Randy Johnson: Last of His Kind

When Randy Johnson wins his 300th game sometime in the next couple weeks he isn’t just going to become a member of one of baseball’s most exclusive clubs; he is likely to become the last member of that club.

While the once ultra exclusive 500 home run club has suddenly become as crowded as a phone booth during a fraternity pledge night, reaching 300 career victories is going the way of the woolly mammoth.

Earlier this season, Gary Sheffield became the ninth player this decade and 25th player in history to reach 500 home runs. Carlos Delgado of the Mets will probably be joining the club sometime in the next year as he stands only 27 home runs away from the once magical number.

With two more victories, Johnson will become the fourth pitcher this decade, and only the fifth in the last twenty years to collect 300 victories. He will become the 24th pitcher in a club that may never see a 25th member.

After Johnson, the pitcher closest to 300 victories is 46-year-old Jamie Moyer with 249 wins. Entering this season, Moyer needed to average 18 wins per season for the next three years to reach 300.

He has three wins so far in 2009, but considering that he has exceeded 17 wins only twice in his 23 year career, the likelihood that he will achieve 300 wins is pretty remote.

Of pitchers under the age of 40, CC Sabathia, who will be 29 in July, entered this season with 117 victories through his first eight seasons for an average of 15 wins per season. He will have to maintain that average for another 12 years to reach 300 wins.

There are quite a few reasons why these two milestones of greatness have swapped levels of difficulty during the last quarter century.

The combination of performance enhancing drugs, shrinking ballparks and an increase in the number of mediocre pitchers at the major league level have combined to inflate home run totals and elevate players who in other eras would have been lucky to hit 300 home runs to statistical levels once reserved for the greats of the game.

At the same time that forces have combined to increase offensive numbers, starting pitchers have become the victims of a similar convergence of factors.

Once upon a time, starting pitchers in Major League Baseball were considered warriors, heading to the mound every fourth day to carry the mettle for their team. They took the rubber each time expecting to pitch nine innings and some considered it an insult if the manager even thought about taking them out of the game.

Former Baltimore Orioles stalwart Jim Palmer was known for expressing frustration when he was removed from a game before it was finished. Considering that between 1969 and 1978 he averaged 18 complete games a year, you have to wonder how Palmer would react today when most managers are looking to the bullpen by the sixth or seventh inning.

Sending the game to the bullpen earlier is one reason that when a pitcher now wins 16 games in a season he often in the discussion for the Cy Young Award.

The other major reason is that in this era of five-man pitching rotations, pitchers get several fewer starts per season than when most starting rotations included only four men.

When Palmer won 20 or more games in eight of nine seasons between 1970 and 1978, he averaged 37 starts per season and exceeded 300 innings pitched four times.

Johnson is generally recognized as one of the workhorse pitchers of his generation, but he has never started more than 35 games in a season and his career-high for innings pitched is 271.

It is telling to consider that Johnson’s career total of 100 complete games ranks first among active pitchers and is nearly double the second place total. Yet, when compared with the all-time list, Johnson is tied with Dennis Eckersley and two others for 399th place on the career complete game list.

Baseball has always been a game of numbers. Reaching 500 home runs or 300 victories has always meant nearly automatic induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Yet, as the value of these milestone numbers becomes a little murky, other factors will have to be used to determine Hall of Fame credentials.

With the recent positive test for performance enhancing drugs by Manny Ramirez, seven members of the 500 home run club have now been linked to PEDs.

The Hall of Fame selection earlier this year of Jim Rice, who hit 382 home runs as baseball’s premier slugger of the late 1970s and 1980s, could indicate a shift away from bloated numbers and toward excellence within an era as criteria for Hall of Fame selection.

A shift toward that kind of evaluation could bode well for some of the premier pitchers of the last two decades.

There has been much debate recently as to whether Curt Schilling –with 216 career wins– is deserving of Hall of Fame recognition. While his win total, along with that of Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz –with 214 and 210 career wins respectively– falls well short of pitchers from previous eras, it looks more impressive when compared with his contemporaries.

Even if Johnson had not been able to continue his push toward 300 wins, a total that Palmer did not reach despite having eight 20 victory seasons and 211 complete games, there is little doubt that his dominance during the late 1990s and early 2000s would have earned him a spot in the Hall of Fame.

