3 up and 3 down of the world of sports ...

THREE UP ...

1. Not that Tony Dungy's criticism of the NCAA had a bearing on it, but let's applaud Louisville for its decision to hire Florida defensive coordinate Charlie Strong as its head coach. Strong had played a central role in Urban Meyer's success with the Gators, and he should have been a candidate to run a program long before now. He's got a challenge ahead of him at Louisville, but the Cardinals have been a winning program in years past. Strong could have easily been offered, oh, a program with no chance of winning -- in this century or the next.

2. Not sure why the Tigers are trying to unload Curtis Granderson, but I have to admit it will be a wonderful deal for the Yankees, if not an outright betrayal to Tigers fans. Now, I'm not Yankees fan, no matter how much I try to understand the organization. You can't but salute a team for not wanting to stand pat. Bold teams like the Yankees make bold moves, and this was, if it goes through, a bold move that will make the Yankees younger, faster and better. Can anybody say World Series champs, 2010?

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Will Yankees buy another title? Some say yes ...

I met Ted, a venture capitalist and an Obama supporter long before I found a seat on the bandwagon, in Argentina early last year. Ted was taking his wife, his son and his daughter on a whirlwind tour around the world. They were seeing sites that would stay with a lifetime.

Part of their purpose was to take baseball to the unschooled. Every place he and his family went they left their love of the game there for others to share. Ted’s a Red Sox fan, unabashedly. So if you see a boy in Chile or South Africa in a Red Sox cap, blame Ted.

He loves baseball the way I do, and he infused that love of the game into his son Gibson, whom I watched play against a group of Argentine youngsters on a well-groomed ballfield in Buenos Aires.

I’m not trying to revisit the adventure in South America, although it's certainly worth sharing with people. I’m only mentioning Ted and his son now because of an e-mail he sent me the other day.

“He and I made it to Game 3 of the Red Sox-Angels series, and got to see our beloved Sox disintegrate in the ninth inning to get swept,” Ted wrote of he and Gibson. “And we thought about you all playoffs since Cleveland’s former players were so successful.”

Did you have to remind me, Ted?

I can’t dispute the role of formers Indians. I mean, how much better were manager Charlie Manuel’s Phillies after picking up left-hander Cliff Lee, a Cy Young winner, in a midseason trade? And the Yankees signed the best free-agent pitcher available last offseason when CC Sabathia joined them in a $161 million deal.

And where did Sabathia, a Cy Young winner, build his reputation?

In an Indians uniform, of course.

Even Ted’s beloved Red Sox had a high-profile Indian in catcher Victor Martinez, a linchpin in their journey into the postseason.

Ted was less concerned about the past than he was about next season. He looked into baseball's future and didn’t like what he saw. Not that he begrudged the Yankees and their success, because he didn’t.

What Ted lamented was the system that allowed New York to build the best team money can buy. With revenue streams from a new ballpark, the Yankees should become stronger this offseason as they jettison old pieces and add new ones, a point not lost on Ted.

“Some of the reporters stupidly argued that the Yankees’ World Series win wasn’t about the money, since they failed to win in the past when they made really bad signings,” Ted said. “That’s about as weak an argument as you can get.

“Take away Sabathia, (A.J.) Burnett, and (Mark) Teixeira, and the Yankees might not have made the playoffs again.”

He was right, despite what some sportswriters have claimed. The Yankees are a store-bought team, using the financial wherewithal at their disposal to outbid any team for a player they want.

I have long ago moved past decrying how the Yankees organization builds successful teams. It’s not the Steinbrenner family’s fault that it was blessed with a cash cow, and the family is willing to spend that cash to succeed.

That’s what seems to frustrate Ted and a legion of baseball fans elsewhere. It seems unfair to let deep revenue streams, not astute talent evaluation, decide which teams will be the most successful.

“Baseball sorely needs to revise its system, since the Yankees will now go out and buy two or three more All Star/future HOF players to get even better next year,” Ted lamented.

He’s right here, too. The Yankee dynasty is back, more prepared than ever to spend money and to bludgeon the competition into submission.

And what can anybody do about it?

Absolutely nothing.

Economy costs guys like Coco their jobs

The news itself hardly amounted to a footnote. The Royals announced it quietly a day or two after the World Series ended, the buzz that surrounded the Yankees-Phillies series still fresh in the baseball air.

But it wasn’t news I could ignore, because it centered on one of the most refreshing personalities baseball has had in recent years, a player with perhaps the catchiest name in the game's history: Coco Crisp.

The news: The Royals declined to pick up an $8 million option on Crisp for 2010, a decision that leaves him a few days away from free agency.

