Reappropriating Some Greens

For the past five years, I have been hoping that someone from the PGA tour would refuse to play at the Masters golf tournament as a form of solidarity with Martha Burk and the National Council of Women’s Organizations. Particularly early on in that controversy, back in 2003 and 2004, I read and heard comments from the likes of Tiger Woods expressing agreement that Augusta National Golf Club should admit women as members; however, I have yet to see a PGA member who was invited refuse to play.

This year, though, while biding my time not watching the tournament, I wondered if there might be a better action to wish for. When I think about it, of those who still play the tournament (i.e. not Jack Nicklaus, for instance), outside of Tiger Woods and maybe Phil Mickelson, I don’t think that the refusal of any PGA tour member to play the tournament would have any kind of significant persuasive impact. And even if Tiger or Phil refused to play, I wonder about the way that the PGA, Augusta National, and the press would handle it. However, this year, a new and I think even more delightful tactic occurred to me. What if the winner (or even any high-placing competitor) gave the money that he made at the tournament (after dutifully paying his caddie) as a donation to the National Council of Women’s Organizations? For Trevor Immelman—this year’s winner—that prize was $1,350,000. I believe a caddie’s cut is usually 10 percent, so that makes $1,215,000 as a donation.

Now, one might say that to Immelman that’s a lot of money (though he did earn over $1.8 million on the PGA tour last year and over $3.8 million in 2006, which doesn’t even account for non-PGA tournaments played, any endorsements he might have, etc.). Fine. Tiger Woods has tons of money. Let’s say he donated all of the money he made at the Masters since the first protested tournament in 2003. The figures are:

$93,000 for 15th place in 2003
$70,200 for 22nd place in 2004
$1,260,000 for 1st place in 2005
$315,700 for 3rd place in 2006
$541,333 for 2nd place in 2007
$810,000 for 2nd place in 2008
(All of these monetary figures were found on espn.com.)

That’s a total of $3,090,233. Again, if we take out a ten percent caddie cut, the total comes to $2,781,209.70. This certainly seems like a donation that Tiger could afford and imagine how over $2.7 million dollars would help out the National Council of Women’s Organizations in its many projects and efforts. And what could the PGA, Augusta National, etc. do? They couldn’t complain that this was a public affront to them, the way they might if someone refused to play. Additionally, it would now be the player’s money and he would have the right to do what he wished with it. So, I’d tend to think that anyone who complained would look like a total jackass to a lot of people.

I'm really liking this idea better. So, come on, PGAers, step up to the teebox on this one.

In the line of Roger McDowell and Orel Hershiser ...

Burke Badenhop will be the latest pitcher from Bowling Green State University to play major league baseball. He was called up by the Florida Marlins on Monday and it looks like he will start for the team this weekend.

As a proud alum and now faculty member at BGSU, go Falcons!

Lost in 80s Music Update No. 1

Before you do anything else, you've got to check this out!

And now for a series of news tidbits for 80s music freaks like me:

• Sean Levert, of the Cleveland-based 80s trio Levert, who were perhaps best known for their Top 10 hit "Casanova" in 1987, but who had a series of hits on R&B radio (often called "Black radio" at the time, even among Billboard music charts), passed away on March 30 at the age of 39. This makes two of the three members of the band to pass away in the last two years. Sean's brother, Gerald, died in November of 2006.

• New Kids on the Block are reuniting! I imagine they'll take it step by step in their return. Don't forget to check out their website for the latest news!

• Rick Astley is finding himself in the midst of a return of sorts. It's called RickRolling and it's become significant enough of a trend to be reported as news. Hope you enjoyed getting RickRolled at the beginning of this post.

Confluence of the Underappreciated

Last night, while driving through Ohio on my way home on I-75 from Cincinnati, I tuned into AM 1510 WLAC out of Nashville. I've found before that this radio station comes in regularly after dusk on that stretch of the highway. Last night, it made for one of the best listening experiences I've had in awhile, as they were airing the University of Tennessee women's basketball NCAA tournament semifinal game against LSU. In the process, it brought together two areas of American sports culture that I believe get some attention, but go underappreciated.

