“Viva Havana”

I don’t know if baseball will ever-ever become the favorite past time of sports fans in America.  The NFL has seen to that.

But baseball is still very popular, and never more so than what we will see this morning (10:30am) PST from Havana, as the Tampa Bay Rays play an exhibition game against the Cuban national team.

MLB officials will be there.  President Obama will be there.  The Castro regime will be there.  And baseball fans across the US and the Carribbean will be there in spirit, watching, if not in person.

The Cold War with Russia and Cuba is long ago.  We have new enemies now creating global tensions.  But the 90-miles of Gulf Coast waters seemed like a solar system distance after Russia and Fidel Castro took over the island in 1959.

Baseball was beloved in Cuba.  The 1930s thru the 1950s saw a tremendous pathway of Cuban stars to the states, from Minnie Minoso, to Camilo Pascaul, Pedro Ramos to Tony Oliva, Luis Tiant and others.. .  Baseball in Cuba gave us great leaders in Bobby Maduro and Nap Reyes, names only old timers would recognize, but names who influenced many coming from Cuba to the US.

The Havana Sugar Kings were a legendary minor league team in the International League.  The Cuban winter leagues saw great teams in Cienfuegos, Santa Clara, and many other Cubsn cities, where major legue players wintered abroad, played ball, and played blackjack in the casinos.

When Castro took over in 1959, it was as if time ceased. There would be no Cuba, as we knew it as young baseball fans, for 40-years.  Time ceased in Cuba too economically.  A thrid world country, no facilities like running water and electricity grids in parts of cities.  You can see Edsels and DeSotos still on the streets of Havana.  Poverty is rampant.

Slowly a trickle, then a tidal wave of baseball players started to defect.  Rene Achoa, a Cardinals pitcher, was one of the first.  then Livan and Orlando “El Duque”Hernandez.  Since then, we all know the names, Puig, Aroldis Chapman, Jose Abreau and the next one to come, Lazarito.  Yes Cuba has its WBC team.  It has its own so-called major league Serie Nacionale, but its athletic programs are full of corruption, military interference and intimidation still.

If you talk to players of Cuban descent, Yonder Alonso in partcular, Americanized now after coming as a child, they can relate the hardships in Cuba, relayed to them by parents.  Escapes thru sugar cane fields, boarding planes in the middle of the night, taking rafts, stealing boats, fearing for your life.

I am sure in Little Havana, part of the city of Miami, there will be some joy of Cuban citizenry, but there will be some resentment too, for lost family members, persecution, prosecution, and the deathly ill-fated, oft-forgotten Bay of Pigs Invasion.  Our only modern day references of Cuba stretch from the Cuban Missle Crisis to Guantanamo.

Maybe today becomes more than just a game on the Grapefruit Circuit schedule for Tampa Bay.  Maybe President Obama can open trade relations, and start a free flow of goods and services to Havana, and a flow of players and visitors from the island stateside and back.

Once upon a time, Cuba was special.

The antangonistic Raul Castro-Obama press conference took on nasty dimensions.  Solving decades of oppression cannot be easily forgiven.

Maybe baseball can be the catalyst to fix all the ills that have plagued the island country since the Castro win over Batista.

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“This-That-Some of the Other”

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Did you get your money’s worth out of the first weekend of March Madness?  Blown leads, last second shots, tons of 3-point shots,  and 12-higher seed teams getting beat.

Texas A& M shoots 22% in first half, then comes from 10-points back in final (:30) to force double overtime and win against Northern Iowa.  Poor kids from Cedar Rapids.

Arkansas Little Rock’s fabulous (30-4) season ended with a stomping by Iowa State.

Stephen F-Austin knows what Northern Iowa is feeling, after letting a 6-point lead get away in the final  seconds, losing to Notre Dame.

Wisconsin, in the memory of former star Frank Kaminski, hit back to back 3’s in the final (:20) to stay alive.

Gonzaga does what they do best, their big men went wild shooting for all over the court, 8-treys early, and a win over Utah, leading at one point by 30.  You know Utah, from the PAC-12 conference.

Duke had Yale by 27 at one point, then the Eli’s rallied to cut the lead to four, but the Devils found a way to beat the Ivy Leaguers.

Villanova, playing pretty angry, after a late season fade knocked them out of a number one seed, was relentless in Iowa. 59% shooting in the opening half did not hurt either.

The blue bloods fot it cranked up but it was Indiana kicking Kentucky out the door, as John Calipari ran out of 1-and-done players.

That time of the year, springtime, so Kansas is rolling to a (31-4) record with all its shooters and still alive.

Oregon can breathe this morning after nearly getting taken out from their number 1-seed slot.  They live to play Duke next.

Of course it was tough sledding for some of the little guys early on in the tourney.  Just glad to get in but then getting run out.

Austin Peay got popped; Florida Gulf Coast was one and done; no more miraculous comebacks from Fresno State; Stony Brook lost its first game then lost its coach the next day to a better job and Cal Bakersfield put up a fight but then lost to Oklahoma.

It was just the first weekend, so on we go to the Sweet 16, and the only ones left will be the big boys, all the other wannabes and hope-to-be’s are now gone.

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“Shooting Air Balls & 3’s”

“The NFL-900 Page Rule Book”

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This will be some interesting week next week in Boca Raton. NFL owners, GMs, Coaches head to Boca Raton and they will examine more potential rule changes.

