Journal-News.com

BLOG: Racism isn’t why Bonds is out of work

By Tom Archdeacon | Thursday, July 17, 2008, 02:11 PM

With the All star game finally over, we begin the second half of the Major League baseball season with Barry Bonds on the outside of the game looking in.

An All Star just last season and arguably the greatest home run hitter of modern times — though considering the chemical enhancement cloud over him, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, I’ll give the nod to Ken Griffey Jr. and soon to Alex Rodriguez — Bonds still can’t find a job.

No team seems to want him.

Why is that?

A few weeks ago at the American Baseball Research convention in Cleveland, Bonds aunt — Rosie Bonds-Kreidler — called it racism and said he was being “blacklisted.”

Bonds agent Jeff Burris tells anyone who will listen it’s a “conspiracy.”

And a few days ago, a New York Times columnist suggested Bonds is being “boycotted” and questioned the “owners apparent ungodly conspiracy to keep Bonds out of uniform.”

I’m sure some people’s attitudes toward Bonds often has had something to do with race, but I don’t think that’s the real reason he’s not on a team now.

I think his age, injuries and the boatload of money it’d take to sign him have something to do with it. That’s reason enough to take National League teams out of the equation altogether.

Sure he could still be a designated hitter in the American League, but at what price?

I’m not talking paycheck, I’m talking about the toll he takes on any team once he walks into its dressing quarters. Instantly the clubhouse turns into a circus tent.

Because his numbers are suspect and more so because he’s under indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice, he’s going to draw all kinds of negative attention — and clamoring hordes of media — into the team’s inner sanctum.

Add to the fact he’s never one to mingle with or embrace his fellow teammates — basically, he can be pretty much a self-absorbed jerk — is his presence going to help a ball club down the stretch?

This is not to say baseball hasn’t been poisoned by racism through the years — from the color line that so long was enforced to current complaints by Los Angeles Angels star Tori Hunter to the way Jackie Robinson was treated when he first integrated the big leagues in 1947.

Philadelphia Phillies players taunted him with the n-word. St. Louis players threatened to boycott if he played and in Cincinnati his treatment was the worst.

There was the death threat he got before a game and there was that famous scene recounted by “Boys of Summer” author Roger Kahn.

On May 13, 1947 — as the Dodgers were taking infield practice at Crosley Field — Reds players in the dugout and fans on the other side of the railing began taunting Robinson, calling him “shoe shine boy” and “snowflake.”

That’s when Dodgers shortstop Pee Wee Reese, a white Southerner, walked over to Robinson at first base, put his arm around him and glared into the Reds dugout. Robinson said he never felt alone on the diamond after that.

I didn’t see any of Bonds’ former San Francisco teammates going out of their way to wrap an arm around him. That’s because his trouble — drug enhancement charges aside — wasn’t so much about race, as it was team chemistry.

The guy brings none with him and makes no effort to develop it once he’s there.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment

BLOG: No Love From Buckeye Fans

By Tom Archdeacon | Monday, July 14, 2008, 12:29 PM

My wife and I go down to Miami almost every year. I lived there for many years, wrote sports there and still have a lot of friends and fond memories there.

I love the place.

On our last visit, I stopped at a sporting goods store and bought two green, orange and white Miami Hurricanes golf shirts.

I covered the ‘Canes — especially the football team — for several years. I first wrote about them during the dismal Pete Elliott, Carl Selmer and Lou Saban years, when they won just 20 of 60 games, were often routed by teams from up north and drew ever-dwindling crowds to the old Orange Bowl.

Then came Howard Schnellenberger and Jimmy Johnson — not to mention Bernie Kosar, Vinnie Testaverde, Jerome Brown, Alonzo Highsmith, Melvin Bratton, Bennie Blades and so many more colorful, talented and sometimes controversial athletes. Together, that bunch led to the first two (1983, 1987) of what now has become five national titles.

I liked those teams then and now — even though I’ve been back in Ohio since 1989 — I still pull for them. Probably more so since I don’t cover them.

But a lot of other folks outside of South Florida are of far different sentiment. In fact, some website called Bleacher Report recently compiled a list of “The 10 Most Disliked Programs of the Past 25 Years.”

