In years to come, when Bud Selig looks into his chest of baseball memories to relive the glory days of his inconsistent reign, he'll no doubt gaze with reflective pride on the international tournament he envisioned and championed into existence. Other mementos of the past, such as any mention of his role as enabler in the largest illegal drug scandal in the game's history, have been tossed aside, along with the polyester leisure suits that made him the center of attention on the lighted dance floors of the 1970s.

The World Baseball Classic provided yet more proof that, though the names may be unrecognizable or unpronounceable, the skill is universal, even if it comes from areas far removed from the New Jersey meadow where the rules and dimensions of the modern game were born.

U.S. fans, used to big swings and even bigger misses, were treated, if they cared, to styles of play seemingly lost in the chase for immediate gratification. Anyone wondering what the game looked like before the advent of instant offense need only tune into any contest by the final pair to be transported back to a time when bat control, smart base running and crisp defense were mandatory and well-practiced keys to victory.

But no matter the merit of the Asian, Caribbean or European style of play, the WBC will not fulfill Selig's prediction as a true World Cup-type event until changes are made.

The biggest hurdle to clear before the games restart in 2013 is coaxing greater support from Major League owners. Selig, during an in-booth television interview, said the owners will have to put aside individual need for the greater good of the sport.

This is going to be a tough sell even for a commissioner who is basically a displaced owner. Owners and executives are rightfully concerned that an injury to a key player could deter a title shot and affect their bottom line.

This fear of lost revenue will change when the merchandising and television dollars start rolling in - which they will, as long as the series can be kept afloat.

According to bizofbaseball.com, domestic TV ratings for round one jumped 40 percent over 2006, with viewership up almost 90 percent.

But more important than U.S. ratings is how the game does overseas. ESPN reported that the five first-round games were the highest-rated non-soccer events ever broadcast on ESPN Deportes. In Asia, where Major League Baseball is trying to make a big impact, the March 13 game between Japan and Korea pulled in a 37.8 rating in Japan with even bigger numbers in Korea. The Classic also helps the exposure of foreign players, so look for teams to tap into the under-used Korean talent pool.

For all the outstanding competition and international grudge matches the Classic brings out, watching teams play each other four or five times just gets old. Reseeding teams in the second round would prevent boring repetition and make for additional compelling matchups. Who wouldn't want to see Cuba take on the U.S. and give Castro even more column fodder? The former revolutionary leader's op-ed piece in the Escambray was a bit rambling, but he had a point about the disparity of having three of the four top-ranked teams by the International Baseball Federation in one division.
As important as the international element is to the Classic, a huge part of its future depends on U.S. success and the participation of American athletes.

Even with the majority of talent and viewers coming from places other than the United States, as goes the U.S. so goes the Classic. America still produces the best baseball talent, and fans in all countries want to see the best compete. Just as fans in the Netherlands celebrated like it was Nieuwjaar after their club defeated the mighty Dominicans, so do fans elsewhere want to take down an even more dominant U.S. team. But for this to be the case, changes have to be made to make it more attractive to players.
Baseball is an everyday game, and stretching a nine-game tournament over three weeks doesn't give players the necessary time to prepare for both the Classic and their upcoming Major League season. Fixing this is a two-step process. Slicing a week off the schedule will eliminate the unnecessary down time players hate, and beginning training earlier will ensure proper health and team coordination. The later will be toughest to implement.

Counting spring training, the Major League season lasts nine months, which leaves very little off time to heal wounds or eliminate the stress of a marathon season. Getting 28 player to make such a commitment will be difficult. Therefore, use fewer players. This is not Little League. Not everyone needs to play. Pick a starting nine, plus pitchers, who are going to play each game and keep the rest in reserve with their clubs in spring training. Should an injury arise, fly in a replacement.

One final suggestion: Lower ticket prices. While the price tags may not have been out of order when compared to quality seating in Boston or New York, triple-digit prices are a bit much to watch Panama take on China. While the final numbers were good in Los Angeles, mainly because of its large Korean population,  TV viewers were greeted far too often with too many open seats to indicate they were tuning into an event worth watching.

