-0-

“Padres-What Did You Expect”

-0-

Well that was nice. Thanks for giving up a month of interesting baseball. Now you are where I said you would be.

The Padres tailspin has begun, after a bit of a suprising start to the season.

San Diego is in last place now in the National League west, as we hit the quarter pole of the schedule.

The Friars are (15-27), and on a pace to go (60-102)…exactly where I said they would be by season’s end.

Saddled with journeyman starting pitching, Jhoulys Chacin and Trevor Cahill have pitched better than I thought they would, mostly at home. They compete.

Clayton Richard has given the team two really good outings, that’s all. Jered Weaver has allowed a ton of home runs, and has shown us why the Angels cut him free.

Luis Perdomo has pitched well for six-seven innings at a stretch, but has not gotten much run support.

The bullpen is showing signs of fatigue, and we are just a quarter of the way into the season. Overuse seems to be draining Brad Hand and Brandon Mauer.

Very disappointing on defense, especially in the outfield, where three rookies are starting.

The infield has been spotty on defense, especially at short and 3rd base.

A great start for Wil Myers, hitting over .300 with power, and seeing more strikes than I thought he’d ever see, considering there isn’t much run support around him.

Hunter Renfroe has shown great resolve to work thru bad stretches, witnessed by the (4-42) slump with 20-strikeouts. He has bounced back.

Manny Margot has had a good start at the top of the batting order.

But more times than not, Andy Green sends out a lineup card that has 4-of his 8-hitters batting (.220) or less, and how are you supposed to compete with that at bat?

The fans are starting to lose interest, and it’s not even June. Take aways the tremendous opening homestand of the season against the hated Giants, and the Padres attendance has plunged.

On the year, averaging (25,771), but minus the opening series, the team is averaging just over (22,400), fifth worst in baseball. They already have 11-home crowds of 19,000 or less.

So much for the promise of ‘wait till next year’ and they have lots of dates, and lots more empty seats to come.

What I expected. Not very good on the field, and probably won’t get much better this season at least.

-0-0-0-0-

-0-

“Aztecs Playing Poker-Might Lose Badly”
by Lee ‘Hacksaw’ Hamilton

-0-

San Diego State football is on the clock, and time is running out for them to find the land and financing for a new football stadium.

The Aztecs sent out a stern press release last night, saying they were breaking off negotiations, with the City and with Soccer City exec Nick Stone, refusing to accept terms for a joint MLS-Aztecs football stadium at the Qualcomm sight.

This comes after Mayor Kevin Faulconer attempted to barter a deal as a go between to find a solution to the stadium size controversy that FS-Investors is proposing.

But its deeper than that.

It’s not just an Aztecs demand for 35,000 base seats plus the ability to expand to 40,00 in the future.

It’s not just the argument, who pays for the additional construction if-when expansion happens.

It’ really about an SDSU power play to try and get a gift of 35-additional acres of land for advanced planning for campus expansion going forward over the next 3-decades. The Mission Valley land is the front door for campus expansion in the future.

But the deal has so many complexities.

Soccer City says it needs the majority of the land to help fund all the project they want. It they give up 35-acres to SDSU, FS is left with just 25-acres for their owner use, plus the 15-acres reserved for an NFL stadium.

San Diego State has enjoyed success on the football field over the last 7-years, but they do not move the needle in the community. They average less than 19,000-paid fans per game, with student tickets taking up the rest.

They desperately need a home as Qualcomm Stadium faces closure in 2018. The Padres, civic gesture, say they’d make it Petco Park available, for jut one year, a no-solution situation.

The school’s president is exiting shortly. The interim president does not seem to have the juice to execute a deal. The new Athletic Director, JD Wicker, needs to find the solution, but seems to be knuckling under to on campus pressure to use the football program as the bargaining chip for the land grant they need, want, demand.

SDSU says there is a developer out there, but he has not surfaced publicaly.

The mayor wants-needs to move from the crumbing Q-sight, and the money drain it has become for decades.

Now animosity is building, name-calling following…and Soccer City on the clock themselves

If John Moores is the Aztecs ‘sugar daddy’ then he needs his JMI-firm to step front and center and get into negotiations. If the Aztecs have a different developer, then maybe they need to go public, and buy up different tracks of land, and let FS move ahead with its 79-acres proposal.

