Weekly Sporties

-As much as I want to see golf rise in popularity, that will be hard to accomplish when the people who run the sport can't seem to get out of their own way. Through two days of the Masters the biggest story had been that of Tianlang Guan, the 14 year-old who won the Asian Amateur to earn a spot at the Masters. A slight kid who doesn't hit it nearly as far as the pros, everyone expected him to come in, shoot in the 80s on both days, miss the cut and gain some valuable experience. But, as is so often the case with kids today, Guan didn't feel like taking it slow and was playing well enough to make the cut going into Friday afternoon. However, his chances of doing that took a big hit when he was assessed a slow-play penalty on the 17th hole. Apparently his group had fallen behind on 10, been warned on 12 and he had been warned a second time on 14. Now, I'm not disagreeing that the kid broke the rule, but it is the application of it which bugs me. Everyone complains about slow play, but no rules officials ever do anything about it. To prove this point, look at the fact the last person to have a slow-play penalty called on them happened in 1995, four years before Guan was born. Plus, everyone was taking forever to play yesterday and therefore the entire incident felt like selective enforcement. Honestly, this is like a cop watching 70 cars break the speed limit and then picking one car out of the bunch to give a ticket. Since Guan is an amateur who can't profit from his good play, it also makes the PGA look like they are interested in cracking down on this problem without reaching into a player's wallet, which is really the best way to get their attention. Basically, they want to look tough, but not piss off anyone who could do something about it or has enough stature in the game to make it into a major issue. I agree that slow play is one of the biggest problems facing golf today, but if you want to fix it appearing to pick on the kid not the way to attack the issue, especially when he is exactly the age when most kids are trying to decide which game they want to play in high school.

-On a cold and drizzly night the Red Sox home sellout "streak" ended Wednesday after 10 years and 820 games. The streak was impressive and a source of pride for the Red Sox, even though the reality is that it probably never got close to that number. Teams are allowed to play with the attendance numbers as they see fit and people had been speculating for a while that the Sox were manipulating the numbers to keep the streak alive by doing thing such as counting tickets which had been given away as tickets sold and calling any game with 90% of the seats filled as a sell-out. However, no amount of creative math towards the end of last season's dreadful run was going to help the Sox to come up with ways to explain away all the empty seats and the streak had started to turn from something impressive to a running joke among rival fans. So, after one more sell-out on Opening Day the Sox gave up the fuzzy math and conceded the streak was over. First off, I am not one of those people who think the sell-out streak ending is a sign that Boston is not the baseball town it once was. I think what this really does is show Boston sports fans have a lot of sports options at this time of year and they are not going to spend money to watch a team which is not trying to contend for a championship. It's demanding a good product and that is never a bad thing. That aside, I actually think the admission that not every game is sold out between now and June of 2020 is going to help the Red Sox. There have been many times when I have found myself with no plans for a weekend and thought about going in town to catch a random Red Sox game, only I didn't because I thought there were no ticket available and I didn't feel like paying a scalper 150% of the price on the ticket. The ability to decide to go to a game at the last minute is going to make guys like me much more inclined to see what's available on any given night rather than automatically rule it out as an option. Ironically, having plenty of good seats available may be the best way to build another sell-out streak.

-When a report broke at the beginning of Spring Training which contended that there was a link between several famous baseball players and a notorious Miami lab known for supplying steroids called Biogenesis, the news was met with a collective shrug from people around the game. It's not that baseball fans condone cheating, it is just that the idea of a baseball player taking performance enhancing drugs is old hat for us by now. At this point it is like hearing a Tour de France winner was juicing - we've become too desensitized to the idea for it to get a big reaction anymore. Thus, once all the names leaked out the scandal was assured to go away within a couple of weeks, provided no one did anything laughably stupid to keep it in the news. Cue Major League Baseball. You see, MLB wanted to see the documents which had been supplied to the newspaper to know which players had been shipped which substances. Unfortunately for them, while they may get to hang out with Congress all the time, MLB doesn't actually have power of subpoena so they couldn't force anyone to turn over any documents. Apparently this made them desperate because on Friday we learned lawyers for MLB paid a Biogenesis lab employee for a copy of their records to get the names of all the baseball players who visited the clinic. If that sounds super-shady, that is because is it. I'm no lawyer (and it's questionable just how much of one they are), but it even sounds illegal. Even worse it reignites people's interest in the story because now we all want to know what is so damned important that MLB would do something which (at best) seems unethical just to get their hands on these records. Reporters are now wondering if there was something they missed and thinking they'd better all take another look at this story. MLB's involvement gave an embarrassing story which was on the way out the door new life. All in all, it just goes to prove the oldest of sayings - no matter how bad the crime is, the cover-up is what always makes it seem that much worse.

