Cynics can't shoot down the Ice Bucket Challege

The Huffington Post has published an article by one Ben Kosinski criticizing the Ice Bucket Challenge for being ineffective. In this same article he points out how effective the Challenge has been. Nice strategy there. The guy points out that donations to the fight against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – known most commonly as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease – have increased fourfold since the start of this effort compared to the same time period a year ago.

Since he torpedoes his main point right there, he naturally must back it up with some ideas that might actually support his opinion. They don’t. They’re ridiculous, and they’re unoriginal.

He argues, for instance, that our participation in the Challenge (I use “our” because I did it) is less about raising awareness as it is filling our social-media-fueled need to share our life experiences. This is an idea that has been written about so many times, Kosinski should be ashamed for pulling it out again. Even worse, it’s completely misplaced. Not that it isn’t true. It is. It’s pretty sad knowing how many people out there feel the need to film and post all their life experiences. A vacation isn’t a vacation unless you can post it to Facebook.

That has nothing to do with the Ice Bucket Challenge, which is not a life experience. It’s something that takes five minutes and exists solely within social media. Social media, itself, is a pretty sad excuse for a life experience, but if you use it, you might as well do some good with it.

“Instead of donating, we are posting,” Kosinski writes. No. We are doing both. As Kosinski pointed out, donations are up fourfold. Did it not occur to him that people who take the time to douse themselves with ice water also are donating?

Here’s my favorite part: “What if the thousands of people who spent money on buying one or two2 (sic) bags of ice actually gave that money to ALS?” Brilliant. Instead of making a nice donation and encouraging others to do the same, calling attention to it with a little self-deprecation, I should have just donated $1.98.

And once again, this logic has been beaten to death. Every October, a few souls bash the NFL for its displays of pink for awareness of breast cancer. I’m one of those folks. The NFL outfits its roughly 1,600 players in all new uniforms, home and away, for one month. Coaches and officials, too. That’s a lot of money that could be put toward research, and it’s hard not to be cynical about the NFL’s motives, knowing the regard in which the league holds human health. And still, the effort surely is at least somewhat effective.

A bag of ice? A dollar ninety-friggin-eight. You, Ben, are suggesting I write a check to the ALS Association for $1.98. I have a better idea: you do that, you cheap bastard. The rest of us are actually making real donations and sharing a silly laugh through social media, which is how many of us share such laughs with friends from afar.

Nice try anyway, Ben. Seriously. I really enjoyed reading about the Ice Bucket Challenge “generating immediate and heightened awareness but lacking any actual donations” and “the ALS Assocation (sic) has seen as much as four times as many donations.” Way to back up what you’re saying with facts.

I hope everyone will keep up this lack of actual donations by visiting www.alsa.org and donating today. And, over Ben Kosinski’s objections, have a little fun with it.

We've got replay. No more managers on the field.

I am dead-set against the use of video review in baseball. In fact, I am dead-set against the use of instant replay in any sport, but the use of it in baseball bothers me the most. My reasons? I’ll save those for another column.

If, however, we are stuck with replay in baseball forever, and I’m certain we are, replay must replace all discussions between managers and umpires on reviewable plays. There was an unnecessary stroll from the dugout to second base by Baltimore manager Buck Showalter in the third inning of today’s Yankees-Orioles game, and the intent of it was so obvious it was sad.

Ivan Nova picked off Steve Lombardozzi on a very close play at second base. Showalter walked out to second in a way that, from 1839 up through last season, indicated an intent to argue with the umpire (a gambit that has never served any purpose but entertainment for the fans or motivation for the manager’s team, but whatever).

With replay now in effect, of course, there is nothing for Showalter to argue. Instead, as Orioles play-by-play man Gary Thorne narrated in real time, Showalter was stalling for time to allow the coaches in the dugout to get word to determine whether the Orioles should challenge the play. Showalter, when he got to the umpire, actually turned to face the Baltimore dugout while conversing with the umpire.

What possibly could he have said to the umpire? Whatever it was, it was complete nonsense, unless it was, “I have nothing to say to you; I’m just looking at my coaches to see if they think you’re wrong. OK, they don’t think so.”

Can we just dispense with the charade of managers walking out to say nothing to umpires? Not only does it look stupid, it stalls the game, because then we have to wait for the manager to walk back. If there’s any chance of a challenge, just have the next batter stop right before reaching the batter’s box and tell the home-plate umpire, “Just give us a second; we might challenge.” The rule should be this: if the manager comes out of the dugout, it is either A) a visit to the pitcher’s mound (meaning the next such visit means the pitcher is gone; or B) he is challenging the call, and if he’s wrong, he loses a challenge.

