Bron-happy mode, and the idea that he could be further developed as a player isn’t occuring to anybody. That’s likely to continue even if they win it all next year, with all the free-agency possibilities going forward.

Anyway, the draft is an annual live-blog staple, so we’ll be doing that tonight. It’s not a strong draft but could be an interesting night, with tons of player-movement potential, teams in position to remake themselves and Jay Bilas undoubtedly trotting out new euphenisms for “wingspan”. T-Mac, Sixers’ Elton Brand and perhaps even Rajon Rondo are allegedy being shopped, for example. To get you in the mood, here’s a pretty good draft preview by the Newark Star-Ledger’s Dave D’Alessendro, a mock draft by the Sporting News’ Sean Deveney, and one man’s list of the best draft picks of all time.

Lucas Glover: Was this a one-shot deal a la Shaun Micheel/Ben Curtis/Todd Hamilton or a springboard to great things?

I’m not inclined to jump hard on either of those choices. Before yesterday, you could say Glover had had an underachieving career. He made a President’s Cup and barely missed the last Ryder, but had won only once and had done nothing in the last 18 months or so.

There’s nothing wrong with his game that I can see and there’s one thing very right about it- he might be the best driver of the ball in the world, and that’s usually big in majors, always in U.S. Opens.

On the other hand, this might be unfair, but I’m not inclined to give him quite 100% credit for this major, in terms of the intangible benefit going forward. This was probably the least chokable U.S. Open in memory, for a variety of mostly weather-related reasons. The golf course was long and tough, but not at all hard (as opposed to soft) and fast and scary.

Also, all the starting and stopping due to rain delays, while undoubtedly a pain in the ass, probably helped the less-experienced guys. If nobody’s completed the same number of holes at the end of a day, are you really “sleeping on the lead”? The whole thing was so, what’s the word… diffuse?… that I suspect it was easier to ignore the leaderboard and just go play.

Glover shot 73 Monday, three over. Given the position he was in with 18 holes left, with the only guy in his path the overmatched Ricky Barnes, any world-class pro could have done about what Glover did, sort of methodically, competently finish the deal off

Phil Mickelson: I heard somebody on TV call Phil, “Probably the most talented player in the world except Tiger Woods.”

You know what else he is? The most accomplished player in the world except Tiger Woods. Who is the most accomplished player in the history of the world.

Looking at Phil 10-15 years ago, you’d have thought the U.S. Open was the major he’d be least suited to. To say he is not a target-golf, point A-to-B-to-C-type player would be an understatement. Yet he’s the first guy to finish second in an Open five times.

I’m fully expecting the fresh-from-vacation Ruppie to come in here any minute and, assuming he can give the Phillies a rest, start ranting about how Mickelson gagged, etc. The truth is he’s always just been crazy-erratic, for good and bad. But his ability to push bad stuff aside, whether it’s the driver he just hit 75 yards off line or the 4-footer he just missed or his wife’s health issues, is remarkable even by great-golfer standards. He doesn’t get enough credit for that.

David Duval: Now here’s the week’s really interesting development. People have forgotten, understandably, how good this guy was.

At one point, beginning with his first win in October of 1997, he won 11 times in less than a year-and-a-half, including a Player’s Championship. There have been 3-4 59s shot on the PGA tour, but only one of them, Duval’s, came on a Sunday when he needed it to win by a shot. He dominated a British Open. He was actually the best player in the world for a while before the official rankings caught up.

He’s a Tiger-level talent, but incredibly different from Tiger as a person, in terms of mental/emotional makeup. This is golf’s Mickey Rourke. He was never going to be a 25-year career grinder. So he dropped off the grid for 5-6 years, fell in love with a woman and with being a husband and father, and now he’s back, at 38.

I promise you, Tiger doesn’t scare this dude. Duval’s never going to be No. 1, but he might be to Tiger as Trevino was to Nicklaus, which would be quite cool.

Eldrick: How many times in the last 6-7 years have you watched Tiger and thought, ‘My God, if he drove the ball in the fairway, he’d be 30 under par.’ That’s what I was thinking when Tiger was winning Memorial two weeks ago - “how come he’s not 30 under?”

