It was 50 years ago today. Miles taught all the cats to sway.

What is hip? Tell me tell me, if you think you know.

What is hip? If you're really hip, the passing years will show.

Tower of Power asked that musical question -- aw jeez, can it really be 38 years ago? All of which makes me -- since I can remember buying the album in 1970 -- well, to the younger generation, this fact anong others makes me old.

What is old?

I used to define becoming old as that time in your life when you start saying that young people have nothing of value to say and their music is too loud. That could come at age 29 or age 59, I reasoned, but once it did you were old.

Is this the year I finally got old? I can't say their music's too loud -- I mean, I once saw the likes of Living Colour and Television in bars with their stadium Marshall amps making the glass windows reverberate like the speakers of a Hammond B3 organ. Still, if Tupac is considered old school and borderline old, well then what's the point?

Yes, I can remember John Kennedy being shot. I can remember my dad bringing home our first color TV and listening to WLS Friday nights for their Silver Dollar Surveys.

Yes, I can also remember the 70's, although admittedly not as much of the decade as I would like. I actually saw the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin LIVE in the Dane County Coliseum.

What started this morning's rant was my ill-fated attempts to discuss the 50th anniversary of one of the most important albums ever recorded.

(And by the way, it's STILL AN ALBUM! It is a collection of songs, like a collection of pictures or poems, so it's still an album -- whether it's produced on vinyl, cassette, 8-track, CD, DVD or nuclear-fotoschmear. Okay, I made the last one up.)

Still, can't young people consider music that's more than minutes old? I was trying to discuss the importance of Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue and was met by painful sighs and rolling eyeballs.

Kind Of Blue was an album that transcended jazz itself, easily the biggest selling album in Miles Davis' illustrious career and perhaps, the biggest selling jazz album ever. It is intrinsically and eternally hip -- it was played by uber-hip DJ Clint Eastwood in Play Misty For Me.

It was one of the last recordings of its kind -- produced almost entirely in one take with no overdubs, no sonic enhancements, no digital remixing. It was also an important historical milepost -- in a way, it was almost the last jazz record of its kind.  It precedes the free form jazz of John Coltrane and the jazz-rock fusion of Miles himself in the late 60's.

Kind Of Blue is being re-issued in a 50th Anniversary package, and that's a misnomer as well since it was recorded and released in 1959. Maybe, that's because Columbia/Legacy wanted to get it out before the holiday shopping season or perhaps because 1959 is also the 50th anniversary of Miles' own Sketches of Spain and Coltrane's Giant Steps.

Disc 1 of Kind of Blue: 50th Anniversary Collectors Edition will feature the original album in its entirety with the "Flamenco Sketches" alternate take, the rare "Freddie Freeloader" false start, and a selection of in-the-studio dialog from the Kind of Blue sessions. Disc 2 is a CD of rare musical material circa the Kind of Blue recordings including the very first session by the classic Miles Davis sextet (May 26, 1958 -- Davis's 32nd birthday -- with Adderley, Coltrane, Evans, Chambers and Cobb), more than a half hour's worth of studio material -- "On Green Dolphin Street," "Fran-Dance," "Stella By Starlight," "Love For Sale" -- previously available only on the two-time Grammy award winning Miles Davis & John Coltrane boxed set ("The Complete Columbia Recordings 1955-1961); and the first authorized release of two extended live performances: "So What" from the April 9, 1960 Den Haag Concert featuring Miles, Coltrane, Kelly, Chambers and Cobb. The final disc, Disc 3, is a DVD including an in-depth documentary illuminating the story behind Kind of Blue; and the historic April 2, 1959 television program "Robert Herridge Theater: The Sound of Miles Davis" starring Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

This deluxe Collector's Edition will also include a blue pressed vinyl copy of Kind of Blue, a poster, and an LP-sized 60-page hardbound book.

What's the secret of its staying power, asks Jack Garner of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle ? I doubt anyone could answer a question about something as ephemeral and mysterious and magical as a piece of music. Certain things are obvious: First, it's performed by the greatest small jazz band ever assembled. Besides trumpeter Davis, there were saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb (the sole survivor from the '59 session). Central to the album's greatness, though, was the then-young pianist Bill Evans, who plays on four of the album's five extended tracks and co-wrote two of the tunes with Davis. Considered one of the great intellectuals in jazz, and the Chopin of improvised music, Evans famously collaborated with Davis on the album's breakthrough concept of modal improvisation.

Try as I may, my limited technical understanding of music has never allowed me to understand what modal means. All I know is this music is heavenly in its grace and simplicity and sublime beauty.

The album's five tracks work together almost as a suite, with at least two of the tracks now recognized as gems in the oft-performed standard jazz repertoire - "So What" and "All Blues."

In celebration of the 50th anniversary, the Village Voice found time to chat with drummer Jimmy Cobb, that last surviving member of the session.

"It grabs all kinds of people," says Cobb. "To see how good those guys are, what they could do with just a little, that they could make it sound like that-you know, that's the thing. That's what it is. Just bring it down and it reaches everybody. There's something to that. It was just something that came along and clicked with everybody. It's just probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

"Man, I don't think Miles even thought that it would have that longevity," he says. "If he even thought that that day, he would've asked for a pile of money. You know, if he thought that he had something that was going to really be selling for 50 years, he would've asked for real money."

As for the drummer, "I was probably the soberest one in the band," says Cobb, the only member of the Blue sextet other than Adderley to fully escape a heroin addiction. "And he knew I was going to be on time. And he knew when I got there, I would give 150 percent. So like that, you know. That's the pluses I had."

Here, in a sixth-floor East Side conference room, Jimmy Cobb hums the "Round About Midnight" melody.

"I started right there. I played that with them. I was in the band-no rehearsals, no nothing. So that's the way it started, man."

