A friend posted an article that was on Fox News’ website before it was taken down, and it was some of the most vicious, racist comments I’ve ever seen on the death of Whitney Houston. As I posted, I often stereotype the typical Fox News viewer as white, racist, and usually stupid. I know that I’m overstating, but the posts were so hateful that I was embarrassed for the country. And, let it be said that I was not a huge fan of Ms. Houston, but I saw that she had substance abuse problems and I think what happened to her was sad (as I would have felt about a white or Jewish or any other singer no matter their race, ethnicity or sexual preference.
But we have another idiot shooting off his mouth and finding that there are ramifications for hate speech.
John Kelly, of Oak Lawn, Ill., was suspended from his leadership role with Westside Baseball of Oak Lawn after he posted on Facebook that he was “so sick of reading about this dumb stupid N***** Whitney Houston..” The post has been deleted. He has also been asked to complete a sensitivity training course and has been banned from coaching for the next year, though he will continue to serve on the group’s board. Kelly’s post when the mother of a former league player, who is black, saw the Facebook post and alerted other community parents and children to it by reposting it on the group’s Facebook page.
The post went on to read, “she’s the dumb ass that decided to do drugs n kill herself stay with that woman beater … she blew more $$ up her nose than most of ye will make in yer lifetime … there are kids dying real fathers n mothers fighting for their lives…grow up ye dumb assess…think she’d give a flying f— about u???? Just saying.”
Kelly, who ran unsuccessfully in the 2008 Democratic primary for Cook County Recorder of Deeds, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the matter has “ruined” his life and career as a self-employed tradesman. He claims he is not a racist and that he “didn’t even realize I put [the epithet] in until after I sent it.”
That said, Kelly stands by the contents of his posting, except for the racial slur. He said he was frustrated by the media’s treatment of Houston’s death, which he felt elevated her as a role model for children, as well as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s paying tribute to her.
Mr. Kelly, yes the media makes a lot of the deaths of celebrities, many of whom die from “misadventure.” Do people spend entirely too much time obsessing about celebrities in general, and especially their deaths? Of course they do. Should we spend more time concentrating on war and poverty and the “important” issues of the day? Yes, but we’re human – as a group we watch American Idol (I don’t); we follow sports as though it’s important (guilty as charged). But to slam a public figure because she had substance abuse problems and died, and then pile on with the racial epithet – it was bad form and the person who “ruined” your life is looking back at you in the mirror.

I am happy to see Knicks guard Jeremy Lin doing so well. The Harvard graduate is shattering stereotypes all over the place: Asians can play basketball; Harvard now fields a good basketball team (recently ranked in the Top 25 for the first time in history.
As the father of two Chinese/African-American girls, I am very happy to see Lin get a chance, and make the most of the opportunity.
At this point in my oldest daughter’s life, she is starting to appreciate skin color and the difference between the haves in this country and the have-nots. I tell her that she can do anything she wants in life, she has no limitations. And here is this man, probably held back because of biases against Asian players (this just in, when I was at Northwestern, I saw and played against some pretty good Asian basketball players). So, again, I’m happy to see him play well.
The only down side is, of course, that Lin wouldn’t be an overnight sensation if he didn’t play in New York. As always it seems, anything in sports that happens in the New York-Boston is suddenly world wide news. If it happens in Seattle, or Vancouver, or St. Louis and you’d have a hard time finding on the last page of the newspaper. The only positive to this is that young Mr. Lin will probably get large endorsements. A young, attractive, very smart Asian (or Indian, or European, or black or white, I don’t care) becoming a basketball star – that’s OK with me

