Under the Rule of Threes, events in the sporting world converged recently to illustrate an important point about modern life: You can’t say nuttin’ about nobody.
  
   Just ask the extraordinarily clumsy Don Imus, who remarked about the continuing legal difficulties encountered by NFL star Adam “Pacman” Jones in a fashion that got him in trouble once again, though I am convinced from listening to the exchange that he really was simply employing sarcasm, which often gets lost in translation.

   Several weeks ago, a gal (whoops! politically incorrect) on the Golf Channel, noting the abilities of the seemingly invincible Tiger Woods, (shown at right in Michael Joseph original artwork) gushed that a lynching might be the only way for his fellow PGA Tour competitors to stop him.

   Shortly after that, Johnny Miller, NBC’s golf analyst, found himself in the middle of a storm following Woods’ amazing U.S. Open win over Rocco Mediate. Miller’s sin was opining that the 45-year-old golfer “looks like the guy who cleans Tiger’s swimming pool,” and later added to his fellow commentator, “Guys with the name ‘Rocco’ don’t get on the trophy” at the U.S. Open.

   Well. Three seemingly unrelated incidents, but all linked by the common thread that there’s very little leeway granted anymore to public statements that can range from the obviously racist and inflammatory to the simply stupid or often grotesquely overblown.

   Imus’ comments generated a lot of heat, apparently as much from his track record as anything truly offensive in the remarks. Ironically, if you accept Imus’ explanation that his comments were intended to note his view that blacks can often receive undue attention from law enforcement quarters, it’s possible he could be in hot water with an entirely different group.

   It’s as though we have collectively lost the ability to evaluate comments and make nuanced decisions about what the speaker intended to convey. The Miller fiasco would be exhibit No. 1 in this department. Known for his often biting assessments of PGA players – particularly his solemn intonations about who might have “choked” at a particular moment in a match – Miller, like Imus, no doubt finds himself subjected to even more scrutiny than might otherwise have been the case.
Maybe we ought to simply attribute these things to the “Tiger Woods” effect. It’s hardly a coincidence that the two incidents that caused so much trouble both involved Tiger. Announcers and sportswriters get so caught up in finding new and improved ways to tell the great unwashed about Tigers’ greatness that it inevitably leads to problems.

   I watched the U.S. Open and took note of both remarks by Miller, realizing in a nanosecond that: a) Miller was going to be in trouble in both cases; and b) He shouldn’t be, because it ought to have been clear that he didn’t mean anything offensive about either colorful observation.

   Therein lies the rub. Colorful. If Miller had been more careful, he might have said something more suitable for a state police traffic report: “The subject (Mediate) does not exude the conventional traits of a professional golfer in this particular tournament setting.” Gee, that’s a lot better. (sarcasm)

   Of the remark about the name Rocco not traditionally winding up on the U.S. Open trophy, he could have rephrased thusly: “A perfunctory examination of detailed accounts of previous tourneys reveals that casual nicknames similar to the subject’s do not appear with any noticeable frequency.”

   It may appear that I am a Johnny Miller apologist, which would be wrong. He generally annoys me, especially with his pronouncements about who might have choked at a given moment in a tournament. He is widely applauded for that candor, with the implicit message that other analysts are too timid to offer such observations for fear of alienating the player so designated, but my view would be different.

   I don’t think anybody knows for sure when a player chokes, as the word is commonly understood. In this I consider myself something of an expert, having choked on a number of occasions at the pool table. And that’s my point: I think it would be laudatory and commendable were a player to simply admit that he choked at this or that moment (it has happened rarely), but ultimately I figure he/she is the only one who really knows. Everybody else, Miller included, is just guessing.

   All of this might be funny, except that there’s an insidious impact that eventually trickles down to just about anyone who talks or writes in a public forum, and in the Internet Age, that would appear to be just about all 300 million of us.

   The more people get spanked or otherwise scolded for casual remarks or commentary that seemingly don’t warrant all the hoopla, the more the rest of us bite our collective tongue just a little bit more.

