Stories indexed with the term ‘John U. Bacon’

Dear Loyal Readers,

Although I was officially on vacation this week, because I spent a few days retracing Ernest Hemingway’s haunts in northern Michigan, I decided to take a couple hours – more than I intended! – to combine two of my previous columns: one that ran in the Detroit News in 1998, and one that Time commissioned in 1999 but didn’t run, due to JFK Jr.’s tragic plane crash the same week.

I was inspired by meeting again with Ernest H. Mainland, Hemingway’s nephew, whom I first met 12 years ago pursuing these pieces. He has become a good friend. Then, after a round of golf, I coaxed another old friend, Jeff Johnson, into joining me for an impromptu tour of nearby Horton Bay. While telling Jeff about some of the stories Hemingway based there, a man named Robert walked down the road and joined us, then invited us for a drink with his girlfriend at his rental cabin just up the road – which turned out to be Shangri-La, where the Hemingways honeymooned in 1922. [Full Story]

If you’re sick of the big leagues, but not baseball, check out your backyard.

Here in Michigan you can watch the Beach Bums in Traverse City, the Lugnuts in Lansing, the West Michigan Whitecaps near Grand Rapids, the Great Lake Loons in Midland, and the Kings in Kalamazoo. Michigan fans can see six minor league teams if you count the Toledo Mud Hens – and seven if the Tigers start slumping again. Michigan baseball fans haven’t had it this good in decades.

In 1949, the U.S. boasted almost 500 minor league teams, supported by 42 million fans. But their ranks shriveled when major league baseball expanded, TV blossomed and air conditioning made staying at home much cooler. In just three years, attendance dropped almost 80%.

But when major league baseball turned its back on its fans with strikes and lockouts, the minor leagues aggressively courted them. Almost every fan-friendly custom you see at major league stadiums today they stole from the minors, including fancy food, daily promotions, pop music and endless stunts to keep the fans coming back, win or lose. As a result, the minors have grown back to a robust 176 teams nationwide.

Visit one, and you understand why. [Full Story]

When I read that the Spanish province of Catalonia voted to outlaw bullfighting, I was not surprised. A few years ago I traveled through Spain to write about bullfighting. Along the way, I met Barcelona’s director of tourism, and asked her why bullfighting was much less popular in Barcelona than the rest of Spain. She replied, “It is because we are civilized.”

Bullfighting’s biggest opponents, in fact, have always been Spaniards. Even bullfighting’s fans don’t brag about the 13,000 bulls killed every year in the ring, or claim they deserve to be killed.

But I’m not sure we’re in a position to judge bullfighting too harshly. We kill more than 35 million cows every year, and 100 million pigs and eight billion chickens. Not even Birkenstocks grow on trees. [Full Story]

The gears of justice grind slowly, but they do grind, and sometimes they actually get their man – or woman, as the case may be.

The sports world saw its share of slow-moving justice this week, from the global to the local.

New York Yankees’ third basemen Alex Rodriguez has already admitted he used steroids, but only after his tests were leaked to the press. He’s still playing, and is now one just home run away from hitting 600. Twenty years ago this would have been big news – but since suspected steroid users Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds crossed that threshold, the luster is lost. About half of those polled said they simply don’t care – and they polled New Yorkers. If they don’t care, why should we?

Rodriguez cheated himself out of his own celebration. Seems about right to me. [Full Story]

With the weak economy, and high school coaches urging their players to attend “voluntary” workouts, enrollment for summer camps is down nationwide about 10%. But if the choice is between team workouts and summer camp, I say, summer camp wins hands-down.

Let me explain.

I didn’t want to go to summer camp.

I spent my summers growing up at our family cottage near Traverse City. The idea of going to Camp Hayo-Went-Ha – a YMCA camp on the lake – didn’t interest me. I liked playing baseball, riding bikes and going to hockey school with my best friend. I figured the kids who went to Hayo-Went-Ha either couldn’t play baseball or didn’t have many friends. [Full Story]

It was a beautiful summer morning. I walked from my home in Ann Arbor, down State Street, to St. Thomas the Apostle Church. A crowd had already gathered outside, waiting to pay respects to our old friend, Mr. Brown.

No one told us to call him that. We just did.

In 1937, Mr. Brown’s father and grandfather opened a store called College Shoe Repair. Mr. Brown took over the business in 1951, the same year he married Dorothy – or Mrs. Brown, to us. They worked together every day. They had seven kids, and all of them worked at the store at some point.

