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Also I Shouldn't Have Stopped Trying To Win That Game Against Pittsburgh In The Playoffs

Herman Edwards reminisced about his days as the coach of the Jets this week with the Kansas City Star and unlike Frank Sinatra he's not without regrets to mention.

“The worst thing I did when I was in New York was draft Jerricho Cotchery and … he never got on the field for me,” Edwards said. “Only bits and pieces. Now he’s playing and playing very well and doing what he was doing in practice when I was there. We just didn’t play him enough."

I'm actually not sure that's the worst thing he did while he was in New York. It's a big failing but I don't know that I would rank it above never learning how to work the clock to your favor at the end of games. It certainly doesn't rank above the playoff game in Pittsburgh when Edwards stopped trying to score a game-winning touchdown and twice settled for Doug Brien field goals. Nor would keeping Paul Hackett as offensive coordinator long after it became clear that he didn't know the first thing about developing a winning offense. Other than those things though, not playing Cotchery was pretty bad.

(Tip o' the cap to Dan Benton at the Fanhouse)

Scoop Jackson's Not A Big Reader

Scoop Jackson, firebrand of ESPN's Page 2 and ignorer of all other media, has decided to weigh in on the big story of last week. He's writing about Roger Clemens' contract with the Yankees but he's got the media in his crosshairs.

The media -- the people who are supposed to be the voices of reason, the protectors of the sanctity of sports -- collectively have acted as if Roger Clemens' signing with the Yankees was about Roger Clemens' signing with the Yankees. The media is failing to recognize this is about how one man not only has put an "I" in team, but put a "me" in MLB and "myself" in professional sports.

Roger Clemens is without question the most selfish athlete of our time.

Either that, or he's the most celebrated pimp in professional sports...

He's a self-absorbed, beyond-arrogant, bigger-than-the-game, I-have-no-respect-or-honor-for-the-concept-of-team, I-only-pitch-when-I-feel-like-it, any-team-should-feel-blessed-to-have-me, Randy-Johnson-will-never-be-on-my-level, the-world-revolves-around-me, kiss-the-ground-I walk-on, worship-who-I-am-because-I-am-the-me-myself-and-I-in-MLB pimp.

The idea that the media are the voices of reason in this country is pretty laughable in the first place but that's less important than the fact that Jackson is suffering from selective amnesia about the reaction to Clemens and his deal with the Bronx Bombers. Did he miss Mike Vaccaro's tirade in the Post last week that accused the Yankees of selling their soul for making the deal with Clemens? Was he out of the country when David Wells' opinions on the deal were reported across the nation?  Or Phil Garner's reaction? Or Curt Schilling's or Dave Stewart's? Or those of any number of bloggers who have weighed in with their thoughts about Clemens' "what's best for me" approach to continuing his baseball career? Hell, even his colleagues Jemele Hill and Stephen A. Smith weighed in on how disgraceful they found the whole deal.

Jackson's ostensible point - Clemens is a sacred cow that the media are afraid or unwilling to take down a peg - is clearly without merit. His larger reason for writing the article, calling Clemens a pimp, is  impossible to take seriously. Sort of like Jackson himself. 

A Nearly Perfect Night Of Pitching

The Phillies are back up to .500, after their miserable start that's fairly impressive but what's totally impressive is Cole Hamels. He set down the first 18 Brewers, who are SO last week, and struck out 11 in his eight innings of two-hit, two run ball. The 6-2 win was the latest brilliant performance for Hamels and his Grade-A changeup. It's on the Pedro/Trevor Hoffman level and the Brewers were perfectly hopeless against it until Richie Weeks walked and J.J. Hardy homered in the seventh. Hamels is 6-1, the best start by a Phillie since Eric Milton in 2004, and I think I speak for all of Philadelphia when I say it's hoped that Milton isn't a blueprint for the rest of his career.