Of course, that would then lead to two stadiums being built, one for MLS at 22,000, the other for the Aztecs, with their shovel of dirt in the ground, which makes little sense at all.

This is a big gamble at San Diego State It appears this is a power play by SDSU. And there should be a warning to the Aztecs.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer would not be bullied by Dean Spanos and the big time NFL into giving away the farm. I doubt he’s going to be pushed into an SDSU deal by a school that draws 15,000-paid fans per game.

This looks like big time poker. SDSU should not be trying to bluff the city into a transaction and at the same time, get Soccer City to fold its cards.

If the Aztecs lose this hand, don’t make a deal, Soccer City will go ahead without them. And San Diego State will be in bigger trouble than the football program has had dating back to the 1970s, when people wanted to drop the sport.

Show’em….fold’em ….I don’t like what I see right now at the negotiating table.

-0-0-0-0-0-

-0-

“Hockey and Headhunting”

-0-

The NHL playoffs are on us, and so is the raging debate.

Back in the day, the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs were about being a bully.

The Broad Street Bullies, the Flyers, rumbled their ways to raise the Cup. And there was the era of the Big Bad-Bruins.

Of course we had the legendary run of LeBleu-Blanc-Rouge, the Montreal Canadiens.

And Gretzky and the Great Ones around him with the Edmonton Oilers.

Brawling is pretty much gone in the NHL. You don’t need policeman now on the ice, you need hockey players who can fly.

The fighting has disappeared, but what has reared its ugly head now are head shots, in the most important time of the year..

Over the last group of years we have seen brutal hits. An open ice Scott Stevens blast that concussed the Ducks Paul Kariya, and virtually led to his retirement.

Kris Draper of Detroit was checked head first into the boards, in what could have become a broken neck.

Nathan Horton of Toronto, his career over by a neck injury on a pulverizing hit.

And now Sidney Crosby, the superstar artist of the Penguins, out for likely the rest of the playoffs with another concussion.

Some called it a bang-bang play, when he was pushed thru the crease, into oncoming Washington defenseman Matt Niskanen. As Crosby fell foward, Niskanen’s hockey stick caught him on the jaw, with the suddeness of a car crash-head on.

Player goes down, does not move, and when he does, you can see in his eyes he is badly hurt.

A 5-minute major for the injurious hit, but no fine nor suspension in the aftermath in the NHL league office probe.

The You Tube video gives you lots of angles. How quick the play developed. How Crosby was pushed into the contact. How player head and stick arrive at the same time at that spot. How the Washington player seemed to flick his arm putting power behind his stick.

It does beg the question, in the post-season, is there a different set of rules, on hitting? Play on rather than whistle a major penalty..

It begs the question also, do you play the puck, or play the man? Take over the puck, or takeout the other team’s star?.

There doesn’t seem to be much on video that shows intent, but there have been so many crushing checks in the first and second round of these playoffs, you wonder if the NHL needs to do more, for the crushing blows seem greater now, at the most important time of the season. .

Putting policeman back on the ice doesn’t help. Putting teeth into sanctions for players, who hurt players, is really the right road to travel.

Sidney Crosby’s road is ‘dark’ right now. This superstar has now had 5-concussions, and has missed (117) career games in Pittsburgh.

Hockey and head hunting. More needs to be done about this. NHL are you listening, watching, caring?

-0-0-0-0-

-0-

“Do People Deserve Second Chances?”

-0-

It’s a question always being asked, and now so this week in places like Cincinnati and Oakland.

History in the NFL is filled with players who had lots of problems. Some were given 2nd chances and did well, others self-destructed.

The Rams drafted running back Lawrence Phillips, who had a career track record of violent outbursts, but was allowed to play at Nebraska. Cornhuskers coach Tom Osborn warred with the media who inquired why Phillips was on the team after a violent outburst with a woman he was dating, dragging her by the hair down a stairwell.

Osborn was furious when asked, ‘what if it had been your daughter, would you have let him return to the team?”

