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 Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Bless me, America, for I have sinned ...
Posted by T.S.

I know that according to the Chinese Zodiac, 2010 is going to be the Year of the Tiger. Without succumbing to the obvious gag opportunities, I would suggest that in America it’s going to be the Year of the Confession. The almost equally zany worlds of politics and entertainment will, of course, provide their annual drip, drip, drip of such mea culpas, but my reference is more pointedly to the world of professional sports. I think Mark McGwire might have just opened the floodgates. My guess is that anybody who can do so without inviting legal peril is going to step up to the mike and make official what most everybody has more or less known all along. And hopefully they’ll do a little better job at it than McGwire, who performed handsomely in conveying how awful he felt about the whole thing but whiffed in a number of areas in terms of candor and believability. Just as Big Mac did, everybody else is going to have to pick their spots, but you can’t help but think that for most the sooner they come clean – no pun intended – the better. I liken this to Thelma and Louise as they started heading to that cliff and the dark finish of that 1991 film. Take, for example, the 100-plus guys on the “list” that the Major League Baseball drug testing regimen produced. If I were one of those guys, I think I’d be pondering a way to get it out there, because I just can’t imagine that list is going to stay under wraps forever. Frankly, I am amazed it’s avoided the light of day for as long as it has. I think those guys should ask MLB to covertly notify each and every last one of them on the list and create an amnesty day – how about June 6, 2010 – and encourage all 100-plus to fess up at one time. Gee, the more I think about that the better it sounds for all concerned. It’s huge national news, of course, but it’s remarkably blunted for each individual simply because of the volume. The shadow is removed from the other couple of thousand “clean” guys who played through the period, so I assume they’d be tickled with the idea as well. And from Major League Baseball’s perspective, it would serve to largely close a chapter that’s been as close to Chinese water torture as one can imagine, not that I am suggesting that waterboarding is torture. And I’m back to the Chinese again, who deserve their own apology for the water torture reference, because apparently there’s no historical evidence pointing to them aside from popular usage of the expression itself. I should add that urging those 100 ballplayers who participated in that testing regimen in good faith with the understanding that the results would remain under seal is a great departure for me. I have said all along that we have no right to know who they are; my change of tune comes from the belief that eventually they are going to be “outed,” and if that’s the case, a better strategy is to get out in front of it. Amnesty Day would naturally present the same opportunity for some of the more prominent names ensnared in the steroid debacle – Mssrs. Bonds and Clemens come to mind – but their eventual confessions are more complicated because of the legal proceedings already underway. And please, no scolding for the use of the expression “their eventual confessions.” Just like Thelma and Louise, they have to know that the edge of the cliff is out there waiting for them. And there’s at least one other big-time sports confession to come ... in the Year of the Tiger.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 5:25:05 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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 Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Steroids are an embarrassment only by proclamation ...
Posted by T.S.

As you might expect, I don’t see a lot of point in adding my analysis of the Mark McGwire steroid confession. Everybody who might conceivably be heard from either has been or will be soon enough, all the way from Bobby Knight to the commissioner himself and points in between. I am, however, interested in the broader questions raised by the “news,” which of course isn’t really news at all. It’s just official now. One of the FBI agents, now retired, who was involved in a 1989-93 steroid probe did provide an interesting angle in noting that McGwire’s usage was discovered at that time, and that information was subsequently passed along to Major League Baseball. Like the admission itself, that’s not particularly surprising, but it is worthy of note to remind yourself that when baseball was seemingly resurrecting itself in that bizarrely glorious 1998 season, MLB officials knew – or at the very least should have known – that their historic home run blizzard was artificially enhanced. I know all the arguments about how MLB was pushing for testing and the players union was resisting, but none of that alters the reality that after shooting itself in the foot with a disastrous truncated season and canceled World Series in 1994, the game was revived on an illusion. And the checks were cashed. Lots of them. But to me, the steroid-enhanced 800-pound elephant in the room is the likely reality that players themselves probably wouldn’t give a hoot about using such things except that we – fans, media, Congress and even an occasional President – frantically insist that they must. Without debating the nuance of whether somebody started using to assist a return from an injury or merely to add muscle and thus maybe some long-ball ooomph to his resume, I can’t shake the suspicion that athletes making millions of dollars would seek any remote edge available to keep the paychecks rolling in. Call me cynical, but I think the primary reason you hear the right things from players about this topic is because the pressures of political correctness force them to be outraged, or at least to give that impression. I think the outrage is as phony as the home run totals from (insert your favored span of years here). And before anyone suggests I am minimizing the impact of “cheating,” I would say instead that we ought to be truly vigilant about how “cheating” is defined in a professional sport where so many billions of dollars are at stake. To do any less would just be incredibly naive, and we already know where that got us (think Summer of ’98).