• C.C. Sabathia wasn't quite so good as Hamels but he was good enough to lead the Indians to an easy 7-1 win against the Twins. Sabathia struck out five, gave up five hits and walked one in eight innings for his sixth win. The Twins were overmatched by the gargantuan lefty so they tried to do anything they could to shake his focus. Their best try was a bunt by Jason Bartlett, figuring Sabathia's big body couldn't make the play, but Bartlett popped up and Sabathia made the catch. Nothing else worked either for the Twins on Wednesday night.
• A.J. Burnett is the next contestant on the showcase showdown of dominant starting pitchers on a Wednesday night in May. He whiffed 10 Orioles and went the distance in Toronto's 2-1 win at the Skydome Rogers Centre. The Jays reached Oriole rookie Brian Burres for a couple of run-scoring singles in the fourth and fifth but mustered little other offense. That was okay with Burnett, who was stingier with Oriole hitters than America was with tears for Jerry Falwell.
• Kenji Johjima is to blame for John Lackey's laggard performance in the best pitcher of the night derby. He lined a ball off Lackey's left ankle in the fifth inning of the Angels 5-0 win in Seattle and that helped force him out of the game after six innings and 90 pitches. The Mariners didn't fare any better against the Angel relievers, obviously, but did you know they actually fared worse? Dustin Moseley and Scot Shields were perfect over the last three innings in the Halo victory.
• And, just so you don't go thinking that every pitcher turned into Bob Feller, the Devil Rays outlasted the Rangers 11-8 at Disneyworld. Vicente Padilla gave up 12 hits and eight runs in four innings which was just bad enough for Casey Fossum to pick up a win despite giving up six runs and nine hits of his own. To be fair though, Padilla spent all day on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and wasn't feeling himself.

(AP Photo/H. Rumph, Jr)

If A Playoff Series Falls In The Forest, Does It Make A Sound?

Has there ever been a NBA series that's gotten less attention than the one the Nets extended to a Game Six with last night's 83-72 win? There's no controversy, there's no eight-seed trying to keep going and there's not even the prospect of a team coming back from 3-0 down because the Nets had to go ahead and win Game Three. No, there's just a team winning a game when they score six points in the fourth quarter because their opponents only scored 13 and were down by 18 to a team that's capable of only scoring six points in a quarter of a win or go home playoff game. And then there's two teams combining to shoot 40%, mostly because they can't shoot although if you want to credit good, strong defense go right ahead because I'm pretty sure nobody's even watching. Turnover enthusiasts may be the most thrilled by this matchup, there were 35 last night, while those who enjoy made free throws might like to look elsewhere. These two "professional" sides hit 29-of-49 from the charity stripe.

Yes, sir, if you like poorly played basketball by two teams with little to no chance of winning the title, this is the series for you. The rest of us will just keep waiting for the Suns and Spurs to start.

(AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

A-Rod, Yankees Hold On For A Split

The Yankees split a doubleheader in Chicago yesterday and each game sends a very different message about the state of the Bombers. In the day game they again failed to solve a soft-tossing lefty in John Danks, swinging early in at-bats and getting in holes that Danks filled with sweeping breaking balls. Mike Mussina pitched okay but ran into a lot of trouble in the sixth and what was a 2-2 game turned into a 5-3 White Sox victory. The White Sox have had all kinds of trouble scoring runs this season and the Yankee refusal to wait out Danks was tough to watch. He's a decent pitcher, better than Brandon McCarthy and Horacio Ramirez, but the team's problems with lefties (four straight punchless losses) have become acute and teams aren't slow to pick up on those deficiencies.

In the nightcap, though, they got a gem from Chien-Ming Wang and a big game from Hideki Matsui to run away with an 8-1 win. They piled up four of the runs in the top of the ninth but Matsui doubled home a pair off of Jose Contreras in the third and they broke open a 2-1 game in the seventh with two more of the former Yankee. Bobby Abreu, who homered and singled in the opener, singled home the third run and Derek Jeter tripled him home to chase Contreras. Wang was aces, giving up six hits in seven innings and getting out of a fourth inning jam that was his biggest threat. He gave up singles to the first two batters but promptly got a pair of flyouts and a groundout to escape the inning and head to his second win.

Which is the real Yankee team? Probably they both are as the difference in hitting from day to night was matched by the difference in pitching. The fire's still not on at the plate so when Mussina or another starter is merely okay it's going to be hard to win. Abreu had an encouraging day but Damon, A-Rod and Cano did not so the new Yankee problem still requires some solutions. And, yes, it's really hard to find pictures of Rodriguez that don't make him look gay.

(AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Dirty Rotten Scoundrel

If you're a fan of the irony then you would have loved the way the Spurs closed out the Suns last night. Exhausted from playing with six men all night, Phoenix couldn't get a body on Bruce Bowen with 36 seconds left and he nailed a three to put the Spurs ahead 84-81. It was their first lead since early in the first quarter and they'd go on to win the game 88-85.

The Suns were exhausted because they were playing without two of their top six players and the fact that Bowen stuck the dagger in their hearts must have been especially hard to swallow. Bowen's  play has been much closer to the unacceptable line than anything Amare Stoudemire or Boris Diaw did when they wandered away from the bench but Bowen's escaped punishment and was around to make Phoenix's life much more difficult. They'll have to win in San Antonio Friday to get back home for another game but this kind of grueling effort will hang on players like Steve Nash, Shawn Marion and Raja Bell in the next game.