First is women's basketball. Certainly, both NCAA women's basketball and the WNBA get some media coverage, but not nearly as much as men's college basketball and the NBA. Meanwhile, I've heard sports talk radio hosts ranging from Jim Rome to Tony Kornheiser to many of the fill-in folks on ESPN radio belittle women's basketball to one degree or another. Yet, at least personally, I find women's basketball to be a more satisfying game than men's basketball. Sometimes I'm not sure that that translates as well as it could as it is covered on television, but listening to it on the radio last night captured the appeal beautifully. I'd like to hear it more ...

And I'll be listening, because the second thing that I believe goes underappreciated is the experience of listening to sports on radio vis-a-vis watching sports on television. I've seen plenty of people publicly acknowledge an affinity for sports on the radio, particularly in reference to baseball, but we live in an age in which television coverage is prioritized over radio coverage. Often, the question one asks is "Did you see ..." not "Did you hear ..." in reference to sports phenomena. I do watch sports on television at times and I can't say that every single sport is more enjoyable on radio. For instance, I follow the Indy Car series and I enjoy that on television more than radio (though I have listened on radio before and it's not unenjoyable; indeed, I could see that affinity changing some day, especially if I had XM satellite radio and listened to the races there). Additionally, I'm not sure how I might handle soccer on the radio (though, as I think about it, perhaps it might work for me). Overall, though, I tend to enjoy mediated sports experiences more when they're on the radio than when they're on television. Again, listening to the Tennessee-LSU game on radio last night just reconfirmed that feeling.

So, here's to more recognition of both women's basketball and sports on radio ...

And BTW, the NCAA women's championship game can be billed as the Clash of the Canda(i)ces ... Candace Parker for Tennessee and Candice Wiggins for Stanford. My rooting interest is for Stanford, who I picked to win it all the last couple years and had losing to North Carolina in my bracket this year. Since I didn't pick them to win it, they'll surely win (I hope anyway). I'm sure this interest goes back to my days at Arizona State a few years ago when the Sun Devils would defeat everybody else in PAC-10 play, but hit a wall against the Cardinal.

Likes and Dislikes with NCAA basketball tournaments

Sorry, I've been gone nearly a month ... a week of being sick, a couple weeks of trying desperately to catch up, and then a week without a topic will do that, I guess ...

It's "March Madness" time and, so, I wanted to mention some things that bug me about it:

1. When teams are said to have "shown that they deserved" or "shown that they did not deserve" a bid to the NCAA tournament. We hear this kind of thing every year, yet, as I argue about all kinds of sports tournaments, it's all about matchups. The right matchup and a team has a good shot at winning; the wrong matchup and the team has a poor shot. So, as some would have it, Villanova "justified" selection to the tournament by winning two games. Yet, given a different matchup in the first round, perhaps they don't win at all and then it's "Did they deserve to be there?" On the women's side, Florida State was questioned as a team that maybe didn't belong in the tournament, yet, they won their first game because they had a matchup that worked for them. I'm tired of this need to make everything to black or white ... That's why I say screw declaring a national champion in college football. If West Virginia hadn't lost to Pittsburgh, LSU wouldn't be national champion and Ohio State might have had a more favorable matchup. In the end, it wouldn't have really told us who the best team was. The same sentiment goes for college basketball. The NCAA tournament just lets people have a final winner of some sort. It's still all about matchups and a team's run to the Final 16 or Final 8 is highly determined by that. Just ask Georgetown this year after running into Davidson ...

2. The "Elite Eight" moniker for the round of eight. This seemed to start in the early 1990s when it seemed like there were two possibilities being tossed around: Elite Eight and Great Eight. The industry fell onto the standard "Elite Eight," I assume in keeping with the trend of starting the descriptor with the same letter as the number of teams left--e.g. Sweet Sixteen and Final Four. Yet, the word "Elite" bothers me so much because of what it implies. Do I really want to perpetuate the idea that elitism is good? "Great" has its issues, as does "Sweet" for that matter, but I find them more tolerable. Actually, "Final Eight" is what I say and "Final Four" seems most appropriate, since that's most descriptive of the situation--i.e. these are the final 4 or 8 teams left in the tournament. What's next? "Thirsty Thirty-two?" "Scintillating Sixty-Four?"

