In The Middle Innings

So little excitement in the sports world. Pre-season basketball. The NHL has resumed regular season play, with the gems now nationally televised on ESPN and TNT. The NFL chugs along with its season, the Jets and Giants remaining as one win teams. The vaunted Alabama program took a big hit last Saturday night, when Texas A&M corralled the Tide. And MLB has reached the ALCS and NLCS.

Leave it to Jon Gruden, now the ex-Head Coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, to become embroiled in controversy which cost him his job. Somehow, emails were obtained from 10 years ago, when Gruden was an analyst for ESPN on its Monday Night Football program. They were directed towards the head of the NFLPA, DeMaurice Smith. 

Those emails weren’t pretty. They were racist and nasty. They were out of line. At any time.

There were those who came to Gruden’s defense, arguing how non-racist he was. We’ve seen, in the past few years, all sorts of illogical, pretzel-twisting defenses for the inane and rude arguments of others. So that kind of character defense could have been expected. 

Then there were the homophobic emails which emerged later in the week. What was unacceptable at first became a pattern of intolerance by Gruden which left no safe haven for him. 

I have never liked Jon Gruden. I thought he was arrogant and cocky. He made Bill Belichick likable, and Bill is as much a curmudgeon as can be. The constant smirk on Gruden’s face showed an arrogance for others, and I didn’t ever feel sincerity originating from him.

Sure, it can be argued that he’s a football coach and football coaches know only one thing—football. That is so wrong, because a football coach is a manager of men, and while he is determined t make them a team, teams are the composite of many identities deciding to work for the common whole. 

It was once thought that to make a team function as a unit, individual egos must, many times, be suppressed for the good of all. Except that anachronistic view has changed in the past few years. Players have their own identities and backgrounds. 

A smart coach knows how to navigate each of these individuals and to earn their trust. A smart coach knows when to talk and when not to talk. 

To me, Jon Gruden was not a smart coach. For all of his supposed expertise in X’s and O’s, he was a failure in dealing with others who disagreed with his vision of the world. His omnipotence was his everything, and it was his undoing. 

Racial sensitivity isn’t born of the politics of now. It didn’t come about from the George Floyd murder. 

No, racial sensitivity started with the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s—before Gruden’s time. Jon Gruden was born in 1963, to a father who was a football lifer. Which became his life and was evidently devoid of the teachings of culture and sensitivity in high school in South Bend, Indiana (his father worked for Dan Devine, then the head coach at Notre Dame) or in college first at Muskingum College then at the University of Dayton where he was a seldom-used back QB. 

The apologists say he did nothing wrong. Nothing wrong? Tell that to the communities he betrayed. 

How could he retain his credibility under these circumstances? How could any young man place his faith and trust in a man who has demonstrated an ability to be nasty and anti-social in all of the wrong ways? 

His behavior in the 10 years since the unearthing of the emails in the investigation of sexually inappropriate behavior inside of the Washington Football Team does not matter. I don’t care one iota about his “rehabilitation” since then. More than likely, there are plenty of other misguided emails in a whole host of other locales which would confirm who Jon Gruden really is.

Whether he resigned or was fired does not matter. The fact that Jon Gruden and his snarky demeanor and private thoughts of insensitivity and arrogance are gone from the NFL is what matters. Intolerance is way more important than protecting a football coach of some renown. I only hope, for Gruden’s sake, that he learns from this humbling experience and shows the world by his actions that he has really changed.  

As I alluded, these emails came from the investigation into the horrific culture within the Washington Football Team. In that instance, owner Daniel Snyder was given a slap on the wrist. He was suspended, his wife ran the team and the NFL fined WFT.

Unlike in other instances, most notably when Carolina owner Jerry Richardson was summarily removed as owner of the Carolina Panthers for his unseemly behavior or when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver removed Donald Sterling of the Clippers for his sexual misdeeds amidst a revolt of the NBA players, accountability seems to be nil.

At least in the Richardson probe, there was a written report. Nothing like that in the WFT investigation. Given the fact that these emails about Gruden surfaced in the 650,000 emails reviewed, and given the fact that the WFT is still in turmoil as the F.B.I. raided the team’s Virginia facility and the head athletic trainer is now on leave, it is imperative that another, more microscopic examination of the team must be conducted concurrently by the NFL. 

DeMaurice Smith isn’t just posturing when he asked for release of the emails to the public. What other ticking time bombs are secreted within the obviously sordid culture within the WFT franchise, its ownership and its personnel? 

This kind of institutional malaise makes the New England Patriots look squeaky clean in comparison. And they’re not. One hopes, for the moral integrity of the NFL or, for that matter, professional sports, that there aren’t more of these smoking guns. 

Speaking of bad teams, the Houston Astros entertain the surprising Boston Red Sox in the A.L.C.S. This is Houston’s fifth straight appearance, making them one of three teams to accomplish that feat. But, as we all know, the Astros are the most tainted team in baseball after the whole sign-stealing misadventure which led to the manager and genera manager getting fired, Carlos Beltran losing his chance to manage the Mets and the Red Sox removing Alex Cora as manager for a year. 

Well, Cora is back as the Boston skipper and in an instance of baseball irony, he leads his team against his former team. He was the alleged architect of the scheme, and for his penance, he has a chance to defeat the players he once coached and lead his Boston club into a World Series matchup with either the Dodgers or Braves. 

I’ve read and heard the stories about the abuse heaped upon the Astros players since the scandal broke. How Cora felt the hurt of his former team. 