The Suns led by 16 in the first half and eight with five minutes to play by using a style they were totally unaccustomed to playing. They were deliberate, they were methodical and, if they hadn't been playing just six guys, they would have pulled off a pretty shocking win. But both Marion and Leandro Barbosa disappeared in the second half and Nash just couldn't get it done all by himself. Eventually that led to Bowen getting the ball in the corner. That's the only spot he's dangerous, on offense anyway, and he killed the Suns. In a game that many people were calling a sham before it even started, it ended as a bigger one than you could imagine when the guy most deserving of a suspension beat a team that played its heart out in intractable circumstances.

(Photo by Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images)

More Owners Behaving Badly

Monday's post on the worst sports owners in history garnered a lot of response from Feed readers so we'll spend a little time looking at their suggestions of people who were either left off the list or weren't given enough shit for their misdeeds in the owner's box.

Art Modell - There were myriad reasons given to despise Modell, from the firing of Paul Brown to the theft of the Browns to those annoying "Gotta go to Mo's" commercials. Not so much on that last one, actually, that's just my own vote. He made (dis)honorable mention on my initial post because of the move to Baltimore but readers enlightened me to some of his other lowlights. He ran off Paul Brown and Jim Brown, although sources seem to point to the latter as the reason for getting rid of the former. Two wrongs don't make a right, obviously, and his financial mismanagement, according to commenter Iff, meant he needed to overspend "on a loan to get a player whose girlfriend burned his house down." Bad Moon Rison, for those who can't keep up, is certainly not a player who was so good that you should jeopardize your franchise to acquire him. Cleveland has suffered a lot with Modell, Stepien and the Indian cabal.

Jeremy Jacobs - The owner of the Bruins probably rates below Wirtz and Ballard on the hockey wall of shame but his skinflint ways deserved mention in the original post. Like those other two owners (and Jim Dolan) he's taken an Original Six NHL club and turned them into just another franchise. The hardest moment for Bruin fans has to be that when Ray Bourque finally lifted the cup it was in Colorado because Jacobs never spent enough to surround him with a winning side.

Peter Angelos - There's no doubt that Oriole fans hate him with every fiber of their being. Hardly a good owner, Angelos has, at times, invested some money into the team. The Miguel Tejada signing, the veteran-heavy contenders of the mid-90's and this past offseason's bullpen spending spree all make me wonder if his biggest flaw hasn't been the people he's put in charge of player personnel. He doesn't spend as much as the Sox or Yanks and could probably spend more but his flaws aren't as egregious as the others on this list. He should have been in the discussion, though.

Daniel Snyder - This may be a controversial position but I don't think Snyder's all that bad as an owner. He's a pretty odious guy and starting the trend of charging to watch training camp is a fan unfriendly move that no one should've gotten behind, to be sure, but he clearly wants to win and he's willing to spend every dime he has to get there. If anything Snyder resembles the early Big Stein days, too involved and too much micromanagement, but I wonder if Steve Spurrier or Joe Gibbs had worked out how much animosity people would have had with him. He just needs his Joe Torre, in other words.

The Nuttings/Kevin McClatchey - Don't spend any money and when they do it's in a misguided way leaving the Pirates as a perennial cellar-dweller. They have given GM Dave Littlefield too much rope to hang himself with and that's reason enough for them to make the (dis)honorable mention category.

David Glass - Hiring Dayton Moore showed that he's not totally inept and there are two schools of thought about how dire the financial straits were in Kansas City before he took over. He was definitely working at a disadvantage but this offseason and several strong drafts make me want to leave him on the "wait and see" side of the ledger. The Royals were junk when he took over and he can only bear so much of the responsibility for that.

A couple of other writers added local suggestions. Seth from the Seattlest throws former Mariner owner George Argyros, Seahawk owner Ken Behring and Howard Schultz of Starbucks and the Sonics into the mix. All three have either tried or been the impetus for their team to find a home outside of Seattle. Schultz ranks lowest of the three, to me, for destroying the Sonics and leading to their eventual move out of town. Selling them to a guy who the city couldn't support didn't help at all, either.

David King at the San Antonio Express-News, on the other hand, has some Texas-sized travesties to get off his chest.

• Roy Hofheinz: Got the majors to Houston and the Astrodome built, but alienated and/or bullied about a million people and never let the baseball people take care of baseball,

• John McMullen: Decided Nolan Ryan was too old for the Astros and fans were pretty much superfluous,

• Bud Adams: We'll never forgive him for making them tear down the exploding scoreboard in the Astrodome for extra seats – and then bailing out for Tennessee,

• Bob Short: Brought the American League to DFW – with one of the worst teams in history – and never knew when to quit meddling,

• Bum Bright: Speaking of running a team into the ditch ...

