Mark Kreidler
In so many words.

(Note: This piece is posted at ESPN.com. Link follows the column. /mark)

Great dramedy lately from Victor Conte, the former Balco baddie who is inexorably being re-cast as a “noted authority” on all things cheatable in sports.  Really?  I thought he was the guy who engineered some of the most audacious athletic rip-offs of the past half-century.

But when Conte speaks to such things as the efficacy of a test designed to stop the short-cutters, the world sits up on its hind legs and takes notice.  And when Conte stops just this side of telling the purveyors of that blood test for Human Growth Hormone that their father was a hamster and their mother smelt of elderberries … well, you get the idea.

Conte was everywhere this week, laying waste to the notion that a single positive outcome – in this case, of a British rugby player – could possibly validate the science behind the test that both the NFL and Major League Baseball quickly announced they would closely study and consider implementing.  And in interview after interview, the man did not mince words.

“You’ve caught less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the athletes you’ve tested,” Conte told the Los Angeles Times at one point.  “Do you truly believe that’s the amount of total users out there?”

Well, no, now that you mention it.  In fact, the very test that authorities used to pop poor Brit Terry Newton has been in play for six years already and been imposed upon hundreds of athletes (including Olympians at Athens, Beijing and Vancouver) without once coming up with an official positive result.  Confidence is not high.

For that reason, among others, Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is already reported to be backing off his initial enthusiasm for the blood test even at the minor-league level, where there is no union protection to ward it off.

And for that reason, among many, many, MANY others, you may expect the Major League Baseball Players Association to stand firm against this one.  As little fun as it may be to line up shoulder to shoulder alongside the Victor Contes of the world, this is one of those necessary moments.

For years, baseball’s union was run by a man, Don Fehr, who was respected and reviled in roughly equal measure.  Fehr and his top assistant, Gene Orza, struck some observers as the sort of water-muddying interlopers who would always stand between the sport and a more placid future – say, at just about every negotiated turn.

But on matters such as drug testing, Fehr always had the right idea.  Before he would even consider asking his union members to agree to urinate in a cup, he wanted to know why it was necessary, what it was meant to accomplish, who wanted it done, who would protect the chain of events, and how anyone could be truly sure about the results.  Fehr was constantly and appropriately skeptical of any claim of testing validity that came from the person who was trying to sell something.  And he could get very lawyerly and aggressive on the subject of individual rights.

You have to hope that Fehr’s successor, Michael Weiner, will remain just as vigilant about – and resistant to – the kind of knee-jerking we’ve seen this week, with poobahs rushing in to declare victory in the HGH wars and insisting the test be put in place here.  There may yet be enough science compiled to persuade that the HGH test really works, but you sure can’t prove it by what we’ve seen so far.

Newton’s positive outcome defeated the odds.  For one thing, as the MLBPA explained in its own statement, HGH is said to clear the human system in 18 to 36 hours, meaning you’ve really got to slip that blood test through a small window of opportunity to catch a thief.  For another, most HGH users who are willing to speak on the subject have said they do their cheating out of competition.  In other words, if Sluggo Magee wants to beef up in the off-season, he’s free to use, unless his union agrees to some type of year-round testing.

Beyond that, “This rugby player did not challenge the scientific validity of this positive HGH blood test in any way,” Conte told the New York Daily News.  (I told you: The man made the media rounds this week.)  “If an MLB or NFL player ever had a positive HGH blood test, there would be a team of defense lawyers to challenge every step of the scientific as well as legal processes.”

Not only is that true, it doesn’t come close to being the bad news.  As much as sports leagues say they want clean athletes (and multi-level marketable stars), jumping in with a questionable test and trying to force it into the rotation is no way to go.

One of the reasons HGH has been so popular among sports cheats is that it is, in fact, really difficult to test for – but that isn’t baseball’s or football’s problem.  One thing Don Fehr did exceptionally well, during his exceptional run as the head of the baseball union, was refuse to yield to hysteria.  A little of that would go a long way here.

