Quantcast
Channel: Boston Herald - Ron Borges
Viewing all 288 articles
Browse latest View live

Travelers notebook: Jordan Spieth plays by the numbers

0
0

CROMWELL, Conn. —Jordan Spieth is right where he expected to be if he could find a way to get to 12-under par after the third day at the Travelers Championship. He’s at the top of the leaderboard.

Although Spieth is making his first visit to TPC River Highlands, he predicted Wednesday that 16-under would be good enough to win the tournament. That being the number, he said his goal was to shoot 4-under each day.

Spieth’s 4-under third round yesterday gave him a 1-shot lead over Boo Weekley but to get it he had to birdie three of the final four holes after bogeying the par-5 13th and par-4 14th, an unusual misstep for golf’s newest wunderkind.

Only 23, Spieth is trying to win his 10th PGA event since turning pro four years ago and his second this season. To accomplish that he must hold off not only Weekley but seven other golfers within 5 shots or fewer of the lead.

“I thought that was the good goal trying to make two birdies a side with the last four nines with no bogeys,” Spieth said. “There are going to be mistakes within 36 holes, limiting them and trying to maybe grab an extra one or two is the goal. Tomorrow it doesn’t change. I think somewhere around 16 is a number that I was looking at after yesterday’s round, what we were looking at really at the beginning of the week.

“It’s going to be really good conditions tomorrow, so expect some guys to make some birdies and make a run. Boo and (Daniel) Berger (who is 9-under) are two guys who are not afraid to go low on Sundays. They both historically have done that. So we’ve got a tough gig ahead.’’

Rory ditches putter

After Nike went out of the golf equipment business this year, Rory McIlroy signed a new deal with TaylorMade. But apparently their putters have not been tailor-made for him.

McIlroy changed putters a week ago going into the U.S. Open and yesterday he tried out five different flatsticks on the practice green before finally abandoning the Rory McIlroy TaylorMade Spider putter he’d used in the first two rounds.

“I made a decision this week I would give (that putter) one more week and see how it performed,” said McIlroy, who shot 70 to remain even-par for the tournament. “It’s nothing to do with the putter. It’s mostly what I’m doing with it. … Worked a little bit on Tuesday on my putting, and just tried to figure a few things out.”

If there is one man on tour who can relate to McIlroy’s doubts about his putter it’s Weekley. Asked if he ever changes putters, he said, “I change putters like I change underwear, man. If it don’t work, we’re putting another pair on. If these are a little too tight, you know, we’re changing something, buddy. Something’s going to get done. This year I’ve gone through probably close to about 20. Yeah, that’s a lot of washing.”

Boo to cheers

Weekley is a most unlikely contender at the Travelers.

The 43-year-old carded a 5-under round to put him 11-under and 1 stroke behind Spieth, a place he hasn’t been near putting himself this season.

Weekley missed the cut in 13 of the 21 events he’s entered this year, including four of the last six after opening the season missing 7-of-8. So how did he suddenly put himself in this position?

According to Weekley it was overcoming a “personal problem back home” that he brought up and then refused to explain except to say whatever was bothering him was, until this week, also bothering his game.

“It’s been a while,” Weekley said. “I mean, I’ve been having some personal struggles back home and then finally I’m starting to get that little bit taken care of. I don’t know. It’s just kind of surreal to be back up here in front of y’all and talking about it.

“As much work as I’ve put into golf and as much as I’d love to win again and be a part of it, don’t matter which tournament, I just want to win. That’s what everybody out here, that’s what we strive to do. To be sitting here feels like it’s an honor, at the same time as I’m playing well.”

Casey in range

Paul Casey is 4 shots behind Spieth. What will it take to win?

“Something more than I’ve done before,’’ he said. “We know it can yield some ridiculous numbers with Jim (Furyk’s) amazing 58 last year. It could get blown wide open if somebody goes bananas early. Hopefully, that’s me.” . . .

Taiwan’s C.T. Pan is a tour rookie who has already finished second this season and after a 6-under 64 yesterday is tied for fourth place. None of that might have happened though if his mother hadn’t had an unusual job.

“She was a caddie,” Pan said. “She’s still working at the golf club but not caddying. That’s how I know golf. It’s how I started. I got a free place to practice.”

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

Source: 
DTI
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Eight-time major champion Tom Watson finds new passion as game of golf passes him by

0
0

PEABODY — When eight-time major champion Tom Watson saddles up these days, he’s not putting his golf clubs in his trunk. He’s putting a saddle on his cutting horse.

That’s the 67-year-old Watson’s new passion, one that never will replace golf but has become a competitive substitute for a game that no longer loves him the way he loved it.

For 27 years, Watson played full-time on the PGA Tour. He continued to compete at that level even after joining the Champions Tour in 1999. He won 39 times on the PGA Tour (11th best all-time), was runner-up 32 times and six times was named Player of the Year. To say Tom Watson once dominated his game is to state the obvious.

Eight years ago, at the age of 59, he came within a par on the 18th hole at Turnberry of becoming the oldest man to win a major, but his bogey forced a four-hole playoff with Stewart Cink. Only nine months removed from a hip replacement, Watson’s body and mind could not hold it together any longer, and Cink became, by his own admittance, the least popular Open champion in history.

Everyone watching outside the Cink clan was rooting for Watson. He had not won a PGA Tour event in 11 years, but for three days and 17 holes, it was 1982 again, the year he won the British and U.S. Opens.

Such heroics are behind him now, Watson admitted yesterday with the same firm resignation with which he once defeated the greatest players in the world. Golf remains his first love, a passion that began at the age of 6, but it no longer loves him back. Now it taunts him, whispering occasionally in his ear and then deserting him in a way that has made saddling cutting horses more satisfying.

“It’s the same Tom Watson, but it’s somebody who kind of knows that the game is passing him by,” Watson said when asked how he’ll feel on the first tee at Salem Country Club this afternoon in the opening round of the U.S. Senior Open.

“I don’t hit the ball as far as I used to or with the authority I used to. You know you can’t compete with the players out here when you’re like that.’’

Watson played his last British Open in 2015 at St. Andrews. He missed the cut but when he walked over the Swilcan Bridge, the old stone arch on the 18th fairway that crosses the burn, he took a bow, waved his cap and clapped toward a crowd welcoming him home for the final time.

A year later he played in his 43rd and final Masters, again missing the cut but pleasing a new crowd giving him an equally emotional sendoff. It cannot be easy to face the fading of one’s game but for Watson it’s part of life even though acceptance of defeat has never been his way.

“It’s not my tournament anymore,” he said of the Masters. “It’s not a tournament that I can fairly compete in, and I don’t belong there. I still have visions that I can get it, that I’ll be able to get it back. It’s much like Sandy Tatum’s unrequited love essay he did about showing up and all of a sudden your game that has been with you all these years leaves you for another person.

“And the sad thing about it, or the nasty thing about it, every now and then it shows up on the practice tee, and it tempts you to say, yeah, maybe I still have it. I hope it shows up tomorrow morning on the practice tee.’’

For so long, Watson was a commanding presence on the golf course but age chips away, slowly eroding the gifts that allowed him to win the British five times, the Masters twice and the 1982 U.S. Open, which he considers the most important tournament of the year. It is why he will put a tee in the ground today, even though things have changed.

“The tournament I always wanted to win the most was our national Open,” Watson said. “Same thing on the Senior Tour. It was always the toughest test of golf that we played. We’d complain, we’d bitch, you know, ‘This is too tough.’ But you know what? That’s what I liked about it.

“My dad said, if you win the national Open, you have done something. You have really done something. That’s when I was a kid. I looked up to my dad, and he said, if you win it, the toughest tournament to win, you’ve accomplished something really special. So that’s why.’’

That’s why he’s here. To face the toughest test. Face it even though he knows he cannot win.

For the great competitor there is nothing more difficult to accept. They are winners in part because they refuse to accept the possibility of defeat. When that changes, as it did for Watson sometime after that 2009 loss at Turnberry, what can replace it?

How about a cutting horse?

“I’ve kind of gone off in a different direction in my life,” Watson said. “I’m learning now to be a horseman and competing in a whole different arena.

“I kind of want to be in that arena right there, learning how to compete against the best in the amateur divisions in the cutting horse show business. That’s my next challenge. I hope someday I can fairly win a buckle, you know. When you win a buckle that means you’ve been somewhere.”

In the world of golf, Tom Watson has been everywhere but he recently got somewhere on the cutting horse circuit, too. The place all professionals desire.

He got to the bank.

“I won a check in Carthage, Mo., earlier this winter,” Watson said proudly. “Actually, I didn’t know I won a check. I was in a class of six people in the 2,000 limited rider, and I go in to pay my debt. You know, you go and pay your entry fees, and I paid my $400 for the two events I was in, and I see her writing a check out and I said, ‘What’s that?’

“She said, ‘You won a check.’ I said, ‘I did?’ I won $120. I look at that check — man, I’m more proud of this check than winning the World Series of Golf with a $50,000 check in my hand. That was pretty cool.

“It’s something I hope I can get better at. I hope my handicap drops from a 25 to an 18 to a 9, maybe someday I get close to a scratch, but I may be too old for that.”

Tom Watson may be too old for that or for tournament golf the way it used to be but just to say you saw him swing a golf club once is worth a visit to Salem CC because when he walks to that first tee he’ll be the same Tom Watson he always was. A winner, win or lose.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

062817golfce001.jpg

Golfer Tom Watson speaks on practice day during the 38th U.S. Senior Open Championship golf tournament at the Salem Country Club in Peabody on Wednesday, June 28, 2017.
Source: 
DTI
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: After years of perseverance, Brandt Jobe shoots record 62

0
0

PEABODY — Ten and a half years ago, Brandt Jobe looked down at his golf game. It was lying there on his garage floor, right next to his thumb and index finger.

Jobe had been sweeping out his garage when he made the kind of mistake that can get you in trouble on a golf course. He got too aggressive. As a result, the broom handle snapped, severing off the tip of his left index finger and the base of this thumb. Where does a golfer go from there?

Jobe had earned slightly more than $2.9 million on the PGA Tour the previous two years and had reason to believe at 41 he was finally coming into his own. Then, in an instant, he had a far different notion.

“I thought that was it,” Jobe recalled yesterday after proving it was not by shooting a U.S. Senior Open record-tying round of 62 at Salem Country Club to put him alone in third place, 6 shots behind Kirk Triplett’s 15-under.

Perhaps because his father was a doctor or perhaps because he watched “ER,” Jobe had the presence of mind to scoop up those two fingers and wrap them in ice before putting them in a bag and heading to the hospital.

Several surgeries later, they were reattached but no one was sure he’d ever play golf again because, frankly, nothing quite like this had ever happened.

Jobe’s left hand had already caused him problems two years earlier when he shattered the hamate bone, limiting him to nine Tour starts. Now the damage was more severe, limiting him so much he would average only six tournament appearances a year over the next four seasons and wonder at times whether he was chasing a dream that no longer existed.

“A lot of times,” Jobe said when asked if he’d considered a new line of work. “I was going to physical therapy five days a week for two hours. I’d overcompensated and hurt my wrist. I kept asking ‘when can I play?’ When I turned 50 I still had 11 (injury) exemptions left. We were trying to figure out when I’d be healthy.”

All together Jobe has had eight surgeries, all on the left side of his body. His left hand, wrist and finger problems were soon joined by the need for shoulder surgery. Then a herniated disc in July 2012, shut him down again.

He’d already retreated to the Nationwide Tour in 2010 but rallied a year later, collecting four top-10 finishes in 28 PGA Tour events. But the following July that disc injury began a new set of maladies that within two years left him without a single start on the PGA Tour for the first time since 1989. He did manage a spot in the Web.com Tour finals because of a non-exempt medical extension but it didn’t help. He missed the cut. Perseverance is an admirable trait but at that juncture one had to wonder if common sense was eluding him.

“Unfortunately I’ve had a lot of injuries that kind of plagued me,” he said. “Freak injuries. Shattered my hamate bone twice, out for two years. Cut my fingers off with a broom, out for three years. And all that time you try and play, you know you don’t play good.

“You pick up bad habits and you play worse and it gets more frustrating. I don’t know what my Tour career was, maybe 14 years, but I probably spent seven of them hurt.”

Jobe somehow managed those frustrations and pressed on, playing in six Tour events in 2015 but earning only $12,825. He fared no better on the Web.com, where he had only one start. But he did win medalist honors at PGA Tour Champions Q School, which was worth a $30,000 check and new life on the senior circuit in 2016.

The Senior Tour has been a rebirth for many over-50 pro golfers but with his aches, pains, plus the need to tape his golf glove to his left thumb so he can feel the club’s pressure, it seemed unlikely it would be his. But in his first full season, Jobe began playing as he always believed he could. He had seven top-10 finishes and finished in a tie for third at the Senior PGA Championship, fourth at the Constellation Players Championship and tied for fifth in the Senior U.S. Open.

After all he’d been subjected to from golf and broom sticks, Jobe would have had good reason to fear 2017, but, as he proved long ago, fear is something he finds is best to ignore.

