Sidebars

Big Mouths....by Bob Sanders

 

Her professional clothes were designed by "Omar of Omaha," she wrote 75 percent of her material, her nude photos were judged too good by Playboy (the magazine was going for laughs), and she performed as guest pianist with more than 100 of the Nation's symphony orchestras.

Her name was Phyllis Diller.  She died last week in Brentwood at 95 and those at her bedside said she went out with a smile, thoroughly i keeping with her having been a very, very funny lady.  If she hadn't created such a long and successful career starting at age 37, she probably would have died in St. Louis rather than the Los Angeles suburb.

I had lunch with Diller in the Gateway to the West not long after being named TV Guide regional manager of a large chunk of real estate that included St. Louis.  Transportation in those days was of particular importance to entertainers and St. Louis' central location was a major career consideration.  Diller had achieved her initial success doing stand-up at the Purple Onion while working days writing copy at a San Francisco radio station.  That was in 1955 and it wasn't long before she was being seen on the shows of Jack Paar, Red Skelton and Jack Benny.

If memory serves, the luncheon was somewhere in the Gaslight Square area where Diller had held forth at the Crystal Palace, creative home of other talented people--among them song writers Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf whose credits include "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" from their "The Nervous Set."

The Diller luncheon included four other members of what was then called the press and I believe my invitation was decidedly more of an acknowledgement of my magazine's national stature rather than any impressive local strength.  A difficult market for TV Guide in those days, St. Louis had but three stations, one a UHF.  Diller's arrival from suburban Webster Groves was in a Rolls-Royce and she stayed in character complete with the cigarette holder, a crazy hat and clothes tastefully reduced in impact from her TV appearances.  Her cackling voice and references to "Fang," her brilliant and oft-used comedic invention, were on target and her best line, one of many alluding to her attire, was: "You know you're old when someone compliments you on your alligator shoes, and you're barefoot."

My luncheon with Diller was oddly precient involving recognition on my part that her body, then 42, would have been appreciated by Playboy photographers.  Nude photographs of her were submittd to the magazine two years later and I went to work for Hugh Hefner in 1968.  Oddly enough, during my tenure with Playboy, I never became aware of the Diller photographs nor the "rejection" story until the facts were mentioned in her obituaries.

As many of us now know, Hefner began using photographs of celebrities older than the girls next door.  That was more than 30 years ago; Terry Moore has been the oldest at 55 followed by Nancy Sinatra (54), Vicki LaMotta (51) and Farrah Fawcett (50).  One has to wonder if Diller provided the original nudge some six years after the magazine's first issue with Marilyn Monroe on the cover.  It seems a bit surreal to include Phyllis Diller and Marilyn Monroe in the same sentence but life can, indeed, be curious.  Of more than passing interest are those Diller nude shots.  At least one survives and is included in her 2005 autobiography, Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse.

Diller's greatest contribution to comedy probably was paving the way for a future generation of feminine big mouths including Roseanne Barr, Sarah Silverman and Joan Rivers who, come to think of it, is still being outragous while nearing 80.  The latter's introduction to comedy was as a writer for Diller with the most valuable lesson learned being the mileage achieved from self-directed barbs.

While Diller could be described as a somewhat beguiling big mouth (her work was remarkably clean), such was not the case with Howard Cosell, the sports journalist who transformed an obnoxious one-of-a-kind persona into a much-copied norm for sports broadcasting.

Indeed, there was and continues to be but one Cosell who once said of himself: "Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff.  I have been called all of these.  Of course, I am."

Until Cosell became a household name in the mid-50s, sports broadcasters were largely a breed inventing their craft as they blathered along with home team announcers most often referred to as "homers."  The term remains in use today largely because of the role played by ownerships, particularly baseball, in choosing broadcast teams.  Vin Scully, now pushing 90, is a notable exception and before him such worthies as Graham McNamee and Ted Husing.  It was McNamee, a budding opera singer, who invented play-by-play prior to Husing coming on board as a crossover from news and political conventions coverage.  Arrogant, opinionated, even coarse, Husing could have been the role model for Cosell.

Cosell also was impressive with none of Scully's class and you either thought he was wonderful or an outrage.  Assuming a "tell it like it is" approach, the one-time lawyer (he was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1941), began on ABC with pre- and post-game shows of the then brand new New York Mets.

While baseball was a springboard to fame for Cosell, it was boxing and "Monday Night Football" that cemented his relationship with fans.  It was Cosell's defense of Muhammad Ali who, while still fighting under his birth name, Cassius Clay, refused to be inducted into the military.   Cosell's four years U.S. Army service during World War II made his defense of Ali a lot easier.

Cosell transformed sports reporting and nothing could have been of greater reportorial contrast than the work of Jerome Herman ("Dizzy") Dean whose approach was more than bizarre.  Baseball was his game (he remains the last National League pitcher to win 30 games) and his base runners "slud" into third base while sometimes "returning to their respectable bases."  Inclined to mount evidence that good pitchers must be of stout heart, Dizzy suggested that one possessed "testicle fortitude." 

Until Cosell came along with an intellectual approach, sports broadcast reporting was heavy on cliches and light on stories behind the stories.  His feuds, particularly with New York sports columnists Dick Young and Jimmy Cannon, were classics.  Cannon once suggested: "This is a guy who changed his name, put on a toupee and tried to convince the world that he tells it like it is;  If Howard Cosell were a sport, he'd be the roller derby."

In a very real sense, Cosell legitimatized the sports loud mouth and probably helped open the door, if briefly, for Rush Limbaugh.  ESPN hired the master of hate radio to contribute his limited football knowledge to "Sunday Night Countdown."  That was in the fall of 2003 with Limbaugh lasting less than a month by making racist remarks about Philadelphia Eagles' quarterback Donovan McNabb.

Sports broadcasting's big mouths are many these days with demands made by cable's 24/7 the biggest factor.  A lot of time has to be chewed up and the need for panels of experts results in an obvious contrast to sports anchors on 30-minute newscasts.  About as colorful as network sports broadcasters are allowed to be can be found on golf coverage now the province of CBS, NBC and the Golf Channel.  Johnny Miller of NBC is often peevish while CBS' Gary McCord is consistently amusing as he makes light of a sport that takes itself too seriously.  McCord, still barred from The Masters for nearly 20 years following his description of the 17th green as appearing to be "bikini waxed," is the same guy who split his pants while bending over a putt at the 1984 Fed Ex St. Jude Classic.  Unfortunately, he was without underwear and, after brief embarrassment, bought fellow pro Peter Jacobson's rain pants for $20.  McCord and David Feherty of Golf Channel are the sport's best.

Such ESPN cable carpers as Tony Kornheiser, Colin Cowherd ("The Herd") and "Mike & Mike in the Morning" have shown promise as certified blowhards.  The best of the bunch may be Samuel A. Smith whose boorishness is decidedly of the Cosell School.  A writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1994, Smith had his column yanked in 2007.  Arbitration ensued and he was reinstated while forced to remove political views from his website and cable news shows.  Called "a self-promoting, race-based gasbag" by the New York Post, Smith does radio shows for stations in New York and Los Angeles.  National exposure comes in the form of ESPN's "First Take" with Skip Bayless who can be counted upon to run counter to most of Smith's opinions.  Smith has referred to himself as "a cross between Bill O'Reilly and Larry King" and has been known to change his mind as often as Mitt Romney.  The NBA is his special province and he was a special commentator on the Michael Jackson memorial funeral service.  

Smith may very well be Cosell's heir apparent yet there have been times when I was convinced any mantle assumption would be by Jay Mariotti whose loud mouth career has been stalled by a series of misadventures climaxed by being charged with stalking and assaulting his ex-girlfriend.  His 2010 court appearance (he pleaded no contest, got five years probation) was highlighted by the charge that he allegedly demanded "as a high profile sports writer and general celebrity" that the ex-girl friend get plastic surgery.  A writer of 17 years for the Chicago Sun-Times, Mariotti was employed by ESPN at the time of his arrest in Los Angeles.  His work there included "Around the Horn" while occasionally hosting "Pardon the Interruption."  He has been without work for three years.

Boistrous and obnoxious, Mariotti was so offensive to Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert that the Pulitzer winner challenged Mariotti's inclination to write sensationalist columns while working at his paper.

This just in.  Jim Rome, who left ESPN for a CBS radio gig in January, will go CBS  Sports Network  all the way when he finalizes a deal to do "Rome," a 30-minute daily cable TV show on the network that debuted in April.  Rome may be recalled as a guy who works his name into his show titles as in "Rome is Burning."

Rome may be recalled for an in-studio interview conducted early in his career with NFL quarterback Jim Everett.  Convinced that Everett was a bit shy when confronted by NFL tacklers, Rome began calling him "Chris," a reference to female tennis star Chris Evert.  Everett eventually took Rome to the floor while on the air.  A desk that had separated them, was overturned.

Word is that Rome, once again, will make certain his interviews will be conducted over a very sturdy desk.

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Straight Down the Muddle....by Bob Sanders

 

Professional golf, the only major sport whose players are not unionized, has management both brisk and mysterious.  Little is known about the boards that govern the sport other than the existence of a 16-member Player Advisory Council that reports to a PGA Tour Policy Board whose nine largely veiled members include four tour players plus five of impressive Corporate America lineage.  It is they who internalize the professional sport's unique underpinnings: the rules of the game.

In its never-ending pledge to shine light on those dark and musty corners of troubled American contemporary life, Sidebars, in concerted and highly unconventional efforts with LeakyWiks, has invaded the hallowed halls of professional golf through intrusive efforts originally revealed more than a year ago in "Flygate."  Acclaimed as the first fly-on-the-wall reportage, the journalistic breakthrough now has made possible access to golf's innermost secrets.

The scene is the board room of the Tenth of One Percent Country Club in Florida's Fruit of the Loon County.  All members of the PGA Policy Board are present for the special meeting called in spite of the 2012-15 rules changes already having been voted into place. 

                  Hugh Bristic:            

"In opening this meeting, I'd like to offer a warm welcome   to the tour board members.  It seems like only yesterday that you fellows were required to enter clubs like One Tenth of One by the back door.  Emancipation comes in many forms and you chaps, once considered the hired help, were early winners."

            Bubba Niblick:

"My things have changed and I guess change is why we've gathered here.  As I understand it, the public's increasing appetite for the belly putter exceeds that of our professional level where we have less stomach for it.  Let me offer the observation that steady equipment improvement has been a hallmark of golf and 350 yard drives would not be possible today were we playing with Bobby Jones wooden sticks.  Just as the mulligan will not be given up by once-a-week golfers, it is also true that the public welcomes the decline of scores just as baseball fans want more home runs from Alex Rodriguiz.  It's all about scoring and soccer continues to struggle because of a lack of it."