Link to ESPN.com page: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?id=4948218

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(Note: This piece appears currently at ESPN.com. A link to the site can be found below. — mark)

No need to feel pity or outrage for Tom Cable despite the terminally weird image of Cable walking around the Senior Bowl this week with no portfolio, not so much as a you-da-man for next season from the Raiders’ front office.  After all, as of this writing, Cable is still getting paid by Al Davis despite:

(a) popping an assistant coach during a pre-season exchange;

(b) going 5-11 with a Raiders team that produced 17 offensive touchdowns in 16 games;

(c) having his ugly past domestic issues splayed about the local tabloids for grins and giggles;

 and, far most egregiously,

(d) saying JaMarcus Russell stinks.

Well, Cable didn’t say that.  He mostly only thought it last season, as Russell danced along to a 50.0 quarterback rating and 11 interceptions against three touchdown passes.  But it was still widely seen as a firing offense in the Wonderful World of Al when Cable, in a rash burst of honesty, replied to a question by saying “you know that we would have” made the playoffs with even an average performance at the quarterback position.

That’s a direct shot at Russell, to whom Davis not only guaranteed a franchise-crippling amount of money as a No. 1 draft bust but, however incomprehensibly, remains committed despite what everybody saw out there in 2009.

Yet several weeks beyond Cable’s verbal hara-kiri, nothin’.  Cable isn’t technically the head coach for next year yet, but he hasn’t been fired, either.  Davis has added assistants – Mike Waufle on the defensive line, Hue Jackson to coordinate the offense – without much in the way of Cable-grams.  (As Jackson noted, he spoke almost exclusively with Davis, not Cable, during his interview process.)  Yet there is Cable, in Mobile, for some reason or other.  And the thinking now is that Davis may well retain the man so long as Cable isn’t, you know … calling any plays or getting in the way of anything important.

Maybe Davis is happy with the job Cable did under the circumstances.  Maybe Al, always a players-first owner, took note of the support Cable enjoys within the locker room.  Perhaps the old man doesn’t want to pay Cable money for nothing, and can’t figure out how to enforce the “for cause” part of a firing procedure.  Maybe Davis is simply playing the role of the contrarian, which rumor has it he invented back in the day.

This just in: It won’t get better.  Not for the Raiders.  Not for Cable.  And certainly not for the dwindling Oakland fan base, which is bestowing new meaning upon the sporting term “hard-core.”

If you’re waiting for Al Davis to change his way of doing business, here’s hoping you packed a lunch.  While Davis in his dotage has struck some observers as enigmatic, the larger truth is that he’s a fairly linear football guy.  No matter what the realities of the era that surrounds him, Al likes certain things to almost the precise extent he always did.

Davis favors, for example, the downfield pass and the quarterback who can throw it, which explains why a guy like Russell could parlay a nice Sugar Bowl performance and some really cool pre-draft tosses from his knees into a $61 million payday ($32 million guaranteed, for those crying at home).  Davis favors is the “athletic” receiver as opposed to the truly professional one, which explains Darius Heyward-Bay, another draft-day Titanic.

And, very notably, Davis favors the order of command.  That’s the one with Al up top and everybody – and I do mean everybody – well below the observation deck.

A friend recently committed unintentional humor when he asked if there were a way for the Raiders to “humanely” move Davis out of his role as the club’s top executive, as if Al were a stray pet in need of a new start.  In a word: nope.  There is no informed reading of the situation that would lead anyone to conclude Davis is prepared to surrender control of his franchise.  If seven straight seasons with 11 or more defeats hasn’t done it, nothing will.

All of which brings us back to Tom Cable, the man who might have thought he turned a corner with Davis during the Sahara march of 2009 when he finally persuaded the owner to allow him to bench JaMarcus Russell.  The move was nearly outright applauded in the Raiders’ locker room, where teammates had long since concluded Russell wasn’t ever going to be the guy.  Russell’s replacement, Bruce Gradkowski, was hailed as a conquering hero for coming to work prepared.  It was a giddy minute or two.

