TIME TO CHANGE THE TIMING OF THE TRIPLE CROWN RACES FOR HORSES

                                                                                      Kallas Remarks By Steve Kallas   

 

Once upon a time, three-year-old thoroughbred horses would race frequently and, while it was a difficult thing to race three times in five weeks (Kentucky Derby first Saturday in May, the Preakness two weeks later, the Belmont three weeks after that), it wasn’t absurd, stupid or dangerous.  Many horses would routinely “dance every dance,” taking their shot at horse-racing immortality.  In the 1970s, Triple Crown winners were frequent (1973 — Secretariat, 1977– Seattle Slew, 1978 – Affirmed).

    

But that was then; this is now.  With no Triple Crown winner in 30 years, and even with a realistic chance that Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown can do it this year, it’s .simply stupid to expect them to go to the post three times in five weeks to race at distances they have never raced at before and, in the case of the mile-and-a-half Belmont, will never race at again.

    

Don’t take my word for it.  The Preakness, in the last decade or so, has simply become a prep for the Kentucky Derby winner to take his shot at the Triple Crown.  In the “old” days, six or eight or ten Derby starters would come back to take their shot at the Derby winner in the Preakness two weeks later.  Not anymore.  In this year’s race, other than Big Brown, there is only one horse (out of 19) coming back from the Derby to try his luck in the Preakness, and that’s speed horse Gayego, who finished 17^th in the Derby, some 36 lengths back (some would say he didn’t even race in the Derby off that performance).  Frankly, that’s the trainers and owners of Derby losers telling us that it’s preposterous to race three times in five weeks in the 21^st Century.

      

DON’T HURT THE TOP THREE-YEAR-OLDS

         

Today, you are pretty much doing a disservice to your good, young three-year-old if you send him (there probably won’t be any hers for a long time after Eight Belles broke both her ankles right after the Derby and had to be put down on the track) out to race three times in five weeks.  The Derby winner pretty much has to do it, because a Triple Crown winner today is probably worth an additional $40 million or so if he can get the job done.

    

Do horses get hurt racing three times in five weeks when, generally speaking, good horses today rarely race more than once every four to six weeks?   Well, that’s pretty much an unanswerable question in a sport where a horse can break a sesamoid bone, for example, by simply taking a bad step out of his stall.   

    

But in 2006, Barbaro had raced five weeks before the Derby (he paid $14 as an undefeated Derby winner because no horse in over 50 years had raced his last race more than four weeks before the Derby and won the Derby).  But then, in the Preakness, a pass race from a gambling perspective (as is this year’s Preakness because Big Brown will be a no-value, heavy favorite), Barbaro broke down and, after months of trying to save him, had to be put down.  Interestingly, Barbaro had only raced twice in 13 weeks prior to the 2006 Derby.  While nobody can ever say with certainty that Barbaro broke down in the Preakness because he came back to race 14 days after the Derby (rather than having five or eight weeks off between races as he had previously done in early 2006), the truth is nobody will ever know for sure.

    

Which brings us back to 2008.  Big Brown, beating another long-believed Derby no-no of having only three lifetime starts before winning the Derby (that hadn’t happened in something like 80 years), will come back just two weeks later to try and win the second leg of the Triple Crown.  He should do it (there’s not much competition), but the good horses now lay in wait for the Belmont, three weeks after the Preakness.

      

SO, WHAT SHOULD THE NEW SCHEDULE BE?

         

Here’s a simple but realistic schedule for the Triple Crown in the 21^st Century:  Kentucky Derby, first Saturday in May, Preakness, first Saturday in June, Belmont, first Saturday in July.  Throw in the Travers at Saratoga (late in August) and you have a perfect four-race program for any real good three-year-old in the world.

     

HERE’S A GOOD BASEBALL ANALOGY

          

Of course, if you follow horse racing, you can hear the traditionalists screaming: “this is how it’s been done for over 100 years, horses should dance every dance, it takes a special horse to win the Triple Crown” and on and on and on.

    

But let’s take a look at pitchers in baseball.  Up until the late 1960s and into the 1970s, pitchers took the ball with three days of rest and started about 40 games a year.  That changed in the ‘70s and ‘80s to pitchers taking the ball with four days of rest and, today, starting about 34 games a year.  Not only that, but you baseball fans know that starting pitchers rarely come out for the eighth or ninth innings – the complete game, with rare exceptions, is on the verge of becoming extinct.  Few people know what a complete game looks like. 

