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“This-That-Some of Other”

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Busy time, lots of stuff in my notebook.

SUPER BOWL PREP….The Eagles feel disrespected, because they have not received the national attention the Patriots have in this first week leading up to the Super Bowl. Of course you haven’t. Coach Doug Pederson popping off to bring the attention to him, not on his players. Keep the pressure off them. Of course the Patriots are going after their 6th Super Bowl ring in the Bill Belicheck era. The Eagles last championship was 1960.

NFL COACHING…All the head coaching slots are filled. Am surprised, no interviews for long time Oilers-Titans-Rams coach Jeff Fisher. He did have 167-career wins.

COORDINATORS ON THE MOVE….They weren’t good head coaches, but as coordinators, not bad, so Mike McCoy gets hired by the Arizona Cardinals, after NOrv Turner lands with the Carolina Panhers. Norv will work to improve Cam Newton’s 58% completion percentage. McCoy should work on getting Carson Palmer to reconsider retirement.

GM GONE FROM VIEW….An interesting year for firings of GM’s. It does amaze me AJ Smith was never given a chance to run a club again. His first four years, and his philosophies merited consideration for a second go round.

MIAMI MARLINS SCOREBOARD…They have now dealt away 4-frontline everyday players, starting with Giancarlo Stanton and now the Christian Yelich deal last night. They got 13-minor league players as part of all these trades. Wonder if Derek Jeter will charge minor league prices for the minor league roster he is putting on the field.

WHO BLINKS NEXT….With Milwaukee’s signing of OF-Lorenzo Cain you wonde if this opens the gates for other marquee free agents to sign shortly, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Yu Darvish, Jake Arrieta and others. Spring training is 3-weeks away, and there are some 130-veterans still unsigned in free agency.

HOUSECLEANING IN CLEVELAND…Waiting for an implosion with the Cavaliers, now (4-11) in the last month. No chemistry, not a shred of quality defense, and a flawed roster. You think LeBron James stays after this season?

HOCKEY HURTING…The Kings have one of the highest payrolls in the NHL, but cannot score consistently. They are on the outside looking in for the playoffs. That’s what happens averaging 2.7 goals per game. What’s worse, GM-Rob Blake is still saddled with bad contracts he cannot move. The Ducks seem poised to make a playoff run, after having had 12-significant injuries, but they still have a long uphill run to get to postseason.

TIGER TALES….He isn’t the same golfer, but he draws the crowds. Tiger Woods started with a couple of bogeys, nearly had an ace, and finished even par at Torrey Pines in the opening round of the Farmers Insurance Open. He hit it a ton, good sign, but is iron play and putting was still shaky. He looks different, not as thick as before, his swing is different too, but he seems healthy, and willing to go slowly in this comeback from his fourth back surgery.

MICHIGAN STATE MASSACRE….It’s only beginning in East Lansing, the resignation of the President of the school in the wake of the Larry Nassar sex scandal case with the US Gymnastics Olympic team. Look next for coeds in different sports to come forward at MSU. Might this be as bad as the Penn State sex scandal? Time will tell.

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Hall of Fame-Who Could Have Imagined This?”

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“Baseball Hall of Fame-Who Could Have Imagined”

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Hell’s Bells-what a day for a great pitcher and a great person.

Trevor Hoffman, legendary closer, now a Baseball Hall of Famer.

Not bad for a (.211) hitting shortstop, who could not hit a curvball.nor a slider, but sure could sure throw them.

The Cincinnati Reds didn’t see anything in him. The Miami Marlins didn’t have the patience to grow him.

Then Padres GM-Randy Smith, and then Kevin Towers, both saw special qualities, physically and mentally, to allow him to grow on the job. The Gary Sheffield for Trevor Hoffman trade sure did work out.

The Padres, for all their failures, should be credited for identifying the roles of various pitchers. The first to do it, they developed the philosophy of setup men in baseball. Look at what the game has become.

He rode those pitches, and 601-saves and his (2.87ERA) into Cooperstown. Number two on the all time saves list, probably a never to be challenged again total, second only to Mariano Rivera of the Yankees.

The stats are staggering. The first ever to get to 500-saves…the first to get to 600-career saves. 41-saves in a row. 10-times he recorded 40-saves or more in a season.

19-years in the majors, 16-years a Padre. He helped reinvent the role of pitches who come out of the bullpen

Humble, modest, reserved, classy, and now about to be enshrined.