This year he already has recorded two top-3s, was eighth at the Senior PGA and two weeks ago won his first Champions Tour event by a shot, giving him tremendous momentum coming to Salem. Yet after beginning yesterday tied for 29th, Jobe’s thoughts were neither on shooting 62 nor climbing to the top of the leaderboard.

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Jobe admitted. “I’d played OK the first two days (but) I really scored poorly. So I kind of thought, boy, if you go out there and shoot 4- or 5-under, then another 4- or 5-under, you can get yourself a top-10, top-5 finish. That was possible.

“I’m out there, obviously, trying to play catch-up. Just trying to go as low as you can. Try to make as many birdies as you can on Saturday.”

By the end of the day, he’d made nine, including a phenomenal six on the final seven holes, with only a bogey on eight marring a record-tying round. More than that, it had put him not only in position to win his first major but to show his two teenage kids what it was like for their dad to play golf the way he knew he could.

“I got my kids here,” Jobe said proudly. “They haven’t been out here in quite some time so I’m going to bring them through. You work so hard, and you try and win. The ultimate goal is to win golf tournaments. That’s how everybody measures you. You can have a great career and pile up some money, but at the end of the day, what did you win?

“So that was obviously nice, obviously a relief (winning two weeks ago), obviously telling me the things I’m doing are good enough to win. So just stay down that same path and keep giving yourself opportunities.”

Despite suffering the golfing equivalent of the trials of Job, Brandt Jobe has clearly done that … and not just yesterday.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

070117jobe.jpg

Photo by: 
EIGHTEEN WORTH A WAVE: Brandt Jobe’s 62 yesterday at Salem Country Club likely won’t win him the U.S. Senior Open, but it stands as a highlight in a career with more than its share of hard times.
Source: 
DTI
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Gordon Hayward doesn't solve all Celtics' problems

0
0

This being the start of the July doldrums, when the only team playing meaningful games is the Red Sox, it seemed a good time to clear out the attic of the mind and kick around some random thoughts about issues big and small.

The Celtics landing Gordon Hayward may be a case of subtraction by addition. Green teamers from Portland to Providence rejoiced, but while Hayward gives the C’s a second scorer to complement Isaiah Thomas, at what cost?

A second scorer to take double teams off Thomas was a need, but so too is rebounding and interior defense. Hayward doesn’t solve that, and a certain toughness will be lost if Jae Crowder and Marcus Smart end up the price of Hayward’s arrival.

The Cavaliers led the Celtics by 16 or more points for 46 percent of the Eastern Conference finals because the C’s too often got only one shot per possession. No one could, or would, rebound. That nearly eliminated them against the Wizards, too, when the C’s made Marcin Gortat look like the Polish Shaq at times, and Chicago’s Robin Lopez too often was getting offensive rebounds like a junior Moses Malone. Not good.

Worse, it’s in a year they’re likely to lose their best on-ball defender in Avery Bradley. When they’ve already lost size and what little rebounding they had with the departure of Kelly Olynyk and Amir Johnson, from a team that finished 26th in the league in rebounding.

With the salary cap lower than expected and the C’s staring at a luxury tax they don’t want to pay, Danny Ainge still has considerable work to do. Perhaps Terry Rozier is the future replacement for Bradley, and Jaylen Brown and No. 3 overall pick Jayson Tatum will provide more of what is missing defensively and in the toughness category. That’s a lot of maybes. Historically, when you have to say “if this happens” more than once, you’ve got too many ifs to win.

~ ~ ~

We may not have seen the last of Manny Pacquiao but we should have.

Pacquiao was upset last weekend by a former schoolteacher with minimal boxing skills named Jeff Horn, a gritty kid whose most effective blows came from his noggin. Twice he cut Pacquiao’s scalp with head butts and far too often grasped him in a headlock when they got close, tactics that caused Pac-Man no end of difficulties.

Still, many felt Pacquiao did more than enough to win. He did on my card, but by a slim 115-113 margin. Two judges had the same numbers in the opposite direction; one can argue either side of that. One cannot make a case for the 117-111 judge Waleska Roldan had Horn’s way, however.

As much as Pacquiao’s fading skills argued against his continuing his career, that scorecard argued louder for Roldan to get a day job and an eye test.

The most alarming sign of slippage was not Pacquiao’s apparent confusion in the early rounds while sorting out Horn’s unorthodox and awkward style. The alarming part came after he figured him out and began to land. Pacquiao had Horn in deep trouble in Round 9, but could not finish him off. That could be excused considering Pacquiao is 38. The damning point was when the 10th round began, Pacquiao was too spent to attack.

The Pacquaio who won 11 world titles in eight weight classes would have come out like a buzzsaw and cut Horn down. Instead Pacquiao did nothing, losing the momentum, the round and the fight.

“I told Manny to give me one more of them and the fight was over,” trainer Freddie Roach said later, “but he just couldn’t do it.”

Most great fighters — and Pacquiao was one for most of his 22-year career — go out the way he seems destined to if he doesn’t stop. With his back turned to an inferior opponent, that only a referee can defend him from anymore. That’s no way to end a great career, but in boxing, it’s an old song.

Call it the blues. The black and blues.

~ ~ ~

Pity the Red Sox. They have the second-best record in the American League, lead the AL East and seem to be finally having a power surge. Even starting pitcher David Price may finally deserve some roses to go with his whine. Yet nobody’s interested.

Sox’ viewership is down. Attendance is basically flat. The talking heads delight in criticizing the manager at every turn and repeatedly ask some form of “what’s wrong with the Red Sox” when the standings say “not much.”

Are they more boring without David Ortiz? Of course, but who wouldn’t have predicted that after the most effervescent personality on the Boston sports landscape retired?

Would we rather see somebody swing at the first pitch once in a while rather than turning every at-bat into a rerun of Marathon Man? Sure.

But, folks, Boston says it’s about winning and these guys have one of the best records in the game at the season’s halfway point. How about less complaining about what they aren’t and realize what they are: Closer to a championship than the Celtics.

~ ~ ~

If you wonder why the Bruins seem stuck in second gear, consider this: The past four seasons, only four players in the NHL have amassed more points than Tyler Seguin.

Remember him?

Seguin was shipped to Dallas after the Bruins disappointingly lost in the 2013 Stanley Cup final to the Blackhawks. It was the second time in three years the B’s reached the finals, and their fans were buoyant. Then the Bruins dumped the 21-year-old former second-overall pick for Loui Eriksson, Reilly Smith, Joe Morrow and Matt Fraser, which is another way of saying for nothing. Four years later that’s what’s left from that trade, which may explain why that’s about what they’ve achieved since Seguin departed.

If you want to feel worse, look further down that list. You’ll find Joe Thornton (13th) and Phil Kessel (15th), both well ahead of Brad Marchand (24th), the first Bruin in that time period. If management consistently can’t find ways to use scorers like Seguin, Thornton and Kessel, what are they managing? Lunch orders?

~ ~ ~

Lastly, someone sent me video of Conor McGregor sparring in preparation for his Aug. 26 “fight” with Floyd Mayweather Jr. That led to two conclusions.

First, McGregor could spar until Doomsday. He won’t hit Mayweather three times, but will be hit 300 times.

Second, putting a UFC guy who can’t box (and may not be able to take a punch) against the best boxer in the world is like asking the Warriors to play a hockey game against the Penguins.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

070417hayward4.jpg

Photo by: 
Gordon Hayward

051216mcgregor1.jpg

Photo by: 
CONOR McGREGOR (AP Photo/John Locher)

03Manny2.jpg

Photo by: 
Pacquiao: An all-too-familiar end to a once-great fighter’s career.

051716celticsce006.jpg

WHAT’S THE DEAL? With the NBA trade deadline today at 3 p.m., Danny Ainge has to decide whether to sit tight or make a trade to alter the Celtics for this season.
Source: 
DTI
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Red Sox can keep whining, as long as they keep winning

0
0

For the Red Sox to maintain or expand their lead in the American League East during the second half of the season, they need two things to happen. They need David Price and Hanley Ramirez to keep yelling at the media member of their choice.

Both only began playing like the players they are being paid to be this season after Price launched The Whiners Manifesto in the direction of first Evan Drellich and then Dennis Eckersley, and Ramirez told every writer he could find (and even a wayward radio talk show host) that he knew he had to do better but nobody could replace David Ortiz anyway (which is true, by the way).

If that’s what it takes to keep them going in a way that allows the Sox to expand on what unbelievably at the moment is the AL’s second-best record, despite all the carping and kvetching about what they are not, then be my guest. Anything the knights of the keyboard can do to assist that doesn’t involve a trip to the ER, just ask.

If it means Price needs to moan all day and night that nobody understands how difficult life is for a guy who goes to work once every five days and is paid over $200 million to do it, moan like you’re working in a coal mine. You aren’t by the way, Dave, but if believing so is what it takes for you to pitch the way you’re being paid to, please do.

After missing much of the first half of the year, the guy who was asked to masquerade as the ace of the staff until a real ace — Chris Sale — showed up finally has shown up, too. Since returning from an elbow strain, Mr. Misunderstood has gone from Mini Me to How About Me! If the formula for Price to pitch winning baseball is that this becomes the days of Whine and Roses at Fenway, we’ll take the roses and put up with the whine.

Price’s 3.91 ERA is now better than it was this time a year ago (4.34) and his WHIP is better than it was the second half of last season, when he went 8-3 (.727 winning percentage for the non-sabermetricians out there who still believe actually winning a game counts for something). So if Price returns to the mound Sunday against the Damned (we hope) Yankees and it requires he verbally assault Mike Silverman to beat them, Mike is surely willing to take one for the team he so adroitly covers for the Herald.

Of course, Price would be better served doing that to someone from the Globe since Sox owner John Henry owns it, too. If he yells at one of their folks, that writer would literally be taking one for the team. If Price were to go so far as to rip Nick Cafardo’s shirt in the process, the Globe could ask Price to sign it and then sell it as game-used memorabilia on page C6, next to the Ortiz-signed baseballs they periodically pedal.

As for Hanley, his slow start this season may be traceable to being asked to replace the second-most revered player in Red Sox history or to his constant claim of shoulder soreness. Perhaps if his shoulders didn’t closely resemble LeGarrette Blount’s, he’d have a bit less soreness but that’s up to him and his personal trainer.

Aching or not, his power outage since taking over at DH for Ortiz hasn’t been quite as bad as his first half in 2016. He had only eight home runs at the midpoint of last season to 13 today and his slugging percentage is slightly better while his OPS is slightly worse.

The real concern is he simply isn’t hitting anything — including a much-needed sacrifice fly a couple of days ago against the Rays — as consistently as he did last year, but Ramirez always has been a second-half guy, and the Sox have to hope that again proves to be the case. Let me remind you Ramirez had 22 home runs, 63 RBI, a slugging percentage of .593 (up .118 from the first half last season) and an OPS of .947 (up .146 from his first-half slumbers) during the final two and a half months last year. Maybe his shoulders are still aching from carrying the team for two months.

If replicating that demands he stare a hole through a NESN lens after launching a bomb, go death stare. After all, here in Boston, we only care about winning now (unless you’re Celtics fans, who apparently only care about forever winning three years from now).

If the Sox need two of their highest-paid employees to suffer with a case of distemper to get back into postseason play, OK. If they need to believe they’re more misunderstood than a love-sick teenager, so be it. If they have to convince themselves the stress and difficulty of their job is right up there with brain surgery, we can live with that, too.

If that’s all it takes for the Sox not to ruin your summah, most folks around here will accept it. Of course, if those jamokes also want to be beloved like the lovable “idiots” of 2004 or embraced the way this town wrapped its arms around Ortiz or Pedro Martinez, it will take a little more than winning while whining.

They’d have to start acting like it’s actually still fun to play baseball for a living. If they can’t do that, so be it. Just keep whining … as long as you keep winning.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

062417soxjw17.jpg

Photo by: 
SHAKY START: David Price walks back to the dugout after allowing a run in the first inning of Saturday night’s game between the Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels at Fenway Park.

052817soxnl24.jpg

Photo by: 
Hanley Ramirez/File
Source: 
DTI
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Buy into McGregor-Mayweather clown show at your own peril

0
0

It is unlikely, were he alive today, that Plato would be paying much attention to Conor McGregor, but he once wrote an apt description of what the young Irish conman has been putting on exhibit this week as he travels coast-to-coast and then some, trying to pry dollars from your pockets to watch what one can kindly call a mismatch, or more correctly call a ripoff.

“Wise men speak because they have something to say,” one of the wisest of Greek philosophers (and mathematicians, by the way) once wrote. “Fools because they have to say something.”

If you know anything about boxing or hucksterism, you know where Conor McGregor fits into that equation.

My dad was no Plato, but he knew some things about life. One of his favorite sayings was “an empty can makes the most noise.” Bill Belichick puts it differently but is saying pretty much the same when he cautions his employees to “ignore the noise.”