        Ben Bumptious:

"Thanks, Bubba.  Well put and I'd like to follow up with a comment about another of our problems--namely, logos.  As a member of the Progressive Insurance board, I seem to recall this bodacious body turning down my proposal that Flobot, one of Progresssive's intensely branded advertising weapons, be allowed to caddy for Charley Duckhook in this year's Masters."

Bod E. Orifice:

"Glad you brought that one up, Ben.  That didn't sit well with my board at Gold Libertarians.  Just between us, I heard a rather startling rumor that a gold consortium is coming up with a scheme to have one of the top pros painted gold before every round of the next PGA.  Sort of like what Goldfinger did to that girl in the Bond film."

Woody Cleek:

"Hey, now.  Talk like that is as welcome as a fried egg lie in the Road Hole bunker at St. Andrews.  Funny you should mention metal, though.  News Corporation approached me regarding silver; something about linking me to the FOX Financial channel and becoming the Silver FOX.  My agent tells me it was Stuart Varney's idea."

Bud Bunker:

"Pretty strange getting anything financial out of Varney these days.  He spends most of his time trying to elect Romney.  Hey, is Romney a golfer?"

Bod E. Orifice:

"If he is, he's sure hiding it while criticizing Obama for playing too much of our sport which is pretty funny when you consider Ike teed it up something like 800 times while in office.  I'll bet Romney's a closet golfer with a swing like Doug Sanders."

Bubba Niblick:

"Got it wrong, kiddo.  Doug swung like he was in a phone booth."

Bod E. Orifice:

"Same thing."

Bubba Niblick:

"Not so.  There are closets and then there are closets.  Didya hear about the hedge fund manager suing his poker pro ex-wife for a large percentage of her shoe collection valued at more than a million bucks.  He didn't know she has 1,200 pair, a number big enough to require a walk-in closet that would have handled Doug's goofy swing, his caddy and the entire CBS broadcast crew."

Banks Offshore:

"Let's get back to having a pro golfer painted gold like Shirley Eaton in 'Goldfinger.'  How come the FOX stations have so many gold ads?"

Bill Bottomline:

"Well, old sport, gold is very appealing to libertarians and others of a conservative bent who buy into FOX's basic appeal to those of gloom and doom.  The guns, gold and greed devotees were pretty disturbed when Glenn Beck left FOX but Rupert's people seem to have held onto the gold advertisers quite nicely."

Ben Bumptious:

"Yes, but it's the lustrous logos that appeal to the touring pros.  Take the always exciting Jim Furyk who has a $2 million three-year deal with Johnnie Walker menswear to sport a logo on the back of his shirt collar.  That's in adition to two chest logos plus one on his right sleeve.  He's starting to look like a NASCAR entry."

Hugh Bristic: 

Gentlemen.  "If we've squeezed, forgive the mixed metaphor, all we can out of gold and logos, let's hit one straight down the middle and turn our attention to the belly putter.  As we know, such golfers as Webb Simpson and Keegan Bradley are enjoying pronounced success on the tour and some of their short stick brothers are unhappy.  The subject is open for discussion."

"Soft" Fade:

To put it mildly, old bean, we professionals are hoist on petty petards of our own industry's creation--long putters whose functioning is centered under the chin or anchored to the belly.  It seems to me we're looking at unfair advantage and a total disregard for the spirit of the game when a golfer's stomach becomes part of the putting stroke.  I wonder how many majors Craig Stadler might have won had he used the belly putter?  The Walrus utilizing the dunlop is a horror story beyond anything written by Stephen King."  

Ben Bumptious:

"What in the world is a dunlop?"

"Soft" Fade:

"That's old timey Tom Morris talk taken from the expression: 'done lopped over your belt.'"

I.B. Bottomline:

"Why in hell do we call it a belly putter? That's such a dumb name in obese America.  Talk about bad public relations."

Woody Cleek:

"It could be worse.  How about the paunch putter, the bay window stick or the corporation club?  Other words and phrases come to mind including gut, bread bucket and spare tire.  Of course, the British would spell that last one with a y.  No, let's let bad enough alone.  Let's play this one as it lays."

Hugh Bristic:

"Who started this belly putter business?"

Bubba Niblick: 

"Some guy named Richard T. Parmley.  That was in 1965 and Phil Rodgers was the only touring pro to use it in the '60s.  Not much happened until Paul Azinger took it on late in 1999.  That was following a bout with cancer.  His putting had been all over the place: 143rd in 1997, 111th in 1999, then 4th in 2000.  Suddenly the Zinger could putt and he won the Sony Open by seven strokes.  Azinger has been an inspiration."

I.B. Bottomline:

"Bubba, you seem to have an historical perspective on the belly putter.  While this board is independent of the Royal & Anncient and the USGA in regard to professional rules and conduct of our cherished athletes, I wonder if you have any wisdom to import?"

Bubba Niblick:

"Indeed, I do.  During recent days, my agent has been checking out various plastic surgeons like the guy who has done the most work on Joan Rivers.  If winning golf tournaments involves successful anchoring of the putter in my navel, then you can bet your ass my belly button will be precedent-setting in terms of being the most accommodating"

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Whatshisname?....by Bob Sanders

 

I guess anyone with a computer and a curiosity plays a game I call Whatever Happened to Whatshisname?  I did it the other day and learned that Ray Tarrington left this great party in 1997.  A rather lengthy obituary included his age, 71; the place of death: Washington, Kansas; and the cause of death: heart failure.

There was quite a bit in the obit I didn't know about him.  Raised in Seattle, he played jazz trumpet, had his own band, saw U.S. Navy service in both Pacific and European Theaters including the D-Day Landings in Normandy, and was a graduate of Northwestern University.  We were born within a few months of each other.

Ray Tarrington wasn't his real name but I'll use it out of respect for him.  He was a helluva guy--easily the most enthusiastic person I've yet to meet.  It was that enthusiasm that made him an outstanding sports broadcaster eventually enabling him to pursue radio management and other enterprises.

I met Ray in 1959 shortly after arriving in Kansas City having been transferred by TV Guide from a rather lonely outpost in the Quad Cities where the most exciting aspect of working for the magazine involved the printer and a reluctant press that broke down every month or so.  Not to get too far off this story's main thrust but Ernie Somebody, who directed press operations during my 17-months tenure, once ran his boat aground very close to the bridge that connects Davenport and Rock Island.  It was a bridge too close and enabled Ernie's out-for-a-drive wife to see her thoroughly besotted husband and a very attractive shipmate stumbling around the boat's deck.  With authorities involved, a headline over a picture in one of the local papers proclaimed Ernie's efforts as one of being Scotched on the Rocks.  I promise to write further about highly unlikely Quad City adventures.

I was deligthted to be in K.C.--particularly so because of Tarrington who showed me the town while introducing me to such people as former Mayor Roe Bartle, baseball's Charley Finley and singer Marilyn Maye.  Bartle was a lot of fun, Finley was strange and Maye, then in the midst of an 11-year run at mid-town's The Colony, was eventually discovered by Steve Allen.  With a record 76 appearances on Johnny Carson, she remains a singer of great taste and good enough, at 84, to play such disparate venues as Birdland, Feinstein's and The Metropolitan Room in New York.

Tarrington managed WDAF radio having earned his broadcast spurs while describing University of Missouri and University of Kansas football and basketball games.  He had a solid relationship with Bill Bates, general manager of both WDAF radio and TV, and I quickly realized the childless Bates regarded Ray as the son he never had.  The stations, originally owned by the Kansas City Star, were more of those embarrassment of riches with the newspaper another awkward handler of its electronic wonderkinds.

Sportscasters all have behind-the-scenes stories to tell about the business and Ray was no different.  One of Bates' dictums was that all sports spielers should never allow three minutes to pass without revealing the score.  One of Ray's prized possessions was a Bates' gift, an egg timer whose pouring sands reminded Ray to give listeners the score.   

Early on Ray and I discovered a mutual fondness for golf and it wasn't long before we were spending goodly chunks of Saturdays at Blue Hills where Bates was a member.  Our foursome was filled out by Bob Hanger, an advertising executive who had co-founded Jones & Hanger.  Among the agency's accounts was WDAF.  As related in a prior column titled Golf Linkage, we also played the south side's Hillcrest where our adventures once included the consumption of 64 beers after a round.  The impressive tippling produced impairment of our marriages; one, Tarrington's, was irreparable.  I learned years later than Hanger married Ray's ex-wife.

Ray's second marital venture involved a statuesque daughter of a very wealthy Phillips Petroleum executive.  Although I never met her having been transferred by TV Guide to Los Angeles early in 1966, I did receive details from both mutual friends and Tarrington when we hooked up in L.A. that year.  By that time, Ray had taken leave of broadcasting having decided to provide consul to athletes' general inability to deal with the media.  That aspect of sports remains a problem today although contemporary jocks, spoiled by the remarkable amounts of money thrown at them, are inclined to simply become "unavailable" unless being the producer of, say, a walk-off hit--a certain curtain call for a broadcast interview.  "Was it a fast-ball or a slider you hit into the right field stands?"

Ray's striking enthusiasm was a major factor in his ability to communicate with and teach people like Los Angeles Dodger shortstop Maury Wills how to work with the media.  Among L.A.'s major buzzes back then were rumors that Wills and actress Doris Day had been having a fling since 1962.  The story was told by Wills in his biography On the Run and denied by Day in A.E. Hotchner's look at the actress in Her Own Story.  If true, I believe Ray would have confirmed the rumors.  He didn't.

A decidedly open guy, Ray told me some great stories about his marriage to the stunning blonde who, by the time we re-connected, was an ex-wife once described by him as "looking like something wondrous from a Wagnerian chorus while being imposing enough to carry a sword."  Ray had a way with both words and women.

It was not long after their marriage that Ray, having determined to sleep in one morning heard some strange and powerful mechanical sounds coming from his Kansas City backyard.  More than a bit groggy from excessive libation the night before, a groggy "Tarrington staggered to a window where he observed a very large machine digging a humongous hole in the ground.  The sometimes forgetful wife had neglected to tell him she had ordered construction of a wimming pool.  Details, details.

Relations with her did not improve when the couple made the move to California.  A trip to San Francisco produced another and final adventure when the twosome quarreled in what is now called the Westin St. Francis Hotel.  When Ray awakened the next morning, he quickly realized the blonde bombshell had tossed every stitch of his clothing out a 10th floor window.  

