Cheap Seats
Here’s the news across the nation
From Bernie Lincicome of the Chicago Tribune:
News: NBA looks for drop-dead date.
Views: Will it be Dec. 19, when the NBA players stick their little toes in the piranha-infested waters of the basketball business by staging a charity cotillion? If things go well they might start their own league, with two franchises, one in Las Vegas and one in Atlantic City, and themselves as their own worst and most expensive enemies.
Will it be Jan. 1, which is the last time anyone imagines a season could be put together in time to play even half of the schedule? Will it be April 27, which would be the time the playoffs are supposed to begin and the real season takes over anyhow?
No, the drop-dead date will be whenever Michael Jordan says he will not play again and the world realizes that Kobe, you’ve got next.
More from Lincicome
The NFL is so embarrassed by dunderheaded adjudicating and consistently poor officiating, it is considering instant replay for the playoffs, is keeping its mind open to full-time officials and already has assigned eyewitnesses and press-box audio spies to make sure it gets the coin toss right. It was either that or flip Doug Flutie. Call him in the air.
Chicago Tribune, take 3
Tribune columnist Ed Sherman has this to say about the NFL:
It’s only a matter of time. If the NFL approves instant replay, the networks will make the most of it.
Imagine the possibilities.
Announcer: “This review is sponsored by Right Guard. Thanks to instant replay, NFL officials don’t smell anymore.”
Reg-gie, Reg-gie, Reg-gie
For Boston Red Sox fans, still haunted by the sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, it has been another one of those winters.
Mo Vaughn left. Albert Belle and Bernie Williams snubbed them.
“This should be one of baseball’s three prime regional franchises, New England’s team,” writes Peter Gammons in the Boston Globe, “and in the last 30 years, who are the three best position players developed in that region? Carlton Fisk, Jeff Bagwell and Mo Vaughn, all exiled …
“The Sox believe that they, not the fans, determine which players are to be liked … so it was deemed not only that Fisk, Fred Lynn, Rick Burleson, Bruce Hurst, Roger Clemens and Vaughn were unworthy of enjoyment but that Reggie Jefferson is what the fans really want.”
Who has his foot in his mouth?
New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine admits he made a “bad guess” when he speculated Todd Hundley thought it was “an Italian thing” that led to Valentine’s preference for Mike Piazza, not Hundley, as the Mets catcher.
New York acquired Piazza during the past season and signed him to a $91 million, seven-year contract, then traded Hundley, a Mets fixture since 1990.
“Todd does a lot of that stuff,” Valentine told the Madison Square Garden Network in an interview broadcast Thursday. “It’s an Italian thing. He thinks that I would do something because he’s not Italian or because I am Italian. I think that’s ridiculous.”
Hundley’s response? “It is utterly ridiculous and how can you respond to such a psychotic statement? The more Bobby Valentine speaks, the more people will realize why he has the reputation he has.”