Sob Story, Good Story, Same Old Story

Get out your fiddles and let's hear the Pittsburgh Pirate sob stories. After 75 games, and the Buccos playing at a .333 rate, the Pirates are last in the league offensively in hits, runs, and RBI's. Their pitching has given up the most hits in the entire league and their team ERA is next to last in the league. After 75 games, not one pitcher has a complete game. In the last 19 games they have 17 loses and a mere 2 wins. When GM Neal Huntington goes to watch a game, you have to wonder what goes on through his mind? Hopefully the Buccos are hitting rock bottom but there is doubt with that statement.

Pitt football just received another verbal commitment and this is the first from a local player for the class of 2011. His name is Lafayette Pitts from East Pittsburgh power Woodland Hills High School. Woodland Hills has 5 former grads in the NFL with a possibility of having 2 more this season. What a job veteran Coach George Novak has done. Lafayette Pitts is an athletic corner/wide receiver/kick returner. Lots of upside with this guy.

Is veteran QB Brett Favre returning this season? My guess yes. He will wait to the last minute trying to avoid participation in the early stages of the Vikings training camp. There are a ton of opinions on whether Favre should return but the guy can play the game at his age and he still thinks he can win the Vikings a Super Bowl. Remember only 33 precious days until training camp begins. Is the NFL heading to a lock-out come next March? Stay tuned.

Think Tank II

Nearing the halfway point of the season, the Buccos are 20 games under .500 and in the midst of all of this the Pirates had a 12 game losing streak. After 203 at bats, Lastings Milledge has a big Goose-Egg for home runs. Starter Ross Ohlendorf has gone winless in his last 14 starts. And how about this after 68 games, the Buccos do not have 1 complete game from a starter. Times were different back in the 50's and 60's but Bucco pitcher Vernon Law in 16 seasons amassed a total of 189 complete games. That averages to about 12 Complete Games per season. People in this region of the country love baseball and some of the fans have been very patient but unfortunately for the Nutting's, patience is running thin. Last thing the Nuttings want to see is large doses of empty seats and fans attending the games with brown paper bags over their heads like the New Orleans Saints fans did for numerous years.

A Pitt football recruit that kind of slid under the radar is rising senior Middle Linebacker Ben Kline from Dallastown, PA H.S. near York. What a player Kline is. A heavily recruited hard nosed instinctive player, Kline verbally committed to Pitt over numerous Big 10 schools.

With the summer football camp circuit for high school prospects just about completed, now July is the month for the high school basketball recruiting. There are AAU Tournaments all over the country for both Men and Womens High School Basketball in July plus a multitude of high school evaluation basketball camps. College coaches will be criss-crossing the country looking for athletes in hoops who are potential recruits for their programs.

Looks like an 18 game regular season for the NFL is on the horizon and the elimination of 2 pre-season games. The NFL may want to look at increasing the roster from 53 to 59 or 60 if this occurs. The Super Bowl in New York City in 2014 just may be played in early March.

Talking about football, only 40 days to Steelers training camp.

Garnett Factor

Should the National Basketball Association eliminate the confusing rule that was passed in 2006 stating that a High School Player can attend college for minimum 1 season prior to entering the NBA draft unless that specific player was 19 years old during that calendar year of the NBA draft. Unmistakeably, the 2 best NBA players are Cavaliers LeBron James and Lakers Kobe' Bryant both of whom entered the NBA draft directly out of high school. Another outstanding NBA player that gets publicized but not like James and Bryant is 6'11" 253 pound Low/High post Celtic star Kevin Garnett. Garnett came directly out of high school leaving his stomping grounds out Mauldin, SC HS and transferring to Farragut Academy in Chicago, IL for his final high school season. Being a basketball scout at the time, I attended a National AAU Tournament in Twinsburg, OH in Spring of 1995. Kevin Garnett was on an AAU team that participated in the tournament just 2 months prior to the NBA draft. You could easily observe that he had great potential. He played with great ease, ran the floor like a gazelle, had explosive dunks with either hand, could pass like a guard, and had a soft feathery touch from inside 20 feet. I remember standing under the one basket next to Coach Bob Huggins and Coach John Calapari watching Garnett and everyone was shaking their heads about how good Garnett was. Getting back to my initial statement, should the NBA go back to drafting players directly out of high school. After seeing Garnett and LeBron James play in high school in Akron, OH, I say Yes. The age factor may come into play drafting a 17 year older but Hockey does and so does Baseball. Being an "Athletic Student" rather than a Student Athlete is not the purpose of going to college.