    

Like the horse-racing traditionalists, the baseball traditionalists bemoan the fact that pitchers “aren’t tough anymore,’ that they don’t “suck it up anymore’ and go out for the eighth or ninth inning.  Of course, if you know baseball, you know that we are much closer to the five-inning starter than we are to a return of the nine-inning starter.

    

So the analogy is this:  To have horses race three times in five weeks in the 21^st Century would be like making major league pitchers pitch every fourth day in the 21^st Century, a stupid and dangerous (to pitchers’ arms) thing to put into play.  So, too, to make these horses run distances they have never run before and, in the case of the Belmont, a distance they will never run again, would be like making today’s pitchers (whatever one may think of their “toughness”) pitch complete games no matter how tired they might be in the eighth or ninth inning.  Hopefully, you get the point.

    

While tradition in horse racing (and many other things) should be respected and honored, there has to be a common sense approach to how it really is today.  That common sense approach, in thoroughbred racing, would be to space the Triple Crown races at least a month apart.  That way, more horses could “dance every dance” and, at least arguably, less horses will be put at risk of serious or fatal injury.           

 

© Copyright 2008 by Steve Kallas.  All rights reserved. 

NEWS FLASH: MIKE MUSSINA WINS GAME #3OO, NOT #255 — IT’S THE NEW MATH IN PITCHING

                                                                                      Kallas Remarks By Steve Kallas

   

Once upon a time in pitching, as hard as it may be to believe today, a major league  pitcher would take the ball every fourth day and would start 40-41 times a season and would pitch usually into the eighth or ninth inning (if he was a good pitcher).    

But that was then, this is now.  Today, a major league pitcher takes the ball (maybe) every fifth day, starts 34-35 times a season and, on the rare occasion, pitches into the eighth or (unbelievable today) ninth inning.

 

    

Which brings us to Mike Mussina and his win number 255 on May 8, 2008, a 6-3 victory over the Cleveland Indians.  While the win wasn’t hailed as a milestone, it really should have been viewed as such.  There’s the new math in pitching and here’s how it works:  Starting with the young Met pitchers of the late1960s (you old-time Met fans will remember – Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry and even part-time starter Nolan Ryan), pitchers started to rest four days between starts rather than three.  Over the next few decades and coupled with expansion, this would be the watering down of pitching as we see it today (but that’s for another time).

 

    

Over the next decade or so, there was a transformation of pitching – no longer would pitching every fourth day be the norm, it would now be every fifth day, a huge difference in terms of putting together a pitching staff.

 

    

So whether everybody understood it or not, there would never be another 30-game winner again (an impossibility today with only 34-35 starts a season).  In fact, the question is whether there will ever be another 25-game winner again (also for another time).

 

    

But the new math in baseball for career wins is this:  Since good starters for decades, with rare exceptions (Whitey Ford and Bob Gibson come to mind), would start 40 or so times a year and good starters today start 34 or so times a year, it’s simple mathematics to figure out that a pitcher’s chance to win games reduces by six starts a year or 15% (40 starts less 15% (six starts) equals 34 starts a year).  So, too, again by simple mathematics, will a pitcher’s actual number of wins go down by 15%.

 

    

So the 300-game winner of yesteryear, by mathematical definition, couldn’t possibly win 300 games today if he pitched every fifth day instead of every fourth day.  And this, of course, is before we even talk about middle relievers, closers and the mentality of the pitch count.  So by simply subtracting 15% from 300 (45), we come up with the modern-day equivalent of 300 wins — 255 wins.      

 

    

So Mike Mussina, a possible Hall of Fame candidate down the road, essentially won his 300^th game on May 8, 2008.  And nobody knew about it.

        

© Copyright 2008 by Steve Kallas.  All rights reserved. 

LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL TRIES TO FIX THE PITCH-COUNT RULE IN 2008 BUT COMES UP SHORT

                                                                                      Kallas Remarks By Steve Kallas   

 

Little League Baseball has been correctly lauded for being the first youth baseball league to institute pitch-count limits for young pitchers.  The history is as follows:  until 2005, Little League pitchers could pitch six innings in a calendar week (Sunday to Saturday), regardless of the number of pitches thrown by a young pitcher.  While that was still the rule in 2005 and 2006, Little League started a “pilot” pitch-count program in which 50 leagues in 2005 and about 500 leagues in 2006 instituted Little League’s pitch-count limitations (varying depending on age) to see if this would be something that all Little Leagues should follow.  In 2006, Little League, with much fanfare, announced that, beginning with the 2007 season, all leagues would now follow a mandatory pitch-count rule.

