I’M grateful that I don’t vote in baseball’s Hall of Fame elections. I’d become the target of national derision because, as great as Rickey Henderson was, I could never write his name on a ballot. Never.
On the day Henderson enters the Hall, he will be installed as the most expendable superstar in baseball history. After starting with the A’s, he has changed teams eight times, and he’s working on nine.
When it comes time to choose a team cap in which to appear at Cooperstown, Henderson should select one that reads “RH,” the only team for which he has ever played.
And it’s pathetic to watch and listen as Bobby Valentine panders to Henderson, as if previous managers haven’t tried that before, as if Henderson, at 41, is going to change for Valentine, as if a 41-year-old ballplayer still needs to be coddled.
Last year, Valentine insulted our intelligence and risked his own credibility by lying to protect Henderson. He scolded the media for scolding Henderson, for actually noting that a guy who whose greatness is rooted in his speed doesn’t even minimally hustle and rarely ever did.
Valentine actually said that Henderson gets a slow start out of the batter’s box because he swings so hard, as if that explains why Henderson jogs to first, costing all of his teams incalculable games over a 20-year career.
Of course, if Henderson smells a hit for himself, he bolts from the batter’s box. Valentine knows that, we know that, so why bother? As Judge Judy says, “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” Did Valentine actually think that Henderson would respond to or be grateful for his support?
This spring training, as an inevitability, Henderson’s selfishness has come to be explained (rationalized, really) by the Mets in a simple but desperate philosophy: “Rickey is Rickey.” As if we didn’t know. As if his previous managers and teammates didn’t reach such an exasperated conclusion.
So give it up, Bobby V. Give it up, Mets. Stop trying to excuse the inexcusable.
Besides, it doesn’t matter. You can tell the truth about Henderson — he’s a career me-firster with no regard for whatever team uniform he wears. Or you can lie for him — gosh, he swings so hard, he gets a late start from the batter’s box. It makes no difference. He’s not going to put out any more for the panderers than the truth-tellers.
After all, Rickey is Rickey.
TO witness the decline of both civility and art appreciation, one need travel no farther than Madison Square Garden any day or night the Knicks are home to play one of their rival teams, real or media-imagined.
Consider that only 30 years ago, Madison Square Garden housed one the most discriminating audiences among all forms of entertainment. Sure, you might’ve attended in order to root for the Knicks, but the best basketball players were treated with reverence by the most revered fans in all of sports.
Today, I’m firmly convinced, those players would be profaned en masse by the basketball fans in Madison Square Garden. Today you’d hear, and on a regular basis, “Havlicek s–ks!” “Russell s–ks!” “Jerry s–ks!” “Oscar s–ks!”
The greats would be objects of loud, obscene and organized derision because they are remarkable players who dare give the people their money’s worth by demonstrating their skills in an effort to defeat the Knicks. And the “few bad apples in the crowd” explanation wouldn’t wash, because a few bad apples can’t make such a unified and ugly racket.
To be admired as an opposing player in The Garden, 30 years ago, is roughly the same as being cursed and despised in The Garden, today.
Consider Reggie Miller. While no saint, Miller’s hardly the epitome of basketball evil. In fact, he has no record as a recidivist criminal nor does he regularly play like a thug.
But he’s regularly cursed in The Garden. Of course he is. He’s a very good basketball player, he has done some remarkable things to defeat the Knicks and attention-starved Spike Lee jumps from his front row seat to exploit Miller’s presence.
Two Saturday afternoons ago, on national TV, no less, Miller, in the throes of a rare off-game against the Knicks, was nonetheless the gratuitous target of the low-rent chant from the high-rent crowd that once was distinguished for its knowledge and appreciation of the finer things in basketball: “Reggie s–ks!” “Reggie S–ks!”
Miller finally snapped, making an obscene gesture to an audience that had routinely chanted obscenities at him over the last few seasons.
That night on the local news and in the next day’s newspapers, Miller was portrayed as a lout, a punk and a guy who had disgraced himself, the game and the Louvre of basketball, Madison Square Garden. Good grief.
THE Chiefs’ Andre Rison, recidivist bad guy and superb wide receiver, has been arrested again, this time charged with felony theft.
Rison, last season, was indulged by pandering TV interviewers as a man who has turned around his life by accepting God as his savior. Rison told anyone approaching him with a microphone and camera that he had become an agent of God.
Naturally, while the interviewers nodded their admiration, Rison still behaved like a check-me-out lout on the field, something none of the interviewers asked him to reconcile.
WITH the influx of Hispanic and Hispanic-American athletes in all our sports — even the Devils have NHL Rookie of the Year Candidate Scott Gomez — isn’t it time that professional broadcasters work on some basic pronunciations?
The first name, Angel, for example. Virtually every sportscaster pronounces it “AIN-jul,” like the California Angels or “Angels in the Outfield.” But it’s “ahn-HEL,” as in the way it should be pronounced.
OKIE-dokey, Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue is out and, once again, selling like hotcakes. (Are the prices listed for the topless bikinis the price for just the bottoms?)
Next week, SI can resume telling the nation that women shouldn’t be treated as sex objects.
