And another thing...

Howe, Lindsay, Bertuzzi

The Red Wings signed WHO?!

For a minute there I thought you said "Todd Bertuzzi."

For a minute there I thought the proud franchise that gave us hockey royalty -- Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay, Steve Yzerman, Terry Sawchuk -- had signed a broken-down 32-year-old thug whose primary claim to fame is breaking a guy's neck with a cheap shot from behind that probably should have landed him in prison.

Surely the Red Wings wouldn't do that, would they? Just for a few extra wins?

All I know is I was there in the Joe the night they raised Stevie Y's jersey to the rafters, and the crowd roared and all the lustrous names were there to wave and take their turn in the spotlight, and the thing became a celebration of an entire rich history. Todd Bertuzzi wasn't within a light year of that night, literally or figuratively.

So, no, surely the Red Wings didn't sell all that out by signing the guy. I for one refuse to believe it.

-- Ben Smith      

   

Nothing doing, or vice versa

Way to go, Veterans Committee. To mangle the old Voltaire line (hey, you get culture with this blog, too; consider it a bonus), if you didn't exist no one would miss you.

For the third year in a row the Vets convened and did not elect any geezers to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and not because there weren't candidates. Twenty-seven players and 15 officials were on the ballot, including three stellar frontrunners: Ron Santo, Jim Kaat and Gil Hodges.

Frankly if I'm voting all of them get in, because they should have all been in a long time ago, especially Santo. I really don't know what the criteria is, or why the Vets Committee exists if it's sole purpose is to see how many players it can NOT elect.

I guess they were just there for the beer. Or the free food. Or the complimentary pen-and-pencil set.

-- Ben Smith

   

Bonds-a-palooza

I know I'm asking the impossible, but this is my blog so I'm going to ask it anyway: Can Barry Bonds just go away?

He's back in the news again, just like he will be every day until he either passes Hank Aaron or winds up in stir on the federal dime, and like most of America I've had it. Enough hiding behind your lawyers, Barry. Be a man. Cooperate with the feds and/or George Mitchell and the Major League Baseball steroids probe. 'Fess up or prove, as you keep telling us, that this is all a plot to bring down Barry.

I'm waiting. But from the sound of it, I'm going to keep waiting.

In case you missed it Monday, Bonds's mouthpiece, Michael Rains, said no way will his client cooperate with baseball's steroids probe as long as he's still being threatened with a federal indictment for lying to the grand jury. The feds, quite rightly, recognized a strong-arm play when they saw it and essentially told Rains to go jump off a cliff.

Meanwhile, the players association refused to order its clientele to cooperate with Mitchell's probe, a profoundly stupid bit of stonewalling. Contrast that to the NFL Players Association, whose own membership is pushing for a three-strikes-and-your're-out policy on player misbehavior. Is it any wonder the NFL gets an automatic pass on these issues while Major League Baseball doesn't, even when the NFL doesn't deserve it? (See: The Bengals, Pacman Jones, Tank Johnson).

I fear it's going to be a looooong hot summer.

-- Ben Smith

Badger blooper

Like any dedicated hoophead out there, I love Bo Ryan and what he's done with the Wisconsin Badgers. But he just lost my coach of the year vote.

Just got done watching the end of Ohio State-Wisconsin, as terrific game as you'll see in all of college buckets this year. And frankly Bo blew it.

What planet was he visiting (Mars? Venus? Omicron 5?), ordering a timeout after Mike Conley scored to put the Buckeyes ahead 49-48 with 3.8 seconds showing? If he doesn't do that, Wisconsin wins, because the Badgers immediately inbounded the ball while the Buckeyes were still celebrating, went down and splashed the three at the gun.

Instead . . .

Instead, that got wiped out by the timeout. Which gave Ohio State a chance to reset its defense. Which gave whatever play Ryan set up at the end no shot, because the Buckeyes were ready for it and dutifully blocked the shot on the hopeless drive to the rack.

Just more proof for one my pet theories (I got a million of 'em), which is that the college game is grossly overcoached at times. Let your kids make a play, for cryin' out loud. Let 'em make a play.

-- Ben Smith

Heaven is closed

This just in from the land of sunshine, palm trees and the overhand curve: Nostalgia is cancelled.

Just got finished reading a couple of eulogies for Dodgertown in Sports Illustrated and USA Today, and all I can say is, (bleep) progress. In its name, the Dodgers are pulling up stakes in their longtime home,  Vero  Beach, Fla., and moving west to Glendale, Ariz., which I believe was just built yesterday in the ever-expanding Valley of the Sun.

I'm not a Dodger fan, but I have been to Dodgertown. Went to a game there on Easter weekend five or six years ago with my good friend Jim Saturday, who used to work for the Journal and now does his thing for the Treasure Coast conglomerate of Vero, Stuart and Fort Pierce. It was an absolutely sparking late afternoon and evening, and Dodgertown was everyting everyone says it is: An absolute baseball jewel where the diamonds are always immaculate, soft breezes rustle the palmettos and every manicured path leads to Holman Stadium, the best park in the minors.

If you've never been there, here's all you need to know about it: a pair of trees in flower-bursting boxes grow in the stands along each baseline. And there's no dugouts. And there used to be no outfield fences, just a line of perfectly space palm trees.

I could have sat there for days, taking it all in. And now the Dodgers are forsaking it in 2009 to share a complex with the White Sox that will, I'm sure,be utterly state of the art -- and also utterly charmless.

