UNFAIR JUSTICE FOR A JERK......By Bill Rogan (7-8-05)
Texas Rangers Pitcher Kenny Rogers finally apologized for attacking two cameramen. It was several days too late and probably indicates the apology wasn't heartfelt. Actually, attacking is a harsh word to use for what he did. When I think of attack, I think of a guy throwing punches, stomping and kicking someone and basically beating the bejesus out of another person. Rogers merely shoved cameras off the shoulders of the cameramen and he kicked one of the cameras. Not a smart move since he had broken a finger a few days earlier punching out a water cooler.
What Mr. Rogers did was unprofessional, boorish, loutish and totally uncalled for.
What was also uncalled for was baseball handing down a 20-game suspension and a 50-thousand dollar fine. When did baseball become a bastion for gentlemanly behavior? Where in baseball's by-laws does it state that its players act like boy scouts?
Kenny Rogers showed the world that he is a major league jerk. He deserves to get fined and suspended for a couple of games. 20-games though? Much too severe. Steroid cheats get only 10-games for a first offense. Which is worse, a ballplayer gaining an unfair and unethical advantage through chemistry or a guy having a fit and hassling a couple of cameramen?
Athletes and the media, at times, have adversarial relationships. If every time a player gets into an altercation with a member of the media, should he be fined and suspended? Granted, most altercations are not of the physical variety. (Thank goodness. We all know that most media members can kick the living daylights out of athletes!)
I'm not apologizing for what Rogers did. There is no excuse for his behavior. Still, to suspend him for 20-games was a knee jerk reaction that was typical of the way baseball solves its problems.

WHEN LOSERS ARE WINNERS!.....By Bill Rogan (7-6-05)
The Summer Olympic Games of 2012 have been awarded and major congratulations are in order for......NEW YORK CITY! Congrats to the Big Apple for NOT getting the games.
Let the so-called "winner" London deal with the massive headache of hosting the Olympics.
Why would New York have even wanted to host the games? Actually, they didn't. I don't know one person from New York who thought it would be a good idea to have the Olympics disrupt their lives for the next seven plus years. The only person I know of who wanted the games in New York was Mayor Bloomberg, just another stuffy politician with a huge ego who thought he was doing everybody a favor by bidding for the games.
New York City schools are severely under-budgeted. The city infrastructure is falling apart. Traffic is a mess. Hosting the Olympics would be a huge financial drain on the city. Also, in this day and age of terrorism, how costly would it be to provide security for the games? Prohibitive is a word that comes to mind.
Let London enjoy the logistical and financial nightmare of hosting the summer games of 2012. Let London deal with the seven year struggle to host a two week event that people will forget three days later. Let London provide the enormous amount of security needed to host an event that probably ran its course years ago.
So again, I congratulate New York for not hosting the Olympics in 2012. Hopefully they won't waste time and money putting in bids for future Olympics games. Same to Paris, Moscow and Madrid.
As for London and the fine people of that city, good luck. Take some aspirin and see if you think it was worth it come August of 2012.

THE BLIZZARD BOWL.....By Bill Rogan (6-23-05)
Do we need another lame bowl game? There will be 28 bowl games this upcoming season. 28!
Well, sure we need another lame bowl game.....IF the game is in Denver.
Why shouldn't Denver have a college football bowl game? They have bowl games in outposts like Mobile, Boise and Fort Worth. Why not Denver?
Last season, the Houston Bowl, New Orleans Bowl, GMAC Bowl, Silicon Valley Bowl, Las Vegas Bowl, MPC Computers Bowl and the tradition-laden Champs Sports Bowl all drew less than 30-thousand fans. The Rose Bowl drew 93-thousand. Ok, bad example there.
Seriously, doesn't some bowl organizer realize that a bowl game in Denver would draw well more than 30-thousand?
We have the venue in the New Mile High. We have the fan base. I think there are more sports fans in the Denver metropolitan area than Boise. We can certainly round up a few old guys with ugly blazers to serve on the bowl committee.
I even have a name for the game....The Blizzard Bowl! Fans across America don't clamor for another bowl game played in beautiful sunshine and warm temperatures. We need a bowl game played in the snow. We can have the Colorado Ski Industry sponsor the Blizzard Bowl. Have Dairy Queen provide Blizzard Milkshakes. Instead of some stupid halftime extravaganza, have a ski-jumping competition from a ramp extending from the third deck of the stadium onto the field.
You ask, "But what if it's not snowing that day Bill?" No problem. Bring in snow making machines and blow it all over the place. A guaranteed game in the snow. Have Santa give the Blizzard Bowl Trophy (an ice sculpture!) to the frostbitten winning coach.
Since the game won't be deciding a national championship, who cares if the elements favor one team or another?
So there you have it, a plea for yet another bowl game. Right here. In Denver. The Blizzard Bowl. Instead though, they'll probably opt for another bowl game in San Diego and call it something like the Poinsetta Bowl. Wait, they already did that for this upcoming season. They should have just named it the Boring Bowl.

