Category Archives: Sports news

local news, Sports news

Who’s on first in the Texas League?

baseball-pic

Left hand, meet the right hand. Right, say “hey” to left.

Someone — and it’s difficult to discern who — isn’t talking entirely straight regarding a possible baseball franchise move from one city to another in Texas.

A consultant who works with the San Antonio Missions of the Texas League apparently has told downtown Amarillo officials that the Missions might like to consider moving to Amarillo once the city build its downtown ball park.

Oh, but wait! Tom Kayser, president of the Texas League, said the Missions aren’t moving anywhere. Kayser said Rich Neumann, the consultant working with Brailsford & Dunlavey, isn’t speaking for the team or the league or anyone else he can think of.

The third principal here is Melissa Dailey, head of Downtown Amarillo Inc., who told the Amarillo Local Government Corporation of the Missions’ possible move. I don’t recall her saying anything was set in stone, or that any other pledges had been made.

Yes, it’s a bit confusing.

Something is amiss. Someone might have spoken out of turn down yonder in San Antonio without telling the league president of the intention.

It’s been reported that San Antonio wants to upgrade to a AAA farm club; the Missions are a AA team affiliated with the San Diego Padres of the National League. Amarillo’s baseball fortunes currently are tied to an independent organization that in the next season will play half of its own homes in Grand Prairie. So, with that, Amarillo is looking to upgrade as well, to a AA team with a Major League Baseball affiliation.

So, let’s get all this straight. OK?

Many of us in Amarillo want to see some movement in the right direction as it involves the city’s baseball future.

First things first. How about we determine with absolute certainty whether the discussions we’ve been told have occurred with the San Antonio Missions are the real thing — or are they just a diversion?

 

 

local news, Sports news

MPEV action gets a stunning jump-start

Baseball

Well, now. It appears that Amarillo is in the hunt for a serious tenant for a proposed multipurpose event venue — with a ballpark — to be built in the city’s downtown district.

The city has been home to independent baseball teams for quite some time. As it has been noted, they come and go. Next year, the Amarillo Thunderheads are going to merge with the Grand Prairie AirHogs and will split their “home” games between the two locales.

Now comes word that the Local Government Corporation is going after an affiliated Class AA team, possibly the San Antonio Missions, a farm club linked with the National League San Diego Padres.

This team might want to come to Amarillo and play its home games in the MPEV.

Here’s what City Councilman Randy Burkett, a member of the LGC said to NewsChannel 10: “A AA team takes most of the risk out of it. An independent league and an independent team is very risky. They are here today and gone tomorrow in some cases. Not all cases, but with AA baseball, you’re a league affiliate with Major League Baseball. They’ll come in here and sign a 30-year agreement with us and then we’ll know we will have an affiliated team here for 30 years.”

Interesting, yes?

There will be hurdles to clear. The LGC has to get a design done by April, under the timeline it and the City Council have set. Will the MPEV’s planned 4,500 permanent seats be enough for a AA baseball team? Will the MPEV’s estimated $32 million price tag hold up?

The city has changed its mind on whether to pursue an independent team. It has decided to pursue an affiliated minor-league franchise.

With a new ballpark officially on the table, the inducement has become decidedly more attractive.

 

Sports news

Rose in the Hall of Fame? No way

pete_rose_webstory

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is a man after my own heart.

He has told Pete Rose categorically this: No matter how great you were on the field of play, you do not deserve reinstatement in the game you dominated for so many years.

I totally agree with Manfred.

It’s been speculated that Manfred’s edict might open the door — if only slightly — for Rose to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. I hope that isn’t the case, either. Most experts, though, say that Manfred’s decision slams the Hall of Fame door shut — forever.

Look, I am as big a baseball fan as any red-blooded American male. I used to love watching Rose play hardball. He got more out of his fairly limited natural athletic ability than any 10 players who ever donned a uniform. Rose played hard and he played to win.

