As we prepare for baseball season, there is yet another Wrigley Field story. For awhile, the Chicago Cubs have tried to find a way to obscure an advertisement for a casino across the street from the left field bleachers (positive spin – the team doesn’t want to condone gambling; my cynical side – the team doesn’t get revenue from the sign since it’s on a building the team doesn’t own).
Anyway, the team has erected an ad of its own: for Toyota. Is it just me, or is it fully appropriate that the sponsor of a baseball team that hasn’t won in 101 years is a car company that is known primarily now for mechanical problems and recalls?
Just askin’.

SI.com reported today that Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington tested positive for cocaine during the 2009 season. The 57-year-old manager has , like a player who tested positive, been subject to increased drug testing since his failed test, which was administered by Major League Baseball last July. Reportedly, he has passed all of his subsequent tests.
The team decided to support Washington and retain him as manager, because he “came clean” and admitted his use before the test results were even completed. Washington called the commissioner’s office shortly after he was tested following the 2009 All-Star break to warn it that he might fail the test. Washington also told his Rangers bosses about his cocaine use, and they accepted his apology as heartfelt and also his explanation that this was a one-time transgression.
As to why he was using cocaine, Washington wouldn’t specify. “There is no right way to explain something wrong, and I did wrong. Was it tension? Maybe? Anxiety?”
As someone who thinks that almost all drugs should be legal to people over the age of 21 in the privacy of their homes and not before driving or other activities that could injure someone else, I think it took a lot of guts for the African-American manager to head off the test results by admitting it to the commissioner’s office, the team, and his family.
But this incident does again raise the issue of the pressure on coaches and managers throughout sports, professional and collegiate. There were baseball managers and coaches who were well known for closing bars in every town the team played in including the team’s hometown. It has led to people quitting early like Dick Vermeil, Bill Cowher, and most recently, may have claimed University of Florida head Coach Urban Meyer. These head coaching and managing jobs come with a lot of money and media attention, and but they also come with great expectations and pressures. It’s definitely not for everybody.

To no one’s great surprise, Tiger Woods announced that he would return to the PGA Tour at the Masters on April 8th. This would be his first public appearance on a golf course since his auto accident opened the floodgates of infidelity reports, sexual addition rehab, etc.
Now, there will be some hecklers, but Augusta will be as protective of the 4-time champion as they can. Besides, tickets are so hard to get, there’s little chance that someone would risk having their access revoked to hassle Tiger. And it won’t be easy – he hasn’t played professionally since November, on one of the toughest courses, and a place that Tiger hasn’t won since 2005.
As I wrote here a few weeks ago, even though I’m not a golf fan by any means, this is my only interest in Tiger Woods – how he fares in major tournaments. How many women he slept with; whether his wife stays with him; is irrelevant to me. As a father, I just think about his children; as a sports fan, I only care if he breaks Jack Nicklaus’ record for major tournament victories.

The economy is bad. We all know that. We also know that state and local governments are also hurting badly. And one of the most media covered movements is the Tea Party Movement, a group that espouses fiscal responsibility, but actually is just a cover for the 21st century Klu Klux Klan. Even if paying excessive taxes were a problem (actually, the Obama Administration got passed the biggest middle class tax bill in recent history – just not to the rich), the U.S. does not pay as much of its income to taxes as say Canada, among other countries. But is anyone willing to pay for anything?
Now however, things are getting ridiculous. When staffing cuts start hitting our schools, it makes you wonder what would people like their money spent on? Kansas City earlier this week announced that it would be forced to cut about 40% of its staff including teachers to cover its budget shortfall. Even closer to my home, Elgin, IL is making just as significant cuts to payroll including closing schools, firing teachers, and eliminating programs.
Yes, teachers’ unions have had too much power around the country; and we should go to year-round school instead of a calendar that follows the old agrarian calendar – freeing up the kids for the summer (harvest time). And I also understand the waste in government run systems (and here in Illinois, corruption is so rampant that it makes one sick). (It can also be said that one way in which many states and corporations can save money would be if there were universal healthcare and limits on pension benefits, but no one makes this argument.) Still, what would we want to spend our remaining money on?
Here in Illinois, the governor is pushing for a temporary tax hike, and companies and media like the arch-conservative Chicago Tribune is pressing against any tax hike at all. One of the GOP candidates says that cuts are all we need to handle the crisis. Is there waste? Yes. Are there belts that can be tightened in government? Of course there are. However, we also have to accept that tax rates have not increased in many years. And yes, my family is lucky, having 2 incomes, but we also pay a monthly amount greater than our mortgage on day care for the Indignant Children, but if we have to pay more to keep the teachers in class, helping our children learn, then so be it.
That is the problem of many people – they want government to do everything – make us safe; pave the roads, school our children, take care of the millions of things that government does, and no one wants to pay a dime for it. Yes, the lunkhead conservatives think that the market economy will take care of everything, so who needs government, especially the Federal Government (especially with a black head of the Executive Branch)? But that is one of the things that government should do – corral corporations. Corporations are soulless entities driven only for profit – and history has shown us that corporations will do anything, including pollute our skies and waters, sell poison, hire slave labor while firing domestic workers (and then they wonder why people aren’t buying their crap). A working government stands to “level the playing field,” protect people from corporations.
But I digress. Everyone says that children are our most vital resource, and I know that I would sell everything I own and do anything, legal or illegal, to take care of my girls. And if the local school district wanted to raise taxes to keep our local schools running, I’d be opening my checkbook. I may not like it, but I’d be there.
What are these people thinking?

