The Sports Guru

Every year you hear the stories.  For every one guy that makes it in the NBA there are about 50 that don’t.  Only 1st Round picks receive guarunteed contracts and there are always players that stay in the draft based on horrible advice, end up not getting drafted, and find themselves in a foreign country or worse out of the game entirely. 

Lenny Cooke is one such story.  Cooke was a Blacktop Legend in New York City and New Jersey.  He played in AAU tournaments with the best.  Carmello Anthony, Shannon Brown, LeBron James.  Cooke had no problem telling everyone that he was the best.  He once challeneged Kobe Bryant to a game of 1-on-1 at a summer camp that Bryant was attending as a speaker to the players.

Like James, Cooke was a freak for his age.  Rising 6′6, weighing in at 230, mostly muscle, Cooke easily dominated smaller competition.  Unlike James, however, Cooke was relying on bad advice.  He struggled through school.  While LeBron was receiving national attention, with his high school games being played in college arenas, televised on ESPN2, Cooke was transferring through six high schools.  When colleges came calling with scholarships, Cooke refused to listen.  Even LeBron went through the paces and has often said he would have went to Duke or North Carolina had he been froced to go to college.

Cooke and Lebron faced each other often on AAU teams, with Cooke doing all the talking off the court while James used his game to do the talking.  James dominated Cooke, but Lenny still felt he was the better of the two, the people he trusted told him so. 

Too young, too immature for the NBA, Cooke went undrafted in the 2002 draft.  He was invited to play in the summer leagues but had trouble remembering the plays and soon was left behind.  Suddenly Cooke found himself alone, all of people he trusted gone.

Cooke has since bounced around and I had lost track of him until today when I cam accross this article in the New York Daily News.  It seems Cooke was in a serious car accident almost 2 years a go that nearly ended his life.  He has battled back, and at the tender age of 23 is looking for another chance to reach his dream.

We have run out of adjectives to describe LeBron.  To say he is wise beyond his years is an understatement.  LeBron had something else goiong for him.  He had people that truly cared about him watching out for him.  Controlling who came into contact with him.  His mother made sure he satyed out of trouble and he had friends, real friends that were there before LeBron was, well, LeBron.

People also criticized the NBA for putting in an age limit.  They use LeBron as an example for their argument.  For every LeBron, though, there are dozens of Lenny Cooke’s.  Young men that don’t have that support system.  I say the NBA got it right.

Good Luck Lenny, I’m pulling for ya. 

There are so many things I want to write about my fingers are trembling.  Every time I look up there is another story that just begs me to dissect it.  Instead of writing 5 or 6 articles I figured I would just touch on each and give my 2 cents….

***According to this and this, Derek Jeter is branching out into the Men’s Grooming product business with the release this fall of his signature scent, Driven.  He spoke of the help his mother and sister gave him during development of the product, including the mixture of scents and design of the bottle and logo.  Let’s think about this for a minute.  We all know Jeter IS Mr. Yankee.  My thought is this takes in a little too far.  If A-Rod had come out with his own scent he’d be getting killed in the press.  Not to mention Jeter is releasing his scent through AVON, a company that claims right on their web-site to be “the company for women”.  Athlete fragrances haven’t done well in the past(i.e. Michael Jordan) and this one will probably do no better.  I can’t imagine being asked by the Gurette, “ohhhh, what cologne are you wearing?” and me responding, “I’m wearing Derek Jeter”.  Creepy.
 
***I am going to offer my services for free to every American League Manager out there.  Usually I would charge for this type of expert consultation, but I am feeling generous today.  In fact, let’s make it a “Man Law”.  Do not pitch to David Ortiz after the 1st inning, under any circumstances.  How many walk-off hits and home runs does this guy have to hit before teams realize that he might be pretty good.  The latest  example of this was last night when new Indians closer Fausto Carmona decided to “challenge” Papi with a 2-0 fastball in a 2 run game.  Oops.  Papi proceeds to hit it about 450 feet, winning the game.  How is it that Barry Bonds is hitting about .200 and teams still walk him twice a game yet Papi is leading the Majors in virtually every clutch stat possible.  I know it’s Manny Ramirez hitting behind Ortiz, but it doesn’t matter.  Ramirez might beat you, Papi WILL beat you.

