Off Wing Opinion

Baseball Strike Averted: News just off the wires, read the AP story on ESPN.com here. Biggest news so far -- contraction put off till 2006. How the Expos could survive in Montreal much longer I don't know, which leads me to believe that the league will find a buyer willing to move it out of town ASAP. More commentary later.

UPDATE: The players have agreed not to challenge contraction after 2007, which is as good as a guarantee that the owners won't resort to it. Most likely, this means a number of franchises will most likely move, or at least use that threat in order to extract better lease agreements on their ballparks. The piece says that steroid testing will begin next season "on a survey basis," which suggests to me that the language in the final agreement is probably closer to what the players proposed. In effect, the public debate over steroids merely handed a cudgel to the owners in the negotiations, one they probably used to get leverage elsewhere.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The 'Luxury Tax' charge paid by the Yankees and a handful of other clubs, is set to rise. Not a surprise, and in effect, it's nothing different from revenue sharing in other sports anyway. In any case, I'm wondering if Yankee owner George Steinbrenner's hiring of Microsoft lawyer David Boise will actually lead to anything. If he wanted, Steinbrenner could throw the whole agreement with a mere press conference.

Spending His Labor Day Weekend. . . In Indianapolis covering the World Basketball Championships can't be a lot of fun for Washington Post sports writer Steve Wyche.

That's why I'm sure Wyche was relieved yesterday as a former Los Angeles Laker center started talking trash about his team's chances of knocking off the U.S. in the tournament:

If there were any doubt about how far international basketball has come, look no further than Yugoslavia's Vlade Divac. The starting center for the Sacramento Kings, Divac said here today that the U.S. national team's reign as the world's basketball power is in jeopardy.

"We don't think we can beat them, we know we can beat them just like somebody can beat us before we can meet [Team USA] in the finals," Divac said after his team whipped outclassed Angola, 113-63, in opening-round action of the World Basketball Championship at Conseco Field House. "They are the favorites and they are number one and the best. [Do] we have a chance against them? Yeah, we do have a chance. If we come close, we will take advantage of it."

"I want to be part of history," Divac said about knocking off the U.S. team on its home turf -- the first time this tournament has been played here. "That is why I am here."

Now, while the U.S. team in Indianapolis isn't the strongest the country has put together since we started sending NBA players to the Olympics in 1992, it isn't exactly composed of pikers either. If Yugoslavia, or anyone else for that matter, were to beat the U.S. in this tourney, it would be a monumental upset.

So why is Divac talking so loud? Why is he acting so proud? The answer my friends, which you won't find in Wyche's piece, is in the part of the paper that covers politics.

You see, while the paper says Divac plays for Yugoslavia, he really plays for Serbia. Yugoslavia was never a country anyway, more like a police force with administrative responsibilities over a crazy-quilt of ethnic groups that have really never liked each other. Blame the Huns, the Hapsburghs, or the Ottomans; whoever you choose, the place is a mess.

And, as our current events database tells us, it wasn't long ago that American jets began bombing the bejeesus out of Serbia in order to prevent them from slaughtering ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

As you might imagine, we're not exactly popular in Serbia right now. Granted, we might think of the bombing as a necessary humanitarian intervention. But the Serbs, despite the fact that they've dumped Slobodan Milosevic, don't exactly see it that way.

So, when you see Divac talk big about toppling the mighty Americans, just realize that he's playing to a crowd that wants to fight back. And this is the only way they know how.

POSTSCRIPT: I wanted to add a link or two on the U.S.-led air campaign against Serbia, so I went to Google. As it turns out, a loose cabal of Serbian-apologists and professional anti-Americans have so completely gamed Google, that I went through eight pages of references without finding one reliable source for an article on the bombing. Luckily, the search engine at Slate came to the rescue.

UPDATE: Well, if you're going to shoot your mouth off about beating the U.S., you'd figure you better make short work of Spain, right? Wrong. The trash-talking Divac and his Yugoslav teammates just dropped a 71-69 sqeeker to NBA rookie of the year Paul Gasol and his compatriots. I caught the last two quarters on NBA TV, and I never knew basketball could be played so close to the floor. It's as if the players' sneakers were lined with Titanium, and the court was a giant magnet. Something tells me the U.S. still has little to fear.

Freudian Snap Count: While some coaches score points with the media with their candor, Arizona Cardinals coach Dave McGinnis has to get by with comedy. After all, he's coach of the Cardinals, and what choice does he really have:

NFL teams have to reach the 53-man roster limit by Sunday, and McGinnis faces some tough decisions. "That's why I get $5 million a year. Oh, I'm sorry. That's Spurrier," he said, referring to Washington Redskins coach Steve Spurrier.