    

Little League had consulted with world-famous youth arm expert Dr. James Andrews and his second in command, Dr Glen Fleisig, prior to instituting the pilot program in 2005.  Drs. Andrews and Fleisig recommended that pitchers in the 11-12-year-old range (i.e., those who pitch in the televised Little League World Series in August) throw no more than 75 pitches per game and no more than 100 pitches per week.  Little League took these recommendations and decided that 11-12-year-old pitchers, in the pilot program of 2005 and 2006, could pitch up to 85 pitches per game (10 pitches per game higher than the doctors’ recommendations) and then would need four days of rest before pitching again.  No weekly limit was set.

 

BUT A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO PROTECTING THE ARMS OF YOUNG PTCHERS. 

    

When Little League announced that the pitch count rule would be mandatory starting in 2007, THEY CHANGED THE DAYS OF REST IN THE REGULAR SEASON FROM FOUR DAYS TO THREE WITHOUT MENTIONING IT IN THEIR PRESS RELEASE AND WITHOUT CONSULTING THEIR OWN DOCTORS.

    

This had far-reaching effects that even Little League didn’t quite understand.  For example, little leagues often will play Monday-Friday, Tuesday-Saturday, Wednesday- Sunday, etc.  With the reduction in days of rest (from four to three), this would mean that, in 2007, your top pitcher could pitch TWICE in a calendar week (up to 85 pitches, 170 in five days), something that was impossible under the old six-inning rule (if you pitched more than three innings in one game) and well-above the doctors’ recommendation of 100 pitches per week.

    

If you were involved in any little league, it wasn’t hard to imagine that managers in the Little League Majors (11-12-year-old players) would eagerly pitch their “star” pitcher twice in a week.  This certainly hurt the notion that Little League would develop lots of new pitchers, one of the goals of the new rule.

    

BUT IT WAS MUCH WORSE FOR THE LITTLE LEAGUE ALL-STAR TOURNAMENT THAT CULMINATES IN WILLIAMSPORT, PA. 

    

Inexplicably, and against anything remotely resembling their doctors’ recommendations of 75 pitches per game and 100 per week, Little League lowered the days of rest from THREE in the regular season to TWO in the Williamsport tourney.  Understand what that means: an 11- or 12-year-old pitcher could now throw up to 255 pitches in SEVEN DAYS (compared with the doctors’ recommendation of 100 pitches in seven days).

    

Despite a Little League official stating that Little League consulted with the doctors before instituting the change from four days of rest to three days, Dr. Fleisig specifically told this writer that Little League never consulted either doctor before instituting the change.  And even Little League officials don’t claim that they consulted the doctors when instituting the “two-day rest, 255 pitches in a week” rule for the tournament.

    

What does Little League say about the change from four days of rest to three?  In a Little League “online chat” on October 18, 2006 with Nick Caringi, Little League Baseball and Softball director of operations (still posted at littleleague.org), the following question was asked and answered:

    

Randy, a local Little League vice-president and manager in Oceanside, Calif., asks:

 “Is the pitch count regulation for 2007 going to be adjusted at all?  For example, three days of rest instead of four?  Although most of us believe in the pitch count rule, we have a hard time with a four-day rest period.” 

  

Mr. Caringi’s answer was telling:

     “Randy, you must be referring to the limitations on the Pitch Count Pilot Program, in which a 12-year-old pitcher was required to have four days of rest if he/she yhrew 61 or more pitches in a day.  Your position was a common one among the leagues that took part.  FOR THAT REASON, the rest has been reduced exactly as your (sic) suggest.”     (emphasis supplied)

     

Mr. Caringi’s answer is telling, not just because the reason that is given is that the leagues (as opposed to the doctors) didn’t like the four-day rest, but also, and more importantly, because the DOCTORS’ views (75 pitches per game, 100 per week) are never mentioned in the answer (because, according to Dr. Fleisig, they were never consulted on the change).

    

Understand that Dr. Tim Kremchek, orthopedic surgeon for the Cincinnati Reds and a doctor who often works with young pitchers and operates on their injured arms, when asked about the 255-pitches-in-a-week rule during the Williamsport tourney, was very blunt:  “That’s utterly ridiculous and I’m going to call it abuse.  What about the kids?”

