Unequal Swap

I had just started my drive home last night when the news came over WEEI-Boston that Adam Vinatieri had signed with the Indianapolis Colts. The reaction of the sports talk hosts and callers can be summed up as "panic stricken."

There was sure to be gloom in Patriot Nation if/when The Greatest Jackrabbit left, but there were several factors that made yesterday's annoucement more traumatic. It appears the Patriots are not trying very hard to keep their veteran players, Vinatieri was lost to a key conference rival, and the leading candidate for the Patriot placekicking vacancy seems to be goofball Mike Vanderjagt.

The Patriots have let receiver David Givens, linebacker Willie McGinest and Vinatieri escape in free agency this winter. There have been no acquisitions of note. Regarding a replacement for McGinest, I'm sure Bill Belichick's plan is to find some underappreciated and undersized defensive end, coach him up at linebacker, and rotate him in with five other guys. The philosophy around here is it's better to pay middle-class wages to six OK linebackers rather than a king's ransom to one big-name guy. But you can't replace one great placekicker with six mediocre guys! Ask the Cowboys whether that works.

Everyone figured if Vinatieri left, he would be on his way to the NFC, either Green Bay or Dallas. Having Indy sign him was a thunderbolt. There are five teams in the AFC that Patriot fans have enjoyed tormenting recently: the three division rivals, the Steelers, and the Colts. With the Steelers winning the Super Bowl and Miami appearing poised to challenge for the division, having the Colts steal Vinatieri has introduced another little bit of doubt about whether Belichick still has his genius cap. The biggest nightmare for Patriot fans would be to see Vinatieri kick a game winner for the Colts in Foxboro in an AFC playoff game.

Still, the Pats apparently have a chance to sign the most accurate kicker in the history of the league, Vanderjagt. What's wrong with that? Maybe the superstar quarterbacks for the Colts and Patriots can explain.

Peyton Manning, 2003: "We're talking about our idiot kicker who got liquored up and ran his mouth off."

Tom Brady, 2005: "Adam is the most clutch kicker in the history of football."

When last seen, Vanderjagt had an ugly failure on an attempt that would have sent the playoff game against the Steelers into overtime. He sliced it so badly that it reminded me why I gave up golf. A few days later he was yukking it up on Letterman, which greatly irritated Colts management. That's why the black cloud stuck in the minds of Pats fans can be summed up thusly: "They got Adam and we're stuck with Vanderjerk."

Patriot safety/nutcase Rodney Harrison came up with the "Vanderjerk" nickname when the idiot kicker said something stupid before a playoff game two years ago. I think Vanderjagt is still expecting a beat-down from Harrison so I doubt he will be seen on the practice fields in Foxboro this fall. Maybe Belichick could get back some of that genius status by going with an undrafted free agent out of a Division II school. It worked spectacularly last time.

The Greatest Jackrabbit...maybe

The greatest football player ever to come out of my alma mater South Dakota State is a placekicker, which you may consider pathetic if you went to a Division I-A school such as (for example) Colorado. But oh, what a kicker: Adam Vinatieri, Class of '95.

I have lived 10 miles from the New England Patriots' home in Foxboro since 1991. The first few years the Pats were awful and it didn't bother me when they got blacked out on TV because it meant a game involving better teams would be shown instead. But along about 1996, I started becoming more interested in the local team because (a) they were getting much more competitive under Coach Duane (Bill) Parcells and (b) they had an obscure kicker who happened to be from South Dakota State.

The kicker is no longer obscure. Vinatieri pulled off perhaps the most famous kick in NFL history four years ago during a blizzard. He followed it up with famous kicks #2 and #3 to win Super Bowls. He had a field goal that won a third Super Bowl but it doesn't qualify as all-time famous because it wasn't of the last-second variety. (Ho-hum.) Last season he set the team career scoring record, passing original Boston Patriot Gino Cappelletti. The South Dakota State guy is forever a New England hero even if he ends up playing for someone else this fall.