I can’t say the decision came as a surprise. His time in Kansas City was uneventful after coming there from the Red Sox in November 2008. He was supposed to energize the Royals with his daring play; he never did. Crisp spent more time on the disabled list than he did in manager Trey Hillman’s lineup. And at $8 mil, the Royals didn't see his as a good investment.

Now, he’s essentially on the jobless roles, if you can compare what happened to him as being jobless just yet. I’m guessing there’s a difference. I doubt he’d qualify for an unemployment check.

In this depressed economy, an economy that baseball isn’t insulated from, Crisp will have the same difficulty finding an $8 million job as a laid-off autoworker at the Ford plant in suburban Detroit would. I do hope Crisp has his baseball resume ready to send general managers.

The sad part of it is that he’ll not be the last high-paid Major Leaguer who will find his job eliminated this offseason. Jermaine Dye and Austin Kearn joined the list the other day, though both men walked away for $1 million get-lost checks in their pockets.

For men like Dye, Kearn and Crisp, the offseason will be hard to predict. They are players who, in other years, would find plenty of suitors. But only the Yankees -- always the Yankees -- will be keen on spending big.

The rest of the teams, the Royals, the White Sox, the Indians, the Pirates -- you pick the team -- will be window shopping for bargains: The Dollar Store over Neiman Marcus.

What does this mean for players? And for baseball fans?

For the former, they will have to take deep cuts in pay, if they can find work at all.

I don’t think that message will be lost on any of them. I can remember talking to Crisp after the 2005 season about his trade from Cleveland to Boston, he was circumspect about it all

"It's business," he told me.

That’s how baseball fans have to look at it as well. To expect their favorite teams to go spending wildly is to believe the Earth is flat or that you can buy a Rolex at Walmart.

To look at life to the contrary is to waste it, and fans need to keep on living life as they look realistically what this offseason won’t be.

Somewhere out there is a Major League team that will see Crisp, 30, as a useable, inexpensive part. It will see him for what he still has to give the game: enthusiasm, speed, charisma -- a Triple Crown of intangibles that seamlessly tie into his talent.

In a sport short on charismatic players, a sport peopled by dour souls like Arthur Rhodes, David Weathers and Milton Bradley, baseball needs a Coco Crisp perhaps more than he needs it.

Lee displays his talent on grandest stage

I remember when he arrived in the Major Leagues on Sept. 15, 2002. He had come to the Indians organization earlier that summer in the Bartolo Colon trade that brought the Tribe a handful of big league prospects.

And while the then 23-year-old Cliff Lee wasn’t the centerpiece of the deal, he was no mere throw-in. Brandon Phillips, a fast-talking, almost-ready-for-the-big-leagues infielder with a hip-hop swagger, was the blue chip, and Phillips did turn into the ballplayer he was expected to become.

The expectations on Lee were grand as well. He was a prospect on the rise, but the Indians didn’t need him to step into the rotation and take over for Colon. They already had an anchor for their starting rotation in left-hander CC Sabathia, so they could afford to wait for Lee.

He didn’t disappoint them. OK, so he had a misstep in 2007 when the Indians sent him back to Triple A. He didn’t like the idea of being back in the Minors.

What players do? Lee was 28 then, and his resume already included two 14-win seasons and an 18-win season. He wasn’t injured, and he hadn’t forgotten how to pitch. He was just going through one of those hiccups that players sometime have.

Lee picked the wrong time to have his, though. His struggles kept him off the ’07 playoff roster during a season in which the Indians came within a win of making it to the World Series.

No telling what might have happened had Lee pitched. He might have made a difference. He might have proved the arm needed to carry the Indians to where they hadn’t been in a decade.

One thing I remember well about Lee in the years I talked to him and wrote about him was that he didn’t live his life peeking over his shoulder. Few players I have met live totally in the present the way Lee always did. He never dwelled on what he couldn’t change, even if it was last night’s bad outing. He never revisited the stories that came out yesterday.

I also remember his confidence. To call it cockiness would be to call it wrong. He had a belief in himself that he was comfortable with, though not arrogant with. He seemed to know he was a cut above others who made their living throwing a baseball.

Believing and proving are two different things. No argument there, right?

And all the belief in the world, all the cockiness can’t mask a 5-8 record with a 6.29 ERA, numbers that got Lee sent back to the Minors in ’07.

But that 2007 season taught Lee, now 30, a lot about himself. His trip back to Triple A helped him relearn to pitch – to trust his fastball. And learn Lee did, as the Cy Young Award he won in 2008 proves.

