---

Bar Chat

08/19/2013

The Saga Continues

Are you ready for some foot-ball?! NFL Quiz: OK, time to get rid of some basics to get you back in the mood for NFL action in a few weeks. Give me the top ten rushers all time in career yards. Answer below.

Imagine being a teammate of Alex Rodriguez these days. He makes your club better on the field, but by all indications the guy doesn’t have one friend in the clubhouse, let alone in the front office, and for very good reason.

“The new lawyer for Alex Rodriguez, opening a fresh defense for a player who sees himself as unfairly targeted by Major League Baseball and his team, said that the Yankees tried to hasten the end of his career by playing him when he was injured and that baseball’s commissioner is determined to brand Rodriguez as the ‘poster boy’ for doping.

“The lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said the Yankees and the commissioner, Bud Selig, were working together to sideline him from baseball and nullify his contract, under which he is still owed $86 million after this year.

“Tacopina said baseball investigators were trying to ruin Rodriguez with accusations of doping based on the word of the operator of an anti-aging clinic in South Florida ‘who has no credibility.’...

“ ‘We have basically had enough,’ Tacopina said Friday. ‘The process is being perverted when they act the way they do to make their case. They are pushing Alex to his limit.’

“He added: ‘The legacy of George Steinbrenner would be horrified. This is the New York Yankees. This isn’t some thug-culture club.’

“Tacopina declined to answer questions about whether Rodriguez had used performance-enhancing drugs, saying he was trying to follow baseball’s process and did not want to violate a ‘confidentiality clause.’

“ ‘I will sit here and tell you this: Alex Rodriguez should not be suspended for one inning, let alone 211 games,’ Tacopina said.”

Those of us in the New York area know Tacopina well, a high-priced, “made-for-television presence,” as Steve Eder puts it.

Yankees president Randy Levine responded. “Each and every one of these allegations is specious and completely false. It is pretty sad that any lawyer would make such ridiculous statements.”

Major League Baseball executive vice president Robert Manfred said, “The bottom line on this, I have yet to see Alex Rodriguez or any of his representatives say that Alex Rodriguez didn’t use PEDs. They’ve adopted a strategy to make a circus atmosphere of irrelevant allegations.”

Tacopina claims that during the 2012 playoffs, “the Yankees hid from Rodriguez that a magnetic resonance imaging test had revealed that he had a torn labrum – essentially a hole in his hip – and continued to play him, even though he was struggling mightily.

“ ‘They rolled him out there like an invalid and made him look like he was finished as a ballplayer,’ Tacopina said.

“On Saturday at Fenway Park – the field where Billy Martin once openly confronted Reggie Jackson in another nationally televised game – Rodriguez played for the Yankees while simultaneously trying to shred their integrity.

“Assume, for a moment, that what Rodriguez believes is true. The Yankees, then, would have preferred to lose [in the playoffs] with a diminished Rodriguez, in the hopes of making him permanently injured and allowing them to recoup much of his remaining contract through insurance, than to try their best to win with him.

“Rodriguez is asserting that if you bought tickets to those American League Championship Series games against the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium, the ones in which he went 1 for 8 with three strikeouts, the Yankees were stealing your money. Because you would have attended those games on the assumption that the Yankees were trying to reach the World Series – when the Yankees, according to Rodriguez, had an evil plot that prioritized getting rid of him over winning a 28th championship.

“ ‘They did things and acted in a way that is downright terrifying,’ Tacopina said, referring to the Yankees....

“The appeal process could take months, which is discouraging but has created a dynamic in which the Yankees’ superstar is openly warring with the organization.”

Levine told ESPNNewYork.com in a telephone conversation Saturday afternoon, “Alex should put up or shut up.”

Upon hearing this, Tacopina said, “We will put up, mark my words, we will put up. [Levine] is always a very big talker, but he is going to be humbled eventually.”

Tacopina is claiming Levine had told Dr. Bryan Kelly, who was about to perform hip surgery on A-Rod in January, “I don’t ever want to see him on the field again.”

