Newz Forum: OTHER: The Sports Curmudgeon on the MLB Hall of Fame, BCS, NHL plus more...

Here is an actual score of a college basketball game I found in the agate type of the Washington Post: Lee 83 Lincoln Memorial 78. I live in the Washington DC area; I've seen the Lincoln Memorial thousands of times and I can say with certainty that it does not have the mobility to score 78 points in a decade. There must have been no defense at all in that game..

The MLB Hall of Fame ballots went out yesterday and there are several new players on the list for the first time. I understand that there is a formula that assures that every player who meets some minimum criterion gets onto the ballot as soon as he is eligible and that formula does create some very unusual entries on the list every year. Fortunately, there is a weeding out criterion that forces the removal of names that do not get some minimum number of votes in their initial ballot lest the list become bloated beyond recognition. This year there is one name on the list that is sufficiently outrageous that it will be interesting to see if it draws sufficient votes to stay on the list. Darryl Strawberry was clearly an on-field talent of some significant proportion; Darryl Strawberry was also a troubled man and a head-case of epic proportion. I cannot begin to imagine that he would garner sufficient support to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, but I wonder just how many of the voters will look at his ability and his performance on the field and vote for him this year.

Auburn remains at #3 in the BCS voting again this week and it appears as if Oklahoma will be the team to play USC for the BCS Championship in January unless Colorado pulls an upset of huge proportion in the Big-12 Championship Game. Auburn fans will bemoan their fate and rant about the ineptitude of the BCS selection process. I'm on record favoring an on-field playoff for determining the college football champion, so don't try to paint me as a BCS apologist. But the Auburn fans need to direct some of their ire and to vent some of their spleen at the Auburn athletic department and the Auburn football program for a weak out-of-conference schedule that cannot - repeat CAN NOT - be used to help justify Auburn as worthy of inclusion in a championship game. In games over which Auburn has more than half of the decision-making authority, they chose this year to play Louisiana Tech, Louisiana-Monroe and The Citadel. I understand that there is a long tradition of padding schedules with inferior out of conference opponents but I notice that USC played Notre Dame and Va Tech out of conference this year and that is more than a small step higher on the college football food chain.

In the East Coast Hockey League, there was another player/fan incident that has not drawn nearly the attention of the Pacers/Pistons "basketbrawl" event. A player for the Reading Royals was not on the active roster for a game in Wheeling West Virginia; and so, he was sitting in the stands with a couple teammates and among the hometown fans. Words were exchanged and evidently the words escalated in terms of volume and acrimony because at some point this player felt that the proper action on his part was to drop his trousers and "display himself" to the fans in the stands. The player was given a 12-game suspension by the ECHL; and at last check, he is no longer listed on the roster for the Reading Royals. By the way, when I went to the website for the Reading Royals to see if he was still on their roster, I learned that the team has won a franchise record nine games in a row. I also learned that on January 7th, the team will have a promotional giveaway of Yuengling License Plate Holders. Why should anyone be wary that a fan would get one of those and pound down a few Yuenglings at the game go out to the parking lot and install this on his vehicle and then wrap his car around a utility pole on the way home? After all, any publicity is good publicity according to Mark Cuban...

Speaking of hockey, ESPN and ESPN2 have been showing re-runs of the World Series of Poker and a "Poker Invitational Tournament" in lieu of the NHL games that they would be showing if the NHL were actually playing games.

Aside: According to one report I read, the league and the Players Union have not conducted any negotiation sessions since September, which I would take as a bad sign if I were a Zamboni driver in an NHL town.

November is a sweeps ratings month and the preliminary results indicate that ESPN2 is getting higher ratings this year with the six-month old poker re-runs than it got last year for the NHL games.

Aside: I would take this as a bad economic indicator if I were the owner of an NHL team or a player in the NHL who figured to draw down a mid-seven figure salary from one of those owners.

Finally, here is an item from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

"A 30-year-old man holding the down marker at a kid-football game in Cranston R.I. got into a fight with the referee and the line judge - allegedly punching and kicking the latter - because they told him he couldn't talk on his cellphone during the game... The scene escalated when an off-duty police officer at the game tried to intervene. Police arrived and hauled the man, his 48-year-old mother and another fan off to jail."

What are the odds that whatever business was being conducted in that cellphone conversation could have been worth all of this? Probably about the same odds you could get on the proposition that the next fashion craze will be unbuttoned disco shirts and a heart monitor.

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...

Copyright The Sports Curmudgeon







[Edited on 12/2/04 by SportzWriter]

i can't imagine why darryl strawberry would be included on the hall of fame ballot.....he is worse for the game than pete rose, why even bother

Originally posted by toejam
i can't imagine why darryl strawberry would be included on the hall of fame ballot.....he is worse for the game than pete rose, why even bother

it goes to show where baseball's priorities are...