"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do, I stare out the window and wait for spring." - Rogers Hornsby

:: Saturday, December 06, 2003 ::

Colgate Is More Than A Toothpaste

The same family that founded the soap and toothpaste company also donated many millions of dollars to a small upstate New York school called Madison University, which in appreciation named the school after the Colgate family.

Colgate University is where I went to school, as you know if you've read this blog for a while; I went to my 25-year reunion last May.

And today, I couldn't be prouder to be an alumnus, as today the Colgate Raiders defeated Western Illinois 28-27 on a touchdown with less than two minutes left by Jamaal Branch, who you are going to hear about one day in the NFL. Today's game, for the second week in a row, was played on Colgate's campus in a driving snowstorm.

This win kept the Raiders undefeated this season at 14-0 and put them in the semifinals of the Division I-AA playoffs, next Saturday against the winner of tonight's Northern Arizona - Florida Atlantic quarterfinal. If they win next weekend, they'll go to the I-AA championship game in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Friday, December 19. That game will be televised nationally on ESPN2.

Colgate has a little over 2500 students, and no scholarships except need-based ones. The last two weeks they have defeated state schools with six times their enrollment and many athletic scholarships.

This is proof that the true student-athlete can indeed compete on the same stage as the "big boys". Western Illinois, for example, played I-A third-ranked LSU this year. Sure, they lost 35-3, but at least this tells Colgate players that they're not "second-rate" by any stretch. Pretty impressive for a school whose football team was 0-11 as recently as 1995; I'd give almost all the credit for this to coach Dick Biddle, who was so highly regarded he was considered for the coaching vacancy at Duke (he turned it down, saying he didn't want to leave Colgate and only considered it because he is a Duke alum).

Having playoffs like this, to me, is far more exciting than the silly BCS system, which sometimes does come up with a true national championship matchup (this year, it appears it will), but more often than not bogs down in controversy.

There's one little thing that I wanted to mention here. Colgate is the highest-seeded team remaining in the I-AA tournament, but they have already been told that they must play next week on the road. Why? Supposedly, Andy Kerr Stadium, where the Raiders play, doesn't meet the minimum 15,000 seating capacity for such events. That's silly, as was pointed out on the Colgate radio broadcast today. The stadium officially seats 10,221, but could easily be expanded to 15,000 or more with temporary bleachers in the end zones.

I doubt Colgate's players would be too unhappy to play in the warmth of south Florida next weekend, but still -- a 14-0 team ought to be rewarded with a home game. This teaches the wrong lesson to the true student-athletes who have worked so hard to get this far. Of course, if Northern Arizona wins, they might wind up playing in a snowstorm in Flagstaff, Arizona!

Let's go 'gate!

:: posted by Al at 5:02 PM [+] ::
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More Free Money!

About three years ago, the attorneys general of 43 states sued several record labels and large retailers, including Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music Distribution, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic Corp., Universal Music Group and Bertelsmann Music Group, as well as retailers Tower Records, Musicland Stores and Transworld Entertainment, accusing them of price-fixing in the price of selling CD's.

Anyone who bought a CD from 1995 through 2000 could sign up to be a member of this class, in the class-action suit, with the proceeds to be distributed to the members of the class upon settlement.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that it appears the case is almost settled, and everyone who signed up will get $12.60, about the price of a discounted CD these days. It's not much, but far more than people get in most suits of this type, where you generally get a dollar or so, or maybe a discount coupon. Here, 3.5 million people, myself included, will get an actual check.

The article also states:

"In addition, $75.7 million is to be distributed in the form of 5.6 million music CDs sent to libraries and schools throughout the nation."

This is a win-win situation for everyone. The RIAA ought to sit up and take notice.

:: posted by Al at 11:43 AM [+] ::
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At Least One Chicago Judge Has A Brain

The moron (no, I won't dignify him by mentioning his name) who ran onto the field at the Cell on April 15 and tried to attack umpire Laz Diaz, was sentenced to six months in jail and 30 months probation today. It was also recommended that he undergo alcohol abuse treatment -- well, that's a no-brainer.

This is good news, though I still think the sentence isn't stiff enough. One of the problems, of course, is the massive publicity these kind of things generate. The idiots who do this kind of thing seem to revel in the TV time they get -- the loser who attacked KC Royals coach Tom Gamboa in September 2002 reportedly called his family and told them to turn on the news so they could see him.

It's hard to blame TV networks for focusing cameras on what is indeed a newsworthy event. But these days, when athletes do stupid things on camera so they can get on SportsCenter, and companies like Nike put out commercials that encourage this sort of behavior, is it any wonder that people who drink too much at ballparks (behavior that is encouraged by the teams, no matter what lip service they pay to responsible drinking) want to do it too?

