Baseball needs to take advantage of stars like Fielder and Howard

The most family-friendly sporting event of the year begins in Williamsport next month - that is, as long as your family is white, middle class and from places like Boynton Beach, Davenport or Tom’s River.

Chances are you won’t find any teams from the inner city at the Little League World Series. In fact, the odds of seeing more than a couple African-American kids on any roster are slim-to-none, which is why when Connecticut baseball coach Jim Penders calls baseball a “white-collar” sport in this country, he might as well being saying it’s a white-faced game.

Many believe the reason less African-Americans are playing baseball is strictly a financial issue. In fact, last year Penders told the New Haven Register that he recruits the best players who can afford to come to school, as opposed to just the best players. But that points to an across-the-board problem, one that affects Americans of all backgrounds and isn’t just happening in sports.

It still doesn’t explain why baseball continues to thrive even in poor white communities while it has become an afterthought in almost every urban area. The sport is becoming as segregated as hockey, golf or tennis in most parts of this country, which basically means an entire generation is missing out on our national pastime.

Like most of Major League Baseball’s problems, it has only itself to blame. The two most well-known black ball players right now are Ken Griffey Jr. and Barry Bonds, the same as it was 15 years ago. But Griffey is at the tail end of his career, currently hitting somewhere around .200 and Bonds has essentially been banished from the game. Bud Selig and company have done an awful job at marketing any of the current African-American stars, all but passing up Jimmy Rollins, C.C. Sabathia, Prince Fielder and Ryan Howard in favor of guys like Joe Mauer and Tim Lincecum.

It’s not that Mauer and Lincecum don’t deserve to be stars, but when you have a serious lack of interest from the black community on your hands, why wouldn’t you make the effort to reach out using your most valuable assets? Fielder and Howard in particular have the ability to resonate with young fans the way Griffey and Bonds did in the nineties. Fielder took home the Home Run Derby on Monday night, an event that is still quite popular in the little league crowd. And on Thursday, Howard became the quickest ever to reach 200 homeruns, getting there in just 658 games.

It’s not just chicks who dig the long ball; it’s everyone, especially kids.

And Fielder and Howard’s homeruns can reach the inner cities. They’re young enough to be fan favorites for another decade and baseball needs to take advantage of that. Maybe then Williamsport in August will stop looking like some private school reunion and baseball can actually go back to being America’s game.

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Baseball Random Rumblings: Fresh Manny is a scary thing for baseball

• A year ago Manny Ramirez was in the process of running himself out of Boston. Over the course of about a month, he had shoved the team’s traveling secretary to the ground, taken a few nights off against tough pitchers and laughed it up following an error against the Angels. Put simple, he had the public approval rating of President Bush.
  
  Now Ramirez has a new cloud over his head. Once considered too stupid to even know how to use steroids, a 50 game suspension suggests he was just stupid enough to get caught. His run of 11 consecutive All Star Games was halted, his legacy tarnished. Now, he’s got the public approval rating of Bin Laden.
  
  That’s not going to change. No one is going to forget about the suspension and the diehard baseball fan will never forgive him. He’s probably a long shot to ever make the Hall of Fame. But that’s not going to stop him leading the Dodgers back to the playoffs, as he did last season when he delivered one of the great two-month stretches in the history of the game.
  
  In fact, you could argue that his suspension will only benefit the Dodgers. (How typical for baseball. Even when they get something right, it goes wrong.) Now he’s going to be fresh when everyone else is trying to battle through the dog days of summer. He’ll be just hitting his stride as pitchers are reaching the 175 inning mark, which means he might be able to put up numbers that trump what he did last season.
  
  And if that happens, you can count on the Dodgers being around in October… And early November.
  
  
• Tiger Woods might be the greatest golfer in history, but his sport and his personality only allows him to be interesting for about seven days all year. Think about it: There are four majors in golf, plus the Player's championship. That’s 20 days. Most sports fans might follow Woods on Thursday and Friday, but we don’t actively watch. That leaves ten days, and if you assume he’ll play poorly on at least three of those days, Tiger is relevant for a week a year.
  
