I think that one of the cruelest things that can happen in life is to keep someone hanging when you know you’re going to get rid of them. Be it a job, or a sports position, or a marriage or relationship, give the bad news now, get it over with and move on. Allow the person to suffer his/her grief at the loss, instead of keeping them hanging.
Even though the vultures have been hovering over Oakland Raiders’ coach Lane Kiffen’s job for three weeks, it wasn’t until today that Al Davis finally pulled the trigger and fired Kiffen. And, the gutless old bastard didn’t even have the balls to fire him in person like the Rams did to Coach Scott Lanahan yesterday.
Kiffin and Davis had not seen eye-to-eye for months on the assistant coaches and other issues, and Kiffen did verbally throw Davis under the bus a couple of times as the team floundered. But, Davis is very old, and is trying to win the way he always did, and the results have been horrendous. Kiffen’s Raiders this season showed more life than they have in years, although losing two tough games in the fourth quarter to Denver and last weekend to San Diego brought the end of Kiffin’s tenure.
Overall, Lane Kiffen will land on his feet – he’s still a very young man and was a talented coordinator at USC. Al Davis will continue to sit in his box at Oakland County Coleseum (which we will lovingly refer to as “Xanadu”) and watch his beloved Raiders falter until Davis says “Rosebud” and gives up the ghost like the fictional Charles Foster Kane.

There are times when it appears that two teams fighting for a playoff berth are both so inept, that neither team deserves to continue its pathetic season. This time, the two teams are the Chicago White Sox and the Minnesota Twins. Last week, the White Sox lots a chance to put the AL Central Division away by losing all three games to the Twins in Minneapolis, and it appeared that the Twins had the division won; after all, they faced the perennial cellar dwelling Kansas City Royals in the homer dome all weekend, while the Sox faced the Indians, a team that feels it should have contended all season but didn’t.
And the Indians did what I expected, beating the White Sox 2 out of three games; but the surprising Royals, finished the season winning 15 of 18 games, also beating the Twinkies 2 out of three.
This leaves the Twins with 88 wins and the white Sox with 87, ½ games behind, but having played 161 games, they need to make up a rained out game with Detroit today. If the Sox win, they play the Twins tomorrow in a one-game playoff. But either team will be facing the surprise team of baseball, the Tampa Bay Rays, a team neither Chicago nor Minnesota have played well this season. The Sox are sending Gavin Floyd, who sucked in his last start to the mound today to face former pitcher Freddy Garcia who has already sent a text message to Sox manager Ozzie Guillen that he wants to knock his old team out of the playoffs. This would leave John Danks going against the Twins on Tuesday. Mark Buehrle has pitched like the great veteran that he is, but as long as Javy Vasquez is holding down a spot in the roster, the Sox are playing with one pitcher short.
While I want the White Sox to win of course, somehow, it may not make any difference if they are only going to be cannon fodder for the Rays.

