All posts by Bernie Lincicome

Rocky Mountain News

I didn’t read the News today. Oh, boy.

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I didn’t read the News today. Oh, boy.

Nor tomorrow and tomorrow.

What comes to mind is poetry, how absurd. Lines that were committed to memory for a college grade back when the written word had value, a B- as I recall.

Stop all the clocks, shut off the telephone…let the mourners come.

The best newspaper is dead and for no good reason save the spine to fight on, a battle lost to lessers and to a marketplace diverted by ease. The world today can be held in the palm of the hand, with all the news and sounds and motion a tap away.

These are familiar agonies that grip the newspaper industry across the land and may yet do in the survivor here, victory not a conclusion as much as an amnesty.

Sports is a small part of it all, the writing of it, the reporting of it, the celebrating of it, the censuring of it. The sports page is the proxy for harder reality, where the wars are only mock and success and failure matter only as long as it takes to turn off the scoreboard. Or turn the page.

The scores will stand, heroes will come and fools will go without this newspaper to note any of it.

It is impossible now not to think of endings, of those I witnessed and wrote, others who faced the finish, most with tears, even the hardest of men. I recall that little knuckle of a shortstop, Larry Bowa, weeping in a scruffy laundry room hastily set up for his departure from the Cubs.

They all cry at the summing up.

My most vivid memory is the last fight of Muhammad Ali, in Freeport, Bahamas, a shadow lurching and gasping in the ring, and then finally slumped in his makeshift dressing area, a cinderblock men’s room reeking of urine, facing the finish, a weeping young John Travolta at Ali’s knee.

Martina Navratilova, exiting Centre Court for the final time, stopped to pull up a piece of sod. Jack Nicklaus posing on the footbridge on the 18th hole at St. Andrews, was stubbornly dressed in a sweater vest in fashion when he was.

Joe Louis, the great Brown Bomber, became a prop to various promoters, and I cannot see old films of him in his prime without recalling the last time I saw him, poking around a post-press conference dining room looking for left over coffee in discarded cups still warm enough to drink.

Just this week I saw a picture of the last scrap of Shea Stadium, what looked like a walking ramp standing stark against the sky. An awful place, Shea, one of the most uncomfortable, inhospitable places I ever covered a game, football, baseball and even soccer.

And still the sadness came when thinking of all the memories made there. It is much too easy to walk into Invesco Field past the parking lot where Mile High used to sit. As if it was never there.

Beginnings are not as easy to know as endings nor do they stick as long. I saw it in Chris Evert, then 14 years old, knocking balls on a clay court in the town where I first worked for a newspaper.

Michael Jordan was it from the start and remained it until his final shot in Utah that won his sixth championship. The perfect finish, the most perfect ever, except Jordan could not leave it there.

I understand that. If this were a perfect column, the final and best of any I’ve ever written, I would still want to write another. And another.

If this newspaper had another day, another edition, it would want more. It most certainly deserves more.

Baseball, Biography, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

Rodriguez is not giving back any of the money

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The money made him do it.
Money is the second oldest motive in the world, after all. Willie Sutton famously said he robbed banks because that’s where the money is. The Menendez brothers. The Lindberg baby kidnapping. Bonnie and Clyde. Wall Street.

All about money.

We understand. People do awful things for money. Heroic things. Careless things.

Except, of course, Alex Rodriquez already had the money. More money than any baseball player ever. More money than Madonna, just to make a nice, neat circle.
Rodriguez already had the talent, too. That’s why he got the money. More talent than, well, certainly Madonna, and anyone else in baseball, including Mr. Clear and Mr. Cream himself, Barry Bonds.

How awful it would have been if A-Rod had been judged to be worth only, oh, $20 million, or even $15 million. What a shame. What a sham.

A man has to protect his over-inflated worth, or what’s a CEO bonus for?

Rodriguez is not giving back any of the money. Not for the years 2001 or 2002 or 2003, nor is he returning the MVP award he won in Texas. He is not refuting his distinction as the youngest player to ever do just about everything.

Sorry, Ernie Banks, you kind old gentleman. A-Rod is still the sluggingest shortstop of all time.

Rodriguez is not saying, please, don’t count any of the 156 homers hit during that time, nor please ignore any of the phony deeds that got him to the Yankees, to New York, where even Rodriquez’ money is more than anyone needs for doing nothing very vital.

Are you worth that much money, Alex? I will be as soon as I take this shot.

What’s in the shot? Dunno. This is a loosey-goosey time. Everyone’s doing it.
The President of the United States finds the news depressing. He said so at a press conference that somehow, after the economy and war and terrorism had been dealt with, just naturally got around to Rodriquez, A-Fraud as is his new alias.

