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Kenny Williams is a gambler. He bets big, and big bettors can cash big paydays. Williams banked one gigantic payday: the 2005 World Series.
All of sports deserves more than a little Justice ...
Kenny Williams is a gambler. He bets big, and big bettors can cash big paydays. Williams banked one gigantic payday: the 2005 World Series.
Serena Williams got a No. 2 seed at the U.S. Open, which begins Monday morning. While a No. 2 seed might sound fair, how can it be fair when Dinara Safina, the player seeded ahead of her, has won nothing of importance.
You wonder whether Roger Federer, the world No. 1, has the stomach for the grind that will be the U.S. Open.
His season has already been wildly successful. He’s conquered a demon: the slow red clay of Paris; he’s recaptured the glory on the hallowed grass at Wimbledon when he bested Andy Roddick in an unforgettable Finals, and he’s marched on toward the kind of greatness few men in any sport have ever achieved.
On Monday, Federer returns to New York City to perform on the largest theater in men’s tennis. He’s already earned the affection of crowds in Flushing Meadows. They adore him, as tennis fans elsewhere do. They’ll root for "Fed" to repeat, cheering on the Swiss star, a five-time winner here, as they’ve cheered on Americans like Connors and Ashe and Agassi and Sampras in Grand Slam yesteryear.
All had much to prove as they stood on the U.S. Open courts and prepared to slug it out with competitors who longed to win the year's final Grand Slam to put a signature on their tennis seasons.
Federer doesn’t need a signature on this season. For aside from the Australian Open in January, he’s won all the tournaments that matter. He’s beaten Rafael Nadal on clay, though not on the red clay of Roland Garros. But it wasn’t Federer’s fault he didn’t. A gimpy Nadal didn’t make the Finals there, perhaps opening the way for Federer to claim the only Grand Slam that had eluded him.
His trophy case is filled with more than Grand Slam glory. He has awards that he’s won from every corner of the tennis universe. His bank account is flush with cash, richer than he could have imagined. He’s happily married now, the father of newborn girls.
And he’s No. 1 again, ahead of the extraordinarily gifted Nadel – the lone player who has dared to challenge the Federer supremacy in men’s tennis.
On the first day of the U.S. Open, Federer will show up with no tennis worlds left to conquer. To say he’s playing for pride, as clichéd as that statement is, would be accurate.
But if he must play for something else, then play for the crowds that worship him. Give them what might be the last great moment in a career of great moments. In a young man’s game, the old pro Federer might not have many great moments left in his brilliant forehand.
Michael Jackson would have been 51 today, which doesn’t seem old when you know his life expectancy should have been 70-something. But for a generation of people, Michael Jackson, the cute kid who fronted The Jackson Five, will be forever young.
To think now of Jackson, whose death last month has been ruled a homicide, is to remember that skinny, boyish entertainer whose falsetto voice displayed uncommon range. He was, a legion of music lovers will attest, the most gifted performer of his era, an artist with a velvety voice that made girls weep and whose dazzling footwork would have made "Mr. Bojangles" jealous.
The scope of his career touched all aspects of life in America, aside from politics. Jackson was a celebrity who fascinated us, even if the man often confounded us.
He was an entertainer we knew all too well, and he was a man we knew not at all.
For he closed that part of himself to the prying eyes of the public, holing up on an expansive estate he named “Neverland.” Out of nowhere, he’d re-emerge, talking about one project or another, preparing for a concert tour that, more often than not, didn’t take flight.
But when he did perform, when he did put on his dancing shoes, take center stage and sing the songs that spoke to Baby Boomers, Jackson reclaimed the throne he had abdicated.
“The King of Pop” was back, and we regretted he had been away. His absence cheated those who didn’t care about his personal life; they cared about his wonderful music and his performances.
When Jackson did perform, what entertainer was better?
He was a showstopper – period. Who but Michael Jackson could trump the Super Bowl itself, as the man did Jan. 31, 1993, in the most brilliant halftime performance the signature sports event of our time has ever witnessed.
Back in '93, he was 34. He was still the “Thriller,” proving it to the worldwide audience of millions as he moonwalked across a makeshift stage. His life looked full of promise. Michael Jackson seemed to have even higher heights to scale if that’s what he wanted for himself.
We never found out if he did.
For Jackson soon turned inward, closing himself off from his legion of fans and their adulation. He become, as the tabloids called him, “Wacko Jacko,” the man’s whose grotesques feature repulsed us.
Yet we never forgot Jackson the entertainer even as he hid, and we don’t forget him now in death. We do wonder why a man with so much used so little of it.
Perhaps he gave us all he could give, and when he spent all those gifts, maybe Jackson felt he had nothing us to thrill us with.
Maybe dying was his way of easing on down the road. But Jackson shouldn’t have left without first hearing our acknowledgment of him. In his work, he brought so much joy too so many.
