By the header on this site, it could indeed be a horrible week for your friend and humble narrator. Since my favorite hockey team, the Chicago Blackhawks, is at home at this time of year, I have to tell you that I was rooting for the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Stanley Cup Finals against the Detroit Red Wings. Barring that, I hoped for a compelling series that would hopefully go seven games, with lots of overtime excitement.
Well, the Dead Things, I mean Red Wings, are ruining all of my hopes. I have watched a great deal of games 1 and 2 and Detroit is making Sidney Crosby and the Penguins look like they are skating in cement. The Penguins have yet to score even one goal against the Western Conference Champions, and even though they managed 22 shots on goal in game 2, they went all of the first period and most of the second without registering one shot. Crosby and Malkin have disappeared, and so little time is being spent in the Wings end of the ice, goalie Chris Osgood is working on his tan and ordering cold drinks.
The series now moves to Pennsylvania, and let’s hope that the move revitalizes the Eastern Conference Champions, otherwise, the series won’t last into June.

I teach credit to bankers for a living, and when I teach classes on strategy, I usually ask the class for the dumbest decision in the history of modern business. Usually, the class stares at me, silent, thinking about something that can’t be measured and is truly my opinion, but is backed up by being taught in business schools all over the world.
My usual answer: New Coke. Remember New Coke? Despite being the number one soda brand in the world, the morons at Coca Cola decided to change the over 100 year old recipe to make Coke taste more like its rival and number 2 company Pepsi. So, they took Coke off the shelves completely and replaced it with “New Coke.” I hate Pepsi, so I was against the plan, and so it seems was the rest of the world. Coke sales plummeted; and Coke management seemed genuinely surprised that at the vehement response they got from old Coke drinkers.
Eventually of course, the original Coke returned as “Classic Coke,” eventually just become the standard Coke again. New Coke was called Coke II; was produced for awhile and eventually disappeared.
This was the model I used in class, but I may have a new one. Getting hammered due to high fuel prices, American Airlines announced today that they would be charging passengers $15 for the first checked bag of luggage. Fuel prices caused all of the airlines to charge for luggage checked after the first bag and for oversized bags, but now it costs money just to check one bag on American.
What will happen? Some people are going to choose another airline, but most people traveling on American after June15th, which will be the first day of the new policy, will be trying to carry on bags the size of refrigerators to avoid penalty. And the lines at the American Airlines terminals baggage checks will get longer because one way in which people could bring all of the toiletries and liquid items they wished were through checked luggage. So, more people are going to try and bring liquids on the plane, which will need to be checked.
A friend of mine works for an airline (not American), and she is constantly complaining about the very dumb decisions that the senior managers make at her airline. People already are rating airline satisfaction at the lowest point since 1991, and now American’s management is coming with this stupid plan. Boost the fares $15, call the charge something else, but by charging people to check their first bag may lower people flying their airline, which won’t help cash flow.
Somewhere, the “retired” managers at Coca Cola who came up with New Coke are smiling. They’re no longer alone as the biggest corporate dolts of all time.

Only once before have the Chicago Bulls had the number 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft. In general, when they sucked, they either didn’t suck badly enough to get the first pick, or they didn’t win the lottery.
All that changed last night. With only a 1.7% chance in the lottery, the Bulls ended up with the top pick in the draft, and boy they need it. But they also need luck.
In general, the Bulls’ luck has been lousy. They lost a coin flip in 1979 to the Lakers for the first overall pick that turned into this guy named Ervin “Magic” Johnson. I seem to remember him having some success with the Lakers. The Bulls drafted David Greenwood, a decent forward from UCLA who had a decent career, but nothing like the Hall of Fame career that Magic had.
Of course, the Bulls “lucked” into Michael Jordan with the third pick in 1984, but only out of need. The Houston Rockets took future Hall of Fame center Hakeem Olajuwon with the first pick, and the Portland Trailblazers took Sam Bowie number 2. In retrospect, it seems like the Portland management was stupid, taking Bowie who had an injury-prone, ineffectual career over the best player ever to lace up gym shoes, but the Blazers already had a top shooting guard in his prime: Clyde Drexler; and as the old adage goes, you can’t coach a player to become 7-feet tall, and Bowie was a 7 footer.
After the Jordan era, the Bulls were certainly bad, and they had top picks, but none of them panned out, at least in Chicago. The last Bulls number 1 overall pick was Elton Brand, who has had a solid career with the Los Angeles Clippers. Marcus Pfizer and Eddy Curry were the number 4 picks in 200 and 2001, and they both left town without the team making significant improvement. Jay Williams, the number 2 pick in 2002 wrapped his motorcycle around a tree and never played. Kirk Hinrick has been a fine pick at number 7 in 2003, and 2004 number 3 pick Ben Gordon has been an All Star and voted Best sixth man. Joakim Noah was the number 9 pick last year and someone named LaMarcus Aldridge was the number 2 overall pick in 2006 and currently toils in Portland.
So, the Bulls are “on the clock” and will get either Memphis point guard Derrick Rose, or power forward Michael Beasley from Kansas State. Both players are great young talents, but Rose is from the Chicago area and the Bulls don’t have a prototypical point guard. Time will tell…

When I was an Andy Frain usher, one of the players I ran into all of the time at Wrigley Field during the 1984 and 1985 seasons was Rick Sutcliffe. And while he was the NL Cy Young winner in 1984 and certainly one of the reasons that the Cubs won the NL East in 1984, Sutcliffe was personable, and nice; a truly good person. So, I was saddened earlier in the year when I heard that he had been diagnosed with colon cancer during spring training.
So, it is very good news that “Big Red” will be back in the ESPN booth tonight covering the Atlanta Braves – New York Met game. According to reports, he still has surgery ahead of him on June 16th, but he underwent chemotherapy and radiation at the same time.
I don’t know if I will get the chance to watch any of tonight’s game (my television seems to be dominated by “The Wonder Pets” these days), but I am very happy that the big lefthander is back, and I wish well through the remaining procedures to one of the truly class men I met in baseball.