Levine said with A-Roid’s permission, the Yankees would release all of his medical records dating back to Rodriguez’ first hip surgery – March 2009 – to refute Tacopina’s contention that he was not told by the club Rodriguez was unfit to play during last October’s playoffs.

A-Rod, following the Yankees’ desultory 6-1 loss to the Red Sox on Saturday, said he would release the records “when the time is right,” a common refrain of his lo these many years.

“Now the latest loud lawyer to join A-Rod’s weird version of a dream team, Loud Joe Tacopina, who knows about as much about Alex Rodriguez as he does being an astronaut, says that the Yankees actually told a doctor to botch a surgery on poor Alex Rodriguez. It is as desperate – and pathetic – as anything that has happened yet, and makes you wonder if these people think they can win this case in the newspapers or on talk radio; makes you wonder if these people actually have a bottom.”

“(A-Rod) has such great support, it seems, that not a single player has spoken up and called Rodriguez innocent. Then again, Rodriguez himself has not declared his innocence, either. He has tried that before, with Katie Couric in 2007...when he denied having ever used performance-enhancing drugs.

“ ‘I’ve never felt overmatched on the baseball field,’ Rodriguez told Couric. ‘I’ve always been in a very strong, dominant position.’

“Rodriguez extolled his hard work, going back to his Seattle days, then gave his opinion on the growing steroids scandal. If anything came of it, he said, it would be ‘a huge black eye’ on the game.

“Now he is the face of that scandal, the only player who did not accept his punishment from Major League Baseball...He continues to play...to the dismay of some fellow union members, the ones he loves unconditionally.

“ ‘I’ve got a problem with it,’ Boston pitcher John Lackey told Peter Abraham of The Boston Globe this week. ‘You bet I do. How is he still playing? He obviously did something and he’s playing. I’m not sure that’s right.’”

[Lackey let his pitching do the talking on Saturday in Boston’s win.]

And then there is the “60 Minutes” report, that A-Rod’s camp leaked the names of teammate Francisco Cervelli, Ryan Braun and at least one other. As the New York Post’s Ken Davidoff put it, “The accusation of being a snitch poses an even greater threat to A-Rod’s already tenuous status in the players’ fraternity than do the allegations that constitute Major League Baseball’s 211-game suspension he is appealing.

“As one member of the Red Sox asked, on the condition of anonymity, ‘If that’s true, how does he even walk back into that clubhouse?’”

“Nothing enhances clubhouse harmony quite like the news that a player already believed by many to be at the very least a nuisance and at the worst a pariah actually threw one of his own teammates under the bus in the Biogenesis investigation.

“If the ’60 Minutes’ reporting is accurate, A-Rod not only violated baseball’s collective bargaining agreement, he also alienated the last segment of our population that could possibly be on his side: the players’ union. Rodriguez denied the allegations....

“The good news about this news is that it focuses us even more on just how awful it is that A-Rod continues to play when he should be suspended, as his Biogenesis brethren were. To see A-Rod in pinstripes, pretending as if everything is normal, is worse than watching Barry Bonds’ tainted march to the career home run record.

“By playing, A-Rod continues to harm whatever legacy he has left. Let’s hope that soon, he is kicked out of the game forever, putting him out of his misery, and us out of ours.”

Ball Bits

--Miguel Tejada was suspended 105 games, effective immediately, after testing positive for an amphetamine in violation of Major League Baseball’s drug program.

Tejada, the 2002 A.L. MVP who has long been linked to PEDs, said, “I admitted I made a mistake. But I want people to understand one thing: I wasn’t using a drug to take advantage on the field, or be stronger or hit more home runs.

“I’ve been using it [Adderall] for the past five years and had medical permission from MLB. But my last permit expired on April 15 and they didn’t give me another.”

Tejada was hitting .288 with 20 RBIs in 53 games for the Royals but was on the DL with a calf injury.

