Quick hits during a busy week...

It's about time that Jim Rice got into the Hall of Fame.

There have been many who were detractors, trying to compare him unfavorably to other players or Hall of Famers - seldom comparing him to the peers with whom he played. From 1975 through 1986 - a twelve season stretch - Rice led the AL in total games played, at bats, runs scored, hits, homers, RBIs, slugging average, total bases, extra base hits, go-ahead RBIs, multi-hit games, and outfield assists.^[3] Among all major league players during that time, Rice was the leader in five of these categories. In five categories he was better than anyone in the game - better than Mike Schmidt, Reggie Jackson, Carlton Fisk, Tony Perez, and any other Hall of Famer from that era.

Detractors like to point to his defense, and talk about the advantage he had playing in Fenway's short left, forgetting that the Green Monster wreaks havoc with visiting outfielders. The Monster both giveth and taketh away - defensively it's more difficult than people remember when it comes time to vote for the Hall. They also forget that Reggie Jackson was brutal in the outfield. Additionally, Rice was a six-time top five candidate for the MVP during that 12 season stretch, including a win in 1978. Jackson was a top five candidate five times over a 12 season stretch and hit 100 RBI's or more only six times over a 21 season career. Rice - eight times.

Yes, Jackson was a monster in the post season, but Rice was better than most people give him credit for - in 1986 he also scored 14 runs and drove in six. The 14 runs Rice scored is the fifth most recorded by an individual during a single year's postseason play.

Jackson was inducted in his second year of eligibility. It took Rice 15.

It's a shame they took this long to get it right.

For the Birds...

So - if anyone had told me, pretty much at any time in the last couple of weeks, that the NFC Championship game would come down to Arizona holding court against Philly, I would have laughed hard enough to give myself a hernia. Philly I figured could make it that far, even though I believed it to be unlikely, but the Cardinals? Anyone else notice any signs of an impending Apocalypse?

Elsewhere around the NFL...

I was a little surprised by Josh McDaniels choice to go to Denver. Lately it's a situation where it seems like the inmates are running the asylum. I figured that there was every possibility he would end up wherever Scott Pioli did.

Rumors are that Terrell Owens might be on the chopping block in Dallas. Wonder where he ends up if that happens. Oakland, maybe?

Good luck in your next line of work Tony Dungy. I gotta admit, I thought he'd be back for one more season. It should be interesting to see what happens in Indy next season.

Caveat Emptor

Buyer beware.

Everyone has something to sell. Everyone. Me? I'm trying to sell the idea that I might indeed have a clue as to what I'm writing about...not everyone buys, particularly not my wife.

At least retail is honest about it. For the rest of us...well, let's just say you have to pay closer attention to what's being sold...

Let's go through some of the people and groups making sales pitches out there -

Scott Boras/Alex Rodriguez - A-Rod is the car that Boras is trying to sell. He's like a Jaguar- a sleek, pretty bauble of a car with a 12 cylinder engine that has a tendency to crap out on you at the worst possible moment. In 2004 when the Yankees needed a $30 million bat to save them from Mo Rivera's struggles, A-Rod disappeared like J.D. Salinger from the public eye.

Buyers need to beware of the slick, used-car salesman Boras, and his shiny toy of a product, A-Rod. Consider - even in a (contract) year in which A-Rod set career highs in RBI's (156), OBP (.422), and slugging (.645), hit the second most homers (54), and third highest batting average (.314), Boras is going out of his way to get potential buyers to NOT look at his client's post-season failings in that same career year - in a year in which A-Rod led the league in RBI's, he knocked in one in this year's post season.

So during a season in which A-Rod averaged an RBI per every 3.7 at bats, he had one in 15 during the postseason. Even adding in the 8 he had during the 2004 playoffs, this is what he has done in baseball's second season since then - 9 RBI's in 94 at bats, or one for every 10.4 at bats. For his career he has knocked in a run for every 4.9 at bats in the regular season, that has dropped off to one for every 8.6 at bats in the postseason, a number that has gotten progressively worse with each passing season.

This doesn't include the following facts that I have mentioned in other posts - for the first three seasons after A-Rod left Seattle, the team averaged in the vicinity of 10 more wins per season; after he left Texas, they averaged eight more wins per season; the Yankees have average almost four fewer per season, decreasing from 111 wins per year to 94 this year. And, here's the kicker, he has failed to help any team he has been on advance to the World Series. Buyer beware.

The first half of the Patriots schedule - What they are trying to sell? Professional football. How? By complaining that the Patriots are doing things they shouldn't be...like scoring a lot. The people who need to beware? The fan-bases of the Jets, Dolphins, Cowboys, Chargers, Bills, Bengals, Redskins and Browns. Really, the fans of the Cowboys, Jets, Dolphins, and Redskins in particular.