If you value your hard-earned cash, I’m giving you the same warning when it comes to putting down $100 or so to watch Floyd Mayweather Jr. box a guy whose suits are a size too small and whose ego is two sizes too large.

Conor McGregor is mixed martial arts’ biggest star. He is the cauliflowered face of the UFC, the first and only mixed martial artist to hold UFC championships simultaneously in two different weight classes. Good for him. If you enjoy a sport where it’s acceptable to quit when things get difficult, fine. Carmelo Anthony can relate.

In Los Angeles, Toronto, New York and soon London, McGregor has snorted and raved about what he is going to do to Mayweather, who is ending a two-year retirement at age 40 to fight him — not in UFC’s Octagon but inside a boxing ring. It should be noted that McGregor has never been inside a boxing ring nor has he ever boxed a minute in his life.

In the UFC, he’s known as a striker and a feared one. He supposedly carries knockout power, enhanced somewhat by the four-ounce gloves he won’t be wearing on Aug. 26, when he squares off with the best boxer of his era at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas in 10-ounce mittens.

McGregor has fiendishly promised to knock Mayweather out “inside four rounds.” Each time he says it he chews his gum a little faster and curses a little louder. Nervous, my friend?

McGregor’s promise carries the weight of empty noise, which these days seems to be what grabs the most attention. All you have to do is look in the White House. This week it’s hard to tell if the bigger lie being sold to a gullible public is, “No one ’round here never spoke to no Russians” or “I’m going to (expletive) knock you out, Floyd.”

One of the most revealing utterances from McGregor came in LA, where he and Mayweather kicked off what has become an increasingly more profane and increasingly less profound series of televised hype sessions. On that first day, McGregor claimed, “somebody’s 0 has got to go.”

News bulletin: Somebody’s 0 went on June 28, 2008. That was the first of three McGregor losses inside the Octagon. That night he lost in 69 seconds. To Artemij Sitenkov, also known as who? Two years later, on Nov. 27, 2010, McGregor must have had another appointment because he lost to Joe Duffy in 38 seconds. But if you think that’s because he was a hungry young fighter only recently removed from the welfare rolls in Ireland, fast forward to March 5, 2016.

That’s the night UFC’s biggest draw lost to Nate Diaz in less than two rounds. Not wanting to see his biggest star erased like that, UFC head honcho Dana White staged an immediate rematch and this time, lo and behold, McGregor won a decision that left Diaz’ record at 19-11.

You think there is any boxer with a record of 19-11 who would beat Floyd Mayweather Jr.? Or even go the distance with him? If you do, go lie down, take a nap, then think again.

So when Conor prattles on about “somebody’s 0 has got to go” remember the only guy with a 0 is Mayweather, who will enter the ring 49-0 in the sport of boxing and with a reputation as being the best defensive fighter of his time.

As the press conferences have mounted, Mayweather’s rhetoric, which was originally relatively congenial by his standards, has grown coarser. The two have turned curse words into every form of verbiage imaginable and several not imaginable by anyone but maybe Quentin Tarantino. Perhaps if there was something really to say about this match that might have been tempered a bit?

Such overheated rhetoric will continue right up until Aug. 26. You can count on that. These guys will launch more bombs than Kim Jong-un. They’ll make about as much sense, too.

People will buy this because they love a freak show. They love to be conned. Then after they get conned, they love to complain about it.

That Mayweather chose to come out of retirement to face a guy who has never had a single professional fight is understandable. The IRS just gave him 22,238,255 reasons why, and then reminded him of seven million more. That’s the size of the lien they slapped on him for what they claim is unpaid 2011 and 2015 taxes.

McGregor accused Mayweather of “wearing a (expletive) track suit” at their first press conference, insisting he was dressing like a 12-year-old break dancer not a 40-year-old man. It may be the only accurate statement he’s made since this began.

Mayweather countered by informing McGregor he could wear whatever he wants because he doesn’t have “a boss” while McGregor does. That boss is White, a former Boston Harbor Hotel bellhop turned combat sport multi-millionaire. When the three of them are on a stage, Conor McGregor makes the most noise until they open their wallets. Then he gets very quiet.

The same will be true on Aug. 26, when the fighting starts. The truth is it’s not a fair fight because, as he and his avid supporters will soon learn, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Watch some of his sparring video and you can see that against young boxers who would be afraid to drive by Mayweather’s house.

Fortunately for McGregor, Mayweather is not a knockout puncher. He has fragile hands and a wary, slick approach to his discipline. But here’s the problem with that.

Unlike UFC, you can’t tap out in boxing. You can’t quit because someone keeps punching you in the face, or cuts you up, or beats you down. All you can do is take it until somebody else decides this empty tomato can has had enough.

When that happens it will be interesting to hear what McGregor has to say. Assuming his jaw still works.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

071317floyd1.jpg

Photo by: 
TALKING TRASH: Conor McGregor (right) has had plenty to say about his upcoming fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Source: 
DTI
Insert Body: 
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 
Insert Body Bottom: 

Borges: Chris Sale provides perfect blueprint for David Price

0
0

If David Price has been wondering just what, exactly, Red Sox fans expect from their ace, all he had to do was pay attention yesterday. All he had to do was watch Chris Sale mow down the Yankees.

When Sale trotted out to take the ball in the eighth inning of a 1-0 game in which he’d already thrown 107 pitches and struck out 12, the crowd of 36,936 bellowed its approval. Here was a guy who wanted the ball and when he got it kept firing it past a collection of helpless Yankee batters until manager John Farrell took him out after he struck out Gary Sanchez for the second out of the inning, finishing him off with a 95-mph fastball followed by an 82-mph slider in the dirt that had Sanchez waving at a pitch he had little chance of hitting.

When Sale turned the ball over to Craig Kimbrel with Aaron Judge coming to bat, the crowd roared its approval of another sparkling outing by the Red Sox’ best pitcher and perhaps the American League’s best.

Some would have liked to see Sale finish what he’d started and he was probably one of them but Kimbrel fought off Judge’s persistence, finally getting him on a flyout to right to end the inning. Unfortunately, the closer gave up a game-tying blast to Matt Holliday to open the top of the ninth and you could hear the grumbling from Swampscott to Skowhegan. Why in the hell didn’t they just let Sale take care of his own business?

Pitch count be damned. Sale was sailing along, his last two pitches before Farrell retired him so nasty Lord Voldemort must have concocted them. In the end Sale didn’t get the decision but you couldn’t blame that on him. He did his job the way Price was supposed to until a bruised elbow and a bruised ego conspired to make him both unavailable for a time and peevish for all-time.

Fortunately Price seems over the former and gets a chance tonight to duplicate what Sale did yesterday when he faces the Yankees and Masahiro Tanaka in the back end of a day-night doubleheader and that’s really all fans, or even the hated media, are looking for. If you’re a player, play. If you’re a pitcher, pitch. If you’re a very good pitcher, pitch very well very often. That’s all it takes to please the populace.

Nobody cares about your petty grievances with the denizens of anti-social media. Nobody cares if your charity bowling event raises a ton of cash or doesn’t raise a nickel. Your choice of dogs is of no real interest to the paying customers.

Those things are all footnotes, a fact Sale seems to totally understand. You won’t find him on Snapface, as Bill Belichick would put it. You won’t find him on Twitter or Instagram or in Dennis Eckersley’s face on a team plane, either. In fact, other than on the day he pitches it isn’t easy to find him at all, which is the way he likes it.

Sale understands what the Red Sox want from him and what Red Sox fans want just as desperately. They want him to pitch the way he did yesterday, when he scattered three hits and struck out 13 in 72⁄3 innings against their most hated rival.

You don’t have to be Prince Charming and you don’t need to be Darth Vader. Just be a pitcher who gets people out, which Price will have the chance to do tonight. If he does it as well as Sale did, even the blogosphere will be safe for him to traverse.

With Sale in total command until the minute he left, leading 1-0 and having shown no signs of a letdown despite throwing 118 pitches, it looked like the Sox were going to up their lead over the sinking, third-place Yankees to 51⁄2 games. That it didn’t quite work out had to leave you wondering what might have been had Kimbrel stayed in his seat and Sale had been left to finish what he started.

We all know that seldom happens anymore. We all know Kimbrel has been pitching lights out all season. We all know John Farrell went by the book. He did what the Manager’s Manual suggested, which was go to his closer.

But when someone like Sale is dealing like he was yesterday, as Earl Weaver used to say, “there ain’t no bleeping book!’’ Had he been struggling, OK. But he wasn’t struggling. The Yankees were struggling.

To be fair, just about every team that’s faced Sale the past two months has been struggling. He’d won 10 of his last 12 decisions and the Sox had won seven of his last nine starts. Yesterday was his 13th double-digit strikeout performance in 19 starts and if you base your thinking solely on past performance as indicator of future success Sale had a career ERA of 1.31 against the Yankees going into yesterday’s game and all it did was go down. Since ERA became an official stat in 1901, Eddie Watt is the only pitcher with a minimum of 50 innings pitched against the Yankees with a lower career ERA.

So the odds were on Sale’s side and the way he was dominating the Yankees was on his side, too, when Farrell went to his copy of “How To Manage A Big League Game’’ by Tony La Russa and took him out. That didn’t quite work out as he hoped but one thing sure has.

Chris Sale is working out just fine. Now how about you, Dave?

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

071517soxjw16.jpg

Photo by: 
Starting pitcher Chris Sale walks to the dugout after his work in the second inning of the Boston Red Sox vs. New York Yankees MLB game at Fenway Park. Saturday, July 15, 2017. Staff photo by John Wilcox
Source: 
DTI
Insert Body: 
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 
Insert Body Bottom: 

Borges: If Colin Kaepernick wants to play in NFL again, he better learn that sooner or later ‘you’re gonna have to serve somebody’

0
0

I’m not convinced many professional athletes should be taking career advice from Michael Vick, but he had a point Monday when it came to Colin Kaepernick and it wasn’t that he could use a new barber.

In essence, Vick suggested it might be wise for the unemployed Kaepernick to “just try to be presentable.” Vick was referring to Kaepernick’s considerable Afro but there was a larger point to be made there that Kaepernick wasted no time making clear he doesn’t get.

It’s one that applies to all employees and all employers. Simply put, if you want a job it might be wise not to regularly announce to potential employers that you’re a potential pain in the butt in matters both big and small.

Many employers can accept, at least to a degree, the big issue pain but not on every issue. This is especially true if at the same time your production begins to slide off a cliff, as has happened with Kaepernick.

Not long after Vick’s comments on FS1’s “Speak For Yourself,” Kaepernick couldn’t resist tweeting out the definition of the Stockholm Syndrome. Frankly, in a place with the conservative worldview of the NFL, he might as well have lit his hair on fire even though there may not be 10 coaches or GMs who could tell you where Stockholm is let alone what the Stockholm Syndrome is.

What they can tell you though, is what they consider a pain in the butt, and Kaepernick’s response was a good example of it.

“The Stockholm Syndrome appears when an abused victim develops a kind of respect and empathy towards their abuser,” Kaepernick tweeted. “It was named after a bank robbery in Stockholm when a group of bank employees were held hostage and developed a strong sense of empathy towards their captors. When this traumatic event was over, they even defended their captors by not wanting to say anything that might endanger their captors’ freedom. This usually happens because the victim sees the smallest act of decent behavior as an extracted event which makes them see their captors as essentially good. This way they leave aside all the negative behavioral distinctions of their captors and focus on the positive ones. This syndrome is also called “traumatic bonding” or “victim brainwashing.”

You want someone who reacts to Vick’s tactless but innocent advice like that in your lunch room?

Not likely.

Vick’s poorly voiced point was once expressed far more eloquently by the great singer/songwriter Bob Dylan on his album “Slow Train Coming.” In “Gotta Serve Somebody,” Dylan told it like it is for all of us earthlings.

“You may be a state trooper, you might be a young turk

You may be the head of some big TV network

You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame

You may be living in another country under another name

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You’re gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

You can kneel down during the national anthem, wear your hair as you like or even murder fighting dogs, as Vick did. You can be as outspoken, outrageous or out of line as you want. Just understand there are consequences to pay and they grow as your performance slackens.

If Kaepernick played the last two years the way he did in 2013 and 2014, the 49ers wouldn’t care what he did during the national anthem or how politically active he is becoming. They wouldn’t care that he’s conjured up his inner Oscar Gamble, wears more tattoos than a biker gang and at times irks conservative teammates or coaches with his views. They may not like it but that’s not the same as caring about it.

For a time, no one cared what Vick was doing either but eventually he got busted abusing dogs, lied about it to both the cops and his boss (everybody’s got to serve somebody) and paid a stiff price. He went to federal prison for 21 months, lost millions of dollars once owed him by the Falcons and was never again the explosive player he’d once been, but did continue to be the inaccurate thrower he’d always been.

Yet somehow Vick lasted seven years in the NFL after he came out of jail, including three as a starter who went a pedestrian 20-20 for the Eagles. He was no longer the player he’d been but somehow he kept a job. How?