   I intend to resist that temptation mightily. 

   I ran across this cool signed photograph of one Rudolf Wanderone, aka Minnesota Fats. He is arguably the most famous pool player in the world, a point that severely aggravated a number of his contemporaries and left couuntless others at least mildly bemused.

   Irving Crane, whom I have written about in other columns, would belong in the former column; Willie Mosconi, whom Fats played in campy television matches in the 1970s, I would characterize as in the mildly bemused column. Thirty years ago when I spent the better part of four months mostly racking balls for Crane during practices sessions (her mercifully allowed me to shoot on the rare occasions when he missed) near his home in Rochester, N.Y.

   Hard as it is for me to imagine now, I was the young whippersnapper then, still under the dreaded age of 30, and Crane was all of 65. Short of questions directly related to the practice session at hand, decisions about idle conversation surrounding the afternoon were in his hands, but I was always particularly delighted when he would reminisce a bit about his storied history in the game.

   It was pretty rare when he talked much at all, since he took practice more seriously than anyone I’ve ever known, even though he was competing sparingly by then and would retire from the pro tour a couple of years later. He told me stories about Ralph Greenleaf, whom he admired but was also appalled by Greenleaf’s alcoholism; he also talked occasionally about Mosconi, and even more rarely about Fats.

   Mostly what I remember about Fats’ name coming up was Crane’s insistence that despite the flashy nickname and legendary self-promotion, Minnesota Fats couldn’t have competed with any of the top players at straight pool, which was Crane’s favored game. Fats was a nine-ball player, or more likely banks or one-pocket games that lent themselves to the gambling end of things. It was part of Crane’s mystique that he didn’t even care for gambling, which could be a real handicap for a guy trying to make a living in a “profession” so exquisitely involved with wagering.

   I only met Willie Mosconi on one occasion, I would guess around the mid-1980s when I got lucky and wound up having lunch with him at an billiards exhibition at a restaurant in the Philadelphia suburbs. The place, Williamsons Restaurant, is a local institution in Horsham, Pa., for old-time collectors just a couple of miles up the road from the site of the Eastern Pennsylvania Sports Collectors Club (EPSCC) shows in Willow Grove.

   I was clearly unworthy of sitting at the same table for lunch with Mosconi and the man he was playing against, fellow Billiards Congress of  America Hall of Famer Jimmy Caras, who lived in nearby Wilmington, Del., and their wives, but simply hustled a bit (the generic use of the term) to snag the seat. I was with an old friend, a poolroom operator from Delaware who had played high school basketball with Dick Groat, and we simply figured out where we thought the guest(s) of honor would be planted and just plopped down in the other seats at the table. The worst that could happened is that we would be politely asked to move to another table.

   Instead, Mosconi and Caras just sat down and apparently assumed that the two reprobates at the table had some divine right to be there. Needless to say, we were thrilled. While we largely left the choice of table discussion topics to the actual dignitaries, I did mention to Mosconi that I had spent a good deal of time with his old archrival Irving Crane.

   While Willie didn’t precisely use the quote attributed to him in this autobiography about “Irving Crane wouldn’t take a shot unless his grandmother could make it,” he did confirm the conventional wisdom that Crane had been perhaps the most careful player he had ever encountered.

   And about Fats he was a bit more diplomatic than Crane had been a half-dozen or so years earlier, noting simply that while Fats hadn’t truly been one of the top players on tour – or even actually playing in the major tournaments – he had been an incredible ambassador for the game. He did tell us, however, that he would go to great pains to find ways to tune out the legendary Minnesota Fats shtick and nonstop banter, which even in exhibition matches could prove to be a problem for pool players more accustomed to relative serenity and quiet while shooting, two words that wouldn’t even show up in Fats’ vocabulary.

   But a couple of words that did allegedly pass from Rudolph’s lips always tickled me, whether he actually said them or not. “Irv Crane would have been the only guy to notice the horse under Lady Godiva.”

   Of such witty gems are legends forged.