Other than the title of an old song by the great Todd Rundgren, I admit to having mixed feelings about bicyclist supreme, Lance Armstrong. On the one hand, his is a powerful “feel good” story: overcoming testicular cancer and going on the win cycling’s greatest prize, the Tour de France not once, but a record seven times. However, he has changed his name from Gunderson to the “All American” name he uses; left his wife and kids to first get engaged to singer Sheryl Crow, then, after that broke up, dating or being linked to every available female celebrity in sight. And, of course, the rumors that continue to dog him: the use of performance enhancing drugs.
Now, it appears that Armstrong is fulfilling the oldest of sports clichés, the champion that can’t retire. Was it competition or a need to get back into the spotlight that led Armstrong to become a marathon runner? He had competed in the 2006 and 2007 New York City Marathons, and in the 2008 Boston Marathon and, to his credit has done a lot of work through his foundation helping cancer patients. While he finished the marathons, a feat unto itself, he didn’t win; and no one covers the 20,000 runners who finish after the Ethiopian runner finishes first. So, over the last few weeks, it had been rumored, now it has finally been confirmed that Armstrong would be returning at the age of 37 to the world of competitive bicycle racing and the 2009 Tour de France.
This time, there’s something else to prove, that he and his team are clean. It doesn’t help that Armstrong is reuniting with his close friend and Astana team director Johan Bruyneel, because Astana was banned from this year’s Tour because of past doping violations. Of course, Astana will probably be allowed to participate in 2009 according to Pat McQuaid, the leader of cycling’s governing body. To try and vindicate himself and his team, Armstrong has added another person to his entourage – anti-doping expert Don Catlin has been hired to test Armstrong anytime, anywhere, and he will post the results online. There was no word whether Mr. Catlin would be testing the other members of the Astana team.
In addition to hubris, it appears that Armstrong is ending his three year retirement to raise awareness of the battle against cancer. Armstrong told the Associated Press, “I think we’re sure we’ll have success with the (anti-cancer) movement, because we need it, but I’m not sure I’ll be the fastest cyclist in the world.” So, why compete if you don’t think you can win, even in support of a worthy cause?
This is yet another item on both the good and bad sides of the “ledger” in my book on Lance Armstrong. As one who lost most of his immediate family to cancer, to raise money and awareness in the battle against the disease is most worthwhile. But to return expecting not to be the best seems foolhardy. First, I can’t believe that he would want to return to the sport he dominated without trying his best to win. More important, however, even if he participates in the 2009 Tour and has an anti-doping watchdog at all times, we can’t go back in time and prove that he was clean when he won the seven titles other than his assertions. In fact, participating now clouds the drug issue even more. If he doesn’t win, lots of people will say that he lost because he wasn’t using performance enhancing drugs; blaming not the three years away, or his 37-year-old body. It’s a lose-lose situation.

I pride myself on the fact that I have watched perhaps 30 seconds total of American Idol, but often the winners force themselves on my consciousness. I know who Ruben Stubbard is although I’ve never heard him sing. I know that Carrie Underwood won and is now a bona fide country music star (although I’ve never heard her sing either). So, I know who Clay Aiken is. I have heard him sing however, and I wasn’t impressed.
Try as I might, I couldn’t keep knowledge of Clay Aiken from entering my head. At the same time, this week’s announcement that Aiken is gay was absolutely no surprise whatsoever. I was more surprised when it was announced a short time ago that he had “fathered” a child. Of course, it was artificial insemination, but still, I was surprised.
On the same day, Lindsay Lohan “revealed” that she had been dating her lesbian girlfriend for a long time. For some reason, people seem to believe that this was just a reaction to all of the drug abuse/family problems/rich and famous/paparazzi attention that Ms. Lohan is getting.
Celebrity attention is at its highest in history, but really, who cares whether Mr. Aiken or Ms. Lohan are gay? After all this time, with famous celebrities like Ellen Degeneris, Rosie O’Donnell, Rupert , and Melissa Etheridge openly gay, isn’t it time to accept the lifestyle and let gay people live like everyone else? Theirs seems to be the last taboo that Americans are holding onto, like lifeboats on the Titanic. Let gays marry; let them have all the rights, privileges and responsibilities as everyone else. But first, let’s stop being “shocked” when a famous person comes out of the closet. And by the way, stop gawking at them – they’re people, not beings from another planet.

Leave it to India again, taking the initiative from we lazy and fat Americans. For a long time, I have told incredulous co-workers and friends that the abyss between the rich and poor in this country, if left unchecked, has but one outcome – a French Revolutionary type of response where the poor march on the rich and take them out and lead them to the guillotine. Most people think I’m crazy to think that, but maybe it isn’t as far-fetched as one would believe.
Today, 63 people have been arrested in India after a mob of fired workers bludgeoned to death the chief executive who had dismissed them. Lalit Kishore Choudhary, the 47-year-old head of the Indian operations of Graziano Transmissioni, an Italian-headquartered manufacturer of car parts, died of severe head wounds yesterday afternoon after being attacked by scores of laid-off employees, police said.
Reportedly, Mr. Choudhary called a meeting of 100 former employees to discuss possible reinstatement, but apparently, the rift between management and the workers, which had been building for some time, erupted in violence and unfortunately, the death of a man with a wife and one child.
However, the question is, will anyone learn from this? Will workers take a CEO, drag him or her (but most likely him), out of his plush office, and take things into their own hands? The problem, of course, are the egregious salaries of chief executives at major corporations, and the fact that they are not held accountable. Run a billion corporation into the ground, and what do you get? More than likely, they get a huge golden parachute of many more millions of dollars, while the workers lose their jobs, livelihoods, and pensions. It amazes me that a disgruntled worker hasn’t tried to find the heads of Enron, Worldcom, and other top corporations that have gone bust and tried to enact some frontier justice.
I’m not advocating violence, but when you treat people like crap, or as numbers on a balance sheet, don’t be surprised if the people don’t rise up at some point.