Driving in golf is in some ways like serving in tennis. If you’re the clear-cut best player in the world while getting your first serves in 50 percent of the time, and you all of a sudden have a tournament when you get them in 95 percent of the time, you’re not just going to win. You’re going to annihilate people.

Tiger drove it the best he ever has in his life for 72 holes at Memorial and shot 12 under on a par-72 course with reachable par-fives. This should not have been seen as a reason to concede him the U.S. Open, except that people assume, somewhat understandably, that he’s superhuman.

Pre-surgery, Tiger’s short game was not only the best ever by light years. It was better than had previously been imagined possible. But until very recently, I suspect that Tiger hasn’t been able to practice normally for months and months. He actually is human, sort of, and his short game is just not at the same insane level. He can win now, and he can’t not contend, but it’s gonna take some time for him to be Superman again.

I still don’t think Hank Haney’s doing him any good.

where it’s pretty nice- partly cloudy, more breezy than ideal but that’s kind of welcome given the recent soaking and 99 percent humidity. Bear in mind that even though it’s rained every day for what seems like two months, the next time we have three straight dry days you’ll see people toeing the dirt ruefully and shaking their heads, “Yep, we need rain…” 

We’re 86 minutes from kickoff. Pennsylvania is on the field and ostensibly warming up, but things look pretty disorganized. Lots of milling around, very little coaching going on. I’m almost certainly reading too much into this, but that’s what we bloggers do.

Being organized is an issue because last year, neither team was, especially Pa.’s, and a miserable, sloppy, endless game resulted, bad enough that plenty of press-box denizens were wondering if scrapping the whole concept would be a bad idea.

The game’s only Lancaster-Lebanon League player is Lebanon QB James Capello (Iowa State), who’s expected to play a lot and may start. The other Pa. QB, Curtis Drake of Philly West Catholic, is an option guy who’s going to Penn State “as an athlete.” 

Capello is 6-2, 190 in the program. He looks a bit chunky on the field.

Ohio has the more impressive roster, at least in terms of college commits, 21 D-1A players to 13. And too many of Pa.’s are to second-tiers like UConn, Rutgers and Temple. Ohio has, in addition to the customary Buckeyes (seven of them), a Florida State, Tennessee, BC, Iowa, two West Virginias, two Michigan States.

Ohio has three Pitt signees and zero Penn States. Pa. has four Penn States and four Pitts. Pa. has no Ohio State commits.

Let’s point out, though, that a past criticism, and I think a legit one, of Pa. teams is that they tended to pick a team that looked better in the program than on the field. Not a problem currently. It is hoped.

Here’s a list of the NBA’s all-time top 50 players by Slam magazine. It’s easy to quibble and there are one or two obvious howlers (Dennis Rodman but not Bill Walton or Pete Maravich?) but overall, it’s a better list than I expected. Dissent welcome.

As of Wednesday night, the “aftershow” part of Artie Lange’s hideous/spectacular performance on the debut of Joe Buck’s new HBO talk show was still here. Elsewhere, all traces of Lange’s appearance have apparently been removed from the Internet by, what, nervous HBO lawyers? An embarrassed Buck or someone on the show’s staff? I thought HBO was all edgy and stuff. I thought raw public attention was a good thing in show business. Whatever.

Most of the blogosphere predictably hates Buck and is semi-defending Lange, but I thought Lange was mostly on the wrong side of the line between bitingly funny and merely obnoxious. I don’t buy the, “You invite Lange on, what do you expect?” argument because I’ve heard him on “Fresh Air,” on NPR, when he was thoughtful, self-deprecating and not at all beligerent or profane.

I’m not particularly a Buck fan, but didn’t think he did badly considering, and even got some solid shots in (Lange puts both feet up on the coffee table- Buck: “What, are you getting a pap smear?).

