One of the worst trends of the past several years is that non-apology apology. A person or company does something horrible and shortly after the act becomes public, the lawyers and spin doctors craft an “apology” which is neither genuine nor sincere. These non-apology apologies mostly sound like what they actually are, “we’re really sorry for getting caught.
The latest example comes from the Houston Astros. With the first day of Spring Training, the Astros players, new manager Dusty Baker, and owner Joe Crane were all paraded before the media to discuss the scandal. Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve apologized in brief statements for their roles in the team’s sign-stealing scheme in 2017. “I am really sorry about the choices that were made by my team, by the organization and by me. I have learned from this and I hope to regain the trust of baseball fans,” Bregman said. Altuve said the Astros had a “great team meeting” on Wednesday night and said the “whole Astros organization feels bad for what happened in 2017. I especially feel remorse for the impact on our fans and the game of baseball,” he said. They probably needed to make statements because the apologies are a 180 degree change from their responses at the team’s fan fest last month, when neither player showed remorse for his actions.
New Astros manager Dusty Baker said he hopes his players will be forgiven by fans and other players. “I ask the baseball world to forgive them for the mistakes that they made,” he said.
Crane, as he did last month after Major League Baseball released its findings and punished the organization for the sign-stealing scheme, apologized and vowed “that this will never again happen on my watch.” He pointed out that he went beyond MLB’s decision to suspend manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow by firing both men. Crane said that he agreed with MLB that the players should not be punished. He called them “a great group of guys” who didn’t get the proper guidance from Hinch and Luhnow.
However, that doesn’t change Crane’s bottom line – he will hold onto his title. He took little time to point out that MLB decided that Houston was keeping the title and that he agreed with that decision. “Our opinion is that this didn’t impact the game. We had a good team. We won the World Series and we’ll leave it at that,” he said.
Stealing signs successfully didn’t impact the game? Well, if that’s the case then why was anyone punished? I know that teams in many sports try to steal signs but it was hard looking from one dugout to the other, but with television cameras, it is much easier to do so and the Astros took advantage in an elaborate scheme that was fully endorsed by the front office, the manager and coaches and the players. I can understand the intent to keep their World Series Championship; when you have had no success in your entire history going back to when the team was founded in the mid-1960s, it’s important to hold on to the one bright light in history. Certainly, if a similar event had happened to the Cubs in 2016 after 108 years of failure, the Ricketts would hold on to the championship trophy like a survivor to a life preserver.
But the Astros deserve all of the abuse they’re going to get. They will be booed in every park other than their home ballpark. I look forward to the comments, signs and memes that will be coming out all season. The players deserve it. The team deserves it. The owner certainly deserves it. The only person who doesn’t deserve it is Dusty Baker since he wasn’t there, but he will be booed in association.
And they’ll all deserve it and I hope they’re ready because it is definitely coming.

With the discovery of the sign stealing being used by the Houston Astros during their 2017 Championship Season and the failure of Commissioner Rod Manfred to strip the Championship from the Astros, it was a cinch that the Baseball Gambler in Chief, Pete Rose would once again use this opportunity to have his lifetime ban overturned and allow him to be on the Hall of Fame ballot. After all, the major steroid era stars like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are getting closer and closer to attaining the vote total needed to enter the Hall.
I was a supporter of Rose being in the Hall of Fame because it seemed like he bet while as a manager, not as a player. Years later, when the full evidence on Baseball’s investigation, Rose bet while as a manager, but he also bet while playing. As another person who fell for Rose’s decades of lying, I, like many others turned my back on him.
However, my stance on Peter Edward Rose has been, I think, consistent. I do not believe that he should ever be reinstated; he should never be able to make a living in baseball. However, I have always thought that Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame. The 4,256 hits , .303 lifetime batting average belong in the Hall if, for no other reason that it is impossible to have a morals clause for the Hall of Fame when Ty Cobb was one of the first six enshrines (at least what has been written about Cobb – those stories may be fabrications and exaggerations).