Those teams, those four mentioned at the bottom of that last paragraph, were the ones that started the complaints of how the Patriots are playing offense this year (well, the Jets complained about something else, and maybe they should be more worried about what's happening on the field than on the sideline - if this were European soccer, they and the Dolphins would be well on their way to playing in a semi-pro league). One Redskin, who shall remain unnamed in this post, accused the Patriots of disrespecting the game in an effort to deflect attention from the fact that what the Patriots really disrespected was the Redskins highly regarded defense.

As just about every former coach, player, and most pundits have said - there's no mercy rule in the NFL, if you don't like a team scoring on you, then do something about it. Rolling over and playing dead when you get down by a couple of touchdowns is what really disrespects the game.

Buyer...beware.

The National Press - The national press, in an effort to build up this weekend's game between the Pats and Colts, are trying to sell the Patriots as the evil empire with the merciless coach who won't take his foot off the pedal once he's driven the opposition into the ground. The Colts are the perennial good guys of the league with the owner doing everything he can to make a stadium happen in his host city, and the brilliant, but nice head coach in Tony Dungy.

Let's look at some of the facts in this - yes, the Patriots are running the score up on people and annihilating their opponents. However, it's not like the Colts under Dungy have never done this. The following was ganked from the Boston Globe's Eric Wilbur, via Dave at The Coffin Corner -

W, 49-14
W, 41-10
W, 41-9
W, 51-24
That quartet of one-sided scores comes to you courtesy of the 2004 Indianapolis Colts from a November-December period during which Peyton Manning and Company annihilated the Texans, Bears, Lions, and Titans, respectively. And, you know it's funny, I don't remember one person whining about them running up the score.

Tony Dungy, the good-guy coach in all of this, did not call off the dogs. Dungy has also publicly associated himself with groups that have well known anti-gay stances (but I suppose that's okay, because everyone knows that on one is gay in the locker room). Focus on Family, the group with which Dungy is most closely associated has been referred to by a number of people as "rabidly anti-gay." Last I checked, Bill Belichick has never aligned himself with any hate groups that hide behind a thin veil of legitimacy by claiming to be family advocates.

Let's look at Jim Irsay - still public enemy number one in Baltimore. Still the only owner that gets more of a rise out of Baltimore fans that Peter Angelos. For those who have forgotten, Irsay, the so-called nice guy owner, packed the Colts up in the dead of night and broke his lease with Baltimore County in an effort to move the team to Indy. Irsay did this against league wishes. Yeah, he's a good guy.

I have no personal issue with the Colts on the field. Manning is a supremely talented quarterback (please take a cue from Brady and cut back on the public endorsements - its annoying enough to make me look forward to seeing you get your head handed to you). The team is talented. However, the general manager and owner have whined whenever things didn't go their way, the head coach is a bigot, and the press is selling a serious double standard here.

Once again...buyer beware.

I Guess Because Ho-Hum Bowl Doesn't Sound as Good...

I have seen better.

Granted, I have also seen worse championship bouts, but this year's Super Bowl certainly wasn't in the top 50 percent of the games played. This was a game in which both teams did their damnedest to give the game away - Chicago just worked a little harder at it.

The Colts turned the ball over three times on offense (twice from the game's MVP), missed an extra point and a field goal. The Colts high-powered offense accounted for 22 total points on a rainy night.

Unfortunately for the Bears, their offense could manage only 10 points and Rex Grossman was responsible for three of the team's five turnovers (two interceptions on poorly thrown balls and one fumble on the center exchange) - two coming at a time late in the game when the Bears still had an opportunity to pull ahead on touchdowns. Grossman had a later fumble on the exchange that he recovered himself.

It was a sloppy game with few exciting moments (I am not saying this because I am a Patriots fan - I still feel that the Giants-Bills game in January of 1991 is amongst the best ever, the conflicts between the Steelers and Cowboys are epic - except for a mediocre game in the mid 1990's, and the 49ers-Bengals game was special - and I don't like either of those teams).

As for the game MVP - I think the selection of Manning was weak, and probably based more on sentiment than what he actually did to win the game. Let me qualify this by adding that I don't necessarily feel as though there was a clear cut candidate.

His game wasn't horrible, but it wasn't "Most Valuable Player" quality either (Hell, Rex Grossman completed as many touchdown passes to Colts as Manning did). I think that Dominick Rhodes was just as deserving for his ability to keep the Bears offense on the sidelines and to wear out the Bears D while racking up 113 yards and a touchdown on 21 rushing attempts.

Another option would be safety Bob Sanders. Granted he had only two tackles, but also forced one of the Bear fumbles and had an interception (returned 38 yards) and a pass defensed. And a final, although unlikely candidate - Adam Vinatieri. He accounted for 11 points, and after the initial kickoff, kept the ball away from the dangerous Devin Hester.