Is the PAC 10 now the PAC 11

Is the dust settled yet? The PAC-10 is now the PAC-11 or will it remain the PAC-10 even though it has 11 teams in the conference by adding Colorado. While stung by the lose of Colorado and Nebraska, the Big 12 is now really the Big 10 but it cannot be because the Big 10 is the Conference with Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, etc. But wait the Big 10 really should be the Big 12 now with the addition of Nebraska and Penn State(back in 1990). But how could the Big 10 be the Big 12 with that conference being centralized in the great Southwest. Total confusion reigns and the Powers in the BCS better get this straightened out soon. One thing for sure, sports fans everywhere are discussing this like you would not believe. All these college football junkies think they got this figured. The big discussion at Mt. Lebanon Atria's has Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State, and Iowa State coming to the Big East to make a 12 team football league and make the Big East Basketball incredible. As we know, this is all speculation but it is creating a great amount of entertainment in all the local watering holes across the entire USA. It sure beats talking about Big Ben and the Pirates going through their"June Swoon". Just remember, only 45 days until training camp commences.

Stand Pat Big East

The Big East Conference should stand pat. With Nebraska leaving the Big 12 and signing with the Big 10, with Boise State leaving the WAC and going with the Mountain West, and on Monday Oklahoma State joining the PAC-10 after Colorado did it on Thursday is showing people that there is going to be some big time movement amongst the conferences. I think the Big East should wait it out. Do not forget, the Big East survived the loss of Miami FL, Boston College, and Virginia Tech. The Big East Football Conference is a pretty good venue and has an automatic BCS bid which it hopefully will not lose. The Big East Basketball Conference may be the best in the country. What if Rutgers leaves for the BIG 10, now Big East Football is down to 7 teams. I think the league should hold it's ground and attempt to absorb some other good program into the league. For example, what if Missouri is left out their to dry with no Big 10 or PAC-10 offer. Missouri would be a solid program to bring into the Big East with it's nice Kansas City audience. If Missouri is scooped up by another Conference, then the Big East will have to look elsewhere and possibly petition schools like on the rise football program East Carolina to join or Central Florida or even put pressure on Basketball Power Villanova to move its football program up to 1A. Do not forget 1AA Villanova won the FCS Football National Championship in 2009. Villanova is ready to go with its recruiting base, a nice stadium, a good market, and a great alumni group supporting the program. Big East football is good. Cincinnati last year went 12-0 during regular season, Pitt is playing really well, UConn is getting better every year, South Florida exploded 3 years ago and now has Skip Holtz at the helm, Louisville has dropped off somewhat, Syracuse will get better under Doug Marrone, and West Virginia was a heartbeat away 3 years ago to play in the National Championship game. Do not panic Big East, the Basketball Conference is great and Football continually gets better.

Recruiting in June

This is an important time of the year for football recruiting. Some people ask the question, why in the month of June is high school football recruiting of top priority. With all the new rule changes that have occurred with Division 1 recruiting, June is an unbelievably valuable month. Most if not all of the Division 1A schools are conducting late Spring, early Summer football camps bringing in multitude of prospects for evaluation purposes. Some high school players have already verbally committed prior to the completion of the Junior Academic Year. Now the College camp circuit gives numerous Division 1A programs an opportunity to evaluate other prospects that have not verbally committed. Do not forget recruiting fans that there are 220,000 high school seniors that play High school football every season and out of that 220 Thousand that compete, just about 2200 will sign NCAA Division 1A on the first Wednesday in February. That equates to about 1% of all Seniors playing this Fall 2010 football season will get a scholarship to a Division 1A program. To show how accurate this is with the class of 2009 in Pennsylvania, there were approximately 8400 Seniors that played high school football in the great state of Pennsylvania and 84 young men received 1A scholarships. I ran a recruiting/teaching football camp for 29 years, enjoyed every minute of it, but unfortunately with NCAA rule changes, my Metro Index Camp got temporarily legislated out of business. Good luck to all the young football players this June during the camp circuit. Oh and by the way there are only 50 days to the beginning of Steeler's training camp.