He became someone who did just what he’s urging Kaepernick to do. He accepted that if you want to continue playing in a league that really doesn’t need anybody all that much for very long, you “gotta serve somebody.”

Vick admitted he’d been given much the same advice when he was a young player and didn’t listen “until the end, until I was going through the turmoil and the hardships.

“I just think perception and image is everything. I’m just going off my personal experiences. Listen, I love the guy to death. But I want him to also succeed on and off the field. This has to be a start for him. . . . It’s not about selling out.”

The truth is Colin Kaepernick is not the 97th best available quarterback in America, which he would have to be to not have a job in the NFL. He is better than that. Maybe better than half the quarterbacks in pro football. But he’s also someone who has gone 3-16 as a starter the past two years and has not shown signs for three years that he’s the player who once led the 49ers to the Super Bowl with explosive runs and occasionally startling throws.

What he’s shown is what he also was even when he was winning, which is a guy who isn’t very accurate (59.8 career completion percentage when the mid-60s has become the norm) in a league that demands accuracy. When you couple slipping performance with rising controversial political activism you have a guy many teams conclude is more trouble than he’s worth. Not collude but conclude.

Is he being boycotted? Probably not. Is he better than Brian Hoyer in San Francisco or whoever in Cleveland or with the Jets? Perhaps, but not lately and lately is all that counts in the NFL. Lately and never forgetting everybody’s got to serve somebody . . . especially when your game begins to slip.

Short Title: 
Borges on Colin Kaepernick: Everybody has to serve somebody
Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

071817vick1.jpg

Photo by: 
Michael Vick
Source: 
DTI
Insert Body: 
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Stunning CTE study message clear — play football at your own risk

0
0

The news keeps coming and it is seldom good when the subject is the connection between playing football and losing your mind.

There may be more delicate ways to explain the effects of football on the brain but breaking it seems the most concise and the most accurate. This was reconfirmed yesterday by the largest study yet done on the subject, whose results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

There are still doubters because there will always be doubters when people have either a vested or a visceral interest in the subject. But it is becoming increasingly more difficult to argue against the numbers. In fact, even the NFL seems to have given up after more than a billion dollars was spent on legal expenses and a settlement that some critics view as hush money.

Whatever the truth of that, one truth is clear: You play football at the risk of breaking your brain.

The latest study done by the Boston University School of Medicine diagnosed CTE — chronic traumatic encephalopathy — in 177 of 202 former football players. That is an astounding 87 percent. And the numbers worsen the longer you play.

CTE Report

The disease — which causes memory loss, cognitive issues, suicidal thoughts, rage, impulsivity and worse — was found in 110 of 111 former NFL players (that’s 99 percent, folks) and seven of eight former CFL players. It was found in nine of 14 semi-pro players and 48 of 53 college players. The latter is a 91 percent incident rate.

For players who did not play beyond high school, however, the numbers tumbled to only three cases in 14 brains examined, and no cases were found in two pre-high school players, which is a relief if nothing else.

There is no question all who play football do not experience the clusters of tau protein in the brain that result in CTE, and surely if a study was done of everyone who ever played, common sense argues the percentages would go down some. But as longtime researcher in the field Dr. Ann McKee said, “It’s impossible to ignore anymore.”

One can argue the college study wasn’t broad enough, but 48 out of 53 is broad enough to tell me something’s going on.

So understand the choice you make when you send Johnny off with helmet in hand.

 

Through high school, it would appear, the odds lessen greatly. Perhaps that’s because the size and speed of players increase as the competition level does and hence the deleterious effects of the constant head-cracking that is so much a required part of the “game” does as well. That we do not know.

In fact, as the game’s apologists continue to argue, there is much we do not know about the effect of concussive, sub-concussive and repetitive blows to the head.

But where each one of these studies leads is to the same conclusion: you play football at your peril and you play pro football with almost a guarantee that at some point in life you’re going to look in the mirror and have no idea who is looking back at you.

Some critics contend this study may be looking at outdated data, claiming they were done on players prior to recent equipment alterations, rules changes and the adoption of less contact in practice. While those things are true and may to a degree lessen the carnage, anyone who has ever put on a football helmet and used it to batter another person’s head like a mountain goat understands the limitations of such changes if football is to remain football.

The use of the head as a weapon and a targeting agent is as basic to the game as the ball itself. When that is not the case, the game becomes rugby. Rugby is a tough game, to be sure. But it’s not football. And it’s certainly not NFL football.

So you can apologize all you want for what the game is. You can argue the growing pile of studies all reaching the same conclusion have flaws or aren’t widespread enough if you want. After all, it’s a free country (for now at least). There are people who don’t believe the earth is warming and maybe even a few who still think it’s flat. That’s up to you.

So if you’re trying to decide whether your son should play football or not, factor all those questions and doubts in if you want but then factor in the numbers: 87 percent of all players, 99 percent of NFL players, 91 percent of college players studied all came away with their brains dented.

You like those odds? Then send little Johnny on out there.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

AP17206618891944.jpg

Photo by: 
This combination of photos provided by Boston University shows sections from a normal brain, top, and from the brain of former University of Texas football player Greg Ploetz, bottom, in stage IV of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. According to a report released on Tuesday, July 25, 2017 by the Journal of the American Medical Association, research on 202 former football players found evidence of a brain disease linked to repeated head blows in nearly all of them, from athletes in the National Football League, college and even high school. (Dr. Ann McKee/BU via AP)
Source: 
DTI
Insert Body: 
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Let the boos rain down on phony David Price tonight

0
0

Tonight is the night for Red Sox fans to teach David Price a lesson about the consequences of his actions, since his manager won’t.

If Sox fans are who they say they are and are as bothered by Price’s gutless ambush of Dennis Eckersley on the team plane a month ago as they seem to be, tonight is the night to let Price know there is more than home-field advantage at Fenway Park. If you don’t know how to act, there’s also home-field disadvantage.

Tonight is the night to treat Price like Darryl Strawberry once was. How Jose Canseco once was. How a long-ago shortstop of the Sox named Don Buddin, whose hands seemed to be made out of concrete whenever games got close, was. Tonight is the night to boo David Price off the pitcher’s mound.

A year ago, I thought Price pitched better than he got credit for, although when you’re being paid $31 million one can understand why some felt paying nearly $2 million per victory was a little steep. But how he’s pitched — or not pitched — isn’t the issue any more. The issue is how he acts, and how the team that employs him has too. Or hasn’t.

It is one thing for an athlete to have a confrontation with a sportswriter. Other than the writer and the player, nobody cares unless the cops get involved. But Dennis Eckersley is a Hall of Fame pitcher, someone who has done what Price has never done, which is pitch like a champion in the playoffs.

You all know by now how Price ambushed Eck last month on the team plane, verbally assaulting him as a number of his weak-kneed teammates applauded. Then Price went back to his seat, I was told, and put on a pair of sunglasses as if he was The Terminator. It was midnight.

Guys who wear sunglasses at midnight are either beaten fighters or morons. Price has never been in a fight in his life, so there you go.

Later he cursed out Eckersley a second time on the plane and again neither his teammates nor what passes for management did a thing. That includes manager John Farrell, who deserves your animus as well.

It has often been said that Farrell looks like John Wayne. Now we know he has more in common with Wayne than a wide chin. Wayne was a phony sheriff and a phony soldier. He just played them in the movies. Farrell is doing the same as Red Sox manager. Acting.

Reportedly, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski apologized to Eckersley in Toronto while Farrell went out of his way to say he had not. He called their relationship “professional.” Well, one guy is, so he’s half right about that, which is better than he’s batting with in-game decisions lately.

Yet the truth is, the only apology should have come from the thumb-sucking bully willing to take on any sportswriter or 62-year-old Hall of Famer as long as 24 teammates are around but not man-to-man. Kind of the same approach he takes to the loneliness of postseason pitching.

Had Farrell thought for a minute WWJWD — as in What Would John Wayne Do — he would have stood up and told Price to sit down and shut up. At least it’s what he would have done in the movies.

But this was reality, and you saw what you got. According to all accounts, a number of Price’s teammates applauded his schoolyard stunt. Worse, no one intervened either time. No one said a word when Price claimed Eckersley didn’t understand the difficulty of life in the big leagues, which would make Price uninformed as well as ill-advised.

If there is anyone who has experienced nearly all the difficulties of big league life, it is Eck, a recovering alcoholic who was flat on his back several times but battled back to end up in Cooperstown. The only way Price gets in there is to buy a ticket.

But Price was right about one thing. Eck doesn’t understand how difficult it is to keep choking in the playoffs the way Price has. In fact, Eckersley gave up one of the most painful home runs in World Series history yet came back to register 15 postseason saves. He never managed to do what Price did a year ago in the playoffs, which was post a 13.00 ERA. Eck’s career postseason ERA, mostly as a closer, is 3.00. David Price’s? Nearly double that.

Eckersley is now a sometimes analyst for NESN, and fans greatly appreciate that he tells it as it is. When it’s good, he says so. When it’s not, he says that too, and it seems the latter is too much for this collection of diaper-wearing Red Sox. With the only adult in the room, David Ortiz, gone, Sox insiders claim Price now rules. If that’s true, be glad football season has begun because these guys will crack under pressure like an overripe melon, just as they did in embarrassing fashion last year against Cleveland.

Yesterday, a worried Sox management saw the need for damage control. Club president Sam Kennedy told WEEI, “Dennis Eckersley was owed an apology, clearly.” He said he apologized by phone the next morning but was unsure if Price had (he has not, and management knows it). He also said, “David Price is a fantastic teammate. He’s got their backs. He’s doing everything he can to compete at a high level. But we all make mistakes.”

Yes, and the first is not apologizing when you act like a spoiled brat and an entitled jerk. Sam left that part out.

It was disappointing to some to learn Dustin Pedroia was cuddling with Price on a clubhouse couch a day after the story became public, laughingly pointing out it was being talked about on national television. That’s how kids react after they step in it. They make themselves look worse because they don’t have sense enough to be embarrassed after making fools of themselves. They don’t know when they’ve gone too far. Apparently, neither does their manager.

So now it’s up to the final arbiters in such circumstances to speak. Now it’s up to you, the fans, to tell David Price tonight that he’s being paid $31 million to play baseball at Fenway Park, not the Yawkey Way Middle School.

It’s up to you to be the only adults in his life. Let him have it every inning he’s out there, strikeouts or flameout. Let him know, in Boston we know a phony when we see one.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

062417soxjw25.jpg

Photo by: 
FAN THE FLAMES: David Price starts tonight against the Royals at Fenway Park, and the left-hander deserves to hear it from Red Sox fans after his run-in with NESN’s Dennis Eckersley. Staff photo by John Wilcox
Source: 
DTI
Insert Body: 
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Terrell Davis’ induction lowers bar for Pro Football Hall of Fame

0
0

CANTON, Ohio — Terrell Davis will be officially inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame tomorrow night and he has no doubt his bust belongs in Canton.

But does he?

“If the Hall of Fame is about a person who impacted the game and played at the highest level when the stakes were high, I think I checked all the boxes,’’ Davis says. “If you can raise (your game) and play to the level I was able to play at during those moments that speaks for that. When you throw in the accomplishments on the team front — two championships — and every individual award you can imagine (including league and Super Bowl MVP) I achieved, there was nothing I did not achieve in the period of time I played.’’

Davis’ words are all true and they are also the issue. Was the former Denver Broncos’ runner great? For three years indeed he was.

But was he great enough, long enough, to be called a Hall of Famer?

Frankly, sorrowfully, no.

Davis was one of those victims of his game’s violence. After three consecutive seasons (1996-1998) in which he ran like a Hall of Famer and was the league’s best back, Davis blew out his knee chasing down an opponent who intercepted a pass, an unselfish act from which he emerged drastically changed.

Davis was never again even a shadow of the same player. He never lasted more than a half season and three years later was gone after playing only 16 games after his 2,008-yard rushing season in 1998. His injuries had taken the quickness, speed and power that once made him special.

Ever since, a debate raged over Davis, who was a Hall of Fame finalist the same number of years he played like a Hall of Famer — three — before his election in February. When asked if longevity should be an issue for induction, Davis has a quick retort.

“My career wasn’t short,” he’s said. “It was efficient.”

Davis indeed had three of the greatest rushing seasons in league history, gaining 1,538, 1,750 and 2,008 yards and scoring 49 touchdowns while also running for an additional 1,140 yards and two Super Bowl titles in eight playoff appearances. But can a Hall of Famer be a comet racing quickly across the night sky and then fading away or must he be someone as reliable and bright as the sun?

Now consider this: From 2001-03, Priest Holmes also went to three Pro Bowls, as Davis had. Each won a rushing title. Davis ran for 5,296 yards to Holmes’ 4,590 in their best three years but Holmes carried 146 fewer times while rushing for more touchdowns (56 to 49), scoring more touchdowns overall (61 to 53), catching twice as many passes (206 to 103) and doubling Davis’ receiving yardage.

Holmes twice led the NFL in yards from scrimmage. Davis never did. Holmes led the league in scoring once. Davis never did. Holmes led in touchdowns twice. Davis did it once.