The day of the 1966 Academy Awards offered further insight into Tarrington's relationships with women.  A noon-ish phone call I received was disturbing; it was from a friend of Ray's who said my name had been mentioned by him a number of times and she thought I would be a person to provide some analysis for what she believed was a frightening admission on his part.  The woman was fearful Ray was considering suicide.  I attempted to reassure her that Ray seemed in good spirits the last time I had seen him.

That year's Oscar awards was the one featuring wins for Julie Christie and Lee Marvin.  In the company of the Guide's Joe Finnigan (he wrote the magazine's Hollywood yellow pages), I was positioned in the basement of the Santa Monica Auditorium near a small platform that enabled Oscar recipients to move from the photo op area to one created for print interviews.

Given her award on stage by prior year's winner Julie Andrews,  Christie (she won Best Leading Actress for "Darling") and Andrews ("Mary Poppins") headed for the steps where I stood.  At that time, Andrews was arguably the biggest star in the business and she appeared to be enjoying her fellow Brit's good fortune.  Then I noticed Andrews' bemused smile.

"How quickly they forget," was my observation to her as she hung back on the tiny platform while Christie was enveloped by those anxious to get reaction from filmdom's new flavor of the year.  Andrews laughed and we chatted a few moments while Christie was engaged by the media horde.  The scene offered further suggestion that success in show business can be such a fragile matter.

Soon I was at a party at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel chatting with Angie Dickinson, seated at the end of a bar with then husband Burt Bacharach whose mind seemed elsewhere.  Perhaps he was composing music in his head or, maybe, I was the 28th guy that night to strike up a conversation with his gorgeous wife.

My mind kept shifting back to the conversation about Ray Tarrington.  I had handled the situation rather badly and was giving the woman's concern much more credence.  In an attempt to assume some responsibility in the matter, I called Bates in Kansas City.  It was about 1 a.m. back there and Bill was a bit disgruntled upon picking up the phone, then listened as I told him about the call from the woman and Ray's apparent threat to take his life.

There was a long pause at the other end.  "Bill, Bill.  Are you there?" I pleaded.

Long pause.  "Yes, I am," he answered.

"What do you think?" I asked.  "I mean about Jay killing himself."

"Well, Bob," replied Bates.  "That's what Jay tells all the girls."

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Long Time No See....by Bob Sanders

 

These lives we live can be loaded with tranquility or resemble the roller coaster ride at Puritas Springs Park, not far from where I grew up in Lakewood, Ohio.  If you tend to believe, as I do, that life is a series of easily recalled sets of time frames accompanied by dialogue exchanges plus the often ego-driven narratives of those we have come to know, then good fortune is ours. 

At 86, I'm lucky to be able to remember many of the dialogues experienced plus the faces of nearly all who have influenced my life.  Most of those recollections are vivid although the knife-sharpening  man, who pushed his cart through the neighborhood during my childhood while calling attention to his talents by shouting something resembling "pape-ah-lags," continues to be face-less. 

People with the ability to recall faces are now being singled out as "super-recognizers" and it's nice to know at an advanced age that I excel at something.

Speaking of faces, anyone ever around Nancy Joyce of Chicago's Station WTTW could hardly forget her.  I couldn't and proved it a couple of month's ago.  The words "bright" and "lively" couldn't do her justice 40 years ago.  The unfortunate aspect of our relationship was that I replaced her as promotion manager of the Windy City's public television channel.

I had been offered her job by station manager Bill McCarter, an astute professional whose short-comings were a tendency to nit-pick and believe that every new key hire would somehow provide the kind of magic that results in large market shares.  Joyce had not done a bad job but was the victim of unfortunate timing and thinking.  Slated to leave the station, she stayed on after I asked her to do so.  McCarter went along with that one, I eventually moved on to Field Enterprises (Chicago Daily News/Sun-Times) and I never saw a face-to-face Nancy Joyce again.

Enter Dick Hieronymus, a musician of considerable skills whom I met while living 14 years on the Fourth Corner's San Juan Island.  Having moved to Bellingham eight years ago, I continue to communicate with him and was startled a few months ago when I received an email accompanied by entre to a most unusual You Tube clip.

Titled "I Have No Secrets," the 18 second bite consists of a man-on-the-street interview of an obviouslky harassed woman pedestrian who turned out to be an unidentified Nancy Joyce.  The quite obvious Chicago locale was a few steps south of the Michigan Avenue bridge looking southeast.  Dressed warmly for the Chicago winter and asked if her hat might be a secret to staying warm, Joyce replies: "I have no secrets.  I'm mad, I have to go to work, I have to earn a living, I'd rather have a private income and get laid well and often."

You might look it up.  My old public TV pal delivers the droll lines with the kind of brilliant flippancy endearingly reminiscent of actresses Betty Davis and Eve Arden.  Judging from the clothing and Nancy's appearance, I'd bet the ranch she was on her way 40 years ago to a job at WTTW.

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I first met Dick Fales early in 1950 at the Cleveland Press where we worked as copy boys while anticipating a break that would provide more significant employment at the outstanding newspaper.  Not long after my arrival, Fales made it to United Press whose offices were on the same second floor where Louis Seltzer and his bedazzling bunch brought news to Clevelanders.  It was Fales who beat the Press to the Sam Sheppard murder case by filing the first wire service story on July 5, 1954.

By the time Fales' story (a re-write of a hastily-written piece by another staffer) had set off a five-bell URGENT in the Press newsroom, I had moved on to the nearby Lorain Journal and checked out the crime scene.  Although the murder had occurred outside the Journal's circulation area, I attempted unsuccessfully to interview Sheppard's brother, Richard, in nearby Rocky River.  Neither Fales nor I had anything more to do with what was arguably the country's second most significant murder case of the second half of the 20th century with top honors going to that of O.J. Simpson.

The next time I saw Fales was in 1957 in Atlanta where I had been transferred by TV Guide.  Fales had moved to sales with UP and would remain almost exclusively with the organization until his retirement in 1988 and a move to the Pacific Northwest.  Neither of us mentioned our one-day involvement in the famous murder case during our brief encounter in Atlanta.

My retirement a year later took Jan and I to San Juan Island (population 6,000 give or take) in 1990.  The day a story about me appeared in the Journal of the San Juans was the day the phone rang with a voice asking for "Sandy," my nickname at the Press.  Soon, Fales and I resumed a friendship that lasted until 2004 when my buddy passed away.  I sometimes wonder what kind of odds were beaten when two one-time copy boys, once employed by a newspaper in Cleveland, would meet again 2,000 miles and 33 years away on a remote island and hoist cold ones at an American Legion bar to learn of each other's one day work history on the Sam Sheppard story?

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One of my St. Louis time frames involves Mary Chase who in 1956 was the latest in a long succession of public relations people who tilled the publicity soil for the Chase Hotel (now the Chase-Park Plaza) under the same name. 

In the lobby where cocktails preceded a party honoring singer Nat "King" Cole, I ran into the very attractive Mary and it was during a time out in the men's room that pal/newsman/disc jockey Bruce Hayward indicated it was his firm belief that Mary Chase had amorous designs on me.  Happily married seven years and something of a coward, I fled the hotel in spite of telling Mary I would return.  One week later, I was transferred to Atlanta.

During the next three years, I was moved four times by the home office eventually landing in Kansas City where my regional responsibilities included St. Louis.

One evening, I entered the Chase Hotel and there, standing precisely where I had left her, was the woman I had stood up three years earlier.

"What took you so long?" she asked.

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It was Bob Cromie, host of such TV shows as "Book Beat" and "The Cromie Circle," who brought up Ernie Gann's name.  I had asked Cromie with which of the many authors he had interviewed would he like to spend a lot of time? "He is truly one hell of a guy," was how Cromie put it.

"I'll tell you something interesting about Ernie Gann," observed Cromie.  "His was the only interview I ever conducted in which the subject would not tell me where he lived.  I asked him why and Gann replied: "If I tell you, you'll ask me what it's like and I'll tell you how wonderful it is.  Members of your audience will then get interested in the place and they'll buy property and build homes and the place won't be the same.  That's why."

Our conversation took place in 1985 shortly before Cromie retired.  When five years later Jan and I moved to San Juan Island in the Fourth Corner, we discovered that two of its better-known residendt were Gann and wife Dodie.  Ernie, author of 25 novels about aviation and the sea, numbered among his best-selllers "Fate Is the Hunter," "The High and the Mighty" and "Blaze of Noon."

It was in August of the year of our arrival that the the Ganns protected their 760-acre Red Mill Farm by donating a conservation easement to the San Juan Preservation Trust thus denying development.  As Gann commented, "We have to do something to save this land.  People need to stop thinking of money all the time, or the land won't be here."  Jan and I became directect beneficiaries of the Ganns' thoughtfulness.  Our home on Little Mountain overlooked the property, now a working farm of unusual beauty to all islanders.  We could see nearly all of it.

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Another of my time frames involves major league baseball's only death on the diamond and the glove worn by the player who replaced Cleveland Indian Ray Chapman, the victim of a much-disputed pitch by the New York Yankees' Carl Mays, a highly successful submarine pitcher inclined to pitch inside.  Mays' defenders believe shortstop Chapman, an outstanding bunter who tended to crowd the plate, leaned into the pitch.

The year was 1920, the season had but six weeks to go and the Indians brought up the Sewellbrothers, Joe and Luke, from the University of Alabama.  It was a remarkable package of talent that also includedleft fielder Riggs Stevenson, eventually traded to the Chicago Cubs where his lifetime batting average of .336 is the 22nd best ever.   Only mis-adventures in the outfield due to a football injury (he was A Crimson Tide quarterback) has kept him out of the Hall of Fame.  All three became storied players who totaled 50 years in the majors with Joe Sewell making it to the Hall of Fame.  His filling in for Chapman helped enable the Indians to win their first World Series.  To paraphrase an old and popular song of the era, stars truly had fallen from Alabama.

Traded to the Yankees in 1930, Sewell gained his greatest fame in New York where the press made the country aware of his remarkable achievements.  Sewell's career strikeout ratio: one in every 63 at-bats, and 115 consecutive games without a strikeout, still stand.  Lovers of trivia are enchanted by the fact that Sewell used but one bat during his 14 seasons.  He treated the bat during the campaigns by rubbing chewing tobacco into it with a Coca-Cola bottle, then buried it in his backyard for a little winterizing.

The arrangement with the University of Alabama also included Crimson Tide baseball coach Zen Scott who was given a sports department job with the  Cleveland Leader now the Plain Dealer).  His other "job" was keeping an eye on the kids.  Scott, who lived in my neighborhood, gave me Sewell's black Rawling's glove when I was about six and I learned to play the game--sometimes under Mr. Scott's tutelage.

