Skipping Through the Sporting World
by Tom Rathkamp
eya
sports fans! Instead of diving into a monogamous subject this week, I’ve
decided to mix it up a bit and scribble some random thoughts on a variety
of sporting topics. Hold onto your hats folks. It could get windy ……
*** Boston’s Nomar Garciaparra sits at .394 as of Tuesday, August
8th. Although we’d love for Nomar to be the first ever right-handed
hitter to bat .400, his chances border on the sublime. According to
experts, the main stumbling block in his quest is his inability to draw
enough walks.
As you know, a walk does not constitute an official at-bat. Being near
the top of the Bosox batting order every night, Nomar almost always
garnishes four official at-bats a game. A 1 for 4 nets a game BA of .250;
2 for 4 gets ya .500. Combine those two and you have a .375 average for a
two-game stretch. This is below his current .394 clip. Add one walk to
each of those games, keep the hits, and you have a 3 for 6 or a .500
average. Get the picture? At any rate, he would have to go on a mega,
multi-hit blitz to get to ..400, then attempt to sustain it the rest of
the way. Not likely.
*** Forward Brian Grant, a free agent with the NBA’s Portland
Trail Blazers, scoffed at a $70 million contract offer from the Blazers -
even more in a sign-and-trade offer to Cleveland. Word has it that Grant
wants to play for a "winner," with his head turned towards the
Miami Heat. A winner? What is Portland, chopped liver? Seriously folks.
Perhaps Grant believes that the current Blazers will never beat LA in the
West, and that Miami might at least reach the finals via the East. Gee,
who would the Heat most likely play?
Grant joins the ever-growing club of stars who don’t have the
necessary confidence in "themselves" to make a team a winner.
Like I’ve said before, only Michael Jordan (and now Shaquille O’Neal)
truly deserve the gargantuan dollar amounts. Why? Because they really do
(in Mike’s case, "did") make their teams winners.
*** Can you believe that some fans in Wisconsin were calling for
the Packers to trade Brett Favre because backup QB Matt Hasselback turned
in another stellar (though irrelevant) performance against another second
string unit last Friday night (In pre-season game # 1 mind you)?
At the risk of indicting my fellow cheeseheads, they are viewing this
one game with cheddar-colored blinders on. Granted, it’s fun to analyze
the football pre-season to death around these parts, especially with the
Milwaukee Brewers mired in another dismal season. But a note to these
idiotic fans who called for Favre’s exodus: The correlation between
pre-season success and regular season gold is "non-existent"
… in ANY sport. Relax, will ya?
*** My prayers go out to Daryl Strawberry as he battles a recurring
bout with cancer. I’ve been as critical as anybody regarding his drug
and alcohol problems, but nobody deserves cancer. Nobody!
Any comments, criticisms, or condemnations on this sports column or
previous ones? Feel free to email me at andydan@milwpc.com
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