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“Cubs Win-Cubs Win-Cubs Win”

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I can still hear him in my heart, Harry Caray, the Hall of Fame Voice, shouting “Cubs-Win-Cubs Win”.

Of course he’s been gone awhile, and the Cubs didn’t win all that many games of importance while he was barking it out of the WGN booths at Wrigley Field.

But the Cubs did win with the early Monday morning trade to acquire Cuban relief ace Aroldis Chapman, and his 105mph fastball out of the bullpen, from the Yankees.

Chicago has bats, and the Cubs have arms, in the rotation, and now a rocket man coming ut of the pen to save games.

Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, Jason Hammel and John Lackey. That’s a pretty good four man rotation to run out there in the pennant race. Add Kyle Kendrick as a super utilityman, and last year’s 30-save guy Hector Rondon, and that’s alot of talent.

But Chapman is from another galaxy, solar system, with all world heat.

Keep in mind those bats are really something, from Kris Bryant to Anthony Rizzo, Ben Zobrist to Addison Russell, Jason Heyward to Dex Fowler, and the host of catchers they have.

And the Latin American alumni chapter at Wrigley Field is impresive too.

What is most amazing, GM-Jed Hoyer and President Theo Epstien have made deals, and haven’t moved any of the crop of cornerstone young players off the roster.

Aside from the Starlin Castro trade with the Yankees, the Cubs still have Jorge Soler, Javy Baez, Aris Alcantra, Kyle Schwarber, Pedro Stropp and Wil Contreras with the big club. And they still have a sugar-cane truckload of prospects in the system.

They’ve been building for this World Series run for a long, long time. The Curse of the Billy Goat covers lots of years.

Now they have a pitcher with a lightning bolt arm as a closer.

More now than ever, fans at the end of games can shout “Cubs Win-Cubs Win-Cubs Win” and have it really mean somthing. Harry Caray would love that.

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“This-That & The Other”

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Padres..When you figure out this team, let me know. they have a really poor record, have spent the season trying to find the daylight while in the basement, are trading away many of their veteran players, and yet they have 17-wins this year against teams that were in 1st or 2nd place.

Padres…Must tell you, am very disappointed when I hear Padres players tainting comments about the trade deadline of welcoming a deal to a pennant contendor, especially when some of them are making the kind of money they are making and are out of the pennant race again.

Dodgers…I don’t know how they survive this loss of Clayton Kershaw, likely headed to back surgery. Hyun Jin-Ryu is on the DL with elbow issues. Chris Hatcher, the setup man is gone. Brandon McCarthy is ailing. Bud Norris is not very reliable. There’s nothing left at Oklahoma City to trust.

Angels…Everyone I know was rooting for Tim Lincecum in his comeback, but reality is set in. There is no oomp to his fastball. The hip surgeries have takena way his mechanics. In his last 24-innings, he has given up 30-runs, 50-hits, and allowed 63-base runners.

Chargers…There are two storylines to pay attention too. Joey Bosa is still unsigned. The club should pay him much of his 17M bonus money upfront. It’s the way business is being done these days. The agent is wrong if he thinks he can break new ground and get a team to get rid of off set language in contracts.

Chargers…Mike McCoy wasn’t to blame for that (4-12) debacle of a season..but he needs to be in the postseason this year to retain his job. When you have a potential Hall of Fame quarterback and your franchise has won just 1-playoff game in 7-years, from Norv Turner to McCoy, the current status quo cannot be any longer acceptable.

Chargers…Surprised at the UT poll on the Stadium situation that so many people have worked so hard on. Only 30-percent of San Diego voters polled say they will vote yes on the Stadium referendum-hotel tax increase. 40-percent say they will vote ‘no’ and 30-percent don’t know. And there is growing resentment over downtown-vs-Qualcomm, with only 26-percent wanting downtown and a high 66-percent favoring the Q-sight.

Rams…They are the first NFL team to open camp, with rookies rolling in on Tuesday, and vets reporting Thursday. Coming in, is the 1st pick in the draft, quarterback Jared Goff. Back for his second year, is bright young running back Todd Gurley. Then there is a pretty good defense. And of course , 70,000-season tickets for home games this fall.

Media…A good game gone off track on television. The Padres have a superb TV broadcast package, led by Dick Enberg and newcomer Don Orsillo. Sunday’s telecast was poor, with fill in Jesse Agler working with Mark Grant. Too much ‘ha-ha’ non baseball stuff. Way too much talk. Let the game breathe. and speaking of ‘bad’, the Padres social hour telecast is is filled with really poor content, inside jokes, and pandering. Talk baseball, there are a thousand stories in the naked city. Too much noise.

Media….Is there a better writer with a better grasp of all things Olympics, with opinions on the matter than the UT’s-Mark Zeigler? Exceptional coverage. He should be the LA Times lead Olympic guys.