In a few hours, he will showcase this talent for a national audience when he starts Game 1 of the World Series for the Phillies, who picked Lee up in a midseason trade with the Tribe. He will be facing the Yankees, a team that he has faced countless times.

He will also be going against an old teammate and his friend – Sabathia, himself a Cy Young winner with the Indians in 2007.

Two former Indians, two players who matured into staff aces in the same city and in the same uniform, pitching in a World Series opener at the new Yankee Stadium, performing under baseball’s brightest lights: Lee against Sabathia.

This is where I always thought Cliff Lee would be: pitching on this big stage. I just figured he would be doing it in Cleveland, not in Philadelphia.

For CC, it's his time to grab greatness

The Bronx in October, baseball under the lights tonight. The Yankees had been here countless times over the decades. It was on these nights, in this month and in this part of New York City where Yankee legends are made. Think Jeter and Williams. Mantle and Maris. Or the Babe and Gehrig. Does anybody believe Reggie Jackson would be revered today as "Mr. October" if he had played for the Cubs? No Major Leaguer puts on those white Yankee pinstripes without expecting to win championships somewhere along the way. That's certainly one of the reasons CC Sabathia came to the Big Apple. Sabathia left hints last season that he saw himself playing on the West Coast, going back to a part of the country near where he had grew up and nurtured his baseball skills. He refined those talents in Cleveland, spending his formative years this decade in Jacobs Field. He had wanted to remain an Indian, to continue to pitch in a place that doted over him like a favorite son, a place where he won his Cy Young Award and a place where he sealed his reputation as a top-of-the rotation starter. If not for Cleveland, he might not be a Yankee or the best-paid pitcher in the game. But the Yankees didn't throw megamillions at Sabathia for what he did in the past. No, the Yankees dipped into free agency last offseason and shelled out a princely sum to a man they expect will be anchoring their rotation for years to come and leading them to championships. The Yankees are counting on the first one to come this October (or will it actually be November by the time the World Series ends?), and they will get a glimpse of whether Sabathia can take them there tonight when he faces the Los Angeles Angels in Game 1 for the American League championship. He's been here before with the Indians. It was October 2007, and he carried their hopes for a trip to the World Series. But Sabathia wasn't up to delivering it then. The pressurer of the occasion seemed more than he could tolerate, and he wilted under its intensity. He would not play in a World Series with the Indians that season or the next. He would get no redemption in '08, no chance to prove if he's as good as his '07 Cy Young says he should be. Now, Sabathia, a candidate for another Cy Young this season, has a second chance. He's playing for the most storied franchise in the sport and in a spanking-new ballpark in the shadows of the old Yankee Stadium. He will be trying to fill this new ballpark with heroic exploits that are fresher than those of exploits from Yankee yesteryear. And if he can deliver, Sabathia will bask in the cheers that Yankees fans bestow on their heroes -- the reassuring cheers that Yogi and Whitey and Joe D. heard in bringing championship banners to fans here. They expect championships -- year after year after year. Those championships have eluded their Yankees in recent years, which is why the team went out and bought the best pitcher on the open market. In return, they're banking on him to deliver a title, something he couldn't bring to the Indians and the Brewers. He won't do bring the title home alone -- no pitcher ever can. But if the Yankees don't win one this season, Sabathia will take the lion's share of the criticism for not doing more to make that happen. He sought this moment in the spotlight and all that came with it; now, he needs to show the world he can handle it.

Shut loophole on international free agents

Baseball is a crazy game. Or, some might argue, a stupid one.

I often find myself leaning toward the latter category. For stupidity is the only thing I can point to for why baseball officials refuse to seal a loophole as big as Alex Rodriguez’s ego.

This time the issue is talent, not the inequity in market profitability, though profits, I suspect, do weigh heavily in this situation as well. At the center of it, as with most things in baseball, is money, which Aroldis Chapman stands to make a pile of.

Who is Aroldis Chapman?

Unless you know baseball well, the 21-year-old Chapman isn’t on your Fantasy League radar. But for those unfamiliar with him, they should file his name away, because he’s a ballplayer who should someday be making headlines in the Majors. He’s the latest defector from Cuba, a country with a deep pool of baseball players.

Now, Chapman is on the open market. His handlers are pimping his talent to the baseball world. They should fetch a handsome return, as they rightly should.

People who have scouted Chapman, a 6-foot-4, 180 pounds of arms and legs, claim the man’s as good as any pitcher his age. He has a fastball that routinely hits 100 mph. It's the kind of velocity that should make him a top-of-the-rotation starter, a rare commodity in an era in which quality pitching has proved scarce. Teams never have too much of it.