And the President is especially depressed about the message sent to the kids out there.
Don’t do this, kids. Don’t do it if you want to make $27 million a year, hang out with celebrities, challenge the greatest records in the greatest game, be considered the best there ever was.

Deny everything until you can’t and when you no longer can, be ready to say you are sorry, really sorry. Sorry for being foolish, sorry for being naïve, sorry for being part of a loosey-goosey time in baseball, sorry for…well, you know. All of it.

Don’t accuse the reporter who got the story of stalking you because that just seems petty, but do make sure to confess to a friendly baseball eminence, someone who will treat you with deference and never make you say out loud the actual word, “steroids.”

You may come away leaving the impression that you had done nothing more serious than put cinnamon on your sunflower seeds.

There are many good lessons here for kids. No reason to be depressed about that.

Spread the blame around. Give a share to Tom Hicks, the Texas owner who paid him all that money, and to Seattle, too, I suppose, for not being a grand enough stage for a 25-year-old with great hand-eye-coordination. And his agent Scott Boras for concocting the contract in the first place.
Blame everyone before Rodriguez.

If there was “enormous pressure” to perform on a last place team, why should Rodriquez feel any less pressure playing for just as much money in the House that Ruth Built? Maybe, as his postseason failures grow, what Yankee fans resent is that he does not think enough of them to do what he did for Texas.

In the five years since Rodriquez confesses he did what others did, what he felt necessary to justify the wealth he accepted, he has been a terrific player, if not Derek Jeter in the New York heart. In the same way that Bonds was great before the pharmaceutical deceit that will define him forever, so does Rodriguez repel sympathy. Maybe more so.

Rodriguez was the anti-Bonds—and I suppose that title now falls to Ken Griffey, Jr.—the natural specimen of power and skill, unpolluted by either chemistry or conceit, and surely that perception made it difficult for Rodriquez to confess before now.

It’s that image thing again. In Texas he had to be better to justify the money. In New York he had to lie to protect the original lie. Lie. Lie. Lie.

The so-called Steroid Generation of Baseball is defined by lies, finger-wagging, stone-walling, Congress defying lies, and now that Rodriguez has told some of the truth he seems more forgivable than Bonds. Or Roger Clemens. Or Miguel Tejada.

Bonds may go to jail for lying. That’s the difference between lying to a grand jury and lying to Katie Couric.

Football, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

Changes and Broncos

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Encouragement is where you find it, and in the case of the top-lopped Broncos so far it is that no one wants out.

No one wants to play for a contender, as in Kansas City, an insult from inside by both Larry Johnson and Tony Gonzalez. No one wants a different defense, as Julius Peppers in Carolina, is just generally unhappy as Anquan Boldin in Arizona, or is still thinking it over, as LaDanian Tomlinson in San Diego.

Coaching changes inevitably cause this sort of thing, and old sores seem always to need fresh picking.

It would appear that the Broncos are willing to buy into whatever it is that fresh coach Josh McDaniels will have on offer, most importantly, the quarterback.

Clearly, at this point, McDaniels needs a happy Jay Cutler, more so than Cutler needs a new coach. And the Broncos generally must accept the notion that all of this upheaveal was necessary.

Cutler has come around to that conclusion, no longer as bitter a view as that of Jake Plummer, who is now in the duck blind and able to shoot without being shot at.

This attitude change must be taken as wisdom from Cutler, and a sign of maturity as well. It is not wise to stick your tongue out at the new boss.

When last Mike Shanahan spoke to his team there could not have been much satisfaction with a season so ragged at the end. The Broncos had to assume that many changes would be coming, just not the one that did.

Rather than the usual good-byes by this time—Mike Shanahan would have shown half the defense the door by now and started replacing them with others, not necessarily betters—the Broncos remain, and much can be said for it, employed. To still have a job is to still have hope.

Not that it will last long. Except for Champ Bailey, Elvis Dumervil and D.J. Williams, the defense could be put in a sack and dropped off a bridge. No, that’s cruel. Cut a hole in the sack.

Who replaces them? An ideal list of free agents would start with any or all of the Baltimore linebackers, including Ray Lewis, linebacker Mike Peterson of Jacksonville or James Farrior of the Steelers, the aforementioned Peppers, Albert Haynesworth, safety Brian Dawkins of the Eagles, not to overlook running back Darren Sproles of the Chargers or the once-upon-a-Bronco, Bertrand Berry

All are just names now and if one of them is more worthwhile to the Broncos than the rest, it is Haynesworth, the Tennessee defensive tackle. It must be assumed that some of these will end up in Denver.