Honestly, I think that baseball is waiting for Pete Rose to die. I believe that the powers that be will never allow Rose to be enshrined while alive. Rose has lied for decades; he would turn the Hall induction into another moneymaking operation, and who knows if that money is being used to gamble, which is something that baseball does not need.
I don’t think that Bonds and Clemens should ever be inducted because what they did was outright cheating. There’s no evidence that I’ve seen or heard that says that Rose threw a game, at least as a player. The younger, less experienced, ignorant members of the Baseball Writers of America, the group that votes on the Hall candidates every year seems to be ready to forgive Bonds and Clemens, or they’re ignorant on history. They don’t understand that both men were shoo-in Hall of Famers before they took one shot or banned supplement. Vanity, jealousy, the need to stay in the game longer drove these men to cheat. Greed and gambling addiction drove Pete Rose and maybe it would be fair for him to never be inducted in his lifetime.

With less than a week to go before pitchers and catchers report to spring training, there were two superstars on the trade block: the Cubs’ Kris Bryant and the Red Sox Mookie Betts. Bryant is on the block because relations between the team and Bryant’s agent, the noted shark Scott Boras are strained because the Cubs kept Bryant in the minor leagues for the first three weeks of 2015 season so that they could keep his rights for one more year. This went to arbitration and the Cubs won, meaning that they retain his rights through 2021 and won’t commit to a $270 million multi-year contract because they also have Javy Baez and Anthony Rizzo to try and keep in town. I wouldn’t bet on Bryant’s Cub future being very long.
Betts, another young star, was being shopped because of salary reasons. The Red Sox, one of the richest teams in the sport, still don’t want to pay over the salary ceiling for players and they have to pay a luxury tax. Finally, another of the big money, big market teams stepped up; the Dodgers, with several playoff appearances over the past few year including losing the 2017 World Series to the cheating Houston Astros, apparently don’t care about the luxury tax. They acquired Betts who is due for a huge multi-million long term contract and also David Price from the Red Sox in return for high prospect Alex Verdugo and they also sent Kenta Maeda, a mainstay in the bullpen to the Twins.
I hate to bring this up, but I do have to question whether besides being a deal they Red Sox needed to make fiscally, they also got rid of two of the most prominent players of color on their roster? Boston of course, was the last team in the major leagues to integrate. Boston of course remains one of the most segregated cities in the country, and is one of the starting places of the Tea Party movement that energized when Barack Obama was elected.
I’m not saying that this was the major factor, but I can’t say that it wasn’t a factor.

In a very surprising move, Mark Dantonio, Head Football Coach of Michigan State announced that he was stepping down to “spend more time with his family.” Whenever a famous person, coach or politician says they are quitting for family reasons, most likely, there are legal reasons, or in college, NCAA investigations that are the real cause.
In this case, the resignation is particularly questionable. First, Dantonio’s announcement comes one day after former Michigan State recruiting director Curtis Blackwell filed an update in an ongoing lawsuit claiming that Dantonio and the Spartans committed multiple NCAA recruiting violations. Blackwell said Dantonio helped arrange jobs for multiple high-level recruits and took Blackwell on recruiting visits, which is against NCAA rules because he was not an on-field coach.
Blackwell was on Michigan State’s staff from 2013 through 2017 during some of the peak years of Dantonio’s 13-year run in East Lansing. Blackwell’s contract was not renewed in May 2017. Blackwell filed a lawsuit last year claiming that he lost his job because he was made into a scapegoat for a stretch of sexual assault issues plaguing the football program and the university.
In an earlier filing for the same suit, Blackwell said Dantonio ignored warnings from two of his assistant coaches while recruiting former four-star defensive end Auston Robertson in 2016. Robertson, according to court documents, exhibited a pattern of sexual violence during his high school years and was expelled from his high school’s campus during his senior year for one incident. Less than a year after Dantonio brought him to campus, Robertson was charged with sexually assaulting a fellow student on campus. He pleaded guilty to a reduced charge and is currently in prison.
Michigan State athletic director Bill Beekman said the school was aware of Blackwell’s allegations and said the school would be happy to defend Dantonio and his actions in court.