The ending, however, has yet to be written. Jimmy Cobb, suitably enough, is at the forefront of the 50th-anniversary DVD. This month, the drummer will be recognized as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazzmaster. November brings appearances at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, as well as a number of dates in Germany. In January, Jimmy Cobb will turn 80 years old; in February, he'll be leading a new outfit, the So What Band, as part of Kind of Blue's continuing golden-anniversary celebration, still officially 11 months away.

But despite all the attention that comes with this territory-and having provided percussion on a work of acclaimed and enduring genius-it's the people he remembers, not the songs: "I'm proud to be here, man. I'm proud to be going on 80 years old. I never thought I'd be 80 years old. I'm here. I'm sorry that all my friends are gone, you know, but I've got them here."

80 is most certainly old to most people. John McCain is the old one in this current election and his counterpart. Barack Obama is essentially the young one. I could add that -- although, the aforementioned young whippersnappers who considered me old for bringing up Miles Davis -- Sen. Obama, That young One,  is a mere three and half years younger than me.

This age thing comes up in context in the sports world these days with the success of Joe Paterno. Penn State is currently #3 in the polls and I said three weeks ago that the Nittany Lions were the best team I've seen all season.

(Every once in a while, you get it right in this business. Three weeks ago, after Wisconsin laid a big stinky egg at Michigan, I told anyone who would listen that the Ohio State game was a toss-up, but that Penn State was going to murdalize the Badgers -- something like 42-10. This, of course, led to a barstool wag to confront me, 'hey if you think so, why not give me those 32 points? You said it right?" At 48-7, I still comfortably covered.)

I would also argue that Penn State has the easiest road to the BCS Championship game as they have no conference title game to slip them up on the way. And yet people are still saying that Joe Paterno is too old to coach football.

The Canadian Press offers that the man can still coach, even if a sore hip means he does it most weekends from the press box. He still knows how to win, too, seven straight and counting this season on a familiar climb back toward the top of the college football poll.

And so two months shy of his 82nd birthday, with two national titles to his credit and a third in his sights, the last thing left for Joe Pa to prove is that he cares as much about the future of Penn State football as he does about its past and present.

With the third-ranked Nittany Lions back in the national conversation for all the right reasons, there's a rare moment of consensus in the debate that has divided Penn State people for years. Just about everyone agrees once more that Paterno has earned the right to go out, whenever that is, on his own terms. What he needs to understand is there's no time like now to let the rest of us in on just what those terms might be.

Stubbornness is admirable sometimes, but it's not always an answer. Paterno doesn't have to come up with a date - more on that later - but sitting down with school president Graham Spanier to start discussing a successor would be a good place to start. Paterno is in the last year of a contract and with Michigan headed into Happy Valley this weekend and the Nittany Lions travelling to Ohio State the next, he could lose a whole lot of bargaining power in a hurry.

During his midweek conference call, Paterno turned aside questions about his own future the same way he always does. Someone asked how long before he could move back down from the press box to the sidelines and JoePa replied, "I don't know," then added a moment later, "I don't get get-well cards. Can we talk about the football team and not me, for crying out loud?"

No such luck, Joe. Count the Detroit Free Press' Drew Sharp among those calling for the old man to shuffle off into the shadows.

ESPN has revealed that 42 Penn State football players faced 163 criminal charges of varying circumstance since 2002. Twenty-seven players either were convicted or pleaded guilty to a combination of 45 charges.

There will be significant blemishes on any major football program when placed underneath such a piercing microscope. Paterno sternly rejects the notion of compromising character for better talent and more victories, but in the aftermath of that report Paterno nonetheless wielded a sterner disciplinary stick - dismissing three prominent players from the team.

This was precisely how one paves the exit road for a longtime college head coach - create the appearance that he's losing control. All of a sudden, the skeletons that consistently remained hidden behind lock and key see the light of public scrutiny.

It's not worth it any longer for Paterno.

He injured his hip demonstrating an onside kick during preseason practice. He might need hip replacement surgery after the season. Paterno's relegated to the coaches' box upstairs because he can't get around on the sidelines without the use of a cane.

JoePa's proven he's still got it, but it's time he realizes he's had enough.

If not old, perhaps the word for the day should be OOPS!

As in the Tampa Bay Rays being seven runs up and seven outs away from dispatching the Boston Red Sox and reaching the World Series for the first time before OOPS!

After losing that lead and that game, how will the Rays react? The Boston Globe's Shira Springer reveals that Tampa Bay designated hitter Cliff Floyd will stick with a steady diet of Nickelodeon. He will bypass all news and sports channels. He will toss the daily papers aside. Sitting beside his kids at home, Floyd will try to forget last night's devastating 8-7 loss to Boston with an overdose of "Dora the Explorer" and "SpongeBob SquarePants."

"That's how you eliminate all the stuff," said Floyd. "You can't turn on the news and see how we made history."

"We've got two games to see what we're made of," said Floyd, who made (and won) a World Series with Florida in 1997 but fell short with the New York Mets in 2006. "We win Saturday and we go to the World Series. We've got to go out there and play.

"We learned a valuable lesson tonight. Anything can happen at any given time. The only luxury we have is that we were up 3-1. The momentum has shifted to them, but we're in our house where we feel real comfortable."

Meanwhile, the BYU Cougars were undefeated and making noises of running the table and barging their way into the BCS discussion before OOPS!

Mercedes Mayer of the hometown Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that TCU coach Gary Patterson hasn't stopped voting for his team in the Top 25 polls.

Now his team has given voters a reason to stop wondering whether the Horned Frogs deserve to be mentioned among the nation's best.

TCU dominated No. 9 BYU in all aspects of the game, snapping its Thursday night curse at five games and putting a damper on the Cougars' reign atop the Mountain West Conference with a 32-7 victory before 36,180 fans at Amon G. Carter Stadium.

TCU (7-1, 4-0 in Mountain West Conference) has lost just once this season - to then-No. 2 Oklahoma - and BYU had won 16 straight games and 18 in a row against conference foes.