I wrote something the other day about the Bill Simmons’ piece on Kobe, mentioning that it was a good piece although Simmons reached at times. One of the ways he reached is elucidated well here by the excellent public-affairs blogger Matt Yglesias, who also happens to be an NBA fan. Simmons says Kobe is similar to Michael Jordan “statistically and stylistically,” but the difference is he doesn’t “command a room,” like MJ, whom he compared to “a cross between Dr.J and Sinatra.”

Except that they’re not that similar statistically. As Yglesias’ numbers show, Kobe is simply not a real efficient offensive player, whereas Jordan is the most efficient perimeter player who ever lived. It reminds me of the Kobe-Lebron debate, which is conducted as if people haven’t noticed that Lebron is not only a better passer, playmaker, rebounder and teammate, but scores more than Kobe and shoots less. Hello?

Here’s an excellent take on the Letterman-Palin dustup by Slate’s terrific Dahlia Lithwick. It’s also an interesting look at the origins of all the “There’s no way a [Jew/woman/Democrat/Republican/homosexual/meat-eater/Jehovah’s witness/etc.] could get away with saying that,” stuff that plagues the public debate on most everything. I admit thinking that sort of thing all the time, and it’s not always, on its face, wrong.

Example: There’s no question that a white male lawyer who made the white male equivalent of Sotomayor’s now-famous “wise Latina woman” comment would thereby eliminate himself forever from consideration for a Supreme Court nomination, or certainly from consideration by a Democratic President. Sotomayor defenders who say the statement was taken out of context, or is rendered moot by her case record, are missing the point. The statement, by itself, would be career suicide for a white male, regardless of context, even if his case record establishes he’s the greatest legal thinker who ever lived.

Having said that, so what? I’m not sure what good it does to say that, what it has to do with anything, certainly what it has to do with whether Sotomayor should be on the SCOTUS. It’s like hardcore pro-choice people saying if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. Maybe. So? The issue is whether or not that would be a good thing.

Lightning round:

Buster Onley with an interesting survey of usage-damage to bullpens.

On the legal implications of online poker.

I’m not the only one who’s noticed that, at mid-career, Pedro Feliz has completely changed his approach to hitting.

Great rumor. Not gonna happen.

Because it’s almost Father’s Day: Michael Lewis, of Moneyball fame, on the Today Show talking about his current book about Dads.

From the “How you like me now?” dept: The very last pick in the NFL draft, aka Mr. Irrelevant, is about to sign a three-year, $1.2 million contract.

And we’re out. Tomorrow: something live from the Big 33 game, which I fervently hope isn’t as soul-crushingly dull and tedious as it was a year ago.

Here’s one of three segments of the latest edition of The Low Post, in which Starkie and I compare the Lakers to the great teams and Kobe to the great players.

This is segment two, recapping the NBA Finals.

Segment three: are Eagles fans all in all just pretty darn happy with Big Red, Banner, McNabb and Co.?

*Sporting News Today is an e-mail quasi newspaper they deliver to your inbox everyday for free. It’s an interesting experiment, like a new-age version of the beloved National in some ways. It’s worth checking out; lots of information, although not enough in-depth stuff and real writing for my tastes.  

I bring this up because they cover recruiting pretty hard, and Monday’s briefing on football recruiting is led with a look at Manheim Central’s Dakota Royer…

*For an antidote to all the anti-modern-methods-of-handling-pitchers nonsense you hear in the mainstream media (pitch counts are unAmerican, etc.), check out the latest issue of Sports Illustrated. Apropos to Stephen Strasburg, SI talked to nine former “can’t miss” flamethrowers from as long ago as 1950 (Paul Pettit) to as recent as 2001 (Mark Prior). It’s story after story of throwing 95 on the second day of spring training, of getting big-league rotation-anchor workloads while still a teenager, blowing out an elbow and being essentially told to rub some dirt on it and get back out there, etc, etc.

People focus on the game their favorite team blew last night and forget about the hundreds and hundreds of guys they never heard of who had their development butchered and faded into obscurity.