My distain for Oprah Winfrey and all she stands for is well known to regular readers of this blog, but maybe she made a BIG mistake taking her talk show to her own cable channel. Last weekend during the Grammys (that featured the highest rating in years in part due to the fact that Whitney Houston died the day before, Winfrey tweeted a request for viewers — Nielsen subscribers in particular — to watch her cable network OWN.
“Every 1 who can please turn to OWN especially if u have a Nielsen box,” she tweeted, according to EW.com. Adding later, “Commercial Grammy people..u can turn to OWN.”
Some of Oprah’s more than 9 million Twitter followers responded by criticizing her for “begging for viewers” and calling her “pitiful,” “desperate” and “corrupt,” and at least one follower noted that her account must have been hacked. Not to be outdone, Oprah defended her tweet with, “the word ‘please’ is used as a courtesy not a beg” and “unethical a little harsh don’t u think? Seemed like it made sense to me. Sorry if u’re offended.”
Problems have been noted at the network, which is female-directed fare and a continuation of the old Oprah Winfrey show and her own self-aggrandizement and deification. I am happy to read that some of her own “followers” called her on it and Neilsen is investigating and may revise it’s ratings for the time period.

In a bit of a surprise, the Chicago White Sox added a left-handed bat to their outfield mix, former Cub Kosuke Fukudome. To their credit, they are paying a lot less than their North Shore counterparts did. Fukudome will make only $1 million guaranteed, half of that coming this season. If he proves himself more helpful on the South Side than he did on the North, he could make $3.5 million for 2013.
That is quite a difference from 2007, when he signed with the Cubs for $48 million over four years. Last season, when he was traded by the Cubs to the Indians in July, Fukudome was paid $13.5 million.
Why do they need this guy? Fukudome is expected to fill in at all three outfield positions and provide protection in case the expected and inexperienced starters Alejandro De Aza or Dayan Viciedo fail. In my experience, he has the ugliest swing in baseball history, especially on a breaking ball, which makes me wonder how much help he’ll be in a breaking ball league?
If he plays like he did for the Cubs, he’ll hit .400 in April and .150 thereafter.

It was no surprise to me last week when Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd said that he used cocaine before many of the games he played in during his career. Boyd, who spent some time late in his career with the White Sox, told a Fort Myers, Florida radio station that he snorted up everywhere.
“Oh yeah, at every ballpark,” Boyd said. “There wasn’t one ballpark that I probably didn’t stay up all night, until four or five in the morning, and the same thing is still in your system. It’s not like you have time to go do it while in the game, which I had done that. Some of the best games I’ve ever, ever pitched in the major leagues I stayed up all night; I’d say two-thirds of them. If I had went to bed, I would have won 150 ballgames in the time span that I played. I feel like my career was cut short for a lot of reasons, but I wasn’t doing anything that hundreds of ball players weren’t doing at the time; because that’s how I learned it.” According to Boyd, he used the drug prior to at least two thirds of his games during his career, but was never asked to take a drug test and many teammates knew of his cocaine habit.
Boyd started 207 games over 10 seasons in the majors, the majority of which he spent with the Boston Red Sox. Upon retiring, his career record stood at 78-77 with one World Series appearance, a loss in game 3 of the 1986 World Series against the Mets while he was with Boston.
Most people think of performance enhancing substances, but the other drugs are just as popular. The first person I thought of when I read the news was Dock Ellis. The former Pittsburgh Pirate claimed that he pitched his 1970 no-hitter against the San Diego Padres while on LSD.
A lot of people will be talking about this at spring training, but this is a non-issue. If someone has a drinking or drug problem, it is much more likely that their performance will decline, which leads to a demotion, or being out of baseball, and no more big checks. Besides, drug tests are much more common, and penalties for drugs are set and communicated to all of the players, so, if you get caught, that’s your problem.
It was funny though.