If the announcement comes that Vinatieri is leaving New England, no doubt the TV stations will play an assortment of his historic kicks again, but one play I wish they would show more often is from early in his career when he caught Herschel Walker from behind on a kickoff. Perhaps the tape shows something different, but in my mind's eye I see him coming from five yards off the pace and running down the swift former Heisman Trophy winner. Some say that's the play that convinced Parcells to keep Vinatieri on the team, and the rest is history.

The stereotype about kickers is they are little European soccer players who yell, "I keek a touchdown" after making a field goal, but Vinatieri was a real football player in high school. He played quarterback and linebacker for the Rapid City Central High School Cobblers, and kicking was just an additional chore. (Other notable Cobbler graduates include one of my brothers and my sister, 20 years before Vinatieri.)

It's inconvenient when facts don't quite fit the story line, but I should admit that Vinatieri is not a hands-down choice as the best Jackrabbit football player ever. Jim Langer, South Dakota State '70, was the starting center on the undefeated '72 Dolphins team and is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The annual award for the top Division II lineman is named after Langer. I'll still give the "Greatest Jackrabbit" nod to Vinatieri because Langer grew up in Minnesota and didn't go to high school with me or any of my siblings. Assuming Vinatieri gets into the Hall someday, how many other schools with a mediocre football history primarily in Division II (now I-AA) have two inductees?

In college football, North Dakota State is almost always better than South Dakota State, and it's a given that the University of Colorado is more powerful than either. But neither the Bison nor the Buffaloes have anyone in the Hall of Fame. Barring a late rush by someone such as Kordell Stewart (haha), Vinatieri's enshrinement in Canton will make it Jackrabbits 2, Native Bovines 0.

O'Neil Snubbed

The only association I have with John Jordan (Buck) O’Neil is the same last name, but still I'm mystified as to what it takes for him to get elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Seventeen people associated with the Negro Leagues were elected today by a special committee, but Buck was not one of them.

Buck was two-time Negro League batting champion, five-time championship-winning manager, the scout credited with discovering Lou Brock and Ernie Banks, the first black coach with a major league team, and a driving force behind the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. Those other 17 must be exceptional people to be more deserving than Buck. The fact I've never heard of any of them must be a shortcoming on my part.

Buck O'Neil is 94 years old and in my opinion is qualified two or three times over. The special committee should reconvene in special session and vote Buck O'Neil in the Hall of Fame before God calls him home.

Update 2022: Buck didn't make it before his death in later in 2006, but did make it in voting in 2021. Formal induction is July 2022.

Change of Seasons

Super Bowl 40 (no pretentious Roman numerals here) was a game only a Steelers fan could love. The losing team was awful, the officiating was awful, and even the winning quarterback was awful. It might have been the second-worst Super Bowl of all time, surpassing only Super Bowl 5 when the Colts beat the Cowboys. Even that drudgefest in 1971 had one thing going for it: Until fellow South Dakota State alum Adam Vinatieri came along, it was the only Super Bowl decided by a last-second field goal.

SB 5 was so bad that a member of the losing team was named MVP. Cowboys linebacker Chuck Howley got the award for gathering in three of the game's ten (10!) turnovers. In the fourth quarter of SB 40, the Steelers were on their way to an unimpressive win and I was wondering who could possibly win the MVP award. The Seahawks hadn't made any plays all day so a repeat of the Chuck Howley vote seemed extremely unlikely. There were no obvious MVP candidates from the Steelers defense except, as the joke goes, the officials. The Steelers offense only made three plays all day, but it turns out that Hines Ward was in on two of them so he got the Escalade.

With the dreadful game in Detroit (capping an otherwise decent football season) now out of the way, my thoughts now turn to the Winter Olympics. Hahahaha ha ha...ack...ooof...I almost hurt myself. No, really, who cares about that!? I thought the Winter Olympics were neat the first time I saw them on TV...in 1968! Since then I've gotten over it, and February represents a hole in the sports viewing calendar. I don't care about the Olympics, hockey, golf or tennis, and in regard to basketball I'm a firm believer in the "two minute" rule: Don't bother watching until the final two minutes. Fortunately, the hole in the sports calendar between the end of football and the start of baseball is getting shorter all the time.