It cannot be overlooked that Blackwell’s dismissal and off the field player issues came to light during/after the 2017 season. After having a dismal 2016 season (3-9 record), the Spartans had another 10 win season, the sixth under Dantonio, but afterward, the Spartans posted two 7-6 seasons – not bad, but not at the top of the conference either.
Other points that make this questionable: Dantonio stepped down one day after the university paid him a $4 million bonus. The resignation also comes the day before National Signing Day, when high school seniors can announce where they are going to play next year. Who wants to go to Michigan State now? Or, do they have a poor recruiting class and Dantonio could be blamed?
In addition, who quits in February? Dantonio says that every February he considers whether or not he’s going to coach the next season. The month with signing day? The start of Winter practice? When it is time to start gearing up for the next season?
Smells fishy to me.

I felt that the quote from Shakespeare was appropriate for the sudden death of Laker Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant at the age of 41 in a helicopter crash. Eight other people including Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter were also killed in the crash that appears to have been caused by fog.
I always had a mixed feeling about Bryant. Coming out of high school, son of an NBA player, Bryant was one of the players no fan knew that much about coming into the league. Of course, that was in the days of high school seniors jumping straight to the NBA; not like today when players have to “participate” in college for one year, giving the school one year of cash flow, and showing the players the hypocrisy of the allegiance of the NBA and NCAA. Kobe grew up in Europe and was multi-lingual, but it wasn’t until he hit the league that everyone realized that he was a unique talent. Over time, you had to admit to his tremendous athleticism and his drive to win. In that way, he was most like Michael Jordan to whom Bryant was always compared.
I admit that, on the court, my antipathy toward Bryant was solely based in allegiance to Jordan. As great as Bryant was, he was a lesser light around here to Jordan. Some people said that he needed Shaquille O’Neal to win his five titles while Jordan did not have a dominant big man (but that argument falls apart because Jordan had Scottie Pippen, perhaps the greatest number 2 man in NBA history). However, they both had that killer instinct on the court. My only issue with him was that he stayed too long. Like Jordan, they both should have retired a year earlier (for Jordan, for the final retirement).
I think I really fell off the Bryant fan club when he was charged with the rape of a 19-year-old girl in Colorado in 2003. The case was eventually dropped, but the young lady sued in civil court and the case was settled for an estimated $2.5MM. Bryant was married at the time to his widow. Stories about this incident made their way slightly in the stories about Bryant and it makes one wonder if there isn’t an impossibility for a black man, even a rich athlete, to considered rehabilitated if he has served his sentence (Michael Vick) or the criminal case was dropped and money paid in a civil matter.
Admittedly, the Colorado case was never the first thing on my mind when I thought of Kobe Bryant. In fact, I didn’t mention it here when he retired. Supposedly, he became a better person for his mistakes: a better husband; a better father. After making a disparaging homophobic comment in a game in the early 2000s, Bryant not only apologized, but he became an active supporter of LGBTQ rights. He was becoming the positive force that perhaps Jordan, bound by Nike money, could never completely be.
We are saddened by the death of the nine people in the helicopter yesterday, especially Bryant and his daughter. (As the father of a daughter only a year and change older, I was particularly saddened by her death and the other young people on the flight.) Kobe Bryant worked very hard to be better on the basketball court, and he succeeded – five NBA Titles, a member of the Hall of Fame. The greater achievement is that he took his mistakes and made himself a better human being. That is the message that we all should take from his sudden, tragic death.

There is no question that Serena Williams is the female tennis player of her time; maybe the female athlete of her generation; and a serious contender for female tennis’ GOAT. Ever since winning her 23rd Grand Slam Singles title at the 2017 Australian Open (more amazing that she did it in the early stages of pregnancy with her daughter), more people were certain that it was only a matter of time before she tied and eventually eclipsed Margaret Court’s 24 titles (and in so doing, further reduce the bigoted, racist, fundamentalist Court’s exposure).