Memories of the music blaring as he came out of the bullpen. Memories of watching him buckle the knees of power hitters with his breaking stuff. Watching him answer all questions whether it was after a great day, or an odd bad day.

And memories of the Yankees sweeping the Padres four straight in the Fall Classic, but fans at Jack Murphy Stadium refusing to allow Hoffman and his teammates to leave the field, with a standing ovation that went on and on and on, on a day they were eliminated.

And now just think, there will be a spotlight shining on his plaque in Cooperstown, just like there is one shining on the gold plaque shining honoring Tony Gwynn in that same hallway.

The best part of Trevor Hoffman, aside from the saves, wins, and his stay with the Padres, is this.

Hoffman-Hall of Fame-it is forever in Cooperstown.

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“Golf’s Greats-Liked-Disliked”

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They tee off on Thursday, the two modern day greats who have carried the Pro Golf Tour for over a decade.

Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods were the modern day icons, almost equal to Jack Nicklaus and Arnie Palmer in the 60s and 70s, and possibly Ben Hogan-Sam Snead and other back in the day.

It would be unfair to say it’s sad to see what the two superstars have become, because they are still out there on the tour, giving fans great rounds of golf, but not stringing together four days of greatness as they did in years gone by.

What was then is not what is today. Age and injury have caught up with both, so have personal issues too.

Tiger Woods is attempting a second comeback, after shutting it down a year ago right after he played at Torrey Pines, leading to another back surgery.

Woods has had 3-surgeries in 14-months, four back operations in all, in addition to the leg surgery for a fractured knee, suffered here in winning the US Open.

Of course his life off the course has become a public mess. The meltdown of his marriage over his infidelities and the height of his career. A year ago, his arrest on DUI charges with a cocktail of pan killers in his system.

He has been in rehab twice, for a sexual addiction and then the painkiller problems. He lost his sponsors, lost his credibility, lost his wife and kids.

Mickelson has never come off the tour because of injuries, but has been plagued by arthritis. Off the course, his involvement with a convicted gambler on insider trading charges has hurt his reputation.

But both are still magnets to the fans and the TV ratings.

Fans and the golf media follow Woods, whether he is hitting off the tee, or coming out of rehab.

Mickelson is indeed the fans man, and draws huge galleries of so many appreciative of his personality and interactions with one and all.

The stats remain staggering, considering how global the game has become, and how many great international golfers are now part of the tour.

Woods with 79-career wins and 14-Grand Slams. He’s won 7-times here at Torrey Pines.

Phil has 42-wins, 5-majors, and 6-runnerups in the US Open, the only grand slam he has yet to get.

But the drought has been staggering too. Woods last major win was here, at the US Open in 2008, before his health, life and career fell apart.

Mickelson has not won on the tour since 2013 and has not been a leaderboard top guy on a Sunday in years.

They have meant so much to the sport dating from the late 1990s to where we are 17-yaars later.

Unfair to say hanging on or just hanging around, because they are so revered, as players, and at least in Mickelson’s case, as a person.

They will have a following for sure this weekend in the Farmers Insurance Open….they just likely won’t ever win a PGA tourney event again.

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“The Olympics-the Darkest Moment”

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The greatest events we see every four years have been sandwiched by scandals and tragedies.

The what is happening as we prepare to watch the Winter Olympics in South Korea, seem to be the worst of all time.

Society has watched the terrorist tragedies of the Munich Olympics, you never forget the TV coverage of the Olympic dorms, the seized airliner, the kidnappers in ski masks.

You remember the bitterness of the forced boycott of the Olympics during the Jimmy Carter era.

Recently the era of tampered drug tests and the expulsion of the Russian athletes for a far reaching scandal.

Mexico City gave us the Black Power salute of the American sprinters and the horrid flashback at John Carlos and Tommie Smith.

And of course, the scandals about bribes and kickbacks on bids as countries built facilities that nearly bankrupted them, while the IOC got richer and richer.

All that pales now to what has happened to more than 150-female athletes who were members on the US Olympic gymnastics team.

Years and years of sexual abuse, directed at young athletes, ranging from age 13 to those in their 20s.

Dr. Larry Nasser is headed to life in jail.

Beyond the sordid sickness of what the Michigan State doctor did, is the equally bigger question, how come no one knew, how come this was allowed to go on unchecked?

Now 6-top administrators of US Gymnastics have resigned in the wake of the tsunami of public disclosures by the girls of what Nasser did to them.

Michigan State officials said they had no knowledge.

A former CEO of Team USA, reportedly had his officials tell the parents they would investigate and not to speak in public.