It was late in the season of 1933 when some of the Babe Ruth Yankees, including Sewell, made personal appearances at the Masonic Temple next door to my Cleveland suburb home.  My parents encouraged me, seven at the time, to seek out Sewell to show him my glove.

"Where did you get that?" asked the astonished Sewell when I approached him at the end of the evening's festivities.

"Mr. Scott," I replied.

"Where is he?" pursued the future Hall of Famer.

"Down the street," I said.

"Let's go see him," suggested Sewell.

Scott had some years before left the employ of the newspaper and lost touch with Sewell after the trade to the Yankees.  I soon had re-united two long-lost friends who had played roles in a rare piece of baseball history.  I didn't realize then what I had done at age seven, but I carry with me such good feelings when I recall that moment.

The Sewell glove and my baseball cards eventually went the way of many cherished possessions, gathering dust before disappearing but leaving behind vivid memories.  I still wonder when it was that the great ballplayer had used the glove in his pursuit of the glories of the game.  For all I know, the glove may still be somewhere in the basement of a home at 1310 Summit Ave. in Lakewood.

Judging from the look on his face when I showed him what had become "my" glove, I like to think it was Sewell's first in the major leagues, perhaps one he bought or was given in his 'bama hometown of Titus, used at the University of Alabama and taken with him on the train to Cleveland where he helped the Indians win their first World Series.

I suspect that anyone who played 14 years of major league baseball with only one bat probably played with very few gloves.

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Perfection....by Bob Sanders

 

Los Angeles, perhaps this country's most self-important community, has always been on an aggressive search for perfection.  It's as though the city, having overcome a prior description by Dorothy Parker who suggested L.A. was "72 suburbs in search of a city," expects perfection because it is so deserving.

My old boss, Hugh Hefner, has a somewhat beguiling theory about L.A.'s reputation for having a population of beautiful people perhaps not exceeded by any other of the world's cities.  The not exactly world-traveled Playboy founder believes Los Angeleans are noted for their beauty because something like five generations of attractive people have settled in Southern California with the intention of getting into the movies.  When Hef begins such beguiles, faint strains of Cole Porter can be heard along with the realization that he moved from Chicago to L.A. for many reasons, among them a surfeit of beautiful women.

One of Hefner's long-running friends was Barbie Benton, a UCLA premed freshman when she met him in 1968 on the set of "Playboy After Dark," a TV series I promoted when Screen Gems took a hike from responsibilities accepted on a handshake basis.  The pleasant, bug cute, and intelligent Barbie and I hit it off when we met poolside at Miami Beach's Playboy Plaza Hotel late in 1970.  Hefner, taking momentary leave of us, returned quickly accompanied by an unbecoming grumpiness about our somewhat intense chatter.  Asking her to come with him, Barbie refused, saying: "I will when I get through talking with Bob."  Hefner, decidedly a perfectionist, eventually determined that Barbie, certainly one of the girls next door, wasn't perfect although three pectoral pictorials were impressive.  Never a Playmate, Barbie appeared three times on the magazine's cover.

Benton hasn't been the only Barbie involved in nudity.  It doesn't seem possible but nearly 10 years have passed since the El Segundo-based Mattel Inc., then the world's largest toymaker, sued a Utah artist who used nude Barbie dolls in some of his photographic work.  That Barbie was regarded by many as perfection goodness knows and Mattel alleged that Thomas Forsythe's use of the doll infringed on its copyrights and trademarks.  The media never reported a reaction from Ken nor is there record of a Hefner response.

The humorless Mattel was stunned when a San Fancisco appeals court ruled that use of the doll's image was a parody and protected under the First Amendment.

There can be no doubt that greater Los Angeles is obsessed by beauty running from Botox to buttocks.  Further, going under the knife is now as common as sand on the beach at Santa Monica.  Fleshing out details is a tawdry business but we could start with Dr. Michael Niccole who began surgical improvements on two daughters beginning at age 10.  It all started with a much-improved belly button thanks to the critical eye of the refurbishment doctor.  Other family members, including a wife and two sons, have undergone cosmetic enhancement in the search for, among other features, the perfect nose.  Perkier and bigger breasts are part of perfection's pursuit and so it was that an 83-year-old grandmother recently acquired them, perhaps inspired by the terribly plastic Joan Rivers whose face these days is as tight as skins were on Gene Krupa's drums.  Granny is now hopefully at the beach attracting admiring glances if not conversation. 

As this is written, Granny may even be at Muscle Beach, one of this country's great freak shows now located in Venice although, judging from her age, might pay her respects at what what used to be the original site located on the south side of the Santa Monica Pier.  Officially closed there in 1959, Muscle Beach goes back to the '30s when Vic Tanny and Jack LaLanne sought body perfection later achieved by such celebrities as Arnold Schwartzenegger who made it to the movies and the governor's mansion in Sacramento before attracting the attention of checkout counter publications.

When the subject of baseball comes up, the sport's perfection is generally referenced by pitching performances in which but 27 hitters come to the plate in fruitless attempts to get a hit.  There have been 22 of them in the major leagues with the lone Los Angeles effort achieved by Sandy Koufax who did it in 1965 when he beat the Cubs, 1-0.  The Brooklyn-born lefty had a total of four no-hitters but only one was perfect.

Beauty, as we know, is in the eye of the beholder and so it was that what has been described as an eagerly anticipated environmental sculpture has been unveiled at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Titled "Levitated Mass," the work is by Michael Heizer who, apparently, was out to find the perfect rock, all 340 tons of it thus making possible a megalith in a megapolis.  If big is beautiful, then "Levitated Mass" is your cup of granite.

Moving the sculpture's center piece rock from its point of discoveery in a quarry near Riverside was not easy and required a circuitous, 105-mile path through four counties and 22 suburbs.  A huge transporter 200 feet long was used.

There's a stark quality about "Levitated Mass" and it might be its empty field location and a channel of polished concrete that cuts 456 feet across it.  The channel descends to a depth of 15 feet becoming a two-rail pedestal for the rock meaning that visitors can stand below ground level and see a rock from a vantage point never before possible.  At present there are no signs suggesting skateboarders should refrain from performing Gingersnaps and Godzilla Flips on the $10 million project, walking around money when compared to what it costs today to buy an election.  Everything considered, the location, immediately adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits, is perfect and doubtless will  produce stories about the ghosts of dinosaurs being aroused by the new Paleolithic rock now located in the prehistoric resting place.

It was a good week for rocks.  We learned that not only could one of 680,000 pounds be moved in Southern California but, also, how the enigmatic stone heads (some weighing 90 tones) of Easter Island were transported from their quarry points of origination.  It's one thing to move the "Levitated Mass" by means of gasoline and a huge transporter with 88 pairs of wheels, but quite another to have mysteriously transfered nearly 900 smiley faces in those Polynesian halcyon days that preceded a devastating "ecocide" climaxed by the island's population descending into cannibalism and barbarity.  A July National Geographic  magazine story includes details of an experiment conducted in Hawaii in which a smiley face replica was rock and rolled down a road by three teams using very strong ropes.  Lost in all that rock and rolling was the weight of the fake stone head: five tons, 1/18th that of the real thing.  The mystery, in many ways perfect, may not have been solved.  

Moving an isolated big rock 105 miles across a suburban sprawl to the heart of a city the size of Los Angeles is a bit complex in the business of getting the public's attention.  Sometimes inspiration of an unusual nature comes into play as in Carhenge of Alliance, Nebraska where a replica of Stonehenge awaits the next owner.  The asking price is $300,000 and the gray spray-painted 38 cars, jammed in the ground in 1987 in the perfectly arresting symmetry of the British original built between 2500 and 2000 BC, is, according to owner Jim Reinders, "slightly used."    

Drawing eyes of the curious to Alexandria, Indiana is the world's largest ball of paint whose creator was an amateur baseball player who saw a ball accidentally fall into some paint.  Fascinated, Michael Carmichael began a program of dipping and painting with the ball eventually becoming the size and shape of a football whose lack of perfection may have caused him to donate it to the Indiana Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's Home Museum in nearby Knightstown where it can be seen today.

Carmichael had bigger things in mind.  It was on January 1, 1977 that he had his three-year-old son paint another baseball.  The only rule observed by father and son: each new coat must be a different color from the preceding one.  Today's paint ball is strung up in a backyard shed and has more than 20,000 coats with wife Glenda responsible for 8,000 of them.  Families that paint together are quaint together.  Something of a fanatic about paint, Carmichael currently performs 10 coats on dry days although he once called it quits for nearly a year only to return to his obsession.  Some of those dry days are longer than others; once a month Carmichael paints a neighbor's lawn employing a different theme each time.  One of the obvious aspects of the situation is that Glenda never questions her husband's whereabouts.  And, yes, the world's largest ball of paint perfection has been recognized by the Guinness Book of Records.

Some cities attract visitors simply by being strange and two come immediately to mind.  One is Manshiyat Naser, a suburb of Cairo.  Also known as Garbage City, Manshiyat Naser is one big dump whose most significnt citizens are the Zabbaleen, Coptic Christians much envied by Waste Management.  While western collectors of garbage recycle between 20 and 25% of litter, the Zabbaleen regularly register a fingers-to-nostrils 80%.  That's not perfection as garbage collecting goes, but it is impressive.

Another odd place is Miyake-Jima, an island off the coast of Japan.  Its special allure is to those enormously attracted by volcanos.  Sitting on top of a chain of them is Mount Oyama where 17,500 earthquakes occurred in less than a month in 2000.  Lovers of volcanic destruction can take tours that include abandoned houses and flattened cars.  Visitors and locals are required to wear gas masks, a necessity that for all we know may be called "OyamaCare" and not a bad idea for those Christian folks near Cairo.

Realists realize that crowd-gathering curiosities can achieve success quite simply.  San Luis Obisbo, California has Bubblegum Alley where you can affix a chaw of your very own while the World's Largest Hockey Stick is in Duncsan, British Columbia.  It's in Duncan and not Yazoo City, Mississippi because British Columbia is in Canada whose relationship to hockey is something like Green Bay to football only more so.  Canada also claims the World's Largest Egg measuring 3,000 lbs in its fourth reincarnation.  Other wonders include The World's Largest Thermometor in Baker, California while Rock City, Tennessee pays homage to miniature golf where it all began.