Since then of course, there has been the baby, rebounding from pregnancy, a new marriage, and a host of injuries, but it is 3 years later and she has not won the magic number 24. Ms. Williams lost in the third round of the Australian Open in 3 sets, making 56 unforced errors. At 38 years of age, the air of inevitability of winning her 24th Slam title is starting to wane. Yes, she remains in great shape and she and her husband, reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, certainly have more than enough money for nannies, maids, etc. to help care for her daughter while Mommy practices. While one should never underestimate Serena Williams, the clock is ticking, and the window of opportunity certainly isn’t as wide open as it has been.

The most disturbing attribute of the very rich, which includes professional sports team owners is the belief that they are “above” the common folk and as a result, there are no consequences for their actions. Money and clout will keep them above the fray. Most of the time, this is true. Enough people are willing to look the other way to hide their actions. The optimistic side is that this is happening less frequently, ask Jeffrey Epstein (if you could), Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and the police officers going to jail for killing unarmed people of color.
Still the hubris of the very rich is very large, very real and very harmful. The New Orleans Saints are going to court to keep the public from seeing hundreds of emails that allegedly show team executives doing public relations damage control for the area’s Roman Catholic archdiocese to help it contain the fallout from a burgeoning sexual abuse crisis. Notice, there is no denial that the assistance occurred, just that what was exchanged is not reviewable by the public.
Attorneys for about two dozen men suing the church say in court filings that the 276 documents they obtained through discovery show that the NFL team, whose owner, Gayle Benson, who inherited the Saints and New Orleans Pelicans when her husband, Tom Benson, died in 2018 is devoutly Catholic, aided the Archdiocese of New Orleans in its “pattern and practice of concealing its crimes.” The attorneys’ motion stated that “(O)bviously, the Saints should not be in the business of assisting the Archdiocese, and the Saints’ public relations team is not in the business of managing the public relations of criminals engaged in pedophilia. The Saints realize that if the documents at issue are made public, this professional sports organization also will be smearing itself.”
Saints attorneys, in court papers, disputed any suggestion that the team helped the church cover up crimes, calling such claims “outrageous.” They further said that the emails, exchanged in 2018 and 2019, were intended to be private and should not be “fodder for the public.” The archdiocese is also fighting the release of the emails.
The issue is because the ties between the local church and the Saints include a close friendship between New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond and Mrs. Benson. Mrs. Benson has given millions of dollars to Catholic institutions in the New Orleans area, and the archbishop is a regular guest of hers at games and charitable events for the church.
Attorneys for the men suing the church say multiple Saints personnel, including senior vice president of communications Greg Bensel, used their team emails to advise church officials on “messaging” and how to soften the impact of the archdiocese’s release of a list of clergy members “credibly accused” of sexual abuse. The NFL is brought into this not only because of the team’s membership, but also because reportedly, Saints’ emails used the team’s nfl.com domain. The league has made no comment on the situation and probably won’t publicly.
Here’s another nasty situation that confronts Commissioner Roger “The Sherriff” Goodell. It’s a certainty that if such a situation involved a player or coach, the penalty would be severe. However, it is always a tricky thing to be a commissioner who has to penalize one of his bosses. That said, pedophilia is one of the worst crimes (sins?) imaginable and the Catholic Church has paid out billions of dollars all over the world to victims of priest sexual abuse. What is shocking is that the emails were exchanged in 2017 and 2018, not 2003 when the Boston Globe won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the cover-up and circulation of abusing priests within Archdiocese and to other jurisdictions. No, litigation is underway and again, the Church is seeking to keep its sins undercover.
What will be the fallout? Wikipedia lists that within the Archdioces of New Orleans, there are 1,238,228 people living there and 520,056 or 42% are Catholic. One has to believe that many of these people have been victimized, have relatives victimized, or certainly know people who have been victimized. While football is the national pastime in the South (especially with an LSU National Championship just captured), the pedophile scandal has decimated church attendance and revenues over the years.
Can Goodell do as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver did to Donald Sterling and make Mrs. Benson sell the team? Reportedly, she also owns the Superdome and surrounding parcels; can they force her to sell? What would be the fallout of the community? Would it cause a split between those who support the Benson family and those who don’t?
The bigger question is why do these rich people, who have everything, want to inflict religion on poorer people including having their children sexually assaulted? I do not understand.