A free agent like him comes at a high price. Already, the typical suspects have lined up to throw millions Chapman’s way.

The Yankees are interested; they’re interested in any player who can make them better. The Mets, the Angels and the Red Sox are interested, too. That means the paupers of baseball will be watching this auction of prime talent from the sidelines.

And here’s the loophole: Why isn’t Chapman in the June draft?

Baseball does its fans and its weaker franchises an injustice when it allows talent like Chapman to avoid the draft. But all players from Latin America and Cuba and Japan and Korea and Australia and China avoid it, which keeps clubs like the Royals, the Pirates, the Nationals, the Padres, the Indians, the Marlins, the Rays and the Indians, as well as a few others, from participating in high-stakes auctions.

The advantage goes to the Yankees and the Red Sox, who can afford to miss or overpay for a can’t-miss prospect no matter what he’s asking for his services.

No other sport gives rich teams such an advantage, and if you listen to what baseball officials say, the loophole can’t be closed. No way, they claim, can baseball hold a draft of international players. It would be too complicated, too costly and too unwieldy to work.

To believe what baseball officials and general managers say is to partner with the stupid. They have no more difficult a task in putting together a worldwide draft than hockey or basketball do. A good scout can find talent in the Arctic Circle, if boys are playing baseball there. If the player’s name is registered for the draft, someone will figure out if he can play -- or if he can’t.

The issue is: Should players like Chapman be free to peddle their talents without rules. If so, why? If they can, then why not let a Minor League player who can’t find his niche in one organization do likewise? Why keep him on a treadmill going nowhere?

A team with a deep farm system shouldn’t be allowed to hinder the progress of a ballplayer.

The concept of letting a franchise hold a player’s rights for more than a season might have outlived its purpose. In today’s world, a player in the Minor Leagues should be able to pursue free agency after each year. He should be allowed to do what Chapman will do: post a for-hire sign.

That will keep teams from stockpiling talent. It won’t, however, stop the Yankees and Red Sox from outbidding rivals for the CC Sabathias and the Manny Ramirezes, but even the Yankees and the Red Sox can’t find a place for all the young players in the game.

Those players will have to go elsewhere first, perhaps honing their baseball skills on the cheap in Kansas City or Pittsburgh or San Diego.

At least then, fans there will have a window for success, which is more than what they have now. For a talented player like Chapman, if he’s as good as people say he is, could give any of these teams hope, and I see hope as a good thing for people who have spent the past decade watching their favorite team dwell in the cellar.

Bronx zoo doesn't faze CC

OK, so I was wrong.

I didn’t believe CC Sabathia could hold up under the tabloid scrutiny and the fickleness of native New Yorkers. I thought laid-back Sabathia, cloistered during his career as an Indian, would wilt under the demands of playing in pinstripes and in leading the Yankees to a pennant.

The Yankees aren’t there yet, but if any American League team looks as if it has a division title locked up, the team is the Yankees. They can pat Sabathia, a pricy free-agent signing, on the back for his generous contribution.

Talk all you want about Roy Halladay, Zach Grienke, Felix Hernandez, Justin Verlander, Josh Beckett as frontrunners for the Cy Young Award, but ask me who I would vote for in the Cy Young derby, I would say Sabathia.

In his last outing, he matched left-hander Mark Buehrle in a duel of staff aces. Neither got the win; neither took the loss. But Sabathia did what Buehrle did: kept his club in the ballgame.

The Yankees went on to beat the White Sox in extra inning, though this isn’t my point.  What is the point is that Sabathia, with one Cy Young already to look at, has grown into a pitcher capable of greatness.

He always had the tools, even as he toiled for teams in Cleveland that didn’t have the deep lineup the free-spending Yankees do. But a pitcher can’t worry about what might happen beyond his control.

I got that message from Cliff Lee, a former Indians left-hander who also has a Cy Young as his bona fides. Lee often talked about taking the mound each start and keeping his team in the ballgame. Do that, and you’ll make a lot of people happy, he said -- media, fans and yourself.

Sabathia has succeeded in that. He’s got 15 wins  -- he goes for No. 16 tonight -- with a month left in the season. He’s staring at a 20-win season and another trip to the postseason. He has been there on a few occasions, but he’s never pitched to his greatness in any of those other opportunities.

He should this time.

I can’t see Sabathia unraveling under the postseason pressure. His experience with the Indians and Brewers should ensure the pressure of it won’t fluster him. No reason to think it will, because the way he’s handled the bright lights of Broadway, a place that can undo the strongest of men, should prove Sabathia is ready for prime time.

To Yankees fans and the New York tabloids, no time is as prime as the postseason.