  My point? Tim Lincecum is more exciting, more often than Woods.
  
  
• Looking back at my baseball predictions at the start of the year, my American League picks are still in tact. I had New York, Boston, Detroit and Seattle making the playoffs. Today, I’d change only the Mariners.
  
  The National League is a different story. I had the Mets winning the World Series, and they might finish under .500. I thought the Braves would take the Wild Card. And I had the Cubs winning the Central by the All Star break, and they’re three games out. It looks as though only the Dodgers will come through for me.
  
  But hey, who’s watching National League baseball anyway?

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McNair's story all too familiar

In a lot of ways, Steve McNair was a pioneer. Here was a guy who made it all the way to the NFL from a town smaller than my neighborhood. Someone who got to the top by way of Division I-AA Alcorn State, where he almost won the Heisman. And perhaps most significant of all, McNair became a star at the highest level when being black was still considered detrimental for quarterbacks.

He was the type of athlete we’d all like to believe we would be with the type of overcoming-all-odds story we’d all need to have to ever come close to playing on Sundays. He was the type of role model we wanted our kids to have with the work ethic we want all players to possess.

He should still be that guy today.

But he’s not. Now, as we learn more and more about the secret life that appears to have led to his murder over the weekend, the Steve McNair story becomes a lot more typical. He now comes off as the type of guy we believe all athletes and celebrities are – unfaithful, selfish, egotistical types who think they can get away with anything because of who they are and what they do.

It should be made clear that famous people aren’t the only ones who cheat on their wives and run out on their families, but I also find it hard to believe this would have happened if McNair never made it to the NFL and just remained in Mount Olive, Mississippi his entire life. His fame played a role here. It allowed him to pick up a woman half his age and his money allowed him to hide their relationship from everyone in his life.

Not everyone has the ability to pull off that double-life, but athletes can and many of them do. McNair’s story should serve as a cautionary tale for those guys. It’s not that sleeping around will get you killed – that’s extreme. It’s that getting into these situations can and more than likely will lead to jealousy and resentment from one of the parties affected. That’s where problems come from.

But you know what? It’s hard to have faith in the unfaithful athlete. They haven’t learned from Magic Johnson, who could have died from sleeping around. And they clearly haven’t learned anything from Shawn Kemp (who has seven children with seven women) because Travis Henry actually topped that number. So why should anyone think they’ll learn from the guy whose girl friend murdered him?

That’s the thing with athletes. We expect them to be superhuman, but that doesn’t make them super humans. Steve McNair, it turns out, was no different. He’s gone now and so is his wonderful story. All we have left is an all too familiar athletic legacy.

More on Steve McNair
A few last words on Steve McNair - Where's the Outrage?
Affair McNair - Me Talk Athlete
The Legacy of Steve McNair… A Good Man Just Not Perfect - A Couple Things

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Why I Coach...

Anybody who thinks the Chicago Cubs are the most loveable losers in the world never met my little leaguers. Then again, no one has ever witnessed anyone, anywhere, lose quite like us. We were the Bad News Bears without a happy ending. We made the Washington Generals look first-class. I felt bad watching the runs pile up on my helpless little guys, but the other teams felt worse – you know things aren’t going well when the other coaches are rooting for you.

Winning just wasn’t our thing. Not that any of my little guys knew – once, after an especially bad whooping, one of my nine year olds tugged on my t-shirt and asked if we had won. Won? I gave him a perplexed look, “buddy, we didn’t even make it out of the batter’s box today.”

Such was life for my team during our 0-16 campaign. We struck out, we dodged groundballs, and for a bunch of fourth graders, we had an uncanny ability to remain clean (dirt also wasn’t our thing). But the truth is, I’ll probably remember the losing only slightly more than my team, and that’s only because I actually kept score for every game. It’s everything else, the hilarious stories and the head-scratching ones, the heartwarming and occasionally heartbreaking tales that made this season memorable for me.