For that, the man deserves our thanks, although they come his way posthumously: “Happy birthday, Michael!”
Journalists preach about integrity and transparency, two noble principles that have long been the hallmark of the profession. Yet those principles can collude head-on with the issue of privacy.
When it does, privacy should seldom lose.
But privacy took a trouncing when journalism steamrolled it with the ongoing leaks of names of ballplayers who used performance-enhancing drugs (or steroids). Their names were supposedly on a “secret” list. Yet it seems as if each day another player whose name made the list is outed, much to the consternation of the player and his union leaders.
They had agreed to the testing under the condition players who tested positive for using PED would have their identities kept secret. The agreement also satisfied people at the highest levels of the Commissioner's Office.
Deals like these, however, are as shaky as a house built with Popsicle sticks. They fall apart because a well-kept secret is as rare as a game-ending triple play. So, of course, such a deal had no chance of holding up, and it didn’t.
Not that I have one ounce of sympathy for men like Alex Rodriquez, David Ortiz and Miguel Tejada, men whose names made the users' list. For what they did was stain the game’s integrity, and no American sport has put a higher value on its integrity than baseball.
I do, however, think the PED abusers are owed more than a bad bargain. To leak their names cast a spotlight on them that is unwarranted. To leak their names, by all accounts, was illegal, too.
Illegality outrages journalists. They pour endless hours and as much of their newspaper’s money into setting a wrong right. Yet I have not seen a single newspaper or Internet company or newsmagazine take aim at the man (or men) who leaked these names.
The leaker has become baseball’s version of “Deep Throat,” though comparisons between the two are as absurd as comparing Morton’s to McDonald’s. Both serve meals, but does anyone want to build a gourmet dinnerl around a bagful of Big Macs?
Somewhere out there is a journalist who sees the injustice of what has happened to these ballplayers. I would like to think that an investigative reporter for a media company with pockets deep enough will explore the matter: find the person who leaked the names. The reporter might find a Pulitzer Prize in it for him.
I hope he uncovers the person’s name not to vindicate the PED abusers but to make certain that people in positions to keep secrets, keep secrets. For to assail the behavior of Rodriguez and Ortiz on one front leaves no choice, as unseemly as it might be to people, but to do likewise on the legal front.
As bad as what the 104 PED abusers did, it pales in comparison to breaking the law in leaking names. The man who did deserves more than public scorn. A caning sounds about right.
Or, better yet, a prison cell next to Bernie Madoff.
I can't pull myself away from ESPN and its saturation coverage of the Little League World Series, now winding toward its endgame. I'm borderline obsessed with it.
I thought I had gotten my fill of the Series last year when I covered these pint-sized ballplayers for MLB.com. But even as my career with the dot.com veered in another direction, I've maintained a deep affinity toward the event.
I left a piece of my baseball heart last summer in Williamsport, Penn., the epicenter to what might just be the purest form of America's national pastime.
The headline: “New Eagle Has Landed,” words that had nothing to do Thursday night with a moon landing.
The words referred to a much-anticipated event, one that, while significant in its own way, could never measure up to a more historic occasion decades ago.
The new Eagle was Michael Vick, a convicted felon who was trying to resurrect an NFL career that unraveled like a spool of thread because of Vick’s fascination with fighting – and then lying about -- pit bulls.
His return didn’t draw the public outrage many people had expected. Animal rights activists who criticized the team’s decision to bring in someone guilty of so ghastly a crime had talked of massive picketing and of boycotts. But nothing like that occurred in Philadelphia – not inside the stadium and, apparently, not outside of it either.
Philadelphians stayed focused on Vick’s football and not on his criminal past. They showed a side of themselves that is … well, not all-too common among the hypercritical people who call the “City of Brotherly Love” their home. They showed compassion.
In the end, Vick’s debut was just a footnote in a 33-32 win over the Jaguars. His role in it wasn’t much: six plays in the first half, one as a slot receiver. He looked rusty, but he was back after more than two years, which likely meant more to him than it did to anybody else.
“It felt the same,” Vick said of getting on the field. “It’s almost like riding a bike, you know. You never forget how to do it.”
For him, this was one small step, a step that might bring Vick the glory and the adulation he once enjoyed before he went to prison. He’s a long way from reclaiming that glory, but at least his journey won’t be interrupted because people refuse to accept the fact that Vick, repentant about his past, had paid his debt to society.
I won't talk about what a fool is likely to do with his money. Not when I can simply talk about the fool himself. His name is Milton Bradley, a $10 million head-case who plays right field for the Chicago Cubs.
Smart but unschooled on how to be a grownup, Bradley had a typical Bradley comment to a question from an ESPN Chicago reporter after a 15-6 loss Tuesday night to the Nationals, the worst team in baseball.
The question: "Obviously not the type of beginning you felt you were gonna have here on the homestand."