--The Phillies fired Charlie Manuel, which seemed a classless thing to do with just about 40 games left in the season. It’s not like the Phils are going anywhere. In his nine seasons, Philadelphia won five consecutive division titles, 2007-2011, and the 2008 World Series. He was 780-638 during his tenure, .550, but after this year’s All-Star break, the Phils were just 5-19.

Ryne Sandberg took over on an interim basis, though if he does well he will undoubtedly get the nod for 2014.

So Sandberg’s Phils were shut out his first two games by the Dodgers, but then ended L.A.’s 10-game winning streak on Sunday, 3-2.

The Dodgers had gone 42-8 in their prior 50, the best 50-game stretch since the 1942 St. Louis Cardinals. Until Sunday, the Dodgers had also won 19 of 20 road games, the best such streak since the 1916 New York Giants. Remarkable.

--It’s not worth commenting on Commissioner Bud Selig’s new plans for video review until the owners, players and umpires get together to approve it. I don’t like what I’ve heard thus far;  one challenge in the first six innings and two after, with umpires on the field still being responsible for balls and strikes, hit by pitches and check swings.

--Detroit’s Max Scherzer became the second A.L. hurler to win 18 of his first 19 decisions since 1919, the other being Roger Clemens in 2001 (Clemens finished 20-3), as the Tigers defeated the Royals, 6-3, on Sunday. In the same game, Miguel Cabrera became just the third hitter in baseball history to have 40 home runs, 120 RBI, and a .350 batting average thru 116 games. [Cabrera is hitting .360.] The others? Babe Ruth and Jimmie Foxx.

--As the Wall Street Journal points out, St. Louis’ Allen Craig is the best clutch hitter in baseball since 2012. Through Saturday he is at .457 with runners in scoring position this season, after batting .400 with RISP last year.

Through Thursday, combining the seasons, he was at .429 with Miguel Cabrera second over this almost two-year stretch at .390. Adrian Gonzalez was a strong third at .372.

The Cardinals’ team record of .330 (thru Saturday) would be an all-time high.

--With his 18 RBI in four games, Tuesday thru Friday, Alfonso Soriano tied a MLB record held by five others.

2002 – Sammy Sosa
1939 – Joe DiMaggio
1936 – Tony Lazzeri
1930 – Lou Gehrig
1929 – Jim Bottomley

“Of the 14 players suspended by Major League Baseball for allegedly obtaining performance-enhancing drugs from a bogus Florida antiaging clinic, (Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez) are the only two Americans. The other dozen players are from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

“This distribution is in keeping with the history of PED suspensions in baseball. While 28.2% of the players on MLB Opening Day rosters were born outside the 50 United States, foreign-born players account for 63.2% of the PED suspensions since 2004, when baseball’s penalties for failing a test went into effect. This is more than twice as many as one would expect if drug suspensions were proportional to demographic representation. Americans account for 71.8% of big leaguers yet only 36.8% of the suspended players.”

--The Dodgers have a skunk problem at Chavez Ravine. The team denies it, but as a stadium worker told the Los Angeles Times, “Oh, they do.”

I mean, goodness gracious...one time this year “the skunks actually ran into the stands, once on the field level and once in reserve.”

Did they pay? No word on this. If I had paid big money for my field level seat and found a skunk occupying it, I’d be rather torqued off.

College Football

--More preseason polls

1. Alabama (58 first-place votes)
2. Ohio State (1)
3. Oregon
4. Stanford
5. Georgia (1)
6. South Carolina
7. Texas A&M
8. Clemson
9. Louisville
10. Florida

Sport Illustrated

1. Alabama
2. Stanford
3. Texas A&M
4. Ohio State
5. Oregon
6. South Carolina
7. Louisville
8. Notre Dame
9. Florida
10. Clemson

--While there is nothing definitive on the status of Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel, I’m guessing the NCAA and the school come down hard on him. Three games, not two.

Why? It’s the right thing to do and in the case of the school, would show real integrity, as much as it probably kills their dream season.

[Manziel’s parents, by the way, have clammed up, which tells you something.]