STATS ARE OVERRATED......By Bill Rogan (6-22-05)
Rafael Palmiero will, one day, be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He'll end up in the vicinity of 600 home runs with more than 3-thousand hits and close to 2-thousand rbi's.
Now, I ask you this....name a big home run Palmiero has hit. Not a clutch home run in a meaningless game in May, I'm talking about a home run or hit in a huge spot in a pennant race or in the post-season.
Give me a defining moment in Palmiero's career. Can't do it can you?
I'll help you out. The defining moment, to me, in Palmiero's career came in 2003. Ralphie was putting up his usual big numbers for the Rangers who were languishing at the bottom of the AL West standings. The Cubs, his original team, were in a pennant race and made a deal for Palmiero. You would think that after 18 World Series-less seasons, the sweet swinging first baseman would have jumped at the chance to go back to Chicago in the heat of the chase. You would think, right? Um.....no.
Rafael Palmiero, as was his right, vetoed a trade to the Cubs and the chance to play in the post-season in order to stay with the last place Rangers.
Palmiero is now with the Orioles who are having a surprisingly successful season thus far. Maybe Palmiero will request a trade to the Devil Rays so he can put up numbers in a non-pressurized environment.
The Hall of Fame voters have become much too stat oriented, too swayed and dazzled by numbers. Don't they remember actually watching these guys play? Do they need to be overwhelmed by stats to know who should be in the Hall of Fame or not?
I saw Jim Rice play. The same with Jack Morris, Goose Gossage and Kirk Gibson. Those guys should be in the Hall of Fame. Perhaps their stats aren't gaudy enough for the voters. Maybe they didn't play buddy-buddy with the media.
While Gibson's stats pale in comparison to Palmiero's, who would you rather have up in a key situation with the season on the line? Gibson was a winner. Palmiero isn't.
In my book, Rafael Palmiero will go down in history as one of the great stat compilers of all time. However, when I think of winning ballplayers, I won't think of Rafael Palmiero.

WE'RE #30!!!........By Bill Rogan (6-17-05)
Congratulations to the Colorado Rockies. They are, officially, the worst team in baseball. The Royals have a better record. So do the Reds, Brewers, Pirates and Tigers. Even the Devil Rays have a better mark. The Devil Rays!
The Rockies are the best at being the worst.
Todd Helton's career is dying at Coors Field where the fan's hopes have died long ago. The Rockies mismanagement group should trade Helton to a better team, which at this point, would be any team.
The marketing slogan is "Gen R". What does that mean? Perhaps the slogan should be, "Get a Few Wins!" Or, how about, "Devil Rays...we're coming to get you!"
This is a franchise that just drafted Timothy Brewer, a pitcher from the Virgin Islands. One problem. The kid is a junior in high school and ineligible for the draft. The Rockies claim they don't know how this happened. I'll tell you how it happened. This franchise is incompetent, that's how.
How else do you explain the fact that they took the love affair the fans had for this team for granted and now play before 30-thousand empty seats per game.
There is always an excuse. The altitude. Young players. Bad contracts. Free agent pitchers that didn't pan out. Fans are tired of excuses. Tired of slogans. Tired of being asked to be patient. Tired of watching minor league baseball at major league prices.
I'm tired of watching these losers and I'm not even a Rockies fan. I just want to see good baseball and witness a real pennant race every couple of years. Is that too much to ask? I get tired of watching the Rockies play the role of spoiler every season....beginning in May. This franchise is a laughing stock, but nobody's laughing. It is time the Monfort brothers sell the team. They need to sell the team. Immediately. They've proven inept at running a major league franchise. Time to let someone else take a crack at it.

