Commentary
With the Steelers, no news should be considered very good news PITTSBURGH – One of the big stories out of Steelers training camp to this point is who will hold on placekicks.
Will it be backup quarterback Tommy Maddox or Josh Miller? If you’re a Steelers fan, you should be greatly encouraged by this development.
It’s not because you really care who holds but rather because this is an indescribably minor issue. It matters to Maddox and Miller and to kicker Todd Peterson but it’s not really much of an issue to anyone else.
In some camps, they’re deciding who the quarterback is going to be and the choices are all fairly frightening. The Steelers have relatively few position battles because they’re loaded.
There’s a linebacking spot to be decided and some roles have to be sorted out at receiver. Basically, though, this is a team that doesn’t have a lot of decisions to make, hence the occasional focus on who the holder will be.
It’s a case where no news should be considered very good news.
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The motto for this year’s Florida State football team is “Let’s roll.”
It was chosen by head coach Bobby Bowden, which proves that experience and wisdom are not necessarily constant companions.
“Let’s roll” comes from the Sept. 11 tragedy. They were the words uttered by Todd Beamer, as he led a group of passengers in charging the cockpit of the plane that had been hijacked by terrorists.
Everyone aboard was killed when the plane crashed in Somerset County. The hijackers had apparently planned to slam into the White House as part of the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
In other words, “Let’s roll” has a life-and-death meaning which is totally inappropriate for a college football team, especially less than a year after the tragedy.
It takes courage to play football but competing in a sport shouldn’t be confused with what happened aboard Flight 93. There is no comparison. Bowden should know better and choose a different rallying cry for his football team.
He ought to apologize for his lapse in judgment, too.
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Manager Lloyd McClendon was talking about what it would take to make the Pirates a championship-caliber team.
He said they needed “three, four, five” more players. The difference between three and five this case is probably about $14 million these days.
In other words, it’s easier to talk about it than it is to get it done.
The Pirates don’t have that kind of money, they don’t have the ability attract first-rate free agents and they don’t have that much to trade that will bring value in return. Toss in the fact that they’re handicapped by ill-advised contracts that limit their flexibility and you realize what a challenging job General Manager Dave Littlefield has.
There are no budding superstars on the horizon from the minor league system in the next two years. Some nice prospects will be moving up to Class AA next year but they’ll still be at least a couple of years away from the major leagues.
Even then, it might take time for them to get established and it may never happen at all – as we just saw with Chad Hermansen.
The Pirates have improved from last year to this season. They should take a similar step next year, if only for the added year of experience and the fact that Aramis Ramirez is likely to be much better than he has been this season.
But a turnaround that makes this team into a powerhouse is not imminent
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Chick Hearn’s play-by-play of the Los Angeles Lakers never made it this far east, which is a pity.
Hearn was a legend, coining phrases that became part of basketball lexicon. His impact was enormous, largely because of his amazing staying power.
Hearn died at 85 the other day after a career that spanned 42 years of Lakers play-by-play. He was on duty from the time the team moved from Minnesota, through Elgin Baylor and Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain, through Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson to Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.
From 1965 through 2001, he called 3,338 consecutive Lakers games before heart surgery sidelined him
He was planning to come back for at least one season before he suffered a fatal brain injury in a fall at his home.
As we saw earlier this year with Jack Buck, some of the most remarkable careers in sports belong to the,people who call games rather than play them.
John Mehno can be reached at: johnmehno@lycos.com.