***ESPN’s Jayson Stark wrote a brilliant piece dealing with Roger Clemens and the Trade Deadline that passed at 4:00 PM yesterday.  Clemens made a tough decision in May when he chose his home-town team over the team that drafted him.  I really thought there was a strong possibility of Rocket heading back to Boston to finish his career.  Roger is nostalgic, and ending his career by helping the Red Sox win another World Series would be the stuff of legend.  Was it close to happening?  As Stark puts it, the Astros and Red Sox travelled down that road, going so far as to talk names.  The conversation stopped when Astros Owner Drayton McLane ended the talk.  If what Stark says is true it proves just how selfish McLane is.  Roger deserved to go out his way.  Sure, he chose to come back to the Astros, but that’s Roger.  He feels loyalty to his hometown and to McLane.  Roger would never had demanded a trade.  Similar to Greg Maddux, Clemens would do what was better for the team and keep his mouth shut.  The Astros could have gotten 2 or 3 prospects to inject into a system void of any significant talent.  And Clemens could have finished where it started.  It would have been magical, but the greed of a billionaire got in the way.

***Speaking of the Deadline.  Can someone tell me why the Indians didn’t trade Aaron Boone to ANYONE for a bag of peanuts and tall draft?  If there is anyone wasting a spot on a roster more than Boone I haven’t found him.  Boone was a nice player in his day, but the knee injury efectively ended his career.  He has essentially been cashing paychecks and booting ground balls for the last 2 1/2 years and the Indians should have ended it.  Let’s hope that they’ll do the right thing and simply grant Boone his release and move on.

***Color me stupid for wanting to believe Floyd Landis.  According to this, it appears that a portion of the Testosterone found in his system is synthetic.  In layman’s terms, Landis was doping.  I defended Landis in this blog last week saying I believed him because he was “acting innocent”.  It is starting to appear that I was fooled.  Not again.  I am officially boycotting writing about cycling on this Blog.  I talk about sports, and cycling is a farce filled with cheats and liars.  Foll me once, shame on me, fool me twice, I kick you off my Blog.

***An interesting story here.  Jason Taylor, former Akron Zip and current Miami Dolphin is married to teammate Zach Thomas’ sister Katina.  Well it seems Katina has filed for divorce and the big topic around Dolphins camp is how it will affect the locker room.  All the major players are saying the right things(though I haven’t seen anything from Thomas), but you’d have to think it won’t be that easy.  Without knowing the reason that Mrs. Taylor is requestion the split, it is hard to imagine that Taylor and Thomas will have the same type of relationship they have shared in the past.  The last thing a team on the fringe of becoming a contender is for family strife.  This will be one to keep out “eyes” on.

I watch alot of those cop/killer shows on Discovery or A&E and the like. You always see these guys who get accused of these awful crimes claim their innocence, but never convincingly. You know the type. I joke with the Gurette that you can usually tell if someone is guilty or innocent by the way they react to being accused. I know if I were accused of a crime that I did not commit I would raise holy-h*** trying to prove it wasn’t me. Looks like Floyd Landis is that type of guy.

Take Rafael Palmeiro for instance. He fails a drug test, goes on to claim it was from a “B12″ shot, then makes assertions that “his side of the story will be told”. A year later we are still waiting for that story. If I were innocent I would be screaming it everyday, granting interviews to everyone, etc. Not Palmeiro, who has faded into oblivion, hoping that in 4 years people will forget and still elect him into the Baseball Hall-of-Fame.

Not Landis, however, who knows he is at the cusp of losing everything he has worked for his whole life. Cycling, unlike every other sport in the world, convicts and punishes before you get a chance to defend yourself. Even Palmeiro went throuogh his entire appeal process with an arbitraitor before the suspension was handed down. Not cycling, where newspapers across the globe are portraying Landis as a cheater. The French must be loving this, seeing as they have been trying to nail Lance Armstrong for a decade. They had to have been pissed that another American won “their” race, and one with a degenerative hip no less.

To his credit, Landis isn’t taking any of this lying down. In a Press Conference today in Spain, Landis again claimed he is dope-free and vowed to fight to clear his name. “We will explain to the world why this is not a doping case but a natural occurrence, we will request the ‘B’ sample immediately, and I will have a representative there,” Landis said. He said the result would be made public as soon as it was known.