Having spent far too many days this year in hospitals, I'll probably be inclined to turn down an inviation, should one be extended, to The Clinic, a bar in Singapore.  Morbidly chic and located in the trendy Clarke Quay area, The Clinic brings a medical atmosphere to booze matters including such comforts as gold plated wheelchairs while drinks are served in syringes and vials by nurses dressed in scrubs.  Their wheelside manners are reputed to be perfect.

Perfection is not easy to find in thoroughly laid back Bellingham, Washington where I live although lovers of rain, moss and bad soil take pride in those daily confrontations believing such challenges are what define and isolate us.  If so, perhaps it's time to get serious, like Los Angeles, and create an attention-getting attraction that will create a new us.

Two possibilities come to mind.  One, providing homage to our past association with Georgia Pacific, would be the erection of the world's largest roll of toilet paper, a monument easily constructed of stone being used in what will be a failed attempt by Regal Cinemas to build a 16-screen Cineplex at Barkley Square.  The last "tissue" of the perfectly enormous 10-story monument would be an enormous American flag whose snapping in the breeze will keep awake all 'hamsters living within a five-mile radius.

A much cheaper Plan B possibility would be an empty store, a perfect and significant sign of our times.

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Missing Jesper....by Bob Sanders

 

I miss Jesper Parnevik.

That's not easy to do considering his claim to fame as a touring golf professional: wearing clothes that strongly suggest the designer is the same guy who dresses the polka bands of Cleveland.  Among Parnevik's other eccentricities is eating volcanic dust as a dietary supplement and, yes, pleading guilty to introducing Tiger Woods to Elin Nordegren, an event that preceded Woods' entanglement with a fire hydrant and a reported golf-club-in-hand pursuit of Woods by the lovely Swede, now an ex-wife.

Following revelations of Woods' womanizing brought about by a phalanx of phallic conquests, the golfing world pretty much lined up lockstep behind the man capable of doubling TV ratings by qualifying for weekend play.  Parnevik, who was Nordegren's employer at the time of the introduction, took exception to her choice of clubs suggesting: "I hope she uses a driver next instead of a 3-iron."

The sartorially-challenged Parnevik, also from Sweden, won four times on the European Tour joining the PGA ramble in the mid-90s winning five events while making three Ryder Cup appearances.  Aware of the golfer's flamboyant sense of fashion set off by a decidedly gauche flip of his golf hat, the manufacturer of the Ryder Club cap attached the event's logo on the bottom of the bill instead of the front so that it could be seen.  Parnevik's explanation for the bill flip: he wants to make sure he gets his face tanned, a reasoning that would make sense only if his golfing was limited to the Eskimo Open, the Arctic Circle Closed or the general area of Bellingham, WA.

While it's tempting to suggest no sad songs should be sung for him in view of his tour winnings of more than $15 million, it is also true he is recovering from hip surgery and continuing back problems, the most recent being a broken lumbar vertebrae.  Those downers were followed by a severe injury to Parnevik's right hand suffered when he got too close to a motor boat engine blade.  Any golfing for money the injury-prone one does this year will be while on a Medical Extension whose challenges are severe: he has to earn $620,087 in his first 12 starts to retain status as a touring pro.  Jesper can handle that one by winning one event and have enough walking around money to buy a round of drinks for all attendees plus members of the host club.

Getting a tee-off time at the U.S. Open was a lot easier at the first one held in 1895 at the nine-hole Newport (R.I.) Country Club.  Literally a sideshow to the U.S. Amateur (both tournaments were conducted at the Newport club), the events originally were scheduled for September, then moved back to not interfere with America's Cup.  The Open's field of nine split a $335 pot with winner Horace Rawlins taking home $150.

Last week's U.S. Open Championship, won in highly impressive fashion by Webb Simpson, also featured the rather dramatic return to a major event by Casey Martin, now a 40-year-old college coach (University of Oregon) whose presence at the 1998 Open gave followers of the game a further peek into just how traditional and narrow of mind the stalwarts of the game can be.  Martin, who suffers from Klippel-Trenauney-Weber Syndrome of the right leg, is forced to ride a cart, a means of transportation that shocked, yes, shocked the sport's reigning nobility including Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.  It was not one of golf's finer moments and the Supreme Court produced further embarrassment when it ruled in Martin's favor.  Despite playing little serious golf these days, Martin was back for another go round having won a tournament qualifier.  With the passing years has come respect for Martin from those who run the sport that prides itself on being the only competition in which players call penalties on themselves, something Jack and Arnie should have had the good sense to do.  Martin's nine over 159 did not qualify for weekend play but the hope is that, like 17-year-old Beau Hossler, he'll be back.

Hossler, an amateur who gained entry by winning a regional qualifier, was the surprise of the tournanment for shooting three over par for three rounds.  Very much in contention, Hossler faded on the last day--humbled like all the field, including the winner, by the Olympic Club's Lake Course.  It took a 68 on Sunday for Simpson to finish one over.

I hope I'm wrong but it does seem that we are seeing an increase in the number of logos being worn by this year's Open participants.  We've reached the point where the most successful of the touring pros know a year in advance what they will wear each day of major tournaments.  Logos are to golf what product placement is to the motion picture and television industries whose creators are more than willing to place bottles of Coca-Cola and Budweiser (logos in full view) as boy meets girl.

People who know about such things suggest a logo festooned Polo shirt can kick sales up 10% as a result of exposure during those exciting final holes, presentation of a trophy and the how-it-all-came-together interview.  With nine holes to go, the eventual winner was one of many being captured by TV's ever-curious cameras.  At the end, he was a jumble of tight shots.  The shirt people, scout's honor, would much rather have as a winner Adam Scott than the supremely lumpy Kevin Stadler whose father, Craig ("The Walrus") Stadler, was even more so.

Monetarily speaking, a cap logo is a lot more important than shirts and golf bags although the sponsor's name is much larger on a bag whose view is often shielded by camera-unaware caddies.  A top 25 player can make a much as $200,000 for a cap logo and $50,000 buys shirt and bag exposure.  Ryan Moore became the rebel without a logo when he won the Wyndham Championship in 2009, collected $918,000, then announced he would continue to forego sponsorships and endorsements, a policy begun a year earlier.  His relatively brief and rare fling with golfing Puritanism ended the next year when he became part owner of Scratch Golf sporting the firm's logo while playing.  Later that year he scratched Scratch, moved to Adams Golf, then switched to Shift4 and a contract calling for a logo on his left chest thus raising a question (at least for me) concerning the availability of a manly right chest.  That's why we have lawyers who write such problems, then solve them.   

There was a time when golf pros were delighted to be gifted with a box of free clothes that did not include T shirts until Clark Gable made them acceptable in 1934's "It Happened One Night."  One of the game's early clothes horses was Jimmy Demaret who never saw a stripe he couldn't mix with a plaid.  He eventually hooked up with a Fifth Avenue tailor who made Demaret a vision in electric blue, bottle green, canary yellow and vermillion.  A decade earlier the great Walter Hagen was much more traditional.  Having remarkable credentials in drinking and womanizing, Hagen was known to arrive at the first tee attired in a rumpled tuxedo, evidence of overnight carousing.

Protocol, one of those most respected aspects of golf, was momentarily forgotten when Phil Mickelson's caddy once showed up at The Masters wearing the same shirt as the offended Charles Howell III, who was playing in the Mickelson group.  The faux pas of Emily Postian significance was solved and word floated that a majority of club members were of the opinion that the late Masters "Chairman in Memorium" Clifford Roberts would have had a tizzy had he been around.  The golfing equivalent of unmitigated hell can break loose when a golfer decides the hat or shoes worn during a hot round the day before surely must be lucky omens pointing toward a fond embrace involving a trophy.

Idiosyncrasies are major tour story lines in the drama that is golf fashion.  Rickie Fowler always is totally bedecked in orange on Sundays.  That's because he attended Oklahoma State University where he played on the Cowboy's golf team.  The color green is anathema to Tiger Woods who also refuses to wear white pants.  On the other hand, Bubba Watson, this year's Masters champ, has been dressed during recent weeks in nothing but white as he earns $300 each time he drives 300 yards.  His driver is a riveting azalea pink and the money, paid by sponsor PING, goes to a series of Southern California charities while the clothing, produced by Travis Mathew Apparel, can be purchased by anyone regardless of handicap.  Play with a 24 and look like Bubba.

Not to underline the point but the hope among many golf intimates is that logos on the golfing body don't become more common than insignias on NASCAR equipment including the uniforms worn by the contestants.  With 75 million fans and enormous TV eposure, it costs underwriters anywhere from $500,000 to $20 million to get in the game.

It was while working for public relations firm Field Enterprises in Chicago in the 70s that I found myself making phone calls that, if successful, would help put corporate America's logos on the racing cars of Ted Field.  Ted came into play because his father, Marshall Field IV, had first produced Marshall Field V--unfortunate timing for the younger brother who had visions of becoming a motion picture mogul.  He eventually did just that producing, among others, "Cocktail," "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" and "Mr. Holland's Opus."  First, Ted had to get the money to make them.

The Field Enterprises staff began seeing quite a bit of the kid brother and word suddenly was bruited about that he had met the age requirement of his father's will (Marshall Field IV's death was a suicide) for a big payoff.  This was slightly before the demise of the Chicago Daily News in 1978.  Meanwhile, Ted had become something of a pest asking that the PR department sell the logo project to any contacts including past employers with lines like "Playboy's a natural" and "how about TV Guide?" tossed my way.  We went through the motions and I have to confess most of them were slow if at all.  The thought of Walter Annenberg seeing his TV Guide logo on a car's hood was beyond amusing and abject failure was mine.   

It may have been NASCAR or golf logos that inspired Jason Sadler; then, again, it may have been Russian ladies, newly arrived in this country sans English skills, who wander around public markets wearing confusing, nasty or worse messages on T shirts.  Sadler, 26 when he founded IWearYourShirt in 2009, sells companies the opporunity for him to wear their company's shirt for a day.  His story has been picked up by "Today," CBS News, CNN, Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.  He charges what he calls "face value" that works out to $1 on January 1 and $365 the last day of the year.

This makes absolutely no sense nor does his selling of monthly sponsorships--good in tandem, he says, for $83,000 a year thus beating the hell out of food stamps.  It might take the mind of a Jesper Parnevik to figure this one out.

If there are possible questions about the availability of other locations for logos beyond shirts, caps and bags, can the human behind be, well, far behind?  Will the day soon dawn when touring pros, anticipating further use of the human body for advertising purposes and the resulting payouts, begin drawing attention to the billboard attractiveness of their very own asses?  Will Kevin Stadler go on a diet?

And, while we're on the subject of goofy possibilities, let us hope the tattoo craze does not become acceptable to professional golf.  On the other hand, think to what degree Jesper Parnevik's forehead, revealed in all its pigmented glory by the bill flip to end all bill flips, might inspire an advertiser?