3. Billy Packer -- I'm not the first or last to say that he bugs me, but the other day it finally dawned on me what about him bugs me so much. He is blatantly dismissive and utterly smug about it. When, for instance, the other day, during the telecast of his game, he mentioned that no one had Davidson in the Final Eight, the way he put it (and I don't remember or have the exact language) was so dismissive of the idea that one could have conceived of them there that it was downright offensive (probably particularly so for me personally, since I had them in the Final 16 and seriously considered picking them against Wisconsin). He is typically dismissive of schools from non-BCS leagues, their qualifications, and their chances. He is also dismissive during games of the possibilities of teams winning or coming back to win and, while I've seen him have to eat his words before (a UCLA comeback in the last 2 minutes during the regular season, I believe against Stanford, I think 9 years ago), he seems not to learn any caution from it. I know other announcers can make statements that might be similar, but I guess the way that Greg Gumbel or Jim Nantz or others say it makes it at least feel like they recognize variety of opinion and possibilities.

4. When two non-BCS schools ranked between 5 and 12 are asked to play one another in the first round. This year the Drake-Western Kentucky, Kent State (another team that was victim to the "they don't belong there" syndrome, just because they happened to have 1 bad half of shooting)-UNLV, Butler-South Alabama, and Gonzaga-Davidson matchups all fit. When one of these teams makes the top 4 seeds, little can often be done to keep them from being matched up with a non-BCS school (though, in that regard, at least the committee did put the BCS 14 seed Georgia against Xavier and not match up two non-BCS schools). So, I understand in those situations. However, over and over again, the non-BCS schools are judged more severely when they fail to win tournament games than the BCS schools are. These are often held as indictments against non-BCS conferences getting more than one bid. When the tournament selection committee then makes them play one another in the first round, it compounds the problem for these schools and their conferences within the hierarchy of big-time college athletics. I think the selection committee should be much more cognizant of this.

5. CBS's decision to turn damn near everything into the "one shining moment" motif. Enough already ...

Lest I seem like a complete crank (though, that was what baseball "fans" were called back in the day, so I'm not completely opposed to being called that), here are things that I have enjoyed:

1. Stacey Dales -- She's done work on football and on men's college basketball. As a former women's college basketball player herself at the University of Oklahoma, she gets most prominently featured on ESPN for their women's college basketball coverage. When I hear here analysis and reporting, she seems intelligent, articulate, and insightful.

2. The Vern Lundquist-Bill Raftery pairing -- They seem to be having fun and I seem to catch it. While Nance-Packer is CBS's number one team, if given a choice, I'll tune into a blowout that Lundquist and Raftery are calling instead of a close game that Nance-Packer are calling ... that is, if I'm not listening to my radio instead. Gus Johnson is great, too ... and lucky as hell ... he got to call the Davidson-Kansas mid-major barnburner this year and, if memory serves me right, he was on the call for Gonzaga putting themselves on the map and nearly beating Connecticut in the round of 8 back in 1999.

3. Making out brackets for both men's and women's NCAA and NIT tournaments. Heck, I would have even done the CBI tournament for 16 men's teams, but I didn't want to deal with how they changed the matchups based on who was left after the first round. Bradley and Tulsa go for all the marbles in the rubber match of the three-game championship tonight ...

4. And, since my preference is to listen to the radio, hearing Tommy Tighe always brings back so many great memories ... And calls by John Thompson, Brad Sham, Dave Sims, and the whole lot make me smile.

Roger Clemens is now a Hall of Famer

I suppose a decent summary of the current view of Roger Clemens is that he was a no-doubt Hall of Famer, but that his alleged performance-enhancing drug use creates (at least some) space for doubt. I'd like to articulate a reverse opinion of sorts: There was some doubt about whether or not Clemens belongs in the Hall of Fame, but it is the connection with performance-enhancing drug use that puts him in for sure.

Ultimately, the argument here is not so much about Roger Clemens as it is about what some might consider a meaningless semantic argument, but one that I have for some time wanted to see articulated more. The basic gist of this argument is that the National Baseball Hall of Fame is not treated as a Hall of Fame (and the same goes for so many other kinds of Halls of Fame), but is treated as a Hall of Achievement--where individuals who perform at specific levels of success are rewarded. If it's going to be treated as a Hall of Achievement, then let's call it that. Otherwise, if it's truly going to align with its name, it's not a place into which one gains entry by performing well, but a place into which one gains entry by being well-known.