No. 1 on the Most Disliked list were the Miami Hurricanes of Jimmy Johnson, 1985-88.

Ohio State — the Jim Tressel teams from 2002 through last season — were rated No. 3. In between the Canes and Bucks was Southern Cal (2003-2005).

Some Buckeye fans seem to have a special disregard not only for Miami — the team OSU beat for the title after what Canes fans and many others consider a controversial end zone flag — but for anybody who thinks differently about the South Florida team while living up here in the midst of Buckeye Nation.

I’ve found that out first hand over the years in critical e-mails, anonymous phone call rants and once from an old, “well-to do” lady who decided to cuss me out in a downtown Dayton restaurant.

But the point has never been made more clearly than this summer when I began wearing my golf shirts.

My neighbor and his pal — two guys I really like, both of them big Buckeye fans — tease me good-naturedly whenever they see the shirts. That’s the way it should be and I like that.

When I joined a foursome at Shaker Run golf course in Warren County last month, a guy in the group looked at my shirt and cracked: “You ought to feel right at home wearing that shirt down here … the Lebanon prison is just across the way.”

I liked that tweak, too, but the one in the parking lot of the Kroger Store on Wayne Avenue the other day wasn’t quite as creative.

The guy with the Ohio State decal on his rear bumper, simply rolled past with his window down and barked “F—- you!”

But I’ve got to say there’s only been one jab I’ve gotten since I’ve worn those shirts — and worn them quite proudly I might add — that really hit home.

That because it was at home.

The other day when I was going to go somewhere with my wife, I pulled on the one shirt that is mostly bright orange.

“You’re not wearing that are you?” she said. “You look like a big orange pumpkin.”

The truth hurt, but there was some consolation.

At least it wasn’t a big scarlet tomato.

Permalink | Comments (27) | Post your comment

BLOG: Top 10 Sports Spectacles in the Miami Valley

By Tom Archdeacon | Wednesday, July 9, 2008, 02:43 PM

To rouse myself from the slumberous prospect of the Dayton Flyers opening their home schedule this season with Wofford, Delaware State, Bethune Cookman, Mercer and Troy University — none with a name much less a winning record last season — I tried to think of the must-see events in the area each year.

Here’s my list of the Top 10 Sports Spectacles in the Miami Valley:

10 — Harness racing and the rest of the surrounding corn dog, cotton candy, rides-on-the-midway, country-crooners-and-rockers-on-the-big-stage scene at The Great Darke County Fair.

9 — The high school regional track meet at Welcome Stadium, especially when the individual sprinters or the relay teams settle into the blocks and that back-and-forth banter ripples through the electrified crowd.

8 — The Dayton Bombers going at it with their down-the-road-nemesis, the Cincinnati Cyclones, on some cold, wintery, Saturday night at the Nutter Center.

7 — Wright State hosting Miami University at the Nutter Center in what’s become a growing Valley rivalry that draws almost as many RedHawks fans as Rowdy Raider backers, almost always has a down-to-the-wire outcome and features two quality coaches in Miami’s Charlie Coles and WSU’s Brad Brownell.

6 — The high-decibel faceoff between state side and church side when next-door basketball neighbors Central State and Wilberforce University meet in the Marauders’ small Beacom-Lewis gym and the CSU pep band begins rattling the rafters with that beloved crowd sing-along: “I’m so glad … I go to CSU.”

5 — The high school regional basketball tournament at either UD Arena or the Nutter Center and the high-stakes drama of two teams, each trying to get their tickets punched for that fairytale trip to the state’s Final Four.

4 — That roar-against-the-eardrums, get-yourself-coated-in-dust-and-grime night at sold-out Eldora Speedway when the best dirt racers in the nation go at it in the World 100. For the bullring purists of this famed dirt bowl, this tops even the big names at the Prelude to the Dream and the King’s Royal sprint car spectacle.

3 — Friday night under the lights high school football — St. Henry versus. Marion Local — for the standing-room only championship of God’s Country and, afterward, especially if the game’s in St. Henry, a belly-to-the-bar full house at Fish-Mo’s tavern.