Media..The UT hired a cub reporter Rob Harms to cover Gulls hockey. He sat in the pressbox watching ACC-basketball games on his computer, not really covering the AHL team very well. Now he’s gone back to the Carolina’s. The UT didn’t do a very consistent, nor quality job, covering the team. There are hockey writers in this markete they could hire.

Media….the AHL Gulls deserve a better radio deal than they had on ESPN-1700, which you cannot hear. Making fans listen off your website wasn’t very satisfying. The broadcasts need to be better.

Media..Congrats to Todd Leonard for exceptional coverage of the British Open, and all things surrounding the week of Phil Mickelson in Scotland. His byline was featured in the LA Times.

Media..Good Luck to Todd Adams, ex-Assistant Sports Editor at UT..now at Detroit Free Press….Jay Posner, with more resources, now running sports staff, with chance to have his guys do more enterprise stories than ever..

Media..Congrats to friend John Kentera, for job well done running the San Diego Sockers as GM, and good luck heading to work as an Administrative Assistant to classy agent John Boggs. The coach, bird dogging players, sounds good to me.

Media..Josh Lewin, who has been doubling doing Mets baseball on radio, and Chargers games, as an out of towner, moves West, swapping out baseball to do UCLA football and basketball this year.

Gulls…Will be interesting to see what they do in goal this year. Last year’s starter, John Gibson, became the parent Anaheim Ducks starter. Then veteran Anton Khubodin, who drove them into the AHL playoffs, signed with the Boston Bruins. Ex-Montreal goalie Dustin Tokarski, coming off a knee surgery is under contract, but they need more, unless they are bringing back veteran Matt Hackett.

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“NFL Removes Doctor-Too Little-Too Late”

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Chargers and NFL fans need to do one of two things. You need need to get a copy of the controversial book “League of Denial”, that traces the history of the NFL concussion crisis, and the lawsuit that triggered a 935-Million payment to retired players.

Or you need to get access via Netflix or other sources, and see Will Smith’s acting performance, in the very controversial movie “Concussion”.

Just to refresh your memory as you glance at the couple of stories written this week about Dr. Elliot Pellman, the longtime New York Jets lead physician, who was forced out by the league as head of their “Concussion Committee”.’

Pellman has been at the center of the lawsuit filed by retired players, over the NFL’s treatment, or lack of treatment, of players who suffered concussions, dating all the way back to the 1970s.

Pellman, who was the personal physician of then Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, was named to head the committee, that supposedly did all types of research, or so they say, and came to the conclusion, there were no inherent dangers to players suffering concussions in games.

He was part of an NFL paid team that authored 14-different white papers on brain trauma, and fought off the insinuations of the doctors, who discovered CTE, the tau protein, that showed signs of impending brain damage.

Pellman was not a neurologist. He stone-walled, and stood firm as a 30-year NFL employee, that players were not in danger, going back on the field and playing.

And because of that public league stance, we saw the tragic suicide of Mike Webster, the death of other Steelers offensive lineman, the more recent suicides of Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, André Waters and so many others.

It was only thru the efforts of the research team at Boston University, we discovered 90-of-94 deceased players, whose brains were studied, had concussions and had CTE, and died early deaths because of all that trauma.

You may feel good now that the NFL has settled the lawsuit, is funding on-going research at Boston University, and has set aside money as payments for players with Dementia, Alzheimers, brain damage,personality disorders, ALS, and more.

Money is also set aside for the families of players, who killed themselves.

But don’t feel good yet, for not one penny has been paid to the ailing, ill and in some cases, near-death players yet. It is still tied up in courts and law offices.

Pellman leaves the NFL, not necessarily disgraced, for he was never blamed by the league for mistakes. They hid behind the theory that modern sports medicine helped determine what CTE was, and what tau protein was, and what was happening to players, who got hurt.

Of course, if you buy that, then you also bought the tobacco industry about no connection to Lucky Strikes and lung cancer.

Life will go on. NFL camps will open. Players will continue to get hurt. The league will tell you stats that concussions are down, and rule changes are in, to help and protect the players.

But what they want you to forget are the families who lost fathers, and husbands, brothers and sons to suicide. They don’t want you to see the players with acute mental and physical problems now, the aftermath of the big hits.

And somewhere this morning, the retired, forced-out, Dr. Elliot Pellman gets up in his life of retirement and will go golfing, for all is well in his life. Not so for the suffering players of his era. How he, Paul Tagliabue, and even Roger Goodell can stand in front of a mirror and act that all is well in the NFL is beyond me.

Go find the book on Amazon. Go find the movie to watch. Tell me you believe the NFL, then, or now. The doctor removed doesn’t solve the hurt so many have. Removing the doctor was too little-too late.

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“Dodgers Blue-New Meaning”

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It doesn’t get much worse than this, especially when you are amongst the rich and famous, and have tried to do so many things right.

In a span of 24-hours, the Dodgers lost 4-pitchers, to a wide variety of injuries.