Another assumption is that by rushing to the head of the line first, the Broncos got the best of the bunch of new coaches. Of the 11 changes in the NFL, two were pre-chosen—in Indianapolis and Seattle—and Tom Cable in Oakland and Mike Singletary in San Francisco were merely kept on.

Eric Mangini shifted shirts from the Jets to the Browns, the Chiefs just picked Todd Haley, leaving McDaniels among a half dozen who have not head coached before, no reason to be pessimistic there.

It is discouraging to assume that McDaniels’ chief credential is that he will mind his owner and not, for a while at least, act like he is the franchise.

One might wonder if a late casualty like Jon Gruden would not be a more useful choice all around, but that assumes that McDaniels is not the next Gruden.

Ideally, what will happen is that Cutler, still too young to have grown stale, will respond to the new challenge and the new crew, when it would be natural for him to resent the changes. Cutler is where Ben Roethlisberger was when Bill Cowher left the Steelers.

And it isn’t as if McDaniels is not thoroughly schooled in offense, as was the case with Cowher’s replacement, Mike Tomlin. Cutler is replacing one expert offensive mind with another, except the new one is more likely to seem a partner than a critic.

More enthusiastic is Brandon Marshall, less vital but nonetheless essential. The Super Bowl is evidence of what a Larry Fitzgerald or a Santonio Holmes can mean, and those moments yet await Marshall.

Just as Cutler can imagine himself to be Tom Brady so can Marshall see the success that came to a settled Randy Moss in New England with McDaniels’ offense.

With, then, the two most notable Broncos on board, McDaniels is free to sort out the rest, and much sorting is needed.

Linebackers. Defensive linemen. Safeties. Running back. Not necessarily in that order. But in some order.

Baseball, Crime, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

The mugbook is running out of pages for athletes

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The mugbook is running out of pages for athletes who are less than they seemed, when great physical achievements are diminished by human weakness. The fault is theirs, of course, but ours, too, and maybe the cereal maker who puts them on the side of the box.

We perpetually wish that the breakfast of champions is not what it often turns out to be.

Those eight gold medals were carefully arranged for the photo of Michael Phelps. Nice picture. As we were reminded by Donald Rumsfeld, it is not the action but the pictures that matter.

And now the other one, the one where it looks like Phelps is swallowing a telescope, rather a device for inhaling marijuana, will not last as long, but it is more recent.

Barry Bonds faces trial soon and Michael Vick is about to be sprung, proving only that the door swings both ways. The brother, yes, the younger brother of Mark McGwire shops the story that McGwire himself won’t tell, about all of it. Roger Clemens? The muck hardens.
So why do we keep this up, those of us who still have the means to do it, glorifying strength and speed and hand-eye coordination? Caution always come later, and as in the case of the Steroid Decade in baseball, without enthusiasm.

We have let Kobe Bryant back in from his brief exile, a prize for being the best player in basketball, just as Michael Jordan was passed without real scrutiny into his gambling associations.
So, too, will this pass with Phelps, a young hero much over-prized and guilty of little more than having similar appetites of the young. There is no designated punishment for being a disappointment.
The list of Olympic champions is rife with vacated victories, some still fresh from Beijing, those who tested positive for performance enhancers, which, by the way, Phelps has not. There must be examples of swimming after pot but more likely nachos after pot.
It is not that Phelps’ indiscretion is a small corner of the very big picture, it is simply that he is not as represented, and that will be something his marketing folks will have to sort out.

As for Bonds, what has seemed endless almost to the point of piling on is about to reach a resolution. Bonds will be officially condemned or officially forgiven, though in the minds of the world there will always remain only the first one.

Bonds cannot get off any more than Tiger Woods can make us forget how brave and foolish competition can make a man. If Woods never plays golf again or can’t play it as Woods again, there will always be that Sunday in San Diego.
The moments that last, that seem pure and clean, are too few to lose, and so we guard them and scrapbook them and are all the more disappointed when they are soiled. We just never seem to learn to separate the feat from the character, or lack of it.

Bonds must now face an accounting, evidence being notes and recordings and whatever was gleaned from the raid of Bonds’ mother-in-law’s house, all to prove that Bonds lied, not exactly the central concern of the sport that passively allowed him to become the greatest home run hitter of all time.
What baseball wants, and what we want, too, what all sports want, is the promise of innocence, never more represented than in the sleek, shaved body of Phelps, in a sport that washes its heroes as it glorifies them, a sport watched once every four years, and only when a Phelps or a Mark Spitz is doing it.