The Prince of South Beach -

Ah, Prince and the half-time show...It was one of the better halftime shows that I have ever seen, but I have to admit to some surprise at the lack of outrage from middle America about the sexual suggestiveness of the shadow-theater at the tail end of the mini-concert (see the Reuters picture above).

Racial Barriers -

This morning on ESPN's Mike & Mike radio show Mike Greenberg made a big deal about "racial barriers" being broken. It is, at its core, a ridiculous sentiment that implies that there was someone, or some group of someones in control of the NFL that have consciously been trying to hold back black head coaches.

If Tony Dungy were the ONLY black head coach in the NFL right now (he wasn't even the only one in the Super Bowl), I would concede that this Super Bowl win was about a racial barrier that has been broken, that his win would probably mean that other black coaches would get shots at more of the top spots, but this is a guy that's been a head coach for a decade and he's not alone as a black head coach in the NFL.

Here's the real trick - name a Latino head coach. Asian? Hell, try for assistants - outside of Ron Rivera of the Bears, it's pretty hard, isn't it?

Black History Month and the Super Bowl

During the course of the 2006 NFL campaign five AFC teams were piloted by black head coaches - Cincinnati (Marvin Lewis), Cleveland (Romeo Crennel), Indianapolis (Tony Dungy), Kansas City (Herm Edwards), and Oakland (Art Shell). In the NFC, there were two - Arizona (Denny Green), and Chicago (Lovie Smith). Shell and Green have since been fired and Mike Tomlin hired in Pittsburgh to replace Bill Cowher.

This is the first post-season in NFL history that will feature a black head coach, and as the dominoes fell this post season, it will feature one on each sideline. What does this mean in the grand scheme of things? Absolutely nothing. Is it progress? Yes.

However, as long as we pay attention to black versus white in the coaching carousel - we in the press, in the executive suite, and as fans - do an injustice to those coaching on the sideline.

Is it historically important? Probably not. From a color barrier standpoint, there are a number of others that came before in the athletic arena that led the way. It's unlikely that during the two week press whirlwind that is the time between the division championships and the end of the Super Bowl that we'll hear a reporter repeat a paraphrase of the ignorance that Redskins quarterback Doug Williams was subject to over 20 years ago with the question of, "How long have you been a black quarterback?"

Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy are unlikely to receive the hate mail and threats received by Hank Aaron almost 35 years ago when he was on the verge of breaking Babe Ruth's all-time home run record.

The NFL will not have to switch hotels in Miami, or pull the game from the city like the American Football League pulled its 1965 All-Star Game from New Orleans and moved it to Houston due to the way that 23 black players were being treated in the city.

The coaches will not be forced to seek out separate accommodations for themselves or their black players from those of their white teammates like the coach for Jackie Robinson did.

Players today seldom, if ever, have political agendas such as Muhammed Ali, Jim Brown, and Olympians Tommie Smith, and John Carlos.

Do problems still exist with the system? Sure. This season past season saw seven teams with black coaches, and if the Cowboys hire a white coach then next season will have only six black men in charge of teams in a league where more than half the players are black. Are there more than six qualified candidates? We won't know until the candidates get the opportunity.

However, Green gave us three losing seasons in Arizona, and Shell presided over the NFL equivalent of A Comedy of Errors, then again, Mike Singletary's name has been looming large as a soon to be hot commodity.

While the interviewing rule changes proposed by the Rooney family, owners of the Pittsburgh Steelers, has helped, the genesis of these changes and the really important changes go back years.

It goes back to coaches like Hank Stram, and Joe Gibbs who gave blacks chances at positions that most believed they were incapable of playing. It goes back to owners in the old AFL, like Al Davis, who listened to the complaints of the players who were confronted by racism. It goes back to Brown, Ali, Smith, Robinson, and Carlos, who weathered the early social and legal violence that went with being popular symbols in a fight for racial equality during a time when teams couldn't even stay in the same hotel and fans often were not allowed to utilize the same facilities at a stadium just because of the color of their skin.

It goes back earlier to Jesse Owens putting the punctuation mark on the joke of the Aryan Master Race and to a son of a slave that laid the ground work for the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. - Paul Robeson .

According to the online archive at Rutgers, "Robeson was awarded a four year academic scholarship to Rutgers University in 1915, the third black student in the history of the institution. Despite the openly racist and violent opposition he faced, Robeson became a twelve letter athlete excelling in baseball, basketball, football, and track. He was named to the All American Football team on two occasions. In addition to his athletic talents, Robeson was named a Phi Beta Kappa scholar, belonged to the Cap & Skull Honor Society, and graduated valedictorian of his class in 1919."

Robeson was an outspoken proponent of equal rights in the 1940's, but faced censorship from the House Committee on Un-American activities. For more information on Robeson and his importance to sparking the Civil Rights Movement, click here.