 

THE 2008 CHANGES:  GOOD, BUT NOT ENOUGH

     

So, in 2008, Little League has “refined” the pitching rules.  While they make much of a change that a pitcher can’t catch in the same game after he throws a pitch (obviously a good rule that will have managers scrambling to get more kids to catch, no easy task), the main helpful change is that, during the regular season, a pitcher, while still only having to rest three days (they should have changed it back to four like the pilot program), now needs a game in between starts plus the three-days rest before he/she can pitch again (see page 34, Rule VI (d), of the 2008 Rule Book) .

    

As anyone involved in Little League knows, this is a huge change.  For the most part, Little Leagues play two games (sometimes three) in a week.  If there are a lot of rainouts, then you can play three in a week consistently.  But this change eliminates what was obviously going to happen in 2007:  no longer can a star pitcher pitch Monday-Friday, Tuesday-Saturday, etc. without an intervening game, an unlikely occurrence before rainouts.

    

Having said that, it would be better and safer for young pitchers to just return to the four-day rest period set up by Little League in the Pilot Program after the original consultation with the doctors.

 

NO SIGNIFICANT 2008 TOURNEY CHANGES, HOWEVER

     

While Little League already has a game-in-between-starts requirement in its tournament rules (see pages T-12-13, rule 4f, in the 2008 Rule Book), in addition to only two days of rest, the reality is that the tournament schedules are such that teams often play three games in four days.  For example, the Little League Championship Game is always on a Sunday and the semi-finals are the day before.  Friday is always an off day (in case of rainouts, according to the Little League)  and to play on Saturday you have to win on either Wednesday or Thursday.  So your Sunday teams will have played either Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday or Thursday, Saturday, Sunday.  This means that your star pitcher can throw 170 pitches in either four or five days (Wednesday-Sunday or Thursday-Sunday), an absurdity under the doctors’ recommendations of 100 pitches per week. 

    

If those same pitchers pitch either three or four days before (which they sometimes do), you have the absurd situation where a 12-year-old throws 255 pitches in seven (called abuse by Dr. Kremchek) or eight days. Understand that this tournament can have these schedules for up to six weeks in July and August, so this isn’t an isolated occurrence.  Also understand that no game in between is needed (only two days rest is needed) if the previous game was at another level (district to section to state, etc.), see page T-13, rule 4(f)(2), in the 2008 Rule Book.

 

SO, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

     

The only hope is for the doctors to say something, publicly or privately, to Steve Keener, the main man at Little League.  Keener has already said that, if Dr. Andrews calls and recommends a return to the four days of rest, Little League would seriously consider it.  While Little League says it changed the rules for 2008 after consultation with, and the approval of, Drs. Andrews and Fleisig, here’s hoping that the doctors understand the damage this amount of pitching can do to young arms, based on their own studies and recommendations.

    

After all, if pitching coaches and managers in the major leagues would be fired (and they would be) if they trotted out Santana or Beckett or Webb or (you fill in a name) to throw 85-90 pitches on a Monday, Thursday and Sunday, for 255 pitches in seven days, then there is no rational explanation for Little League or the doctors to allow 11- and 12-year-olds to do the same in the 2008 Little League Tournament.  You get the point.

    

Please don’t fall for the Little League response that other youth leagues have not instituted a pitch count and, thus, kids can be throwing unlimited pitches if they play for multiple teams.  While it would be great if other leagues followed suit (and Little League and Dr. Andrews and Dr. Fleisig are to be, and have been, lauded for their initial pitch count rule), this article ONLY talks about throwing 255 pitches in a week IN THE LITTLE LEAGUE.  For multiple leagues, if the parent doesn’t keep and enforce his/her own pitch count for his/her own child (yes, sometimes under enormous pressure from other parents, coaches, etc.) in accordance with doctors’ recommendations, that parent is a fool.

    

Hopefully, the Little League and its recommending doctors will do the right thing and change the 2008 Little League Tournament rules before this summer.  Then they can change the Little League regular season rules for 2009 to meet their own doctors’ original suggestions.

      

 

© Copyright 2008 by Steve Kallas.  All rights reserved. 