I have passed through the home town of Super Bowl MVP Santonio Holmes, not the hell hole he described, Belle Glade, Florida. Just another collection of souls and strip malls, supporting agriculture, but no Walmart as he said.

I did not see a single dope seller on any corner, though I may not have passed the right corners, including the one on which Holmes himself confessed to selling drugs. Had it been the reverse, MVP first, drug dealing second, we would be as unforgiving as we are with Phelps.
Timing does matter, then, and the fall is always down, never up.
When Red Smith, then in his 70’s, was asked why he kept writing sports, he answered, “In case I meet another Joe DiMaggio.”

We must keep looking.

Football, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

This one was all thumb screws and root canals

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TAMPA, Fl — Nevertheless, the Steelers of Pittsburgh will keep this Super Bowl trophy. They can put it with the other five, and tell lies later about how this one was a cinch.

It was not. This one was all thumb screws and root canals, shock and awesome, slap and smack, a duel in the cool tropical night.

“This is for you Pittsburgh!” shouted game MVP Santonio Holmes, raising the Lombardi Trophy over his head as if it were the first one instead of the sixth, as if the town had never seen the others.

This may be the least of all the Super Bowl winning Steeler teams, though the trophy is exactly the same size as all the rest.

They passed the shiny symbol around, from owner to coach to players, toted to the ceremony for some undeclared reason by Joe Namath, the trophy a hard earned souvenir, harder than the Steelers thought. Winners get to leave fingerprints.

Losers—in this case the Cardinals are not losers as much as companions in as gutsy, gut-wrenching, a melodrama as any since…well, since last year when the wrong team won with a helmet catch—are left with highlights.

And the Cardinals had highlights, the highest and lightest a catch and run of 64 yards by Roy Fitzgerald that would have, should have stunned the Steelers into an admission that fate or chance was wearing a Cardinal on its hat.

“The Steelers are a 60 minute team,” said their coach, Mike Tomlin.

This one was won with a classic, almost cliché catch, the kind that is staged in movies or dramatized in sports books, impossible and indelible, the football equivalent of the buzzer beater or the walk off homer. It had everything but slow motion, and it even had that later as it was studied for validity and, probably, for artistry.

“Great players step up in big-time games to make plays,” said Holmes. “I knew that was my play. Ben stuck with me, put it up where it was supposed to be and I made the play.”

Whether Holmes is a great player, certainly he had the greatest game of his life and one of the greatest of any receiver in a Super Bowl, for effectiveness and drama, not that the same wouldn’t have been said of Fitzgerald had Holmes not made The Catch.

Unlike the stadium witnesses, who may have chewed their fingernails down, Holmes had just enough left on his hands to stretch, hold the football, “come down on his toes”, as the referee finally and officially confirmed, and lock down a victory nearly blown from 13 points in front.

And, just like that, David Tyree’s helmet catch for the Giants against the Pats last year was bumped from the top of Great Super Bowl Moments.

“We embrace those moments,” said Tomlin. “We are built for those moments.”

The game did not match the boasts nor beat the spread, and the Steelers’ special torment for the Cardinals was to allow them to think they belonged.

“Nobody expected us to be here,” said Cardinal quarterback Kurt Warner, as if he needed to remind anyone of that. “We exceeded expectations and came close to being world champions only to lose it.”

Fewer penalties and just anyone, Warner having the best chance, tripping up Steeler linebacker James Harrison on the last play of the first half as he was galumphing a record 100 yards with an interception for the longest play in Super Bowl history, and the Cardinals would have had the whip in their hands.

This was a memorable Super Bowl because the Cardinals flirted with the improbable, and the Steelers—except for the plays by Harrison and Holmes—were not good enough to do anything about it.

Arizona could allow itself to believe in destiny even with a half minute to play, until the last five seconds, until Arizona quarterback Warner lost the football, breaking the heart of a perfectly nice place like Arizona.

The Steelers were not going to be lucked out of their birthright, and they weren’t going to be passed or punched or tackled out of it either.

“We back up talk with action,” said Tomlin.

“Backyard ball,” said Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, describing his cobbling together the final, winning drive, and at the same time coining a T-shirt slogan if ever there was one.

“It’s never going to be pretty or perfect,” said Tomlin. “There are no style points out there. But this is a team with great resolve.”

Winners can, and will, say all these things, of course, as Arizona would have said and even more loudly, because the Cardinals would have been the most astonishing winners ever of the Super Bowl, at least since the Jets beat the Colts in the third one.