--Hours after being ranked No. 2, Ohio State coach Urban Meyer said two key players, cornerback Bradley Roby and running back Rod Smith, will sit out the opener against Buffalo. Last year’s leading scorer, Carlos Hyde, was previously disciplined and will miss at least the first game as well.

Of course Meyer has been criticized in the past for lax discipline, such as when he was at Florida, see Aaron Hernandez.

--So Sports Illustrated had a story accompanying their preseason rankings, talking about some of the strong academic schools that are making their mark on the gridiron these days, like Stanford and Northwestern and....Vanderbilt.

I mean it does have to be said that at Vandy we now have five players charged in an ongoing campus rape investigation from this summer. All five were suspended.

--The Buffalo Bills have been very high on rookie QB EJ Manuel but now he’ll miss the remainder of the preseason with a knee injury.

--Poor Dustin Keller. After five seasons with the Jets, the tight end moves on to Miami and on Saturday suffered a season-ending knee injury.

--I watched the first quarter of Saturday night’s Jets exhibition game and Mark Sanchez was underwhelming after a respectable start. [Sanchise had another awful pick in the red zone.] But Geno Smith didn’t play because of a bad ankle.

So, with three weeks to go before the opener it appears Sanchez will win the starting nod by default as much as anything else.

[The Jets’ Flight Crew, though, was in mid-season form Saturday.]

--Wake Forest’s Tommy Bohanon, a seventh round pick by the Jets, appears to have won the starting fullback position already. Yesss!!!! All the reports are positive.

--A high school football player from Georgia died from injuries sustained during a scrimmage Friday night. A Fulton County medical examiner ruled the cause of death was from a fracture of the third cervical vertebrae.

Witnesses said the boy, a defensive back with a scholarship offer from Kentucky, tackled a receiver after a catch was made downfield and a coach said he “just immediately went limp.” The kid made a “fundamental tackle...head was up. It was a clean tackle.”

World Track and Field Championships

So I caught the action at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on Saturday and they finally had a decent crowd. Heretofore, attendance had been dreadful, with organizers desperately trying to fill the stands by offering freebies to anyone who wanted them.

So what does this say about Sochi’s prospects? [It’s pretty obvious.]

But I’m here to tell you something you won’t find anywhere else. Athletically, the Cold War is back on, baby! I am suddenly pumped for the Sochi Games and I hope our terrific women’s Alpine team kicks major ass on the Russians’ home slopes.

What is going to be great to watch, though, are two events in particular. Figure skating and the men’s hockey competition.

You can already tell the Russian judges in skating will be out to screw the Americans, and, believe me, the U.S.-Russian hockey matchup will have both nations glued to their tubes.

And why do I say this after watching Saturday’s action at the track?

All you had to do was hear the Russian crowd reaction to any time an American athlete was introduced. Let’s just say the normally nasty Russians were at their worst, and with relations between Moscow and Washington seemingly on an unstoppable downward spiral, the Russian propaganda machine will be in full force come Sochi.

The most telling example was the women’s 4X400 relay, which the U.S. has won the last three world championships and last four Olympics.

All Americans love Allyson...the epitome of beauty, athleticism and total class.

So this meant she couldn’t anchor an already depleted 4X400 team which was missing Olympic gold medalist Sanya Richards-Ross as well.

Yet the Americans, were it not for a horrible third baton exchange, probably would have edged out the Russians at the wire, but instead settled for silver. It was a fabulous race for us track aficionados. A very gutsy effort, but the home town Russkies got their wish. [Cough cough...the four Russian relay team members were, err, rather striking.]

Meanwhile, Usain Bolt took the 200 in 19.66, with Jamaican teammate Warren Weir second and American Curtis Mitchell third. For Bolt, though, it was only the tenth fastest 200 of his career, well behind his 2009 world-record time of 19.19. Bolt turns 27 next week and has dominated the world in the sprints the last five years and vows to do it all again in Rio. But you can see he’s a changed man. Much of the bravado was missing this week. He knows for the first time in his career he’s vulnerable.