But replay still has to go. Again: another column, another time.

Don't Blame the Stadium -- Yankee FANS are Quiet

I don’t take any issue with Terry Francona or Dan Shulman – who form a terrific team, by the way. (Oh, and you should catch a college basketball game with Shulman on the call, too. The guy’s just solid.) The ESPN Sunday Night Baseball broadcast team surmised this week that the weak crowd noise in the new Yankee Stadium – and it is undeniably weak – is a product of the Stadium’s design and high ticket prices. I don’t disagree, but I think there is something else that has contributed even more. Frankly, I think the old Yankee Stadium would be almost as quiet were it still standing and housing Bombers games. The fans have changed. Specifically, winning has spoiled them. I must first admit: I am going to take this completely from a self-centered viewpoint, but I don’t care. I think I’ve been a pretty damned good Yankee fan for 35 years. And my generation of Yankee fans and I had a lot to do with making the old Stadium what it was in the 1990s and early 2000s. It’s a good viewpoint. Read it. I’m 39 years old. That means I was 22 and a senior in college in the fall of 1995, when the Yankees made the playoffs for the first time in 14 years. I repeat: the Yankees made the playoffs for the first time in 14 years. Do you know what it’s like to go 14 years without seeing your team play a single post-season game? If you are an Orioles, Royals, Indians, Rangers, Astros or Pirates fan (or if you were an Expos fan), you do. If you came of age in the era of divisional play and cheered for any other team, you don’t. And either way, you certainly don’t know what it’s like to have that kind of drought while watching another team in the same city win a championship and take the town over. That’s what it was to be a Yankee fan in the 1980s – to see the Mets not only win two division titles and a World Championship, but also to see them draw 3 million fans and make New York truly a Mets town. Don’t believe me? The Mets won the World Series in 1986 for the first time in 17 years. They drew 3 million fans the next year. The Yankees won it in 1996 for the first time in 18 years. They drew less than 2.6 million the next year – in a bigger ballpark! They failed to draw 3 million in 1998, when they won 114 regular-season games. Over the six years from 1985, when the Mets started to content, to 1990, the Mets ranked second, second, second, first, third and second in the National League in attendance. I won’t even get into where the Yankees fell over those same six seasons, but over a similar stretch, from 1995 through 2000, the Yankees ranked seventh, seventh, fifth, third, third and third in the American League. Believe me now that New York was a Mets town? You put all that together, and you can believe me when I tell you that by 1995, those of us who had not seen the Yankees in the playoffs since we were little kids, had worked ourselves into a pretty serious frenzy, and when we went to the Stadium, we were going to shout ourselves hoarse to give the Yankees every last bit of home-field advantage. That place was rowdy and loud and happy and awesome. By 1999, when the Yankees won for the third time in four years, I guess it’s fair to say our thirst for victory had been somewhat slaked. The insane-asylum atmosphere in the Bronx could have dissipated. But then along came the Subway Series in 2000, and 9/11 in 2001, and the rise of the new and improved Red Sox in 2003. Each year, there was some new incentive to make it seem like life and death all over again. That’s not the case now. It’s hard to put a finger on when it stopped being that way. I think it was probably 2004, both with the arrival of Alex Rodriguez and the stunning loss to Boston in the 2004 ALCS. Each of those events changed the dynamic, at least for me. In 1996, the Yankees were a scrappy band of overachievers, a group so charming and likeable that the rival Mets took out a full-page ad in the New York Times after the Yankees won the World Series, congratulating the Yankees and thanking them for “making our city proud.” They ceased to be that sometime before 2004, but you could almost talk yourself into it. Not anymore, once Rodriguez showed up. At that point, the Yankees were undeniably the team that was going to win by outspending you. And they were worse than that, because they didn’t win. The loss in the ALCS, however, meant that the stakes we always knew no longer existed. It’s sad to say, and nobody in New York OR Boston wants to hear this, but the stakes were always different. The Yankees had to win every year. The Red Sox, like the Brooklyn Dodgers 50 years earlier, just had to win once. The 2007 title for Boston and the 2009 Yankees championship were great moments for each city, but they exist in a vacuum. For the Yankee fan, the collective years of having the upper-hand, right through 2003, were sweet because we had to win every time, and we did. That ended in 2004. And even if that’s not how you feel about it, there is this: If you are my age, you are not screaming your lungs out at Yankee Stadium the way you did when you were 22, because if you kept that up, you’d have no voice left. And anyway, what’s the point? You don’t have the fear of not winning this year because you don’t know what the future holds. You know exactly what the future holds. More Yankee teams that should at least make the playoffs. And if you’re 22 now, you are in prime stadium-screaming age. But you will never know what it is to want so desperately just to see your team win once, the way we did in 1995, the way fans of every other team do now. You can’t know, because the Yankees have been in the playoffs every single year but one since you were 5 years old, and they’ve won five World Championships. You are spoiled. You’re not as loud as we were. Why would you be?

Remember how awesome it was when East won the World Series?

Something has been bothering me about the Little League World Series for 22 years, and I’m going to get in off my chest right now.

No, it’s not that 11- and 12-year-olds are having their Little League games broadcast around the world in prime time on ESPN, although that is a little disturbing. My sportswriting colleague Jeff (also one of my most dependable readers) has a huge issue with this, and he’s not wrong. Here’s the way I see this: if you really want to watch kids this age on TV playing baseball, and you don’t know them or, at least, they’re not representing a place you call home, I have to question your choice of sports programming.

Yeah, I know, I know: “These kids are playing for the love of the game, with youthful innocence and enthusiasm and blah, blah, blah…” Almost all baseball players play the game that way. A few major-leaguers do not. Minor-leaguers do. Go watch them. Watching little kids play is creepy.

The flip side: if the kids are competing for a world championship, and they’re from your hometown, or at least a town close enough that you can feel a connection, you’d be crazy NOT to watch.

The Little Leaguers representing my hometown, Fairfield, Conn., just lost in their bid to reach a second consecutive Little League World Series. They dropped a one-run contest in the New England regional semifinals last night to the team from Cumberland, R.I. I was very proud to see that the town where I grew up and played Little League has gone so far in this competition two straight years.

What annoys me, however, is the way the TV coverage strips away that hometown identity. Yesterday’s game was on the New England Sports Network, the same network that shows Red Sox and Bruins games. I don’t get NESN here in Pennsylvania, so I don’t know how the score bug looked on the NESN broadcast. If the game were on ESPN, however, the teams would have been called “Connecticut” and “Rhode Island.” That’s how they would have appeared on the graphic, and that’s what the announcers would have called them 95 percent of the time.

But Connecticut and Rhode Island did not play. They don’t even have teams. The teams were Fairfield and Cumberland. I didn’t start following this regional online because Connecticut was in it. Connecticut is in it every year, and if the team is from New London or Kent or Manchester, I couldn’t care less. Those places are nowhere near where I grew up. Connecticut is a small state, but it’s not that friggin’ small. I started following to see how Fairfield was doing.

The reason this rant of mine goes back 22 years is it brings us to 1989, the year Trumbull, with Chris Drury, won the World Series. I was, like everyone I knew back then, fascinated that a team so close – Fairfield and Trumbull are less than a mile apart over near Sacred Heart University – was winning a world championship.

What left me scratching my head, however, is why the word “Trumbull” was absent from the team’s jerseys, replaced with the word “East.” Teams in the LLWS trade in their hometown uniforms for one representing their region.

But these teams are not representing their region. I can assure you, I will glean no regional pride later this month if Cumberland, or Andover, Mass., wins the Little League World Series, just, I’m sure, nobody in Pennsylvania in 1989 cared that a team from the “East” won it. I would have taken great pride had Fairfield won it.

Alas, ESPN and Little League would have done all they could to rob me of this. Fairfield would have worn “New England” jerseys and Mike Patrick would have referred to the team as “Connecticut.”

I’m sure that Little League wants to make sure all the teams have nice uniforms to wear – and that they look good on TV. I don’t mind that. But I guarantee, some uniform company can produce new uniforms in a few days that read “Fairfield” or “Cumberland” – or, for that matter, “Keystone,” the Clinton County, Pa., Little League team playing this weekend for the Mid-Atlantic’s berth in the LLWS.

But, like everything else, let’s just reduce everyone to their lowest common denominator. The hell with the folks from Cumberland, who might enjoy seeing that town’s name on TV on the jersey of the kids they know, competing for a world championship.

Jeter Commits Errors of Omission

Derek Jeter has never done anything during his professional career to bring shame upon himself or the New York Yankees.

But twice, what he hasn’t done has shown that Jeter, as admirable a sports star as almost any of his generation, is not perfect. Twice now he has shown he is not in touch with the rest of us.

The first was his failure to show up last year at Bob Sheppard’s funeral. The second, actually, hasn’t happened yet, but it will happen tonight, when Jeter will fail to appear at the All-Star Game in Arizona.

Jeter’s sterling reputation has been built upon his incredible baseball accomplishments, especially in those moments when the spotlight shone most brightly, and upon his reverence for the traditions of the Yankees and of baseball. Jeter – and every other Yankee player and coach – showed a complete disconnect with Yankee tradition a year ago by not appearing at Bob Sheppard’s funeral. Sheppard’s voice was Yankee tradition. Jeter has to know this. He is the captain and the face of the team. His absence at Sheppard’s funeral showed a disregard for the tradition he has always claimed to revere.

His absence tonight will do the same thing. Jeter accomplished something Saturday only 27 other players have accomplished when he collected his 3,000th hit. Twenty-eight men. That’s two players for every decade of Major League Baseball’s existence. When you do something only two people every 10 years can do, the rest of baseball would like to celebrate it.

Jeter will not give baseball that opportunity. That’s not right. All the dog-and-pony shows in sports have gotten so nauseating; these scripted stage performances when a team wins a championship or someone breaks a record. But since there’s already one going on tonight – which is pretty much all that is left of the All-Star Game – the show should honor one of its own taking his place in baseball history only 72 hours ago.

But Jeter won’t let it happen. His reason – that he is physically and emotionally worn out from the chase for 3,000 hits – is completely legitimate. It also is not good enough. Jeter has given so much to the game, but the game has given as much to him, if not more. He owes baseball this opportunity to celebrate his place in its history. He doesn’t have to play. He is coming off an injury.

But he has to make the trip. It’s the least he can do.

Lee spurning gives Yankee fans a taste of what it's really like to be a sports fan

Yankee fans finally have a faint reminder of what it is like to root for a real baseball team.

There seem to be very few Yankee fans left who still remember and appreciate how special 1996 was, when the Yankees won a world championship they had to wait for; that was the product of patience with young players, shrewd acquisitions made with baseball skill rather than financial might, togetherness and good decision-making in the dugout.

I never stopped appreciating how magical that run was, because by the time it happened, it was happening to a franchise that felt snake-bitten, even if not to the same degree as other recent first-time-in-eons champions such as the 2004 Red Sox or this season’s Giants.

By the time we got to 2009, the Yankees had morphed into something that could never produce a moment that sweet again. You could feel happy for the individuals for their special moments: Johnny Damon for his sweet double-steal in Game Four, Hideki Matsui’s MVP slugging, or even Alex Rodriguez’s long-awaited star post-season. Fine – he’s a cheater. He’d be a cheater without that performance. Might as well get a little glory while you’re at it. He can deal with its diminished meaning.

You could not, however, tell me that 2009 was “magical.” There is nothing magical about blowing every team away with money every single off-season, guaranteeing yourself a spot near the top of the standings every year and just waiting to see in which year the stars aligned to produce a championship.

I’ve been a Yankee fan for 32 years, so when the last out of the 27th championship was recorded last fall, I let out a loud, hearty “YEAH!” And instantly I knew one thing: I didn’t mean it. It was forced. You’re supposed to scream like that when your team wins the World Series. Then again, that’s supposed to be a moment of ecstasy.

It wasn’t. 1996 was. It was, for the same reason that this fall’s title was ecstasy for Giants fans: not just because they hadn’t felt that feeling before, but because they had no idea if they’d get another shot at it anytime soon.

That’s how it was for Yankee fans in 1996. Like Sisyphus, sports teams are forever rolling boulders up hills. When the season ends with no championship, as it does for all but one team per sport every year, it rolls all the way to the bottom, and you don’t know if you’ll ever get it even near the top. When the Yankees lost in the ALDS in 1997, we had no idea what was coming the next six years. We knew we’d better savor our precious 1996 title, because we might not get another shot soon.

Now, when the boulder rolls back down the hill, it stops on a ledge pretty darned close to the top. The Yankees have so little pushing to do. Which means, as in 2009, there will be far less glory in the accomplishment when it happens again.

But the boulder rolled a little farther down Monday night, when the Yankees lost out on their chance to acquire one of the best pitchers in baseball for the second time in three years. Cliff Lee’s signing with the Phillies is a good example in ways that transcend baseball. Someone demonstrating that there is something other than money that is his greatest priority shouldn’t be a novelty, but it is, and Lee has done us all a favor by reminding us.

He also has put Yankee fans in a position where they might, just might, get a new taste of what it truly means to be a sports fan. It means you take an interest in your team’s young players. It means you watch them grow and mature, and when they show you that they are not yet the stars you want them to be (Phil Hughes?), and they don’t win when you need them to, you don’t just show them the door and buy someone else’s proven players.

