An exciting new story popped up in my local newspaper the other day. The Chicago Cubs may have thrown the World Series.

Not LAST year’s World Series. They weren’t in that one. Nor the one before that. Or the one before that. Or the one before that.

Okay, I couldn’t remember when the Cubs were last in the World Series, so I looked it up. Wiki tells me it was 1945. And they lost that.

Did the Chicago Cubs throw the 1945 World Series? Who knows? The story I read was not about the 1945 World Series. It was about the 1918 World Series.

Yeah, you read that right.

And no, I am not confusing this with the famous “Black Sox Scandal.” That effected the 1919 World Series, and was not about the Cubs, but rather their cross-town ‘brothers,’ the Chicago White Sox.

Nope. The year is 1918. The team is the Cubs.

Where did this ‘breaking news’ come from? It is actually part of the 1920 “Black Sox Scandal” court disposition. And somebody decided to report on it now, only 91 years later.

So in other words this was news, in 1920.

It seems to me the better time to have investigated this would have been in 1920, when any of the participants were still alive.

The White Sox players from 1919 were thrown out of baseball forever, and many died destitute.

Whatever happened to the Cub players from 1918?

Nothing. Since there was no investigation nobody was punished and they all played out their careers.

Unless you are Indiana Jones, it would be a little hard to ‘get to the bottom of this’ now….

Maybe their century-long chase for another World Series championship is just the God’s way of making the Cubs pay for the 1918 ‘non-scandal.’

Go Giants!

Dear Southerners; Are you trying to rid yourselves of that ‘southern hick’ label? The following story may not help…

A University of Alabama football fan decided to show how much he hated Auburn University.  He poisoned two 130-year-old trees that Tiger fans regularly gather around after games. The trees are not expected to survive.

I always try to avoid clichés.

Blondes and the Polish are not dumb.

The Chinese are not smarter than us.

The people of India are not all nicer than the rest of us (though they are pretty nice).

But southerners?  What are we to make of them?

This type of story makes them all appear to be the ‘goobers’ that many people think they are.

I know-know-know that there are many intelligent, articulate and cultured natural-born southerners.

It doesn’t matter. These episodes go on in perpetuity. This is but the latest example.

Feel free to share a story of some northerner doing something asinine, but I promise it won’t live up to this. I don’t mean ‘criminal’ behavior, just asinine behavior.

Remember, this is football-fan based hatred, probably the stupidest kind…

The Southeast Conference, home of both Auburn and Alabama, has the best football, and probably the stupidest fans.

Do these two things, football and stupid, necessarily go together? Who knows? Maybe football is just a sport that appeals to a larger percentage of really stupid people.

The southern intelligentsia, and that cannot be an oxymoron, must literally shake every time they hear a story like this.

Southern… Hick…. Moron….

These words do not HAVE to go together…..

Do you know what a ‘perfect game’ is in baseball?  This occurs when one team has all 27 batters (3 per inning, times nine innings) retired in order.

The very finest pitchers, even at the peak of their careers, know they will probably never throw a perfect game.

If a batter reaches base in any way the perfect game is out the window. Any hit or walk or hit-by-pitch ends it. A fielder misplaying a grounder or fly ball ends it.

To say that a perfect game a ‘statistical anomaly’ is more than a bit of an understatement. This has only happened 20 times in the entire history of the major leagues. (The real anomaly is that it has already happened twice this year)

This type of sporting event is so significant that, if a pitcher anywhere in the country, is five-plus innings into a perfect game, word spreads nationwide almost instantly.

And so it was on June 2 of this year. Armando Galarraga, a previously unheralded pitcher with the Detroit Tigers, was on the verge of earning the 21^st ever perfect game.  ESPN was not televising this game but, for the final few innings, kept cutting to the game to show every pitch Galarraga threw live.

Sports fans across the country were hanging on each moment, and calling their friends to alert them to tune in to ESPN

Baseball has lots of goofy superstitions. When a pitcher has a no-hitter going, after about 5 innings the rest of the team will refuse to talk to the pitcher as long as the no-hitter lasts. I suppose this is so no teammate ‘jinxes’ the pitcher. A perfect game is the ultimate no-hitter. We have to imagine it was pretty quiet in the Tiger dugout….

Fans have no such restriction however, and those in the stands at the game were going gaga with every pitch.

They, along with the rest of the country, were counting down….  “He just needs four more outs….  three more outs… two more outs….   ONE MORE OUT!!   HE JUST NEEDS TO GET THIS GUY OUT!!!

HERE IT IS… A SLOW ROLLER TO THE FIRST BASEMAN… HE SCOOPS IT UP AND THROWS IT TO THE PITCHER WHO IS COVERING FIRST AND….