-Really, baseball should want to make sure their players aren't on steroids because the last thing they need is these guys having 'roid rage. Not because it looks bad or sets a bad example, but because they are awful at fighting. Take Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke, who beaned San Diego Padres first baseman Carlos Quentin with a pitch on Thursday night in retaliation for a pitch thrown over the head of Matt Kemp earlier in the game (one of those classic 'unwritten' rules of baseball) and then when Quentin charged the mound the two collided like sumo wrestlers. Greinke came away from the scrum with a broken collarbone and is expected to miss a couple of months of the season. First off, I am not sure if I should applaud Greinke for not throwing a punch with his pitching hand, which was really smart, or call him an idiot for leading with this throwing shoulder, which was really stupid. Mostly, I blame his catcher for not getting out there to intercept Quentin before he ever got that far. (Dodgers' manager Don Mattingly thinks Quentin should be suspended for however long Greinke is out with his injury. Good luck with that one. When you are the one who starts the fight with a beanball you can't blame other people for the consequences.) Still, this just proves that baseball fights are the stupidest thing ever. People can talk all they want about how bad basketball players look because their 'brawls' consist of a lot of pushing, shoving and someone yelling, "Let me at 'em" as soon as they are sure their teammates have a good hold of them, but at least no one is stupid enough to get themselves hurt in the process. The only good thing to come out of this is that after years of players going on baseball's disabled list with injuries suffered while falling asleep in a tanning booth, getting stung by a bee or a tattoo being too detailed (all of those are true, by the way), someone is finally going on the DL with an injury sustained in a legitimate way.

-Early Monday afternoon it was announced that Louisville head coach Rick Pitino had been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. What was rather ironic about the timing is that until his team won the National Championship about seven hours later I didn't think he was worthy of enshrinement. My Celtics bias aside, there has never been any doubt that Rick Pitino is a hell of a college basketball coach. However, despite the high number of wins and the fact that he had taken three different programs to the Final Four, the simple truth of the matter is that he had only one National Championship to show for it. So to me this was part of larger debate about whether or not a guy who simply wins a lot of games is really a Hall of Famer, or does he need to have titles to be worthy? Several people defended the decision the next day saying that if Pitino had never spent six season in the NBA he would much higher on the win chart and may even have a few extra titles, but that feels almost like you are downgrading the people who stayed in college and kept their programs chugging along. After all, this is a sport where winning the last game of the season is the ultimate goal and before Monday Pitino had the same number of championships as a guy like Gary Williams, who is not in the Hall of Fame and who took just as many programs to the NCAA Tournament. (While Williams will probably get there eventually, I am also curious what the rush to put Pitino in was all about, especially given that Williams has retired while Pitino is still active.) It is impressive that he is the only man in history to win two National Championships at two different schools, but it is not like two titles makes him elite. I guess the Hall of Fame voters should just be really happy Louisville was able to stage that large second-half comeback, otherwise his selection would have raised even more eyebrows than it did. My point is this - the Hall of Fame is supposed to be for the absolute best of the best and if I had the pick of any coach in history to start my program Pitino would not be in my top ten selections.

-A couple weeks ago New York Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano fired his agent and signed with a new firm spearheaded by rapper Jay-Z. Not happy to just have clients in baseball, Jay-Z has set his sights on a few basketball player and will probably get them due to his cultural influence. (As an aside, Jay-Z will have to sell his shares of the Brooklyn Nets if he start representing NBA players. Considering he was never more than a vanity owner whose shares total up to about .067% of the team, I really don't think it will take too long to sell them off. Seriously, has there ever been a person more disproportionally associated with a franchise in relation to the amount of the team he actually owned?) Putting that aside, I still have to advise against players signing with Jay-Z's firm. I have no doubt being linked to him will automatically make any athlete cooler and raise their profile, but I can't say it would be worth it for them. This is not the first time a rapper has tried to get into the agent game, it makes sense since athletes and entertainers often run in the same circles, most famously when rapper Master P became running back Ricky Williams's agent out of college and then negotiated one of the worst contracts in history. It would have paid William a king's ransom if he hit all the incentive clauses, but the numbers to trigger those clauses were too high. I'm not sure if the way the contract was done was based on hubris or lack of experience, but Williams would have made far more money if he had signed a more traditional pact. I think there is an ego that comes naturally with the hip-hop industry and I'm not sure you want your agent to be more famous than you, because they will always try to keep you one step below them. So, if I were a professional athlete in need of new representation I'd be more than happy to be invited to one of Jay-Z's parties, I am just not sure I would let him manage my life savings in return.

-I don't care who you are or what your line of work is, everyone has fantasized about a Hollywood producer making a movie about their life and begun to think about who would play them in that movie. Well, it turns out the tough job of casting someone's life story is no longer being left in the hands of the producers, because everyone is going to have a say. Later this summer production will start on a new movie about the life of Baltimore Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas. For the football scenes the film's producers are turning to Baltimore's current NFL quarterback, Joe Flacco. While Unitas's son from his second marriage is pleased with that decision, Johnny's sons from his first marriage do not agree with the choice. They think the throwing motion is all wrong and would rather have someone like Peyton Manning play Unitas. I have to say, given the number of commercial Manning shoots in any given offseason I'm not sure the movie could afford him. Still, this issue has provided a fascinating insight to the mindset of Baltimore football fans because for as much success as the Ravens have had in recent years, there are still some diehards who consider the Colts to be their team and would dump the Ravens in a heartbeat if the Colts wanted to come back. They are like the oldest of New England football fans who still consider the Giants their team because they were the only game in town before the Patriots existed. Still, I don't think Flacco should take this too personally, because from reading the story it sounds like the two factions of this family wouldn't agree on what color the sky is. But if I were the Unitas family I would be far more concerned about the idea that a professional football player will be doing all the acting, rather than the producers casting an actor and teaching him how to throw because I don't care how authentic the football scenes are, I've seen what happens when athletes try to act. I'm pretty sure this movie is going to suck and that will be far more damaging to their father's legacy.