LET’S TAKE 5: BRIEF BUT LUCID THOUGHTS ON 5 TOPICS

Please review and consider this actual, unaltered photograph caption that I saw in the local newspaper today—“Tiger Woods walks with swing coach Hank Haney during a practice round prior to the Masters Monday in Augusta, Ga.” Given Tiger’s reported infidelity and sexual indiscretions should we not put some of the blame on the guy who teaches him how to “swing”? How does he get off the hook? If Haney gets credit when Tiger swings successfully he must also be taken to task when the swinging takes Tiger out of bounds.

Regardless of what happens tonight in the NCAA men's basketball title game the Butler Bulldog basketball program is a wonderful story. What really strikes a chord for me is the fact when Butler’s home court, Hinkle Fieldhouse, was built in 1928 it had a capacity of 15,000 and was the largest college facility in the nation for 20 years. Heck, the private school’s enrollment is just over 4,000. What does that tell you about the state of Indiana and their feelings toward the sport of basketball? They love it. As football is to Texas, basketball is to Indiana. You may know that the much-acclaimed 1987 sports movie “Hoosiers”, starring Gene Hackman, was filmed in Hinkle Fieldhouse because the historic game upon which the movie was written was actually played there in 1954. The Indiana state high school championships were held there for decades. The Hoosier state is steeped in tradition and great history and so, too, is Butler.

After enjoying the hoops action of March Madness on the court, yet having to endure mind-numbing, copy-cat announcing, let’s have a contest to solicit a replacement for the now very tired basketball expression “he knocks down the trey.” Basketball aficionados know the five-word phrase translates to “he makes the three-point shot.” From where “knocks down” ever came, and how it became the standard description for such a play over the last decade, I don’t know. But, it’s time to move on. Also, is “trey” really that much more cool than the three? For some reason every play-by-play announcer and game analyst uses the same line. What happened to individuality and style? Suggestions?

I love baseball. Aside from having made a living working for 30 years in football, baseball always was and still is my first love (apologies to my wife). That being said, I was disappointed that in a “made for TV maneuver”, the New York Yankees played at Boston Sunday night on ESPN2. Why? For decades the Cincinnati Reds hosted and played the first game of the season, usually on a sunny but chilly weekday afternoon along the banks of the Ohio River. It’s silly to argue against MLB & ESPN’s agreement to put the best rivalry in baseball out there as the lone game on Sunday night to kickoff the season.

But, what is silly and easy to argue is why those same two ball clubs had to sit around Monday with an off-day, not playing the second game of their three-game series as we would all expect, and then having to resume play Tuesday and Wednesday. Does that make any sense? Later in the season, when the teams have been trudging on through their marathon season and could really use an off-day, they’ll be thinking back to that second day of the season when they sat around the clubhouse or hotel playing cards instead of baseball.

If you have a couple of extra bucks and want to play a long-shot to win the World Series in 2010 you can cash in big with one of these choices—Washington Nationals 150-1, Pittsburgh Pirates 125-1, Toronto Blue Jays and Baltimore Orioles both 100-1. The Yankees are 3-1 while both Boston and Philadelphia are 6-1. Despite it being 102 years since the Cubs pulled off this feat, the Northsiders are a respectable 18-1 shot, pretty good when you have that much history stacked up against you. Certainly not a reach in my opinion, it’s worth tossing a little spare change on the Tampa Bay Rays at 22-1.

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