Even in all-star games. Who can forget when he bowled catcher Ray Fosse over in the 1970 all-star game, injuring Fosse so severely that the Cleveland Indians star never recovered fully?

That said, he also violated one of MLB’s cardinal rules. He bet on the game. The rule book stipulates clearly: violation of the no-betting rule shall result in a lifetime ban from the game.

As others have noted, MLB instituted the rule as a reaction to the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” betting scandal that has kept Shoeless Joe Jackson — another Hall of Fame-quality player — out of the Cooperstown, N.Y., shrine.

I also am acutely aware that the Hall of Fame is full of assorted scoundrels; they are drunks, racists, womanizers, drug users … you name it, they’ve done it and are still in the Hall of Fame.

The Grand Old Game doesn’t stipulate — in writing — that holding racist views or bar-hopping the night before a big game disqualifies you from having anything to do with the game.

It does with betting.

Pete Rose bet on baseball. As Manfred said, Rose “has not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life either by an honest acceptance by him of his wrongdoing … or by a rigorous, self-aware and sustained program of avoidance by him of all the circumstances that led to his permanent eligibility in 1989.”

Sports news

Army, Navy players all on the same team

army navy

Do you ever hear something and then wish you could remember later precisely who said it?

Such a thing happened today to me while watching the pre-games show prior to the annual Army-Navy college football game.

Navy won for the 14th straight year against Army by a score of 21-17 — to my chagrin. When I was a boy, I rooted for Navy. Why? Dad saw plenty of combat while serving in the Navy during World War II. He cheered for Navy; therefore, so did I. That all changed in the summer of 1968 when I was inducted into the Army. Then I became an Army football fan.

During today’s pre-game show, one of the players — I think it was an Army guy — who said the game is special in this regard: All the young men, the Army cadets and the midshipmen, shared a common mission, which is to defend the nation. They’ll do that when they graduate from their respective service academies, receive their commissions and then serve their nation during this perilous time.

Another young man noted that it is the “only game where all the players are willing to lay down their lives for everyone watching it.”

How true. How profound. How difficult it becomes, therefore, to worry too much about who wins or loses a football game.

Each of these young men — and all the young men and women at all the service academies — are special.

Winning a football game? No big deal. Quite soon, many of them will be fighting for something much bigger and more important to all of us.

 

entertainment news, Sports news, State news

Is this a form of socialism?

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Greg Abbott, the candidate for Texas governor in 2014, spoke differently about subsidizing sports and entertainment events than when he became the actual governor.

Back when he was running for the office — and on his way to trouncing Democratic opponent Wendy Davis — Abbott frowned on the state pouring public money into private ventures.

Hey, but what happened? He’s governor now and he’s just committed $2.7 million in public money to help support a World Wrestling Entertainment event next spring at AT&T Stadium in Arlington … aka Jerry World.

WWE, for those who’ve been living under a rock since the beginning of time, produces fake wrestling events. However, it’s huge, man!

Gov. Abbott signed off on a plan to bolster the Events Trust Fund, which the state set up to help defray the cost of these extravaganzas.

If you want to know the truth, I kind of like Candidate Abbott’s view better than Gov. Abbott’s idea.

According to the Texas Tribune: “The Events Trust Fund is designed to defray the costs of some large events by paying state taxes collected during the events, such as those levied on hotel reservations and car rentals, back to event organizers. Local governments or nonprofits they authorize must approve the events, and the cities that host them are required to chip in some of their local tax receipts, too. State officials only calculate the size of the payment from the fund after an event is held and the economic activity has been documented, according to the governor’s office. ”

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/12/11/texas-spending-27-million-wrestlemania/

OK, I get that WWE’s big shows produce a lot of economic activity to any community that hosts them.

Then again, this also seem to smack a bit of what some have called “sports socialism.” Public money gets kicked in to support a private enterprise event. Granted, the $2.7 million that Abbott authorized is veritable chump change when compared to the entire state budget, if not the entire amount of money set aside in the Events Trust Fund.