A social misfit, Phillips played, was drafted by the Rams, and washed out with more violent incidents off the field. He killed himself in prison last year.

Christian Peter, another Nebraska star, was drafted by the Patriots, but the owner ordered his release, because of a violent incident with a woman in college. He never played again.

Tight end Jeremy Stevens had alcohol and legal issues at Washington, but was drafted. Given lots of chances, he could never stay out of trouble, and was soon gone.

The list goes on and on, including a series of Cowboys draft picks, most recently drug craving pass rusher Randy Gregory.

In the NFL, Adrian Peterson was allowed to return, after an ugly child-beating incident. Carolina’s Greg Hardy, involved in a bad domestic abuse case, resurfaced in Dallas, but lasted one year.

Ray Rice never got his career back after the 1-punch video while with the Baltimore Ravens. Ex-49er-Raider Aldon Smith remains out of the league because he can’t stay out of trouble.

The league has been harsh with multiple time drug offenders like the Browns talented and troubled wide receiver Josh Gordon, and many more.

It leads us to where they are today, with Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon and Raiders cornerback Gareon Conley. The Bengals are taking enormous heat for the Mixon pick. Conley is professing innocence and the Raiders said they did all their due diligence.

The video of Mixon sucker punching his girlfriend, shattering 4-bones in her face, is hideous. It was worse that the Ray Rice video.

Conley issue is so called consensual sex, a ‘he said-she said’ case.

The NFL, which has taken stern measures against players who break the law, domestic abuse, DUI, drugs, guns, says it does not have the power to discipline players for what they did in college.

The Bengals believe they have to give Mixon his second chance, not out of Mike Brown’s benevolance, but rather the running back’s gifts. They did the same thing with troubled linebacker Vontaze Berfect.

Yes, the NFL cannot discipline them coming into the league, but you can believe, they will keep an open file, and if those players, or others with troubles, step out of line, once they step into the NFL, the sanctions will be severe.

Do they deserve second chances? I guess so. But Joe Mixon and people of his ilk better understand, second chance is a last chance, for them even if they are in the NFL.

-0-0-0-0-0

-0-

“Clippers-at-NBA Crossroads”

-0-

What’s an owner to do?

Steve Ballmer bought the lowly Clippers franchise for 2B-taking it out of the darkness and disgrace of Donald Sterling owner.

He signed his core players,paid them handsomely, developed his own class of fans at the Staples Center, and saw them win games.

They’ve done everything right, except the biggest thing, win in post-season.

So now Ballmer is at a crossroads, and his President-GM-Coach Doc Rivers, should be in the crosshairs too.

The Clippers have found their niche in LA because the Lakers have been so bad for four years running. But make no mistake about it, the Lakers heritage forever outshines the Clippers. And the minute the Lakers start to win, the Clippers, will drop off the front page and the lead stories on the TV sportscasts. and the front page.

Ballmer has tough decisions. He gave Rivers the authority, the money and the players, and the Clippers put up winning seasons of 51-53-56-56-57 in season.

Post-season, they have never delivered. First round failures. Second round blowouts. A tough seige of injuries. Too many early exits. They don’t give trophies for trying in the NBA.

And now what does he do with the options he has to pick up on stars Blake Griffin and Chris Paul? Are you going to give them 21-23-25M per year going forward, considering what has been their most recent past?

They are paying lots of money to center D’Andre Jordan, but they’ve never made it count in April, much less into May, and never into June.

Might they be better dealing off a star or two, regroup with young talent, and try a different style.

The owner has done great things, the players and the coach have not.

You could wait another year or two, and hope they can take the next step. You can hope the injury issues plaguing Griffin will be history. Or you could worry, if you keep them all, you wake up one morning with an older team, that still has not gone deep into postseason.

The Clippers, for all the glitter, are still not Golden State nor San Antonio nor Cleveland. And with this roster, they just never will be.

Clippers basketball. It won’t slink back to the Sterling era, but you don’t want to become the Phoenix Suns, with proud past and pitiful existence now.

You lost to the Utah Jazz, a rag-tag franchise of young players. What does that tell you about your franchise, and what you should do next?

Cross-roads, crosshairs, time to cross some names off the roster and staff directory.

-0-0-0-0-