But he did let loose after anchoring the winning Jamaican team in the 4X100 relay on Sunday...so another triple for Bolt as he outkicked America’s Justin Gatlin, the U.S. taking silver.

And the Jamaican women took the 4X100, also over the U.S., to give Fraser-Pryce a triple of her own.

And your editor has a new fave, American Brianna Rollins, who a day shy of her 22nd birthday won the 100 hurdles, the youngest world champ ever in an event where you often don’t peak until you’re around 30. Rollins overtook reigning world and Olympic champion, Sally Pearson of Australia, in the final stages. Pearson exhibited great class afterwards, befitting her terrific country....compared to the freakin’ hosts.

Britain’s Mo Farah wrapped up his stupendous double-double, winning the 5,000 on the heels of his 10,000 victory a week earlier. Just spectacular. So he follows up his double Olympic gold with this. He thus cements his position as one of the 2 or 3 greatest distance runners of all time. British Prime Minister David Cameron thinks he should be knighted. Farah should be.

Back to the women’s 200, speaking of all-time greats, Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce won, not having to deal with a Felix challenge down the stretch, thus doubling on her win in the 100.

American Jennifer Simpson won silver in the 1,500...a super effort. You go, Girl! [17-year-old Bronxville, N.Y. high school student Mary Cain finished 10th. Awesome. She should be right there in Rio.]

Matt Centrowitz of the U.S. took silver in the men’s 1,500.

Lastly, of course in Moscow this week there was lots of talk about the government’s recently enacted anti-gay legislation that has the rest of the world (except for some African nations...I won’t bore you with the details) up in arms.

Russia’s biggest track and field star, Yelena Isinbayeva, said at a news conference Thursday that she supported the law, suggesting it reflected the country’s views.

“It’s my opinion also,” adding: “You know, to do all this stuff on the street, we are very afraid about our nation, because we consider ourselves like normal, standard people. We just live boys with women, and women with boys.”

On Friday, she issued a new statement after getting inevitable heat from her foreign competitors over the above.

“English is not my first language, and I think I may have been misunderstood when I spoke yesterday. What I wanted to say was that people should respect the laws of other countries, particularly when they are guests.

“But let me make it clear I respect the views of my fellow athletes and let me state in the strongest terms that I am opposed to any discrimination against gay people on the grounds of their sexuality.”

Golf Balls

--Patrick Reed picked up his first PGA Tour win in defeating now 20-year-old Jordan Spieth at the Wyndham. Now it’s on to the FedEx playoffs, round one in New Jersey at Liberty National.

“As easy as (Jason) Dufner can make the game look, he’s not completely immune to hardship. He had struggled this season trying to live up to the heightened expectations that followed his breakthrough 2012, during which he won the first two tournaments of his career. Things began to turn around two weeks ago during a practice round at the Bridgestone Invitational. Dufner and Dustin Johnson took on Phil Mickelson and Keegan Bradley in a match with an ornate series of bets. ‘He played his best golf of the year,’ says Dufner’s agent, Ben Walter. ‘That gave him a massive shot of confidence.’

“ ‘He won a Ziploc full of cash,’ says Dufner’s wife, Amanda.”

--Dustin Johnson is wedding Wayne Gretzky’s daughter, Paulina.

--I’m pumped over NBC’s coverage of Premier League football. I ended up watching most of Saturday’s Manchester United-Swansea City game, the opener of the season, and while I won’t watch many contests until the winter when the season begins to heat up, for us casual Premier League fans this is going to be great stuff...to watch these games live.

And not for nothing, but if you are a Man U fan, check out their four goals in the 4-1 win. Robin van Persie is the man this season. And Danny Welbeck’s second goal (fourth of the game if you YouTube it) was gorgeous. Meanwhile, Wayne Rooney is an ass.

--A 12-year-old girl was attacked by a black bear in Michigan while she was out running in Wexford County late Thursday. Her clothes were shredded, her body cut and bruised, but she is expected to be released from the hospital in a few days.