One of the most alarming books I’ve ever read about the pro tennis tour was “Hard Courts: Real Life on the Professional Tennis Tours” by John Feinstein. In that book (1992), he detailed how tennis parents dominated the player’s life; and in effect becoming the young person’s employees, but with guardian powers over money. The book specifically detailed Michael Chang’s family, and most tennis fans can recount the antics of the fathers of Mary Pierce, Steffi Graf and the Williams sisters.
One of the foremost players of the time (but not detailed specifically in the book) was Arantxa Sanchez Vicario. Cursed by playing in the time of Graf and Monica Seles, which kept her from being the best in the world, Ms. Sanchez Vicario was one of the best in the world and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2007. It appears that she too was bilked by her folks; in a book published this week, she said that her parents lost an estimated $60 million in career earnings through mismanagement.
The now 40-year-old Sanchez Vicario said her parents were obsessed with her tennis career and controlled most aspects of it. Her father Emelio, reportedly paid her a monthly stipend and she trusted him to invest the rest. She is reportedly now estranged from her parents and brothers Emilio and Javier, also former tennis players.
She retired in 2002, and after “breaking free” of her parents’ influence, she found out that the money was gone and she was left with the tax burden for the years of tennis winnings. Ms. Sanchez Vicario’s mother, Marisa, responded in an open letter to Spanish media that she and her husband were devastated by their daughter’s accusations. Marisa Vicario Rubio insisted “we never took advantage of Arantxa and under no circumstances is she broke.” She said her 75-year-old husband, Emilio, has a weak heart, intestinal cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
Families are, by their very nature I think, dysfunctional, and to have a gifted child, whether in entertainment or sports places a whole different strain on the relationships. The child needs parents to love, guide and nurture them, but when the family is dependent on the child’s earnings, the parents can become the stereotypical “stage parents” pushing, controlling, and perhaps, spending the money as if they themselves earned it Some deal with it; some rebel openly like the case of Jennifer Capriati. Somehow, I wish that the international tennis authorities require the majority of prize monies to be placed in some kind of trust to protect the players. There are enough scam artists and hangers-on looking to steal an athlete’s money without their parents joining in the heist.

As you probably know, in my office, I am the biggest Chicago Blackhawks fan around, and whenever something happens, people mention it: if things are going well, they mention it; if they are in a losing streak (like now) everyone wants to know my opinion.
Usually, I just say that it’s a long season and remind everyone that we had a horrible 3 week period near the end of the Stanley Cup Championship season (2009-2010). Unfortunately, last night the Hawks lost their sixth straight game to a goal starved Colorado Avalanche 5-2. Recently, the Avs couldn’t score with help, but last night, they score three goals in the third period, opening up a 2-2 game through two periods. A troubling situation is occurring – the defense is becoming sieve-like and the goaltending appears shell shocked. The penalty kill is at a woeful 78.3%; the team has given up the second most goals in the Western Conference, and the team posts a 2.92 goals against average, one of the worst in the league. Unlike that guy who said I was too hard on the team at the Sabres game I attended, this level “ain’t gonna get ‘er done.”
Looking at the Plus/minus, there are some interesting issues – the star defensemen are on the “plus” side: Seabrook is +10, Keith is +8 and Hjalmarsson is +5, but you need to ask if their ratings are elevated by being on the ice for so many goals? Honestly, Keith hasn’t been the same since he won the Norris Trophy in 2010, and Seabrook has not been consistent. The same can be said of Hjalmarsson.
I have said that the offseason acquisitions have been mediocre at best. Steve Montador I have called mediocre, and at +4, that seems to be the case. My other target has been Sean O’Donnell who has been horrible and at -6. the 44-year-old may be done and probably should be replaced. The surprise has been Nick Leddy, who everyone seems to think is making progress, but is inconsistent, but he is at the bottom at -10. He’s only 20 years old, and the quality is evident, but perhaps too much is being expected of him? And I can’t tell whether the number of goals is attributable to Corey Crawford and Ray Emery or weak defense in front of them?
But I don’t want to leave out the front line – there are a lot of front line players in the severe negative column. Michael Frolik has not proved he deserved the big contract at -7. Dave Bolland and Bryan Bickell are both at -8, and Andrew Brunnette is at -10 with Leddy.
There is NO ONE who wants to see the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup again; NO ONE! However, I also know that this level of defense does not win games, much less championships. All season I have complained about the lack of a truly dominant 60 minute game – we won lots of games in the first half of the season with one great period and because we have some great scorers. Maybe 4-5 games this season have we shown the same type of consistent effort, hustle and smart play to win the Cup.
I love the Hawks. Toews has the potential of being Mark Messier for the 21st Century (high praise in my mind). Patrick Kane is starting to score, but he will only get better. Marion Hossa is in a slump now, but he has had an amazing season. Patrick Sharp has played well after injuries. We have the talent to contend. I sincerely hope play improves otherwise it’s going to be a long summer.