Holmes was on his way to winning a third rushing title in 2004 with 892 yards and 14 touchdowns in eight games when he too went down with a knee injury. A year later he hurt his spinal cord and retired in 2007 after an aborted four-game comeback.

At the time of his retirement, Holmes had rushed for more yards, caught more passes and scored more touchdowns than Terrell Davis but never had the chance to excel in the playoffs that Davis had playing beside John Elway.

There’s one other thing they don’t have in common. Priest Holmes doesn’t have a prayer of getting into the Hall of Fame.

Holmes has never been even a semifinalist. Last year his name was not even included on the preliminary list of 94 candidates.

Why? Because normally longevity matters to gaining entry into the Hall and it should. Gale Sayers was always considered the outlier in Canton. He was a back so brilliant that his five seasons of sustained excellence (five All-Pros, twice a league leader in rushing as well as being the game’s most dangerous kick returner) in a seven-year career marred by two devastating knee injuries created an exception.

Few had a quarrel with that then or now but this year the benchmark has been dangerously lowered.

If three brilliant years are enough to enter Canton, is Holmes a Hall of Famer? What about Clinton Portis, who in his first four seasons rushed for an average of only 120 yards less than Davis and after suffering his own injury came back to gain 1,262 and 1,487 yards, giving him six seasons of over 1,000 yards rushing to Davis’ four?

Did you ever once watch Portis and think Hall of Famer?

This is the dilemma the induction of Terrell Davis, who is a wonderful guy and was once all too briefly a wonderful runner, created.

So where’s the line now? Nobody’s quite sure but one guy who hopes it’s moved is a long forgotten running back named Larry Brown. Unless you hail from D.C. or are over 50 you’re probably saying, “Who?”

Well, between 1969 and 1972 Larry Brown was the best running back in football. He won a league rushing title, twice led the NFC in rushing, was a league MVP in 1972, ran his team to the Super Bowl and went to four consecutive Pro Bowls, one more than Davis. The only other back to go to four straight Pro Bowls in those years was Hall of Famer Floyd Little.

But at 5-foot-11, 195 pounds, the beating Brown took wore him down. He became more of a receiving threat after those years and although still a consistent back he was no longer the same. He retired at 29 after eight seasons, four of them brilliant, sure that he would never get to Canton.

“When I retired I was told that I didn’t play long enough (to enter the Hall of Fame),’’ Brown told me and my Talk of Fame Network colleagues after Davis’ election. “I said, ‘but I used to think all I had to do was make a significant contribution to the game.’ In retrospect, I think I did that.

“But with Terrell Davis being inducted this year, hopefully things will change because we have very similar stats and both our careers were cut short because of injuries.”

Larry Brown is right.

Priest Holmes can make the same argument.

A number of others can argue a similar case. Heck, even Clinton Portis can say ‘what about me?’

That’s the conundrum created when Terrell Davis enters the Pro Football Hall of Fame tomorrow night. How little brilliance equals a Hall of Fame career?

All we know for sure is a lot less now than there used to be.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

080317tdavis1.jpg

Photo by: 
LONG ENOUGH? Terrell Davis, a league MVP and two-time Super Bowl champion, was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame despite a short window of success, fueling debut over the importance of longevity in getting to Canton.
Source: 
DTI
Insert Body: 
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Patriots owner Bob Kraft merits place in Pro Football Hall of Fame

0
0

CANTON, Ohio — Last night the Pro Football Hall of Fame belonged to Jerry Jones. Before long the same should be true for Bob Kraft.

Generally, I’m not a strong believer in putting owners into halls of fame. While they serve a central role, as any paymaster does, generally their overall contribution was once best described by Hall of Fame lineman and longtime executive director of the NFL Players Association, Gene Upshaw.

“Owners?” Upshaw said. “Without the players all they own is a bunch of tight pants and jocks!”

That is true but not in the case of the pioneers who built the NFL like Bert Bell, George Halas, Art Rooney and the Mara family or Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams, who created the American Football League out of dreams and deep pockets.

It is also not true for Jones and Kraft, two guys who changed the economics of pro football through shrewd merchandising, creative negotiating with broadcast networks and, in Kraft’s case, at considerable personal sacrifice to spearhead the negotiated settlement of the 2011 lockout.

An NFL owner must do more than simply be associated with winning to earn a bust in Canton. This is true even if you turn a franchise around from a perennial loser and financial failure, as Kraft did after buying the struggling Patriots in 1994.

Although some have begun to equate Super Bowl trophies with an owner’s value, the fact is the players win those trophies with some assistance from their coaches. So for an owner to reach Canton he must make a contribution to the game far larger than financing a winning team. To be frank, building a team that has won five Lombardi Trophies and played in eight Super Bowls in 23 years is difficult to ignore, but winning cannot be all there is to your legacy, as I would argue is the case with Broncos owner Pat Bowlen.

The story is different with Kraft. He has won like few owners in the game’s history, but it’s the rest of his resume that makes his case for joining Jones in Canton.

First, Kraft saved professional football for New England when he rejected a $75 million buyout to allow then-owner James B. Orthwein out of the stadium lease Kraft held so he could move the franchise to St. Louis. That decision, coupled with a subsequent one in 1994 to pay a then-NFL record $172 million for a team his financial advisers told him was worth no more than $115 million, kept the Patriots in New England six years after he’d bought rickety Foxboro Stadium out of bankruptcy for $22 million to gain control of its ironclad lease with the Patriots through 2001.

When then-owners Billy Sullivan and Victor Kiam tried to move the team to Jacksonville, Kraft used the lease to block them. When Orthwein made his $75 million ransom offer, Kraft said “nyet!”

Had he not, the AFC would have been left with only one major television market — New York — while the NFC would have had New York, Dallas, Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco. Had that become the case, a push would have been made to either significantly reduce the cost of the TV package for AFC games or force realignment. One can only imagine the fractious nature of those negotiations.

At the time of Kraft’s purchase, the Patriots had the lowest season-ticket base in the league and the highest debt. Three years later they appeared in Super Bowl XXXI, winning the first of eight conference championships. That is the most in the Super Bowl era and the team’s five Super Bowl championships tie Kraft with another Hall of Fame owner, Eddie DeBartolo Jr., as the most by a single owner.

As Kraft’s dynasty was dawning in 2002, he was finishing construction of a $350 million privately funded stadium, the first of its kind. Gillette Stadium became the anchor store for surrounding mall development, an idea most new stadiums now follow.

Kraft cannot claim to be a founding father of the game, but he can claim more than saving pro football for New England and creating one of the NFL’s greatest dynasties. He also played a key role in negotiating the lengthiest and most lucrative TV contracts in league history, thus financially solidifying all 32 NFL teams, and in settling the longest lockout in sports history at a time of personal crisis.

“Without him this deal does not get done.” NFLPA executive board member Jeff Saturday said after Kraft’s intervention ended the 135-day lockout and led to a 10-year labor deal.

That day, Kraft stood on a podium with Saturday, NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith, commissioner Roger Goodell and others at the request of both sides in the midst of sitting shiva, the seven-day mourning period of the Jewish faith following the death of his wife of 48 years, Myra. He was unshaven, deeply saddened and wearing a torn black tie under his suit, a traditional sign of mourning. Even in his grief, Bob Kraft was there for pro football.

“Without him, someone else would have needed to step up, and I don’t know who that someone would have been,” then NFLPA vice president Domonique Foxworth said.

One example of Kraft’s negotiating skill came after the two sides agreed to a new rookie salary system and reduced length of rookie contracts, one of several major stumbling blocks to a deal. He then returned to his wife’s side, but when the owners and players reconvened, representatives of the owners balked. After a failed phone conversation with his fellow owners, Kraft flew back the next morning and swayed his side to a more reasonable position.

“I don’t know what he did or said or how he explained it to them, but he made it so it made sense,” Foxworth recalled.

Making sense is not always easy, however. In 2007, after his team was heavily penalized during the Spygate episode, Kraft did not threaten the commissioner’s authority nor challenge it in court. Instead he apologized to fellow owners for his team’s involvement in what he found to be an embarrassing episode. End of story . . . but not the end of his Hall of Fame resume.

Kraft made clear his distrust of the league office’s Deflategate investigation that led to a four-game suspension of Tom Brady last season but again refused legal action. Patriot fans were enraged but despite deep reservations he insisted he would not challenge the commissioner’s authority even though he felt it unjust, putting long-term league concerns ahead of his own short-term ones. Then he assembled a team that won Super Bowl LI with the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history.

To fully grasp how Kraft earned his way into the Hall one must understand both his contributions to the betterment of the league and the sad state of affairs in New England prior to his arrival. From its inception in 1960 through 1993, the Patriots had a winning percentage of .450 (225-276-9) and made the playoffs only six times. Between 1989 and 1993, they were at an all-time low, with a winning percentage of .238 (19-61). That offseason Kraft purchased the team. Since then, their winning percentage is .691 and they are one Super Bowl victory from tying the Steelers for the most Lombardi Trophies.

If you do all that you belong in Canton . . . sooner rather than later.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

020517patsnl307.1.jpg

Photo by: 
Robert Kraft accepts the Lombardi trophy from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell after the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons in Houston on Sunday, February 5, 2017. Staff Photo by Nancy Lane
Source: 
DTI
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Late Dick MacPherson a winner on and off the field

0
0

Dick MacPherson might have been the nicest man who ever coached pro football. Certainly he was the only one who ever gave my daughter a quarter.

It was 1992 and things had turned sour for the Patriots, as was often the case in those days. Coach Mac had arrived with some fanfare a year earlier after a decade spent turning Syracuse into a college football power and immediately improved the 1-15 Patriots to 6-10, which was a respectable first step.

But there was a shadow of disorganization over the organization that seemed to always keep it in the dark. Ownership had been in a shambles for years between the last days of Billy Sullivan and the short ones of Victor “I bought the Company” Kiam and James Busch Orthwein (who was from the side of the Busch family that didn’t get into the beer business).

Management was the king of mismanagement, with a former college athletic director named Sam Jankovich at the top and a former player agent named Patrick Forte as general manager. All you needed to know about Forte was he wanted to fire Bill Parcells.

By the middle of MacPherson’s second season, the locker room was a viper’s den, and Coach Mac was getting sick trying to make this collection of misfits better. They’d lost a half-dozen in a row when he spied a 3-year-old girl sitting next to me at a press conference because her sitter was ill and came right down and shook her hand.

Then he gave her a quarter. Just like your grandfather might have.

That’s the way most people who played for Dick MacPherson during tenures so successful at UMass and Syracuse that he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2009 remember him. His two-year stint as Patriots head coach was just a 8-24 blip on a career of both football and interpersonal success.

“Lost a great one today,” tweeted former Dallas Cowboys and Syracuse fullback Daryl Johnston after the news got out that Coach Mac had died Tuesday at 86, still in his beloved Syracuse. “I owe this man so much. He believed in me before I did.”

Coach Mac believed in everybody, which was his great strength. Unfortunately he also seemed to believe everybody, which with some NFL players is not a wise choice. The troubles he encountered in New England were so trying they left him hospitalized with acute diverticulitis halfway through the 1992 season, resulting in surgery that sidelined him until the final game of the year. They lost that day, 16-13, in overtime. That figured.

He was fired two years and one day after having been hired because he refused to scapegoat his staff and fire his assistants, as Jankovich demanded. He wouldn’t blame them for a 2-14 debacle.

“I dreamed of coming here and putting this thing together,” MacPherson said after being let go. “I didn’t stop dreaming until right now. . . . I feel that if you are the head coach of an organization, the ultimate blame should be put on you, so if anybody goes, in my opinion, the head coach should go.”

No firing the offensive coordinator. No blaming the defensive staff. The man who gave a child a quarter and a smile was a stand-up guy unwilling to throw others under the bus to save his hide.

He was, to be fair, probably a mismatch for the NFL even though he’d been a successful assistant in Cleveland and Denver, where he rose to defensive coordinator. He admitted as much later in life, seeing that the college game and the kids who played it were perhaps the place best suited for a guy who gave out more bear hugs than tongue lashings.

When he was first hired in New England, MacPherson got the news while in Maine, where he was born and raised. He was sworn to secrecy by Jankovich and complied as best he could. But when you go to mass every Sunday and the priest asks what’s new, are you going to lie?

Dick MacPherson wasn’t. He told his parish priest a little secret only to hear it broadcast from the pulpit a few minutes later. Keeping secrets wasn’t Dick MacPherson’s strong point. Dealing with people was.

“He was just the greatest guy,” longtime Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim said after learning of MacPherson’s death. “He was one of those rare guys everybody loved.”

They didn’t love him just because he won, but he won plenty, going 45-27-1 at UMass (1971-77) and 66-46-4 at Syracuse (1981-90). He won four Yankee Conference championships in seven years in Amherst and rebuilt a moribund Syracuse program into one that went to five bowl games and was 36-10-3 in his final five seasons before heading to New England.