(Bleep).

-- Ben Smith

Combine this

I'm so excited. It's NFL combine week (you can always tell when it's coming; the stores in Indy all sell out of Lunesta, Prozac and straitjackets) and I've got a copy of Brady Quinn's Wonderlic test right here in my hot little hands.

The first question on it was, "What is your favorite color?"

Quinn answered "blue." The correct answer was "red."

The next question was "If you had a choice between lobster and steak, which would you choose?"

Quinn replied "steak." The correct answer was "both."

The next question was "Are you a happy person?"

Quinn said "yes." The correct answer was, "Are you nuts? This is NFL combine weekend. Nobody's happy about anything."

Ain't that the truth (and speaking of truth, in case you haven't already guessed it, I made up the whole Quinn-Wonderlic thing). It's a festival of lunacy, combine weekend, in which people who ought to be mumbling into their chest hair in a padded room somewhere instead obsess over tenths of a second and scores on a meaningless test instead of whether football players can actually play football.

Quinn's a good case in point. Once upon a time he was golden with the NFL geeks; now he's the man most likely to fall down an elevator shaft on draft day. Suddenly he can't do anything right. Suddenly Jamarcus Russell of LSU, the Beast of Baton Rouge, is everybody's fave because he's the size of a defensive end and can throw rockets -- and he beat Quinn in the Sugar Bowl.

Sure, Quinn hasn't helped himself any with his Greta Garbo act -- he skipped the Senior Bowl, and as of yesterday was a no-show for combine workouts -- and he didn't help his stock with a senior season in which his best games were all against Army, Navy and the Sisters of the Poor. But, come on, the guy can play, and so can half the other guys the NFL geeks are picking to death this weekend (See: USC wideout Dwayne Jarrett).

Reminds me of last year at this time, when the big news was that Vince Young had basically Freddied the Wonderlic. Of course, we all know how he then went on to be a HUGE failure his rookie year with Tennessee.

Not.

-- Ben Smith

Pacers take another charge

You have to feel for Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle. It can't be easy running a home for wayward boys.

That's sure what it's been like this season around Carlisle's team, which apparently has two offensive sets these days: Perp Walk Left and Perp Walk Right. This after Jamaal Tinsley and Marquise Daniels were formerly charged on intimidation, battery and disorderly conduct Wednesday for their part in a fight Feb. 6 at 8 Seconds Saloon in Indianapolis.

Tinsley, Daniels and Stephen Jackson, remember, were involved in that wee hours Wild West show back at the beginning the season. Jackson is gone now, traded away, and Tinsley and Daniels need to go next, assuming the Pacers can get anything of value for them. And then someone needs to start asking some hard questions about Larry Bird's stewardship of this franchise, rapidly devolving into a national punch line to rival the Portland Jail Blazers.

A state with the proud hoops tradition this one has deserves better from its signature franchise. Legend or no legend, if Bird can't provide that, he needs to go, too.

-- Ben Smith

Forget him not

Pete Best. Wally Pipp. The third guy on the medals podium with John Carlos and Tommie Smith.

Yes, we are playing word associaiton. But since this is my blog, and I make the rules (mostly as I go along), I'm going to cheat and give away what you're supposed to say next: ."Jim Sorgi."

That would be Peyton Manning's backup at quarterback (you know, the guy whose career highlights so far read "warmed up on the sideline three times in 2006"), which certainly puts him up there with the other three as "The Most Forgotten People On Earth."

There's one more of those, of course: The Maytag Repairman.

Apparently Sorgi's got that one covered. Read on:

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070221/SPORTS03/702210488

Remembering DeFay

And on a somber note . . . a moment of silence, please, for longtime WKJG sportscaster Dick DeFay, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 81.

Dick was retired or headed that direction when I showed up in town 20 years ago, but nobody had to tell me who he was. As a guy who grew up here I knew him as Hilliard Gates's longtime sidekick on 33, a familiar face and voice I will always associate with sports in this town.

Up in the Coliseum pressbox before the Komets and Quad City on Wednesday, we were all remembering Dick, as befits a man who came into our living rooms for 41 years and is, by the way, a member of the Komets' Hall of Fame. In his last years I always seemed to run into Dick at Wizards games, a quiet man who, long after he'd earned his rest, never quite got the sports beat out of his blood.

Rest easy, Dick. And on second thought, maybe it's not a moment of silence we should observe in your honor, but the roar of a crowd.

-- Ben Smith

Knight, all right

Damn Bob Knight as a bully and a sociopath all you want (and I have, serially), but when the man's right he's right.

Just got finished reading his comments on the new rule that requires players to be at least one year out of high school before being eligible for the NBA, and he's spot on.

"Worst thing that's happened to college basketball since I've been coaching," Knight told the Associated Press.

Amen and amen. The NBA was already treating college buckets as a de facto farm system, and has for years; with the new rule, it's now treating the college game merely as a holding cell to stash its richest prospective talents for a year until they come of age. As Knight pointed out, where's the incentive for a kid such as Kevin Durant of Texas, who's sure to jump to the NBA after this season, to even pretend to be a student-athlete? If he decides to quit going to class this semester, he won't be ruled ineligible for it until after he's gone.

The whole system was a farce before; now it's doubly so. I'll be commenting more on this in my regular column down the road, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you want to check out the original story, here's where to find it:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/basketball/ncaa/wires/02/19/2060.ap.bkc.big.12.coaches.0716/index.html