When the shoe repair business slowed down in the ’70s, Mr. Brown started selling hockey equipment and sharpening skates. That’s how most of us got to know him. [Full Story]

Whenever I drive up US-23, I can’t resist gazing at two structures on my right: The Whitmore Lake High School stadium press box, where my writing career started, and the big red ski jump on Whitmore Lake, where it almost ended.

I once volunteered to visit the Whitmore Lake Water Ski Club, the oldest in the state, to try water ski jumping. The problem is, this is not something you can gradually work up to. It’s your basic all-or-nothing proposition.

Take our coach, Hal Baker. On several occasions he had cleared a hundred feet, the sport’s main milestone, but one time he hit the side of the jump so hard, he embedded white paint in his skin. A few times, he leaned back too far, causing him to fall backward into the water – at 50 miles per hour.

“I’ve been pulled out unconscious a few times,” Baker said, with a reassuring maniacal cackle. This was a man who knew the thrill of victory, and the unconsciousness of defeat. [Full Story]

The 2010 World Cup is in full swing – even if the U.S. was eliminated in the second round. I’ve played soccer, coached it and covered it, and there’s a lot to like about the sport.

First, soccer players are great athletes. The pros run about six miles a game. They can settle the ball down from any direction in a split second, play keep-away with it for days, and then blast it right on target, with either foot.

For TV viewers, it’s a pleasure to see the great expanse of green on your screen, with no TV timeouts interrupting play. And, unlike baseball’s World Series, the world is actually invited to play in the World Cup. It’s almost every nation’s favorite sport. And you can play it anywhere, with anything. [Full Story]

For college coaches and athletes, June is supposed to be reserved for easy chores like conducting camps, fixing tackling dummies and replacing nets.

Well, so much for the lazy, hazy days of summer. This has been one of the craziest Junes of all time.

The NCAA finally completed its four-year investigation of the cesspool that is the University of Southern California’s athletic department. The NCAA was shocked – shocked! – to discover USC’s boosters were giving tens of thousands of dollars to their star players. (The NCAA officials must have been the last folks to know.)

But, to its credit, the NCAA actually came down with some consequences: a two-year ban on bowl games, and the loss of 10 scholarships for the next three years. The school cheated for wins and for money, and their punishment will cost them wins and money – though probably not as many wins and as much money as they gained by cheating.

That would have been pretty big news by itself. But then the Big Ten started talking about expanding, which sent every major conference into a paranoid frenzy, trying to keep their leagues intact. Rumors started flying about this school and that conference. Some said the Big Ten might expand to as many as 16 teams, including Notre Dame, and the Big Eight, the Big East and maybe even the venerable ACC would collapse. [Full Story]

Hard-core hockey fans – and really, are there any other kind? – are all pumped up this week because on Wednesday night, the Chicago Blackhawks scored in overtime to win their first Stanley Cup since 1961. And that harkens back to the era of the so-called Original Six.

But if you’re not a hard-core fan, you probably don’t know what Original Six means. The Hard-Cores will be quick to tell you the Original Six is code for the first six NHL teams. They’re easy to remember, if you think of them in pairs: New York and Boston, Montreal and Toronto, Detroit and Chicago.

Hockey fans revere the Original Six the way basketball fans gush about the Celtics-Lakers rivalry and classical music buffs go on about Bach, Brahms and Beethoven. The Original Six has become such a popular catch-phrase, it’s now on a baseball cap, featuring all six team logos. It outsells the caps of most individual teams.

I’ve always suspected the Original Six is such a hot catch-phrase because, for the Hard-Cores, it doubles as a secret password. If you know what the Original Six is, you must be Hard-Core. And if you don’t, you ain’t. [Full Story]

I’d just finished writing my commentary Wednesday night, when a friend tipped me off that I should be watching the Tigers game. He didn’t say why, because there’s a code in baseball against jinxing a pitcher who’s throwing a great game. I turned on the TV, and saw the Tigers were beating Cleveland, 1-0, in the eighth inning. Then I finally realized Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga wasn’t just working on a no-hitter, but a perfect game.

What’s the difference? A no-hitter means just that: A pitcher can’t give up any hits. But he can still let a runner get to first base on a walk or an error, and keep his no-hitter. But to throw a perfect game, the pitcher can’t let a single batter reach first base for any reason. He’s got to get 27 straight outs.

How rare is that? In the 135-year history of Major League Baseball, only twenty pitchers have done it. Twenty. It’s ten times rarer than a no-hitter – so rare, in over a century of Tiger baseball, not one pitcher had ever thrown a perfect game. Ever.