It’s not just the big-name guys; every decent-sized town in America has some favorite son who signed with a big-league club, went to the low minors, hurt his arm and was finished. I personally know at least two guys like that. They get salvaged today. No, they don’t turn into Warren Spahn, but they get careers…

*At the Barnstormers’ game the other night, we were talking about the “Major League,” movies. It turns out that “Major League II’’s gigantic cast included not just Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Corbin Bernsen, Omar Epps, Steve Yeager, and Bob Uecker but… Keith Lupton, the Barnstormers’ VP for baseball ops.

The movie was filmed in Baltimore, and Lupton was then with the Bowie Baysox, the O’s Class AA affiliate. He played the White Sox’ first-base coach. He’s in the IMDB and everything. Keith said if you watch the movie on TV or DVD, he’s the very last name on the credits. Said he used a lot of Lee Strasburg’s “Method” techniques to reach deep down inside himself for the role….

*I thought it was a fine NBA season and the playoffs overall were excellent, but the Finals were a disappointment, almost an afterthought. Tough to know what to make of the Lakers and Kobe. It’s hard to think of them as a great team, and certainly their Finals opponent wasn’t ready to win a championship.

On the other hand, how many great teams did Jordan’s Bulls vanquish? This championship felt a lot like those - a team built around one very, very committed player with a great coach. The same coach, actually.

Kobe was of course impressive, but my take on him hasn’t essentially changed - a wonderful player who tries to be a team guy, but dominating individually is as important to him as winning, and once in a while, when things aren’t going great, that little bit of him that thinks like Allen Iverson takes over.

ESPN’s Bill Simmons has a (typically) long take on this here. As usual, Simmons reaches a bit and could use editing, but he’s mostly on the money…

*In my column last Sunday, I wrote about how the Philly media and the Philies’ Raul Ibanez unleashed fury on blogger Jerod Morris because, near the end of a long, fact-based analysis of Ibanez hot start, he wrote the following:

“…it’s time for me to begrudgingly acknowledge the elephant in the room: any aging hitter who puts up numbers this much better than his career averages is going to immediately generate suspicion that the numbers are not natural, that perhaps he is under the influence of some sort of performance enhancer. And since I was not able to draw any absolute parallels between his prodigously improved HR rate and his new ballpark’s hitter-friendliness, it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility that “other” performance enhancers could be part of the equation.

Sorry Raul Ibanez and Major League Baseball, that’s just the era that we are in — testing or no testing.”

The Philly Daily News’ Paul Hagen had a very good feature in Tuesday’s paper on the training regimen that has helped Phils’ reliever Ryan Madson push his fastball from the low 90s to the mid-90s, which, near the end, including the following: 

“In this era of baseball, of course, no pitcher is going to add that many miles per hour in his late-20s without raising suspicion that he has been helped by performance-enhancing substances.

Madson, who turns 29 in August, understands that. He began to smile even before the obligatory question was finished, and held out his pipe-cleaner-thin arm as a rebuttal. He’s skinny, 6-6 and 200 pounds.”

So when a blogger asks the question, he’s an idiot and a coward and it’s an outrage. When Paul Hagen asks it, it’s “obligatory”.

Glad we got that straightened out.

Today’s Sunday News column, plus a couple additions observations at the bottom:

 The Phillies’ Raul Ibanez has 21 home runs through Friday, among overall offensive numbers that, if the season ended today, would make him a serious candidate for National League MVP.

He’s 37, and has never hit more than 33 homers in a season, and more than 24 only once.

Jerod Morris — just a guy, out there in America — has Ibanez on his fantasy team.

Morris’ fantasy league has a message board on the Internet, and fantasy leagues being the chop-busting fraternities that they are, a message showed up on the board recently that read, in part:

sorry, crean, [Morris’s team is called Hitting Crean-Up] but i must call bull#!@* on raul ibanez …

i thought they were testing???

That was not, Morris knew and so do you since you both live on Earth, a reference to the SATs.

Morris’ instinct, of course, was to return chop-busting serve. Instead, “I resisted the urge to fire back a gut-reaction retort and decided to do a little investigation,” he wrote on a Web site, midwestsportsfans.com, to which he contributes under the moniker “JRod.”

In short, Morris tried to figure out if there was any logical explanation for Ibanez’ monster season in light of his advanced age.

He looked at a lot of things. That’s actually an understatement.