Last baseball season I made it to 15 professional games at various venues throughout the country: spring training in Arizona, five big-league parks (KC, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Baltimore, DC), an independent league park (KCK), and the Arizona Fall League. This season my travel schedule is much less extensive and I don't have any tickets on order.

I am scheduled to go to Florida in early April. Spring training will be over by then, and the Devil Rays (or whatever PC name they will be using then) won't be home when I'm in the Tampa area. Of course I could always take out a home equity loan and get some Boston Red Sox tickets, but I'm not real gung-ho on paying their admission prices when I can watch all of their games on TV. Maybe I'll take in a Pawtucket Red Sox game just to get to something this year.

Pawtucket's McCoy Stadium is only five miles from my house, but I'm intrigued by a game the Pawsox will be playing Saturday, August 26 at Fenway Park. Actually it's a minor league doubleheader with the Lowell Spinners hosting Oneonta in a Class A New York-Penn League game at 2:00, followed by a Class AAA International League game between Pawtucket and Rochester. It seems like a chance to get to Fenway Park this year without taking out that home equity loan. Ticket prices have not been announced but supposedly will be "family friendly."

I wonder if they'll be selling Monster seats....

Gas Giants

As I squinted at the time early Saturday morning (4:30 a.m.), it came to me that I had forgotten to put out the trash. I knew it would be difficult to get back to sleep without resolving that situation, so I threw on some clothes and dragged the stuff out to the curb. Walking back up the driveway, I noticed a bright planet trailing behind the half moon. Saturn, I thought.

Oh well, there's no time like the present. I quickly set up my Televue 85 telescope and took a look at 75x. Instead of rings, I saw a banded disc surrounded by four little dots: Jupiter and the Galilean Moons. I checked my calendar to find out when Saturn would be up, and 18 hours later I returned to the back yard and found it high overhead.

As it turns out, Saturn's orbit will be at opposition this coming Saturday. That means the orbits of Earth and Saturn will be as close as they get in a 378-day cycle, and Saturn will be overhead at midnight. I use my Televue more as a wildlife spotting scope than an astronomical scope so my mount is just a photo tripod with a video panning head. But it worked well enough to find (at 138x) the ringed ornament hanging in the sky. If there's a neglected telescope stuffed in a closet, now is a good time to dig it out and take a look at the rings. Saturn rises in the east and sets in the west just like the Sun and Moon, so now should be visible throughout the night. And if you happen to be setting out the trash at 4:30 a.m., the Jovian system also is worth a look. (Or you can wait until May 5 when it will be at opposition.)

After some dabbling in astro observing and photography, I decided a while ago it would save a lot of time and frustration if I would do my astronomical observing mostly through the photos of others. But once in a while it's a good idea to look at the sky and get a reminder that those photos represent something real.

Sutter

It was nice to see Bruce Sutter get elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Yesterday it was announced he barely got the required number of votes, making him the first pure closer to be honored. Along with Cal Ripken, Jr. and Tony Gwynn, Mark McGwire will be eligible to be elected next year. I think McGwire will get elected but he will have fewer votes than the other two due to that little steroids controversy. I still like my idea of closing the Hall to new inductees after this year. OK, one exception for Gwynn and that's it.

Tomorrow I'm off to Iowa in search of bald eagles again. I usually don't complain about it being too warm in January, but I have heard that for eagling, colder is better. I'm sure there will be a few eagles along the mighty Mississippi, so look for photos next week.

Bruce Sutter, 1999

Adages

I managed to stay awake all the way to the end last night as Texas pulled it out against Southern Cal 41-38. I am left with one question: If Reggie Bush was the greatest football player of all time and space, as some pundits seemed to think prior to last night, why wasn't he on the field for the pivotal fourth-and-two with just over two minutes remaining? I don't have a problem with USC going for it, or with giving the ball to LenDale White, but I don't understand why Bush was over on the sidelines watching. Even having him in as a decoy would have affected the Texas defense, wouldn't it?

Of course after last night, the pundits have forgotten all about Bush and are now proclaiming Vince Young as the greatest football player of all time and space. The pressure on the Houston Texans to draft the hometown hero Young instead of Bush will be enormous.