Comes now the winter, and Al Davis’s primary move has been to hire a man, Hue Jackson, who – after his many conversations with Davis – speaks enthusiastically of getting Russell “playing the way we all wish that he can perform.”  In other words, it’s back to Square One, with JaMarcus at the helm – just as Al Davis would have it, which is the same thing as saying it will be done.

Memo to Cable, for 2010 and beyond: When you cash the checks, it means you forfeit the right to act surprised.

ESPN.com story link: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=kreidler/100128

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Wondering just now about separate but connected questions:

1.)    Why anyone feels compelled, on the subject of Mark McGwire, to “give the man credit” for finally acknowledging his obvious, ongoing, career-enhancing, career-wrecking abuse of performance enhancing drugs; and

2.)    Whether Barry Bonds understands he’s just been placed on the clock.

I’ll go ahead and guess the answer on Bonds, because it certainly goes to the heart of the man – and perhaps because it delineates his character from McGwire’s, too.  Under almost no circumstances can you expect Barry Bonds to come clean.  It’s just not him.

Mark McGwire, though – that’s different.  From the start of the steroid talk, I understood McGwire to be almost catastrophically humiliated by his own actions and by getting found out.  That humiliation seemed to inform his every action, from McGwire’s widely mocked ducking of Congressional questions in 2005 to his retirement into an utterly private post-baseball life, where no such questions were forthcoming.

McGwire is talking now for one reason: His friend and baseball mentor, Tony La Russa, convinced McGwire to return to the baseball spotlight as a coach, and La Russa helped his former player understand that he had to come clean in order to be forgiven (or, more significantly, to forgive himself).  Sounds highfalutin’, I know, but that’s the La Russa way.

I have a hard time giving McGwire credit for this, because he had to be talked into it.  At any rate, he’s merely acknowledging what those in the sport have long since dismissed as yesterday’s news.  His PED use was simply a given, as were Sosa’s and Bonds’s.  It helped McGwire reach historic heights, and it almost certainly contributed to his awful demise as a competitive athlete.

If it brings the man peace, I’m all for it.  But there can be no pats on the back for a person who had so many, many chances over the past several years to positively influence kids by admitting his mistakes, but declined.  Wish him well, but, please, no hero’s welcome.

(By the way: Forget the Hall of Fame.  Mac’s credential for being on the ballot was his career home-run total, which we now know to be significantly achieved via under-the-table, back-room cheating.  That doesn’t make McGwire unique, but it does bust his HOF balloon, no matter how quickly anyone rushes in to forgive him.)

Still, his admission puts McGwire a long step ahead of Bonds.  And this is not a distance you should expect to be closed anytime soon.

When McGwire said Monday that he wished he hadn’t played in the steroid era, it was a thought to hang on to.  You can understand: McGwire, who probably thinks of himself as a very different person than Bonds or Sosa or A-Rod or even Jason Giambi, nevertheless is destined to be grouped with those men when people discuss the drug-cheat years in the sport.

But where McGwire was shamed into silence, Bonds has taken a different tack, especially privately.  His take, boiled down to its essence, has always been, “I gave you people a show.  Isn’t that what you wanted?”  This image of Bonds as a defiant one is grounded in fact and observation, not demonization.  Defiance is the man when it comes to Bonds and his baseball life.  He’s not going to apologize for trying to be the best in the game.

For that reason among many others, some of them legal, the wait for a come-clean moment from Bonds is bound to be a long one.  If you’re into confessionals, Mark McGwire will have to do for a while.  Hope it’s enough to sustain.

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You have to love the timing: In the same week that Six Good Innings is released in paperback, the town in which the story is set starts making Little League news again.

Toms River, New Jersey, is a place that takes its Little League seriously.  Very seriously.  Scare-your-children seriously.  The Toms River teams have gone to the LL World Series in Williamsport just enough times over the years for the townsfolk to assume they’re always going to produce killer ballplayers from 12-year-old DNA, and it is that pressure – to win it all and add to the legacy – that I wanted to examine when I spent the summer of 2007 there.

