Jason Kiley of wishoops.net reported Friday that Madison Memorial basketball player Wesley Matthews will attend Marquette. This is interesting in several ways:
Johnny Winston emailed:
Please feel free to share this information with all interested persons or
parties -100 Black Men of Madison, Inc. Golf Outing
On Monday July 26, 2004 The 100 Black Men of Madison, Inc., cordially
invites the public to participate in their 4th Annual Golf Outing at
Cherokee Country Club located at 5000 North Sherman Avenue.Registration begins at 11:00 a.m. with a shotgun scramble at 12 noon. The
$125 fee includes 18 holes of golf, motorized cart, dinner, prizes and a lot
of fun!The 100 Black Men of Madison is a non-profit, tax exempt organization.
Participation in this event helps the 100 Black Men of Madison to fund the
organization’s charitable activities in the Dane County area for
underprivileged youth. A free youth golf clinic will be presented to all
registered youth from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.Walk ups are welcome the day of the event. For more information and to sign
up, please contact Derrick Smith at 608-831-0525.
Dallas Maverick Billionaire owner Mark Cuban maintains a blog here. Interesting reading, including recent stories on their decision not to re-sign Steve Nash and make the way for UW's Devin Harris. Cuban more or less communicates with the traditional media via his blog. This blog is certainly an example of where we're we're heading.
Fascinating article by Steve Fainaru on Bud Selig's Miller Park hardball tactics (with some interesting comments from former governor Tommy Thompson):
The soaring brick ballpark on the outskirts of this city took the lives of three ironworkers. It cost a Republican state senator his job and set back taxpayers a sum equal to the Milwaukee County parks budget projected over the next decade. It nearly exhausted the political capital of the former governor, Tommy G. Thompson, who championed the stadium to keep Wisconsin "major league." But Thompson won't set foot in the place. Last year, when the ballpark's tenants, the Milwaukee Brewers, invited Thompson to Opening Day, he declined. He did it to protest Brewers owner and Commissioner of Baseball Allan H. (Bud) Selig, who, Thompson said in an interview, provided misleading financial information to get the stadium built, then broke promises to use the increased revenue to make the Brewers competitive.I've not set foot in Miller Park, and don't plan to. Then, there's this quote from the deputy editor of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on their predicament (the newspaper's parent company's Chairman was a lobbyist for the stadium!):"There were just so many misleadings and mischaracterizations," said Thompson, now Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Bush administration.
Inside the newspapers, reporters and editorial writers felt constrained. "We were totally compromised at that point," said Sue Ryon, deputy editor of the Milwaukee Journal's editorial page, then the lead editorial writer on the stadium issue. "We had no credibility. Anything we said, it was, 'Well, who can believe them? Look at the position they're in?' We felt as a newspaper, as an editorial board, handcuffed, and that was pretty much from the beginning."Two useful links: Field of Schemes | Doug Pappas site
The 2004 Mad City Marathon..... was wet:
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A refreshing column from Tom Oates on long time UW women's track coach Peter Tegen. Oates' essential point is that Alvarez's record the past few years has not been great, therefore will he get the same treatment as Tegen?
Several years ago, I recall reading a Doug Moe column that mentioned that WSJ sportswriter Vic Feuerherd was "forbidden" from writing about the Badgers. (I seem to recall that Feuerherd was exiled to cover the Brewers....). I'm glad to see the WSJ take a more proactive position (which they should!).
Matt Sedensky writes about surfers & sharks (I remember discussing this issue with abalone divers when I lived in California....).
KAHANA, Hawaii — Sam George can't believe the audacity of surfers who seem to return to the water as soon as the blood of a shark attack dissipates — even though he's one of them."Once the blood cleared and the paramedics got off the beach, I'm as silly as the rest," said George, San Clemente-based editor of Surfer magazine.
Michael Lewis pens a fascinating article on Billy Fitzgerald, the longtime baseball coach at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans. Fitgerald has coached many exemplary student/athletes. Recently, some of them got together to fund the school's gym renovation in his name.
Lewis's article explores the friction between a coach trying to get the most out of student/athlete's and parents who want to protect their children.
''The parents' willingness to intercede on the kids' behalf, to take the kids' side, to protect the kid, in a not healthy way -- there's much more of that each year,'' he said. ''It's true in sports, it's true in the classroom. And it's only going to get worse.'' - Scott McLeod, Newman's headmaster.
Since then McLeod had been like a man in an earthquake straddling a fissure. On one side he had this coach about whom former players cared intensely; on the other side he had these newly organized and outraged parents of current players. When I asked him why he didn't simply ignore the parents, he said, quickly, that he couldn't do that: the parents were his customers. (''They pay a hefty tuition,'' he said. ''They think that entitles them to a say.'') But when I asked him if he'd ever thought about firing Coach Fitz, he had to think hard about it. ''The parents want so much for their kids to have success as they define it,'' he said. ''They want them to get into the best schools and go on to the best jobs. And so if they see their kid fail -- if he's only on the J.V., or the coach is yelling at him -- somehow the school is responsible for that.'' And while he didn't see how he could ever ''fire a legend,'' he did see how he could change him. Several times in his tenure he had done something his predecessors had never done: summon Fitz to his office and insist that he ''modify'' his behavior. ''And to his credit,'' the headmaster said, ''he did that.''
Wishoops.net has excellent coverage of this weekends WIAA boys basketball tournament (box scores and video clips).
"Are we going to be replaced by a computer or what?" one veteran baseball scout told The Los Angeles Times last week.
Selena Roberts has a timely look at Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland A's. Beane has made the Oakland A's winners, despite a very low payroll and competitors with piles of cash (money is not the secret to success).
But what the swipes reveal is how threatening an alternate view is to baseball's theology.It's a threat to inept owners — and/or a certain baseball commissioner — who have used their small-market woes as habitual excuses for futility. It's a threat to Yankeesque teams who spend millions to assemble constellations only to be increasingly grounded by teams of cohesive humans. It's a threat to romanticized scouts whose legends are built on a 5 percent success rate.
"Everyone thought they had it figured out a long time ago," said Scott Hatteberg, the A's first baseman. "Now you have these young guys coming in to mess with it."
San Francisco's Commonwealth Club has an interesting interview with Beane and writer Michael Lewis regarding last year's excellent book, Moneyball.
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I've posted some photos from the division 4 (Prairie School vs. South Shore) and 2 (Luxemburg-Casco vs. Richland Center) WIAA Girls Basketball Tournament Finals.
Great fun!