2 — A mild summer night and a Dayton Dragons game at always sold-out Fifth Third Field. Picked by Sports Illustrated last year as one of the top 10 toughest tickets to obtain in all of U.S. sports, there’ll be that all-ages camaraderie in the stands, Heater, the baby races and the rest of the between-innings entertainment and, if you’re lucky, some of the current Dayton players may even stir the ghosts of those former Dragons and send a couple of bombs high over the left-field wall and across Monument Avenue, where they’ll ricochet off the old Requarth Lumber company building. That’s the way Wily Mo Pena, Samone Peters, Randy Ruiz and Stephen Smitherman did it that one magical year when the team hit 144 home runs in a 139-game season.

1 — The Dayton Flyers versus the Xavier Musketeers at jammed-to-roof UD Arena in late February, the Red Scare crazies going nuts at one end of the gym, the rest of the red clad crowd — and a segment in blue sweaters and blue painted faces, too — on its feet and roaring and, out on the lit-up court, the hoop talents of these century old rivals matching each other dunk for dunk, trey for trey as they tug the game’s momentum back and forth in this hold-you-breath atmosphere that is unmatched by any other one particular sports event in the Miami Valley.

Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment

BLOG: Hammon no Benedict Arnold in sneakers and shorts

By Tom Archdeacon | Sunday, July 6, 2008, 09:16 PM

People who should know better — and by that I especially mean Anne Donovan, the coach of the U.S. women’s Olympic basketball team — are painting Becky Hammon as Benedict Arnold in sneakers and shorts.

Next thing you know some of these near-sighted jingoists will be trying to ship her off to that Guantanamo detention camp.

Hammon — raised in Rapid City S.D., schooled at Colorado State University — is the star point guard for the WNBA’s San Antonio Silver Stars. She’s also one of the most popular players in the league.

She made the Olympic team — the Russian Olympic team and will represent that country next month in Beijing.

And because of it, Donovan — and a bunch of sports bloggers around the country — are trying to T her up for treason.

What Hammon is doing “is unfathomable to me,” Donovan, one of the most decorated women ever to play U.S. basketball and herself a three-time Olympian, told ESPN. “If you play in this country, live in this country, and you grow up in the heartland and you put on a Russian uniform, you are not a patriotic person in my mind.”

In my book Donovan is being disingenuous. She knows first hand that the 2008 U.S. Olympic team will have several athletes and fellow coaches on it who grew up in other nations — some like table tennis star Gao Jun still living in their homeland — who will be trying to win medals for America in Beijing.

That happens every Olympics.

Same as every Games, American citizens become Olympians for other nations on the flimsiest of links. Look at the Winter Games and some of the people recently who become bobsledders and lugers and cross county skiers for Caribbean and Central American nations, although they are living right here in the U.S.

And how about the Greek women’s softball team at the 2004 Athens Games? More than half of those players were from the U.S.

But since Donovan lit this issue up like a Fourth of July firecracker, it’s gotten the interest of a lot of folks.

A Florida blogger goes on and on about how “unpatriotic” Hammon is. Another sports blog site is running a big picture of her with the word “TRAITOR?” in red above it. Another Web critic hopes she “blows her knee out with a career-ending injury” while in a Russian uniform.

A lot of these people are just nuts.

Hammon is no traitor. The WNBA’s runner-up for the 2007 MVP, she wanted to play for the U.S. in these Games. But when Team USA sent out its initial 23 invites to try out for the team last summer, her name wasn’t on the list.

And so — like a lot of WNBA players do because the money isn’t great in the American pro league — she decided to play overseas in the offseason. Last winter she signed a four-year deal worth $2 million to play for CSKA, a Russian pro team.

Under Russian league rules, even though Hammon has no ancestral ties to the country, she was eligible for a Russian passport and to become a naturalized citizen. And because she had not played for another nation internationally, she was invited to play for Russia.

Sure all this sounds a little convenient, but we here in the U.S. have rushed people through the process to become American citizens just in time to become Olympians for us. If you have a problem with all this, direct your criticism to the International Olympic Committee, because it allows it.

Former Bucknell standout J.R. Holden is doing the same thing Hammon is and is getting no grief. Although he has no blood link to Russia, he’s already represented the country in international competition.