Well, you know the rest. Umpire Jim Joyce thought, incorrectly, that the ball was not caught in time, so he called the runner ‘safe.’

A blown call. No perfect game. Not even a no-hitter. Nothing. History erased.

There are plenty of hotheads in professional sports, and baseball probably has a higher percentage than most.

I would not have been shocked if Galarraga ‘went off’ on the umpire.

Screaming, kicking dirt and throwing things are all part of baseball. It is distasteful, but routine.

Here was Galarraga’s immediate response to the blown call.

I hereby declare Armando Galarraga “Sportsman of the Year” for his charming response to an otherwise catastrophic disappointment.

For some reason, Major League umpires are protected from post-game press scrutiny. No one is allowed to ask them questions. Jim Joyce spoke to the press anyway. His apology was profuse and heartbreaking. You could feel his anguish at having made such an errant call.

His admission was actually historic. Umpires NEVER admit they made a bad call.

So Winkest Link also offers our highest level kudos to umpire Jim Joyce.

Thank you both for bringing ‘sportsmanship’ back to sports.

LeBron James has apparently let a lot of people down.

His team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, was just eliminated from the playoffs by the Boston Celtics.

He didn’t win any championships with Cleveland.

This wouldn’t be much of an issue, but all the aforementioned mags, newspapers and television networks have already anointed LeBron as the next savior of the NBA, the next ‘Michael Jordan.’

Not much pressure there, right LeBron?

He is eligible for free agency, and can now choose to re-sign with Cleveland or sign with any other team. The most talked-about ‘other teams’ are the New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls.

Who knows where he will sign. If he re-ups with Cleveland, Cavs fans will rejoice, and many people will praise his loyalty.

If he signs with another team, any other team, he will be seen as greedy, or as calloused toward the long-suffering Cleveland fans.

Is James, at 25, officially overrated? We sort of doubt that. It took Jordan longer than this to start his championship run.

Either way, I don’t care. He has been nothing but a class act, who has reflected positively on Cleveland, and the NBA.

LeBron, if you are reading this, just grant me one wish…..

Don’t sign with the @*!#*!# Lakers

Who gives a crap?

Jim Nantz, apparently some sort of golf announcer, said he would be fired if he used that language on air.

Well, Jim, you’re paid to have a microphone in your face. Tiger is not. It’s not his fault that what he says is picked up from nearby microphones. Nor is it any other athletes fault, or job to keep themselves PC. Usually when an athletes (or fan) swears, and it’s picked up, the announcers just laugh it off or ignore it.

What I’m saying, Jim, is do your job and let the athletes do theirs.

Short answer: Money.

Long answer: MOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNEEEEEEEEYYYYYYY.

We at the Winkest Link have discussed this, and have accepted that none of the extra 32 teams would honestly have a chance. They wouldn’t be adding the possible National Champion. Granted, they could be adding another George Mason, and there is discussion every year about teams that deserved to make it but were left out.

But if you were left out in the first place, you didn’t have much of a chance to win it all anyway.

An expansion would also belittle the quality of play in the National Invitational Tournament, which is prestigious enough, and it’s a great honor to play in that tournament as well. We at the Winkest Link, being big Nebraska and Creighton basketball fans, are all too familiar with the NIT.

Plus, with the creation of the Collegeinsider.com Basketball Tournament (CIT) and the College Basketball Invitational (CBI), teams that even think they deserve a postseason will get one.

The Winter Olympics are now over. Did you enjoy them? Did you watch ANY of it?

I did, and am startled to announce my personal conversion: The winter games are more fun than the summer games.

Can’t believe it? I can hardly believe it either. I have always been one (of the many) who trash talk about how lame the winter games are.

But they are NOT lame. They are way more interesting than the summer games.

Let us start with the obviously fun events: ski jumping, the aerial jumps, short track & long track racing, hockey, half pipe (and ALL snowboarding events), slalom & moguls skiing, luge, skeleton and bobsled.

Those events are entertaining regardless of who is competing, but the wacky X-game additions are especially fun to watch. There is not NEARLY as much crashing in the summer games.

But I had a good time with lots of other events, even the curling. Okay, curling doesn’t elevate your blood pressure, but sort of draws you in anyway, like watching poker on TV.

The Nordic skiing events were all pretty good, but especially fun was the skiing and shooting event called the biathlon. Skiing and shooting…. Gotta love it…

Imagine how much I would like the Winter Olympics if I cared even the slightest bit about figure skating! Which I don’t!

I liked how much fun Canada seemed to have hosting it (note especially the goofy closing ceremonies). Nobody makes more fun of Canada than Canadians.

Everybody tells me how beautiful Vancouver is. Now I believe them.

Maybe I enjoyed this so much because I have been cooped up inside too long this winter and just needed visual evidence of some physical activity other than shoveling.

