Sports fodder for a Friday morning . . .
Wolf Pack fans, where have you been lately? You are missing a heck of a college baseball season. The Pack baseball team, which will play its final three home games of the year starting tonight, has a great chance to win the Western Athletic Conference regular season title. It would be its first regular season title since 2000. The Pack athletic department insists that Peccole Park holds 3,000 fans. It's time for Pack fans to prove it. Warm sunshine. Cold beer. Four games in less than 48 hours. A winning team. It's Pack paradise. And, no, the media doesn't get a percentage of the ticket sales.
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How badly does the media overblow trivial things these days? Well, a couple of naked inflatable female dolls were spotted in the White Sox clubhouse this week. The White Sox, a team struggling to score runs, considered the dolls as "slump busters" and just wanted to change their luck. Some members of the media, of course, considered the dolls offensive to women and demanded that manager Ozzie Guillen apologize to the politically-correct world. Guillen, a guy who is as subtle as Britney Spears climbing out of a car, didn't apologize. And we don't blame him. Are the dolls in bad taste? Of course. Are the White Sox a bunch of 20- and 30-something male pigs? Of course. What else do you expect to find in a male locker room? This is the reason why the media now gets most of its interviews in antiseptic interview rooms, where everyone gets the same, old, tired, boring story.
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This was a good week for the media and other politically correct organizations to blow things out of proportion. When Eight Belles tragically broke both her front ankles seconds after finishing the Kentucky Derby, cries of "ban the sport" and "suspend the jockey" and "that horse had to be on steroids" and "a filly shouldn't be allowed to run in the Derby" were heard almost immediately. A lot of people who know absolutely nothing about horse racing for some reason felt the need to comment on the tragedy. Everyone just needs to relax. As long as human beings are allowed to use animals for sporting and financial purposes, tragedies are going to happen. Overreacting is not the answer. High school athletes die and suffer life altering injuries every year. Should we ban high school sports?
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Some good, though, hopefully will come out of Eight Belles' death. Horses are not tested for steroids in the Kentucky Derby. That has to change. Thoroughbred horses are more fragile than they were, say, three and four decades ago. The horses are bred solely for speed and not durability. It's time to try and find a healthy balance. It might also be time to ban the jockey's whip from racing.
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Roger Clemens made a point this week to apologize for making "mistakes in my personal life for which I am sorry." What mistakes? Clemens, of course, is not saying. Clemens continues to deny using performance enhancing drugs or having affairs with real life slump busters. So, what, exactly, are you apologizing for, Roger?
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OK, we won't turn this column into another episode of Project Runway. But those throwback uniforms the Oakland A's and Texas Rangers wore this week were fabulous. It would be great if all teams went back to the styles of the 1950s and 1960s. Loose-fitting shirts and pants. The pants stopping a few inches below the knees. The uniforms of today are better than those hideous polyester, skin-tight disco duds of the 1970s. Remember those red-white-and-blue elastic waistbands? But we shouldn't single out baseball. Football and hockey uniforms from the 1950s and 1960s were also better than the uniforms of today. NFL helmets now look like something out of Star Wars. Hockey uniforms can give you a headache. Only the NBA, which got rid of those ridiculous short shorts, are better now.
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By the way, can you reference Project Runway or use the word fabulous in the same column in which you defend inflatable female doll slump-busters? Just asking.
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We like the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings to meet in the Stanley Cup finals. The Penguins have the underrated Evgeni Malkin, the boy wonder Sidney Crosby as well as Marc-Andre Fleury in goal. And the Red Wings, well, are the New York Yankees of the 1950s. See, we do talk hockey in this space.
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Only hockey, though, would conduct its World Championships right in the middle of the NHL playoffs. Why would the NHL - a great percentage of the World Championship rosters are made up of current NHL players - allow an event to divert attention away from its sport at its most important time? It's because the NHL has lost sight of what makes its league great.
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Hey, San Francisco Giants, trade Barry Zito. Now! Before he makes another start. He looked downright mediocre against Pittsburgh. But don't press your luck. Get whatever you can for him right now. A bag of baseballs, a throwback Jim Ray Hart jersey, a one-way boat ride to Alcatraz? Just get rid of him and his "are-you-kidding-me?" contract before it cripples the franchise.
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HBO is going to film its "Hard Knocks" training camp show this summer at the Dallas Cowboys camp in Southern California. The lure of Pacman Jones, Jerry Jones, Tony Romo, Terrell Owens and Jessica Simpson is just what the cable network needed after ending The Sopranos. Will (when?) Pacman get arrested again? Will Owens start crying when Jessica hugs Tony? Will Jerry Jones get another facelift? Stay tuned.
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There is no truth to the rumor that Mark Fox is on the short list for the Chicago Bulls, New York Knicks and Dallas Mavericks jobs. You know, in case you were wondering.