RECORDS used to be made to be broken. Today, they’re twisted until they break.
Camden High School’s Dajuan Wagner, last week, was celebrated from Cape May to the Palisades for breaking the New Jersey boys high school scoring record. He scored 52 points against Ocean City to reach 3,311, one more than John Somogyi, who last played for New Brunswick’s St. Peter’s in 1968.
And that’s all that matters in a superficial sports world that can’t possibly distinguish right from wrong because it doesn’t care. Wagner scored one more point than the guy who held the record. End of story, start the parade.
Left as irrelevant is that Somogyi’s high-school coach didn’t leave him in the game to bomb away during blowouts.
Wagner’s coach, however, sees shooting fish in a barrel as a varsity sport. Six times, Wagner scored 52 points or more in games won by 41 or more points. He scored 57 in a 75-point win, 80 in a 56-point win and 100 in a 90-point win. World War I flying aces were not credited with kills for shooting down unarmed aircraft.
Last week, when Wagner scored 52 to break the record, Camden won 94-48. And Wagner had only 14 by halftime, meaning he scored 38 – or was allowed to – in the second half of a mismatch.
Also left as irrelevant is that Somogyi, unlike Wagner, did not benefit from the 3-point shot. Somogyi and Wagner each scored plenty from the outside, except Somogyi got credit for two points while Wagner received three. Wagner made 10 3-pointers in his 100-point, 61-shot game, that 90-point win.
But what difference does that make to a sports media that unblinkingly, favorably and equally compare what Mickey Mantle did in the “postseason” (the World Series) to what Jim Thome has done in the postseason?
Yesterday’s New York Times, in a lengthy feature on Wagner, credits the teen with providing hope and pride to Camden, a blighted city otherwise wrought with political corruption, street crime, poverty and despair – a town through which Dajuan drives a Cadillac sports utility vehicle.
Oh, there’s a brief mention that Wagner was arrested for his alleged part in a three-on-one assault of a classmate. But it’s also noted that no weapon was used in the assault, as if that’s reason to feel good.
In January, Sports Illustrated offered the same upbeat account of the episode – Good news, sports fans, no weapon was used in the attack! – in an absurd celebration/rationalization of Wagner’s 100-point game in a 90-point win.
And while the Times’ piece notes that Wagner’s father, Milt, was hired by Memphis U. coach John Calipari, a scandal magnet, prior to successfully recruiting DaJuan, it states that “some columnists” have criticized Calipari for such an act. As if these columnists might be wrong, as if there might be some intelligent, two-sided debate on the issue.
The nerve of “some columnists” for even suggesting that such Machiavellian practices even exist. They should have written that Dajuan Wagner’s signing to play for Memphis after his dad was hired by the coach was a matter of serendipitous coincidence.
But there’s no mention that a game against St. Raymond’s of the Bronx, in Trenton last month, ended with Camden winning and Wagner taunting a St. Raymond’s player, thus there could be no mention that St. Raymond’s was pelted with garbage by the Camden/Wagner fans as it left the court.
Wagner scored only 39 that day, six below his average. Then again, this was a close game. Camden won by four.
But such mentions wouldn’t fit the theme: Dajuan Wagner’s basketball accomplishments have brightened the otherwise gloomy city of Camden, he has provided hope to the impressionable.
But has Wagner and his adult enablers provided hope for Camden? Or have they provided a lesson in how the means – no matter what they might be, and especially in modern sports – justify the ends?
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GOOD stuff tonight on Ch. 13 at 8 p.m. “Dem Bums” is a one-hour retrospective on the Brooklyn Dodgers that includes a lot more than the usual footage and “Wait ’til next year!” testimonials of their surviving fans.
Producer/director/writer Marino Amoruso, who has been active in trying to have the late Gil Hodges elected to the Hall of Fame, has included previously unseen footage (at least by me) and some fresh old stories.
Daily News sportswriter Jack Lang, now retired, is seen telling the story about how the woeful Dodgers of 65 years ago escaped the cellar after winning two games in a row. Ed Murphy of the NewYork Sun, Lang recalled, responded by writing, “Overconfidence may cost the Dodgers seventh place.”
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THE Mets have long had a knack for embracing surly, selfish “name” players who are difficult to root for, from Dave Kingman, to Bobby Bonilla, to Rickey Henderson, to now, perhaps, Gary Sheffield.
Smooth job by Jim Nantz last week, subbing for Bryant Gumbel as host of CBS’s “The Early Show.” “I’m actually sitting here,” Nantz said Tuesday night, “preparing for a segment on home appliances.”
Among all the cheerleaders in professional sports – the NFL, the NBA, the XFL – have you ever seen any actually lead a cheer?
Too many happy nonsense moments from NBC’s Doug Collins. Yesterday, during Knicks-Raptors, he said that Glen Rice knows what it takes to win a championship, having been with the Lakers last season. Rice’s big gripe about last season’s Lakers, however, was that Phil Jackson didn’t allow him to feel a part of the team. Or hadn’t he heard?
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HITMEN coach Rusty Tillman, by refusing to play Jesse Ventura’s WWF game, may enjoy the ultimate last laugh. Tillman has helped expose Ventura for what he is and what he does to tens of thousands of previously naive voters in Minnesota.
Ventura, the governor of Minnesota who takes his most public of marching orders from Vince McMahon, said Saturday that his pre-fabricated, ratings-desperate on-air trashing of Tillman is nothing personal.
Really? Spewing gratuitous hate – calling Tillman “gutless” – on national TV may strike Ventura as sportsentertainment, but Tillman’s young children, watching on NBC, became distraught by Ventura’s act toward their father. They took it seriously and personally.
And if it’s impersonal fun, then why have the young mookpunks in Giants Stadium – McMahon’s and NBC’s preferred customers – taken their cue from Ventura to chant obscenities about Tillman?
If I were Ventura, I’d try to push through legislation that allows 14-year-old boys wearing vulgarity-decorated T-shirts to vote in Minnesota. Without them, his WWF and NBC Sports constituency, he may not be re-elected.