Teaching baseball to children is a lot like teaching someone to speak English. Every time they think they’re getting the hang of it, another crazy rule pops up and throws everything off. The “infield fly” rule is just a preposterous as “I” before “E” except after “C.” And why, as my first basemen once asked, can’t you just throw the ball at the runner to get him out? Monkey ball works in kickball.

The key is learning all the positions, but that also means knowing right from left, which can be tricky. Sometimes it can also be hard to pronounce the names of each spot on the field. For example, one kid spent the entire year asking to go to the mountain and I would always say no. I thought he was talking about the big pile of dirt behind out dugout. Turns out he meant the pitcher’s mound, and he took the hill in our final game. Jose hit four batters in a row.

My actual pitcher (we only had one) was a 3’2 seven year old who played right field and batted dead last on opening day and was the starting pitcher and leading off by game three. He was so tiny that our catcher (his brother) would often knock him over when throwing the ball back to him. But Joey knew that pitching was all about intimidation, so he’d wear eye-black to look older and make his “mean face” to strike fear in the hitters. That’s heart.

Of course, every team has an overachiever. Ours was our shortstop. Chris knew how to catch and could throw all the way across the diamond. He liked to dive and slide and even though he had an awful habit of throwing his bat after swinging, he made contact enough to be considered our best hitter. In one already out of reach game, a ball was hit to shallow left field and he made the greatest catch any of my kids had ever seen, so they did what the pros do: They jumped on top of him and celebrated as though it were the game-winning catch. One problem: It was only the second out of the inning and a runner tagged up and scored.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t laugh or smile at everything that happened this season. Sometimes reality hits hard. They old motto is “kids say the darndest things,” but in actuality, they’re brutally honest. Mom drinks too much. Dad’s never around and he doesn’t pay child support. Or we’re going to be homeless. Real life problems that winning in baseball won’t solve. My friends often tease me by comparing me to Keanu Reeves in “Hardball,” but the truth is, real life tends to be a lot less entertaining and a lot more eye-opening.

It’s the tear-jerking stories that make me want to come back and should make you want to get involved. Sometimes we don't realize that kids these days are lonelier than ever. Not every child has a reliable parent to turn to or someone willing to pay attention to them. Too many grow up with John Madden as their male role model and Grand Theft Auto has taught them far more about stolen cars than they will ever know about stolen bases.

It's really sad, especially when you hear from people who have already given up on a generation. Children need coaches and role models in their lives now more than ever. It's so easy too. Spend a couple hours a week with a youth. Mentor them. Coach them. Teach them. Do something.

It's not hard to have an impact on a child's life.

So make it happen.

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Win over Spain was great, but this was no miracle

How many times do we have to compare a major upset in sports to the Miracle on Ice before we realize that nothing, NOTHING, will ever be able to top USA 4, USSR 3? The latest violation of this rule occurred last week in the semifinals of the Confederations Cup when the United States Soccer Team stunned a Spain team that had not lost in its previous 35 games.

The victory was a remarkable one for Team USA, who needed all kinds of luck just to qualify for the knockout stages of the tournament. Only two weeks ago, it looked as though head coach Bob Bradley was about to lose his job when his team was embarrassed in consecutive matches by Italy and Brazil. But the US, after manhandling Egypt and getting help from the Brazilians, managed to sneak past the first stage and into the semifinals, where it pulled off the incredible upset over one of the world’s best teams.

There is no question the story sounds a bit similar to Lake Placid in 1980; what with all the good fortune needed simply to advance to the next round and a team playing well over its head to shock the world. But that’s about where it ends and that’s why we need to keep our eye on the ball.

The Miracle on Ice occurred at the Olympics and the US soccer team’s victory happened at the Confederations Cup, a tournament that consisted of just eight teams, most of whom will not be a factor at the World Cup next summer. One is a tradition that dates back (in some form) for centuries and the other, well, even Google considers vague.