McGinnis makes about $900,000.

But It Didn't Count: In Denver last night during a 31-0 Broncos' victory over the Seattle Seahawks, Denver placekicker Ola Kimrin hit a 65-yard field goal as time expired in the first half. Unfortunately, because the kick took place in an exhibition game, it won't go down in the record books. That record is still held by the man Kimrin is trying to beat out for a job, Jason Elam, who hit a 63-yard kick in 1998 to tie Tom Dempsey for the longest field goal ever.

With A Possible Baseball Strike. . . Somewhere around 12 hours away, sportswriters are pulling out all the stops on stories with angles trumpeting how it might be the last time, fill in the blank. Some discuss topics we should lament the end of -- such as the possible end of the career of Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell; or even the certain demise of the Montreal Expos.

But Joe Kay of the Associated Press has just penned an elegy to Cinergy Field, nee Riverfront Stadium:

Cinergy Field

The stadium that's been center stage for some of baseball's greatest plays -- Aaron's homer, Fosse's tumble, Rose's hit -- may not get a curtain call.

If players strike and the rest of the season is wiped out, the Cincinnati Reds' 7-0 victory Thursday over the St. Louis Cardinals will stand as the final baseball game at their 32-year-old stadium.

The possibility of an unscripted ending left fans and players feeling that something was missing. "It'll be a shame if they don't get to take it out in style," said Lou Ann Walden, 50, watching batting practice from the second deck. "There's a lot of good memories here."

The stadium that brought sliding pits and the Big Red Machine to baseball is scheduled to be torn down after the season. The Reds plan to move into Great American Ball Park, just beyond the left-field wall, next season.

Now, for Reds fans, I'm sure the end to Cinergy comes with a bundle of memories. Unfortunately, I come to bury Cinergy, not to praise it. If anything, along with cookie cutter multi-use stadiums in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, the stadium formerly known as Riverfront came to symbolize everything that was wrong with baseball stadium design. In the end, ironically, it was dumps like Riverfront, Three Rivers, and Veterans that paved the way for the retro baseball palaces fans enjoy in so many cities today.

The Tennis Doubles Team. . . Of Amir Hadad and Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi, an Israeli and a Pakistani, are at it again in the U.S. Open. The pair played together at Wimbledon, where they advanced to the third round amidst carping from Pakistani officials who didn't like the fact that one of their citizens was playing with an Israeli citizen.

With an assist from the International Tennis Federation, Quereshi was able to fight off officials from the Pakistani Tennis Federation, and continue playing. And bravo to the ITF. Siding with Quereshi was a rare show of backbone. Most international sporting bodies are usually willing to roll over to have their bellies scratched by despots everywhere.

They advanced again on Wednesday night, and here's hoping they go all the way.

After Some Questions About An Insurance Policy. . . Nearly derailed his attempt to come back from an amputated leg to play football, it looks like San Jose State football player Neil Parry is going to get to play after all. Why? Well, because the insurance company covering him, Mutual of Omaha, has made a special exception to his policy:

Two days after notifying Parry that the lifetime insurance coverage for his prosthetic legs could be canceled if he returned to football, Mutual of Omaha -- the NCAA's catastrophic insurance carrier -- made a special modification to the NCAA's policy Thursday that will keep Parry covered. The news left Parry overjoyed as he prepared to continue workouts with his teammates at the Spartans' training complex.

"The last couple of days, I've been thinking, 'What am I doing all this for?'" Parry said. "I haven't even worked out this week for just about the first time since my accident. I was thinking it was just pointless. It's just the best news. I'm really happy."

Parry's leg was severely broken Oct. 14, 2000, during a game against UTEP, and it was removed below the knee nine days later. After more than a dozen surgeries, Parry is able to walk normally on a prosthesis, and he can run at nearly full speed on a specially designed sports prosthesis. Representatives from the NCAA, Mutual of Omaha and San Jose State had several days of discussions over the matter before agreeing to a special arrangement.

As with most active amputees, Parry expects to face as much as $1.5 million in expenses for a lifetime of prosthetics and subsequent care, including a new prosthesis every two years costing nearly $15,000. All of those expenses were covered under the NCAA's policy.

Now, I know insurance companies just about always get a bad rap, but I wonder if anyone will give some credit to Mutual of Omaha for making this decision. Ok, well then I will. Good for Mutual of Omaha, a company I haven't thought much of since the Marlon Perkins days.