But Patterson knows he can't tell voters which way to go.

"We wanted to come out and be the best TCU football team," he said. "Then we're going to let everybody else judge it.

"This was a big win, but I'd be making a mistake for my football team if I made this the season-ending victory. We've got a lot of good football left. To win a championship, it takes them all."

In Green Bay, came word of the Packers finishing the paperwork for a trade with Kansas City's Tony Gonzalez and then OOPS!

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Tom Silverstein claims that the Green Bay Packers and one other NFL team had agreed on a third-round pick as compensation for Kansas City Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez, but according to Gonzalez, Chiefs general manager Carl Peterson pulled out at the last second.

According to an NFL source, the Packers were the team Gonzalez was focusing on and preferred them over the other contender. He had approved a trade to Green Bay. It was up to the Chiefs, however, to determine where he would be traded.

Gonzalez told FOXSports.com's Jay Glazer that he was furious a deal didn't go down.

"Last night I talked to Carl and I point-blank asked him what it would take to get it done," Gonzalez said in an exclusive interview. "I wanted to know if it could happen with a fourth (-round pick). He started talking about a second and a fifth like the (Jeremy) Shockey deal. Nobody is going to trade a second for a 32-year-old tight end. All along Carl said he would do something that works for both parties. Then he talked about how he traded a third for Willie Roaf, and he made it pretty clear to me that's what was going to get it done. That was certainly fair.

"I know teams offered a third and in the end, Carl made the asking price a second. I'm very disappointed that he didn't go through with it after he told me he was going to try to make it happen. I've been around this league a long time, it's a business. There's nothing I can do about it. I was (ticked) off about it, but I'll get over it. I won't let it affect my play and my preparation."

Down in Chicago, Denis Savard was preparing his Blackhawks for their fifth game of the new NHL season, when OOPS!

The Tribune's Mike Downey (yeah, he's getting entirely too much ink here, but what can I say when he's front and center ice on the biggest stories of the day?) thinks that the team didn't give Savard much of a chance.

Canning a coach four games into a season is a pretty bloody ice-cold act on the Blackhawks' part.

Particularly when the gentleman in question is Denis Savard, a prince of a fellow who in Chicago is considered to be hockey royalty.

"Like a brother to me," said the general manager who fired him, Dale Tallon.

"All class," said the team president who fired him, John McDonough.

Two minutes for back stabbing.

Savard was given-wow-four whole games to show results.

No, check that. Three games. It is plain that the process of kicking Savvy off the Blackhawks' reservation was well under way before Wednesday night's icebreaker over Phoenix, isn't it? You don't win a game and lose your job for it. Willie Randolph can vouch for that.

Hypothetically, could Savard have saved his job if he had gone 4-0 rather than 1-2-1?

"Hypothetically, probably," Tallon said.

Well, as long as he got a fair shot.

A bombshell was dropped like a puck on a faceoff Thursday at the United Center, where the smiley-faced Blackhawks took the mask off like the Phantom of the Opera and revealed an ugly side underneath.

They cut their ties with Savard, who was given a new goaltender, a new defenseman and less than a week to go 4-0 with them or else.

Unless you accept the explanation that he also was fired for how the team looked in training camp.

"It was a flat camp," Tallon said. "Then we got out of the gate flat."

Savard's team lost unimpressively on the road against the Rangers and Capitals, then looked better in the home opener with the Predators but lost in a shootout.

I was at that game and heard people speculating Savvy's job was in jeopardy.

"But the season began Friday," I said. "This is Monday."

Meaning that it's never too early to give up on a Blackhawks' season or coach.

As previously mentioned, the college football season been a drag locally. Last Saturday,  the Badgers turned in one of their ugliest performances at Camp Randall, a 48-7 shellacking at the hands of 7-0 Penn State. It was Bret Bielema's second consecutive home loss (following a streak of 16 victories), and the worst Wisconsin football home loss since 1989, when the Don Morton-led Badgers lost to Miami 51-3.

Still, the biggest story of the week might have been the UW Police Dept. feeling the need to Tazer a 54-year old woman during a scuffle at the stadium. The Capitol Times reports Margaret Hiebing, 54, of Madison was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest while her husband, Roman Hiebing Jr., 65, same address, was charged with disorderly conduct, according to UW-Madison police.

The brawl between the Hiebings and the cops started when too many people were trying to sit in Row 69 of Section U on the stadium's east side, said UW police Sgt. Jason Whitney.

"We asked her to go to her seat because she was sitting in the aisle," Whitney said. "We made attempts to contact guest services to help her to her seat, but that didn't happen, so our policy is if you're not in your seat, you get ejected."

This episode brings to mind the bad old days of Badger football in the late 1990's when the combination of lousy football and frisking any and everyone for liqour bottles resulted in acres of empty seats in Camp Randall.

Way to go, Wisconsin cops! What a great marketing campaign -- Come for the lousy football, stay for the Tazering!

A quick peek to the Badger Beat website reveals some other information from a friend of the Hiebings, conveniently left out of the UWPD report.

The victim has had 2 total knee replacements & a bad back from previous injury. She explained this to the female officer and that is why she could not occupy the empty seat in the next row 8 seats in from the isle, but the officer was unimpressed. Once the people in her isle finally moved down, she was able to get in her seat. By the time all the other police officers had shown up, they were pulling her hair & dragging her down the stairs and she kicked them because they were twisting her knees sideways and she was terrified they would damage the artaficial joints and she would need additional surgury.

All in all, do you really feel the police had to take things this far? To taser her? She was not threatening to anybody, just mouthy and standing up to what she believed were her rights, and yes, she shouldn't have done that. But once she was in her seat, which was her's which she paid for, the officer should just dropped it because the crowd was at that point getting very upset, but the officer just wouldn't let it go. And the additional police officers got into the frey and made it much worse. The police are getting too comfortable with using a taser and not using diplomacy and crowd control measures they supposedly were taught. All this because of someone sitting in the isle at a Badger game???