STEVE KALLAS TO APPEAR ON WFAN RADIO IN NEW YORK CITY

    

Attorney and youth sports activist Steve Kallas will appear this Sunday morning, May 11th, from 8:00 to 9:00AM, on Rick Wolff’s WFAN 660AM (New York City) radio show, “The Sports Edge.”  Steve and Rick will discuss current issues in youth baseball, with an emphasis on the continuing problems of aluminum bats and pitch counts for young players.   

Click here to listen to WFAN live on the Web

 

PAT RILEY, GREATEST COACH EVER?

                                                                                      Kallas Remarks By Steve Kallas       

Pat Riley’s time to retire not only is here, but was actually here two years ago right after he stole an NBA Championship from the Dallas Mavericks (and it looks like the Mavericks won’t get another chance).  Rather than go out on top, he chose to struggle along for two more years before he saw the light.    

But it says here that Pat Riley is one of the greatest coaches ever, maybe the greatest coach ever.  Preposterous, you say?  Wait just a minute.    

Riley enters the conversation because of his four titles with the Lakers.  Of course, many believe that anybody could have coached the Magic-Kareem-Worthy Lakers and, while that’s a decent argument, the reality is that to be a great coach and win NBA titles, you need great players (Red Auerbach – Russell, Cousy and the rest; Phil Jackson – Jordan and Pippen, Shaq and Kobe, to name two great coaches).    

But Riley’s ability goes way beyond four titles with the Lakers (plus a fifth with the Heat).  What he did, which puts him in the conversation for greatest coach ever, is CHANGE THE WAY THE GAME IS PLAYED IN THE NBA.      

Now, we may not have liked it, but when Riley coached first the Knicks and then the Heat, he changed the league from the up tempo “Showtime” Lakers to the defensive “let’s make the game a rugby scrum” New York Knicks.  People still actually believe there was a “rivalry” between the Bulls of Jordan and Pippen and the Knicks of Patrick Ewing and … well, not that much else.  There really wasn’t, yet Riley made everybody in the league, including the Bulls, scratch and claw for every basket.  If he had coached the Knicks the way he coached the Lakers, the Knicks would have been non-contenders.  But he did great things with the Knicks during the regular season and at least made the Bulls sweat during the Jordan years.  He even got the Knicks to a Game 7 of the NBA Finals against the Rockets (in a Jordan-retired year, of course).    

He then worked similar magic with a Miami Heat team that also wasn’t really that good.  When Tim Hardaway could play on two legs, Alonzo Mourning wasn’t quite yet ALONZO MOURNING.  By the time Mourning became a star, Tim Hardaway was essentially playing on one leg.  The only time the Heat could beat the Jeff Van Gundy-coached Knicks was when half the Knicks got suspended in 1997.  Again, a “great” rivalry that really wasn’t as great as it was cracked up to be.    

So, the reason that Riley is in the conversation as greatest coach is because he’s the most diverse NBA coach ever (Showtime Lakers v. Scrum Knicks) and, the icing on the cake, his delivery, as promised, of a title to Miami, another franchise he turned from pretenders to contenders.    

Does Riley have his downside?  You betcha.  Faxing in his Knicks resignation was bush league, to say the least.  Cutting the legs out from under Stan Van Gundy to replace him as coach (right when Shaq was coming back from injury) during Miami’s title season in 2005-06 was nauseating, especially to those of us who always thought Stan Van Gundy would be an excellent NBA coach (he’s showing that now with Orlando).  But in the big picture, this guy won five titles and did even better work with two franchises that simply didn’t have a talent level high enough to realistically compete for an NBA title.    

To stay for this final 15-67 disaster in Miami was another mistake.  But I don’t think you can find another coach with Pat Riley’s success who made teams that he coached better and literally changed (for better or worse) the way the game was played in the NBA in the 1990s.    

Pat Riley, greatest coach ever?  You can certainly make a case for him.    

© Copyright 2008 by Steve Kallas.  All rights reserved. 

THE BIGGEST HARNESS RACE OF THE YEAR TO DATE HAS PANARAMIC ART IN AND MALTESE ARTIST AND BONO BESTS OUT

                                                                                      Kallas Remarks By Steve Kallas   

 

They raced three $50,000 divisions in the final preliminary leg of the George Morton Levy Memorial Pacing Series on Saturday, April 27th, at Yonkers Raceway.  The real question was who would (and who wouldn’t) make the estimated $400,000 Final on Saturday, May 3^rd, the biggest (and richest) harness race of the year to date.