That Johnson has been able to withstand the test of time is a testament to his ability and proof that he is indeed one of the greats of all-time.

He also is going to be the last of his kind, so you won’t want to miss his milestone victory. If you do, it might be quite a while before you see another one quite like it.

Walt Frazier – May Vintage Athlete of the Month

Imagine if you played the best game of your career to lead your team to victory in the seventh game of an NBA Championship Series and yet when historians discuss the game you get little mention as they spend most of their time talking about someone who scored only four points in the game and could barely get up and down the court.

Such is the case for the Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month for May, Walt “Clyde” Frazier.

To most, the defining image of the 1970 NBA Finals between the New York Knickerbockers and Los Angeles Lakers is that of New York center Willis Reed limping out of the locker room prior to game seven and then hitting two baskets that set the tone for the Knicks ultimate victory over a powerhouse Lakers team that included Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor.

However, while Reed’s performance provided the emotional lift the Knicks needed, it was Frazier who dominated the game on the court.

Frazier scored 22 points in the first half as New York raced out to a 61-37 lead. The Knicks point guard finished the game with 36 points and 19 assists as New York claimed their first-ever championship with a 113-99 victory.

While Reed may have received all the attention during the 1970 run to the NBA Championship, there was no doubt who made the New York Knicks go during the 1970s.

Known for both his offensive and defensive prowess, Walt Frazier was an integral part of a Knicks team that made three trips to the NBA Finals and claimed the only two titles in franchise history. He was a four-time first team All-NBA selection and was an All-Defensive team pick seven times.

On the court, Frazier directed the show and often yielded the spotlight to his well-known teammates, including Reed, Bill Bradley, Jerry Lucas, Dave DeBusschere and Earl “The Pearl” Monroe.

However, off the court Frazier’s flamboyant sense of style and classic smile put him in a class with only “Broadway Joe” Namath as the most recognized New York City sports figures of the era. Nicknamed “Clyde” after wearing a similar hat to one that Warren Beatty had worn while portraying folk hero robber Clyde Barrow in the popular 1960s movie Bonnie and Clyde, Frazier was known for his flashy wardrobe and for arriving to games in his Rolls Royce.

Frazier’s Madison Square Garden debut in 1967 was a memorable one that proved to be foreshadowing for his decade of success with the Knicks.

A high school standout in Atlanta, Frazier attended Southern Illinois University and was a Division II All-American in 1964 and 1965. He led SIU to the 1967 National Invitational Tournament (NIT), played at Madison Square Garden, and was named tournament MVP as they defeated Marquette 71-56 to win the title.

The Knicks chose Frazier with the fifth pick in the 1967 NBA Draft and he went on to earn All-Rookie Team honors during his initial season in New York.

As part of a talented young nucleus, Frazier helped the Knicks snap a streak of eight straight losing seasons during his first season with the squad. They won 54 games while reaching the Eastern Division Finals the next season and then during the 1969-70 season won a franchise record 60 games and the first championship in team history.

The Knicks lost the NBA Finals to the Lakers in 1972, but won the rematch the following season for their second title in four years. Frazier spent 10 seasons with the Knicks and averaged 19.2 points and 6.3 rebounds per game during that stretch.

He completed his career with three injury-plagued seasons for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Since his retirement, Frazier has remained visible in New York as a color commentator for Knicks games on the MSG Network. He also has appeared in a number of national commercials, most notably as a spokesman for Just for Men.

He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1987.

Each month, Sports Then and Now celebrates and remembers the accomplishments of a notable athlete from past generations. If you had a favorite athlete growing up that you would like to see featured as the Vintage Athlete of the Month, send me a nomination by e-mail.

Small Schools Still Have an Impact on the NFL Draft

As teams prepare for the upcoming NFL Draft, scouts and analysts have scoured the country to find the college football players who can provide an immediate impact for the 32 teams competing to reach Super Bowl XLIV next February. In a world of “draft experts” and the internet, there really is no such thing anymore as an “unknown.”

Every potential draft pick –no matter whether they played for a major college or a Division II school– has a Wikipedia page and his 40-time posted on multiple draft boards floating around the World Wide Web.

When the draft starts this weekend, most of the players selected will hail from schools with names that are familiar to college football fans, such as the University of Southern California, Penn State, Oklahoma and Georgia.