Some athletes and families were asked to sign non-disclosure settlements.

Last week and now this week, the young girls, violated, wept, spoke with anger, and demanded retribution for what Nasser did to them, what the USOC allowed to go unchecked, and what Michigan State knew or should have knows.

Nasser sent a letter to the judge, asking the testimony stop, because it hurt too much. The judge refused.

The teenage girls, including 4-gold medalists, who were violated for years, says Nasser’s pain in no way compares to the pain and humiliation these young girls have gone thru for years.

Nasser will go to prison forever. He might not survive in prison, for the seedy side of society has a history of retaliating against child abusers in prison. It’s their own form of prison payback. The cons to get back at the creep?

And you wonder next, whether there will be legal action coming against the USOC for the decades of abuse that was allowed to happen. The IOC fired the women’s coach, upon finding out he had a 25-year relation with Nasser, and that an athlete testified the coach came into the trainer’s room and saw Nasser performing digital sex on her and did nothing.

The strongest comment among the statements made by all these young women came from Olympian Ali Raismann, who refused to call him Doctor, because he was not a doctor, but a sexual predator.

Of all the horrid things we have experience about the Olympics, this is the darkest moment the Olympic rings have ever experienced.

In a society that has had to deal with child porn, date rape, human trafficking and the Catholic church priest-sex scandal, this is as bad as it gets.

It makes you want to cry, in addition to screaming rage on behalf of these violated young star.

Olympic gold tarnished by an organization, whose leadership may be just as sleazy as the team trainer they let have access to these teenage girls.

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“Super Bowl- Snapshot-Geat Offense-vs-Great Defense”

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This will be fun in two weeks, come Super Bowl Sunday night,even if you loathe the quarterback, dislike the coach, and are tired of everyone coming out of the ‘State of New England’.

The great veteran leadership and the quarterback that make up the foundation of the New England Patriots, against the dynamics of a bright young coach and the dimensions of the street tough defense, that define the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Patriots got stronger and stronger as the game went on, beating the Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC title game.

The Eagles destroyed a powerful Minnesota Vikings defense, to punch their tickets to go to the Big Show with that awesome display in the NFC title game..

It was a wild Sunday in the championship games.

Tom Brady, playing with 12-stitches near his right thumb, overcame that, wore out a once dominant Jacksonville defense, and put aside all types of distractions, to earn the trip back to the Super Bowl, with a 6th ring just ahead.

The thumb injury did not hamper him, though he was scared for much of the week.

The loss of tight end Rob Gronkowski might have been devastating in the game, but so many other weapons were there to throw too.

Danny Amendola made big catches and returned a key punt, off-setting the loss of last years hero Julian Edelman, who did not play at all this year.

The assistant coaches, Josh McDaniels and Matt Patricia, both headed to head coaching jobs when the Super Bowl is over, put together superb game plans.

And the team did not let the controversy of a couple of weeks ago , the stories of strife between the owner, the coach, Brady, his trainer and more, eat away at their team.

And Bill Belicheck’s defense got better and better over the second half of the season. And coming out of character, the Patriots unveiled two trick plays that went for big yardage, something historically you’d never seem from a Belicheck team.

Meanwhile on Sunday night, the Eagles destroyed what was a great Minnesota defense, using their own sledgehammer defense, and backup QB-Nick Foles.

It was the brilliance of young head coach and his kid coordinator that took away the strengths of the Vikings defense. Doug Pederson and Nathan Hackett put Foles in a quick passing package, let him make plays, find his rhythm, and wear out a Vikings defense.

Minnesota came into the game giving up just (275) yards a game. Foles threw for (336) in just 3-quarters, and led his team to 38-straight points to win the game going away.

A journeyman quarterback posted an amazing 141-QB rating, despite having struggled three games in a row heading into this title affair..

And it was an Eagles team that suffered a lot of jolts during the year, losing running backs, and linebackers, and of course their spectacular QB-Carson Wentz.

Heroes everywhere, Fletcher Cox and his friends on defense had lots to do with disrupting Case Keenum. And across the field, Foles came out throwing, and his receivers made big play after big play, and got big yards after contact.

So it is on to the Super Bowl, where New England seeks out a sixth ring, and the Eagles, seeking to do something they haven’t done, win once since the 1960 Norm Van Brocklin-Tommy McDonald-Chuck Bednarick era, will oppose them.

It will be a great Patriots offense vs a great Eagles defense. It will be worth the watch. Even if you hate one of the franchises because they are always there.

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