His greatest team was the 1987 undefeated Syracuse squad that was 11-0-1 and finished ranked fourth in the country after Auburn coach Pat Dye settled for a game-tying field goal in the Sugar Bowl rather than going for the win on the game’s final play from Syracuse’s 13-yard line.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, but MacPherson instructed his players to keep their feelings to themselves after noting they left the field without shaking their opponents’ hands for fear of what they might say.

Coach Mac then went to the postgame press conference lugging the Sugar Bowl trophy he’d been given, speaking without words his true feelings. His team had battled Auburn to a standstill, finally taking the lead on a 38-yard field goal with 2:04 to play. When it was done, kicker Tim Vesling said, “Our coach would have gone for a touchdown.”

I bet he would have.

Every day wasn’t great for Dick MacPherson, of course. Certainly he had too few good ones in New England. But he lived life on the sunny side of the street, as we all should.

Even in the midst of a season of disappointment and chaos, he saw a little kid sitting nervously at a press conference and put her at ease with a smile and a quarter. And when he was finally inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2009, he didn’t beat his chest about his accomplishments or recall Dye’s decision that might have cost him a 12-0 season.

Instead he let a wide smile crease a face that always understood the power of a smile and thought about where it all began, up in Old Town, Maine, and said, “I’m the only guy in the state of Maine that’s in it!”

Somebody should have come over and given him a quarter. And a smile.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

080817dickmacpherson004.jpg

Photo by: 
REMEMBERING COACH MAC: Dick MacPherson took over as head coach of the Patriots in 1991 after successful stints at UMass and Syracuse. The Pats went just 8-24 overall in MacPherson’s two seasons at the helm in Foxboro, including a 6-10 mark in 1991, which included a celebration of a thrilling come-from-behind win against the Houston Oilers.
Source: 
DTI
Insert Body: 
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

PGA notebook: Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els reach 100 majors

0
0

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els put their tees in the ground today, they will become only the 13th and 14th professional golfers to play in their 100th major.

It is a remarkable feat that speaks not only to their longevity and resilience but also to the staying power of their individual games, which have been conjoined since they faced off at the 1984 Junior World Golf Championship in San Diego.

Between them, they’ve won nine majors (Mickelson five, Els four), and as the two gazed at a list of the other 12 who have reached this milestone, Els said, “That’s a heck of a list right there. Those are all our mentors, our heroes. . . . It means that we’ve done it properly, in a good way.”

Topping the list, as he does almost every list in golf, is Jack Nicklaus at 164. It is a number neither man is likely to reach, but the achievement still is impressive.

“It just goes by so fast you don’t think about it,” Mickelson said. “It’s been a lot of fun. We get to play golf, what most people do on vacation, as our job. It’s the greatest job in the world. . . . We’ve both been fortunate to have won some. I know we both want to win a couple more.’’

Els’ first major appearance was the British Open at Royal Troon in Scotland in 1989. A year later, Mickelson made his major championship debut in the 1990 U.S. Open. How long ago was it?

“You see the wooden driver there?” Els said when a photo was flashed of him at Royal Troon. “Those were the good old days.”

Respect for Tiger

As his peers prepared for today’s first round, Tiger Woods was agreeing to plead guilty in Florida to reckless driving and enter a diversion program that will allow his record to be wiped clean.

Woods is the last player to win back-to-back PGA titles in 2006 and 2007, but that was a decade and a ton of drama ago. He hasn’t played in more than a year and hasn’t won a major in nearly a decade, yet his shadow always seems to linger.

“I feel as though had Tiger not come along, I don’t feel I would have pushed myself to achieve what I ended up achieving because he forced everybody to get the best out of themselves,” Mickelson said. “He forced everybody to work a little bit harder.”

Els already had won majors before Woods seized control of the game.

“I won a couple early on, so I was kind of ready to win quite a few, if you know what I mean,” Els said. “Then when Tiger came in ’97 and him winning the Masters in the way he did, you know, that kind of threw me off a little bit.

“He got us to really elevate our games, brought so much more attention to the sport, and obviously a lot more dollars to play for. So we’ve got to thank him.’’

Hitting it long

Local pro Rich Berberian, who now plays out of Vesper Country Club in Tyngsboro, blasted a 302-yard shot in Tuesday’s Long Drive contest, just missing the top 10. Jason Kokrak was the winner with a 321-yard shot that only rolled out a little because of wet conditions.

Berberian, who is the director of instruction at Vesper, is making his second appearance in the PGA Championship. He is one of 20 club pros teeing it up in today’s first round. Seven sons of PGA club pros have won the PGA Championship, including Keegan Bradley, whose dad once was a club pro in Hopkinton before moving to Jackson Hole in Wyoming.

Berberian won the 2016 PGA Professional Championship at Turning Stone in Verona, N.Y., by holing a 33-foot putt on the 18th hole. He also was the 2016 PGA Professional Player of the Year, an annual award to the top club pro.

Stacked field

The field of 156 for the 99th PGA Championship at Quail Hollow includes 97 of the top 100 players in the latest world rankings.

Seventy-three international players from 25 countries will tee off in today’s first round. There also are also 30 major champions in the field who have combined to capture 49 championships. Thirteen of those are former PGA champions, including each of the past eight winners.

Fruit cakes abound

Some things you might want to ignore if you could, but Paul Claxton really has no choice.

A PGA club professional, Claxton married into the family that has owned Claxton Fruit Cakes (an ironic name) since 1948. The company cranks out five million pounds of fruitcakes a year. His wife insisted they live in Claxton, Ga., the town being the company’s namesake.

The town’s water tower proudly proclaims Claxton as “Fruitcake Capital of the World.” Don’t even ask.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

080917mickelson1.jpg

Photo by: 
Phil Mickelson lines up a putt on the 17th hole during a practice round at the PGA Championship golf tournament at the Quail Hollow Club Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2017, in Charlotte, N.C.
Source: 
DTI
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy on collision course at PGA Championship

0
0

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — One day before the opening round of the 99th PGA Championship, Jordan Spieth is not feeling it. That’s a good thing.

After winning the British Open in stirring fashion by following a final-round bogey at No. 13 that cost him the lead with a birdie-eagle-birdie-birdie stretch the next four holes, the golf world immediately began discussing the likelihood of Spieth becoming the youngest player to win the career Grand Slam. All he needed do, the experts said, was win this week at Quail Hollow on a course perfectly suited for his chief rival, Rory McIlroy, but not necessarily for Spieth.

It’s the kind of discussion that can allow pressure to mount in the deepest crevices of your mind. It can make you forget this is, after all, just another 18-hole hike through grass tall and short, sand, water and wind. Just another opportunity in what figures to be 25 more years of them.

Self-imposed pressure has consumed many golfers, some for a week and others, like David Duval, for much of their careers. They begin to see ghosts. Dreams become nightmares. The longer they play, the more they underachieve in the minds of those who look at golf as a succession of losses interspersed with occasional victory.

Jordan Spieth is feeling none of that. He understands what is at stake here and what is not, which is someone else’s imagined pursuit of a goal he never set for himself.

“There won’t be added expectations or pressure,” Spieth said yesterday. “I just don’t feel it. It’s not a burning desire to have to be the youngest to do something. . . . If I don’t win (the PGA) in the next 10 years, then maybe there’s added pressure. Hopefully we don’t have to have this conversation in 10 years.”

That was not the voice of a young man in denial. He understands every major comes with its own pressures. The point he was making is the difference between artificially created pressure and the kind born naturally by competition. The latter he’s happy to face, knowing he’s more likely to weather those storms if he can avoid internal ones of his own creation.

“This is one of the four pivotal weeks of the year that we focus on, so there will certainly be pressure,’’ Spieth said. “I’m simply stating there won’t be added expectations or pressure.

“I believe I’m going to have plenty of chances, and I’m young enough to believe in my abilities that it will happen at some point. . . . Would it be really cool? Absolutely. I don’t come to a tournament unless I plan on giving it my all in preparation to have a chance and to ultimately close (it) out.”

He did that at Royal Birkdale last month to win his third major at a moment when it looked like he might collapse on the final day as he had at the 2016 Masters, where blew a 5-shot lead with nine holes to play by shooting 41 on the back side, including a painful, unforgettable quadruple-bogey 7 at the par-3 12th.

Spieth admits he felt the shadow of that disaster after his wildly off-line drive on 13 at Birkdale resulted in a bogey and a loss of the lead. But instead of collapsing, he nearly drove the 14th green, starting a remarkable tear that will long be remembered by the same competitors he’s trying to face down this week.

“Guys kind of start knowing that you know how to win, and almost like Tiger, where people maybe feel like they can’t do it against Jordan,” Ernie Els, too often a Tiger victim, said of the psychological value of Spieth’s British Open rally.

When you have seven top-four finishes in 19 majors, with three wins and three seconds among them, you carry a certain aura difficult to describe and equally difficult to ignore. When Spieth is in the lead Sunday, the feeling of inevitability is palpable. After he canned a 60-foot bunker shot to win the Travelers two months ago in a playoff, beaten Daniel Berger gave him a sad thumbs-up and spoke of Spieth “doing Jordan things.”

If there is one player who seems insulated from such insecurities, it’s McIlroy. It would be a golf fan’s dream for the two of them to duel it out on Sunday at Quail Hollow, where McIlroy holds the low individual round, the tournament course record and two victories.

McIlroy has labeled Spieth the favorite in a bit of gamesmanship likely designed not to praise Caesar but to bury him. Spieth knows that, but McIlroy also acknowledged his rival has planted a seed of fear.

“He’s got that knack,’’ McIlroy said. “I call it resilience. He gets himself in positions in tournaments where you don’t think he can come back and he does. . . . Being able to do it under those circumstances, under the pressure, that’s what makes him so good.”

That and the images he’s left in his opponents’ minds. It’s a bit like the effect Tom Brady has on NFL foes. Even when they’re ahead, they hear the sound of a big train coming, and in their effort to rush to the safety of the station, they go off the rails.

McIlroy, winner of four majors and finally rounding into top form after a rib injury slowed him most of the year, possesses no such self-doubt. No one understands that better than Spieth.

“Rory is a guy who is very difficult if you come into a one-on-one type situation . . . especially in the majors because he’s not afraid to hit the shot,” Spieth said. “He plays so aggressively and that’s what you have to do to win.

“I think it’s cool we’ve both had the success we’ve had at such a young age. The coolest part is the question of what’s it going to be like the next 20, 25 years.”

The thought of a Palmer-Nicklaus rivalry revival excites not only fans but the players themselves, for it is the stuff of legends. Those legends have yet to be written, but the possibility is why Spieth was still on the range at 3:30 p.m. yesterday. He was there to win a tournament and outplay his competitors, not to become the youngest player with the Grand Slam.

“It was only two weeks ago that I was able to get the third leg . . . and I’m so happy (that) I can’t add pressure to this week,” Spieth said. “I’m free-rolling.

“When we get into these high-pressure situations and I get off-course a little bit, there’s no negativity that comes into play. . . . That kind of freedom allows me to take the fear away in any potential bad situation. I’ve already gone through what will probably and hopefully be the worst loss of my career in the most public eye that golf has.

“Now you get into the heat of things, certainly that changes things because I recognize where we are and what it would mean to win a major. Not anything else other than that. It’s not the fear of it not going well.”

That fear belongs to everyone else. Everyone except Rory McIlroy.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

080917roryspieth1.jpg

Photo by: 
GRAND POTENTIAL: Jordan Spieth (right) will need to beat Rory McIlroy and a loaded field to win the 99th PGA and complete a career grand slam.
Source: 
DTI
Insert Body: 
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Chris Stroud is 1 shot off PGA Championship lead because he just doesn’t care

0
0

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Chris Stroud would have played naked at the PGA Championship if he had to. And he nearly did have to.

Stroud had no intention of being at Quail Hollow this week for the 99th PGA Championship and who could blame him? In 289 career PGA starts, he had never won and long ago gave up on the notion that he might. Not long after conceding the obvious, he became a surprise last-minute addition to the field here after an upset victory at the Barracuda Championship last weekend in Reno, Nev., a tournament he was playing while holding only conditional status on tour.

After winning a three-man playoff against Springfield native Richy Werenski and Greg Owen, picking up his trophy and a check for $594,000, the scramble was on. Stroud had to cancel his planned return home to Houston for a week off after five straight tournament appearances, drove two hours to Sacramento, Calif., to board a flight to Atlanta and then a second flight to Charlotte, arriving around 2 a.m. Monday. Three days later he’s 1 shot off the lead at the year’s final major with an opening round of 3-under-par 68, a performance nearly as remarkable as his perseverance.

“All these years, I kept telling myself: ‘You’re going to win,’ ” the 13-year tour veteran recalled yesterday. “ ‘You’re great.’ Being super positive to myself. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it was putting a lot of pressure on myself I didn’t know.

“Then I gave up on it. About six months ago, I said I’ve had 10 years of good run out here. I’ve played well. I don’t care if I win anymore. I want to win, but I can’t let that be on my shoulders all the time. I’m not going to worry about it. I’m going to play the best I can and let’s just ride this out. I don’t know if I’m good enough to win or keep my card. Since I surrendered to that it’s like all of a sudden the weight was off my shoulders.