And if seeing Derek Jeter cheer on Kevin Youkilis or David Wright celebrating with Shane Victorino doesn't send you running to create your own Mastercard-inspired proclamation of financial support, nothing will.

smurray@midweek.com 

For one, it was a week of redemption. For the other, yet another bridge burned.

Stephon Marbury and Terrell Owens are skilled players who are cursed with more ego than talent, and who have brought more attention to themselves for their actions off the court and field then on. For the time being, Marbury has found a home with a structured team that doesn't really need his help. Owens, however, will be in search for the last team willing to put up with his nonsense.

The Marbury experiment in Boston has gotten off to the start everyone had hoped: quiet and uneventful. In three games (as of this writing)  the Celtics' new point guard has eight points and nine assists in 40 minutes. More importantly he's yet to alienate his teammates, coaches and owners, with no hint of misbehavior. For most players and teams, that would be the expected minimum of decent behavior, but it's been some time since the man with the $21 sneaker went very long without becoming a distraction. It remains to be seen how long he can hold out before venturing down that well-beaten path.

Owens' time in Dallas was the soap opera everyone should have seen coming. The three-year docudrama starring the former 49er and Eagle was highlighted by tremendous skill, dropped balls, bizarre behavior, muscular superiority, locker-room bickering and one alleged suicide attempt. Even though Owens cried famously in support of the man tasked with getting him the football, and then later blamed said quarterback and tight end Jason Witten for conspiring to keep the ball away from him, it became clear that Owens and Tony Romo couldn't co-exist, and no one, not even Jerry Jones - who, like all owners, favors performance over professionalism - is going to choose an aging receiver over a Pro Bowl quarterback. When Dallas imported Roy Williams from Detroit, it was only a matter of time before Owens left the Cowboys in search of sucker No. 4. He'll find that team soon enough.

Though Owens is likely to have a bigger impact on his team, of the two, Marbury is the safer hire. Yes, he's self-involved and is yet to find fault in any of his actions, but unlike Owens, who has literally torpedoed three teams, Marbury doesn't seem to warrant immediate psychological assistance. So far the Coney Island native has deferred to Boston's Big Three and has taken his minutes as they have come, but Marbury needs close watching because history, as they say, repeats itself.

In 2003, Rasheed Wallace was a technical foul-prone Pacific Northwest problem child who entered a very tight Detroit Pistons locker room and helped lead them to a championship. The suddenly well-behaved post man silenced all doubters, and the Pistons seemed to do the impossible. A team of strong leaders was able to rein in a temperamental star and convince him of his evil ways. But the good times didn't last, and slowly but surely Sheed went back to his Jailblazers' ways and began sabotaging his team with bad behavior and disinterest. The Celtics could be next.

Every team thinks it has the structure to rehabilitate troubled athletes, but the successful ones rarely enjoy much long-term success. One of the reasons the Celtics work so well together is they are not afraid to share the spotlight or to get in one another's grill. Marbury couldn't handle playing second plantain in Minnesota when Kevin Garnett was still too young to take on a strong leadership role.

What's going to happen now that Garnett has shown the ability to make teammates cry? His new coach summed up the challenges ahead perfectly, saying that Marbury's problems were in New York and everywhere else -the last two words being most important.

Whoever takes a gamble on the former Cowboy is going to face a challenge. Owens is a No. 1 option who, if he desired, could still earn a Pro Bowl spot. Physical receivers are a premium in the NFL, and any team on the edge of the playoffs or more will be tempted to breakdance with Beelzebub. And it may even work out for a year, but hoping for anything more is just foolish. If the Cowboys, who took  the fun out of dysfunctional, can only handle three seasons, how's a team lacking blood lust for victory in ownership going to do any better?

