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Let's sing
Autumn's busy first month inspires reflection
Posted: Wednesday September 18, 2002 12:51 PM
Updated: Wednesday September 18, 2002 7:06 PM
Here are a few verses of sport's September song:
Nobody has ever sustained more abuse in sports than Bud Selig. But for all his flaws, and for whatever the reasons, it was under his watch that baseball management and labor finally reached an agreement. Yet, I haven't heard a peep out of Selig's critics. Decency should oblige them to publicly acknowledge that the commissioner deserves credit.
For that matter, every time former union chief Marvin Miller opens his mouth and poses as Samuel Gompers, Miller makes Donald Fehr seem more and more like a man of compromise and vision. Here's to Selig and Fehr. Thank you, gentlemen.
Everybody knows that the Summer Olympics are a bloated mess, but when the International Olympic Committee comes out with a plan to correct that situation by eliminating baseball and softball, it only proves, once again, that the IOC is, essentially, a European organization. And you thought President Bush was unilateral.
Has any major United States' athletic failure ever created less attention than our NBA heroes being defeated ... and defeated ... and defeated in the World Basketball Championships? Is this because:
a) Americans just don't care about international sports
b) Americans just don't care about basketball in the summer, no matter whether men or women are playing
c) the NBA has become faceless
d) all of the above.
Please, it is not racist to not care about the Williams Sisters when they play each other. In individual sports, we need contrast to develop a rooting interest. To this point, watching them do battle was watching two peas in a pod. But now that Serena is obviously much better than Venus, there will be much more interest in their meetings because you can either cheer for the clear favorite or the poor underdog. By the way, Serena is still listed at 130 pounds. And I'm riding in the fourth race at Churchill Downs today at 116.
News flash: Monday Night Football ratings continue to decline, even with John Madden in the booth. Surely, it must be demonstrable now that NFL ratings are a function of who's playing rather than who's talking. Why do they keep paying football announcers so much money?
I think that the real disappointment of Patrick Ewing's career was not that he never won a championship with the Knicks, but that he wasn't ever able to win the affection of the big city. New York wanted to love the big guy, but he simply wouldn't give of himself. No athlete has to, of course. Ewing was paid for his talents, not his personality. Also, it's always harder for the giants to win our sympathy. Still, it's sad that a star can play for a team for so many years and never really engender emotion.
On the other hand, there's no evidence that Ewing ever cared whether the fans cared. He was an honest player, and, with Hakeem Olajawon, he was the dominant center in the era between Abdul-Jabbar and Shaq. But Ewing will be quickly forgotten, except in the cold pages of the record books.
I'll bet you can't name The World's Fastest Human.
Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available now at bookstores everywhere.
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