Last night, the Detroit Red Wings reassumed command of the Western Conference Finals series against Dallas, scoring three goals in the first period and cruising to a 4-1 victory in the game and a 4-2 ending for the best-of-seven series. Now, the Red Wings face the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Stanley Cup Finals: the old – Chris Chelios against youth – Sid “The Kid” Crosby and Evegny Malkin.
According to something I read on SI.com yesterday, ratings for the playoffs have been much better than last year: the first round up around 30%; the second round up 50%; and the conference finals up 71% thanks in great part to Crosby.
One would think that NBC would like to strike while the iron was hot; the regular prime-time series (such as they are due to the writer’s strike last fall and winter) are wrapping up, let’s drop the puck!
Not so fast, hockey fans. To make sure that there are games over the Memorial Day weekend, the Finals don’t start until Saturday in Detroit. After having at least one playoff game per night for the past month, we have to wait five days before the finals start. How about a game Thursday, Saturday and Monday? At that pace, the Finals may not have to stretch into the middle of June. And we won’t have to concern ourselves with rust; the Penguins will only have a few days off and the Wings will only have two days, at home, to rest up. Instead, the Penguins will be inactive for a full week; the Red Wings five days. It may help the older Wings, especially Chelios, who is 847-years-old, at least in hockey years.
That makes too much sense, alas. Who are dumber, media executives or fur coat salesmen in August?

NFL owners didn’t wait until November to opt out of their contract with the players’ union, they voted unanimously this morning to end the agreement, two years before the deal was to expire. Does this endanger the upcoming season? According to the league, the vote was timed for now as to now cause labor problems in the middle of the upcoming season.
So, what does this mean to the bleary-eyed barnacles that are still replying the April draft and watched hours of the scouting combine?
What this means is, the 2008 season is probably alright, but there is a new deadline for a new contract: March 2009. The current contract, signed in 1993, apparently didn’t allow the billionaires to make enough money, and they simply can’t let the players win a labor agreement, can they?
SI.com reported that the league plans to keep negotiating with the NFL Players Association and said games will be played “without threat of interruption for at least the next three seasons.” Players’ Union President Gene Upshaw learn of it by e-mail and said “My response to his e-mail was very simple: ‘What a surprise,”‘ Upshaw said sarcastically. Upshaw has been predicting that this would happen for several months now and last weekend referred to the owners as “greedy.” (Nah! Say it’s not so. Owners are greedy? Is Bush stupid?) “As they say during the draft, we’re on the clock,” Upshaw told SI. “That’s basically what it means.”
Let’s hope that all of the millionaires and billionaires can come up with an equitable way of splitting the giant pie of money that NFL football generates. And I realize that Upshaw knows the issues and is the best chance the players have to get them a fair deal, but I just hope that the retired player and Hall of Famer who said he didn’t care about the other retired players because they don’t vote for him, will put aside a portion of any hard negotiated money to the men who played the game after the light have faded and the cheers have gone away…

One of the great things about sports in general, and baseball in particular is that the teams that are supposed to win; often don’t. Otherwise, the Yankees would have 50 World Series Championships; the Red Sox 50; and the Mets would at least win the National League every year, because these are the teams with the highest payrolls in the sport. And the Red Sox have been successful recently; the Yankees are perennial contenders; and the Mets just suffered through the most monumental choke job in baseball history last season. Compare that with the small market Royals and Pirates to whom a pennant must seem like the Holy Grail.
I know that it is only May (the 19th to be precise) and Cub manager Lou Pinella was quoted in the Tribune today as saying “Pennants are won in September” (teams put themselves in position to win in May – something Cub fans need to remember after an 8-2 homestand), but looking at the current standings, one may think that you are reading the newspaper upside down. In the AL East, the Red Sox are in first place, but only one game ahead of the 25-19 Tampa Bay Rays (I still want to call them Devil Rays), and the Rays may have proclaimed themselves as no longer patsies by putting a pounding on the Yankees in New York last week.
The Rays’ National League equivalent is the Florida Marlins, who have a payroll of about ten bucks, but are currently 24-19 and leading the Mets by 1 game. After the third “garage sale” in team history and the unloading of Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera to the Tigers, the low-rent Marlins were supposed to be little more than a AAA ballclub; but they have posted a must better record than the 17-27 Tigers. The Marlins have not looked back: Willis is on the disabled list, and Cabrera has been moved from third base to first.
This is not to say that either the Marlins or Rays will remain in the thick of the race all season (the lack of money for depth will probably hurt the Marlins in the long run), but the longer they remain in contention, the better for the franchises, their fans, and baseball as a whole.