However, there will be a few players selected who attended schools that you need a Google map to find. Places such as Western Illinois, Central Arkansas, Liberty, Sam Houston State and Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo.

While today most of the players selected from these obscure schools will be chosen in the middle or late rounds, there was a time not so long ago when all NFL scouts were regularly finding future NFL stars in some out of the way places.

Since 1960, a total of 3,623 players (22% of all draft selections) have hailed from schools that were not classified as NCAA Division I-A (now known as the Football Bowl Subdivision). However, the percentage of small school players has significantly declined from 28.5% in the 1960s and 27.6% in the 1970s to only 10.3% in the current decade.

The list of great players from small schools is long and illustrious –including many Hall of Fame members and All-Pros. It would take pages to list all the great small school players, but among the names at the top of the list are Walter Payton (Jackson State), Jerry Rice (Mississippi Valley State), Gene Upshaw (Texas A&M-Kingsville), Don Maynard (Texas Western), Willie Davis (Grambling State), Art Shell (Maryland-Eastern Shore), and Willie Lanier (Morgan State).

Twice in the 1970s, the first pick in the NFL Draft was from a school that –at the time– was not a Division I-A school. Terry Bradshaw was chosen first overall in 1970 out of Louisiana Tech and Ed “Too Tall” Jones was the first pick in the 1974 draft from Tennessee State.

Overall, a total of 80 small college players have been selected in the first round of the draft since 1960. Like the overall number of picks, however, that number has steadily declined from 19 in the 1960s and 34 in the 1970s to only five in this decade (including Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Joe Flacco in 2008).

There are certainly a number of reasons that NFL rosters are regularly including fewer players from small schools.

Probably the most significant is that after decades of reluctance, the 1960s and 1970s saw many major football conferences finally start recruiting talented African American players. From the 1950s through the early 1970s, historically black colleges such as Grambling State, Jackson State and Morgan State became known as pipelines to the NFL as they offered talented athletes who could not find a scholarship at schools in the Southeastern Conference and other major Division I conferences a place to showcase their talents.

While major colleges once let future Hall of Famers such as Elvin Bethea, Buck Buchanon, Charlie Joiner and Lem Barney toil away at small schools, big-time programs are now eagerly scooping up all the top talent.

The past decade has also seen an influx of schools that previously competed at the I-AA (Football Championship Subdivision) level to Division I-A. This has slightly reduced the talent level at Division I-AA as many talented players who once fell to those schools are now going to Division I-A schools.

Another move that has increased the availability of Division I-A scholarships is the change over the last 20 years by the NFL to allow college players to enter the NFL before the completion of their college eligibility. This has increased the churn rate at some of the top colleges and had trickle-down impact at all college levels.

In 1993 the NFL cut the NFL Draft to eight rounds and the following year trimmed the draft to its currently size of seven rounds. It is apparent that the reduction in draft size has impacted the draft philosophy of many schools.

Whereas teams were once willing to spend low round picks on players from small schools, they are now choosing to use their lower round picks on players from major Division I-A conferences and instead sign players from non-BCS (Bowl Championship Series) and non-Division I-A schools as free agents.

In 1992, the final year of a 12-round draft, 36 players from non-I-A schools were chosen in the first seven rounds of the draft. The last three drafts have seen an average of 25 players from small schools chosen.

However, the impact of players from smaller schools on the NFL is still significant.

In addition to Rogers-Cromartie and Flacco, other players from recent NFL drafts that have made an impact in the NFL include Marques Colton (Hofstra), Donald Driver (Alcorn State), Brian Westbrook (Villanova), Aaron Smith (Northern Colorado), Antoine Bethea (Howard), Jahri Evans (Bloomsburg), Zak DeOssie (Brown), Rashean Mathis (Bethune-Cookman), Jared Allen (Idaho State), Robert Mathis (Alabama A&M) and Willie Colon (Hofstra).

In fact, of the 21 small college players selected in the 2006 draft, 20 made NFL rosters and 17 were still in the NFL in 2008. If the 2009 NFL Draft goes as expected, you will probably see about the same number of small college players chosen in the draft as in recent years.

It is doubtful that a non-I-A player will be picked in the first round this time, but after hearing all the big schools repeatedly called it will certainly be refreshing when the draft experts start talking about players from places like Richmond, Tennessee State, Furman and Stillman.