Maybe that was why Namath was here, to represent audacity and surprise, and it was all there for the Cardinals.

So close. So long.

Football, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

The NFL encourages this annual folly

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TAMPA, Fl — It matters not who wins Media Day, even to the media, but of all the Super Bowl hoo-haw only two of the days really matter, this one and Sunday.

In a close call, Arizona wins this one, complete with voting paddles, as on “Dancing With the Stars.”

That silliness was under the direction of Warren Sapp, the once and no longer defensive lump who always nattered at least as well as he played. He had persuaded two Cardinals of his own ilk, 330-pound defensive tackles Alan Branch and Gabe Watson, to show their dance steps with a spangled beauty.

To music barely audible over the din of the day, the stars danced as stars do. Branch bit his lip and concentrated on his feet. Watson whirled and tried not to hurt his tiny partner.

At the end the paddles declared that Branch had won narrowly over Watson, though the pair of them were about as agile as a couple of front loaders. Handed his prize, a mirrored ball on a mirrored pedestal, Branch raised it over his head and bellowed—“Yessss!”—as if it were the Lombardi Trophy itself.
Sapp put his hands over is ears, slunk away, rolling his eyes back in his head. “Whoa. This is too nutty even for me,” Sapp said, leaving the poor young woman to fend for herself.
Not nutty at all, actually This is relatively mild for Media Day, no costumed brides looking for grooms, for example, as was one asking Pats quarterback Tom Brady for his hand. No costumed gorillas or bottles of Gatorade with feet.
The nonsense was down a bit, which had to disappoint the girl reporter from Austria.

“I ask you a question,” she said, not asked. And I nodded. “Vere ist Kort Vorner?”
I pointed in the direction of the Arizona quarterback, assuming that anyone named Kurt would be a big hit back in Salzburg. She did not say thanks.

The NFL encourages this annual folly, or at least does not discourage it, especially now with its own network to service. To find wisdom is futile, but one has to try.
“Right here is the epicenter of the NFL,” said Arizona coach Ken Whisenhunt, surprising for throwing the word “epicenter” into any football discussion and, at the same time, diminishing the occasion since the grandest game of the greatest sport of the greatest nation surely makes this the epicenter of the world.

Fred Dryer of the then Los Angeles Rams parlayed one Super Bowl experience into a career. Dryer gave the answer to my favorite Media Day question. Is the Super Bowl bigger than death? “No,” Dryer said, “but it comes in a bigger box.”

And now I have to give some consideration to this response to the question of what this all means.

“People are going through hard times,” said the Steelers Hines Ward, he not being one of them. “But in Pittsburgh if you’ve lost a job or your house you’ve still got the Steelers and you don’t worry about that, the light bill, the rent, stuff like that. When the Steelers play you’re hugging each other without regrets at the bar.”

Now, that’s the epicenter of something. Inflated self-importance for certain.

One shudders to think should the Steelers somehow lose to the upstarts from Arizona, what those bar hugs might turn into.

“There’s an old saying in football,” said Betrand Berry, now a Cardinal once a Bronco. “If you bite when young, you’ll bite when old.”
This is just the kind of gibberish that flows easily from the mouths of football players who are given podiums and microphones for a while. Philosophers, like dancing stars, are not born but made.
“You have to pass failure on the way to success,” said Cardinal punter Ben Graham, the notion sounding more profound because it came with an Australian accent. Austria and Australia in the same day. What a sport.
The NFL itself has operated all season under the slogan, “Believe in Now,” which was, I believe, the same position taken by bankers and brokers.

“I’ll carry this team on my back if I have to,” said Steeler Santonio Holmes.

The Chicago Bears were probably the best example of collective look-at-me-ism at a Super Bowl, but the thing has always had its share of outrageous individuals. The very first one had Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, who was, for his cheek, hammered by Green Bay. Still, The Hammer got the movie contract and his fame subsists.
Todd Christiansen of the Raiders showed up for Media Day with copies of his poetry, which he passed out as press releases. Dexter Manley tried a similar thing by pre-answering questions with a printout, the first public indication that he was functionally illiterate.

This is the one day of the football season when the anxious gives way to the excessive.

“When I retire, I’ll write a book,” said Arizona linebacker Chike Okeafor.

We all say that.

Golf, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

Tiger Woods XIV

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Working just from memory, this must be at least the fourth edition of Tiger Woods, the consistent theme being that in each he has been terrific. The young Tiger, the revamped Tiger, the Tiger Slam Tiger, the married Tiger, the post funeral Tiger, the new father Tiger, the limping Tiger. So many Tigers.