    

The first division had contender Panaramic Art having to win to guarantee a spot in the Final.  Panaramic Art did just that, winning in 1:52.3 to move into 5th place overall.

    

The second division went to, arguably, the best horse in the country right now.  Bono Bests had won his only prior Levy start and was monstrous last week in winning the $100,000 Battle of Lake Erie at Northfield.  But not racing at Yonkers last week cost him all chance to make the Final next week.  While he won in 1:52.3, his point total (50 points for winning plus 25 points for just racing, giving him 150 for the series) only put him in 12^th place.  Had he raced at Yonkers last week and finished first or second, he would have made the $400,000 Final.

    

In the third division, defending Levy champ Maltese Artist also had to win to guarantee a spot in the Final.  But last year’s runner-up (and this year’s points leader) Special Report had other ideas, sending notice that he’s back by pacing his last half-mile in a stunning 54.4 to win in 1:52 by a neck over Maltese Artist.  The second-place finish (25 for second, 25 for just racing) moved Maltese Artist up to only 166 points and in 10^th place.

    

If the top eight drop in for the Final, both Psilvuheartbreaker and Maltese Artist will be on the outside looking in.  However, if all eight don’t drop in, then one or possibly both could sneak in, an unlikely occurrence.

    

    

FINAL POINTS STANDINGS (50 Win, 25 Second, 12 Third, 8 Fourth, 5 Fifth plus 25 additional points every time a horse races, Top 8 make the Final):

    

     1)  Special Report         283

     2)  Took Hanover         258

     3)  Mypanmar               219

     4)  Palone Ranger         208

     5)  Panaramic Art         200

     6)  Rare Jewel              199

     7)  Radar Installed N   196

     8)  Tarver Hanover      188

     Also eligible (if any of the top 8 don’t drop in):

 

     9)    Psilvuheartbreaker  187

   10)  Maltese Artist          166     

   11)  Home Run Hudson  158

   12)  Bono Bests             150

   13)  Gold Dust Beach     137

   14) Royal Man              105      (only horses with over 100 points listed)

© Copyright 2008 by Steve Kallas.  All rights reserved. 

DON’T WASTE TOO MUCH TIME ON VIRTUALLY IRRELEVANT DRAFT “ANALYSIS”

                                                                                      Kallas Remarks By Steve Kallas   

 

The big day is coming:  Saturday, April 26 – The NFL Draft.  But what do you really learn from the “expert” analysis that comes at you from 1,000 different places.  Do these “experts” really understand?  Do they really know what they’re talking about?  Does it really matter?

    

It says here that draft day “analysis” of picks, the dreaded “winners and losers” lists in the draft that will come out the day after and the ad nauseum “what a mistake that team made” analyses you’ll hear until you can’t take it anymore, are all virtually irrelevant in the days and weeks right after the draft.  What I mean is, you really have no clue whether a draft selection (or a team’s entire group of selections) is good or bad until at least the next season.  In reality, it often takes three or four years to really know the answer to what “experts” are guessing about on draft day.  And the “experts” are themselves protected, because there is no answer as to whether they are right or not for months or, more likely, years.

    

My favorite proof of this the last few years is none other than Super Bowl-winning quarterback Eli Manning.  Giant fans, for the most part, have been complaining for years that Eli was a poor pick, that the Giants gave up too much for him, that there were other QBs in the 2004 draft who were (and certainly played) better than Eli.  The most a patient Giant fan could say was “give him time, he’s young.”

     

To look at his regular-season stats, even today, one would think it was a terrible pick.  His lifetime completion rate is still only 54.7% (an unimpressive 56.1% in 2007).  His career QB rating (an absurdly mystifying statistic – but that’s for another time) is 73.4 (an unimpressive 73.9 in 2007).  Most fans don’t even know what that means – except to know that it’s not good.

    

But Eli Manning took the Giants to the Promised Land last season.  He did what very few thought he could do – make big post-season plays to come out of the shadow of his brother and his father to win the Super Bowl.  While we all still think that Peyton Manning is a much better quarterback than Eli (and, of course, he is), remember this – in the only real stat that counts (Super Bowl victories), the brothers Manning are tied at one.  Does that make Eli Manning as good as his brother?  No.  Does that make Eli Manning an excellent number one draft pick despite poor stats?  You betcha.  And all the Eli critics have fallen by the wayside.  After all, he won the Super Bowl and was a major factor in the post-season.