The result is Six Good Innings, a real-time account of what it feels like to be in sixth or seventh grade and expected to peak physically … on behalf of your town.  I met great kids, well-meaning parents and honorable coaches, but the overall pressure – from wherever it comes – was still with my team on every step of its journey.  It’s a burden I wouldn’t wish on my own children, and yet my book is very much a story of how gracefully those players existed in their unique space in the world – in a baseball factory town.

This week, with the book’s release in paperback (Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Good-Innings-Became-Little/dp/0061473588/ref=ed_oe_p), I checked in on the latest edition of the Toms River Little League All-Stars – and sure enough, they’ve won their first three games in district competition.  Are they on their way to Williamsport once again?  The odds against it are incredibly long, but don’t tell anyone in Toms River about it.  They’re already dreaming.  After all, Little League championships are what they do.

Visit our website, www.markkreidler.com, for more information on Six Good Innings, and enjoy a great summertime read about the joys, vexations and – sure – multiple-flavored snow-cones that make Little League the treasure it is.  Then brace yourself for the usual ESPN onslaught of kid baseball on television.  Beginning a few weeks from now, you won’t be able to avoid it.

Thanks to all for the wonderful feedback on my ESPN.com tribute to Wayman Tisdale, the former Oklahoma and NBA star who passed away last week.  The story link is here: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?columnist=kreidler_mark&id=4170151

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Pete Rose says he’d give Alex Rodriguez a second chance, because, hey, good guys do bad things, right?  Or at least things that other people see as bad.

You know: People who don’t get it.  Who never played the game.  Who aren’t jocks.

My favorite snippet from Rose’s radio interview with Dan Patrick is his assertion that using steroids is a worse transgression than betting on your own team to win, as he admits he did.  I love the passage for the beautiful economy of Rose’s lies.

Pete is counting on you to be either too lazy or too young to get to the truth, which is that he was a degenerate gambler willing to bet on anything from a pro game to which of those spiders was going to get to the top of the fence-post first.  He bet on all sports.  He bet on baseball.  He bet on the Cincinnati team he was managing, about which he had the ultimate insider’s advantage – everything there was to know about his players’ injury situations, states of mind, etc.

If you choose to believe that Rose only bet on his team to win (according to Pete, he loved his scrappy Reds so much that he would only bet that way) then, by all means, enjoy yourself.  Just don’t confuse that with chivalry.

Rose denied all of his gambling issues until he got ready to write a book and profit from the admission.  He then acknowledged most of the allegations, but adamantly denied betting on baseball.  For that admission, he waited nearly another 15 years, until it was time to write another money-maker.  A hit on the talk-show circuit, a sure thing at autograph-whore sessions, Pete Rose became one of the most accomplished liars in American sporting history – not long after concluding his career as one of the greatest players ever.

In so doing, Pete created the template that almost every disgraced athlete has used since then: deny, deny, deny, to the point that the people who love you and want to believe you actually start doubting the mountains of evidence against you.  And when push comes to shove, at least find a way to make a buck off the sleazy truth.

So, yes, I suppose it’s fair to say that Rose won’t be getting my Hall of Fame vote if he’s ever reinstated to the game.  (That sound in the background, you hope, is A-Rod wincing at the thought of being “endorsed” by the most notorious gambler in baseball since the Black Sox scandal.)

See the Dowd Report at http://www.dowdreport.com/.

News summary of Rose’s radio appearance May 14: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4166083

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It feels foolish, doesn’t it?  It feels foolish to even venture a guess anymore about who’s using in sports and who isn’t.  It’s a sucker’s bet every time, trying to find the clean stars.  Manny Ramirez isn’t a shock, exactly, but he is one more guy you have to cross off the list.  Just ludicrously careless.