(McGwire/Sosa artwork courtesy of www.goodsportsart.com)
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 3:38:03 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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 Thursday, January 07, 2010
So which cap does Andre wear this summer? ...
Posted by T.S.

Truth to tell, there wasn’t much that was surprising about the results of the BBWAA vote for the 2010 Hall of Fame Class, and I am relieved that Andre Dawson got the nod and that Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven got so close that it would seem induction in 2011 is virtually a lock. I haven’t heard a peep about which cap will be pictured on Dawson’s HOF plaque; my vote would be for Montreal, if for no other reason than to get another Expo into the Hall (Gary Carter (shown here) is by himself at the moment). Since Dawson played more than half his career there, it would seem like the probable choice by the Hall, but The Hawk’s MVP season did come with the Cubbies. Dawson played a handful of games at Jarry Park (Mon dieu, excusez-moi – Parc Jarry), which was a curious little local ball field that had been turned into an almost major-league stadium. Which was not to be confused with Olympic Stadium, where Dawson played most of his career, which was a monstrosity of the first order that was built for something other than major league baseball and thus was quite fairly cursed when it pretended to embrace same. I have been to both parks; the former was great fun because after growing up at Shea and Yankee Stadium, it was almost spooky to watch a major league game at such a yahoo facility. And the latter, Olympic Stadium, was an abomination unto the eyes of the baseball gods, and not just because the awful artificial surface helped to ruin Dawson’s knees, among countless others. Nope, it was just an awful joint, and it didn’t help that Montreal fans couldn’t seem to get the hang of rooting decorum for baseball. I had been to the Montreal Forum to watch the Canadiens, and though I wasn’t much of a hockey fan, watching that team in that facility with those fans could have been enough to bring anybody on board. It was a surreal experience. And yet you plant those same butts on the plastic seats at Olympic Stadium and all the rabid fan fervor would just disappear. Polite and reserved, which works well at Rotary Club meetings but sucks big time at a baseball game. Still, I lived close enough to the Canadian border for the better part of 10 years to develop some real affection for those funny-sounding little hosers. Since they had to endure the ignominy of having their franchise unceremoniously stripped away from them, I figure one more little nod from our Hall of Fame would be a nice gesture and sound international relations to booth, eh?
Thursday, January 07, 2010 4:02:09 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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 Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Naturally, Arthur Miller ends up on Broadway ...
Posted by T.S.
 While I poke around this a.m. waiting patiently for the Hall of Fame announcement later on, I thought I’d take the opportunity to plug some of the work of one of our favorite artists, Arthur K. Miller. “Bride of Frankenstein”
2009
20-by-24 inches, acrylic on masonite
As readers of Sports Collectors Digest are fully aware, Miller’s elegant work portraying many of the greatest players in baseball history has been gracing our covers for more than a decade. When I heard he had his own exhibition at OK Harris Art Gallery in New York City, I wanted to mention it even if only a segment of our readership would have the opportunity to actually visit. I wasn’t even surprised to learn that the exhibition was entitled: Arthur K. Miller – Classic Horror; Movie Monsters from the Golden Era, since I had talked to him a long time ago and he told me about his venture into this area. I doubt if I could improve on the promotional text so I won't try: “MONSTERS! VAMPIRES! WEREWOLVES! Come witness, if you dare, spirited living-color portraits of classic HORROR movie icons from an earlier black-and-white cinematic world! See melodramatic paintings rendered in stark, painterly realism, richly executed in acrylics! Frightful images so lifelike you’ll need to keep telling yourself, “It’s only a painting, it’s only a painting.” The exhibition runs from Jan. 16 to Feb. 20 at the OK Harris Gallery on Broadway in New York City, and the artist will be on hand on opening day from 3-5 p.m. to throw out the first pitch, in a manner of speaking. Obviously, Miller’s spectacular work can be accessed by going to the gallery website at www.OKharris.com, where all these monsters reside, or you can go to Miller’s own site, www.artofthegame.com and have a crack at the monsters and his incredible baseball work.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010 3:49:55 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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 Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Efren Reyes one of my favorites sports legends ...