But there he was, Armando Galarraga from Venezuela, pitching a perfect game. [Full Story]

Comedian George Carlin died nearly two years ago, at the age of 71. Almost every elegy for him said, “He is remembered mainly for his skit on the ‘Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say on Radio.’” But I remember Carlin for a better bit.

I’m not going to discuss his “Seven Dirty Words” routine – it seems a shame to have your life’s work reduced to seven profanities. Carlin was better than that.

I believe Carlin was not only one of our funniest comics – which is, after all, the point of his profession – but also one of the most thoughtful, even insightful. I still use his comparison of baseball and football – and what they say about our society – when I teach my class on the history of college athletics.

Carlin not only breaks down two of our most popular sports, he deftly demonstrates how they define fans as liberal or conservative, dove or hawk, Prius or Hummer.

But I’ll let the man speak for himself. [Full Story]

Michigan first baseman Mike Dufek stepped up to the plate in the tenth inning. The bases were empty, which in this game was rare.

Northwestern had shot out to an early 14-0 lead. We’re not talking football here, folks, but baseball. Then, incredibly, the Wolverines clawed back, run by run, until they tied the game with a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth. That brought Dufek up in the tenth inning, with the game in his hands.

That Dufek had even gotten that far was a story in itself. [Full Story]

The Red Wings bowed out of the Stanley Cup playoffs Saturday, in just the second round. It was disappointing for Red Wings’ fans – okay, crushing.

But it’s worth remembering the Red Wings have made the playoffs for 20 consecutive years – the longest active run of any team not just in hockey, but in baseball, basketball and football. The last time the Red Wings didn’t make the playoffs, George Bush was just getting started – George H.W. Bush, that is.

That 1990 team was decent, but nobody thought it would spark a streak of 20 straight playoff seasons. To do that, the Red Wings have stayed at the top of their game with four different coaches, 25 goalies and hundreds of players. Not one has spanned the entire streak. But the team has been led during the entire stretch by just two captains: Steve Yzerman and Nicklas Lidstrom – and no team has ever had better leaders than those two. [Full Story]

Editor’s note: Ernie Harwell died on Tuesday after fighting cancer for nearly a year. He was 92. Portions of this column were published in John U. Bacon’s September 2009 tribute to Harwell.

This past September, the Detroit Tigers’ beloved broadcaster, Ernie Harwell, announced that he had contracted an incurable form of cancer, and would not seek treatment.

For everybody who knew him, or felt like they did – which, really, is just about all of us – it hit hard. We were losing our baseball buddy, our grandfather, our friend.

The only person who didn’t seem shaken by the news was Ernie Harwell. He said, “Whatever’s in store, I’m ready for a new adventure. That’s the way I look at it.”

Harwell was a deeply religious man, but he never wore it on his sleeve. He simply lived it. He was, truly, at peace.

But I was not. Like just about every sports writer who knew him, I felt compelled to write about him. [Full Story]

The wonderfully named Zoltan Mesko was born and raised in Timisoara, Romania, right on the Hungarian border. Like his parents, Mihai and Elizabeta, Zoltan speaks both languages fluently.

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, life improved dramatically for most people living behind the Iron Curtain – but not much for Romanians. His parents, both engineers, could not leave the country until they won Romania’s Green Card lottery – yes, they had one – in 1997, when Zoltan was ten.

They quickly discovered Hollywood’s depiction of America didn’t quite match their apartment in Queens. It was dirty and cramped – even for just three people – and too expensive, so they moved to Twinsburg, Ohio, right outside Cleveland.

Zoltan learned English in about two months. His parents took two years, but understanding American culture took a little longer. [Full Story]

With tax day just past, it’s a good time to ask where our money should go – and where it shouldn’t. I don’t have all the answers, of course – but I’m convinced one expenditure should end immediately: stadium subsidies.

Two years ago, the New York Yankees signed third baseman Alex Rodriguez to a contract that will pay him $275 million dollars in exchange for 10 years of catching, throwing and hitting a baseball. That puts him ahead of his teammate, Derek Jeter, who has to get by on a mere $189 million for his decade of duty. Sucker.

Whenever teams sign contracts like that, the player’s agent always justifies it by saying, “Well, that’s what the market will bear.”

If that were true, it would still be insane, but at least there would be a logic to it. After all, if any team is dumb enough to pay someone that kind of money, and if a family of four wants to pay $200 to see that guy play – well, then, so be it. That’s how free markets work.