The Guardians Of PC Get Ready To Grill Another: Poor Jennifer Capriati. It's bad enough that she's going to have to contend with the Williams sisters -- perhaps the most dominant duo in the history of tennis, male or female -- for the rest of her career. But after a press conference tonight, something tells me Capriati is going to spend some time in the media-industrial penalty box:

"President Bush has been holding town meetings across the country about Title IX," the reporter said. "He's considering changing this important legislation that's helped women get involved in sports. If you could say something to President Bush, what would you say?" The 26-year-old Capriati's reply was a stunner.

"I have no idea what Title IX is," she said. "Sorry."

Uh-oh. Here comes the PC brigade.

Donna LoPiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation, wasn't shocked that Capriati knew nothing about the federal legislation mandating equal opportunity for women in college sports. The law marked its 30th anniversary last month.

"It doesn't surprise me," LoPiano said. "So many of this generation of tennis players never played in college. They started young. They never played in the Title IX construct. They never ran into it. "Any athletes who didn't come through the school system, I'd be shocked if they knew about Title IX.

She's been totally sheltered from the issues for a long time."

But I'm sure she's in for some Maoist-style re-education for the next 48 hours. God help her, thinking that it was actually her talent and hard work that resulted in her success. Good luck Jennifer, you're going to need it.

Baseball, Softball On Olympic Endangered List: The International Olympic Committee, looking to thin the herd of Summer Olympic sports, may decide to eliminate baseball and softball, amongst other sports:

As major league baseball players and owners worked to prevent a strike, the sport endured a setback on the international stage Wednesday, as an IOC panel recommended dropping baseball from the Summer Olympics.

The panel also proposed getting rid of softball, another game the United States excels at, while adding golf and rugby for the 2008 Beijing Games.

"I think it's preposterous,'' said former Los Angeles Dodgers Manager Tom Lasorda, who coached the U.S. baseball team to the gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. "I don't know what the reasoning would be for this. The baseball park was full for all the games we played in Sydney.

"Also, the softball I saw at the Olympics was an awesome competition and the crowds were great. It's just a tremendous mistake if they drop these sports.''

While I can see why Lasorda, a baseball booster like no other, would be upset, the rest of us shouldn't give it a thought. The team Lasorda brought to Sydney in 2000 was a gritty bunch of minor leaguers, and it was incredible that they were actually able to defeat the Cuban National Team for the gold medal. As great a story as it was, did it do anything to advance the sport? Something tells me no.

Going Into Half Time At FedEx Field. . . The Redskins trail the New England Patriots 21-0. Even worse, New England has scored twice with its second team offense, quarterbacked by journeyman Damon Huard of the flying Huard brothers. This is the worst of possible worlds for Redskins fans, as the first half of exhibition games are the only time when first string players regularly face one another. As I've mentioned before, I think it's going to be a long season for the team, and rough sledding until Redskins coach Steve Spurrier gets the sort of quarterback he needs to run his offense.

&**#&@ You! And The Horse You Rode In On: What else can you say to the offer from the Saudi Royal family to donate thouroughbred race horse War Emblem to the familes of those killed on 9-11?

War Emblem, of course, won both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness earlier this Summer, before failing in a bid to take the first Triple Crown since 1978. Fittingly, perhaps, his road to glory ended at the Belmont Stakes on Long Island, only 20 minutes from lower Manhattan.

Prince Ahmed bin Salman, who owned the horse, died of a heart attack a few weeks ago, the first of three mysterious deaths inside the Saudi royal family. Don't worry, at last count there were more than 7,000 Saudi princes, all still doing their best to suck the country dry of its oil wealth.

Apparently, the offer is part of a multi-pronged publicity campaign to help repair the damage the attacks inflicted on American feelings toward the desert despots. If so, it's too damn little, far too late. Something tells me that the families, who have filed a multi-billion dollar law suit against Saudi Arabia, aren't going to want to accept an offer that's simply blood money.

If the Saudis are really serious about patching up relations, they can start by letting us use our bases in the kingdom to attack Iraq. They can follow that up by granting visas to any and every American citizen that's being held hostage in Saudi against their will. Once we see real acts of contrition like these, Americas will start thinking about letting the Saudis keep their oil. Otherwise, all bets are off.

Then again, Prince Bandar could insist on giving us the horse. Remember what happened when Jack Woltz wouldn't give Johnny Fontaine the role he wanted?