What a way to sell Coppertone Ultraguard!

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All Alone....by Bob Sanders

 

I've always loved a good mystery but studies suggesting we are becoming increasingly lonely flies in the face of all the instant communications available to us.  What is going on?

Actually, it's more than a mystery.  It's a paradox impossible to ignore in coffee shops, libraries, public transportation, baseball games, the beach, the car, you name it.  Choose your site and it's there.  Heads down, everyone.  Let's ignore each other while pretending to be friendly as we further tailor our personas by way of the often badly-written word and retouched photo.  We haven't had this much fun since the last phony resume.

Who would have thought that a song written nearly eighty years ago would best describe the solitude suggested by studies.  It was Irving Berlin who wrote "All Alone" whose point of view was that a lot of lonely people were waiting by the telephone.  In those days, the coin-operated version offered communications a wondrous mobility of sorts.  We've traded the phone booth for the cell phone--a more convenient means of communication yet lacking the romantic effort it often took to hoof it to the phone and set up a meet at the Oyster Bar, under the clock, or at Ricarrdo.  One wonders how many among us practice a self-con suggesting that a multiplicity of fast communications can replace the reality of a face-to-face relationship.  How many among us upon hearing an "alone" song (there must be at least two dozen) immediately think: "hey, they're playing my song."

The loneliness studies today are impressively scary.  One done in 2010 by AARP found that 35 percent of adults more than 45 were chronically lonely--up from 20 percent a decade earlier.  That suggests Facebook (launched by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004) isn't doing what it is supposed to be doing: making us giddy with the understanding we have so many friends.  Further, another study suggests 20 percent of Americans (60 milion) are unhappy with their lives because of loneliness.

I once tested loneliness' first cousin, isolation, at Wrigley Field, a pretty noisy place--particularly if you normally sat in the bleachers where, as Bill Veeck observed: "Here, the beer is colder, the fans much smarter and you can see better."  Retired from the Chicago Tribune, I was invited more than once to watch the Cubs from the firm's sky box high above third base.  I finally accepted the offer trading banter with the Bleacher Preacher and other habitues of the then cheap seats for the air conditioned comfort and free booze of the corporate digs.  It's pretty rare of me to pass up gratis sauce and I managed three innings, then left never to return.  It was awful; there was no noise other than that emanating from the TV while the occupants provided the kind of un-knowledgeable commentary also available at any World Series game.

One has to wonder about such things as touching each other to convey feelings.  While there are no statistics thus far, it does seem that our intense desire for digital connection is going too far when we spend much more time in isolation touching and feeling a tiny screen rather than each other.  Fingers that once walked through phone books now glide over i-pod touch as we don head phones to make certain we're not sharing the experience while our ears are assaulted by noise accompanied by lyrics either repetitive or boring.  Ah, but what control is ours.

A case can be made that limiting each Twitter to 140 characters is working a remarkable hardship on both our language and the people who use it.  With class warfare a reality as we gird ourselves for six more months of the White House Marathon, is it possible that further class warfare is developing between the Facebookers, the Tweeters and the Bloggers?  As a member of the Blogging class, I'm in what is probably a second tier aristocracy of computer communications bearing in mind the significance of Pulitzer-winning Huffington Post, Politico, the Daily Beast and others of the upper echelon.  On the other hand, the often misinformed and misguided production by Tweeters and Facebookers is staggering and we won't even discuss the tearing asunder of our language largely through laziness.

Since this is an era in which we place almost all screw-ups at the feet of the President, I think it quite likely that John F. Kennedy bears some responsibility for all that is going wrong with fast communications spelling although his sentence structure was, largely, exemplary with a good sense of rhythm.  Kennedy, as we have learned, was a terrible speller and purposely wrote illegibly when he couldn't come up with correct spelling.  Let us now refer to all lack of legibility as a Kennedystroke.

Online dating, of which Kennedy had no need had there been such a thing more than 50 years ago, is a strange term since the socializing is done offline.  It is, perhaps, best exemplified by eHarmony whose television commercials promise tomorrow's nirvana through "matching algorithms."  For a fee, eHarmony and other pimps of the communications skyways collect information about you, crunch the numbers, then pair you with someone "prescreened for deep compatibility across 29 dimensions."  As Ohio University professor of economics William Fenzel once told me: "garbage in, garbage out."

The dubious science of matchmaking is getting a lot of criticism these days.  Eli J. Finkel, an associate professor of social psychology at Northwestern University and Benjamin R. Karney, whose professorship is at the University of California, Los Angeles, have just published a critical article in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest.  The study they and three others in the field produced suggests that 80 years of what makes people romantically compatible runs counter to the claims made by the eHarmonies.

Predicting compatibility is at best shaky made even more so since the sites fail to collect, according to the authors, some highly crucial information including job loss, financial strain, infertility and illness.  Research indicates people tend to have difficult romantic relationships if they are emotionally volatile, were mistreated as children or abuse drugs or alcohol.  The romantic brokers say dating pool eliminations are made (four marriages and you're out) but, once gain, garbage in, garbage out if lies are told.

The matchmaking people may have an even larger problem.  With Twitter and Facebook achieving such enormous use, are people simply forgoing the sometimes awkward adventures made possible by the eHarmonies and doing end runs around the panderers?

Knowing there is nothing quite as absorbing as a boy meets girl story and curious about how quick communications might be utilized, I chanced upon what writers of film scripts would be inclined to regard as a likely Woody Allen plot.

Author, public speaker and CEO of something called Buyosphere, Tara (last name Hunt) began showing up all over the Internet a few years ago as Miss Rogue.  I learned this through due diligence that also produced Carlos (last name Pacheco), a character whose perfect realization could be achieved in a delicious Latin fashion by Woody Allen, now a bit long in the tooth for the part but, hey, Woody likes young women.

Carlos began noticing Tara and her triumphs in seemingly anything Montreal or, as he eventually learned, San Francisco, Silicone Valley, New York and, probably, Poughkeepsie.  Tara gets around having spoken at 126 worldwide conferences while traveling more than 476,000 miles.  One of her major Blogging efforts was the unforgettable HorsePigCow and her authorship includes The Wuffie Factor.   As late night TV host Jack Paar used to say: "I kid you not."

In all honesty, there is something voyeuristic about checking out someone like Tara, a very attractive 38-year-old Canadian recently profiled by Joanne Wilson, otherwise known as Gotham Gal.  Photos (found elsewhere) by Eva Blue added to her mystique and Carlos, who lives in Montreal, became intrigued--particularly since Tara had returned there from San Francisco.  One of the Blue photos is partcularly arresting.  It features whipped cream and an interestingly tattooed Tara.

While it's not clear who made the first move, it is certain Tara and Carlos are self-described "slight Tweeters," a term that certainly qualifies as a major oxymoron.  Upping the romantic ante, they first dabbled in Facebook, then consummated some solid back and forth Tweets during which he learned Tara's first major Internet identification was Miss Rogue, not to be confused with Sarah Palin.

Carlos (Woody Allen) was suddenly struck by disaster in the form of his Facebook account being hjacked by co-workers.  The timing, two days prior to Valentine's Day, would have been disastrous except for a fortuitous Twitter sent by Tara and detailed by Carlos in his  Blog of 2012/02/14.  Tara, a party-giver of considerable renown in addition to her other talents, was into the details of a VD party (not what you think) that turned out to be a screening of Casablanca which the cinematically deprived Carlos had never seen.  He did go, however, although he did not speak to the formidable Tara who, according to his highly confessional Blog was simply having pity on him.  True to form, he did not see all of Casablanca but he did like the '20s theater.

According to Carlos, once there I saw her from afar, she was breathtaking (a photo is offered) & surrounded by at least half a dozen friends.  At that point all that courage escaped and my shyness took over.  Also, the last thing I wanted to be was that geeky fanboy from the Internet that showed up alone.  Readers of a bygone era--particularly those who believe Casablanca the greatest movie of all, must be shocked, shocked in the realization that male readers of the Playboy Forum would have handled this one differently.

Aware of Carlos' social shortcomings, good sport Tara invited him to a neighborhood food-discrawl which took on heightened importance as I reminded myself that all this unrequited foolishness was taking place in Montreal, a city where food is as important as women to Hugh Hefner for whom I had toiled more than once in, of all places, Montreal.

Carlos is interesting and may be a split personality who on his Blog describes himself as "a social media voyeur, part-time jogger, reformed hard core gamer, sometimes Blogger and...."  Then, again, he may be putting us on.

We are indebted to Blogger Brad McCarty, managing editor of The Next Web who describes himself as a music and tech junkie living in Nashville and who picked up on what surely had to be the passive Carlos' last shot at Tara.  According to McCarty, Carlos engaged something called the Gowalla Message Service, then planted Gowalla's notes to Tara all over Montreal eventually taking her on a walking date of four hours about which there are no details.  Some of those notes may have been particularly interesting but I guess we'll never know.  Somehow, I can't see Woody Allen doing all that walking.  A series of cab rides makes more sense.

McCarty adds: "The two have stayed together ever since, presently celebrating six months of a relationship together."

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Some afterthoughts about my communications prowl: While "awesome" retains its position as the most over-used word by the lazy, "amazing" is moving up.  The computer and its various family members make it possible for us to be open books.  Frankly, I prefer at least a little mystery.    

Lost and Found....by Bob Sanders

 

It has been a disappointing week.  The Artest (first name Ron) formerly known for rude behavior on NBA basketball courts is back in fetid form under his new and highly inappropriate name, Metta World Peace.  Hardly tranquil was the Los Angeles Lakers small forward's declaration of war on James Harden's head.  Harden's considerable skills are employed by the Oklahoma Thunder and the vicious assault was by way of a World Peace flying elbow.  World Peace claimed it was "accidental" but TV replays suggest otherwise.  For causing a concussion, he got a seven-game suspension, a decided contrast to a 2004 docking of 86.

Joining World Peace as major screw ups were a bunch of Secret Service operatives assigned to protect the President.  Somehow, a number of Columbian hookers wound up at the hotel where President Obama would be staying and, somehow, one of the agents refused to pay for services rendered.  Quicker than you can command room service, hotel management, then the cops were summoned resulting in the mom's apple pie reputation of the Secret Service going in the toilet.  It was the kind of opening scene of inspired lunacy that might have come from the enormously fertile mind of film director/writer Billy Wilder.  The kicker to the scene, of course, is that prostitution is legal in that part of Columbia.  Details, details.