Another observer, three rows from the fracus claims the "rent a campus cop" blew this one. She did ask her to move out of the aisle and the lady kept telling her she has a ticket for this seat but no one would move down. The big bad rent-a-cop said well it looks like you need to go and tried to pull her arm to move her. The lady pulled her arm back and then that's when the rent-a-cop started yelling at her and pulled the mace out and stuck it in her face.
When that did not work she called for back-up. The lady was able to get in her seat when a couple moved down into are row. The real cops arrived but by this time the lady was in tears and was curled up in her husbands arms. I think she was in shock and was not going to go anywhere with the cops. Then the 8 to 10 cops said it was show time and attacked the lady.

Having had my own up-close-and-personal such chats with the UWPD, I now stay miles away from the stadium on game day.

The question begs, though: If the UW cops are going to Tazer handicapped middle aged women during abysmal losing football, how many fans do they expect will show up for that November game versus Cal Poly?

Welcome back to the bad old days, which are already in progress.

Finally, another anniversary this week in sports. Forty years ago yesterday, track and field athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos made their famous, silent gesture at the Mexico City Olympic Games.

They raised two black-gloved fists in a black power salute from the victory stand, during an Olympic gold medal ceremony.

With that in mind, the pair returned to Mexico City, scene of that controversial stance, and Smith recalled that historic moment with Helen William of the UK's Morning Star Online.

"Athletes have a responsibility to speak because they are in a position to make a difference and they have a responsibility to make that difference. That is a truth which remains to this day," he said.

On October 16 1968, Smith clocked a world record 19.83 seconds to take the 200 metres crown ahead of Australia's Peter Norman and his US team-mate Carlos, who won bronze.

With the eyes of the world watching, the US athletes took their moment on the medal podium to make a stand against US racial discrimination.

Smith and Carlos, both shoeless, bowed their heads and raised a gloved fist as The Star Spangled Banner played.

Payback was swift and enduring. They were kicked out of the Games, ostracised, ridiculed, threatened and left struggling to find work.

"1968 was not a protest of anger. It was a cry for freedom through the only avenue that I had open to me," Smith said. "It was the only secular route available to me. It was the only stand that I could take.

"There is no such thing as perfection, but it did make a difference then and now because young people can associate with it."

With this in mind, Smith, who has a Masters degree in sociology, visited London last week to talk to youngsters about how sport and education can counter gang culture in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics.

The countdown to 2012 has made his visit, backed by the British Library and London's Camden Council, all the more timely.

Sport, with its health, discipline and safety benefits, has now been pushed up the political agenda, but there is also a violent knife and gun crime culture.

Smith said: "Young people today in Britain do not have the international platform that Tommie Smith had, but they have a community. They have places where they can start to learn.

"It starts from the inside, in families, and it is up to us to help those who do not have families to help them grow." The 1968 Olympics arrived amid a tense mood of unrest in the US after the assassinations of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy earlier that year.

But to make a political stand at an international event came at a huge price.

Smith was fired from jobs and scholarships for his family were taken away.

Carlos remembers chopping furniture up for firewood and putting his children to sleep in front of the fire when he could not pay his electricity bills. The pressure of it all saw relatives of both men become very ill.

So, does Smith regret his actions or feel it made a difference?

One possible legacy, he accepts, is that the US is now prepared to consider electing its first black president.

Smith said: "Yes, that is true. I was on that trail, but I was one of many humans who were on that trail, through from Dr Martin Luther King Jr and back to slavery. There was a lot of others on the same path as me, especially in the human rights campaign."

Now, 40 years on, Smith is trying to carve out a new legacy for the impact that sport and education can create. He said: "I am a sort of in-your-face person.

"I will look right at the kid and let them know they have a responsibility to get to class, to be responsible to their parents and to treat others how they want to be treated.

"A child's brain is like a computer chip and you have to programme it and that can be done in the home or in the classroom or potentially in the street.

"You cannot grow roses in a rock. Children have to have people around them who will give them a chance to broaden themselves. It is called cultivating our youth."

Yes, I'm old enough to remember that day. You have to consider the life and times of 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot. resulting in riots across the ghettos of America. Bobby Kennedy had also been shot and protesters had been billy-clubbed with the whole world watching in Chicago. In that context, Carlos and Smith decided to say something about all that to the Olympic audience.

They were among my biggest childhood heroes. And the fact that both men are still alive and giving of themselves to young people is one of those sparkling moments that -- Sarah Palin notwithstanding -- truly make me proud to be an American.

Juuuuuuuuuust a bit outside...

I saw the Bucks today, oh boy.

This is something of an accomplishment as the Milwaukee NBA franchise makes it on national cable television about as often as...oh, I dunno, the city of Cleveland gets to celebrate a championship.

Indeed, ESPN networks are televising 72 regular-season games, which include 29 games on Wednesdays and 35 on Fridays. The slate consists of 27 doubleheaders.

TNT is televising 53 regular-season games, including 47 as part of Thursday night doubleheaders and a tripleheader on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. TNT also exclusively televises NBA All-Star 2009 festivities in Phoenix from Feb. 13-15, culminating with the NBA All-Star Game on Sunday, Feb. 15.

However, unless you have Fox Sports Wisconsin or pay good money for NBA-TV or Direct TV's NBA League Pass, you have a better chance of seeing Sarah Palin hug an illegal alien than watching the Milwaukee Bucks. Talk about your endangered species!

And yet, here were my Milwaukee Bucks on, of all places, ESPN Classic this morning as part of something called the NBA China Games 2008. This impressive monicker has been given to a couple of preseason games in China between two moribund NBA franchises -- the Bucks and the equally sad-sack Golden State Warriors -- who collectively could share space on a milk carton. Have You See This Team?