There are two things that professional athletes hate to be called worse than anything, and that is weak and/or soft. But that is what players who fold under pressure can and should be called, and this week, I’m leveling both of these terms at Chicago White Sox pitcher Javier Vasquez.
A career record of .500, and a 13-14 record starting this week, Vasquez was slated to pitch the first game of the pivotal three game series between the White Sox and second place Minnesota. The “Pale Hose” held a 2½ game lead coming into the series with just seven games to play, and the Sox have been abymismal in the Hubert H. Humphrey “Homer” Metrodome. They had been 1-5 this season in the dome former Bear Head Coach Mike Ditka called a roller skating rink coming into last night’s game.
Vasquez, who had a reputation for not being a big game pitcher, was called out by none other than Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen, who said that Vasquez had to step up and show prove the perceptions wrong. He didn’t; allowing five runs on seven hits in five innings, which led to a 9-3 Sox loss and a1½ game lead over the Twins. If my manager had gotten in my face, I would have mumbled, “I’ll show that muther@#@$%^#$!” But he doesn’t seem to have a killer instinct, and for a franchise that doesn’t have the billions of dollars like the Red Sox and Yankees, and has a much lower margin for error, weak pitchers don’t have a place on the team.
Vasquez is signed to a long term contract with the White Sox, and it seemed like a good deal to let Guillen and pitching coach Don Cooper the opportunity to get into Vasquez’ head and eliminate the mental errors that had plagued Vasquez for all of his major league career. After all, they worked wonders with Jon Garland in the World Series year, and have done a good job with Gavin Floyd and John Danks, but perhaps its time to end the Javier Vasquez experiment. He is not a big game pitcher, and may never be more than a mediocre major leaguer. The Sox should investigate whether the millions committed to Vasquez might not be better used on a player with some balls.

William Clay Ford is the descendant of Ford Motor Company originator Henry Ford, but other than the peaks and valleys in the fortunes of the auto maker, the younger Ford is best known as owner of the Detroit Lions, and in that role, William Clay Ford has been of the most inept and clueless owners in the NFL, and perhaps all of sport.
It seems like anything that the fans and media want in terms of changes, Ford goes out of his way to maintain the status quo; almost going out of his way to flaunt unpopular decisions in front of the public. I remember several years ago when the Lions were floundering and the vultures were hovering over Coach Wayne “I look like Ralph Kramden” Fontes, but Ford called a press conference to announce that Fontes was going to stay.
Eventually, however, even the dense Ford decides that change is needed, and reports are flying around the media that the Detroit Lions have finally gotten rid of President and General Manager Matt Millen. FOXSports.com reported Wednesday that the team had parted company with Millen, but the site did not state whether the Lions fired Millen or if the former Pro Bowl linebacker resigned. (A few moments ago, the Lions confirmed that Millen was fired.)
Despite the long history of failure when people from the broadcast booth are hired to run a franchise, Ford did just that six years ago, hiring the announcer. Since the hiring, Millen has been the architect of a Lions franchise that has deteriorated into the worst team in football. In six years, the Lions have posted a league-worst 31-84 record and have endured six seasons with double-digit losses. Last year, it appeared that the Lions had gotten better, winning six of their first eight games, but the Lions finished with a 7-9 record: woeful, non playoff bound, but still the team’s best mark during Millen’s tenure.
Another 0-3 start and the vultures were hovering again. This time, the writing was on the wall when Lions vice chairman Bill Ford Jr., a Ford Motor Company executive chairman and the William Clay Ford’s son was quoted as saying that he would fire Millen if he had the authority
Matt Millen was a very good linebacker, and a very good announcer. He was just a very bad football executive. The Lions now have some hope for the future, but with William Clay Ford’s track record, he may try to hire the consensus worst announcer on television today, Tony Kornheiser off of Monday Night Football next.