Last Night In St. Louis. . . The Raiders handcuffed the Rams, escaping with a hard fought 17-11 victory. The normally high octane Rams offense was stymied, with Raiders cornerback Charles Woodson bedevliling Rams receivers. He finally put the game away with a sack on Kurt Warner on 3rd and long as time ran out. The Rams effort wasn't helped as running back Marshall Faulk was sitting on the sideline recovering from a twisted ankle he suffered last week in a victory against San Francisco.

The win put the Raiders over .500, trailing both the Bronocs and Cheifs in the AFC West by 2.5 games. The Rams are still leading the newly constructed NFC West by four games over both Seattle and San Francisco.

How can this be? Well, it's all on my Play Station, where I've been simulating the upcoming NFL season using NFL Gameday 2003.

Do I really need to say that I'm anxious for the season to start?

A Bit Of Blogrolling For My Friends: Now that my two-day visitor total is nearing 1,000 thanks to National Review, I'd like to say thank you to some of my online friends who took it upon themselves to flak my work when nobody else was paying attention. Formost among them is Jeff Cooper, my favorite left wing law professor, fellow Native New Yorker and Mets fan. Jeff and I tripped over one another during the World Cup, and he's been a daily stop for me ever since. Jeff's been very generous with the links as of late, especially since he's been attracting attention from the big boys.

There are others: Radley Balko of Cato; the mysterious 'Robert Musil'; Justin Sodano; South Knox Bubba; The Leper Messiah; Matt Moore; Matt Haws; Eric Olsen; Martin Devon; Charles Austin; Charles Tupper; and Howard Feinberg, who graciously let me contribute to Puck Hog.

I've also had numerous exchanges at plenty of other places, and if I've forgotten anyone for now, please forgive me. In any case, you'll find those folks down the left hand margin in the links section. Check them out early and often.

Now back to regularly scheduled programming.

UPDATE: I shouldn't forget John Hawkins and Dan Lewis either.

China Screws Wang Zhi Zhi: For some time now, I've been following the saga of Chinese basketball star Wang Zhi Zhi, formerly of the Dallas Mavericks, but now an NBA free agent.

Last week, as the Chinese National Team arrived in the U.S. for the World Basketball Championships, Wang, who had been missing in Southern California, and AWOL from the National Team's training camp, went back to the team, hat in hand, asking to be reinstated:

In Oakland last week, Wang was told by a Chinese Basketball Association official that he could rejoin the national team if he signed a contract promising to play for China at the Asian championships in early October.

Such a commitment would conflict with the opening of NBA training camps.

"He's at a point in his career where he wants a full training camp before beginning his third NBA season,'' Chan said. "He hasn't attended a training camp yet.''

The latest development was all but certain to widen the rift between Wang and Chinese authorities, who were angered earlier this summer when Wang twice refused to report back to China for national team training.

As I've said before, the real problem here is the stance on the part of Chinese officials that a man's labor is not his own. When Yao Ming, the first pick in the 2002 NBA Draft, signed a contract with the Houston Rockets, he had to agree to fork over somewhere around the equivalent of 80 percent of his salary.

Now, if Wang where to return to China for the Asian Championships, odds are officials would attempt to put the screws to him in regards to his next contract. Something which is sure to cost him millions of dollars. Heck, with that kind of money at stake, who wouldn't go AWOL.

Davy Crockett Rolling In His Grave? Some college football fans in the Volunteer State have taken offense at an ESPN commercial -- a reaction that has actually prompted the cable giant to pull the spot:

The commercial showed Lee Corso, one of the College GameDay analysts, waiting for an elevator. The doors open, and the elevator is filled with orange-clad Vols fans. A pig runs out, and an overweight woman holding another pig and wearing a shower cap and robe yells, "Come here, Rocky Top!"

Excuse me, but I saw the spot more than once, and it was funny. And if I was a graduate of the University of Florida, I'd think it was even funnier. But I digress. . .

ESPN spokesman Mike Humes said Tuesday the commercial will no longer be shown.

Make way for the gutless guy in the suit. . .

"This spot was one of many we created for the tongue-and-cheek style College GameDay campaign," Humes told The Tennessean newspaper of Nashville. "We've traditionally had the most fun at our own expense in our promotional spots. It is never our intention to offend anyone, and we are sorry if we did in this case."

Yep, sorry is the word. I'd love to know what my friend, South Knox Bubba thinks of this.

UPDATE:Then again, if a simple commercial mocking the folks in Tennessee evoked such a response, how about a whole TV show mocking all of Appalachia?

CBS is bringing back "The Beverly Hillbillies." This time, however, the family members we laugh at won't be played by Hollywood actors; they'll be real live rubes from the South.