“Maybe he was energized by joining the defending World Series champs,” Morris wrote.

“Maybe he is seeing better pitches by joining a lineup that includes Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, and Shane Victorino.

“Maybe he is in the midst of a run of good luck in which he’s seeing good pitches to hit at above-average hitters parks and finding himself facing terrible pitchers even at the tougher hitters parks he’s played in.

“Maybe Raul Ibanez is simply a ‘freak,’ and has been a late bloomer with a career track that refuses to follow the norm.”

Morris did find, interestingly, that almost all Ibanez’ homers have come either in great home-run parks (Citizens Bank Park, Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, Coors Field in Colorado and, apparently, the new Yankee Stadium) or against pitchers who have slow-pitch softball ERAs.

(Joe Posnanski, the great Kansas City Star columnist who knows Ibanez well from his time with the Royals, pointed out in a blog post defending Morris that every year since 2001, Ibanez has had a stretch of 50 or so games when he hit like Ted Williams. This year’s stretch just happened to begin on Opening Day.)

Still in all, Morris reached no grand conclusions, which is no surprise and beside the point, since as he admitted, “We have to acknowledge the obvious caveat that 55 games is not a full season and is still a relatively small sample size.”

What matters is the piece ran to 2,000 words of data and analysis. It was the kind of thing “journalists” ought to do but generally don’t, since it’s much easier to dismiss it as the purview of uncredentialed stat geeks in pajamas mainlining Mountain Dew and Cocoa Puffs while staring at the Internet in their mom’s basement.

At least, that’s what ought to matter. What has come to matter is the single paragraph in which Morris acknowledged what he called, “the elephant in the room.”

“Any aging hitter who puts up numbers this much better than his career averages is going to immediately generate suspicion that the numbers are not natural, that perhaps he is under the influence of some sort of performance enhancer.”

Which is simply true. That isn’t Ibanez’ fault, but it is the fault of Ibanez’ sport and his union and, indirectly, of the negligence of Old Media-types who, at every chance, jump all over the credibility of the Jerod Morrises of the world (pajamas, Cocoa Puffs, mom’s basement, etc.).

Enter John Gonzalez of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who saw Morris’ piece. Guess which paragraph he built a column on. The Inquirer came back the next day with Ibanez’ outraged denial of something he wasn’t accused of.

(That, by the way, was the one good thing that came of this. If you take Ibanez’ reaction and throw out the part where he called Morris an idiot and a coward, you get what must be the strongest, least equivocal statement an athlete has ever made about performance-enhancing drugs:

“You can have my urine, my hair, my blood, my stool — anything you can test,” Ibanez said. “I’ll give you back every dime I’ve ever made [if the test is positive].”

That’s way beyond Rafael Palmeiro waving his finger at Congress. That’s a guy saying, “Cut me open. If you find anything, take my money.”

We don’t need your stool, Raul. I mean, ewwww. Otherwise, bravo.)

Back at the endless news cycle, Comcast SportsNet’s “Daily News Live” panel tore into Morris that evening, and soon Morris was on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” having Fox national baseball correspondent Ken Rosenthal roll his eyes at him.

The journalists were outraged by what they were determined to see as Morris’ salacious implication. So outraged they shared it with a wider audience.

This Space is so tired of dumbness masquerading as morality. It is so tired of the Philadelphia sports media, too much of which sees as its master not truth or detail or nuance but the self-indulgent, pretend-angst of Philadelphia sports fans.

As a show of solidarity with Jerod Morris, I am writing this in my basement, in my underwear.

My mom’s basement doesn’t have Internet access, and I don’t own pajamas.

This was one of those columns I foooled around with for too long- trying to knock it out of the park and not quite explaining myself to my own satisfaction. I guess my point is this guy, Morris, did an interesting and extensive analysis of Ibanez’ hot start… So the Philly media ignores the interesting and extensive analysis so it can slap Morris around because he deigned to mention the so obvious it;s banal “elephant in the room.” Here’s the thing- you’ll never see this kind of analysis in the Philly media. It’s called belittling what you don’t understand.