Bravo Landis. I was initially skeptical of all of this, knowing how incredibly dirty this so-called sport is. But the more Landis sticks his nose out and claims he is drug free, the more interviews he does, the more press conferences he holds, the more I am changing my opinion of him. Not becuase I know the medical reasons why Landis may or may not have high testosterone, just simply becuase Landis is ACTING innocent. He is acting like he was as shocked as everyone else. Palmeiro had over a month to prepare for the public outcry, to prepare his “defense”. The best he could do? Throw a teammate under the bus.

Not Floyd, he is going to go down scratching and clawing. “I would like to make absolutely clear that I am not in any doping process,” Landis said. “I ask not to be judged by anyone, much less sentenced by anyone.” The next fews weeks are going to be intriguing. I really do hope that Landis is telling the truth and he isn’t just an incredible liar. My guess is that he is not and all the hard work to show that it is “Innocent until proven guilty” will reap rewards.

An athlete who cheats does so because they don’t want to work. By working as hard to prove that he is not a cheater, Floyd Landis is showing that in fact he isn’t. Cheaters don’t work this hard.

**According to This, the Browns could be in big trouble already, just 2 days into training camp.  If the injury to LeCharles Bentley is serious, which it appears to be, what could have been a promising season(8-8) just got a whole lot bleaker.  Whenever an NFL Lineman, who let’s face it are porbably some of the toughest people on this planet, scream, “NO!” they know it is something serious.

The Browns must be wondering what they have to do to stay healthy.  Kellen Winslow has missed the past 2 seasons, Braylon Edwards went down and noone knows when he will actually return.  If there was a Curse of the Bambino, and if the Cubs are cursed, then there must really be a curse on this franchise, with some of the most passionate fans in sports.

I am not a Browns fan but I can respect their fans and hate to see an injury like this in a practice.  Here’s hoping the injury isn’t as serious as it looks, but I am not holding my breath.

**Sometimes when a miracle happens you wonder if it is too good to be true.  We like to hope it isn’t, but our common sense tells us it is.  That appears it may be the case with Tour De France winner Floyd Landis, where it has been reported by his team that he tested positive for unusually large amounts of testosterone.  Landis, of course, was shocked by the result and has requested his ‘B’ sample get tested.  If that comes back positive as well, his cycling team Phonak has already said he will be fired.

Pending the results of that ‘B’ test, I can’t really say I am that surprised.  Cycling is the dirtiest sport on the planet and before the Tour even began most of teh favorites were booted as part of a doping scandel.  Even quotes from Landis’ mother didn’t seem all that encouraging –

She said Thursday that she wouldn’t blame her son if he was taking medication to treat the pain in his injured hip, but “if it’s something worse than that, then he doesn’t deserve to win.”

“I didn’t talk to him since that hit the fan, but I’m keeping things even keel until I know what the facts are,” she told The Associated Press in a phone interview from her home in Farmersville, Pennsylvania. “I know that this is a temptation to every rider but I’m not going to jump to conclusions … It disappoints me.”

Let’s face it, believing that a man that is in need of a Hip Replacement can win the hardest cycling event in the world is more amazing than believing a man that survived cancer can do it.  Both are miracles and we would love to believe that miracles do happen.  More often than not, however, we find out that the miracle is actually someone playing fair, and not cheating the rules, the sport, and the fans.

Now this looks like a great time.  The 1st ever National Hamburger Festival will be taking place in Akron, OH on August 12 and 13.  I have talked before about my love of everything that has ‘Cook-off’ in the title, and a festival solely dedicated to that All-American Meal, the hamburger, is one that I may have to clear my calendar for.

Events included in this year’s festival include:

*  The First Ever ‘Hamburger Hearings’ to decide who actually invented the hamburger, and who makes it the best.
*  Hamburger cooking demonstrations
*  A Miss Hamburger pageant
*  Bobbing for Burgers contest
*  A Hamburger Eating contest
*  And of course, music from a Jimmy Buffett Tribute band

There will also be a Baby Burger contest, where children need to be decorated in their best Burger Themed attire.  That will surely scar them for life.

If you are going to be in the Akron area that weekend, make all attempts to attend.  It is sure to be a Patty-Slappin’ good time!