It was a great football game, the type envisioned by those who created the Bowl Championship Series (That Is Not a Series). It proves the old adage about a blind squirrel occasionally finding a nut. Any year (most years) when there aren't exactly two undefeated teams from major conferences, the legitimacy of the championship game is suspect. This year the BCS cultists lucked out when Michigan scored on the last play of the game to inflict Penn State's only loss. The game proved something else that should be an adage: All-time great teams have both offense and defense. Pete Carroll made his reputation as a defensive coach, so it's ironic that his offense was so great and his defense was so deficient.

Vegas

I'm headed to Las Vegas tonight. When I say that it elicits a certain type of response, so I hasten to add that LAS happens to be the closest airport to Death Valley, which is where I'm going first. Casinos, lotteries and other such entities would not exist if they had to depend on me for business.

It will be a wide-ranging trip, also including Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico, the sky islands of southeast Arizona, the Arizona Fall League in the Phoenix area, and the Aviation Nation air show back in Las Vegas. I'll post text message updates throughout the two weeks and eventually there will be photos.

Final item about the World Series: I checked the Venezuelan newspaper at eluniversal.com to see the reaction in Ozzie Guillen's homeland. Since I don't do Spanish I had Google translate it. I was able discern that they are very proud of Oswaldo, but here is proof that online translations are far from perfect:

Now in Chicago one hopes that the other local equipment, the Puppies, that militate in National Liga and which they have not gained a title of the Classic one of October from the season of 1908, is the next ones in putting the ring of winners.

I think it is more likely the 100th anniversary of Orval Overall's '08 series clincher will come and go long before the Puppies enjoy another Classic one of October title.

Longest Day

I heard the end of the third game of the World Series this morning, sometime after 2 a.m. Eastern time. I didn't see it because my eyes were closed, as they are most nights at that time, but I was awake and listening. I heard them say at five hours and 41 minutes it was the longest game in World Series history, but only a tie for most innings, 14.

And they said the other 14-inning game was Boston beating Brooklyn 2-1 in the 1916 World Series, so I looked up the details this morning at Baseball Almanac. The time of game was reported as 2:32.

How can a 14-inning game take twice as long now as 89 years ago? There were 17 pitchers last night, and many of those pitching changes came during innings. Back in 1916, both pitchers went all the way, with Babe Ruth outpitching some guy named Sherry Smith. Fox wasn't producing the show in 1916, so that also sped things up considerably.

Maybe they can't prevent games from going into extra innings and dragging on, but I do have one suggestion for moving things up by 40 minutes – cut out the pregame show. No one cares what Kevin Kennedy and Jeanne Zelasko have to say. Get rid of them, start the game at five minutes after the hour, and maybe we can get done a few minutes before 2:00.

Useless Factoid o' the Day: Fox does not have a monopoly on worthless information. While browsing Baseball Almanac, I found that the winning pitcher for the Cubs in the deciding game of the 1908 World Series was Orval Overall. His bio link says "Nickname: None." With a name like that, you don't need a nickname. With two wins in the series, I guess you could say he was the best pitcher Overall.

Long Climb

The World Series teams are set and it's good to see some new faces in there. I'm usually an American League backer but I have family in Houston so I suppose I should cheer for the Astros, for what it's worth.

This summer at several games, I assumed I was seeing the 2005 National League champs in action. But at the time I assumed it was the three games involving the Cardinals. When I saw the Astros, they were at their much-publicized 15 games under .500.

It turns out I was there when the Astros started to dig themselves out of that huge hole. On May 27, they were 16-31 after dropping the first game of a series against Milwaukee. I saw the next two games that last weekend in May at Miller Park, with the Astros winning an atypical 9-6 slugfest on Saturday, then taking a more characteristic 2-1 win on Sunday with a quality start from Andy Pettitte and a heart-attack save (two on, nobody out) from Brad Lidge.

From May 28 to July 31, the Astros went 41-17 to climb from sixth place in the division to leading the Wild Card race. Next week the World Series comes to the State of Texas for the first time. My useless bit of trivia regarding that is there is now only one early-1960's expansion team that has not been in a World Series – the second incarnation of the Washington Senators, now known as the Texas Rangers. With all the curse-breaking that has been going on in recent seasons, maybe it will be Rangers-Cubs next year...nah, probably not.

