Cheap Seats

It’s all in the eyes of the beholder

“In the popularity poll that is all-star voting, fans hit about .500 this year,” writes Ross Newhan of the Los Angeles Times.

“Great in the batter’s box but only fair at the ballot box.

“The starting lineups for Tuesday night’s game at Coors Field, for instance, wouldn’t include about half of the fan selections if based strictly on the first three months.

“The managers almost always make up for election mistakes with their selections of the reserves.”

Right, Ross. So you’re saying Cleveland manager Mike Hargrove resisted those temptations when he named his shortstop, Omar Vizquel, ahead of Boston shortstop Nomar Garciaparra.

Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe calls the slight about a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10: “You want a 10? I’ll give you a 10. Try these All-Star break numbers. HRs, 25; RBIs, 100; Runs, 68; Hits, 101.

“That was Detroit’s Hank Greenberg in 1935. He did not make the All-Star team.”

That’s a lot of Gatorade, hot dogs and Air Jordans

Fortune magazine has decided that the “Michael Jordan effect” has had a $10-billion impact on the world’s economy in the 14 years since he joined the NBA.

That figure includes everything from books to videos, from cereal to sunglasses, from sneakers to sweatshirts, from tickets to television revenue, from soft drinks to Sara Lee, from basketballs to batteries.

It includes half of everything Nike, and also half the windfall reaped by David Falk, who represents Jordan, when he sold his agency.

Hey Edwin, you’ve been bamboozled

“Thumbs down to college football’s new playoff system,” writes Edwin Pope of the Miami Herald. “It might be great yet, if we can find enough Ph.D’s from MIT to explain it. The only people I’m dead-solid-sure can make sense of it are Las Vegas oddsmakers like Roxy Roxborough, who never met a number they didn’t recognize.”

Back up Edwin, and repeat after us: It is not a playoff system, it is not a playoff system. It is the bowl system with a fancy covering.

Now that’s old

One gets the idea Tony Kornheiser of The Washington Post was getting disgusted with the Baltimore Orioles:

“What’s (owner Peter Angelos) thinking when he says ‘it’s about time’ to trade for younger players? When exactly will it be time - when half the team qualifies for AARP benefits?

“This team is older than ‘The McLaughlin Group.’ (Joe) Carter is 38, Eric Davis 36, Harold Baines 38, Cal Ripken 37, (Norm) Charlton and (Doug) Drabek 35, Jesse Orosco 42. With old goats like that, they could trade for Milton Berle and get younger.”

The last word …

“If Sloan was managing a game against Mark McGwire, his strategy would probably be to let McGwire have his five or six homers and concentrate on shutting down everybody else.”

-Michael Ventre of MSNBC on why Utah coach Jerry Sloan didn’t call for a double-team on Michael Jordan in the closing seconds of Game 6 of the NBA finals.