It makes no difference. The winter games, minute for minute, are better than the summer games. We will see if I change my mind in two years…
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Tiger apologized recently. It was broadcast live on TV. This was a really big story.

Whole televised sports hours were dedicated to discussing all aspects of this.

Countless hours of radio programming, even on non-sports stations, have parsed his words and vocal intonations. Newspapers and magazines are swimming in articles about this.

Was he sincere?

Maybe you know this already, but it seems he cheated on his wife.

Granted, my opinion of him, overall, has changed. I now see him as an athlete who cheats on his wife. Not the most exclusive club.

I presume many of his original sponsors liked his story, his too-good-to-be-true persona. A handsome super-perfectionist golfer, a mixed-raced kid who obviously loved his mother and retired-military father.

When the news of his infidelity broke, sponsors fled from him like rats from a sinking ship. That doesn’t break my heart. He is already more wealthy than about half the nations on the planet.

I suspect though, that some sponsors, cash strapped due to the recent recession, just used his foibles as an excuse to bail on some multi-million dollar payouts.

Did you watch his televised apology? I didn’t, because I don’t care. I follow golf and I still don’t care.

But the media cared. Much, much, much of the coverage and commentary seems to revolve around the following concept:

Too little, too late.

As if Tiger owes the media pundits an apology.

Nope.

Tiger is a guy, not a god. He clearly owes his wife an apology. It is up to her as to whether to accept or not.

He probably owes his sponsors something of an apology. They normally don’t want to shower money on someone who exhibits embarrassing behavior.

Who does Tiger NOT owe an apology to?

• To sportscasters. To columnists for newspapers and magazines.
• To pompous political pundits. (Alliteration!)
• Not even to other golfers in the PGA. Amazingly, some of them are shooting off their mouths about how this is damaging the pro tour. (Shut up, all of you. Your paychecks are all WAY BIGGER because of Tiger. Now would be the best possible time to show a little gratitude.)

And finally, Tiger does NOT owe an apology to you, the average fan. If you are fool enough to hold up an athlete, any athlete, as a role model, then you are an idiot.

Often times when a superstar, whether it is an athlete, actor or musical act takes a political or moral stance, people tell them to just go back to what they are famous for, and leave the politics for the politicians.

I don’t have a problem with a person expressing his/her views even on such a large stage.

Next, I am glad Mrs. Tebow chose not to have an abortion. It is her right to make that decision, not the governments.

It is wrong for the government to be making the decision in either direction.

Please note: Planned Parenthood also supports Mrs. Tebow’s decision.

Enjoy the game.

Formerly fierce Conrad Dobler has paid a terrible price for choosing the NFL as a career. No longer a physical specimen (in the positive sense), today he is 90% disabled, having suffered through numerous operations to repair his battered body. He has had too many surgeries to count, but let us just begin by noting his nine knee surgeries.

His medical issues have no end, and he is still in need of further surgeries. Along with countless other disabled NFL veterans, he has been unable to gain disability assistance from the NFL.

The NFL fights tooth and nail to avoid making disability payments to any retired player.

According to recent comments by Dobler, there are some 9000 living retired NFL players, and 125 have qualified for NFL disability payments. One-hundred and twenty five.

Dobler sarcastically concludes that the NFL must be the ‘safest industry’ anywhere in the world.

I will tell you what the NFL really is, it is a collection of the most heartless bastards anywhere.

Does the NFL have financial problems?

At the Super Bowl this year Queen Latifah will sing ‘God Bless America’ and Carrie Underwood will sing the national anthem. The Who will perform at half, a spot in recent years filled by no-names like Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones.

Did they all perform just for free tickets to the game? I guess there must be a little money involved. How can the NFL afford that?

It is the richest sports league on the planet, with multi-billion dollar TV contracts and creative ‘rights fees’ that require season ticket holders to pay an additional charge, not for tickets, but for the right to buy tickets. So, you pay the fee, and THEN you pay the cost of the tickets. (My understanding is that this creative ploy was invented by the Dallas Cowboys many years ago.)

Think the players are ‘overpaid fat boys?’ You can ignore all of those salaries they trump up.

Sometimes you hear a player signed a five year contract for $10 million or some such. Most players never collect those amounts. While salaries for baseball and NBA players are mostly guaranteed, NFL paychecks end when you are cut from the team.

You can get cut for underperforming, and you can get cut for being injured.

Being cut for being injured will NOT qualify you for disability thru the NFL. Almost nothing will qualify you for disability with the NFL.

C’mon NFL, start sharing the wealth with those who made you all rich. The players. But especially with the players who have been physically disabled by the brutally crushing nature of your sport.

Conrad Dobler is 90% disabled and you argue it has ‘nothing to do with football’? Your high-powered lawyers make that same argument against every disabled player. Pathetic.