But the free market doesn’t come close to paying these guys’ salaries. Who picks up the gap? You do – every time you pay your taxes. [Full Story]

The first quarter of this year has been filled with endless sports stories about salaries and steroids and sex – and pretty much everything but sports. So I welcome a look back at a time the stakes were real, and the men were equal to the moment.

Well, we’re in luck, because this week marks the anniversary of the most important day in sports: April 15, 1947, when Jackie Robinson made his major league debut.

Even people who don’t know about sports know about Jackie Robinson – and they should. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Jackie Robinson made it possible for me in the first place. Without him, I would never have been able to do what I did.”

But, without a much less famous man named Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ president and a University of Michigan law school graduate, Robinson might never have gotten his chance. [Full Story]

From the outside, it looked like a typically dominant Michigan State basketball team. By the end of January, the Spartans were undefeated in the Big Ten, and ranked fifth in the nation. That record hid some problems the public couldn’t see, but Coach Tom Izzo could.

It wasn’t talent. The Spartans returned four starters, including Big Ten player of the year Kalin Lucas, from a team that had already reached the NCAA finals the previous year. The problem was simpler, but more serious: the players just didn’t care enough about each other.

The coaches did. In January, Izzo, his trainer, his video guy and Dave Pruder, his long-time equipment manager, all lost close relatives. And every time, they were there for each other. In the middle of the season, Izzo drove down with his trainer to South Bend for his father’s funeral. Pruder told me, “We knew we could rely on each other. But the players didn’t.” [Full Story]

It’s been a dismal year for Michigan fans. The football team and the men’s basketball team both failed to make it to the post-season, and together they lost to Michigan State three times.

The men’s hockey team was supposed to be the saving grace. Entering this season, the Wolverines had made it to the NCAA tournament a record 19-straight seasons. That streak started in 1991, before many of the current players were even born.

The Wolverines were picked to finish first in their league – but they finished seventh, unheard of in Ann Arbor. The only chance they had to keep their streak alive was to win four straight rounds of their conference playoffs. Nothing else could save their season. [Full Story]

Almost all of the major league baseball’s 30 teams have moved their spring training camps in the past three decades, and fully half of them now play in Arizona. Stay-at-home stalwarts like the Cincinnati Reds trained in Tampa for 52 years before moving to Plant City in 1988, then to Sarasota a decade later, then finally to Goodyear, Arizona, last year.

Even the Los Angeles Dodgers, who created Dodgertown 62 years ago in Vero Beach to provide a safe haven for Jackie Robinson and other black players, also bolted for Arizona last year.

Baseball teams have been city-swapping their spring training sites like swingers in a – well, a bad movie about swingers, I guess.

In this permissive environment, the Detroit Tigers stand as a pillar of fidelity. Except for three years during World War II, the Tigers have trained in Lakeland, Florida every year since 1934. That’s 74 seasons, by far the longest marriage in the major leagues. [Full Story]

In America, you’re “behind the eight ball,” if you will, if you can’t “Talk Sports.” Jay McInerny once wrote that sports fans constitute the largest fraternity in America, and not knowing how to talk about them will put you on the outside of every airport and elevator conversation you encounter.

Now, normally, that’s a wonderful thing – but on the rare occasion you actually need to make small talk in such situations, Coach Bacon is here to cut through the clichés so you can bull with the best of them.

First, you’ve got to see through the silly semantics. They love to talk about the “respective captains from each team,” which means “the captains from each team,” because “respective” adds nothing to that clause. And, of course, the “ensuing kickoff,” which means “next.” [Full Story]

It was the best of Olympics, it was the worst of Olympics. For some, it was the season of hope; for others, the winter of their discontent. But to heck with all that. I’m just here to give you Coach Bacon’s Winners and Losers of the Winter Olympics. So, here we go.

WINNER: Vancouver

Great city, great people, great Olympics. Well done, my Canadian friends.

LOSER: Vancouver

In the opening ceremonies, the flame apparatus failed to rise, launching a thousand Viagra jokes. But the real joke was the speed skating oval, where the Canadians failed to manufacture decent ice. That’s like Jamaicans failing to manufacture decent sand. What’s up with that? [Full Story]

The surprising United States Olympic men’s hockey team will play Finland today in the semi-finals, inspiring some to compare them to the last U.S. men’s team to win the gold 30 years ago, Lake Placid’s “Miracle on Ice.” Sorry, even if the U.S. wins it all, it will not qualify as a miracle. We are not likely to see anything quite like it again. And there will never be another coach like Herb Brooks.