A LEGEND PASSES........By Bill Rogan (6-5-05)
George Mikan passed away this week at the age of 80 after battling numerous health problems the past several years. Mikan was the NBA's first superstar, its first great big man. He helped put professional basketball on the map, leading the Minneapolis Lakers to five NBA championships.
The NBA was always quick to parade Mikan out for various events such as the 50-greatest players celebration a few years ago. However, the NBA, and more specifically the players union, wasn't so eager to help Mikan and the other early day players financially.
In an age where idiots like Latrell Sprewell complain that they can't feed their families on several million dollars a year, Mikan died with serious financial hardships brought on by his medical expenses.
Mikan's pension was 20-thousand dollars a year. Now that he has passed, his wife will get half of that. That is a disgrace.
Mikan was forced to sell off some of his memorabilia from his playing career to help pay the bills. Other players from the early days of the NBA have done the same. That is painfully sad and the players association should be ashamed of themselves.
The players who played and retired before 1965 when when the pension plan went into effect, have been and are getting shafted by the union. Initially, the pre-65ers as they are known, didn't get anything. Now they get peanuts which is a slap in the face.
The NBA and the players union are quarreling over a new collective bargaining agreement, both sides trying to gain as much as possible. That is what negotiating is all about.
But, wouldn't it be nice if there was some serious discussion on how to increase the benefits and pensions of the pioneers who created the foundation of the NBA?
Shaquille O'Neal, a player who has benefitted greatly from the efforts of the old-timers is going to pay for Mikan's funeral. This is a wonderful gesture on the part of Shaq. Perhaps he should be on the negotiating committee and lend a voice to those forgotten NBA players of yesteryear.

HE'S HUGE...AND NOT THAT GOOD! .....By Bill Rogan (5-24-05)
Would I want Shaquille O'Neal on my team? Of course. He is one of the most dominant NBA players ever. He is a certain Hall of Famer and will be talked about as an all-time great performer.
That said, Shaq is not a very good basketball player. Let me explain before you castigate me as a complete bonehead.
The ONLY reason Shaq is successful is because of his size and what he is permitted to get away with.
He's simply too big not to be good. He's 7-1, 325-plus pounds. He's enormous even by NBA standards.
Officials let him barrel over opponents like bowling pins on his charges to the hoop. He's never called for traveling which he does nearly every time he touches the ball. His footwork doesn't remind anyone of Hakeem Olajuwon. And, when was the last time O'Neal was called for a 3-second violation?
Skillwise, Shaq can't shoot beyond 6-feet. Take away the dunk and he'd be lost on offense. His free throw shooting percentage is embarrassing and he should accumulate more than his lifetime average of 12-rebounds per game. By comparison, Wilt Chamberlain, also 7-1, averaged close to 23-rebounds a game for his career.
If you shrunk Shaq down to normal sized proportions, the only way he would get into an NBA arena is with a ticket.
Let's make Shaq, for arguments sake, a foot shorter at 6-1 and drop him to 190 or so pounds. Mini-Shaq if you will. With his pure basketball skills, he would have trouble making a good high school team. He would certainly not be a Division one college player or find himself on an NBA roster.
I should point out that I like Shaq. I like him a lot. He's entertaining. A fan-friendly and charismatic character. He's also a dominant player, although, not necessarily one with very many skills. Unless you cound being a behemoth who has the officials in his back pocket a skill.

LONG LIVE RON BLOMBERG AND THE DH .....By Bill Rogan (5-17-05)
I'm an admitted baseball purist. Traditionalist. Whatever you want to call it.
I'm against domed stadiums, aluminum bats, expanded playoffs, interleague play and artificial turf (the stuff they play on, not the mediocre radio program).
However, people think that I'm a walking contradiction when I say I am in favor of the designated hitter.
The designated hitter has been around since 1973 so its not as if this is some kooky idea introduced last week by Bud Selig in a rare moment of inspiration. The DH has some tradition behind it.
I like the DH because I get sick and tired watching pitchers take feeble hacks. Nothing bores me more than a bases loaded situation early in a ballgame only to see some pitcher embarrass himself at the plate.
Of course, whenever a lousy hitting pitcher does manage a rare hit, someone is sure to say, "That's why we don't need the DH."
The DH allowed us the opportunity to see guys like Harold Baines and Edgar Martinez swing the bat, both borderline Hall-Of-Famers. Naturally, being designated hitters will probably hinder their chances of making it into Cooperstown because some Poindexters think the DH isn't a real position. It is.
The DH lets players who are defensive liabilities in the field extend their careers. Case in point, Paul Molitor and Don Baylor. Or would you rather watch a pitcher hitting .143 waste time in the batters box?
Some people claim the National League game is better because of all the moves a manager must make. Let me break this to you Tony LaRussa worshippers who think the double-switch is the greatest thing since televised poker...it isn't. The double-switch is not splitting the atom or a cure for cancer.
I enjoy the National League game. I prefer the American League version. It doesn't bother me that in one league the pitcher hits and the other he doesn't. You can have the best of both worlds by keeping the Designated Hitter in the A-L. As for the argument that the American League is at a disadvantage in the World Series because the DH is not used in National League parks, that's false. The American League has won 14 of the last 21 World Series matchups.
The DH also lets mashers who are defensive stiffs the chance to rip four times a game. A guy like David Ortiz of the Red Sox jumps to mind. Wait! As a Yankees fan maybe the DH isn't such a good idea afterall.
Seriously, the DH was a tremendous innovation in 1973 and continues to be a major benefit to the game. Keep it.