Andy Warhol was right. 15 minutes of fame is all people like this want. Unfortunately, they get it at the expense of hurting others. The penalties have to be tougher, otherwise I fear that someone may be permanently paralyzed, or worse, lose their life in an incident like this.

:: posted by Al at 3:43 PM [+] ::
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Recording Industry Makes More Friends

The RIAA filed 41 more lawsuits against music file-sharers, including one against a 79-year-old retiree who doesn't even have a computer. Apparently, the retiree's son-in-law briefly added Internet service to the man's cable bill because the cable company wouldn't send two separate bills to the same address.

Look, RIAA, we know how you feel about file-sharing. We know it's costing your members and artists money. We know it's illegal.

Is this the right way to change people's minds about it? Suing little old men? Suing parents who have no idea what their teenagers are doing? Yeah, let's just sue the ass off the whole world, because it's all about money, isn't it, you rapacious...

Ahem. OK, I feel better now.

What would serve the RIAA and the recording industry better, and make more friends, and perhaps more money in the long run, would be an acknowledgement by both users and artists that, yes, this has gone on in the past, no, it's not right, but we'll set up an amnesty, and an absolute deadline date -- say, perhaps March 1, 2004, to give everyone 90 days' notice -- that after said date, illegal downloads will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and we'll also set up ways for people to download individual songs for a reasonable price.

The agency and the recording artists themselves, many of whom have been horrified by the tactics of the RIAA, will make much more money that way and stop pissing people off. Can you imagine any of the sued parties ever buying another CD? I can't.

This, my friends, is life in the USA in the 21st Century.

:: posted by Al at 7:58 PM [+] ::
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LaTroy Hawkins, Part Deux

It now appears that the Cubs have indeed signed LaTroy Hawkins, though curiously, on the Cubs' own website the story just says it's "reported" that he's signed.

You'd think the official voice of the club ought to know, but this is all part of the arcane way that major league deals are done. Ostensibly, the reason is that he has to pass a physical, but this may also be because of the Sunday deadline for arbitration, and something to do with the Cubs having to give up a draft pick for him, which they will probably have to do anyway.

The deal is for $11 million, with incentives that could raise it to $15 million. This is a lot to pay for a middle reliever, but Hawkins may be the best in the game, and the last two years combined, he has thrown 157 2/3 innings, allowed only nine home runs, and walked only 30 batters. This is something we haven't seen out of a Cub reliever in a long time.

It's possible that Hawkins will be given the chance to close, as he did in Minnesota in 2001; he had 28 saves but an ugly 5.96 ERA and 39 walks and 36 strikeouts that year in 51 innings. Maybe he had one or two bad outings that led to the bad ERA, or maybe he just wasn't ready to close then.

I think the closer's job ought to be Joe Borowski's to lose, but there are two factors here: first, that Borowski is a class enough act that if the job is given to Hawkins, JoeBo will go back to the setup role without complaint, and second, if Borowski remains the closer, the Cubs will be very strong in left-handed and right-handed setup, as well as having someone who could step into the closer's role if Borowski gets hurt or falters.

This is an odd position for me to be in -- to compliment a Cub free-agent signing without any reservations or hesitations. Good work!

Of course, we said that about Mel Rojas in 1997, too.

:: posted by Al at 12:56 PM [+] ::
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Cubs Sign LaTroy Hawkins (Or So It Appears)

The proverbial "sources say" that the Cubs have signed Minnesota Twins setup man LaTroy Hawkins to a three-year contract, worth anywhere from $11 million to $15 million, depending on which source you believe.

No one's talking on the record about this, pending his physical, so I'll reserve full comment till later; I'll only say now that on the surface, this appears to be a terrific signing, at a reasonable price.

The above article also mentions that Hawkins is a Chicago-area native, having attended West Side High School in Gary, Indiana.

More tomorrow, or whenever this is "officially" announced.

:: posted by Al at 7:46 PM [+] ::
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And Now For Something Completely Different

Having finished "Mystic River" (which is terrific, much better than the movie, since it fleshes out some situations that the movie kind of glosses over), I have decided to move on to read something different -- and with all the attention being paid to the 40th anniversary of JFK's assassination, I decided to pick up "An Unfinished Life", Robert Dallek's comprehensive new biography of JFK.

Enough of conspiracy talk, I just wanted to read about the man's life, which is interesting enough as it is.

And this is part of a new plan I've formulated; I now have a goal of reading biographies of all the US presidents. So far I've read bios on:

Adams, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, Truman, the huge Robert Caro bio of Lyndon Johnson, and starting this one. So that'll be six of 42, which is a good start. Incidentally, the Adams and Truman bios, both written by David McCullough, are both terrific reads.

Incidentally, in "Mystic River", the publisher has put short, five-page excerpts from Dennis Lehane's other crime novels, which is an interesting idea, and has indeed whetted my appetite for reading some of them.

:: posted by Al at 5:12 PM [+] ::
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