• Eddie Chiles: The inspiration for parodies of Texas oilmen everywhere, Chiles ran the Rangers like his oil wells -- deep into the ground.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in. I think the most enlightening part of the whole process has been learning just how many awful sports owners there have been in history. You could make a top 100 list and still leave off some worthy members of admission to this Hall of Shame.

Starfucker, And Proud Of It

Bruce Willis' current squeeze is Playboy Playmate Tamara Witmer but if the bald lothario can't keep her satisfied she's already got a good idea about who she'd like to ride to fame and fortune next. She's not going to change streams and look for a "regular" guy. No, Miss August 2005 has her sights set on another celebrity or pseudo-celebrity, she already counts Jean-Claude Van Damme among her conquests, to keep her in the gossip columns.

If Willis doesn't work out, she'd like a crack at the Lakers' Luke Walton, or Owen Wilson - although "I heard he's a real dog." Still, "I love going out with celebrities. I'm always up for it."

Witmer and Walton actually have something in common. She's an athlete as well, a veteran of the Los Angeles Temptation, the winners of the 2005 Lingerie Bowl. I'm not sure what position she played but I'm sure she did a great job. Walton may not be as high on the A-List as Willis or Wilson, hell he's not even the third-best player on his team, but you'd be hard-pressed to find too many hoopsters in a better position than the Laker forward. He's in L.A., plays in front of celebrities every night and seems to be beating off starlets with a stick. That he came from Bill Walton says a lot about how good looking his mother must be.

The Fog Is Getting Thicker...And Miguel Is Getting Laaaaaarger!

Miguel Cabrera is mired in a 6-for-37 slump over his last 10 games and the Florida Marlins are searching for a way to help him out of the doldrums. Should he spend more time in the cage? Studying video? A day off? The Marlins tried the last of those approaches last night and it remains to be seen if that does the trick for Miggy, to be fair he's still above .300 for the season, but if it doesn't another option is sure to get discussed more in the future. Skipping the postgame burritos and milkshakes.

Cabrera is in a slump? Someone will say it's because he's fat. He made an error at third? Check out how heavy he looks. The Marlins are struggling? Look no further than the scale to figure out why.

He said he's at 250 and hopes to trim at least 10 additional pounds. The Marlins have spoken with him, but no one in the organization is interested in addressing the matter publicly, considering how sensitive Cabrera is about it.

You'd think the pressures of living near South Beach would keep Cabrera trim. After all none of the hotties who patrol Collins Avenue are looking for a gigantic slug to keep them warm at night. The last baseball player to be taken to task for getting too fat was...hold on a minute, there's actually never been a baseball player taken to task for getting too fat. After the Babe, Fat Freddie Fitzsimmons, Terry Forster, Steve Balboni, John Kruk, Tony Gwynn and Mo Vaughn, the major leagues have finally reached a breaking point. A historic day to be sure. Bob Wickman had better beware.

The Big Story: Don't Leave That Bench, Son

A daily look at the big story of the day in sports as seen through the eyes of writers and bloggers all across the internet.

An earlier than usual Big Story today because of the ramifications of the suspensions handed down by the NBA to the Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs last night. The Association handed down a two game suspension to Robert Horry for his assault on Steve Nash and gave Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw one game apiece for leaving the bench area in the aftermath. In handing down the suspension NBA VP Stu Jackson said, "The rule with respect to leaving the bench area during an altercation is very clear. Historically, if you break it, you will get suspended, regardless of what the circumstances are."

There's no argument that the two Suns left the bench and there's no argument that by the letter of the law they deserved their suspension. Diaw and Stoudemire left the bench but neither one escalated the conflict and Diaw clearly retreats right away when he realizes what he's done. That doesn't matter, the rule says you leave the bench and you're out for the next game. Fine but Tim Duncan, as Jackson admits, left the bench area in the second quarter but escaped suspension because a brief tussle between James Jones and Francisco Elson wasn't judged to be an altercation. So it's okay for a player to wander onto the court during the course of normal play but not when the opposition takes a cheap shot? How does that fit the "regardless of circumstances" edict Jackson quoted?

Easy answer there, it doesn't. The NBA wants to say that there's no subjectivity about the suspension but then they use subjectivity to declare what is or isn't an altercation. The same way they used subjectivity to say that Baron Davis didn't elbow Derek Fisher in the head. If he had, it's an automatic suspension but they said he didn't and he played last night. The way this rule has been enforced has never made sense, Jackson even said that the rule needs to be revisited, and the explanation the NBA hides behind, that a rule is a rule is a rule, is the worst kind of conformist thinking. Jackson and David Stern should feel very good about themselves for compromising the playoffs just so that they can follow the rules.