It could very well be that the price-conscious agent has one of those very reactive minds much like head-hunting NFL defensive linemen quite unable to think things through.  As the story develops, it becomes clear that a number of agents will no longer run the risk of taking a bullet for this or any President.

Then, there's the case of GSA official Jeff Neely who became the poster boy for the $830,000 tab run up by his organization at much ado about precious little celebrations in Las Vegas.  What happened in Sin City is not staying there.  Neely had the misfortune to be photographed with two glasses of wine within easy reach while smiling from a hot tub.  Fox News went reliably crazy.

Offering a nice contrast to this country's stupid elite was one of those feel-good stories NBC's "Evening News" likes to sign off with on Fridays.  It's the tale of Misaki Murikami, now aware one prized possession survived the tsunami that destroy his home and community on March 11, 2011.  A football, containing messages of best wishes, was given him in 2005 as a good-bye gift when he transferred to another school.

The ball made it all the way to Alaska where David Baxter, a radar technician from Kasilof, found it while beachcombing on Middleton Island, 70 miles south of the Alaskan mainland.  Baxter and his wife plan to visit Japan next month but will not deliver the ball directly to Murikami.  They don't want to create a fuss.

While on the beachcombing subject, we've been fascinated for a long time by items carried great distances, then found.  People have been putting messages in bottles for something like 2,000 years.  Champion bottle finder appears to be beachcombing Illinoisan Clint Buffington.  A teacher at the University of Kentucky, Buffington is to bottle finding what Art Wall is to the hole-in-one.  Wall, as a touring professional, had 45 plus nine as an amateur.  Californian Norman Manley claims 59 but he wasn't a pro and some of his aces are unattested.  

With bottle-hunting not as popular as golf, statistics are on the rare side.  Buffington claims 38 readable notes in bottles and his pursuit is intense for someone with sand in his shoes.  He once found a Coca-Cola bottle on an island in the Caribbean Sea and got in touch with the daughter of the man who wrote it, perhaps 50 years ago.  The daughter, Paula Pierce of New Hampshire, understandably was impressed: "That gave me the chills.  I feel like they're sending me a message."  Her parents had stayed at the Beachcomber Hotel in Hampton and had placed a note in a bottle promising the finder $150 to be paid by owner Tina.  Dad was, doubtless, a big spender of other people's money.

It was in 2007 on the shoreline of the Turks and Caicos Islands some 550 miles south of Miami that Buffington came upon another bottle tossed in the Atlantic Ocean.  The year was 1999 and the bottle flip a part of a first wedding anniversary celebration by Ed and Carol Meyers in Duck, North Carolina, an outer banks community just a few quacks away from Kitty Hawk.  Interestingly enough, the beach where Buffington found the Meyers' bottle is the same one where he came upon the Pierce container and the note promising $150 to the finder.

A not so far-traveled message in a bottle was one found three years ago by Darin Winkler of the River Run subdivision on the Spokane River.  Walking the banks of the river with his kids, Winkler noticed an old flattened basketball and a bunch of bottles.  One, with an old-fashioned cork stopper, appeared to be of greater vintage than the others.  Carefully extracting a note from the bottle, Winkler noticed the paper was a bit damp, but mostly intact.  A date on it, March 30, 1913, took his breath away.  The note was signed by Emmett Presnell of nearby Rockford.  Research by Winkler suggests the bottle had had a very short trip and very likely spent the better part of nine decades high and dry on a tangle of logs or washed up on a bank making the note so readable after so long.

A postcard can have a lot of travel miles on it and so it was with one received by Vasilia "Vas" Mazzotta last April.  Mazzotta, who now lives in Cromwell, Connecticut, was a bit baffled when she first tried to make sense of it.  Addressed to "Miss Vassoula Sitara" (her maiden name), it was an Easter card, written in Greek and signed by her long-deceased grandfather.  It was dated Athens 20 April 65.  There are no hints of where the postcard had been for nearly 46 years and it remains a mailbox mystery.

Under the right circumstances, balloons can be impressive travelers and so it was when Laura Buxton, 10, released a red balloon ino the air over her home in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England.  That was in June, 2001 and on one side of the balloon she had written: "Please return to Laura Buxton," on the other her home address.

About 140 miles away a man in Milton Libourne found the balloon stuck in a hedge on his property.  Noticing Laura Buxton's name and address, the man took the balloon to a neighbor's house showing it to the 10-year-old girl who lived there.  Her name: also Laura Buxton.

From there the story is like something out of the "Twilight Zone."  The second Laura Buxton wrote the first to tell her of the found balloon; the two, thinking the balloon connection extraordinary, decided they had to meet in person.

On meeting day, the two girls wore the same outfit--a pink sweater and jeans.  The girls, both tall for their ages, were the same height, had brown hair wearing it in the same style and even brought their guinea pigs along.  Both  pigs were  the same color and even had duplicate orange markings on their hindquarters.  Both had three-year-old black Labrador Retrievers at home, as well as gray pet rabbits.

The odd events that brought them together have made possible a strong bonding between the two.  They are now 21 and believe their most unusual meeting was too significant to be regarded as mere coincidence.  Can't you just hear Rod Serling introducing the two Laura Buxtons: "You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination--next stop, the 'Twilight Zone.'"  Da-da-da-da/da-da-da-da.

Quite a few of our four-footed friends have used a variety of travel means to reappear after unique adventures.  Emily, a one-year-old tabby diappeared from Lesley and Donny McElhiney's home in Appleton, Wisconsin while on her evening prowl.  She soon found herself on a truck headed for Chicago.  Inside a container of paper bales, she was shipped to Belgium, eventually winding up in France where a laminating company's employees found her thin and thirsty.  Wearing tags, she was soon reunited with her family thanks to Continental Airlines.  Emily's across-the-pond adventure totaled 4,500 miles.

It wasn't easy for Troubles, a scout dog, to get back to his First Air Cavalry Division Headquarters during the Vietnam War.  Troubles' handler, William Richardson, was wounded deep in the war zone and the two became separated when Richardson was flown by helicopter to a hospital.  That was a tough break for Troubles who not only lost his handler but was abandoned by the rest of the unit.  Everything was strange about Vietnam but Troubles made it back to headquarters in Anikhe three weeks later.  Troubles, a canine on a mission, wouldn't let anyone near him as he searched tents.  The lengthy search ended when Troubles curled up for a nap after finding a pile of Richardson's clothes to use for a bed.

I wonder if my Joe Sewell glove will ever turn up?  I left it behind when World War II called.  Worn by the Hall of Famer who played for the Cleveland Indians and New York Yqnkees, the glove was given me by Xen Scott, a Cleveland area neighbor and Sewell's coach at the University of Alabama.  That glove would have to travel some 2,000 miles--if it's still in a dusty corner of a basement on Summit Ave. in Lakewood.  That's a long way but you never ever really know about such things.  Da-da-da-da/da-da-da-da.

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Obtusely Ozzie....by Bob Sanders

 

No one has ever accused Ozzie Guillen of thinking things through but the remarkable championing of Fidel Castro by the Marlins manager was as startling as Sarah Palin authoring a book about geography or, perhaps, providing us with an insightful analysis of the New York Times.

In the world of public relations, Guillen's gaffe is one of the grand disasters ranking right up there with the Chicago Tribune's Dewey Defeats Truman.

Highly creative writers of satire would have to draw upon muses of incredible inspiration to come up with Guillen's bizarre foot-in-mouth classic.  Just imagine.  Born in Venezuela and a resident of South Florida for the past 12 years, Guillen was a major league shortstop for 16 years, and a manager the past eight.  Playing with and managing Cuban players, he is well aware not only of life in Cuba, but, also, the low esteem citizens of Little Havana have for Castro.

Sensationally bumptious, Guillen had worn out his welcome in Chicago while plying his managerial skills for the White Sox and owner Jerry Reinsdorf.  Guillen's mouth got in the way of success following a World Series win in 2005 when he called a Sun-Times sports columnist a "fagot."  It was not the only time Guillen had demonstrated a lack of sensitivity when involved with the press.

Timing, as we have come to realize, is everything and Guillen's big trouble in Little Havana was astonishing in its essential perversity.  At least he didn't resort to sky-writing his declaration although, come to think of it, that would have been a fine photo op.

Take what had been the Florida Marlins and, as Henny Youngman would have put it, "please."  The Marlins, in spite of reasonable success on the field, have been box office failures fielding teams on the cheap while unable to connect with South Florida fans any better than Mitt Romney with Tea Party types.  What to do?

Starting with a name change, the Florida Marlins became the Miami Marlins and a new state-of-the-art tax-funded stadium was built within the cozy confines of Little Havana.  It cost $645 million and the sheer logic of it all was breath-taking.  Either by birth, pass along genes, or osmosis, those Cuban-Americans are nuts about what they call biesbol going back to the good old days before Castro, Che Guevara and others turned the country Communist, then invited the Russians to help create those missile-threatening 10 days in May that gave John F. Kennedy his finest moments in office.

Little Havana, once described as a Disney version of a displaced Cuba, is a unique place--so much so that U.S. policy toward Cuba is based upon the feelings of a minuscule percentage of this country's population.  A piece of Miami has the kind of clout envied even by Chicagoans who pioneered in such matters. 

The Marlins needed a manager and Guillen was more than available.  Owner Jeffrey Loria signed him to a four-year contract figuring that a Latino leader, admittedly a little loony at times, would captivate the fans of Little Havana with stream of consciousness rants accompanied by legendary accomplishments on the diamond.  Ah, the anticipated joys of genuine verbal linkage to the baseball fans of Little Havana.

As far as subject matter for those intemperate moments, such a possibility as the manager's love for Castro could not possibly have entered Loria's mind.  Castro's popularity in Little Havana is roughly that of a KKK Grand Dragon in Harlem.

It's worth noting that Chicago's press gave Guillen a lot of slack during all eight years of his responsibilities positioning him somewhere between aldermen on the take and Wrigley's latest chewing gum.  Time magazine's Sean Gregory, unaware that Ozzie is Ozzie, reported off-the-cuff flippancy leading with the manager's love for Castro.  The Chicago press would have turned a deaf ear but the guy from Time failed to play the game with dire results for Guillen.  Guillen, who has a heart-on-his-sleeve for anything Latin American, had expressed earlier devotion to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Two of the very strange aspects of the Guillen contretemps is Castro's "role" in baseball and Guillen's stupidity in not offering a reasonable explanation of why he loves Castro.  There exists a reason.