Authorities said it was unclear why the bear attacked her because there is no evidence of bear cubs in the area. Such an unprovoked attack is unheard of, and actually the first time there has been an attack in this particular region. [Though Michigan has recorded three fatalities in the entire state.]

As reported by Eric Lawrence of the Detroit Free Press:

“The girl was attacked after 9 p.m., while she was running on a dirt road behind a cabin, where she often goes. She spotted the bear in her peripheral vision and tried to run faster, but the bear knocked her to the ground. She got up and tried to run, but the bear knocked her down a second time and mauled her. She even tried to play dead at one point, although experts discourage that when it comes to black bear attacks.

“The girl was rescued when a neighbor heard her cries and scared the bear off.”

And then I saw this one from the wire services over the weekend:

“A couple of violent encounters with grizzly bears in and near Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming have left four people wounded.

“In the first incident, a sow grizzly lunged at a group of four hikers in Yellowstone after a grizzly cub met them on a trail Thursday morning, the National Park Service said. A minute-long tussle ensued with the mother bear, leaving one person with injuries that were treated at the scene and another with bite and claw marks that required hospital care.

“All four were able to hike back out to the trailhead themselves.

“Roughly 70 miles away, in a valley near Island Park, Idaho, two Bureau of Land Management contract workers doing a forest health assessment were attacked by a grizzly bear Thursday...

“One man required stitches for bite wounds on his thigh and buttocks. Another suffered bite wounds on his hand while he tried to use bear spray.”

I would say the summer offensive is in full swing. I’m scared to go running now in the park.

--Terrific story in the August National Geographic on the lions of Africa, of which there may be about 35,000 left.

Many of these are in Tanzania and since 1988, when the government first kept records, “Lions have attacked more than a thousand Tanzanians.” In one region, out of 421 attacks, 282 people were killed.

--HBO is airing a documentary on the legendary broadcaster, Marty Glickman, Monday, Aug. 26. Definitely worth checking out.

--Larry David, who played golf a few times with President Obama on Martha’s Vineyard this past week, said he is still unsure whether he’ll do another season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

I did watch his HBO flick, “Clear History.” It was solid.... not great, but solid entertainment.

Top 3 songs for the week 8/14/71: #1 “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” (The Bee Gees...you askin’ me?) #2 “Mr. Big Stuff” (Jean Knight...tune isn’t aging well...) #3 “Take Me Home, Country Roads” (John Denver...love this one...)...and...#4 “Draggin’ The Line” (Tommy James...this one is holding up great...) #5 “You’ve Got A Friend” (James Taylor...not A-Rod...) #6 “Indian Reservation” (Raiders...make sure you drive through by early afternoon...I know from experience...see Whiteclay, Nebraska...) #7 “Beginnings” (Chicago) #8 “What The World Needs Now Is Love/Abraham, Martin and John” (Tom Clay...kind of bizarre one...substitute DJ in Los Angeles...) #9 “Mercy Mercy Me” (Marvin Gaye... brilliant...) #10 “Signs” (Five Man Electrical Band...they played an outdoor concert during a rainstorm and were all electrocuted....)

NFL Quiz Answer: Career rushing leaders.

1. Emmitt Smith 18,355
2. Walter Payton 16,326
3. Barry Sanders 15,269
4. Curtis Martin 14,101
5. LaDainian Tomlinson 13,684
6. Jerome Bettis 13,662
7. Eric Dickerson 13,259
8. Tony Dorsett 12,739
9. Jim Brown 12,312
10. Marshall Faulk 12,279

11. Edgerrin James 12,246
12. Marcus Allen 12,243
13. Franco Harris 12,120
14. Thurman Thomas 12,074

*But the greatest rusher of all time, Jim Brown, is the only one to average over 100 yards per game...104.3. Sanders is next at 99.8 and Adrian Peterson is at 99.4.

Peterson, who has promised to exceed Smith’s total before he’s finished, has 8,849 yards for his career to date.

---