    

And speaking of the great Peyton Manning, have we all forgotten the pre-draft hysteria in 1998 over who would be the better pick – Peyton Manning or the forgotten Ryan Leaf?  Yeah, all the Ryan Leaf “experts” are now hanging out with the Eli Manning bashers.  You get the point.

    

Once in a while, you can answer the question on a draft after a season.  An excellent example of this is the 2007 New York Giants.  New general manager Jerry Reese, despite deflecting credit, has correctly been labeled a guy who had a brilliant draft for the Giants.  All of his eight 2007 draft picks made the team and many made huge playoff contributions.  Many of you know how good Aaron Ross (1^st round) became at corner and many of you saw the huge post-season contribution of Steve Smith (2^nd round – 14 post-season receptions for 152 yards).  But how many of you knew about Jay Alford (3^rd round – sack for the ages late in the Super Bowl) or Kevin Boss (5^th round – five post-season receptions for 90 yards, including that unforgettable 45-yard romp in the Super Bowl) or Ahmad Bradshaw (7^th round – leading Giants post-season rusher) or even long-snapper/linebacker Zak DeOssie (4^th round)?  Very few. And even fewer “experts” could even guess that this group would become this good this fast.

    

So remember, as your head starts to spin from people telling you how this team had a “great” draft or that team “missed the boat,” you really won’t know (and neither will they) for, probably, years to come.     

© Copyright 2008 by Steve Kallas.  All rights reserved. 

PHOENIX DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO DEFEND THE THREE LATE IN THE GAME AND, THUS, LOSES A GREAT CHANCE TO BEAT THE SPURS

                                                                                      Kallas Remarks By Steve Kallas   

 

We recently wrote in this column how Memphis’s inability to defend the three-point shot late in the game cost them the National Championship (Sports Plus, April 8).  On Saturday, April 19, Phoenix made the same mistake and it allowed San Antonio to tie the game in OT, a game the Spurs would eventually win.

    

Here’s the situation:  Phoenix up three, Manu Ginobili with the ball across mid-court with about 9.5 seconds left.  Being guarded by the intelligent Steve Nash, the Spurs’ Tim Duncan sets a pick for Ginobili above the three-point line to the right of the top of the key.  As Ginobili comes by the pick (moving to his left), Shaq goes to Ginobili and Nash goes to Ginobili (8 seconds, 7 seconds left) as Ginobili turns the corner going to the basket (6 seconds left).

    

At that time, up three, Phoenix has five defenders BELOW the three-point line.  In 2008, HOW CAN THAT BE?  The only way Phoenix can’t win is if San Antonio hits a three (or if Ginobili gets fouled and makes a layup, but Nash is too smart for that).

    

Phoenix should have (and could have) defended the three-point line.  That is, once Ginobili goes below the three-point line, his two-point field goal (assuming he makes it) CAN’T tie up the game.  Only a three can.  So Shaq never recovers as Ginobili throws it to a wide-open Tim Duncan (5 seconds) who buries his first three of the year (3 seconds left) to send the game into double-overtime.

    

Nobody seems to understand this.  On Sunday on ESPN, none other than Mike Lupica said:  “The Suns have to be thinking, ‘we did everything right on that play, we did not let Ginobili get to the basket, Shaq did the right thing and there’s Tim Duncan.’”  WHAT??

    

“We did not let Ginobili get to the basket.”  That’s a good thing for all but about the last six seconds of a game you’re up by three (like this one).  Play it out.  Ginobili pulls up for a short jumper or goes all the way to the basket.  If he misses a two, the game’s over.  If he makes a two, Phoenix is still ahead and puts the ball in Nash’s great foul-shooting hands with what, three seconds left, two seconds left?  The game is over.

    

“Shaq did the right thing.”  Shaq did the right thing UNLESS it was very late in the game and your team is up three (as in this game).  To switch on the pick is the right thing but to go below the three-point line is frankly, a stupid thing, especially when your man (Duncan) is all alone at the three-point line.

    

If you say that this was Duncan’s only three of the year, you’re, unlike Duncan, badly missing the point.  When you’re up three, if you can get the opposition to shoot from inside the three-point line as close to the buzzer as possible, you’re going to win the game.  If you allow anyone (good or bad from three) to get a wide-open look, you’re asking to lose the game in the next overtime (as Phoenix did).