Posted by T.S.

I think it’s kinda cool that one of my all-time favorite sports legends is a guy that a lot of casual sports fans might never have heard of. I used to be disappointed and dismayed that the shadowy world of professional pocket billiards had such difficulty getting mainstream media coverage, but now ... (Photo courtesy of www.insidepoolmag.com)
So much time as passed since the days when I used to gripe about that situation that I now understand it’s probably not going to change substantially in my lifetime, and I guess that’s OK. Too bad for the many great players and all the fans, but probably an understandable situation given the aforementioned “shadowy” nature of the game. I have been wading around cyberspace for quite awhile looking up information about Efren Reyes, so long in fact that I have forgotten what got me onto it in the first place. I want to say that Reyes was the greatest pool player I had ever seen, but anybody who knows anything about pool understands that the “sport” defies the idea of that kind of broad labeling. Best you can hope for is “best you’ve ever seen” at this or that particular game. Since I practiced for several months with Irving Crane, he has to easily get the nod as the greatest straight-pool player I’ve ever seen, but Reyes is my pick for 9-ball. He also has the purest and most elegant stroke I’ve ever seen, and I suspect that anyone who’s ever seen him play would probably agree. It’s probably no coincidence that the three sports I am most involved with – baseball, golf and billiards – each offers a particularly compelling reverence for the purest swing, or in the case of pool, stroke. However I happened upon Reye’s Wikipedia entry, I was struck by the extensive listing of his “Titles and Achievements,” numbering to 78 in all. I noticed there were only seven listings in the 1980s, and I was looking for the event in Atlantic City, N.J., where I first saw him play. The other cool thing I remembered was that he used to play under an alias in those days – Cesar Morales – which he said he used because at the time U.S. players knew of Efren Reyes by name (he was already a legend in his native Philippines and in the Far East) but wouldn’t necessarily recognize him by sight. But once they saw his stroke, as I did at that 1988 tournament on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, they would have had no doubt. The other reason I liked Reyes was that he was born in Angeles City just outside of what was Clark Air Force Base. I had been to Angeles City a couple of times when I was stationed at Subic Bay Naval Base during the Vietnam War, and the thought of a world-class pool player emerging from my adopted homeland tickled me no end. There is perhaps no other sport in the United States played by so many millions of citizens that seems so completely unable to effectively market its professional tour than pool. Catching “The Magician” on one of those taped matches on ESPN or ESPN2 can be a hit-or-miss undertaking, but I would urge you to do so if the opportunity arrives. You should never pass up a chance to see one of the all-time greats.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010 3:59:56 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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 Monday, January 04, 2010
When winning becomes just another thing ...
Posted by T.S.

“Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” We seem to have come a long way since that hoary old aphorism was in its prime, presumably in the Vince Lombardi days of Green Bay Packer dominance in the 1960s. Though he is widely linked with the pronouncement, its actual originator is 1950s UCLA Bruins football coach Red Sanders, with the legendary Packer coach reportedly first taking it out for an oratorical spin nearly a decade after Sanders’ reported first utterance in 1950. Perhaps now its been unofficially modified to something more in line with the alleged moral relativism of modern times. I blather in this fashion as a result of watching a couple of weeks of NFL tap dancing in the closing weeks of the regular season that seems markedly different from the win-at-all-costs image that gave the game its initial verve and vitality. I don’t know about you, but regardless of the quite understandable explanations, I don’t much care for watching NFL games where one team has little or no interest in winning and instead is more concerned with avoiding injury. With those as the parameters, that makes it exactly a half-ass exhibition game. I suspect that the expansion of this particular problem came about because the parity theme in the NFL seems to have gotten strained a bit this year, with several teams posting such imposing records that the final stretch of games was almost guaranteed to pose difficulties along these lines. While I understand that winning the Super Bowl is the ultimate goal, I think it raises really troublesome issues when you have things like an undefeated team essentially throwing in the towel early in the second half, even with the understandable goal of avoiding injury to the front liners. I object to this simply on the basis of upsetting the fundamental underpinnings of the sport; a game where physical contact is such an elemental component is not meant to be played halfheartedly. The very bastardization of the process is enough to invite injury itself, since the game is being performed in a fashion diametrically opposite to its primary function. And if it seems too snooty to decry it on such broad philosophical grounds, how about this: What happens if – for example – the New York Jets somehow pull off the second miracle in the history of that often moribund franchise? Would a Jets Super Bowl win in four weeks be forever tainted by the argument that they never should have set foot in the playoffs in the first place? I’m just sayin’.
Monday, January 04, 2010 3:14:32 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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 Thursday, December 31, 2009
And what do we do with guys like Harold Baines? ...
Posted by T.S.
If all the other HOF dilemmas I've discussed aren't enough, how about adding a discussion of Harold Baines into the mix? He narrowly missed falling off the ballot entirely after last year’s 6 percent tally; Baines ended up with an eye-popping 1,628 RBIs. It’s tricky trying to determine why a player who accumulated such unassailable numbers should be so lightly regarded by the voters. He also ended up with 2,866 hits, and I always wanted him to get the needed 134 in order to test the reliability of that particular Cooperstown magic number. My suspicion was/is that it wouldn’t have made enough of a difference. I don’t think fans and writers outside of Chicago environs thought of Baines as a Hall of Famer, and I think that’s unfortunate. Guys like Baines and McGriff shouldn’t be penalized for simply acquiring their HOF-worthy statistics in such a professional and low-key manner that somehow nobody appreciates how good they were. But Baines faces one other challenge: he played roughly 60 percent of his games as a designated hitter, and serious fans are going to have to prepare themselves for a lengthy debate about how that major league rules anomaly is going to be treated by the BBWAA. If Baines' initial vote totals are any indication, it’s going to tax our abilities to successfully apply logic, fairness and reason to a debate often directed largely by emotion and intuition. The arrival of one Edgar Martinez on the ballot this year makes the question more compelling. Almost certainly the greatest designated hitter in the history of the game, he was a late bloomer who didn’t get rolling at the major league level until he was 27 years old, then sat out much of the next two seasons after a torn hamstring. He had one batting title under his belt when he became a full-time designated hitter in 1995 and won a second, adding a Silver Slugger Award and generally leading the league in everything except restaurants visited. So what are we to do with a DH with five Silver Slugger Awards, seven All-Star appearances and two batting titles and a .312 lifetime batting average? The answer ought to be obvious: install him in Cooperstown where he belongs, but I have concerns that it isn’t going to be that simple. The Hall of Fame voters are going to have to decide how to evaluate the top performers at that jury-rigged position that curiously is embraced by only half of the major leagues. That grotesque situation alone probably explains some of the confusion about it; just