Well, they brought it upon themselves. They deserve the scorn that each one received for participating in such inappropriate behavior. 

I saw one headline calling this series “An Awkward ALCS.” The blame goes to MLB for not further punishing the Astros players. Or those in management. Like Alex Cora. Carlos Beltran is paying a greater price for perhaps a lesser, if not equal, role. It is their black eye and the ratings will either support the fact that people don’t care to watch or they are watching rooting for both teams to fail (which is, of course impossible). 

Yet we love calamity. NASCAR thrives over crashes and fights among drivers and crews. Nothing sells better than the drama of reality TV.

Yes, I will watch this series and the companion N.L.C.S. series. I am a baseball fan and besides, the Jets are in their bye week, so I am rid of that distraction for one week. I just cannot root for either team—just like I found it hard to root for either Tampa Bay or the Red Sox in the A.L.D.S., which was a great triumph of the underdog downing the giant—Tampa Bay’s Achilles heel proved to be its pitching, which was supposedly the best in the American League. 

Such is baseball life when you are a Yankees fan and teams you hate seem to be winning while your team remains on the sidelines and you wonder what additional moves are going to ensue after the firing of the hitting coach and third base coach Phil Nevin for his botched move of sending Aaron Judge home to be tagged out on a perfect relay to squash a rally in the Wild Card game. Somebody had to be the scapegoat for that move. 

NewYork has a ton of decisions to make. First is whether manager Aaron Boone returns. Which is likely, although there was a surprise firing of the Cardinals skipper, Mike Shildt over “philosophical differences.” That might complicate things a bit, although I warn the Yankees to look at history—firing Yogi Berra and replacing him with Cardinals manager Johnny Keane in 1965 led to the dark times for the franchise. 

In a addition to filling the coaching vacancies, there are issues about signing Judge to a long-term deal; what to do with Gary Sanchez in his arbitration year; the headaches that Gleyber Torres creates; whether to sign Anthony Rizzo to a long-term deal; what to do about the woefully-underperforming Joey Gallo; how to fill the shortstop hole; supplementing the pitching; trading Luke Voit, etc. The list seems to be endless. 

Kudos to the Dodgers and Giants for a thrilling N.L.D.S. It took to the very last pitch by fill-in reliever Max Scherzer, a blown called third strike on a check swing, to give the Dodgers the win. I don’t know if the LAD-Atlanta series will equal that series in roller coaster thrills. Atlanta is a very fine team—even without two of their very young and very talented stars on the shelf. Atlanta lost to LAD last year in a a highly competitive N.L.C.S. last season, so it is not so clearcut which team will emerge. 

There are stars galore in this N.L.C.S. Freddie Freeman of the Braves and Mookie Betts of the Dodgers. Pitchers Scherzer and Walker Buehler for LAD and Max Fried for ATL. 

It will be interesting to see which teams emerge. From a historical standpoint, the Braves returning to Boston, where the franchise originated, would be nice. The Boston Braves actually played their home games in the 1914 World Series, won by sweeping the heavily-favored A.L. champion Philadelphia A’s—the first sweep in World Series history, at Fenway Park , the home home of the Boston Red Sox.

Of course, revenge could be sweet if the Dodgers defeat the Astros. After all, the Dodgers were one of the victims in the Astros’ cheating. And if it ends up as Boston-LAD, the Dodgers owe the Sox one for the 2018 World Series triumph by the Beantowners.  

Finally, a short comment on the Kyrie Irving saga. Irving is another person I have little use for. Any chance he was worth much evaporated when he made that outrageous comment that the Earth was flat. He burned his bridges with Lebron James in Cleveland, acting like the prima donna he is. He did the same in Boston, alienating his teammates and the loyal Celtics fans. 

His behavior hasn’t been much better in Brooklyn, and he has not performed well while he has been a Nets player. Which is not unexpected, given how mercurial and polarizing a figure he is.

The Nets are a talented team heading into the start of the NBA season. James Harden, Kevin Durant and Irving would be a lethal combination if healthy. 

However, Irving, who always has his own agenda, starting from his NJ scholastic playing days, to his one and does at Duke and into the NBA, has become a lightning rod for controversy. His choice not to be vaccinated is just another example of his selfishness.

I am not quibbling with his right to choose what his life will be. He lives with the consequences of his actions. However, this impacts his team’s opportunity to be a realistic contender for the NBA title.  

The Nets did the right thing in stopping him from practicing or even becoming a part-time player. While Irving says it isn’t about the money, which he says he would like to have, his reasons for eschewing the vaccination simply do not resonate. 

If the average worker was under a mandate to be vaccinated, he would be out of a job like the health care workers and teachers in New York. That kind of logic should certainly extend to basketball players, too. 

I saw one of my doctors this past week. He is double Harvard educated. He, like me, was having great difficulty understanding why people are making such an issue out of being vaccinated. He equated it with the polio vaccine and a whole host of other vaccines routinely administered to children. There was no sympathy for those on their hospital death beds bemoaning the fact that they should have gotten the vaccine. Nor did he have kind words for Irving. 

I wish Kyrie Irving well. I want no harm for him, no matter how much I dislike him for a myriad of reasons. He made his bed. Now he has to lie in it. He is no martyr for a cause. Only for himself.

Meanwhile, I will start watching baseball again starting on Friday night. In the midst of the college and pro football seasons. Abetted by the infancy of the NHL season and the NBA commencing later in the week. 

Somehow, I feel like I am in the middle innings of a very long nine inning game.