    

I’ll say it again:  Someday, somewhere, some coach is going to defend the three-point line rather than inside the three-point line.  Once it becomes obvious to coaches, the game will be changed forever – three-point defense in the last seconds of a game will be much different and everyone will fall in line.  Why it hasn’t happened already is beyond me. 

 

 

 

 

 

© Copyright 2008 by Steve Kallas.  All rights reserved. 

THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING!

                                                                                               Kallas Remarks By Steve Kallas   

Plenty more happened last night than the New York Rangers beating the New Jersey Devils, 5-3,  giving the Rangers a five-game series victory.  It could very well be the end of the glorious run of the Devils as the DEVILS and of Martin Brodeur as MARTIN BRODEUR.

    

With three Stanley Cups and an old-time goalie’s iron man approach to hockey (even when other teams were playing two goalies with some regularity, Brodeur seemed to play every game), Martin Brodeur is a sure-fire Hall of Famer once he hangs up his skates.  But he certainly gave up a number of soft goals in the Ranger series (both Barry Melrose on ESPN and Joe Micheletti of MSG Network kept saying “Marty wishes he could have that one back”).  Accused for years of being a “system” goalie as the Devils played the dreaded trap to perfection, it’s become clear over the last seven or eight years that Brodeur is much more than that – in fact, an all-time great goaltender. 

    

The problem for him (and the Devils), frankly, is the quality of the defense put in front of him.  Gone to retirement are the Hall of Famer Scott Stevens and the excellent Ken Daneyko.  Gone to other teams are the great Scott Niedermayer and the vastly underrated Brian Rafalski.  These guys simply can’t be replaced and haven’t been replaced, even with money-saving genius Lou Lamoriello at the helm.

    

On the other side, the New York Rangers are coming like a freight train.  While it’s true that the additions of Scott Gomez and Chris Drury were crucial, the key to it all, as it usually is in hockey, is the ascension of King Henrik Lundqvist.  Non-hockey fans simply don’t understand the importance of the quality of your top goalie.  Frankly, it’s like starting your number one pitcher every game.

    

So Lundqvist, with very brief time-period exceptions, has been a top NHL goaltender since he came into the league.  He was an NHL “rookie” like Ichiro was a baseball rookie – he was a star in the Swedish Elite League before he came to the Rangers and has an Olympic Gold Medal.

    

While the Rangers charged the net, shot the puck (finally) and caused Brodeur all kinds of problems (separate and apart from the Sean Avery fiasco), it seemed like the Devils had to shoot the puck off a Ranger to score (the game-winning goal in their only victory plus goals two and three that got them back to 4-3 in Game 5).  But Lundqvist put down the hammer and sent a message by stopping tricky John Madden on a penalty shot after all the momentum had shifted to the Devils.  It’s not Mike Richter stopping Vancouver’s Pavel Bure in 1994, but it was the final nail in the Devil’s coffin as they seemed about to crawl out of it.

    

Some Ranger fans feared that the acquisition of Scott Gomez would be the second coming of the disappointing (as a Ranger) Bobby Holik, but that hasn’t happened.  In fact, just the subtraction of Gomez from the Devils was a great blow to their winning system.  In addition, even though Jaromir Jagr obviously missed the underrated Michael Nylander earlier in the season, Jagr has come around and is playing like a superstar again.  Maybe, like many NBA players, he was just waiting for the playoffs.

    

But it all comes back to Lundqvist.  Intelligent, clutch, fundamentally sound, he’s going to be around for a long time.  And that means that the Rangers, arguably helped more than any other team by the “new” NHL salary restrictions, are also Cup contenders this year and in the future.    

   

As for Brodeur, he, Lamoriello and the Devils will regroup as they always do and will still be a factor.  But it says here that, from a winning-the-Stanley-Cup perspective, The King is Dead, Long Live The King!

 

© Copyright 2008 by Steve Kallas.  All rights reserved. 

MIKE MUSSINA V. MANNY RAMIREZ, PART II

                                                                                      Kallas Remarks By Steve Kallas   

Short and sour:  Given the fiasco of pitching to Manny Ramirez last week with a base open (see Sports Plus, 4/13/08) and given the fact that Manny hit two more moon shots off Mussina last night (Red Sox 7, Yankees 5), there’s only one question to be asked:  Do Mussina and manager Joe Girardi still feel that “the comfort level” of Mussina facing Ramirez or Kevin Youkilis is “the same?”  Just asking. 

© Copyright 2008 by Steve Kallas.  All rights reserved.