How many? 19-proposals, some of them radical, some of them stupid, all that will be discussed, thanks to the Competition Committee.

 
The experiment put into place last year worked, the one where the PAT after Touchdowns became a 33-yard field goal attempt. What was a 99% certainty when the old rule was in place, became a risky proposition in 2015.

NFL kickers missed a record 71-point after kicks last year with the ball placed at the 15-yard line, making the PAT a mid-range field goal. The conversion rate was 92-percent, though with the exception of the Steelers, few clubs felt a need to forego the longer extra point, rather than try to for a 2-point conversion after scores. It was the worst PAT kicking since 1977.

 
Only 5-of-32 teams hit on 100% of their kicks. The Jaguars went a perfect (48-for-48), and Atlanta was next (39-for-39). The Chargers, aside from a late season fade from kicker Josh Lambo, finished (39-for-41), a 95% conversion rate.

 
The worst, the team with the biggest leg kicker in the league. The Raiders and Sebastian Janikowski, converted a league worst 88%, missing 4-PATs.

 
The NFL liked it, even if coaches might not have. The long distance PAT will be put into place forever, if it gets the 24-yes votes needed to make it permanent.

 
There are all types of wild ideas about instant replay. Buffalo wants every play available for replay. That won’t happen.

 
What might happen though, is an expansion of replay, where everybody, red-flag happy Rex Ryan included, gets 3-challenges per game, win or lose.

 
There is also debate of using replay to evaluate personal foul penalties on defenseless players, that will merit strong discussion.

 
The Competition Committee has spent the off season arguing about Ejection rules. A discussion that 2-personal foul penalties, that include helmet hits, defenseless receiver hits, blows to the QB head and knees, plus kicking, punching, taunting, could lead to ejections. There were 75-unsportsmanlike conduct flags last year, and only 2-instances, the Josh Norman-Odell Beckham incidents, that a player could have been ejected.

There will be arguments to better define what is a catch vs no catch, but that will be language, not a rule change.

 
The teams will also look at a yardage penalty. If you get a half the distance penalty pushing you back towards your goal line, they want to add the yardage to the distance to the first down. So a holding call, that might cost you 2-yards at the line of scrimmage, would see the other 8-yards extended out, making the first down marker further down the field.

 
And then there is safety at hand. The NFL will look at changing the touchback rule, trying to end major injuries, telling guys in the end zone, if you elect to take the touchback, we’ll give you the ball at the 25-not-the 20. Kick returners might just consider that a victory, rather than trying to haul a kick back 100-plus-yards or getting hurt in the process.

 
Shall be fun next week in Boca Raton, where the NFL wants to improve the game, even if it makes it more complicated by adding pages to the bulging NFL rule book.

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“Road to the Final 4-Plenty of Potholes-Roadblocks”

 
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Bring it on. It starts this morning and it runs 3-weeks, the NCAA Tourney, March Madness as known to the frenzied fans.

 
It’s somewhat akin to the old high school tourneys across the states decades ago, you know, one size fits all. Something like from the movie “Hoosiers” where tiny Hickory has the chance to maybe beat South Bend.

 
You know the blue bloods in the field, and in your brackets, North Carolina, Kentucky,Kansas and more.

 
There are those who have come out of nowhere to be something special this season, like a Virginia or a Baylor.

 
There are the historical names too, Duke and Indiana, not what they used to be, but still pretty good.

 
And then there are Cindarella’s, hoping the wheel doesn’t fall of the coach, or the glass slipper breaks. People like Arkansas-Little Rock, Stony Brook, even Gonzaga.

 
The tourney has been a spectacular show of last second jump shots to win games, heart-wrenching last possession turnovers that lose games. Coaching, yelling, foul calls, rabid fans, with their faces painted.

 
There have been so many unique stories about the ending of these games.

 
Christian Laettner’s amazing turnaround jumper for Duke with split tenths of a second left on the clock.

 
The missed shot-put back that put North Carolina State and its late coach Jim Valvano into history.

 
The dominance of a Bill Walton performance. The emergence of a tiny schools like George Mason, or Penn, or Princeton getting to the Final Four.

 
You may gripe that a (12-19) Holy Cross didn’t earn a chance to be in the show, but they did by somehow winning their tourney.

 
You cannot duplicate the excitement at a tiny place like Florida Gulf Coast University, and what it means to be in the field of 64.

 
And Butler has captured the hearts of America, from the birthplace of the game, the state of Indiana, to be the tiny engine that could.

 
Of course, you cannot forget the heart break of an mistaken Michigan timeout, or a backwards Georgetown pass that became a critical turnover, or the craziness of watching Rollie Massamino lose his mind as his team was winning the title.

 
We’ll see some upsets, some tears, lots of cheers before this first weekend is done. Waiting to see is some 15th ranked team takes out a number two. You always wonder about the dangers of an 8-9. A number one has never lost to a 16, but that’s why they play these games.

 
Before we’re done, we’ll get to see Bill Self and Roy Williams, Coach K, and and Calipari match wits, Xs and O’s, and substitution strategy.

 
But first we must watch what happens today and tomorrow, then Saturday and Sunday. It cannot be duplicated in any other sport, what NCAA basketball has brought to us, as the calendar reads “March Madness

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