Still, I’m a parent, and parents don’t give up so easily.  They know the truth in a way that makes it unavoidable: Their children love, love, love having sports heroes.  It’s got nothing to do with what Charles Barkley thinks about being a role model.  He is one.  LeBron is one.  Peyton is one.  Manny is one.  And every time one of them goes off the rails, he ruins something for a kid in a way that leaves a deep, lasting impression.

It really is that simple.

So baseball is loaded with losers and louts, but you knew that.  The more interesting thing, by far, is figuring out where you’re still willing to go with your hopes on behalf of your kids, the ones who still love pro athletes and want to believe in them.

In the wake of Manny’s news, I thought immediately about Derek Jeter, as follows: Please be clean.  (He’s at the top of one of my sons’ lists, with David Wright at the top of the other’s.)  And I decided that Jeter almost certainly is, that it’s going to be okay.  He’s a safe hero, comparatively.  A sucker’s bet, I know, but we’ve all got to invest hope in something.

Herewith, a quick, shoddily researched but heartfelt list of bona fide winners who I think my two baseball-playing, baseball-loving sons can believe in:

• Derek Jeter.  Punch-and-Judy hitting never looked so appealing.
• Albert Pujols.  Says he’s clean – and, I admit, I’m begging to believe him.
• Evan Longoria.  Nice, short-to-it-and-long-through-it swing.  Natural power.
• Justin Morneau.  Gotta be straight-up talent.  Just got to.
• Adrian Gonzalez.  Gold Glove flexibility; good but not unbelievable power.
• Troy Tulowitzki.  So fun to watch in the field.
• David Eckstein.  I mean, come on.  Gives hope to little kids everywhere.
• Jason Bay.  For the lovely irony of it.
• Josh Hamilton.  Already admitted everything, and no steroids on the list.
• Ichiro Suzuki.  Best pure hitter of his era.

 Now go out there and don’t make me look stupid.

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You knew that, sooner or later, the Alex Rodriguez story would assume its full dimensions of ugliness.  And so it has come to pass: The latest cribbed info from SI reporter Selena Roberts’ upcoming A-Rod book lays out his behavior in sickening detail.

There’s just no way around it, Yankees fans: A-Rod only tips 15 percent at restaurants.

Oh, the steroid use?  Covered and covered.  Roberts’ book extends A-Rod’s roid infatuation back to high school, but at this point that certainly can’t be considered a surprise.  She also accuses Rodriguez of signaling upcoming pitches to opposing batters in the late stages of blowout games, allowing them to pad their batting averages in the hopes that they’ll return the favor down the road.  Not precisely breaking news in the game of baseball.

But A-Rod at only 15 percent?  That’s criminal, right?  As Charles Grodin told Robert DeNiro in Midnight Run, “These people depend on tips for a living!”  And at Hooters, A-Rod was known as the lousy 15 percent guy.  He comes off as absurdly cheap, cheap in a way that is disproportionate to his wealth.  (As opposed to absurdly low-rent, for being in Hooters in the first place.)

Not sure what the Hooters “servers” feel would be appropriate – do they really want a percent, or are they simply hoping A-Rod is as stupid with his money as most pro athletes and leaves a thousand-dollar tip for a few drinks and a lot of wiggle?  For that matter, if 15 percent is cheap, have we ascended to a point at which a 20 percent tip is considered the norm, for normal (i.e. perfectly ordinary) service?

Does a waiter get 15 percent for showing up to work that night, and 20 percent or more if he’s anything more than banal?  Most of us struggle with the tip amount most of the time.  If they’re changing the rules on me in the middle of a recession, I’m hosed.  I already over-tip for fear of looking cheap … to a total stranger.

Earth to server: I depend on money for a living, too.

No sympathy for A-Rod here, but killing a guy over a 15 percent tip?  Now you’re opening up a national conversation that we can all get into.

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Story link: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/04/29/2009-04-29_arod_on_roids_for_years_new_book_claims_juiced_with_yanks__even_as_a_teen_source.html

Allow me to quote Joe Maloof about the search for the next head coach of the Sacramento Kings: “Whatever Geoff thinks.”