Even so, Hammon said she debated the situation and was willing to risk the security of the $2 million deal — which would be voided if she played an international game for another country — if he she had a legitimate shot to make the U.S. team.

Although late in the game — long after Hammon had signed her Russian contract — Team USA did make her one of its seven additional invitees who would get a try-out, it appears it was just a face-saving move by the organization. Hammon and her agent talked to a lot of people in the know and found out she basically had no shot at making the team.

And so she tried out for the Russian team and the fire storm began. And as happens so often these days, people — many with an agenda of their own — start defining other people’s patriotism.

That can be a debatable topic even when it falls into the arena of national security. And this is just sports.

Donovan and some of those match-to-the-gas can bloggers might not see that, but Hammon does:

“I’m still an American girl,” she said recently. “I’m not over here selling secrets to the Russians. This is not espionage. This is a game of basketball. We are not at war with Russia. The Cold War is over.”

Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment

BLOG: Athletes and the Stars & Stripes

By Tom Archdeacon | Friday, July 4, 2008, 02:01 PM

At baseball parks across the country today, at the U.S. Olympic Trials — both track and field in Eugene, Oregon and swimming in Omaha, Neb. — at race tracks, soccer fields and maybe a golf tournament or two, American flags will be unfurled on the fields of play, waved by spectators on the sidelines and in the grandstands and carried by some of the competitors.

And that’s gotten me to thinking about some of the more memorable displays of athletes and the Stars and Stripes — from U.S. goalie Jim Craig wrapped in the flag and looking in the stands for his dad after the American’s Miracle on Ice hockey victory over the Soviets at the 1980 Olympics, George Foreman carrying a tiny flag in his right fist as he ambled around the ring after winning gold at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City to my all time favorite, Bellbrook High’s Charlie O’Dell carrying Old Glory after 9/11 — I’ve either witnessed, written about or both over the years.

The displays are great when heartfelt, but distasteful and often outright wrong when used merely as a prop or, worst of al,l when used to disparage a beaten competitor by waving the flag in his or her face.

I was there that day at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney Australia, when the U.S. men’s 4-by-100 meter relay team — Maurice Greene, Jon Drummond, Brian Lewis and Bernard Williams — acted like real jerks after winning gold.

I remember how the Olympic Stadium crowd of 110,000 was mostly turned off by them. The Australians have little use for what they call “tall poppies” — people who work especially hard to stand out — and these guys were taking that concept to the extreme.

Other American athletes were embarrassed, some were enraged.

Here’s a paragraph from what I wrote about the display:

“The U.S. sprinters turned into WWF wrestlers with American flags as props. Two guys shed their shirts. All began to preen and parade around. Lewis used the flag as his own personal do-rag, tying it to is head while he did muscleman type poses. Williams began to mimic the evil-eye poses of the wrestler The Rock, then wrapped the flag around his face like Count Dracula. The sprinters used the flags as bat wings, tourniquets and, when they couldn’t think of anything else, simply dragged them along behind them.”

The flip side of the relay team’s disrespect came from O’Dell, then a burr-headed senior lineman for the Bellbrook High football team. It occurred just three days after the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001 and minutes before the kick-off of Bellbrook’s game with Northridge.

The pros and most college teams had called off their weekend football games. Miami Valley high schools had decided to go on with their schedules, but no one in the stands or on the sidelines that night was absolutely sure the game should go on.

Back in the shadows of the Bellbrook stadium, Eagles head coach Kevin Basinger had spoken to his edgy team. Hestressed country and community and freedoms, including the opportunity to play football on Friday night.

When someone asked if one of the players wanted to carry out the American flag an assistant coach had brought to the game, O’Dell stepped forward.

And as the purple gates in front of the goal post opened and the team charged onto the field through a haze of smoke — thanks to parents with fire extinguishers — and ripped through the big banner the cheerleaders held, O’Dell said he was thinking one thing:

“I’m not the fastest guy in the world and I worried about everybody running right past me. I worried about the flag. I didn’t want it to fall or bow or do anything but stand tall.”

