Fire the coach!

I wanted to be the first to say it, but it's probably too late.  Already there are "dead coach walking" lists all over the internet.

Al Groh of UVA seems to be at the top of most lists.  0-2 after losing to Texas Christian today, William & Mary last week. By most objective criteria, Groh has not achieved a great deal in Charlottesville.

Well, except he has a great deal.  In Charlottesville.

Roughly $1.7 million a season through 2011.

And there's the rub.  How do you fire a coach who is into you for that much money, the year after UVA spent $2.1 million to part ways with basketball coach Dave Leitao?

Firing Groh would be the responsibility of Athletic Director Craig Littlepage.  Which would force Littlepage to walk that long last mile to tell the nice folks at the Virginia Athletic Foundation that large sums of money must be advanced to buy out the coach whose contract he extended after the 2007 season.

How would that conversation go?

"I had the right vision for UVA football and basketball.  It was all coming together.  And then it didn't.  So, I'll need you to dig just a little deeper...."

At which point the VAF will probably begin to wonder how much it would cost to buy out Littlepage.  Which is probably a question which should be asked.

Craig Littlepage isn't exactly Bernie Madoff, but he's done a reasonable imitation, promising unrealistic returns on investment.  Like Madoff's ponzi scheme, the investors in UVA athletics have come to realize the money is gone with little to show for it.

Groh's extension was tied to a vision of national championship contention.  Littlepage sold that vision, which is probably not achievable at UVA, with or without Al Groh as head coach.

Simply put, Charlottesville is not a destination location for the type of players needed to put UVA into one of the major bowls.  There is not history of success, no more of a pipeline to the NFL than other ACC schools, and the ACC itself is not a marquee football conference. 

Could another coach change that?  Butch Davis at UNC is a close comparison, and while Davis is moving Carolina in the right direction it is a multi-year project with no guarantee of anything more than the Top 20.

And Al Groh is no Butch Davis.  A good offensive mind, an experienced coach, someone who should consistently win eight to ten games a season.  But not a national title.

Where does that leave UVA?

With an AD who probably can't pull the trigger, but may be fired himself.  And with a coach who will probably ride out the season before getting a golden parachute from the VAF. 

And lots of unrealized dreams.

 

 

Has it come to this?

The St. Louis Cardinals are contending for a pennant and believe John Smoltz can help.  Which could mean a number of things.

The Cards number five starters have been really, really bad.

They are spending entirely too much time reading Dave Duncan's press clippings and consider him the Helen Keller of pitching coaches.

Somewhere Jim Bouton is tuning up his knuckle ball and waiting by the phone.

The front office is afflicted with a mysterious disease that results in an inability to read statistics.

Statistics like these:

Smoltz allowed eight home runs in his last twenty innings with the Red Sox.

Didn't have a single quality start in eight trys.

The RedSox, a championship caliber team, lost six of his eight starts.

The toothpick just popped out.

Smoltz is done.  As a starter.

I'm hedging my bet on Smoltz the reliever, because of his 33/9 strikeout to walk ratio in forty innings, and the stretches within games where his stuff has been commanding.

Then again, the walks are deceptive.  Nobody takes your pitches when they are always right around the plate begging to be driven from the field of play.

So, why is Smoltz not in the bullpen?

Smoltz has a reputation as being one of baseball's good guys and is well known for his charitable work in the Atlanta area.

But he's human and stubborn.  One of only two pitchers with twenty win and fifty save seasons to his credit, Smoltz feels like he's earned the right to come back as a starter.  St. Louis is giving him that chance.

The RedSox offered Smoltz a chance to go to minors, get some work, and return to the bullpen down the stretch.

Did he owe the RedSox?

Boston management won't say it, probably because Smoltz looks better going out the door than coming back in.  But if the RedSox were sincere in thinking he could contribute in the bullpen later this year, it hardly seems gracious to abandon them.

The Braves were right.

Over the winter the Braves front office was criticized by Smoltz, Chipper Jones, and many fans for not outbidding the RedSox to bring him back. 