because it’s been 37 years doesn’t mean that MLB has any less of a responsibility to figure out a way so that all 30 teams could play by the same set of rules. In the meantime, there’s no effective argument to make that Edgar Martinez doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame. Hell, Major League Baseball itself renamed their annual designated hitter award after him, a nod quite properly reserved for only the truly immortal. If there are writers out there who harbor gnawing misgivings about the appropriateness of the DH and thus decide to massage their apprehensions by passing on Edgar’s candidacy, the simple answer is you guys have got to get some counseling. And DH is not the only far-reaching examination that the voters face. All-time saves leader Lee Smith is edging up toward the 50 percent mark after eight years on the ballot, so voters clearly seem to have some ambivalence about that odd statistic that is barely older than the designated hitter rule in its modern configuration. Add in the anguished debate that is ahead (or already upon us) about how to handle the steroid-tainted crew and the BBWAA and maybe later on the Veterans Committee setup (whatever form that ultimately takes) are going to have their hands full. For the record, I might as well push forward my own choices, It seems only right that I would offer my views about how I would vote if I somehow were allowed to do so. So here goes: (in a kind of haphazard order of relative enthusiasm for the selection) Andre Dawson, Mark McGwire, Roberto Alomar, Edgar Martinez, Fred McGriff, Harold Baines, Dave Parker and Don Mattingly. As I noted in earlier blogs, my list bears no resemblance to what I fear is going to happen, that no one is going to make it. There a couple of others I would have loved to add in there, most notably Dale Murphy, but I had to limit it to the number that I did. It was only upon proofreading that I noticed there were no pitchers included in the mix. Gee, I may be as goofy, arbitrary, illogical and inconsistent as the knuckleheads who actually get to vote.
Thursday, December 31, 2009 9:03:54 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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 Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Dawson faces imposing HOF challenge ...
Posted by T.S.

Here’s one of my elemental beefs with the lunkheads (some of the them are, anyway) who make up the annual BBWAA vote for the Hall of Fame: Andre Dawson came up 44 votes shy of election last year. If we are to hope that he gets elected this year – and I do indeed – 44 guys/gals have to decide that an eight-time All-Star who wasn’t worthy last year is somehow now looking more, uh, immortal this year. That’s idiotic on the face of it. I don’t fault the Hall of Fame, which labors mightily to find a fair and effective procedure for deciding who gets a plaque, but I do think there needs to be more rigorous oversight from the BBWAA over their own little (and important) fiefdom. If there were some procedure for our mysterious scribes to explain some of their more unusual maneuvers, like the guys who somehow leave names like Henry Aaron or Willie Mays off the ballot, or more recently guys who turn in blank ballots. Really? Nobody at all is worthy enough by your ethereal standards? So I fear for Dawson’s chances, pessimistic as I am about his ability to pull in those 44 additional votes. I figure there are enough new HOF-worthy names appearing on the ballot for the first time to confuse these same writers anyway. Mark McGwire, who belongs in the Hall of Fame, seems unlikely to make it this year of maybe even any year until the voters figure out an equitable way to reconcile their epic disgust over alleged steroid use with the reality that virtually a whole generation of modern stars is going to arrive on the ballot under that cloud. McGwire, who is guilty of little more than implementing a regrettable strategy when he testified in front of several hundred Congressional hypocrites, will have to ultimately find a spot on the wall in Cooperstown. But at 22 percent last year – actually a decline from the year before – it’s difficult to imagine that happening anytime soon. Bert Blyleven fell a mere 67 votes short last year, but his situation is more ominous because he only has two BBWAA votes left after this one. The only thing I can figure is wrong with his candidacy is that he won 20 games only once, and thus confronts a curious BBWAA preoccupation with magic numbers that seems to suggest that winning 20 is wonderful but 18 or 19 is just plain yucky. He also suffers from being lumped in – fairly or not – with a number of other fine hurlers who fell short of that other magic number: 300. That list would include Jim Kaat, Tommy John and Luis Tiant. How you look at those four guys and decide who is the more urgent candidate is way beyond me. More on this year's HOF ballot in another blog.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009 3:49:26 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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 Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Why does boxing emulate wrestling? ...
Posted by T.S.