Andy Pettitte hurled six shutout innings May 29.

AFL

It's October and we all know what that means for true baseball fans – the Arizona Fall League season is underway. Although I'll probably make it to just three games, this is the seventh time in the last eight years that I'm making the journey west to see the top minor leaguers in action and get a few photos.

In previous years I set up HQ at a Scottsdale hotel because two teams played at Scottsdale Stadium. This year the stadium is being renovated so the two Scottsdale teams are playing at the new Surprise facility on the other side of the valley.

Of course October also means the major league playoffs on TV. Once again we are subjected to the inane utterances of the "analysts" that Fox and ESPN dig up for the occasion. Tim McCarver is just so Profound that after five minutes I want to run out of the room screaming. Mike Piazza, please consider taking a class because the on-the-job training thing just isn't working out. And Steve Lyons, please please please just shut up! Sometimes I try watching with the sound muted, but then I miss the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd. For all those TV execs looking for a way to increase revenue, how about offering Pay Per View with NO announcers, NO network promos, and NO junk statistics. I would pay a few dollars for a channel that had just the basic video feed, a few replays (not 10 of each pitch), graphics just for basic stats, and the stadium sound. I've been watching baseball for 40 years; I don't need Fox treating me as if I don't know which end of the bat to hold.

Galway

I've been in Galway a few days now and the city is atwitter over the local hurling team playing in the All-Ireland final this weekend. Hurling is a sport where 15 Irishmen to a side chase a ball around, whacking at it and each other with sticks. Or something to that effect. I've been able to stay on my tourism schedule of Connamera on Monday and Inis Mor yesterday. It's a bit rainy today but I will do the Cliffs of Moher later on. They are 700 feet tall so by "do" I mean look at them.

Arrived Ireland

I flew into Ireland overnight. The bus took me from Shannon Airport to Galway, and I was able to see that Ireland in fact is quite green. I was able to get into my hotel a bit after noon, so the first order of business was a nap to supplement the 2-3 hours of sleep I got on the plane. I couldn't figure out how to turn on the lights in the room, but figured it could wait until after the nap. Eventually I did figure it out and felt as triumphant as a caveman flicking a cigarette lighter. You have to put your room key in a slot on the wall. Perhaps every hotel in the world except the U.S. Super 8's to which I am accustomed have this feature. Explorations start tomorrow.

Pujols ejected but Cards lead Nats 3-0 in 7th.

Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Good crabcake, lots of red brick.

Half of the Fun

These days the Twins play in the Baggiedome in downtown Minneapolis, but in the '60's and '70's they were out in the suburbs. My first major league game was at age 11 on June 22, 1968 at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington.

Today the Mall of America sits on the site, but back in 1968 it was baseball under open skies. In the game program (25 cents) it says, "Half of the fun at a ballgame is keeping score," and instructions were provided on how to do so. It didn't say what the other half of the fun was, so I kept score.

Visiting was a mediocre Yankee team, six years removed from winning the World Series and nine years away from winning their next one. Twins pitcher Jim Kaat got the first two Yanks to fly out, but the third connected for a home run. It was my first major league hit, so to speak. Referring to the scoring instructions, next to the name "Mantle" I drew four horizontal bars (four-base hit) and a "7" (to left field) then circled all of it (run scored). The scoreboard flashed the message that it was the 528th home run of Mickey Mantle's career.

Of course I remember that The Mick hit a home run in the first major league game I attended, but documented on the scorecard are forgotten details. For instance, Mantle was playing first base, not the outfield. The designated hitter hadn't been adopted by the American League yet, so I figured the move to first base was because of his knees. Web research today verified that one of the great center fielders of all time spent the last two years of his career at first base due to bad knees, and they were two awful years. He retired after the 1968 season after hitting only .237 with 18 homers in 144 games. The notation on the scorecard that he was playing first base is what compelled me to look it up. Perhaps the "other half of the fun" is looking at a scorecard 37 years later and seeing details and clues that add substance to imperfect memory.