You sure about that, Joe?

Are you sure you mean that Geoff Petrie will actually be unshackled to do his job as GM?  Or do you only mean those words this week, in the first flush, before Petrie begins edging closer to choosing a head coach who isn’t on your personal list of “great guys” to whom you’d like to cut a check?

Given how obviously the Maloofs have wanted to see the franchise succeed over the years, it is all the more remarkable how often Joe, Gavin and the whole nutty crew have sabotaged the process.  They ran off Rick Adelman, their first and most original sin, for the apparent shortcoming of not being sociable enough.  (I’m not exaggerating: Joe Maloof told me at one point that he wanted a coach who would win those games on the court and then be a constant presence in the community.  How’s that workin’ out for ya?)

They overruled Petrie’s instincts to choose Eric Musselman, who wowed the family at his interview with a PowerPoint presentation and personally embossed leather folders for each Maloof.  They overruled Petrie to select Reggie Theus, who’d buddied up to them while coaching at New Mexico State.  (No such judgment on Kenny Natt, a decent guy who was asked to warm the seat this season after Theus went poof.)

They made loud noises about their cherished close friend John Whisenant, former coach of the WNBA’s Monarchs.  After all, Whiz is trusted by Joe and Gavin.  In a word: wow.

While other people wonder whether Petrie should be kept around, I’m constantly amazed that he hasn’t blown town by now.  The Kings only got Petrie in the first place, remember, because Portland owner Paul Allen meddled in Petrie’s business there and mucked up the front office to the point that he became frustrated and left.  The ensuing years showed just what magnitude of mistake that was, as Allen’s guys trashed the Blazers and Petrie built a powerhouse at Arco Arena.

Now Joe Maloof says Petrie will be free to hire the coach he wants – subject to ownership review, of course.  As Petrie begins fleshing out a candidate list that is sure to be long on proven NBA track record, short on glitz and likely not cheap, we’ll see whether the Maloofs mean what their franchise-owning son is saying.

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There’s a great unintentional understatement about John Madden in the Associated Press story announcing Madden’s retirement from broadcasting today – kind of funny, considering that “Madden” and “understatement” almost never go together.

But at one point, the story intones, “Madden is reluctant to fly, and often traveled to games in a specially equipped bus.”

Well, no, not really.  The truth: Madden is a Class A claustrophobic who absolutely refuses to fly, hasn’t flown in a plane in 30 years, and for decades has always traveled to games in a specially equipped bus.  And he’ll tell anybody who asks.

It may sound nit-picky, but it’s worth noting.  Madden’s complete acceptance of who he was, and his willingness to share that with anyone and everyone, is one reason he ultimately became so beloved as a broadcaster.  Madden was, above all, himself – and never more human than when discussing his refusal to get on a plane.

He never shied from describing the events of 1979, when, after a decade of white-knuckle flights as the Raiders’ head coach, he suffered what he described as his “third full-blown panic attack” while on a trip during his first year as a broadcaster.  He swore that if he got through that flight in one piece, he’d never get on another plane in his life.  He has kept that vow.

Some trace Madden’s visceral reaction to a terrible airplane accident in 1960 that took the lives of several Cal Poly San Luis Obispo football players and staff members.  It was a flight that Madden, a Cal Poly graduate assistant at the time, was initially supposed to be on.  Instead, he stayed behind to coach a JV game.

Whatever its emotional roots, Madden never made a secret of his claustrophobia when it came to airplanes (and anyone who similarly saw his reluctance at entering an elevator can believe it).  He spoke openly.  He didn’t let it prevent him from having an incredible second career, but he also didn’t sugar-coat his own fears – and that openness was consistent with the way Madden came across in the broadcast booth.  For better or worse, he always sounded like who he was, and people were drawn to it – charmed by it, mostly – for 30 years.

Story link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/04/16/sports/s075301D99.DTL

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