Will somebody please splain to me why boxing seems to want to be more like wrestling than it does try to be a serious sport worthy of its once-exalted status in both its amateur and professional incarnations. I had more or less abandoned the sport for a couple of decades or so as it reveled in all of the inane self-inflicted confusion and idiocy that has been rampant over that span. And then I kind of accidentally watched Manny Pacquiao defeat Miguel Cotto for the Welterweight Championship last fall and I was hooked once again. I saw the fight on HBO a week or so after it took place, but it was the best boxing match I had seen since Muhammad Ali’s tangles with Joe Frazier. With my longstanding affection for all things Filipino, I promptly declared myself a Pacquiao fan and decided I would eagerly await the Super Fight with Floyd Mayweather. And then the B.S. started. I know, I know, with the hundreds of millions of dollars at stake the epic battle is probably still going to take place sooner or later, but now the two camps are wrangling over blood and urine. And my question is essentially: Why in the hell does boxing allow the parameters of how its matches are contested to be something that is part of the negotiations between the two fighters? Gee, I am so naive that I thought the sport’s governing body(ies) would determine important considerations like testing for drugs, etc. I suppose it’s also likely that this silly wrangling over whether Pacquiao can withstand the rigors of a blood test within two weeks of his match is nothing more than a publicity ploy, but I grouse about it because it makes the sport and its practitioners – boxers, officials, media, etc. – look stupid in the process. Golly, how much blood do they actually extract for these things? Perhaps we have spent too much time watching that other HBO extravaganza “True Blood.” Nearly 30 years ago when I worked for the Empire State Games in New York, our offices in Albany were about 30 feet away from the chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, which at the time was former Heavyweight Champion Floyd Patterson. I would catch him napping with his feet up on his desk from time to time and with his office door opened a tiny crack, which was no big deal lest anyone think that’s some kind of criticism. But what I found most interesting about the NYS Athletic Commission was the fact that at the time it had professional wrestling under its domain as well as boxing. One seemed like a legitimate sport – including a considerable presence at the amateur level in our Empire State Games – and the other seemed more like, uh, entertainment. I understand that the borrowing back and forth between the two would be inevitable, but sadly it seems like over the last 30 years boxing has become more like wrestling than the other way around. Maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad, except that over the same span wrestling was becoming more like the Jerry Springer Show than it was moving toward boxing. But assuming they get this silliness behind them, I am going to be watching that fight in some fashion or other. And I’ll be rooting for the Filipino.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009 4:09:51 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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 Monday, December 28, 2009
2010 HOF ballot has too many worthy candidates ...
Posted by T.S.
OK, I’ll admit it, I’m nervous. With about a week left to go, I am starting to worry that there might not be anybody elected from the BBWAA ballot for next year’s HOF class. It’s bewildering that the number of worthy candidates should have an impact on the results of any particular individual’s chances, but it seems to be the case, and thus the addition of names like Roberto Alomar, Edgar Martinez, Barry Larkin, Fred McGriff and Andres Galarraga seems ominous for some of the holdovers. I refer, of course, to Andre Dawson and Bert Blyleven, the two candidates with seemingly the best shot at election after a significant number of years on the ballot. For the former, this is the 10th try; for Blyleven, the 2010 vote is No. 14, meaning he’ll have but one more crack at BBWAA election if this year’s tally comes up short. And I think it might. Depending upon the day you asked me, I would likely say there are between 7-10 guys on the list who would get my vote, and my fear is that with that many worthy nominees the votes get spread around so much that perhaps nobody gets the needed 75 percent. I am going to blog about the 2010 vote for much of the next few days leading up to the Jan. 6 announcement, citing some of the individual cases of most interest to me. In the meantime, it’s worth noting that many of our cherished notions about magic numbers and hallowed benchmarks need to be re-examined, to say nothing about the looming (actually already upon us) dilemma about what to do with the steroids questions. I hold no illusions that my prognostications are any more valid than anybody else’s, but if I am going to blog I might as well put something at risk: I don’t think the 2010 BBWAA vote will push anyone past the 75 percent threshold. Even as I type it, I hope to heaven I am wrong about my conclusion. No offense to Doug Harvey and Whitey Herzog, but I’d want to see more folks on the podium next summer. More on this on the morrow.
Monday, December 28, 2009 4:39:16 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
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