I will never forget the impact the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team had on our country – or the impact the coach, Herb Brooks, had on me.

On Dec. 13, 1979, my best friend was heading home from hockey practice up north, when he was killed in a car accident. I found out the next morning, seconds before my Huron High School hockey teammates and I walked out onto the basketball court for our first pep rally. What started out as one of the happiest days of my life, had suddenly become the saddest.

I didn’t come out of it for months. But when the 1980 Olympic hockey tournament started, I watched every second of every game – I was transfixed by this team and their coach –  and that’s what brought me back. [Full Story]

The modern Olympics started in 1896, but it took 28 more years before the winners would hear their national anthem during the medal ceremony.

The Vancouver Games will conduct 86 medal ceremonies, during which any of the 82 countries present could be serenaded with their national anthem. But not all are created equal – including ours.

You probably knew the melody for our national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner,” came from a popular British drinking song, and that Francis Scott Key added the words during the War of 1812. But you might not have known the song didn’t become our national anthem until more than a century later, in 1931. And we didn’t start playing the song before ball games until World War II.

“The Star Spangled Banner” may be two centuries old, but its status as our national anthem is relatively new – and, I think, not beyond reconsideration. [Full Story]

Twelve years ago I covered the Winter Olympics in Nagano. It was exhausting – and exhilarating.

Every day, right in front of me, I got to savor the skill and the speed of the skiers and the snowboarders, the hockey players and the figure skaters. But what I remember most is the energy generated by the athletes and the audience, who seemed to feed off each other. I didn’t get to merely see it. I got to feel it – an experience shared with thousands of people from around the world, right as it happened.

So that’s why I was stunned when I called my friends back home, breathless about the drama stirring all around me, only to learn they had no idea what I was talking about. They weren’t impressed by the Nagano Olympics, or the coverage of it – take your pick. And that’s when I realized the Olympics I was experiencing had nothing to do with the one they were watching – or not watching at all. (Nagano had the lowest ratings in 30 years.)

Now, I realize TV can’t compete with being there, especially 12 time zones away. But it can come a lot closer than it usually does. [Full Story]

It’s hard to think of too many endeavors that receive more overblown attention than do sports. And within sports, nothing’s more overblown than the Super Bowl.

This time around, we’re getting endless stories about President Obama picking the New Orleans Saints – because … that matters? – a preview of the ads scheduled to run during the game, and several hundred articles analyzing the recuperation of Dwight Freeney’s sprained right ankle, and how that might affect national security. Or some such.

But in the midst of this morass are two stories worth telling. [Full Story]

The Michigan basketball team recently lost to Michigan State by one point, all but ending the Wolverines’ chances to return to the NCAA tournament. The Michigan hockey team faces Michigan State this weekend, and they need a sweep to improve their fading chances of getting back to the tournament themselves.

For Michigan fans, this is the Winter of Their Discontent. Provided, that is, only wins and losses count.

But the head coaches of both teams did notch a couple moral victories last week. Yes, they’ve lost some battles this season, but they’re still winning the war. [Full Story]

“I think we have too many AAA, Showcase and elite camps for the kids today, and as a result, we are creating a bunch of robots. We need to make it fun for the kids and let them learn to love the game the way we did.” – Herb Brooks, coach of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team in “Pond Hockey: A Documentary Film”

Just over half a million kids play organized hockey in the United States, as I did – but trust me, they’re missing out.

We’re deep in the dead of winter. And for most of us, there’s not a lot to do, and not much to look forward to for the next couple months. But if you’re a hockey player – scratch that, if you’re a pond hockey player – this is the best time of year. [Full Story]

On Monday, former home run hitter Mark McGwire talked to sports broadcaster Bob Costas in an attempt to restore his good name.

He had a lot of restoring to do.

McGwire was one of those super-sized sluggers who were knocking out home runs at a record rate in the ’90s. And, like his peers – Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa – McGwire was widely rumored to be taking steroids.

In fact, the FBI gave the commissioner of baseball a list of 70 players they discovered were taking steroids, including McGwire – two decades ago. The commissioner, of course, promptly did absolutely nothing, because he was too hooked on the home runs that were saving baseball from itself after he had canceled the 1994 World Series.

And the hits just kept on coming. In 1998, McGwire broke one of the game’s most revered records when he shattered Roger Maris’s old mark of 61 home runs in a season by smashing 70. He was a national hero. [Full Story]