Atlanta was offering a pitcher coming off shoulder surgery who cost them $14 million in 2008 for 28 innings work a $2 million contract with incentives.  The RedSox offered $5.5 million and incentives. 

Smoltz was offended.

You have to wonder.

The Atlanta Braves had paid Smoltz over $130 million over the years, including $14 million for essentially nothing in 2008.

So he leaves over the chance to make $3.5 million?

It shouldn't have ended this way.

Smoltz should have taken the Braves offer and gotten in shape for whatever role he could fill with Atlanta.  Worked with their young pitchers, enjoyed his status as elder statesman.

If things didn't work out there would be the big farewell send off before a packed house at Turner Field and offers to work with the team in some other capacity.

Instead Smoltz went to Boston and became the equivalent of a 42 year old Willie Mays hitting .211 with 6 home runs with the 1973 Mets.

It won't get better in St. Louis.

The best thing anyone has said about Smoltz signing with the Cardinals was that he possibly, just possibly, could give them five innings of three run ball now and then.

There is also a pretty good chance he won't be able to do that and we'll be writing blogs in a couple of weeks about his retirement from the game.

I've been wrong before.

Not this time.  Buy some replacement scoreboard lights for the Cardinals.

The old ones will be burning out soon.

 

 

 

 

 

How anyone can think a quarterback who hasn't read an NFL defense in two years is going to come back and be effective?

Can the Pittsburgh Pirates be decertified as a major league baseball team and be declared part of the Boston RedSox farm system?

Why relief pitchers all want to look like the Unabomber.  And who they think they are intimidating.

Why USC only recruits potential sociology majors for its football team.

How many professional lives Omar Minaya has, and why the Mets wear those awful black caps.

Could a trained chimpanzee to manage the New York Yankees to the pennant as long as the payroll was kept at $210 million.

By show of hands, who out there believes Manny Ramirez hasn't been abusing performance enhancing drugs for years.

Does Jim Rome go home and talk like that.          To himself.       And are the e-mails..   From the Clones.               Mostly made up.          By his producers.

And a followup please.  In a street fight among daytime radio hosts, who would be left standing.  Rome, Rush Limbaugh, Doctor Laura, or that really scary woman from "Democracy Now"?

Will there ever be another caucasian thousand yard rusher in the NFL......and why do African-American offensive linemen so seldom get to play center?

If a hockey team in the NHL falls, will anyone hear it?  Or care?

Does Tony Romo care?

What does the 13th pitcher on the Yankees staff do in his spare time, which is basically every day ending in the letter "y"?

Why do I miss George Steinbrenner when I never liked him that much way back when?  And why can't he fire Joe Girardi for no reason just for old time sake?  And why don't they just name it Steinbrenner Field, since it really isn't Yankee Stadium anymore?

Finally, does anyone really know what time it is?  Does anybody really care?  (Rats, another song I won't be able to get off my mind).

 

 

"Fans, for the past two months you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. Look at those grand suckers. Which of you wouldn't consider it the luckiest break of your life just to laugh your back pocket off at them every day?

Sure I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known George Washington.  One hundred sixty-two million, two hundred fifty-eight thousand, two hundred and sixty-nine times.  To have spent years ignoring some of the finest managers in the game.  Then to have come to Los Angeles and make a complete sucker out of that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe Torre?

Sure I'm lucky. When the Los Angeles Dodgers, a team you would give your right arm to play for, holds a place for you for fifty games-- that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you and stay out of your way -- that's something. When you have wonderful clubhouse managers who flinch when your name is mentioned-- that's something. When you have an agent like Scott Boras who can wring every last dime out of these teams -- it's a blessing. When you have little guys like Juan Pierre who play the best ball of their career and then go back to the bench when you come back -- that's the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I’m still Manny being Manny.  And there is nothing you can do about it."

 

My record at predictions is almost perfect.  Had it not been for that one time I accidentally was right it would be perfect.

Still I make predictions.  Why?  Because people who do it as badly as I do go on television or the internet and do it every day.  It looks like fun.