The scorecard also shows: Tony Oliva put the Twins ahead with a two-run homer in the fourth, but the Yankees scratched out four runs in the seventh and won 5-2. Stan Bahnsen, who went on to win Rookie of the Year, allowed six hits (three to Oliva) and struck out nine to get the win. Hall-of-Famer Harmon Killebrew went 0-4. With the help of Baseball Almanac, I have recreated the box score as it would have appeared in the paper the next day. (Update: Kaat and Oliva were selected to the Hall of Fame in 2022.)

I have to be in Baltimore next week on business, so I'm going down early to take in weekend games at Camden Yards (Athletics at Orioles) and RFK Stadium (Cardinals at Nationals). I haven't been to either one before so maybe that's what got me thinking about that first game in Minnesota.

Frank Robinson tolerates a snapshot, 1999

Although I haven't been to Camden Yards, I saw the Royals play the Orioles on July 31, 1988 at old Memorial Stadium. At the time, the Royals were in the middle of the pack (51-52 according to the Baseball Almanac) and the Orioles were simply awful (32-70). The Oriole manager was Frank Robinson, who had replaced Cal Ripken, Sr. early in the season. Once again, my scorecard scratchings reveal forgotten details of the game.

The Royals had two on and two out in the fourth when Vincent Edward "Bo" Jackson launched a moonball that would have hit the roof if there had been one. The outfielders drifted slowly back, waiting for what seemed like several minutes for the ball to return to earth. When it did, it was just over the wall in right-center for a three-run homer. I remember Bo's moonball, but the scorecard fills me in on some of the other details: On base for Bo were the famous George Brett (hit by pitch) and the infamous Bill Buckner (double). In the ninth, Cal Ripken, Jr. hit a solo homer for the Orioles to break up the shutout, but Charlie Liebrandt went on to finish a complete game four-hitter, 4-1. Here's the box score at Baseball Almanac.

The O's finished 54-107 that year. I will see Frank Robinson, now manager of the Nationals, put a better team on the field this Sunday than he was able to back then. I've gotten out of the habit of buying programs and keeping score but maybe I'll revive that practice this weekend.

Smokey and Sturgis

A news item caught my eye this week – a new Smokey Bear hot-air balloon made its first appearance this week at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota.

Where do I start with this one? My Dad was with the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks in the 1960's and was very involved in promoting forest fire prevention. We always had Smokey the Bear knick-knacks and literature around the house. I thought it was cool to see the Smokey Bear balloon at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta last October.

Cool at least until Smokey got impaled on a 600-foot radio tower. Pilot Bill Chapel and two young passengers rescued themselves by climbing down the tower's ladder. When's the last time you had to climb down a 600-foot ladder? I literally had nightmares about that for several days afterward. The pilot of the new balloon is the same Bill Chapel. I would think that getting popped by a very tall tower would cure you of ballooning forever, but maybe that's just me.

Anyway, the news clip was a reminder that the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is this week. I grew up in the Black Hills so I knew that every August there were a lot of motorcycles on the roads. The rumor was there was some sort of debauchery going on up in Sturgis. In 1978 I did my college journalism internship at the Sturgis newspaper, so the first week in August I found myself immersed in the middle of thousands of bikers. I must not have been too traumatized because after graduation I joined the paper full time.

I recall going to the home of J.C. and Pearl Hoel to do an interview about times past. As the acknowledged founder of the Rally, J.C. ("Pappy") was a legend, but I remember him as a cooperative but sort of deaf old gent. He talked about working as a young man in the family business, which was cutting and storing ice in the winter and delivering it in the summer. In 1936 when refrigeration was making ice delivery obsolete, he bought an Indian motorcycle franchise. Pappy founded the Jackpine Gypsies in 1937 and helped start the Rally in 1938. (Pappy died in 1989 at age 84; Pearl died just this year at age 99.)