So, let's go back to Roger Clemens. How well-known was Roger Clemens before the recent issues involving performance-enhancing drugs arose? Within baseball circles, very well-known. That counts for something, for sure, but not all. What about outside of baseball or outside of sports? Would non-sports fans or non-baseball fans tend to have had any idea who Roger Clemens is? I'm not sure. Perhaps; perhaps not. So, I'd think he'd be on the border for a Hall of Fame that follows its moniker. With the prominence of Clemens' performance-enhancing drug case, I think that many non-sports fans and non-baseball fans throughout the United States have at least some sense of who he is (even if it's just recognition that he was a major league baseball player). So, I'd say he gets in.

In this conceptualization, the Hall of Fame looks very different:

Some who are in certainly stay in. Babe Ruth, for instance, goes in at the head of the class. Jackie Robinson--ditto. Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays--yep. Hank Aaron--I'd say probably not as strongly as those other four, but still in. Ty Cobb--I think in. Stan Musial--I'm not sure; I'd want to talk to non-fans from when he was playing or see something that gives me that context.

Others who are in would not be in. I like Billy Williams a lot, but I think Billy Dee Williams is more likely to get in (he was Bingo Long, after all). Nellie Fox--I named one of my dogs after him, but if not for that, my wife (i.e. non-fan) wouldn't have a clue who he is. Lou Brock, Walter Johnson, Carl Hubbell--I don't think so.

Then, there are those who are not in, but would get in. Roger Maris would likely fit here, because of his 1961 season placing him into more of the general public's eye. Bob Uecker probably goes in quite readily (especially because of Mr. Belvedere). And, at the top of the list, no matter how much gambling he has or has not done, is Pete Rose.

Looking at some more recent cases: Cal Ripken--in. Tony Gwynn--unfortunately, not in. Bruce Sutter--nope. Mark McGwire--in by a long shot. Ozzie Smith--in, I think. Gary Carter--maybe the 1986 Mets gives him just enough to get in, but I think he's out. And so on ... right up to the one guy who I think goes in above all of these players, but didn't even come close when he finally made the ballot: Jose Canseco.

Among current players: Sammy Sosa--in. Alex Rodriguez--in, but probably a closer case than most baseball fans would think. Frank Thomas (uh, who's he?)--out. Ken Griffey, Jr.--I think in. Greg Maddux (and his possible 400 wins)--I think out. Derek Jeter--soooooo in ...

I could be wrong on some of those calls. I think the keys would be to look at their broader cultural significance and how well they were known beyond the world of sports. Of course, one question is "What would this accomplish?" I mean, here we'd be rewarding people for popularity, not performance (like that NEVER happens in the United States (though that's not my argument for having this kind of Hall of Fame)). Well, among other things, it might lead those who have to make the decisions to have to look back on the history of major league baseball in a different kind of way. It would mean getting a sense of how ballplayers were known, how much they were known, and why they were known. It might also tell us something fuller about the degrees to which and ways in which major league baseball has or has not been significant in American history. Indeed (and I'm speculating here), we baseball enthusiasts might find that not as many people know or care about baseball as much as we may tend to think ... and that that was even the case back from the 1920s through the 1950s, when, if you believe many prominent accounts of American public memory (look no further than Ken Burns' Baseball miniseries, for example), everyone knew something about baseball.

And, heck, when we engage in that kind of a look at American public memory, it seems like that has some potential to help make sure that we don't "misremember" the legacies of the likes of Roger Clemens.

Just a thought, anyway ...

Surely one of life's big mysteries ...

Guitarist/singer Jeff Healey has passed away at way too young an age. I don't have a lot to say other than that I was saddened to hear about it and wanted to post something about it. I've enjoyed much of his work that I've heard. "Angel Eyes" has gained status as a late 80s classic and it seems to deserve it. As a guy who really wished he could sing better than he can and has tried over the years to be better at it by going lower, this was one of those songs that I felt I could at least not ruin. And lyrics like "What you're doing with a guy like me is surely one of life's little mysteries" made Healey's voice all the more poignant. ... I guess I had more to say than I originally thought. I'll miss you, Jeff.