A pride of Tigers, or is that lions? Well, there have always been enough to go around.

All these Tigers ought to come with Roman numerals the way Super Bowls do, so that it may not be exactly clear which is which and which is when but the pretension assures significance. In fact, we should catalog his major victories the same way, so that Jack Nicklaus’ 18 would be just everyday.

Once Woods gets to his final total, say XXIV or something, we would know how much more it weighs.
This one—let’s call it Tiger IV—is certainly the most unsure of them all, even if Woods himself proved that golf can be played on one leg.

Still, that guilty left knee has been repaired four times now and this last one sounds like something earned on a football field, not on a mown fairway. Torn ACL. Those two words are as scary as any to an athlete. Double stress facture. A single would have been enough.

To have had all that and still have played 91 holes at Torrey Pines at last summer’s U.S. Open begs both admiration and dismay. Nothing Woods does ever again will surpass that. How odd to know at 33, with presumably more greatness still ahead, no greater reward awaits.
One must assume, then, having set so high a mark, that Woods is ready to resume what he left, that he is not just bored or misguided or anything less than what he always was.

The risk is not ours but his, and it is easy to imagine impatience disturbing him long before it does us. And if even if Woods is less, or is just rusty, any inspection is secondary to appreciation for his being back.
The return of a single athlete to his sport has never been as pregnant as this one, not Ben Hogan coming back from his car accident, not John McEnroe returning from adulthood nor Joe DiMaggo back from the war, not Muhammad Ali from political exile.
I do not remember any of them receiving, to quote the PGA tour site, “comprehensive on-line hole-by-hole video, audio, scoring and editorial coverage.” Douglas McArthur didn’t get that on his return to the Philippines.

The time that Woods has been gone has its own identity, the Tour Without Tiger, even though it was only eight months and that every tournament won by anyone else still counts.
When Phil Mickelson won at Riviera last week, coinciding with Woods’ announcement of his return, the significance of Mickelson’s victory was widely portrayed as the last one without Woods.

Look at it this way. You’re doing well at a singles mixer, and then suddenly George Clooney shows up.
It is possible to believe that somehow Woods is just what we all need, a symbol of resilience, an envoy of expectations, a courier of hope. Well, sure, that would be nice, and nicer if your 401K cared.

How helpful it would be to the general economy if there were a Woods to ride to the rescue, ( and while he is at it maybe salvage a discarded newspaper). So it was thought that Barak Obama was such a one and so it has turned out not to be so.

But all Woods has to do is restore golf to its place on the sports shelf, where it has been lately missing. Never a game of the masses in any case, golf faints easily from small concerns. While golf has continued after a Palmer or a Nicklaus, and so it will after Woods, it has done so quietly enough to hear a tee drop.
Strangely, Woods plays so few actual tournaments that his absence affects a small number of real locations. Yet does his shadow fall so far and linger so late that places he ignores leave a light in the window (not counting our late, lamented gathering at Castle Pines.)
Not in just these times but at any time, it is not easy to adopt as your proxy anyone who is playing a game for $8 million of someone else’s money.

That’s kind of how we got to where we are.

Politics

Time to Sweep Up

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That wasn’t too bad, being the center of the world for four days. We could have had a nice golf tournament in that time, but then Barak Obama is the Tiger Woods of politics.

What lasting footprint remains is unclear, as well as what we’re going to do with all the fencing and concrete barriers and security scanners. Not much use for those during the dull, daily life of a town whose main meal is trail mix.

Did we show the world we are not a bunch of rubes? The truth is, the world does not care.

There were little jokes about thin air and oysters, the mayor’s last name, the usual, but those who came and those who watched know what they knew about Denver before. This is the place that gave the world an omelet and the boot.

We were all part of the show, and inconvenienced for it, not to dismiss the money that came to town with the circus. If we could get something like this every year, we could fix a few more potholes.

Why one venue was not enough in which to do nothing remains a mystery, and only a natural disaster or a Super Bowl parade should shut down an interstate highway.

We may never look at the Pepsi Center the same again, returned now to its regular functions, except maybe when viewing an Arena Football League game. The similarities to a political convention are obvious; sporadically entertaining while not quite the real thing. Still, close enough to wish it meant more than it does.

I know I shall never enter the Nuggets practice court again without seeing bloggers scurrying to and from the buffet table, not bothering with napkins, perspective or wisdom.

The great national media that descended is all part of the same traveling spectacle, almost indistinguishable from the story they were covering.