What started as a little gathering of Pappy, Pearl and their Jackpine Gypsies friends took on more of an edge as it got bigger. It's all sort of a blur now, but I do recall that at least some of the rumors of debauchery turned out to be true. Up until 1982 there was still camping in the Sturgis City Park. After a near riot in the park that year, I reported on a series of public meetings as the city's citizens wrung their hands over whether it was worth it to endure the massive disruptions brought by the event. Ultimately they decided it was, and now it's (supposedly) 10 times bigger than it was back then. There were changes – camping was banned in the park and much of the partying moved, out of sight and out of mind, to private campgrounds outside of city limits.

To me, Rally week was the time every year when an extraordinary number of drunks showed up, somewhat interesting because of its scope but not something I would attend of my own volition. The high school football season that followed was much more fun for me. My favorite memory as a reporter in Sturgis was when the 1983 Sturgis football team (Brown High School) cruised to 11 straight wins before falling in the state championship game. I left town the following year and went back to graduate school to get a business degree. I don't see that it would be much fun for me in Sturgis now; the Rally has only gotten bigger and more crowded (supposedly 500,000 participants), and in a few weeks the high school football team will bring a state-record 67-game losing streak into the season opener against the defending state champs. Oof!

So I'm not a biker, but maybe those six Rallies 1978-83 had some lasting effect. I'm watching American Chopper right now. Vinnie and Rick are the real stars. They should have their own show.

Performance Enhancers

So Rafael Palmeiro has been suspended for flunking a steroids test. Where will it all end? It won't. When lots of dollars are at stake, competitors will seek an edge, legitimate or otherwise. This is not a new concept! But when there are rules in place and it is proven that a competitor violates them, there should be consequences.

That means suspensions and fines of course, but I also think it would be beneficial to cut down on the garbage masquerading as news. I propose that players who get caught receive extra punishment if they tell us they were set up or it is all a mistake. I propose that teammates, team management, agents, family members, and the President of the United States (a pal of Palmeiro's) be flogged for acting as apologists and enablers. I propose that reporters, columnists and commentators who heard the chant of "Steroids!" directed at Jose Canseco way back in the '80's be prohibited, barred and enjoined upon threat of imprisonment from now acting surprised or indignant about recent revelations.

Finally, I propose that the Baseball Hall of Fame be closed to new inductees after next year. This is the consequence baseball and its players should suffer for perpetuating an institutional lie for so long, and would end the annoying debate about whether the chemical heroes of recent years deserve to be inducted.

But why wait until next year? Relief ace Bruce Sutter is the leading candidate for induction in '06. In fact, back in 1999 when I wrote on Squeezebunt.com about meeting Sutter and Frank Robinson, I assumed both of them were Hall-of-Famers and identified them as such. I was stunned later when I found out that Sutter hadn't been elected yet. What do you mean one of the greatest relief pitchers of all time isn't in the HOF? Sutter seemed like a nice guy so I'll vouch for him; I detected no roid rage. (Robinson, on the other hand, was a bit grumpy.)

Sutter

The situation changes drastically after next year. Canseco, Mark McGwire, and deceased drug addict Ken Caminiti are eligible for election in '07. Although McGwire is the only realistic selection of those three, it shows that the steroid era is about to hit Cooperstown hard.

Santana

In his last 20 starts, 2004 AL Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana of the Twins is 17-0, three short of the American League record held by Roger Clemens. His most recent victory was 2-1 over the sad-sack Royals last night, a game I witnessed in Kansas City. Jose Lima pitched well for the Royals but got no support. (Strangely enough, Lima also pitched the last game I saw in Kansas City several years ago when he was with the Astros.)

Between the two of them, Santana and Lima struck out 12 but also induced more soft popups than I've ever seen in a game. I think there were two hard-hit balls all night. The game-winning hit was a blooper that got over the 2nd baseman's glove by two inches.

Santana looks like the real deal. I suppose the last time I saw a pitcher dominate like that was when Pedro the Punk was in his prime back in '99.

The Royals though are another matter. The season already seems hopeless and it's still April. I was checking the schedule to see what other games I might be able to make it to this year – the weekend of May 14, the Devil Rays come to town. Plenty of good seats still available, I'm sure. The Rangers and a return visit by the Twins are slightly more promising.

Oh, for the glory days of George Brett and Bye Bye Balboni.