After spending decades trying to shed the Bubba image it contracted in the 1960s when its prime-time lineup included a slew of backcountry characters, CBS has decided to embrace once again its biggest hick hit of all. The network already has a crew of casting agents combing "mountainous, rural areas" in Arkansas, West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky in search of a "multi-generational family of five or more -- parents, children and grandparents -- who will be relocated for at least a year" to a mansion in Beverly Hills, said CBS spokesman Chris Ender.

Hmm. The possibilities here are endless. Why not a real-life version of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? I wonder why that idea didn't occur to the folks in Television City in Hollywood?

Case May Break Steroids Racket: I've written plenty about steroids, and just how some athletes use them while attempting to maintain "plausible deniability" in the eyes of international doping agencies. Well, yesterday a court case wass filed that might close down one avenue of steroid use:

Norwegian weightlifter Stian Grimseth has sued a U.S. food supplement maker, claiming its product caused a positive doping test that forced him to leave the 2000 Olympics. Grimseth, who competed at the 1996 Atlanta Games, was sent home from Sydney after the results of a test taken two weeks earlier showed traces of the banned steroid nandrolone.

The weightlifter insisted he did not knowingly take any llegal drugs and said the only possible source of the steroid was a food supplement called Ribose that he started using just before the failed test. Grimseth said he'd cleared the product with Norwegian team doctors.

Later tests of the product by an independent German doping laboratory detected two substances -- nandrostenedion and norandrostenediol -- that break down into nandrolone in the human body but were not listed on the contents. The substances were found in samples of the product that Grimseth had used, as well as in an unopened box of Ribose.

Grimseth wants $1 million in damages from Univerasal Laboratories, the maker of the product. Currently, the FDA does not regulate the contents of nutritional supplements, although it is well known in international sporting circles that such supplements are regularly contaminated either with steroids, or with compounds that break down into steroids once they are ingested into the body. I'll be keeping a close watch on this case. I'm betting Universal will settle out of court, and quickly. Prolonged publicity here would be a bad thing for them, as well as a number of other companies that dope supplements.

For Those Washingtonians. . . Still lamenting our region's loss as an Olympic Bid City, I'd like to remind you all about what sort of characters we won't be dealing with as a result:

The IOC executive board decided Wednesday to recommend the expulsion of Indonesian member Mohamad "Bob" Hasan.

The decision followed a report from the International Olympic Committee's ethics commission, Director-General Francois Carrard said.

Olympic Ethics Commission? Hey Bullwinkle, isn't that an oxymoron?

Hasan, an IOC member since 1994 and a business partner of former Indonesian strongman Suharto, is in an Indonesian jail serving a six-year sentence on corruption charges. He was sentenced by a Jakarta appeals court last year for his role in a multimillion-dollar scam involving a forest mapping project in the early 1990s.

But don't fret my friends, there are more than a few folks like him already making travel plans to New York City and San Francisco, where they will expect to be wined, dined, and bribed courtesy of the taxpayers of those fine cities and the states they reside in. I hope they all enjoy themselves.

But Will He Miss The Prom? Ty Tryon, the youngest person ever to win a PGA Tour Card at 17, is back from a rehab stint, and will return to competition at the Buy.com Utah Classic next week. With a rehabilitation exemption, Tryon will be able to join the tour for up to 23 event between now and 2003 in an effort to keep his card, and a place on the tour. Tryon starts his senior year in high school in a few days.

And Up In Buffalo. . . Scotty Bowman, the greatest ice hockey coach ever, got to take home the Stanley Cup one last time. Bowman, who had his name enscribed on the Cup 10 times, announced his retirement immediately after the Detroit Red Wings defeated the Carolina Hurricanes to win the Cup earlier this year. Good luck to Bowman, a man who deserves a long, and active retirement.

Welcome To Readers Of. . . The Corner, over at NRO. Here's hoping you stay a while, click some of the links, and maybe even add me to your bookmarks. Thanks to NRO's Robert A. George for the link, and some very gracious words.

I'm Glad Keith Olbermann Is Writing For Salon. . . And his latest article on how he believes a potential baseball strike will unwind is one reason why everyone should read him. I'd love to place a permalink to an archive of Olbermann's articles on Salon, but the folks there have yet to construct one. I wonder what the hold up is?

(Link via Jeff Cooper.)

Over At The New York Press. . . C.J. Sullivan chronicles the death throes of the Montreal Expos, slumping their way through what looks to be their last year in the Majors:

Now that they