Still, here I was, watching my Bucks and feeling a lot like the guy in the beginning of Major League -- saying to myself, "you know, maybe they aren't so sh#$%#y." Of course, here is where the director would cut to the two Japanese groundskeepers replying, "no, they're still sh#$%#y."

The expectations are so low for the Bucks that even approaching the .500 mark will be considered a fantastic season. And a quick look at the sum of their parts reveals the makings of a decent basketball team.

This is where we cut for a moment to get you all up to speed on hoops-speak. Coaches are busy men -- along with some actual women in the women's game -- so they use numbers to define the five basic positions of a basketball team. To break it down simply.

• 1 = Point Guard
• 2 = Shooting Guard
• 3 = Small Forward
• 4 = Power Forward
• 5 = Center

So, for the next umpty months of the hoops season, you can now prepare for each and every coach telling the reporters after each and every game, "well, we thought we could play him at either the 3 or the 4 and if we had to, maybe at the 5, but then we were stuck by not having anybody who could cover their 1 or 2."

Still with me? Good, there'll be a test at the end of this column.

So, new coach Scott Skiles has Richard Jefferson who play as the starting 3, but  -- along with hold-over NBA All-Star and recent Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Redd -- can step back to be a 2, if the Bucks want to play a bigger lineup. Former No. 1 draft pick Andrew Bogut is firmly entrenched as the 5 with Charlie Villaneuva slated as the 4.

Yi Jianlian is gone and though we hardly know Yi, this is a good thing for the Bucks. I never quite understood why they drafted Yi anyway -- he was basically a unpolished rookie with the same skill set as a player already on your roster, Charlie Villanueva. It seemed to me that only reason in drafting Yi was to sell more Milwaukee jerseys in the burgeoning Chinese market. I mean, doesn't the Senator (Herb Kohl) have enough money?

So, I was elated that when the front office was cleaned out, Yi was sent out east and getting Jefferson was the proverbial frosting on the cake. I would have been happy if the Bucks had gotten Gary Sheffield and Pac-Man Jones in the swap -- receiving a very good small forward -- sorry, a 3 -- in the bargain made it a steal.

Another new acquisition, Luke Ridnour, joins Redd in the Milwaukee backcourt while two rookies will provide some extra firepower off the bench. Lottery pick Joe Alexander could be the next Larry Bird -- he does have much the same skill-set as the former Celtic -- while former UCLA Bruin Luc Richard Mbah a Moute gives some toughness with someone capable and willing to play defense and grab rebounds.

All of those parts were on display in this morning's victory over the Warriors.

Bogut messed around and got a double-double -- kudos for all who caught my pop culture reference to Ice Cube -- finishing with 18 points and 12 rebounds as the Bucks won for the first time in five exhibition games and recorded their opening victory under new coach Skiles. Ridnour added 16 points and 12 assists while playing 37 minutes, and Alexander finished with 11 points.

Jefferson added 13 points and five rebounds, and Mbah a Moute had 12 points and eight rebounds. And the Bucks were able to win a game -- albeit an preseason tilt over Golden State -- with Redd on the bench with left knee soreness.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Bucks' blog reports that  the two teams will meet again at the Olympic venue in Beijing on Saturday morning (10:30 p.m. Friday Milwaukee time). The Bucks headed for the airport directly after the game and were scheduled to arrive in Beijing around 3:30 a.m. Thursday (2:30 p.m. today Milwaukee time).

Skiles said he expected Redd would be able to play in Beijing in the second game of the trip. Forward Charlie Villanueva suffered a neck injury in the second half today and had to leave the game, but it was not thought to be anything serious.

Alexander, who had struggled in his first two exhibition games, contributed some key baskets in the Bucks' fourth-quarter run.

"He was able to get a couple good looks and knock them down," Skiles said. "He still doesn't know what we're trying to do yet.

ESPN will also broadcast Friday night game.

The same paper also reports that Alexander has been the talk of the China road trip.

Before the Bucks' practice Tuesday at the Guangzhou Gymnasium, the 6-foot-8 Alexander was swarmed by a huge group of reporters. His fluency in Mandarin was one reason for his popularity, and the fact he spent much of his youth living in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

"They enjoyed me a little bit," Alexander said in a phone interview. "There was a pretty fair amount (of media), more than I'm used to."

The new Joltin` Joe didn't play in the Bucks' first two preseason game and is still acclimating himself to his new team and the NBA. Still, in the much weaker Eastern Conference, at season's end, Milwaukee -- with a new coach and many new players -- could be in the hunt for one of the last remaining playoff berth.

At least, they give the impression -- as those Cleveland Indians in Major League -- that maybe they won't be so sh#$%#y.

The World Series is approaching a Tampa Bay-Philly matchup, while FOX Sports might not appreciate this very distinct possibility, ESPN's Tim Keown would be eternally grateful.

If either the Phillies or the Rays -- or both -- advance to the World Series, this great country of ours will owe them an enormous debt of gratitude. The first two weeks of the postseason have provided us with indisputable evidence: Dodgers-Red Sox is a World Series matchup America simply cannot afford.

 This isn't about teams or individuals. This is about coverage. This is about nonstop Manny Ramirez versus the Red Sox, with every angle exposed and every past transgression unearthed.

Your rooting interest is beside the point. You know this as well as I do.

There's only so much Manny anyone can take. There's only so much Red Sox anyone can take. 

The combination? Sorry.

The Chicago Tribune -- surprise, surprise -- thinks that Da Bears have the best chance of the collective 3-3 teams in the NFC North to win the division. Call him provincial, but the Trib's beat reporter David Haugh makes the point that...the numbers clearly show neither the Packers nor the Vikings have a schedule loaded with more opportunity than the Bears.

The Bears' remaining 10 opponents have a combined 25-31 record, and the only team left on the schedule currently above .500 is Tennessee. And the Titans have to come to Soldier Field on Nov. 9. That's one of six home games left for the Bears-the most of the three first-place teams.