Marbury and Owens are gambles. Vegas was built on such excitement. It's the lure of sudden richness with only the house coming out ahead. Boston got a seat at the table. Will Minnesota or Oakland?

smurray@midweek.com

The uniform was different, but the feeling inside Joe Louis Arena was vintage 1990s.
Well, almost. Eleven years has a way of calming hostilities, even those toward uber villain Claude Lemieux, who a decade ago was as welcomed in the Brown Bomber's playhouse as octopi on the ice in Denver.

The images are still clear: Lemieux's check that sent Kris Draper hard into the boards and then to the hospital with a broken jaw, cheek and concussion - which, even though it came from behind, upon further review looks more accidental then purposeful. And, most famously, the March 26, 1997, retaliation by Darren McCarty 301 days later that sent the Avalanche's instigator to the ice for protection, which included a scrap between goalies Mike Vernon and Patrick Roy, and a second show of strength four seconds into the second period when Adam Foote and Brandon Shanahan tied up. It was hockey at its best.

The 43-year-old former master of the sucker punch played his first game for San Jose Jan. 20 and has been rewarded with 19 penalty minutes in 15 games, but it wasn't until he skated against Detroit did his comeback become noteworthy. For better or for worse, after four Stanley Cups, a Conn Smythe Trophy, 785 points and 1,756 penalty minutes, Lemieux will be remembered most for the fights he instigated and for the rivalry he helped start. After five-and-a-half years away and seemingly a lifetime since the NHL has seen confrontation in all its former gory glory, the NHL could use a few agitators and retaliators.

In all truth, the league doesn't need players such as Lemieux or McCarty, who before his groin injury had scored one goal and 25 penalty minutes, all for fighting majors. The league is blessed with international talent that has raised the skill level to unseen proportions. Commissioner Gary Bettman wanted his league to be celebrated for its athleticism and not fisticuffs, and from that aspect it's been a success.

But the lack of fighting and story-ready characters has caused the league to lose some of its identity and attractiveness at a time when even the NFL is making cuts. The realities of the economy and a salary cap won't allow teams to employ punch-first-and-ask-questions-later players such as "Tiger" Williams, whose 3,966 penalty minutes has made him a penalty box legend. The league will never completely go back to the days of paid enforcers, nor should it. Even hockey needs to evolve. But the league does need something or someone to stir the pot and create matchups that make the regular season something more than an 80-game preview to the post-season. It wasn't going to be Steve Avery and his camera-mugging comments and, as much as the league is trying, it's not going to be Sydney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin.

Ovechkin is the game's best player, Crosby its most-famous and best-marketed. The NHL and its broadcast partners are pushing these two as a latter-day version of Howe vs. Richard, but neither really fits the role. Ovechkin has the jaw-dropping talent, but Crosby is more inclined to hit and hide than menacingly stalk an opponent for a true face-to-face tussle against a force majeure. Then again, saving one's aggression for a smaller target is standard operating procedure for Broad Street bullies in every city. And for 20 seasons, no one exhibited that belief more than the man named the No. 1 Most Hated Man in the NHL by ESPN in 2006.

Claude Lemieux was a jerk with the marvelous ability to get under the skin of his opponents. Detroit fans should have recognized a similar skill in its own well-loved 6-foot-11-inch, 260-pound Bad Boy. If they did, they'd never admit it. Such is the nature of pests. They are loved in their hometown, despised on the road and needed in today's NHL - a fact that hasn't escaped the now calmer vet.

"It's good for hockey,"  said Lemieux in the Detroit Free Press. "I think hockey was at its best as far as TV ratings and the interest of the hockey fans (then). They couldn't wait to watch those games, and I think we need more rivalries of that kind to develop to promote our game."

There was a time when Toronto vs. Montreal, Edmonton/Calgary, Islander and Rangers and, yes, Red Wings/Avs meant something more than an evening out and playoff position. It was nearly life and death. The NHL needs to get that back, and Lemieux and McCarty are too old to lead the way.