The Democrats, and the Republicans next, are a bunch of folks basically selling snake oil and networks and cable and radio and newspapers and bloggers all help them sell it.

The tipoff is that the Pepsi Center was decked out to look like a Las Vegas showroom, without bare breasted women in tall feathered headgear—though truthfully I could not see the entire hall from my seat—but still strutting, posing and hustling in one great gaggle of self-promotion.

The poor delegates are only props, having no job at all to do, except to compete for the silliest hat. Every speaker reads from a giant teleprompter, doing talking-point duty, speaking not to the convention but to voters on the other end of the camera.

Half were campaigning for themselves, so even Barak Obama was used.

CNN boasted that it had the only booth on the actual convention floor, as if location meant better insight or wiser commentary. It was like teacher’s pet sticking his tongue out at Fox News, which ought to have more than that stuck at it.

In case your network was doing something else at the time, the most entertaining line came from Ohio governor Ted Strickland who said that George W. Bush came to office on third base and stole second. Sports images and politics, remember?

Real moments, such as the appearance of a gravely ill Ted Kennedy, only confirm that even the participants buy into this total nonsense.

I was reminded of a media session at a Winter Olympics. The suits in charge were being grilled relentlessly by the few Olympic writers, each side addressing the other by their first names. Why is the U.S. not doing better, Bill?

Why do they care so much, I wondered. And the answer is because without each other they are both out of jobs. The media chews, swallows and sometimes spits out. The newsmakers make no news but use pretty wrapping. We mistake choreography for democracy.

By the time things got to Obama’s Invesco Field speech Thursday night, an authentic moment of history, the message was much less important than the fact that his would be the last one.

So, here he is, America, and Denver had very little to do with it. We were the plastic bag used to carry the groceries home, or maybe the paper bag since it’s the Democrats.

Politics do make strange bedfellows, a warning to change the sheets. And how strange it is that before you collect the voice of the people, you have to go into lockdown.

Here’s the one conclusion that can be reached. Choosing a presidential candidate is as ugly as making sausage. Of course, you can freeze the sausage.

Politics

Obama Multi-Tasker

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One imagines Barak Obama showing up in town wondering what all the fuss is about.

We want you to be our president, someone tells him.

Me? Little old me? Really? Aw, you guys. Okay. Since you’ve gone to all this trouble.

It shall be much more magisterial than that, I expect. Nothing like 200,000 Germans shouting his name, but Invesco Field is not Berlin’s Tiergarten. Sorry, sir, it’s the best we could do.

What was it I was assured? “There will be some surprises on Thursday night that will bring America together for change.” That was from a helpful DNC staffer who gave me a preview of what to expect.

I now know, but does Obama?

Since Obama has been away from all the doings at the Pepsi Center, enjoying his arugula with goat cheese over penne pasta, he may not be completely aware of all the promises made in his name. So, before he accepts the nomination of the Democratic Party, maybe he should take a look at the list.

There at the top is the promise from his vice-presidential seat-mate, riding shotgun into tomorrow, the man who will deliver to him all of Delaware’s three electoral votes, Joseph Biden.

Biden has assured all that Obama will “not only transform America, but transform the world.”

This is right in Obama’s wheelhouse. He is, after all, a citizen of the world. Ich bin ein burger der welt, not to be confused with ein burger and fries.

A little caution is advised here. Transforming the world is not all it’s cracked up to be. The present president has done much transforming, and the Democrats have spent much of this week promising to transform it back.

That’s what all that talk of change has been about. Change. Change. Change. Please, we get it.

Hillary Clinton assures us that Obama will revitalize our economy, defend the working people and meet the global challenges of our time, end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home.

Well, that should take up a whole Monday, maybe half of Tuesday for so able a man as Obama, leaving him the afternoon to, as Brian Schweitzer, governor of Montana, promised, to break our addiction to foreign oil.

On Wednesday then, as Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick pledges, Obama can fix all the flaws in the education system.

Maybe that will take most of the day, but there is still time after a nice dinner of arugula and veal chops, to get around to making good on keynote speaker Mark Warner’s vow that Obama will defeat terrorism and restore America’s leadership.

Thursday will be a full day, starting in the morning satisfying Robert Casey, Jr.’s promise to bring us together, followed by providing small business incentives per New York Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez.

And then, just before a lunch of arugula and shrimp salad, Obama can create 5 million new green collar jobs and build new energy technologies, just not to disappoint our own Frederico Pena.

Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius is confident Obama can fit in a few hours to “save the dream of home ownership for families who’ve lost their homes or fear they can never afford one,” adding that this is unlike John McCain, who can’t keep track of them all.