These events ought to be able to stand on their own. It’s not as if the venue that’s going to play host to WrestleMania is a dump. It’s a state-art-of-the-art stadium where the Dallas Cowboys play professional football under the ownership and management of Jerry Jones, who — last I heard — wasn’t worried about where he’d get his next meal.

What’s more, the money going to this event is public money. Meaning, it’s my money, and yours.

With the price of oil plummeting and the state perhaps looking for ways to recover from the revenue shortfall that’s coming, let’s hope we don’t come up short because we’ve contributed money to help pay for a fake wrestling show.

 

Sports news

Remembering a humble pro sports executive

inman

I shared a story with a young friend of mine this week, and I want to share it here. It involves a now-deceased professional sports executive who embodied the kind of humility we see little of in today’s world of pro sports.

On June 5, 1977, the Portland Trail Blazers won the National Basketball Association championship. They beat the Philly 76ers in six games, winning the final game in Portland.

Oh, and Portland is my hometown. I didn’t attend the game, but watched it on TV. You’ll recall that the Sixers had some pretty good athletes: Julius Erving, Darryl Dawkins and George McGinnis come to mind.

I was working at the time as a sports writer for a small suburban daily paper in Oregon City, about 15 miles south of Portland. I was not yet 28 years of age.

The Blazers scheduled a victory parade through downtown Portland a few days after the big win. My editor assigned me to cover it, to shoot pictures and write a story about the event for the next evening’s paper.

Off to Portland I went.

The parade commenced. I followed the open cars along several streets, shot some pictures of the players waving to their fans and then ended up in Terry Schrunk Plaza, a park in front of a 40-story bank building.

The crowd was enormous. I looked across the way and saw a smaller building attached by an overhead walkway to the skyscraper. I went to that building, which overlooked the plaza and the crowd of about 60,000 or so fans; all told, the parade drew perhaps a half-million folks into downtown Portland.

The players were introduced. Bill Walton! Maurice Lucas! Terry Gross! Lionel Hollins! All of them took their bows. Head coach Jack Ramsay said a few words.

Then I looked across the platform where I was standing and noticed another familiar figure. He was all alone.

It was Stu Inman. And who is this man? Oh, he was just the guy who built the team that was being honored below. Inman was the general manager of the Blazers. He negotiated the deals that signed Walton, Lucas and the others who had just brought much glory to the city.

Why wasn’t he down there, soaking up the love that was being thrown at the team? I walked over to him, introduced myself — and asked him directly, “Stu, why aren’t you down there?”

“Oh, that’s for someone else,” he said. He wanted the players and the coaches to collect all the adulation. It wasn’t his thing, he said.

Fair enough. I thanked him, congratulated him and said so long.

Humble. That’s the word that comes to mind today as I look back on that man and that time.

I’m trying to imagine: Do you think Dallas Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones would stay away?

 

local news, Sports news, Uncategorized

Hey, maybe Amarillo really is a baseball town

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Paul Matney seems to be a serious expert on baseball and its potential interest in his hometown.

The retired Amarillo College president hit the stump this fall to campaign for approval of a multipurpose event venue in downtown Amarillo. Part of Matney’s pitch was that Amarillo “is a baseball town.”

The MPEV received voters’ endorsement on Nov. 3 in a non-binding municipal referendum. The Amarillo City Council then ratified the results and voted unanimously to proceed with development of the MPEV.

Then, what do you think was revealed just this week?

Melissa Dailey, head of Downtown Amarillo Inc., told the Local Government Corporation that, by golly, she’s had some informal contact with a Class AA minor-league baseball franchise that might be interested in setting up an operation in Amarillo.

Dailey said she is not at liberty — yet! — to disclose the name of the franchise. She said the city is on a “short list” of communities being considered.

Hey, didn’t Paul Matney predict this might happen if voters approved the MPEV?

Yes, I believe he did.

The LGC is moving forward, per the City Council’s advice. It will report to the council regularly as it continues its work toward developing the $32 million MPEV.