Though they'll help any chance they get.
smurray@midweek.com

The warm-up to the Super Bowl is typically endowed with pronouncements of greatness and the exploitation of memory in an effort to create public adoration and legend from the merely ordinary. Much like "The Catch," which forever solidified Dwight Clark's place among the pantheon of Sunday superhero worship, the drive to immortalize circa 2009 went out of its way to convince us that a journeyman quarterback with three great years out of 11 was the rebirth of Y. A. Tittle.

Kurt Warner is not a Hall-of-Famer, just as Clark's catch was simply a wide-open pass tossed high for the benefit of the 6-foot- 4-inch receiver, who dwarfed the tailing defensive back and who enjoyed an empty five yards of end zone in front of him.

It's not that Warner is a bad dude. On the contrary, he's one of the few people in the NFL worth giving a damn about. Throughout his career, the winner of the 2008 Walter Payton Man of the Year Award has put his fame and money to great, not just good, use. He stuffs Christmas stockings for foster children with his family, his First Things First program provides free trips to Disneyworld for children with life-threatening illnesses, and his efforts to help victims of Midwest flooding should make FEMA employees everywhere cower in shame. Warner is a Hall of Fame person, not a Hall of Fame quarterback.

Due to injuries and being docked hours in favor of supposedly younger and better quarterbacks, Warner has played a full schedule only three times during his 11-year career. He was magnificent during those seasons, but beyond that, he's Jim Plunkett - a guy who was great early and late and who rode a Super Bowl victory to fame and a lifetime invitation to the Raiders annual rubber chicken roundup.

Since his 2001 Super Bowl season, Warner has been a virtual castoff, hanging on as a backup waiting for his competitors to through their annual bouts of poor play. The two-time MVP was out of St. Louis by 2003 and became the designated clipboard holder for both New York and Arizona. And had it not been for Matt Lianart's inability to run an NFL offense, Warner may have already retired.

One of the biggest flaws in Warner's resume is the success of those who replaced him. It's hard to make a convincing argument about an individual's greatness when his backups accomplish nearly as much, if not more, than their predecessor.

Warner is an accurate passer - second all-time in completion percentage and fourth in QB rating- with a quick release that perfectly fit the offenses in which he played. And that's another problem. Warner is the product of the systems he's played in and the beneficiary of the talent that surrounded him - which has been outstanding: Marshall Faulk, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt and Az-Zahir Hakim in St. Louis and  Larry Fitzgerald, Anquan Boldin and Steve Breaston in Arizona.

In the five games Warner missed in 2000, Trent Green had a higher quarterback rating and a better interception percentage than Warner. After beginning the '03 season a perfect 0-6, Warner lost his job to Marc Bulger who went 6-1 with a 101.5 rating to go along with 14 touchdowns, 6 interceptions and an invitation to the Pro Bowl. In contrast, Warner finished with a 67.4 rating with three touchdowns and 11 INTs.

Warner does get justifiable credit for getting two teams to the Super Bowl after years of Lion-like success. But outside of those three Super Bowl years, Warner's record is 21-32.

During a Jan. 6 ESPN feature about his charity work, Warner said, "Five, 10 years from now people won't remember the name Kurt Warner. They won't remember that I won this Super Bowl or won that award, but the people we've touched will never forget us and that's the legacy we want to leave, and that's why we get connected and try to give back as much as we can."

No doubt he purposely downplayed his achievements, but he's correct on the impact on things bigger than football. Warner is 39th in completed passes, 59th in attempts, 38th in passing yards and 40th in touchdowns. He touched more lives as an individual than do most teams and that should be his legacy, not the Hall of Fame.
smurray@midweek.com

For Notre Dame's nation of loyal fans, the struggles of Charlie Weis has been a two-year odyssey of frustration and disbelief.

For everyone else, the demise of college football's most polarizing program and its self-proclaimed greatest offensive mind has provided nothing but sheer entertainment.

But while the Irish faithful rub their prayer beads in the hopes that the next football messiah will soon come riding in beneath the blue-gray October sky, they need to stow their snowballs and grudgingly admit the school made the correct decision in retaining the embattled coach.