I realize that I’m probably coming off as your typical, cranky old sports columnist who refuses to acknowledge that recent great moments in sports could actually trump those from a bygone era. But that’s not the case at all. In fact, I was born six years after Lake Placid. I just recognize that, considering the state of the world in 1980, a victory over the Soviets at the Olympics meant a lot more than a win in some irrelevant soccer tournament.

I also realize that sports fans tend to embellish what a win actually means, and by no means am I trying to argue that Mike Eruzione had anything to do with the fall of Communism, but the Miracle on Ice was bigger than just sports. The USSR was considered evil; If Iran or North Korea had the world’s best soccer teams and we defeated them, then the comparison would be a little more valid.

Nearly 30 years later, it’s hard to envision anything, much less a win over a country we really like, ever matching what happened on February 22, 1980. That was about rivalry with a legitimate enemy. This was a tune-up for next summer against a country we like to vacation in.

And for the record, Team USA hockey finished the job a few days later to win gold in 1980. Team USA soccer just went back to being Team USA soccer.

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Rubio's selfishness a slap in the face to Americans

On the same day a piece in the Wall Street Journal criticized the way America’s youth basketball system prepares its athletes for the pros, the biggest headache from this year’s NBA Draft came from overseas. Spain’s Ricky Rubio might have the court vision and passing ability of some the sport’s all-time greats, but lately he’s proven that he has the brains of some of its most foolish players.

Rubio was largely considered the most fundamentally-sound player in the draft, but he made headlines in recent weeks more for the stipulations he had for playing in the USA than for his abilities on the court. The 18 year old made it clear that he had no interest in playing for Memphis, who picked second, and he wasn’t crazy about Oklahoma City, who followed the Grizzlies. So when Sacramento took Tyreke Evans with the fourth pick, it became clear that Minnesota was going to land Rubio.

But shortly after the Timberwolves took the Spanish star, Rubio’s father made it clear that he had no interest in playing in Minnesota and Rubio himself followed up by saying the state was “too cold.” Suddenly the kid who once said he was so excited to play in the NBA that he’d play for free was allowing his agent to say he was considering heading back to Europe for a few seasons.

Isn’t a selfish point guard an oxymoron? That’s exactly what Rubio is proving to be by trying to manipulate the system and land only in a place he wants to be. Might as well give him a private airplane while you’re at it.

This disgusts me. The media spends so much time criticizing American players because they are too-selfish, too-greedy, too-black, but no one ever wants to get on the foreign players who say they’ve always dreamed about playing in the NBA, yet will only play in place that is the right fit for them. You think Blake Griffin is thrilled to be playing for the worst franchise in professional sports?

Of course not. But he’s ecstatic to have a chance to play in the NBA, something he’s probably thought about since the first time he picked up a basketball. You can attack the American system or the American player all you want, but at least they aren’t taking the draft for granted.

They know what it means to make it to the NBA and with the exception of a few (Steve Francis comes to mind) they’d play for any team willing to take them. Meanwhile, the foreign players, realizing they have all the leverage in the world, take advantage of the system. Rubio is just the latest player to abuse it. Remember when Yi Jianlian didn’t want to play for the Bucks because there weren’t enough Chinese people in Milwaukee? For the record, Rubio and Jianlian have the same agent – Dan Fegan.

Someone ask DeMar DeRozan and Brandon Jennings, two guys who grew up in Compton and will now play in Toronto and Milwaukee respectively, how much they care about not being surrounded by people who look just like them.

What a slap in the face to the American player. And you better believe the Americans recognize it and resent it.

No matter where Rubio ends up, I guarantee he won’t be a favorite in the locker room.

More on Ricky Rubio:
Media Old & New Concur : Walsh Should’ve Taken Jennings - CSTB
Timberwolves Should Hold Onto Their Guns With Rubio - The Sportz Assassin
Anybody seen Ricky Rubio at El Meson? - Star Tribune

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