A certain death-blow to their pennant hopes, which had been on the edge all season long, because of prior injuries and surgeries, and long rehabs.

Clayton Kershaw, as great an arm as modern day baseball has seen, is down again, and now the rumblings are back surgery may be coming to solve a herniated disc situation, he has dealt with over the last four weeks.

An equal to Sandy Koufax, and the more moderrn Randy Johnson and Steve Carlton, he has been an iron man as a starter for the Dodgers.

The statistics are staggering.

Pick any season, and they flash in neon lights.

Look at the career totals, (125-58) with a 2.39-ERA, (1,891-strikeouts) in (1,732-innings).

This is a huge loss, though pitchers have come back from disc issues.

The devastating Kershaw news came hours after pitcher Hyun Jin-Ry went back on the disabled list, with elbow problems, after just 1-start. This after 7-months or rehab work to recover from shoulder surgery, with its starts-stops-setbacks. They fear he may never be the same pitcher again.

Add to that the loss of setup reliever Chris Hatcher with an oblique, and the elbow surgery for a bone spur to ex-Braves pitcher Alex Wood, who has never been fully healthy, and this seems close to a death blow to Los Angeles in hopes of chasing down the first place Giants.

Starter Brett Anderson is still having his mail sent to the DL, not having recovered from his own arm surgery a year ago.

The Dodgers may be rich in payroll budget, they may have money to burn, based on the contracts they have eaten with all their failed Cubans, or the money paid to players they no longer wanted (Matt Kemp), but there is a limit to the adversity a franchise can handle.

They have young arms coming. Julio Urias is here, but is being monitored at age 19. Jose DeLeon might be the next to join the big roster.

And of course, with the trade deadline coming soon, they are rumored shopping up and down Yasiel Puig, in a package deal, to get a front line pitcher.

LA may be the 2nd biggest market in the country, may have the deep pocketed owners, but they can take only so many hits, and they have.

The atmosphere at Chavez Ravine probably is colored “Dodgers Blue”, but it has a different meaning now, than before.

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“Olympic Scandal-Epic Proportions”

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You think of Russia, you think of its history.

You remind yourself of its leaders, what they did to their country, what they did to the world, what they did in the war.

This generation thinks of Russia and thinks of its leader Putin, corruption, graft, scandal, forced takeovers of neighboring countries.

History remembers Gorbachov and the breakup of the Soviet block, and President Reagin’s request “take down that wall”, and it did come down.

The past generations would remember Nikita Kruschev, and the USSR, and the military state of existence as the USSR.

Our fathers generation knew of Russia, and the regime of Josef Stalin, the wars, the deaths, the agrarian and mechanized society.

As the Olympics appear before us, we remember Russia, and its athletes.

The most famous was the Red Army hockey team, that lost in the Lake Placid Olympics. More recently, we think of the greatness of its gymnastics teams, or its basketball teams.

And now another horrific issue, involving Russia, a doping scandal of epic proportions.

The IOC is about to ban all Russian athletes from competing in the next few weeks from Rio, after the World Anti Doping Agency, (WADA), uncovered a massive state-run drug testing cheating campaign.

Over 311-tainted drug tests, hidden by Russians, replaced by other samples, that were turned over to WADA. More than 150-athletes in all, in various sports, allowed to compete in Moscow and in Sochi, eventhough coaches and administrators knew they were dirty. At least 31-gold medals won by those athletes in a a wide variety of sports.

Putin refuses to comment on the nearly 2-year probe. The scandal stretches back at least five years in this probe, but who knows how really far back it goes.

The remnants of cheating goes as far back as East Germany and the Olympics in the 1970s.

Russia would not be the first country banned from the Olympics. It’s happened before. South Africa went thru a decade long banishment because of aparthied. Afghanistan, because of its ties to the Taliban. India, because of bribery charges. And off course, post World War II, Germany and Italy.

We’ve had the US boycott in the Carter administration. And of course, the IOC and FIFA is reeling because of the the bribery and kickback financial scandals, unveiled in the last year.

Professionalism and big business are not at the intersection of the Olympic games. Gone forever is the linked rings logo that used to symbolize amateurism.

The simple solution is quite complex. Independent global testing, not done by a country’s federation. But to execute it in a timely fashion, leading into the games, is a logistical nightmare.
Testing in Boston is not the same as testing in Kiev. Testing in Congoville, may not be as easy as testing in Copenhagen. And it goes on an on.

There are clean athletes in Russia, not tainted by all this. A move to allow them to compete ‘unattached’ as independents, running and jumping without wearing a uniform with a flag, was proposed. But there is so much anger now over the depths and the tentacles of those who ran and financed this massive scandal in Russia, the bitterness will not subside.

We’ll watch America’s great swimmer, the Japanese gymnasts, the brilliant Ethiopian distance runners, but things just won’t feel the same.

The world athletics federations feel betrayed again. From Stalin to Putin, nothing seems to have changed in Russia, style, personality or methodology.