Notre Dame's options are limited. When the school made Ty Willingham the program's first fire, and more importantly when it offered Weis the decade-long extension after only five games into his Notre Dame career, the school became  just another football whore guided by a disconnected pimp more committed to his own ego than taking responsibility for the mess he helped create.

But I digress.

Currently, there are no coaches available who fit the school's new level of unrealistic expectation. After the embarrassment of George O'Leary and the mediocrity of Bob Davie, Gerry Faust and Willingham, just any old hire will not do. Notre Dame needs a star and right now, for better or for worse, the biggest celebrity is the one who has recorded the school's lowest two-season win total since 1962-63.

By most recent reports, the buyout on Weis' contract was of little concern to the school financed by a $7 billion endowment and its own television deal which has not paid its expected dividends to NBC as the Irish's poor play has meant lower ratings and refunds to advertisers.

Money had little to do with Weis' continued tenure in South Bend, and going on a third coaching search in seven years doesn't exactly hint at the job security top coaches look for. Had a hotshot been available and interested, Weis may have already been given the OK to seek other employment.

Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly has been a popular candidate for a number of schools in recent years, but has in effect thumbed his nose at Notre Dame by declaring his allegiance to his current employer.

Kirk Ferentz, always a favorite to leave Iowa for greener pastures in both college and the NFL, will have to win a lot more than 55 percent of his games to calm the ire of Irish faithful.

Skip Holtz? Sure, he coached under his slurring father at Notre Dame and has turned East Carolina from a joke to a conference contender, but living in his father's shadow would be tough, as would convincing Irish fans their best hope lies in the hands of a coach who averaged seven wins a season in Conference USA.

Mike Leach has shown a willingness to talk about new employment but already makes $1.7 million per, and has an AD who is committed to adding to Leach's wallet before the bowl season ends.

Boise State's Chris Peterson, who pulled a reverse Charlie Weis, succeeding after parting with his former successful superior, would be a great hire if they could get him. Peterson has won 35 of 38 games, but he's a quality-of-life guy who may not be convinced that the honor of coaching the Irish trumps the pressures of academic requirement and national expectation.

Had it been anyone else but Charlie Weis, the three-game improvement for a team dominated by freshman and sophomore talent would have been palpable - especially when any complaints regarding talent could be blamed on his predecessor. But when a new coach comes in blind drunk from the corn squeezings of his own ego and self-professed intellect, any stumble on the road to immortality will be met with an equal level of disdain.

Perhaps no coach ever has been greeted with greater adoration than Charlie Weis. After being spurned by Urban Meyer, Weis and his four Super Bowl rings were greeted upon the Notre Dame campus like Odysseus returning to Ithaca while pronouncing, "The whole world talks of my stratagems, and my fame has reached the heavens."

Weis was supposed to follow in the hallowed footsteps of Leahy, Parseghian and, dare we dream, the great Norwegian himself, Knute Rockne. Instead, his .571 winning percentage has put him in line with Davie (.583), Faust (.535), and dare we say, Willingham (.583).

The Irish are loaded with youth, but that doesn't excuse Weis for not making progress. In fact, the team has regressed. Critics and fans were split on whether the school's 4-1 start was a prelude for a return to greatness or a mirage built on sub-par competition. After losing to Pittsburgh in overtime, being blanked by Boston College, barely scraping by Navy and coming up short to a god-awful Syracuse team, the only remaining argument was about how bad they would lose to Southern Cal. Pete Carrol showed  kindness, holding the line to 35 points.

Not even the Commander in Chief's Trophy has been safe under Weis. The academies, which for years had been fodder for easy Notre Dame victories, have suddenly become contenders to the crown with victories over college football's most holy organization by both Navy and Air Force.

Notre Dame will be better next year. For all the hype, Weis is a talented coach and the Irish will get their fair share of talented recruits. But if we can take one lesson from these last two years, it is that college coaching is not just a job for those who can't cut it in the NFL. It is an entirely different type of employment that calls for skills unique to the job.

smurray@midweek.com