Obama will have his own house by then, a big white Georgian mansion, on a short term lease, four years, maybe eight.

It can’t take long to fulfill energy wonk Nancy Floyd’s assurance that Obama will not only stop global warming but cut taxes for families who buy fuel efficient cars, built in America, of course.

He could do this over a late snack of arugula and cheese, maybe a nice crottin de chavignol or some Spanish manchego.

Friday should probably be reserved for looking into the soul of Vlaldimir Putin or figuring out what to do about all those Chinese, because Fairbanks mayor Jim Whitaker has seen a steely resolve in Obama, so it shouldn’t take more than half a day.

And then as Missouri Senator Claire McCaskell knows, Obama can rein in spending, root out waste and get American out of the economic ditch it has been driven into. Obama can be forgiven if he calls a tow truck.

This leaves Saturday, a day for a little variety. Off the arugula and onto some radicchio or maybe frisee. He can eat while standing, as Illinois representative Rahm Emanuel has seen him do, standing up to the special interests and for hard-working middle class families.

And on Sunday, Obama can rest. With a nice arugula and tilapia with a pecan topping.

Politics

Hillary, Buh Bye

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At the confluence of Cherry Creek and the Platte River, the place called, appropriately enough, Confluence Park, a stubborn booth sits in sad insignificance, removed from the jangle of the Pepsi Center and the important business being done there.

On the banks of the creek, blue yard signs are stuck almost as afterthoughts, urging anyone passing by to vote for Hillary Clinton for President.

These were bicyclers and joggers mostly, along with one lone fellow carrying a sandwich sign saying in perfect Shanahanese that he was a protester protesting protest bans.

Hillary for President is not an option, not any more, but the sentiment clings. We shall not know what kind of president Clinton would be and thus it can always be imagined that she would have been great.

Barak Obama, or John McCain, will have to live with what they actually do, just as George W. Bush must, an unerasable record at the mercy of history. Clinton has the best of it, really. She gets to be the greatest leader never allowed to lead.

There are millions who believe that and will always be able to believe it since Clinton can do nothing from here to change it. She has become Hillary of Arc, a martyr to the cause, mistreated by a jealous inquisition, namely the press. Some of this is true, some of it is an honest ache no male can understand.

My one experience that reinforces the rage came at a Colorado caucus I witnessed, an affair so loosely managed it might have been an unsupervised elementary classroom, which is where it was held.

Votes were taken by a show of hands, less certifiable than hanging chads, and the guy doing the counting was wearing an Obama ’08 t-shirt. This is where Clinton lost, of course, in the caucuses, her own fault but lost nonetheless.

I wanted to ask why the booth and the signs were there at Confluence Park, so out of the way. What was the point of it, a stubborn token or a Quixotic gesture? But the booth was unmanned (unwomanned?) Like the candidate herself, irrelevant.

This seemed a more appropriate scene than others around town, assorted lunches and meetings, the public defiance of the public fact, women angrily interviewed. I could not miss the symbolism of the place as well, of two separate streams joining to make a stronger one.

If the media has egged on the Clinton-Obama clash, carrying it into the convention, it is because conflict is more interesting than harmony, a thistle demanding more concern than a daisy. The wedge being driven by the McClain campaign is self-fertilizing.

It is easy to find the disenchanted Hillary backer. I live with one, in fact. But the truth is, the outlook is empty, like the booth.

I picked up a loose Hillary for President badge as a souvenir, to be added to a collection of Muskie, Bradley, Giuliani badges, if I actually had such a collection.

Ah, yes. Clinton v. Giuliani, that’s how it was supposed to be when this all started.

And if I had such a collection it would have to include Huckabee and Nader and Kucinich, all of those who never got as close as did Hillary, nor got their chance to properly step away.

Breaths were held Tuesday night for Clinton’s address to the delegations. If only armpits had been squeezed to sides as well, the aroma of the room would have improved greatly, but they were continually raised in applause.

The moment was hers and she did not abuse it. It was more than just another losing candidate being kissed off with a final few moments in the spotlight.

Clinton urged her supporters to do the right thing, wistfully recounting memories of the campaign, she and the sisterhood of the traveling pants suit, urging all to get on with the only job that matters, electing a Democratic president and Congress. It was not like McArthur’s farewell at West Point, but it had that feel.

What could not be missed was the contrast with Michelle Obama of the night before, she eloquent and supportive, confident of the future.

So, it came down to this. The woman who would be president was at the end compared not to the man she battled so fiercely and narrowly for the job, but to his wife.

Maybe the Democrats got it wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.