And did it ever

As Charlie charged through the smoke — flag held high, his team coming on behind him — folks in the grandstands were reduced to tears and Nick Falzarano, a local photographer of note, was on the field, snapping off four quick frames.

He sent one of the shots to Sports Illustrated. The magazine loved the picture and printed it across two pages in the front of its Sept. 24 issue.

As SI picture editor Jim Colton put it:

“Nick’s photograph captured the essence of what we were looking for. It was very poignant and colorful and the kid carrying the flag had a great expression on his face. It showed these kids weren’t ruffled. And the background the scoreboard reading first-and-10 - very subtly expressed the challenge ahead.”

Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment

BLOG: “Perfect Fit” for Paul Biancardi

By Tom Archdeacon | Wednesday, July 2, 2008, 07:56 AM

Paul Biancardi was reflecting on the past 28 months and the self-defining journey he’s been on.

It was March of 2006 when he left his head coaching position at Wright State — a basketball job he had waited much of his life for, a job and a bunch of kids he loved — bumped out in large part because of the NCAA sins of his former Ohio State boss, Jim O’Brien, and his loyalty to him.

“You get knocked down in life, but the key of who you are is how you get up,” Biancardi said Tuesday night.

Who Biancardi is — besides a good coach, an even better family man and somebody I and a lot of other people in the Dayton area really like — is a guy who over the past two years has been embraced by both one of the best college coaches in the business and now the nation’s top sports network.

This past season he was the top assistant on the staff of Rick Majerus at Saint Louis University. The under-manned Billikens finished 16-15 and nearly knocked the Dayton Flyers out of the Atlantic 10 tournament and all of the rest of the postseason. St. Louis extended UD to overtime in the A-10 opener and lost by one point, 63-62.

“I can’t tell you how good Coach Majerus has been to me and my family,” Biancardi said. “He allowed me to come back to the game I love and show what I can do.”

The folks at ESPN — where Biancardi worked for a year in a lesser capacity right after leaving WSU — saw plenty.

That’s why he’s been hired to be the network’s National Director of Recruiting for High School and College Basketball. In short ,the ESPN folks want him to be one of their gurus when it comes to hoops, especially high school hoops:

“ESPN wants to be an expert in in-depth analysis of high school basketball recruiting — who are the top players, what are their skills, where are they going to college and how will they fit into that school’s program.

“I’ll need to know the best players in the country from freshmen, sophomores and juniors on up. I’ll cover all the top 25 to 30 high school teams in the country — and quite a few more — an analyze them on the internet, radio and television.”

Biancardi will run a department that includes five former college or pro coaches. He’ll do a lot of work on the internet and as a color commentator on high school and college games on ESPNU.

One of his first assignments will be the upcoming National AAU Tournament in Orlando.

He got the job because of all his years as a coach. He started out an assistant at Salem State, Suffolk State and Boston University. He then spent seven years as an O’Brien’s assistant at Boston College and six more at Ohio State. He coached Wright State for three seasons and was the 2004 Horizon League Coach of the Year.

He loves being a coach and leaving the profession to be a member of the media was a tough decision.

“There was a lot of soul searching,” he said. “I love coaching.”

That made it difficult Tuesday night when he told the Saint Louis players he was leaving: “You recruit kids as basketball players and then you get to know them as people and you love them … When I finished talking to them they looked at me and said something that warmed my heart. They said ‘Thanks Coach.’ “

Biancardi had to do what’s best for his wife and two children and he said the ESPN job offered that. It’s thought he signed a three-year contract and will move to Charlotte.

As he puts it: “It’s a great challenge, an exciting opportunity … and a perfect fit.”

Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment

BLOG: I’m not so sure O.J. Mayo will be a great pro

By Tom Archdeacon | Friday, June 27, 2008, 04:02 PM

Will O.J. Mayo be a great NBA player?

I’m not so sure he will, but almost everybody else seems to think so. Especially the pundits and talk-show callers in the Twin Cities, today, who are lamenting the Minnesota Timberwolves’ late draft-night trade of Mayo — who the team had just made the No. 3 overall pick in the NBA draft — to Memphis for No. 5 pick Kevin Love in what ended up an eight-player deal.