“All these people told me this for years, but I had to get to the bottom to figure it out. I literally said, ‘I’m done. I’m just going to do the best I can and have as much fun as I can.’ All of a sudden it falls in my lap.”

In 17 events this season before the Barracuda, he’d made just under a half million dollars and finished in the top three once and top five once before lightning finally struck in Reno. But winning when it’s so unexpected brings its own problems, and one of them was clothes. Or a lack of them.

“My wife had to bring me extra clothes but that’s a good problem to have,” he said. “I got 1,400 text messages, 55 voicemails and probably another 100 emails. I replied to every single one of them.

“I’m a big believer in that. I told a few guys after golf is gone and done for me, all you have left is people and the relationships you have. I care more about people than I do about my golf. I was raised that way. I’m grateful to have a chance to play on the tour and stay healthy.”

At a time when we hear so much of spoiled athletes seeming to take their good fortune for granted, Chris Stroud is a breath of fresh air. There was not a hint of whiny David Price in him. Not an ounce of diva or a whiff of self-absorption. Just a guy who uses the word “grateful” often and the words “I,” “me” and “disrespect” not once.

Stroud began playing golf at 5 with his father, Jimmy, guiding him. All his life he dreamed of being a PGA Tour player and that first happened in 2007. But no one dreams of being a scrambling tour player, someone always fighting for a position and too seldom cashing checks.

Stroud was an occasional PGA Tour player for a time, competing on satellite tours and going to Q-school to earn full-time status. He finally got it 11 years ago, but the best he could do was back-to-back seasons with four top-10 finishes. He made well over a million dollars both years, but with the cost of traveling to over 25 events a year and the other expenses that are part of the professional golfer’s life he wasn’t exactly living in high cotton. Nor was he living in the winner’s circle. Until last weekend.

Then yesterday there was his name, 1 shot behind tournament leader Thorbjorn Olesen and dead even with U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka. Jordan Spieth? Rory McIlroy? Phil Mickelson? They’re all looking up at him today.

Whether he can maintain his position by telling himself it’s no longer important if he does, remains to be seen.

“When I was 9 years old I knew I wanted to be on the PGA Tour. It was a dream. When I got out here my dream was to win. It’s at least a 20-year dream come true.”

That dream may not hold up for three more days here at Quail Hollow, but Chris Stroud will take it as it comes. After all, he finally got a victory, a spot in the PGA Championship near the top of the leaderboard and a two-year tour exemption, which means everything to a 35-year-old scuffler hanging on to the thin edge of the PGA Tour.

“I’m in (next January’s Tournament of Champions) at Kapalua,” he said, a broad, unbelieving grin on his face. “Obviously I’m playing well. Today was one of the easiest rounds. It’s a deep confidence that I have now.

“Any time I start talking about golf my caddie says, ‘We’re not going to talk about golf. Stay distracted.’ We talk about anything but golf. We talk about science. We talk about spirituality, baseball, football, Texans, Astros. Anything to keep my mind off golf.

“As soon as I hit it I’m talking about something else. If I say something he goes, ‘We don’t care about golf.’ It’s an experiment we tried last week and it absolutely worked.”

Which is why Chris Stroud is working today, 1 shot off the lead at the PGA Championship and not thinking a thing about it.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

d2a73d87e33b42278cf647266fd22070.jpg

Chris Stroud reacts after his putt on the 17th hole during the first round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at the Quail Hollow Club Thursday, Aug. 10, 2017, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
Source: 
DTI
Insert Body: 
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama within reach of lifting country’s major burden

0
0
Subtitle: 
Japan’s 1st in reach for Matsuyama

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In tournament golf, pressure is always around you. For some, there is the pressure of outside and outsized expectations. For others, there is the pressure of avoiding being on the outside looking in. For everyone, there is the most obvious pressure, the pressure to win.

But for Hideki Matsuyama the pressure is different and more outlandish. It is the pressure of carrying your nation’s hopes onto every tee box and green. So it was again yesterday for the 25-year-old who is trying to become the first player from Japan to win a major championship.

At every major for the past several years, his name would come up in almost every press conference as someone from the ever-expanding coterie of Japanese media following him like a flock of goslings behind the mother goose would ask player after player if they thought Matsuyama would soon win his first major.

The consensus was, and remains, that he is on the cusp, and that is where he finds himself again this afternoon when he tees off in the final round of the 99th PGA Championship only 1 shot behind the leader, Kevin Kisner, with whom he played yesterday along with Jason Day.

For Matsuyama, close is becoming a familiar place. He has finished inside the top 15 in all of the first three majors this year, including a tie for second at the U.S. Open. That is his best finish in a major and ties him with Isao Aoki for Japan’s best. Aoki finished second to Jack Nicklaus at the 1980 U.S. Open. Matsuyama also is tied with Tommy Nakajima, whose six top-10 finishes in majors was the best by a Japanese player until Matsuyama did it in barely four years on tour.

Unless disaster strikes, Matsuyama seems sure to pass Nakajima today, but can he surpass Aoki and become the first from his country to win a major championship? If work will get it done, Matsuyama finally might get that weight off his shoulders because he is widely considered to be the hardest-working golfer on tour.

Once considered a poor putter, Matsuyama spends more time on the putting green than anyone and is almost always the last to leave the range during tournament weeks. It is often a battle between him and Vijay Singh for who will hit the least visible shot from the range as darkness closes in.

Ceaseless practice certainly has paid off this year. He’s already won three times, has three seconds, shot a 61 last Sunday to win the WGC Bridgestone, is currently ranked No. 3 in the world and has piled up $4,193,954 in earnings this season. Yet one question always lingers:

“When will Hideki win a major?”

It hovers over him everywhere he goes, whether he’s tearing up the course or bogeying the 12th and 13th, as he did yesterday at Quail Hollow to slide out of a tie for the lead and temporarily fall 2 shots back. One could see the shoulders of several members of the Japanese press corps sag noticeably. One can only imagine what Matsuyami’s must have felt like.

Coping with pressure is the tour professional’s lot in life. It is a requirement of the job, and those who cannot stand up to it will not last. But there is pressure to win and pressure to keep one’s tour card that are normal and to be expected. What, then, can the weight be of carrying a country’s hopes around like an overstuffed golf bag?

Only Matusyama knows because he is the only one that is feeling it, but his 2-over round of 73 yesterday that pushed him out of the lead he’d shared when the day began might have been a result of knowing the question is always out there.

“When will Hideki win a major?”

“I don’t know if the other players should be nervous or not, but this is my first experience leading a major, or tied for the lead after 36 holes,” he said after completing the second round that had been suspended because of darkness and rain. “Being a new experience, maybe I’ll be a little nervous, but on the other hand, I’m looking forward to the weekend and seeing how I do.’’

For most of the third round, he was steady and unwavering. Through 11 holes, he was at even for the day and a solid 8-under as he, Kisner and journeyman Chris Stroud dueled for the top. Then, suddenly, came back-to-back bogeys at 12 and 13, several wayward swings suddenly creeping first into his mind and then down through his club to the ball itself.

Was it just a bad swing?

A miscalculation of distance or wind?

Or had he felt the silent tap on his shoulder and heard the whisper, “When will Hideki win a major?”

“It’s hard for me to speak to the pressure he could feel winning the first major for his country,” Jordan Spieth said yesterday. “I’ve got no background on handling a question like that, to be honest. I’m sure he feels a little added (pressure) because of that.

“With the way he’s been playing, his misses seem to be birdies right now. When you have it going, you have it going. He’s going to be tough to beat.”

He might be, but unlike the rest of the field, Hideki Matsuyama is not merely trying to beat his competitors and a tough golf course. He’s trying to beat a nation’s golfing history. Today, when he will try again to become the first from his country to win a major golf championship, in the back of his mind, he will hear that question all afternoon long.

“When will Hideki win a major?’’

Only Hideki Matsuyama has the answer, but the less often he asks himself that question, the greater chance it will be today.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

13hideki.jpg

Photo by: 
Hideki Matsuyama of Japan, hits his tee shot on the ninth hole during the third round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at the Quail Hollow Club Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

13hideki2.jpg

Photo by: 
OUT OF TROUBLE: Hideki Matsuyama hits from the pine straw on the ninth hole in yesterday’s third round of the PGA Championship.
Source: 
DTI
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Justin Thomas turns major choke at U.S. Open into PGA Championship

0
0

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — He’s not just “Jordan Spieth’s best bud” any more. Today, Justin Thomas is the guy with his name somewhere Spieth’s is not. Engraved on the Wanamaker Trophy.

When the week began, the central story of the 99th PGA Championship was whether Spieth would become the youngest golfer to win the career grand slam. After a remarkable finish won Spieth the Open Championship last month at Royal Birkdale, Thomas shared some libations sipped out of the Claret Jug with his boyhood friend as they flew home together on a private plane. Spieth was the winner of a major for the third time. Thomas was still just his friend from their amateur golfing days, albeit a friend with three PGA Tour wins this year and a failed chance at this year’s U.S. Open, when he fell apart on Sunday and bogeyed three of the first five holes playing in the final group to take himself out of contention.

Crushed by the weight of that disappointment, Thomas failed to make the cut in his next three outings, including the British, and you began to wonder if the weight of other’s expectations and his best friend’s success had begun to wear on the 24-year-old kid from Kentucky whose dad and granddad were both longtime club pros and had pointed him in this direction for as long as he could remember.

“Frustration probably isn’t the right word,” Thomas said yesterday when asked about those times. “Jealous definitely is. I mean, there’s no reason to hide it. I wanted to be doing that and I wasn’t.”

If you are as talented as Thomas, where you go from such disappointment is up to you. You can shrivel up inside broken dreams and let them bury you, or you can bow your neck, beat back the strongest field of the season and hoist a 27-pound trophy over your head after a half dozen guys all take runs at you, including world No. 3 Hideki Matsuyama, his playing partner yesterday.

After 12 holes, five names were bunched together, tied at the top of the leaderboard at 7-under. Thomas didn’t realize things were that close until he saw the scoreboard as he approached the 13th tee, a tricky 208-yard, par 3. Two swings later he had the lead.

“At the U.S. Open I learned I needed to be a little more patient to win,” Thomas said. “I felt I had the game to get it done. It was just whether I would.”

He did, shooting a 3-under-par 68 to win by 2 after Francesco Molinari, Patrick Reed, Louis Oosthuizen, Rickie Fowler and Matsuyama all fell by the wayside. So did poor Kevin Kisner, who led for three rounds but melted down under the Sunday heat, much as Thomas had at the Open at Erin Hills, shooting 3-over 74 to end 4 shots back.

Unknown Chris Stroud did the same, but that was more understandable. He had only gotten into the tournament by winning the previous weekend in Reno, Nev., his first victory in 290 Tour starts. For three days he hung in, starting the day 1 shot off the lead. But the clock struck midnight on his longshot dream long before sunset as a 5-over 76 that left him tied for ninth. It was a great finish for an 11-year journeyman, but no dream.

That belonged to Thomas, whose father Mike started him in golf when he was a kid in Louisville, pouring his hopes and his heart into his skinny offspring. Yesterday, Thomas delivered on all his promise on an afternoon filled with ups and downs and lead changes on an unyielding track at Quail Hollow that had the hardest four closing holes in golf.

Thomas survived them, birdieing 17 and then settling for a safety-first bogey on 18 when he was sitting on a 3-shot lead. But the big moments came on Nos. 1 and 10, the first when he made a touchy putt for bogey which, had he missed it, could have set off memories of his struggles at the U.S. Open.

“The putt on one was pretty big,” Thomas said. “Starting with a double there would have been pretty terrible. That would just have been such a bad double to start the day. When that putt went in it was definitely a relief.”

With his canoe righted before it took on water, Thomas soldiered on, hovering near the leaders and sometimes being one until on 10 his putt seemed headed for a birdie when it hung on the lip, unmoving for several seconds. Thomas stared in disbelief as the ball sat stock-still. As he turned to walk away a full 10 seconds later, the ball suddenly dropped in for birdie.

“I didn’t even see it go in,” he said. “I was looking at Jimmy (Johnson, his caddy) asking, ‘How does that not go in.’ I threw a little fit to see what would happen . . . then gravity took over.”

In a sense, so did Thomas.

His hopes mounting, Thomas calmly holed a chip for a birdie 2 on 13 from the back fringe on a hole only six golfers birdied all day. Of the six, Thomas was the only one feeling the kind of pressure that was by then mounting around him and after that chip the only one holding the tournament lead.

“That chip in on 13 was huge,” Thomas said. “That was a roar like I’d never experienced. That was the most berserk I ever went on a golf course. I’m kind of interested to see how I looked for that.”

Then came a birdie on 17 that was the crowning moment, putting him 3 up with one hole to play. It was a moment he’d first told his father would happen 19 years ago, a promise from a young boy who had no idea how hard it is to make such a promise come true.

“Like all kids he said he would (win a major) around 5 or 6,” Thomas’ father, Mike, recalled. “I said that too, but I sucked.”

The belly laugh of a proud parent followed that comment. Somewhere back in Zanesville, Ohio, Thomas’ grandfather, also a club pro, surely was laughing as well.

As Thomas tapped in his final putt, sitting on a hill not far away was Spieth, Fowler and his old Alabama teammate and roommate Bud Cauley, who had finished his round just as Thomas was teeing off yet stayed to see what might happen.

What they all thought might finally did. Justin Thomas was jealous no longer. He was a major champion, a rare man who lived out a boy’s dream and made good on a promise to his dad made so many years ago.

“I just had an unbelievable calmness all week,” Thomas said. “I really, truly felt like I was going to win.”

And so he did, his only real problem on the back nine coming as he walked toward the 17th green with a chance for birdie.

“I was eating a snack and I literally almost choked,” Thomas said. “Like I started coughing and I was like, am I really going to choke on 17?”

No he was not. Not by a longshot.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

14justin1.jpg

Photo by: 
THUMBS UP: Justin Thomas celebrates after he finishes his final round of the PGA Championship yesterday in Charlotte, N.C.
Source: 
DTI
Insert Body: 
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: We need more open minds in the NFL, and everywhere else

0
0

Apparently, before there was Colin Kaepernick kneeling down, there was Marshawn Lynch sitting down. And now that Colin Kaepernick is sitting out, there is still Marshawn Lynch sitting down. Or maybe not.

Last weekend, Lynch was one of several NFL players either refusing to stand or thrusting a fist upward during the playing of the national anthem as a form of silent protest. It is unclear if their protest is over our country’s troubled race relations, which again percolated to the surface this week in Charlottesville, Va., or over what clearly has become an NFL boycott of Kaepernick’s services. Probably it’s both, and understandably so.

As it turns out, sitting out the anthem is nothing new for Lynch, who according to published reports had done it sporadically during his years with the Seahawks, beginning long before Kaepernick’s statements. He never said why. Or much of anything else.

ALSO READ: Eagles’ Chris Long wraps arm around Malcolm Jenkins during national anthem

To those who suggest they don’t watch football to see political demonstrations, let us consult the dictionary. First, look up the word “liberty.” What you find is the following: “Power or right of doing, thinking, speaking according to choice.”

Then read the The Star-Spangled Banner’s lyrics, which say:

“Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?”

To a great extent players like Kaepernick, Lynch, Michael Bennett and others are asking the same question raised by Francis Scott Key. Does it still wave over the land of the free? In Kaepernick’s case, apparently not.

Today, after white supremacists terrorized the streets of Charlottesville, Va., and our president tried to whitewash what those alt-right groups stood for, it is a legitimate question. That pro football players are asking it is something they should be proud of, not ostracized for.

Chris Long, who was such a joy to be around last season with the Patriots, grew up in Charlottesville. He played his high school and college football there, and had a particularly moving response to what happened. He made a strong appeal to politicians like Trump that they call this Nazi fringe what it is: The enemy of our fathers and grandfathers who fought and died to repel its evils during World War II. It is not, he rightly suggested, “alt” anything, and is certainly not peaceful demonstration or “part of” the problem. The hate those people spew is the problem.

“I wish the rest of the world could be on a team,” Long said. “I know that sounds kind of cliche but we get to really be exposed to each other’s different cultures, different ways of life and the way we look at different things. And I think that’s the really cool thing about being on a team.”

The one person we’re not hearing from these days isn’t on a team anymore. Kaepernick has been silenced by the power of forced unemployment. There is a civics lesson there, too.

The decision of 32 NFL teams not to hire him is no longer a football one. It probably never was. Few can argue there are 120 better quarterbacks available than Kaepernick. Maybe 32 but 120? Come on.

The decision to put him on ice is a political and business one, even though there is little proof Kaepernick is bad for business. Truth is he isn’t. Few would stop watching football for long just because he was kneeling on their sideline. And even though he’s been unemployed for six months, his jersey sales rank 37th among NFL players. Somebody’s buying those jerseys. They’re called customers. They’re not buying Luke McCown’s or Jay Cutler’s jerseys in quite the same volume.

Filmmaker Spike Lee is planning a rally outside the NFL’s office on Park Avenue next Wednesday in support of Kaepernick. It would be more successful if held in front of Budweiser’s corporate headquarters. Or Verizon’s. Or Chevy’s. That’s the only thing the owners hear. Threaten their advertisers and Kaepernick will have a job pronto and not working at a concession stand.

What Lee is planning is not helpful. It’s a stunt more about his brand than Kaepernick’s future, and it won’t do a damn bit of good. In fact, it was already tried in May. Bennett had a far more powerful suggestion.

“It would take a white player to really get things changed,” Bennett said Wednesday during a broadcast interview, “because when somebody from the other side understands and they step up and they speak up about it . . . it would change the whole conversation. Because when you bring somebody who doesn’t have to be a part of (the) conversation making himself vulnerable in front of it, I think when that happens, things will really take a jump.”

Bennett raises a good point but his use of the term “from the other side” illustrates the depth of the problem. A white teammate is not necessarily “from the other side,” but as long as all sides see it that way nothing much will change.

“Over the weekend, so much violence, so much hate,” Bennett said, explaining he’d been thinking of sitting out the anthem for a while and Charlottesville was the final straw. “I just wanted to remember why we were American citizens, remember the freedom, the liberty and the equality, make sure we never forget that.

“I really wanted to honor that, the founding principles of what we’re all supposed to be. Charlottesville was so crazy, so much going on in the world now, it just made sense.”

Bennett believes some players are afraid to speak out — or sit down — and you can be sure he’s right. To be put on ice by an entire league has a chilling effect, but the truth is fear is the breeding ground for hate.

“He had to sacrifice,” Bennett said of Kaepernick. “He spoke up and dealt with a lot of things that were going on — from death threats, people not wanting him in the stadium, people hating him. I think a lot of players were scared of that. Then on top of that, players feeling like he was being blackballed, people were eventually scared. But just because he’s out of the league, we didn’t want to lose that message, pushing for liberty and equality for everybody.”

Part of the problem though, is some folks don’t seem to get the message. Take Browns head coach Hue Jackson for one. Jackson says he respects his players’ right to free speech but hopes none exercise it because the anthem means a lot to him. Good. It means a lot to most of us and one of the things it means is people died so others can protest when they feel the government is unresponsive to bigotry, racial intolerance and even boycotted quarterbacks.

“What we deal with, we try to deal with as a team in our closed environment,” Jackson said.

Aren’t closed environments the problem? Certainly closed minds are. Our fathers and grandfathers fought the Nazis who our president put his arms around this week, so they know that. What’s wrong with the rest of us?

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

2e2b6085a83943e8bd9e1cc311fffd9d.jpg

Oakland Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch (24) sits during the national anthem prior to the team's NFL preseason football game against the Arizona Cardinals, Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
Source: 
DTI
Insert Body: 
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 

Borges: Mayweather-McGregor at Mendon drive-in theater offers big view of fight

0
0

MENDON — Pay-per-view sales are trending toward a possible record five-million buys, and the measuring metrics on a number of other platforms argue that Saturday night’s Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor fight/boxing match/phenomenon/circus act will be big.

If that’s the case, Michael Andelman suggests, why not see it B-I-G?

That’s big as in a 130-foot, state-of-the-art, digital-HD B-I-G screen. For a fight this big, wouldn’t you want to see it B-I-G? The Phantom Gourmet certainly hopes so. Three years ago, Michael and brothers Dave and Dan bought the Mendon Twin Drive-In, one of only three drive-in theatres still in Massachusetts. They had big ideas. This one might be the biggest.

Creators and impresarios of the Phantom Gourmet radio and television franchise and sons of sports talk radio pioneer Eddie Andelman, the siblings have been showing first-run movies and concert simulcasts 160 nights a year since 2014. They’ve also been doing that successfully this year, but as Michael says, “Just not on this night.”

That’s because Aug. 26 is Fight Night in Mendon as well as in Las Vegas, where Mayweather-McGregor will square off to box, or whatever they end up doing, with enough people watching to produce more than $700 million in revenue. With pay-per-view sites, streaming video sites, online sites and get-it-on-your-phone sites available, why come out to Mendon?

“You can’t see this fight on a bigger screen with better sound anywhere else in the world,” Michael said. “When someone takes a shot to the face, it’s going to look and feel like it happened in your car!”

Considering the screen size, that’s a fair point. If you’re a fight fan, it’s also a fair selling point.

A debate raged for years regarding what would happen if a boxer faced a mixed martial artist in an actual boxing match. Until now, it never has really happened, certainly not where the pound-for-pound best boxer in the world agrees to what many believe will be a more than $100 million payday to take on MMA star McGregor, who has never boxed a day in his life but quickly became the face of the foot-to-the-face, rear-naked-choke-hold world of UFC.

None of what McGregor does best will be allowed, but one never knows what could happen under the stress of the moment, especially if Mayweather boxes him into embarrassment with his rapid movement and slick defensive skills. That’s part of the attraction. No one really knows what’s coming, which is why the Andelmans fought their own good fight to become the first drive-in theatre to carry a major pay-per-view boxing event on its B-I-G screen.

“When we first proposed it, we heard, ‘No, no, no,’ for about 30 days,” Michael Andelman said. “We’d done some special events with the guys holding the theatre rights. We’d done a Grateful Dead simulcast (on screen) through them that was the greatest draw they had. They still questioned the idea, but they know we’re great promoters and liked what we came up with.

“Live music, cigars, great food, Guinness on tap, all the preliminary fights, plus the town of Mendon is having a 350th birthday celebration fireworks display during the preliminary fights you can see from the drive-in. It’s the next-best venue to Las Vegas.

“Isn’t that better than 10 dudes sitting in a basement? We’ll have the fight atmosphere, and you’re sitting outside under the stars watching. One of our top priorities is to do things that are ground-breaking. We sold them on this idea. The way we see this is it’s a clash of two cultures, UFC and traditional boxing. It’s a happening. It’s an event. We figure to attract not only boxing fans and UFC fans but fistic pink hats, non-traditional fight fans.”

That’s the same crowd Showtime is looking for on pay-per-view, believing that is what will allow Mayweather-McGregor to challenge the all-time pay-per-view record of 4.6 million buys (and more than $437 million) set by Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao in a fight that was an artistic disappointment but a financial blockbuster.

“This is an event that transcends sports,” said Stephen Espinoza, executive vice president and general manager for Showtime Sports. “It’s captured the world’s attention. We’re seeing unprecedented interest in a number of different ways, surpassing what we never expected to surpass in the Mayweather-Pacquiao event. It’s truly an once-in-a-lifetime event, the two best combat sport fighters in the world facing off like we’ve never seen them before.”

There’s more than a little hype in Espinoza’s words, but that’s what B-I-G events are about. Some deliver, others don’t. The Brothers Andelman freely admit they can’t do anything to insure the two fighters will, but they say the experience at the Mendon Twin Drive-In surely will.

“It might be a great sporting event, or it may not, but it will be a unique event no matter what happens,” Andelman said. “No matter what, it’s a happening. There will be a spectacle side to it, like Michael Phelps swimming against a shark. Does he beat the shark or does he get eaten? Who wouldn’t watch that? Same thing here.”

If you like spectacles, the Mendon Twin Drive-In is the place to find it Saturday night. Unlike shelling out $100 to watch on home TV, you can see Mayweather-McGregor for $30 per person on the B-I-G screen in advance, $40 at the gate or a $60 VIP package that allows early entry (5 p.m. instead of 6). You’ll get music, food, drinks, cigars, preliminary bouts and the fireworks before the real fireworks hopefully begin. You’ll sit with boxing fans, UFC fans and fans who like a Phelps vs. shark type event. It surely won’t be just another night at the fights. Or the movies.

“The intrigue is you don’t know if it will be like last year’s Super Bowl or Al Capone’s vault (which came up empty), but the karma will be something,” Michael Andelman said.

Now if only Mayweather and McGregor do as well, you’ll have a B-I-G hit on a B-I-G, and cheaper, screen.

Author(s): 

Follow on Twitter @RonBorges

Organization

Boston Herald

Articles

Blog Posts

ScreenMayweather.jpg

Photo by: 
THE BIG PICTURE: When Conor McGregor (above) takes on Floyd Mayweather Jr. this weekend, fight fans can watch the spectacle at the Mendon Twin Drive-In.

082117mcgregor.jpg

Photo by: 
Conor McGregor trains during a media workout Friday, Aug. 11, 2017, in Las Vegas. McGregor is scheduled to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a boxing match Aug. 26 in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

082117mcgregor2.jpg

Photo by: 
THE BIG PICTURE: When Conor McGregor (above) takes on Floyd Mayweather Jr. this weekend, fight fans can watch the spectacle at the Mendon Twin Drive-In.
Source: 
DTI
Insert Body: 
Freely Available: 
Disable AP title update: 
Viewing all 288 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images