   Our SCD crew braved tornadoes and floods this past weekend to hold the annual SportsFest Show for the second year at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel and Convention Center in suburban Chicago.

   The high point of the weekend may have been the return of Pete Rose for another autograph session. The all-time hit king has been a longtime friend of Krause Publications, having appeared at SportsFest and at our Hawaii Trade Conference a number of times. I’ve been intrigued by his low profile in recent months during a time when the steroid allegations (and admissions) have been coming faster than kiss a duck.

   Rose graciously allowed us some interview time prior to his public signing appearance on Sunday, and talked about steroids, the commissioner, Barry Bonds and a whole lot more. Whatever your opinion of Pete, it’s hard not to admire his dogged insistence on being himself on all occasions, even if his candor ends up seeming counterproductive to his long-range hopes of being reinstated into the good graces of Major League Baseball.

   The interview with Rose is featured in a video clip on Chris Nerat’s Gavel Chat Blog ... I’ll also be writing it up for my “Out of Left Field” column in this week’s SCD (July 4).

   Another former player from Pete’s heyday, Ron Kittle, turned up at the show in an informal capacity. The 1983 AL Rookie of the Year brought in a couple of artifacts to be evaluated at the “What’s It Worth” segement of the show, a regular component for the last three years that has proved to be popular with Chicago collectors. Kittle’s pride and joy (of stuff he brought to the show) was a 1983 All-Star Game signed bat that has the kind of povenance that can hardly be topped: he got all the signatures himself at the game.

   Kittle, whom I remember even from 1981 during his minor-league days when he was socking 40 home runs for Glens Falls (New York) in the Eastern League and I was the PR director for the Empire State Games in nearby Albany. Kittle said the nifty All-Star bat was headed for a charity auction; he’s also a prolific collector in his own right and the creator of spectacular hand-crafted Benches. We hope to have an interview with him later this summer.

   David Ortiz and the Red Sox have pulled a remarkable triple play on their hated rival, the New York Yankees, and if the Gotham guys keep fumbling their end of this deal, it runs the risk of developing into a full-fledged curse. Not that I believe in such things, mind you.

   As you probably know, the Yankees spent roughly $50,000 digging up construction at the new Stadium because some enterprising worker entombed an Ortiz jersey within its walls; subsequent news reports indicate that additional memorabilia has also been sprinkled about the facility, which is slated to open next year. The Yankees had the right idea at the time, donating the jersey to the Jimmy Fund, which auctioned it for $175,000 a couple of weeks later.

   But now, along with reports of the alleged additional “burials,” comes word that the Yankees are bristling about a MLB-planned promotion for the Home Run Derby contest held the evening before the All-Star Game, which this year will be played at, gulp, Yankee Stadium.

   The State Farm Insurance “Call Your Shot” promotion would have Ortiz, the Sox’ jovial, midly rotund left-handed slugger, trying to hit a home run to a specified spot in the bleachers, thus mimicking (or paying homage to) Babe Ruth’s alleged called shot off Charlie Root of the Cubs in the 1932 World Series.

   As I write this, Yankees officials are grousing about the idea of Ortiz, who routinely clobbers Bronx pitching, being the centerpiece of a promotion held in conjunction with the final All-Star Game (there have been four) at the legendary stadium. There is talk of perhaps including a Yankee player in the promotion, but it seems to me that any modification of the initial plan would likely leave the Yankees looking like the crybaby wieners that so many National League fans have for decades have insisted that they, in point of fact, are.

   Laughingly, all the kibitzing about the “controversy” seems to center around Ortiz being selected for the role, without anybody bothering to note that the Bambino’s called shot – if it happened at all – took place at Wrigley Field, not at Yankee Stadium.

   As they did with the memorabilia items entombed in the new facility, this one looks like its going to wind up being scored E10 against the Bronx Bombers. The Red Sox, having reversed “The Curse,” seem well on the way to reversing the whole concept, and the Yankees seem to be unwitting enablers in the process.