And consequently, the folks in Memphis are giddy about landing the 20-year-old who Sports Illustrated — some 5 years ago — trumpeted as “The Next Big Thing.”

But I’m not sold that Memphis got the best part of this deal. And that’s not because I’m in love with Love. It’s because I have questions about Mayo.

Trouble and a lack of truthfulness seem to follow the guy wherever he goes. And though he’s one of the most talented young players I’ve ever see — and can be quite polite, accommodating, insightful and down-right charming — he’s got a “Me First” side of him that rears its head on and off the court and I think that could end up being his Achilles’ heel.

Already back when he was playing for North College Hill in Cincinnati — part of his six years playing high school ball in three different states — people were saying he was ready for the NBA.

Before Thursday night’s draft one league GM called Mayo “one of the four hardest workers” in the upcoming talent pool. And several people are saying he’s one of three or four draftees who will make an immediate impact in the league.

All that’s probably correct.

But when it comes to Mayo, all that seems true doesn’t always turn out that way. His blogosphere detractors call him everything from a “punk” to a “fraud.” I think that’s over-stated, but I have seen that side of him, too.

The first time I met him was soon after he transferred into North College Hill from Rose Hill Academy in Kentucky, where he’d played high school basketball while being a 14-year-old seventh grader and an eighth grader.

After an early-season game, he introduced me to his “grandfather” Dwaine Barnes. I then visited Barnes, who was working at Milt Kantor’s Victory Wholesale Grocers complex in Springboro.

Barnes claimed he was Mayo’s paternal grandfather and told stories of not knowing the boy was his grandson until O.J. was six or seven years old.

The only problem was that Barnes wasn’t his grandfather, but instead his AAU coach and had orchestrated the move to Ohio from their Huntington, W.Va., hometown.

They lived together — and at times Bill Walker, another NCH transfer who landed in the NBA Thursday night — in an apartment right next to North College Hill High. Barnes bragged of being given keys to the school and that O.J. would often come over late at night and shoot around in the deserted gym.

I wonder how many other NCH students — especially ones who had just moved into the district a couple of months earlier — were given the keys to the school?

Then again, NCH officials seem to have given away a lot more than that — let’s start with integrity — to keep Mayo, Ohio’s two-time Mr. Basketball, around for three years and two state titles before he jumped ship and finished his career at Huntington High, which he also led to the state crown.

It appears that already when he was at NCH — and almost certainly when he was at Huntington High — he was beginning to get thousands of dollars in gifts from Rodney Guillory, a runner for the big time sports agency, Bill Duffy Associates. At least that’s what Larry Johnson, a former sportswriter and another runner and Mayo insider — until he had a falling out — claimed in a big expose by ESPN’s Outside the Lines.

In all — in Mayo’s high school years and last season at Southern Cal — Johnson claimed Mayo accepted over $30,000 in gifts. That included regular ($2,500) shopping sprees, a 42-inch flat screen TV, airline tickets, payment of his cell phone bills ($170 a month) and other items.

His “Me First” style showed on the court, too. His last play in high school epitomizes that.

With his team leading by 40 points in the waning moments of the game, he threw himself an alley-oop pass off the bank board, dunked, then threw the ball into the stands.

He got a technical and was ejected from the game. He celebrated his exile, waving to the crowd, posing for cell-phone pictures, hugging and high-fiving teammates and, most sickeningly, getting a big embrace from his coach.

His apologists — and there are many in the stands and the media — say all that was no big deal. The crowd of 10,000 mostly had come to see him play and he gave them a treat at the end of the game.

They say his associations with Barnes and then Guillory were because he was desperately looking for a real father figure.

Mayo had told me his mother was 14 when she gave birth to him and that she had raised him and his seven siblings on her own. His dad, Kenny Ziegler, a Huntington High hoops star, was in and out of jail. In fact, this past January he was convicted again with possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver.

That night at NCH, Mayo told me he wasn’t going to go down that path. He was going to play in the NBA. He said that’s all he ever wanted.

And now it’s come true.

He certainly has the game. I just hope it isn’t double-teamed by the trouble that always seems to find him and the “Me First” attitude that never quite seems to leave him.

Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment