Keep the rally alive!

The Occupy somewhere ralliers are springing up everywhere. The Yard was taken by their dilettante efforts and strident spirit in saying, “We are mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore!” The Yard decided to join the cause to support their cause. This past Saturday, we occupied our sofa for most of the day. Pictures of the occupation will eventually be displayed at the blog spot. It was a particularly fortuitous weekend to occupy our sofa with USC playing Stanford in a thriller. We were fervent in our desire to support those occupiers everywhere with our La-Z-boy recliner, refrigerator stocked with beverages and a remote control to take us around the nation with limited motion. There was nothing that could stop our fervor. Not on this Saturday, no way. Monday was a business trip but we have committed to be full tilt sofa every Saturday until stuff gets better.

With each passing year the demise of Major League Baseball is predicted and it is derided for its pace and relevance in today’s sports universe. The nation’s oldest pastime has been challenged to shorten the games and become more in touch with a generation of fans who might not appreciate the nuances of the historic game while texting.

In Los Angeles, most fans were unaware that the games were so long because they listen to the last two innings of any game they attend on the drive home. The games can sometimes be four hours or two and a half because there is not a game clock. The team with the lead does not have the option to run out the clock. The team that is behind only has to keep the rally alive. It is what makes baseball special in sports history and in Yard patronage.

The 2011 baseball season came down to the last hour of the final day of the season before the Saint Louis Cardinals knew that they were in the post season. The Cardinals were 10 ½ games out in of a wild card spot in late August. Albert Pujols was leaving. ManagerTony LaRussa was probably gone and soon so would be the 2011 Cardinal Season.

So it should not have been a surprise Thursday night in Saint Louis, the Cardinals were down to their last strike twice in an elimination game. If the batter strikes out, the Cardinals not only lose the game, they would have lost the 2011 World Series. If they lost, that is all that would be remembered. In the bottom of the 9th with two out and with two strikes, an unlikely hero in David Freese banged a two run triple off the right field wall to tie the game. It was historic but it only tied the game. Josh Hamilton looking like the Natural gave the Ranger another two run lead with a majestic stroke that silenced the crowd. In the bottom of the 10th, and most of the mojo juice spent in the Cardinals down one with two out and gray bird Lance Berkman strokes a two strike single to tie the game. That spent all of the Mojo juice Ranger coach Ron Washington could brew in the visitor’s dugout David Freese puts the ball where only the fans can catch it in the 11th and the rest is the history of baseball. Baseball is much like life, there is always enough time if there are enough out. You can never lose if you just keep rallying.

Bryant Gumbel shook up the sports universe this past week by making very strong comments about NBA Commissioner David Stern. Gumbel stated in an editorial during his HBO show that “Stern’s version of what’s been going on behind closed doors has, of course, been disputed. But his efforts were typical of a commissioner who has always seemed eager to be viewed as some kind of modern plantation overseer, treating NBA men as if they were his boys.”

The Yard is not sure who should be more outraged by Gumbel’s comments Stern or the NBA players he apparently was supporting with that comment. It is also an outrage to the history of racial atrocities to compare an NBA player to a slave. The horrors that happened to a slave on a plantation are not akin to the lifestyle of any NBA benchwarmer anywhere.

David Stern is arguably the best commissioner in any professional sport. He is accessible to the press, hard-nosed and creative. Gumbel and the NBA players should hearken back to the days before Stern was commissioner in 1983. There were 23 teams. There were no Nike shoe deals. There was no Dream Team. There was an awful TV contract and the NBA playoffs were on tape delay after the late news in most markets. There were rampant drug problems throughout the league which were well documented in the eight hour news cycle of the day. In 1982, three NBA players were making $1 million a year or more, Kareem Jabbar, Moses Malone and Magic Johnson. The average salary for an NBA player was $65,000 per year. A player could hardly spawn a second family on those paltry dollars.

Since Stern became commissioner that NBA has added seven new teams. Each team employs fifteen players, multiple coaches, back office personnel and staff. Stern’s NBA has built nine new basketball arenas employing hundreds of people playing before thousands of fans. The NBA now enjoys the most lucrative contract in league history. NBA games are televised live on TBS, TNT, ESPN, ABC and multiple regional sports networks almost nightly. The NBA expanded into Canada and internationally. NBA player jersey sales rank among the highest of all sports. The average player salary is $6.5 million and over 20 players make more than $15 million annually. The NBA is in a much better place since David Stern took the helm of this flagging sport. The plantation was never a better place for the slaves.

Bryant Gumbel took issue with Stern being an egocentric and self-centered. This is very interesting commentary from one of the real prima donna loads in television history. The celebrity as diva bar is set rather high and Bryant has cleared it into the finals at most career stops. Gumbel’s ego, back stabbing and tirades have been well documented from his days as the host on the Today to his current position at HBO. He is Wilbon like in his positioning of his question as more important than the answer from his guest. His comments were to shock us into thinking that Gumbel is part of our social relevance. I forgot what were we talking about again?

“Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive and you have defeated time, you remain forever young.” Roger Angell