The Packers' remaining 10 opponents have a combined 28-28 record and Green Bay has to play three teams that currently have winning records: Indianapolis (on Sunday), Tennessee and Carolina. They have to play the Titans on the road, as well as the Saints in New Orleans and the Jaguars in Jacksonville.

The Vikings might face the toughest schedule of the three. Minnesota's remaining 10 opponents have a combined 29-28 record and the Vikings still have to play four teams with winning records: at Tampa Bay and Arizona and home games against Atlanta and the New York Giants.

Meanwhile, leave to to a Madison poltical wonk to crunch the numbers on our Liquid Assets feature the other day, MB did so and insists that this columnist indulged in a bit of fuzzy math.

Hey, I was merely sharing another reader's letter, MB. I didn't get paid for it and you didn't have to pay for it, so I think we're about even.

Still, MB makes the case that...DAL (Delta Airlines) was trading at around $20/share a year ago and now trades at $6/share. That's, huge - but that $1000 investment would still be worth around $300 today. Whereas, $1000 in six-pack cans (assuming $5/six-pack, for 200 six-packs or 1200 empty cans) wouldn't yield anywhere close to $214 unless you could find a recycler that'd pay $.18 per can - in which case I would only drink beer in cans and not curb them.

Okay, picky, picky, picky. Still, MB did offer to cop me a Obama yard sign, so it's all good

Finally, loyal readers might have noticed that your new favorite sports blog -- the column formerly known as Talking Sports -- has a lot of @$%#(&^%()* where there are clearly some words. This is not self-censorship, but many of my former editors would make the case for SOMEBODY, ANYBODY censoring my syntax, verbiage etc etc etc...

The proclivity for this ^%@*&^$(^*#@ is due to FOX Sports bleeping out what it deems as objectionable speech. For those who will claim that I've sold out to the Dark Side, I'll remind you again that I don't get paid for this, so the worst you can call me is a collaborator.

I can't even quote Dave Barry -- an award-winning columnist, if FOX Sports ever saw one -- saying the words Adolf Hitler without finding it bleeping bleeped.

Still, if I may once again channel my inner Ice Cube, I wrote this whole column and didn't even have to use my AK.

So I gotta say, it was a good day.

 

 

"Gear!"

 

 

John Kruk isn't a baseball analyst, he just plays one on TV.

Look, John Kruk the player was a joy to behold, for fan and sportswriter alike. Not blessed with the most athletic physique, the Krukster got the absolute most out of his talents and nearly everybody he played with at every single level lists him among their most favorite teammates.

And he was a quote machine. In an age when ballplayers were growing more and more angry and downright belligerant, John Kruk would always give you a couple minutes of his time

And he was funny. As a Philadelphia Phillie, Kruk once observed, 'It's easy to be a sportswriter. All you have to do is put on 40 pounds and wear clothes that don't match.'

Of course, recently in Milwaukee, Frank Deford, an actual journalist, countered, "Now that Mr. Kruk is a journalist after a fashion on ESPN, he proves that point every time he's on the air."

Yes, I loved John Kruk as a player and fountain of frothy glorious quotes. But John Kruk, the so-called journalist is an intellectual train wreck. His sentence construction is made up of popsicle sticks.

Slate.com hit it right on the nose when they called Kruk, a champion of the indefensible, the nonsensical, and the utterly pointless who once called Placido Polanco the toughest out in the American League (he isn't) and said that Brett Myers' arrest for hitting his wife in the face would "propel him to stand up and be the ace of [the Phillies'] staff" (it didn't, which is probably a good thing).

The column by Slate's Ben Mathis-Lilley asks why the thinking man's game -- baseball -- is being explained on television by the worst analysts? It would be bad enough if Kruk were the exception and not the rule, but why are we being subjected to absolutely terrible analysis during baseball's post-season.

And it's not as if ESPN doesn't have some top rate baseball analysts. Baseball Tonight employs several experts with actual expertise: Hall of Fame writer Peter Gammons, lovably excitable reporter Tim Kurkjian, and ESPN.com regulars Buster Olney and Jayson Stark are all knowledgable with the capacity to share their expertise. Still, they're drowned out by a veritable plethora of eminantly awful space-fillers.

Mathis-Lilley cites a recent edition of Baseball Tonight, where Eric Young's scouting report on C.C. Sabathia consisted of  "He can dominate with the inside fastball as well as the outside fastball," all said over video of Sabathia throwing a curveball.

Do you want cheese with that? Slate.com also noticed that the Milwaukee Brewers might have been the fattest team in recent memory.

Justin Peters claims that Milwaukee's 40-man roster features 12 players who weigh 220 pounds or more, including the (allegedly) 270-pound Prince Fielder, the 290-pound Sabathia, and Seth McClung, who ballooned to 475 pounds when he ate then-manager Ned Yost on Sept. 15. (The Brewers claim Yost was fired, but then how do you explain the ketchup stains on McClung's jersey?)

Catch some Rays? Maybe not. Those plucky Tampa Bay Rays stand a couple games away from sending Red Sox Nation into the winter of their discontent. John Herbert, a longtime Rays' beat writer observes how far the team has come and how much more pleasant it is to cover a winner.

In the bad old days of the last decade, any admission that I was from the Tampa Bay area was met with abject sympathy and even an occasional, "You poor old sod. Won't you ever learn how to play baseball in Tampa?"

I don't have to sweat those trips any longer. Tampa Bay's baseball team has done us very proud. The dream team has gone from worst to first, reminding me of the "incredible" New York Mets of a couple of generations ago.

The Rays have done for Tampa Bay what the local chamber of commerce has been trying to do for years: to give the area some much-needed and consistent front-page publicity all across the nation.

Just one week after dismissing the Floridians' hopes and dreams, the Boston Globe's Red Sox cheerleader Dan Shaughnessy is approaching his own Kubler-Ross stages of loss.

Where did the mojo go? Instead of waxing poetic about our teams, suddenly our teams are getting waxed.