And now the conversation might include a minor-league baseball outfit, with major-league connections, that could move into the MPEV once it’s built.

Who knew?

Oh yeah. Paul Matney seemed to be ahead of the curve.

 

medical news, Sports news

NFL’s dirty little secret out in the open

concussions-in-football-390-x-310

What once was professional football’s dirty little secret has been exposed yet again by revelations surrounding the death of a sports icon.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy afflicts an alarming number of former football players. The National Football League for years denied that it was a problem among its athletes.

Now the word is out that Frank Gifford, a Hall of Fame wide receiver for the New York Giants, suffered from CTE when he died recently of “natural causes.”

CTE has returned to the head of the line of issues that Americans are discussing. I wrote about it for Panhandle PBS.

http://www.panhandlepbs.org/blogs/public-view-john-kanelis/cte-returns-to-the-headlines/

It saddens me to no end to hear former great players such as, say quarterback Brett Favre, say that he won’t allow his children to play football. Indeed, Favre had his bell rung more than once during his great career with the Green Bay Packers, New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings. I pray that CTE won’t claim him, but he is concerned about whether his own children would be safe playing a game that brought their father so much fame and financial reward.

PBS’s acclaimed documentary series “Frontline” blew the lid off this issue with its “League of Denial” special broadcast more than two year ago.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/

The NFL has to come to grips with this situation. It’s already settled a huge claim made by its players association to compensate players and their families for the damage caused by these head injuries.

However, much more needs to be done to make the game as safe as possible for the athletes who take the field.

Are you listening, NFL executives?

 

local news, Sports news

Man … it’s still cold out there!

phillips-2-master675

I posted this blog item once — on Dec. 8, 2009 — but I feel compelled to share it again today.

It’s an anecdotal story about a legendary football coach and his experiences in the Texas Panhandle.

Here it is:

***

Today’s weather reminds me of a story I’ve been telling for years. It involves the legendary football coach O.A. “Bum” Phillips and it’s gotten great laughs from those who have heard it.

I have not verified its complete accuracy. But it sounds sufficiently true. Thus, I believe it to be so — and so do others who have heard it. The story goes like this:
Many years ago, when Bum was coaching the Houston Oilers, he took his team to Buffalo to play the Bills. It was late in the season. Winters in Buffalo can be, well, bracing. The Oilers and Bills played that day in one of those classic winter weather events on the shore of Lake Erie: heavy snow, wind, sleet, rain, temperature well below zero.
The Oilers won the nationally televised game. As the teams were leaving the field, a TV sideline reporter and cameraman approached Bum and asked him, “Well, Coach, how did you like coaching in this cold weather?”
Bum responded: “Cold? This ain’t cold! Why, shoot, I used to coach in Amarillo, Texas!”
local news, Sports news

MPEV argument making more sense

matney

Paul Matney did not say this directly as he was touring Amarillo on behalf of a proposed multipurpose event venue, but I think I have gleaned a message from his pro-MPEV pitch.

It is that if we build a shiny new baseball park in downtown Amarillo we’re going to attract the attention of a serious, well-funded minor-league baseball franchise that can come here to run a team the right way — and not the way it’s being run these days.

I refer to the decision to combine the Amarillo Thunderheads with the Grand Prairie AirHogs and to split the 2016 baseball season between two locations, nearly 400 mile apart.

I believe I now get what the retired Amarillo College president was getting at.

Amarillo’s baseball fan base deserve better than to be treated to this clown show.

They haven’t broken any ground yet on the MPEV. The $32 million venue has been (more or less) endorsed by the Amarillo City Council, which has handed off implementing the development of the project to the Local Government Corporation.

I’m not certain how this combined franchise location thing is going to work for the owner of the Thunderheads/AirHogs. My gut tells me it’s a loser.

It well might give MPEV supporters additional grist to expedite the development of the new ballpark, to get it built, to market the city to the owner of a legitimate Class AA franchise and return serious minor-league baseball to Amarillo.

Hey, maybe this franchise combo deal can be a blessing after all.