Finally, after months of blackouts and finger-pointing, the corporate pissing contest between Comcast, owner of the Versus cable channel and DirecTV have come to an agreement. DirecTV had pulled the plug on Versus last August because DirecTV wanted to place the cable home of the NHL among other things, on a higher price package.
DirecTV said it was because Versus was too expensive; Versus wanted to remain on a more basic package. In short, it was going to cost us, the direcTV subscribers more money, just who would get the blame.
I would like to take the credit since I recently wrote Commissioner Gary Bettman of the NHL and the CEOs of both Comcast and DirecTV imploring them to come to an agreement before the NHL playoffs begin. It was funny – I received an e-mail message announcing the settlement yesterday afternoon as I got home from work, almost at the exact same time as I was opening a form letter from DirecTV once again giving the anti-Versus corporate “spin.”
Well, at least now I can see the previously blacked-out NHL games on Versus, which is the only thing I watch on the channel.

After nearly being arrested a few months ago for challenging the authority of the eunuch then head of security of the building where I work, I have taken the step of putting my wallet, all change, my pens, even my bottle of eye drops into a Ziploc bag and putting it on the X-ray machine as I enter. Now, even that isn’t enough.
Apparently, someone at the Pritzker Prison here read in “Paranoia Digest” that people may be putting plastique explosive in iPods and iPhones (kidding), so now, we have to place them in little plastic carts and put them through the x-ray machines as well (they’re not kidding).
After having another minor run-in with one of the security Gestapo, I finally figured out the central reason why this is so ludicrous – and it comes down to conceit. Really, what terrorist would want to attack this building? Here is Chicago, the targets are endless – Willis (formerly Sears) Tower, the exchanges, City Hall, the Federal Reserve and the other Federal buildings. And these buildings have a lot of security, and many are using very sophisticatedm unobtrusive security systems, I don’t mind that much, but most of the above mentioned buildings don’t have the “in-your-face” security of this building. And this building wouldn’t be on the top 50 list of targets. What, do the Pritzkers think that some enraged businessman who got a lousy room at a Hyatt is going to attack?
Besides, from what I hear about that family, they need to protect themselves from each other.

All over America and the world, people are filling out NCAA men’s basketball championship brackets, and that’s fine. Lots of people will be following the tournament from work and have illegal office pools and the like. Personally, I have grown bored with basketball, so I won’t be participating, but that’s fine.
But, of course, the billions of dollars that the NCAA generates from the tournament aren’t enough. There is a possibility that the organization, which receives 90% of its annual revenues from the tournament, may break its exclusive contract with CBS this summer in order to receive an even more lucrative contract with ESPN or get more bucks from CBS.
I don’t care at all about this, except there is another push brewing to expand the tournament from its current 65 to 68 or perhaps up to 98 schools. Now, I believe that some arrangement should be made for the 4-5 teams “on the bubble” that don’t make the tournament each year. Perhaps a play in game in each region should be played to permit schools who almost qualified, settle it on the court, not in some NCAA board room. And, I also think that none of these spots should go to the big conferences – No Big Ten, No ACC, No Big East; they each have more than enough schools in the tournament as it is. The extra spost should go to smaller schools and tournaments. But to expand to allow nearly every Division I school with a basketball team to participate in the NCAA is ludicrous.
First, it once again devalues the regular season. Second, when do these young men have time to do things like go to class, study, take tests, you know, the things that students at colleges and universities are supposed to do?
I can think of only one scenario in which the NCAA should be allowed to expand, and the conferences won’t like it one bit. If they want to expand the NCAA – eliminate all conference tournaments. As long time readers know, post season conference tournaments have no reason to exist other than to fill the already hefty coffers of the conferences and their member institutions. At some point, college basketball players are going to play nearly as many games as their professional counterparts, and for free.
It’s really hard to accept the NCAA as an entity that is supposed to police the schools under its purview when it is doing everything possible to generate as much income as possible from every source.