We were kings of the world, universally hated by sports fans across the land. Life was a nonstop sequence of banner hoistings and ring celebrations. We grew arrogant, cocky, entitled.

Now the Patriots are an ordinary team with a no-name quarterback, getting pummeled, 30-10, much to the titillation of a national television audience hungry for New England blood.

And the Red Sox, winners of two of the last four World Series and favorites to repeat in the fall of 2008, find themselves trailing the once-laughable Tampa Bay Rays, two games to one, in the American League Championship Series. The Rays, deemed not ready for prime time playoffs by David Ortiz just a couple of days ago, routed the indomitable Jon Lester, 9-1, at Fenway Park yesterday. Who's the scaredy cat now?

This is not to overreact to the Red Sox' plight. The Sox last year trailed the Indians, 3-1, in the ALCS, then roared back to win the next three and sweep the Rockies in the World Series.

But yesterday's lopsided loss to the Rays stunned a Nation still reeling from the Patriots' Sunday night debacle in San Diego. Suddenly Big Papi is Big Popup. Boy Wonder Jacoby Ellsbury is 0 for his last 20 and has fans begging for Coco Crisp. Josh Beckett, Mr. October of this century, is serving more meatballs than Bertucci's. Jason Varitek looks as though he might calcify in mid-swing. Terry Francona has forfeited his hardball Mensa membership and is hearing words he never heard in the Bible.

Moreover, I would argue that the Red Sox have become the new Yankees -- believing in their own manifest destiny that they cannot fathom any other outcome. As the late great Lowell George once put it, the people you misuse on the way up, you meet up on the way down.

It Ain't The Shoes, it's the funky numbers on the helmet

In yet another example of how TV football analysts are soooooo much better than their baseball counterparts, ESPN"s Jamal Anderson reminded viewers that --- everybody, all together, ON ANY GIVEN MONDAY -- anyone can beat anyone in the NFL. Sure enough, the previously hapless Browns dominated the previously unbeaten New York Giants on Monday Night Football.

In fact, in the Department of Cliches portion of our show, the New York Daily News' headline reads, Giants show it's any given Monday in NFL.

Sports Illustrated's Peter King opines that maybe there is NO best team in football.

Still, I don't believe it had anything to do with any of that. It was the funky ole school numbers on the helmets. One look at that and the G-Men were toast!

Finally, Ringo Starr is mad as hell and he's not gonna take it any more.  The good-natured drummer, who also enjoyed a brief acting career after star turns in Beatles' films "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!," guest starred on a 1991 episode of "The Simpsons" in which he is shown scrupulously answering every piece of fan mail that comes his way.

"They took the time to write to me, and I don't care if it takes 20 years, I'm going to answer every one of them," Starr says on the show.

In his mail, he finds a package from Marge Simpson that contains a portrait she painted of him back in the Beatles heyday. He puts it on his wall and writes back to tell her - a few decades late - how much he likes her painting.

Well, not any more, man. The former Beatle has told the BBC that will no longer sign memorabilia for fans and will throw away all fan mail he receives in the future.

"Please do not send fan mail to any address you have," he said in a video message on his website.

"Nothing will be signed after the 20th of October. If that is the date on the envelope, it's gonna be tossed.

"I'm warning you with peace and love I have too much to do," the 68-year-old drummer said.

Dressed in black clothes and dark glasses, Starr said it was "a serious message to everybody watching".

He added: "No more fan mail and no objects to be signed. Nothing."

Starr, who released his most recent album Liverpool 8 in January, recently completed a tour of the US and Canada.  In April, a foliage sculpture of Starr outside a railway station in Liverpool was beheaded by vandals.

The performer had reportedly angered some locals when he told the BBC's Jonathan Ross he missed nothing about the city.

When stupid hair is outlawed, only outlaws will have stupid hair 

Keith Olbermann has already beaten me to creating a Worst Person In The World list, featured nightly on MSNBC's Countdown, but I'd still like to nominate Lincoln Middle School Principal Curtis Davis in Manatee County, Florida for the honors.

12 year old Zachary Sharples, his father and his 4-year-old brother trucked to the barber shop last weekend and all got Mohawks in solidarity with the Tampa Bay Rays winning their first playoff series.

That proved his undoing when he showed up for class at Lincoln Middle School in Palmetto in Manatee County on Monday: He was summarily dumped into an in-school suspension for violating the dress-code.

"I was in the gym, waiting for the bell to ring, and the principal came up to me and said we are not allowed to have mohawks in school," Zachary told the Suncoast News.

The principal brought him to the guidance office, and the counselor confided in Zachary that she too was a Rays fan, but that mohawks violate school policy and Zach had to pay the price.

"I had to go into something called camp," he said. "It was one room, the whole day and I couldn't do anything. I just had to sit there."

There is a happy ending of sorts as young Zach's family is moving and his new school won't have a problem with his rather ugly haircut. Still, what kind of idiot bans a haircut? If he thought the mohawk would become a distraction to learning, then what was the suspension and subsequent media storm that followed it?

It was a painful reminder for me of when my former step-daughter was in school. It seemed as if each year brought a new litany of rules and regulations -- each one intended to instill some kind of discipline and respect. These "law and order" types never have a clue that they're just making fools out of themselves and instead teaching the kids that too many grownups have an enormous stick up their collective asses.

Why do so many self-styled idiots make rule after rule and restriction after restriction upon youngsters -- forgetting that they themselves were young and stupid once upon a time? Because they can, of course. As Eddie Cochran told us all fifty years ago, "I'd like to help you, son, but you're too young to vote."

Of course, the national TV networks aren't especially thrilled to see Tampa Bay and not the New York Yankees in post-season play. The Daily Commercial, a Lake Country, Florida paper sums up their horror.

