RealClearSports: Fast Times and Hijinks at ESPN

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

Snippets of the ESPN book are appearing, and apparently not all the employees at the network spent their days just diagramming plays. Sex? Drugs? Weren't people supposed to be concentrating on Australian Rules football?

The good folk back there know how to run a network. The good folk promoting the 770-page oral history of those who run the network or ran it know how to capture America's attention. By, so far, saying as little as possible.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

RealClearSports: No. 24 Reaches Birthday No. 80

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

SAN FRANCISCO — He described his skills in such clear, unpretentious terms. "They throw the ball,'' Willie Mays once said. "I hit it. They hit it. I catch it."



What he hits today is a milestone. Number 24 has reached birthday Number 80. And if we actually needed another reason to revel in the glory of arguably the finest baseball player ever, well, there it is.

"There have been only two geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare,'' said ...

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

RealClearSports: Death of Bin Laden Through Prism of Sports

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

So I'm listening to Scott Van Pelt and Ryen Russillo on their ESPN radio show Tuesday talking about what they know very well, the NBA, then switch to a topic maybe none of us really know — but still can't stop discussing — the death of Osama bin Laden.

They weren't alone, the sports talk guys. From Ground Zero to a hideaway in Pakistan, everything seemed viewed through a sporting prism.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

RealClearSports: A Sportswriter Without Decency

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

SAN FRANCISCO — The Dodgers and Giants have carried grudges across the decades and across the country. It always has been baseball with an edge.

Now it has become baseball with a reminder.

"There is no room in this game,'' the Dodgers' Jamey Carroll had told a somber crowd Monday evening, "for hatred and violence.'

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: Barry Bonds trial has finally reached point of exhaustion

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By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The 7½-year itch. The government’s unrelenting attempt to convict Barry Bonds begins once again next month, yet another form of March Madness.

According to the best reports, the feds are now into taxpayers for $6 million in trying to prove Barry is guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice. And they’ll be spending a great deal more.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: Madness From Another Media Day

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

ARLINGTON, Texas -- These spikes were not done by a wide receiver who had just scored. They were the four-inch heels of the reporter -- need it be pointed out a woman reporter? -- from some TV station as intent on getting herself noticed as she was getting the answer to a preposterous question.

Stilettos on artificial turf are about as nonsensical as on icy thoroughfares in Dallas, and if this is supposed to be a test case of the 2014 (brrr) New York game we are (chattering teeth) forewarned.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

RealClearSports: Big Mouths Are Ruining Sports

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

SAN DIEGO -- Remember that kid in fifth grade who ratted to the teacher you had a comic book on your desk tucked under the school work?

He's everywhere now, grown older but not grown up, a blabbermouth who delights in making sports miserable.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

RealClearSports: America Slipping in Schools and Sports

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

On a quintessential American holiday, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote of a now quintessential American problem, our decline in global competition.

The emphasis was academics. How half of the winners of Rhodes Scholarships, America's top grads, either were from other countries or the offspring of recent immigrants, students with last names such as Kang, Tauqeer, Alekeyeva and Nadathur.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

RealClearSports: Vick Not Wasting His Second Chance

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

We find satisfaction in realizing what Michael Vick can do. After finding revulsion in learning what he did.

He moves forward, with remarkable skill, a brilliant talent. We move on. And yet ...

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

RealClearSports: NFL Properly Errs on Side of Caution

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

That was a chilling remark by the NFL's executive vice president for football operations. "We don't want to see another Darryl Stingley on our watch,'' said Ray Anderson.

How about on anybody's watch?

How about the league just making that determination after three decades?

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

RealClearSports: War and Sports at Ryder Cup

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

NEWPORT, Wales -- The question brought a laugh. And some serious thought. Could Phil Mickelson, in response to the United States Ryder Cup team being addressed by an F-16 fighter pilot, who happens also to be a golf pro, "explain America's apparent fondness for associating sport with war?''

Mickelson, more concerned about his driving, said only, "I haven't noticed that to be the case, but I do feel proud to be part of a country that cares about the civil rights of people throughout the world and not just in our country.''

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

RealClearSports: Exorbitant Salaries? Just Supply and Demand

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

In Britain, where austerity is in vogue and government budget cuts affect the health system, schools and other vital services, Liverpool of the Premier League signed free-agent soccer star Joe Cole for four years at $7.4 million a year. Hardly austere.

On this side of the Atlantic, the New Jersey Devils, based in Newark, a city with an unemployment rate of more than 13 percent, happily re-signed Ilya Kovalchuk to a 17-year, $102 million contract. Even though rejected by the National Hockey League, it disturbed many citizens.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

RealClearSports: Suddenly, Americans Can't Play Golf

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

It is an accepted premise the United States, until proven differently, isn't going to be a winner in soccer. From a parochial view, tennis is rather hopeless, other than Ms. Serena. Now we can't play golf, at least as well as the rest of the world.

Maybe provincialism is an outdated philosophy anyway. Borders are easily crossed. Maria Sharapova resides in Florida. So does Ernie Els. Ian Poulter, an Englishman who also spends much of the year in Florida, is sponsored by Mutual of Omaha, and it's hard to get much more American than that.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

RealClearSports: Is Era of Soccer Finally Upon America?

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

LONDON -- Is this the end or the beginning? Does soccer, football to the rest of the world, finally capture the United States? Or was this World Cup fascination only a brief affair, a fling encouraged by ESPN, and little more?

Does it become only a sweet memory in anticipation of Drew Brees and Peyton Manning coming to training camp? Or when you think of fullbacks will it mean players who kick a round ball as much as those who occasionally carry an oval one?

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

RealClearSports: England Can't 'Wait 'Til Next Year'

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

WIMBLEDON, England -- The pain isn't going away soon. This isn't Brooklyn in the 1940s. You can't say, "Wait ‘til next year.'' The next World Cup is four years away, four years for England to stew and grumble and wallow in the self-pity for which the English are famous.

"It's English custom,'' wrote Simon Barnes in The Times, "to seek someone to blame.''

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

RealClearSports: 'Los Suns' Go After Arizona's Immigration Law

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

It's Cinco de Mayo, the Fifth of May, the anniversary of the Mexican militia's victory over Napoleon's troops in 1862; cause for celebration in Mexico, a holiday.

It's reason for the Phoenix Suns, whose home is a state at war with itself over immigration, mainly about undocumented Mexicans, to make a statement as clear as the words on the front of their jerseys.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

SF Examiner: Time for Tiger to take action

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By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

AUGUSTA, GA. — He seemed believable, and for us more than for Tiger Woods, that was progress. Yet, Tiger himself said actions speak louder than words.  

The Great News Conference is done. Thirty-four and half minutes of apology, self-deprecation and occasional salient details of what it’s like to have been Tiger Woods since Nov. 27.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2010 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: Despite Controversy, Olympics a Success for NBC

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

That was an interesting report from the Wall Street Journal, the piece which said the luge track for the Olympics, the one where a young man crashed to his death, the one designed to be steeper, faster and narrower than any in the past, would allow racers to reach speeds some officials said were unsafe.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

RealClearSports: Thanks, David Stern for Doing the Right Thing

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By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

Thanks, David Stern. Thanks for doing what any sane-thinking person would have done, suspending the two Washington Wizards players who were so stupid, so arrogant to bring guns to practice.

Thanks for attempting to restore to society some sense of what is right and wrong.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010