A much bandied-about folklore tale is Castro's involvement with baseball.  According to Snopes.com, one odd scenario has Castro awarded a tryout by either the New York Yankees or Washington Senators.  The left-handed pitcher was rejected, so goes the story, thus making possible the overthrowing of the Batista regime, the Soviet-aligned government in Cuba, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It was a Yale historian, professor Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, who researched thousands of Cuban baseball box scores finally finding one of an intramural game between the Law and Business Schools at the University of Havana.  It was in El Mundo in November, 1946 when an F. Castro pitched and lost, 5-4.  The dictator, of course, added to the quirkiness of his horsehide "career" by dressing in the uniform of a tongue-in-cheek team called Barbudos (Bearded Ones).  That was after he came to power in 1959 and he played in just a few games.  A photo helps promulgate the myth.

Guillen has reason to love Castro because of pitcher Jose Contreras.  As kindly as Castro might look upon a fellow pitcher, Contreras was tired of being the premier amateur pitcher in the world.  His fast ball was in the mid-90s, his curve exceptional and, besides, there was money to be made in the major leagues for a guy who said he was 31.  Contreras was the sort of fellow who could beat the United States on one day's rest for the championship of the 1999 Pan American Games.  He struck out 13 in eight innings.  Contreras was tired of amateur scuffling and life under Castro had its shortcomings.

The Yankees, quite naturally, had their usual big bucks to spend on a world class pitcher who finally defected to Gotham in 2002.  Contreras got the largest deal ever to run from Castro--$32 million for four years.  Guillen began managing the White Sox the next year.  

Contreras went 7-2 in 2003 and Guillen was particularly impressed on September 23 of that year when the Cuban pitcher shut out the White Sox for eight innings while striking out nine.  The baseball expression that you can't have enough pitching was a canard that year to the Yanks who traded Contreras to the White Sox and a salivating Guillen on July's last day in 2004.

The next year was a singular one for both Guillen and Contreras.  The latter started the season slowly reaching the All-Star break with a 4-3 record.  Contreras became the White Sox most reliable pitcher winning his last eight starts while gaining status as the stopper of the team's losing streaks.  He finished the season 15-7 with a 3.61 ERA getting 154 strikeouts in 204 2/3 innings.  Guillen had to love Castro.

He had to love him even more when the Sox beat the Los Angeles Angels for the American League flag, eventually winning the World Series with four straight victories over the Houson Astros.  Contreras started game one of every series going 3-1.

Contreras was so sensational that television commentators said that the fire-balling right hander had his name banned from being mentioned in Cuba by order of Castro--no way to treat a fellow pitcher.  Further, according to one story, White Sox games were banned from TV and could be seen only by way of illegal television satellites.  Contreras was a household name while Guillen had become the first Latino to manage a World Series winner.  There was a lot of love on Chicago's South Side.

The following year Contreras won a 17th consecutive game breaking the White Sox team record.  The string included eight victories gained the prior season.  Injuries impacted losing seasons the next two years and he was sent to the bullpen, then the minor leagues in 2009.  Guillen finally gave up on Contreras and he was traded to the Colorado Rockies on August 31, 2009 for cash and a minor league pitcher.  Love only goes so far.

The Contreras story continues today.  On January 28, 2010, the now 40-year-old pitcher signed a one-year, $1.5 (later upped to $2.5) million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies, one of baseball's better teams.  The bad news is that Contreras is pitching relief for far less money although further compensation awaits a World Series winner.  The good news is that he finally made it despite years of deprivation in Cuba where, presumably, the beisbol hip hold guarded conversations about that superb pitcher from Las Martinas.

Meanwhile, those with knowledge of Guillen's real raison d'etre for a professed love of Fidel Castro can't figure out the manager's failure to explain the easily explainable and the good fortune made possible when a Cuban pitcher fled his homeland because of appalling conditions, including playing baseball for free.  Thank you, Fidel.

Baseball is a sport where brilliance is sometimes hidden by a failure to communicate effectively.  Casey Stengel, Yogi Berra, and, yes, maybe, Ozzie will attain their status if he can keep his job with the Marlins following five days banishment.

And, should employment at the major league level continue, perhaps Guillen will learn how to spin a disaster like love for Castro.  It shouldn't have been that difficult.

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In the Rotation....by Bob Sanders

 

A jerk of the thumb as in an umpire's "you're out" goes to all those athletes and others of the sports world who have managed to screw up careers and reputations while involving themselves in stories ranging from the remarkably stupid to the highly tawdry.

Many in number, they include such recent miscreants as: baseball's Lenny Dykstra (grand theft auto and more to come) and the NBA's Jay Vincent (mail fraud) now in prison doing three and eight and one-half years respectively; Jerry Sandusky, who awaits trial for child molestation; and the NFL's Terrell Owens who continues to have difficulty trying to figure out how he pissed away $80 million in salary while acquiring four wives and four kids not one of whom he can support. 

Of vivid contrast to these and others is a 49-year-old pitcher with an 83 mph fastball and a story suggesting that his ability to handle success is, as Branch Rickey suggested many years ago, the result of preparation.

After a year's hiatus from major league baseball recovering from Tommy John surgery, Jamie Moyer is, once again, back in a starting rotation--this time for the Colorado Rockies.  It won't be easy--particularly at home where Coors Field's thin air help provide a hitter's paradise--and there are those who believe Moyer is on board as an unusual baseball twofer: a starting pitcher capable of playing guru to a young hurling staff.  Jamie Moyer is loaded with the kind of intangibles never aptly defined by Casey Stengel who, everyone agrees, was highly appreciative of them.

Moyer's intangibles are heavy on attitude and include running out ground balls harder than a great many every day players, fielding his position with precision, and laying down successful bunts--something of a lost art among today's pitchers.  There are players who affect a team's working climate adversely (ex-Cub pitcher Carlos Zambrano is one) and others like Moyer who add immensely to a happy dugout.

Not to belabor the earlier mentioned waywards of the sports world and their obvious contrasts to Moyer, but such specimens as Ryan Leaf, Art Schlichter and those bounty-hunting New Orleans Saints come to mind.  What the Saints' coaches, Sean Payton and Gregg Williams, did was introduce some Bountygate culture into football's Concussion Era by offering $1,500 for "knockout" hits and $1,000 for "cart-offs."  Payton's defenders suggest the coach didn't know anything about what was going on--a laughable intimation in view of Payton's reputation as a micro-manager.  A league source, in a unique commentary about the cover-up being more significant for the penalties meted out than what happened on the playing fields, added it reminded him "of the Nixon White House."  At least there was, apparently, nothing criminal about what happened in a sport of intense violence.  And yet, and yet.

Leaf, a truly sad case, was arrested again the other day for burglarizing a home searching for the usual: prescription drugs.  It wasn't the first time having been accused in 2009 of breaking into a player's home when he was a quarterbacks coach at Texas A&M.  His most recent arrests followed a monthlong investigation starting with a tip that Leaf had been receiving rattling cash-on-delivery packages worth $500 or more once or twice a week.  Adding mystery to the Leaf story is the surgery he had last year to remove a benign tumor from his brain and radiation treatments he underwent later.  Perhaps Leaf is trying to tell us something?

It appears the only Leaf saga winners are the Indianapolis Colts who drafted Peyton Manning ahead of the standout quarterback for Washington State.  That was in the 1998 draft and Leaf, the No. 2 pick, flamed out for the San Diego Chargers while gaining a reputation as, perhaps, the biggest disappointment in NFL history.

Schlichter, a compulsive gambler who, by his own count, has committed more than 20 felonies, found a new venue not long ago for his con artistry: a million dollar ticket scam.  It was earlier this year while under house arrest prior to beginning a 10-year sentence, that the former Ohio State quarterback was re-arrested for possession of cocaine.

Today's overpaid athletes, many with complex problems in a complicated world, make one long for the good old days when career enhancement motivated Tanya Harding to take offense to the threatening figure skating talents of Nancy Kerrigan.  Neither drugs nor intense greed were involved and, with the help of an ex-husband, Harding hired a bodyguard who whacked Kerrigan's right thigh putting her out of the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championship won by Harding.  For those unaware of the skater's difficult life, Harding attempted other athletic pursuits eventually turning to boxing, whose science she abandoned in 2004.

Moyer, signed by the Rockies to a minor league contract early in the year, made the team late last week.  During spring training, he pitched 18 innings going 2-1 with a 2.50 ERA.  Of particular interest is his strikeout total: 16.  His best outing was against the Giants on March 22 when he threw four perfect innings, striking out four.  He stumbled in a March 28 start against the White Sox giving up three runs, seven hits and three walks in four innings.  Of greater importance was his ability to work out of trouble while throwing 89 pitches. The Rockies won the game.

This will be Moyer's 25th major league season having come up with the Chicago Cubs in 1986.  His first start will be this Saturday (April 7) against the Houston Astros; with a win, he can become the oldest pitcher in major league history to do so.

Moyer, who can carve up a strike zone with the skill of a surgeon, missed all of last year undergoing Tommy John surgery.  By stepping on the mound Saturday, he will be the active leader in victories (267), innings (4,020) and starts (628).  Completion of all those innings affects other records including giving up most home runs (511).  He has never hit one himself.

The longevity of his career coupled with a major league stadium building spree has enabled Moyer to pitch in a record 49 big league ballparks plus three in Japan.  It was in Atlanta in 2010 that, at age 47, he two-hit the Braves while becoming the oldest major leaguer to throw a shutout. 

Among those pulling for Moyer's success are thousands of children whose lives have been enormously affected by The Moyer Foundation, established in 2000 with his wife, Karen.  The Foundation, whose mission is to empower children in distress by providing education and support, helps them to live healthy and inspired lives.  Not that Moyer needs any more inspiration to achieve his goals, but Foundation officials anticipate the pitcher's return to the mound will attract further support for this country's estimated 1.5 million children who have lost a parent in addition to 8.3 million children living with at least one parent in need of treatment for alcohol or drug dependency.

In an April 2 Moyer Foundation press release the pitcher was quoted as saying: "In sports, it's more than just how you throw the ball.  It's about what kind of life you live off field as well.  I think being an athlete and an advocate helps send a great message to teammates, opponents and beyond."

The organization's network of 40 free bereavement camps, called Camp Erin, are devoted to helping children grieve the death of someone close to them while four free camps, called Camp Mariposa, are for children living with drug or alcohol addiction in their families.  At present, these programs provide support to over 3,000 children annually in Washington, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Florida.

When Moyer wins his first regular season game for the Rockies, he will break a record set nearly 80 years ago when Jack Quinn of the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the St. Louis Cardinals on September 13, 1932.  He was 49 years, 74 days old.  Moyer turns 50 on Nov. 18.

Not bad for a guy who will qualify for an AARP card in November.

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