You hope for that one great day where somehow you actually do get something right.  People remember that.  The bonus is there are so many wrong predictions by professional sports media it is virtually impossible to remember any of them.

Which brings me to Michael Vick.  And Brigadier General Charles Pomeroy Stone.

When the Civil War started the Union Army lacked competent officers.  Stone (a Democrat) was an old hand who had fought in the Mexican War.  He quickly made Brigadier General in 1861 and helped prepare the defenses of Washington at a time they were very weak.

In October of the first year of the war, Stone's command was sent on a reconnaissance in force just west of DC at Leasburg.  Stone was blessed, and I used the word with all the sarcasm which can drip off a computer keyboard, with a subordinate who was a good friend of the President and a US Senator.

Colonel Edwin D. Baker, Republican Senator of Oregon, was a man of great accomplishment and greater ego.  He took his small command over the Potomac River without orders, not knowing what force was in front of him, and came near to getting it wiped out.  Late in the day, his back to a seventy foot bluff, he died leading his men into one magnificent mess.  Bodies were floating by the nation's capital for days.

Being a politician, and being a friend of the President, it came to pass that Baker was blameless.  Someone had to be responsible, so a whisper campaign was started against Stone.  He must be a spy, he was too soft on the Virginians, he sent Baker off to be killed because he was a closet Confederate.

So Stone, on next to no evidence, is rounded up and thrown in jail without charge.  He is in poor health, more than a bit disconcerted at being arrested, and is confined in a fort in New York Harbor.  In the winter.  The hope is that time, tide, and drafty quarters will kill him off.

Stone, however, was made of sterner stuff and lived.  Eventually, Congress passed a law requiring he be charged or released and the Articles of War (which mandated a charge be levied within ninety days).  The Lincoln administration kept him in jail for eighty-nine days after the bill passed just for spite.

An administration official was asked why Stone was still being held when everyone knew he was innocent.  The response was that he served as an example to other Democrat officers who might not be cooperative with the adminstration.  He is worth, said the official, a division in the field while sitting in jail.

Which brings us to Michael Vick.

Michael Vick won't be back this year.  Michael Vick may not even be back next year.

Why?

Because Michael Vick is worth more to the NFL not playing than he is on the field.  If Commissioner Goodale refuses to reinstate Vick it will be a rather frightening example to NFL players that, as the Buffalo Springfield once sang, "Step out of line, the man come, and take you away."

The millionaire boys club which is the NFL begrudgingly pays top dollar to players.  But they prefer to purchase a certain level of behavior with their money.  The fewer dreadlocks, tattoos, arrests, and attitudes the better.

If Vick is allowed to come back this fall, what is the message?  Business as usual.  You go out at 3 a.m.  Got some residue in the ash tray and an automatic weapon under the seat.  What are they going to do, fire you?

Well, maybe they can.

If Michael Vick is suspended for a year or more, maybe you think twice.  Or, in some instances, maybe you actually think for the first time in your young life.  And go home before midnight and get an unlisted number so none of the fast company you keep can reach out and renew acquaintances. 

Another thing people miss about Vick is the very real chance that a full season suspension this year effectively finishes him as a star quarterback.  Football is ten times faster on the field than on TV, and missing a season means slower reads and reaction.  Missing two seasons as a quarterback almost certainly means you never get back to where you were, if at all.

Which is OK by the NFL.

Prediction.  Goodale keeps Vick on the sideline this year and maybe out through the first part of the season after that.  Three missed training camps equals no more Michael Vick, at least as a quarterback.  It also means no PETA protestors in the packed parking lot (say that one three times fast). 

What become of General Stone?  After he was let go he was reinstated but followed by detectives constantly.  He served in Mississippi before getting fed up with it all and resigning in 1864.  Married a Southern girl, did a little gold mining, and eventually hired out as a general in the Egyptian Army.

An engineer by trade, Stone eventually came back to New York and got a job on a big project.  Seems they were planning a statue out in the harbor and they needed someone do design the massive pedestal it would sit on.

They call it the Statue of Liberty.

Will Michael Vick make a mark when he's done playing?

Maybe by not being allowed back he already has.