Fox television executives are likely sticking pins in a Tampa Bay bobblehead, hoping to keep the Rays out of the World Series. In the sordid world of television ratings, a Philadelphia-Tampa Bay World Series would be the worst thing since "Cop Rock."
Who knows? By beating the Red Sox in six games to set up the "dreaded" Tampa Bay-Philadelphia World Series, maybe the Rays can force broadcasters into joining everyone in 2008, instead of dwelling on the past.

And since those Tampa Bay Rays are facing the Boston Red Sox, it's surely time for the provincial and parochial East Coastie media to start looking down their noses at  the hopelessly tradition-barren Floridians. The Boston Globe's Dan Shaughnessy kicks off the snobbery.

It's not the Yankees this time. No century of history, no House That Ruth Built, no famous facade in the backdrop. It's not Cleveland with Bob Feller throwing out the first pitch. It's not Chicago with ancient references to Eddie Collins, Black Sox, South Siders, and cheapskate Charles Comiskey.

No. We're a little thin on tradition this time. The Red Sox are playing the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League Championship Series and it reminds me of a Graig Nettles line when he found himself playing for the San Diego Padres after a long run with the Yankees. Dressed in his Padres UPS-driver uniform, pining for his old Yankee pinstripes, Nettles said, "You really notice it on Old Timer's Day. In New York we had Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Whitey Ford walking into Yankee Stadium. Here it's Nate Colbert coming back trying to sell you a used car."

Still, the column did contain a humorous recollection of the time they tried to have an NHL preseason hockey in the Rays' home dome, Tropicana Field -- then called the Suncoast Dome.

The Bruins' Chris "Knuckles" Nilan was one of the first skaters to notice a problem with the ice surface. The sheet was soft and chippy and green slime oozed from exposed pipes when players skated during warm-ups. Fans booed during an hourlong delay while Dome officials tried to correct the problem. Finally, the game was canceled. More boos. But it was a good move in the name of safety.

Had the game been played, said wise guy Nilan, "They would be calling this the Knuckledome."

Does anybody else out there think that it's waaaaaaay too early for the start of hockey season anyway? I mean, what's the hurry? It's just a sad reminder that summer is gone and we might as well start finding our gloves and boots.

Still, the Detroit Free Press' Drew Sharp believes that the game's return could be a tonic to a city in the crosshairs of the economic meltdown.

For a few hours Thursday night, Detroit wasn't home to a scandal that will land its former mayor in jail or increasingly distressing economic news from the automotive industry. It wasn't home to bad baseball or even worse football.

There was finally something worth smiling about, something that didn't instinctively make you recoil in apprehension at the mere mention of the city's name.

The Red Wings struck one final pose with the Stanley Cup, then immediately distanced themselves from what was the old achievement and what's now the new objective. It's the lingering aftertaste of champagne and echoes of worship from appreciative fans four months after the last game that contributes to "Stanley Cup hangover."

But if they're seeking a motivational underdog they can embrace, they need look no further than their own city.

The Tigers were a disaster. The Lions remain a disaster.

Michigan football struggles through a transitional period while the Pistons introduced another new coach while returning pretty much the same roster.

And there remained pockets of empty seats at Joe Louis Arena on Thursday, more evidence of the devastating effects of the economic climate. It's not a question of taking the Wings and their remarkable consistency -- 17 straight playoff appearances -- for granted. It's simply a matter of money becoming tighter.

Meanwhile, another day, another few hundred commentaries on the adventures of the former Pac-person, Cowboys' miscreant Adam Jones. While any and everybody (including this columnist) had their own opinion, consider the spin from Stephen A. Smith on ESPN's 1st & 10, as reported by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

"[Jones] is completely idiotic in this situation," began Smith, who once had his own Quite Frankly show on ESPN.

He was just warming up.

"I'm really ticked off right now," Smith continued. "Because one of the things that I think a lot of people can't say, but obviously I can say being an African-American, I don't see too many white players getting into these kinds of situations."

Smith outlined three years of "trials and tribulations" for A. "P" Jones and one major "second chance" given by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.

"It's entirely embarrassing," Smith said. "As an African-American, I'm really getting sick and tired of having to sit up here and give some kind of explanation as to why these guys find themselves in this situation.

"My last comment: White players are not finding themselves in these situations. We've got to start taking a look at ourselves."

Finally, there's certainly been a deluge of race-baiting by the Republicans and their friends, since they're terrified one of THEM (and you know what I mean) might actually get elected President, but I would still like to explain something to people who saw the angry white folks frothing at the mouth in Wisconsin on their television sets.

Waukesha County, where that election rally took place, is the home of white flight in my home state of Wisconsin. It's the home of Congressman F. James "what are all those brown people doing here?" Sensenbrenner. And it's where all the Milwaukeeans moved to get away from them goshdarned coloured folks and so they're pretty darn upset about it, you betcha.

Still, just mentioning that squeaky Reptile's name (and yes, his voice has always been that irritating) brought to mind a column by a colleague and former editor Joel McNally.

McNally once wrote that Sensenbrenner was the kind of person who never realized calling himself F. James gave his opponents a ready-made campaign slogan.

 

Hector Villanueva-Shivers was put down on July 24, 2007, after a long series of urinary health issues. Villanueva-Shivers was born in June 1992 and claimed by John Shivers from a cardboard box on Langdon Street. He was named for former Cubs catcher Hector Villanueva and while he was quite tiny at birth, Hector grew in his prime to over 30 lbs. Hector's good looks made him a favorite with the ladies, but his life-long passion was food -- wet or dry, just more of it.  He survived eight moves, a 2001 divorce, a 2004 bout with homelessness and periodic drug regimens. "I've always known,' said his life-long Master and friend, "that Hector reflected the yin/yang in my personality -- he was a glutton and a bit of a whiner, and quite ruthless about both, but he'd use his big eyes and bigger heart to get away with it." Hector Villanueva-Shivers is survived by Mr. Shivers and his fellow feline in arms, Jack McDowell-Shivers. He was 15.