Where would the Yankees have been had they cast aside Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte after the Yankees lost to Seattle in such heartbreaking fashion in 1995? Surely they could have dealt all three for someone else’s stars and tried to win with more established players such as Juan Gonzalez, Ken Caminiti and Pet Hentgen. I mean, after all, why wait? We’re the Yankees. We have a mission statement that says we must win the World Series every year or consider the year a failure.

What a bunch of nonsense. Does any of you even remember 1993? Do you remember how much fun it was to go to the Stadium that summer and see a team that had had four straight losing years (something no Red Sox fan under the age of 45 has ever experienced) finally start to win with a group of young, homegrown players and castoffs shrewdly acquired from other teams? Do you remember the Stadium speakers blasting “We’re Not Gonna Take It” after every win, because the team actually seemed to be fighting back against the odds? What odds are the Yankees fighting now? The odds against their not contending? Please.

Perhaps Ivan Nova, Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, Edwin Nunez, Brett Gardner are Greg Golson are on the cusp of being the core of a future Yankee winner. Maybe Austin Romine, Jesus Montero and Dellin Betances are going to join them in a year or two. I’m willing to wait, and I’m willing to take a chance that they will all fail, and the Yankees will finally experience a real dropoff.

Harold Reynolds put it perfectly this morning on MLB Network. Now the Yankees will have to do things creatively, instead of just spending money, Reynolds said. I hope they’ll do it.

If the Yankees win this year, it will be because Andy Pettitte came back and continued his wonderful career. It will be because Phil Hughes got even better with the training wheels taken off and gave the Yankees a consistent season. It will even be because some pitching guru in the organization helped A.J. Burnett straighten himself out. There is accomplishment in these things.

Where is the accomplishment in spending more money than anyone else can hope to spend to put the two best lefthanders in baseball in your rotation? Where is the glory in winning when there is almost no chance of losing?

But since the Yankees now must operate at so much higher an economic plane, with their absurdly expensive stadium and its absurdly expensive seats, there can, of course, be no chance of losing. There can be no risk of the Yankees having to be patient with young players. They cannot allow one seat to go unsold, which might happen if they operate like any other team.

The Yankees' boulder must always start two feet from the top of the hill.

It wasn’t always this way. Too bad most Yankee fans can’t remember – and will never know again – what it’s like to stand with your team as it stands with that boulder at the top of the hill, drinks champagne and rejoices in pushing it all the way from the bottom of the hill.

Icing the kicker: the worst trend in sports

We saw another example of the most annoying trend in sports Sunday: the calling of a timeout to “ice” the opposing kicker before a dramatic field-goal attempt.

Houston coach Gary Kubiak stood next to an official and called a timeout, apparently just before the Redskins snapped the football to begin the play on which Graham Gano drilled a long field goal that would have won the game. In an unusual twist, Gano’s kick after the timeout, the one that counted, missed its mark badly, and the Texans won on their next possession.

Sadly, the gambit seemed to work. Not that coaches were going to halt this awful practice, but if there was any chance, after yesterday they’ll are saying, “See? It works!”

Oh, it works alright. It works if the goal is ruining the moment. A field-goal attempt in overtime is supposed to be a dramatic, do-or-die moment. Because coaches insist on using their timeouts in these situations, with the kicker and holder lined up and the field full of potential energy, much of the drama is removed. Rather than reacting in a normal way to a do-or-die sports moment, we’re looking around the field for an official, trying to find out if we’re allowed to celebrate or be devastated.

I’m pleased to see that most fans are as upset about this practice as I am. I just wish we knew what to do about it. I hear so many fans and media members screaming, “They have to change that rule!”

What rule?

There is no rule concerning timeouts and field goals. None. Head coaches and players on the field – and nobody else – may call time out at any time, as long as a play is not going on. That means that head coaches can call time out with the other team’s field goal team all lined up.

What would you like to see changed? “Well, you shouldn’t be allowed to call time out right before the snap.” Coaches cannot predict the future. They don’t know when the other team’s center is going to snap the ball.

“Well, then, you shouldn’t be allowed to call timeout in the last five seconds of the play clock.” That’s when offenses need to call timeout most often. You’re going to allow that but not allow the defense? Perhaps the defensive team, with three seconds on the play clock, suspects a fake is coming. Are you going to deny the team the chance to change its personnel and play call with a timeout? You can’t do that.

I want this situation to change as badly as you do. If anyone has a suggestion, I want to hear it. I just don’t see what you can do to the rulebook to change it. I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing: praying that every kicker that gets “iced” misses the kick that doesn’t count, then makes the one that does.