Think Tank

The botched call by the umpire in the Tigers vs Indians game will be discussed for a long time. Is it time for MLB to utilize some modified type of booth review. That magnificent pitching stint for Armando Galarraga would have shocked the baseball world with 3 Perfect Games in 2010 with only 2 months of the season gone. That would have been the 21st Perfect Game in Baseball History. I have to give Ump Jim Joyce credit because hs admitted publicly he blew the call which rarely happens with umpires and officials in competitive sports.

Down to 57 days until training camp. Big Ben looks good throwing the football at the OTA's(Organized Training Activities). I have been to numerous OTA's at Steelers Headquarters on the SouthSide. These activities are excellent and well run by the Steeler coaching staff. The players work hard, train hard, and stress the fundamentals so when training camp arrives July 31, they do not miss a beat.

Talking about the Steelers, who was worse as a number 1 selection in the draft, LB Huey Richardson from U of Florida or OT Jermaine Stephens from North Carolina A&T.

The Steelers may play their first pre-season football game before British Petroleum gets that oil leak in the Gulf totally plugged. I hope not.

After watching the Talladega and Indy 500 NASCAR events recently on the tube, you fail to realize that those race cars are at times inches apart and are travelling upwards of speeds of 190 to 210 miles per hour. Those drivers have incredible skills.

Which will be first to arrive on the scene: John Daly wins his next PGA Golf Tournament or Larry King get married for a 9th time?

Golf Rules

What a marvelous game Golf is. I have played the great game of Golf for about 30 years and really got into it in the 1990's playing against very competitive players in the Golf Club I belonged to in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. It is a game that is made up of an immense amount of rules and regulations and the Golf rule books need to be thoroughly studied to understand all the ramifications of the entire game. 2 areas in Golf need to be addressed. A primary area that does not involve an amendment to the Golf constitution is the speed of play on the Golf Course. On Memorial weekend Sunday playoff in the Senior PGA event, the first and only playoff hole took a tremendous amount of time to complete. The 3 guys in the playoff were Tom Lehman the eventual winner, Fred Couples, and David Frost. David Frost hits his 2nd shot from a fairway bunker into some brush adjacent to the green. Couples had to take an unplayable lie and hit his third shot short of the green while Tom Lehman was almost perfect with his drive and 2nd shot leaving himself a 12 footer for birdie. Frost's lie was very difficult causing him to study the shot for a extended period of time. Watching him pace around the green, look at the position of the ball, evaluating his shot, and taking numerous practice swings must have taken 8 to 10 minutes. I thought there was a time limit on when a player was supposed to hit his shot. Now I realize that this was a playoff hole(sudden death only)but the player should make ball contact within a certain time frame by the standards of the game. Frost hit his shot across the green and ended up with a double bogey as did Couples. As a fan, I feel that a player should fit into a time frame with his approach to hitting the golf ball.

I feel that there should be one major rule change in the great game of golf. That rule change should be this. Upon hitting a ball into any part of the fairway and the ball enters a divot or a divot that has been repaired on a fairway, then the player should get a free drop on the fairway no closer to the green. Some of these divots are like small hazards so therefore a free drop seems to be appropriate.

Hard Hat Part 2

Look back at the Monday May 24 Blog titled Hard Hat and let us do a repeat performance. MLB needs to protect the pitcher. One way is to have all pitcher wear protective head gear. Here we go again! Yesterday afternoon Yankees A-Rod hits a line drive rope just above the ear of Cleveland Indians pitcher David Huff and the ball travels down into the right field corner. After a game delay and some prayers Huff is removed on a stretcher and at the hospital is given a CT Scan. Hopefully everything is OK for David Huff. Same thing happened to Pirates pitcher Chris Jakubauskas a few weeks back. It is so obvious that the gurus of Major League Baseball are totally overlooking one serious thing. That is, pitchers are in a dangerous position on the field being only 57-60 feet away from a critical injury. Make pitcher wear a Full Batting Helmet for total protection of the head while they are on the mound.

By the way, after 50 games, the Pirates are 20-30. Three of their so-called top players(Lastings Milledge, Garrett Jones, and Andy LaRoche)after approximately 460 at-bats have a grand total of 8 Home Runs in the first 50 games. Milledge is at the bottom of the totem pole with a goose-egg 0 round trippers. Milledge is not a prolific home run hitter but he has some power and athletic prowess to carry the ball out of the park. Then to boot, these 3 above players combined batting average is just a shade over .250. Hopefully the Buccos get it turned around and not after they are out of the pennant race. There are only 60 days to Steelers training camp.