I just hope someone is ready to break out the maps.





Check out this list of the top Late Round Draft “Gems” from Small Colleges

Isiah Thomas: Latest Big-Time Coach Looking for Success at a Small-Time Program

You can now add the name of former NBA player, coach and executive Isiah Thomas to the long list of “big time” coaches who have retreated to the perceived safety of non-major college basketball to try and rehabilitate a damaged reputation.

With the announcement that Thomas will take over as head basketball coach at Florida International University (FIU), he is following a path that has been tried by many, but with surprisingly mixed results.

The history of college basketball is filled with coaches who enjoyed tremendous success at the highest level of competition, but for one reason or another fell from grace and no longer commanded the interest of top programs.

Many smaller schools are constantly looking for opportunities to increase exposure and contend with the major athletic programs, so lower-level Division I schools are often willing to overlook any baggage and accept their new coach with open arms.

What is different about the hiring of Isiah Thomas is that he has absolutely no experience coaching at the college level. You can also argue that with the exception of his stint as head coach of the Indiana Pacers, where he posted a 131-115 record in three seasons, his post-playing career has been anything but successful.

Thomas was an abysmal failure during front office stints with the Toronto Raptors and New York Knicks. During two seasons coaching the Knicks, he posted a record of 56-108.

He also is credited with driving the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) into bankruptcy during his stint as owner of the league.

Most coaches who have made the transition from a major program to a lower-level Division I school have struggled not only with the increased challenge in recruiting players to a non-marquee school, but also with the realization that they are no longer at a school where the coffers of the athletic foundation are filled with cash.

Because in most cases the school is paying their marquee coach significantly more in salary than they had previously paid, there is immediate pressure to increase revenue through ticket sales, advertising, and booster contributions.

However, while the addition of a big name coach usually provides an immediate bump in interest and exposure, that increase is often temporary. If the new coach isn’t able to immediately put a winning team on the floor –often a challenge because the coach generally inherits a team that has not had recent success– it isn’t long before the new coach must begin to accept the realities of life at a non-major program.

When Lefty Driesell coached at James Madison University –after being forced out at the University of Maryland following the death of Lenny Bias– the quote floating around the school was that Driesell “had an unlimited budget, and he exceeded it.”

Driesell arrived at James Madison in 1989 amid great fanfare and expectations that he could raise the national profile of the college. After posting first round NCAA Tournament upsets each year between 1981-1983, the basketball program had struggled with only one winning season in the immediate three years before Driesell’s arrival and fans were excited about the prospect of “Lefty” taking the team back to the NCAA Tournament.

He immediately elevated expectation and alienated the other members of the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) by saying that getting to the NCAA Tournament should be easy because all you have to do is win the conference tournament.

It proved to be an ominous statement as Driesell took JMU to the championship game of the CAA Tournament five times during his eight-year tenure, but registered only one tournament title. After he left in 1996, the JMU program struggled for more than a decade before registering a winning season in 2009.

Driesell finished his coaching career a peg further down the coaching totem pole at Georgia State University. He retired ranked 9th all-time among Division I coaches with 786 career victories.

In addition to Driesell, a number of other former big-time coaches posted only moderate success at smaller schools.

Hugh Durham, who led both Florida State and Georgia to the NCAA Final Four, became head coach at Jacksonville University in 1997 and posted a 106-119 record in eight seasons.

After leading the University of Alabama to eight NCAA appearances and four SEC Championships, Wimp Sanderson became head coach at Arkansas-Little Rock in 1994. In five seasons, he led UALR to an 85-58 record, but never reached the NCAA Tournament and made only one trip to the NIT.

After leading the Los Angeles Lakers to an NBA title and Loyola-Marymount to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament, Paul Westhead arrived at George Mason University in 1993 amid high expectations. In four seasons, he led the Patriots to a 38-70 record. After spending most of the past decade as an NBA assistant, Westhead was recently named the head women’s basketball coach at the University of Oregon.

One coach who was able to parlay his reputation into success was Gene Bartow. After leading Memphis State to the NCAA Championship game in 1973 and UCLA to the Final Four in 1976, Bartow left the spotlight to start the athletic program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB).

Bartow enjoyed tremendous success during his 18 seasons at UAB, including nine trips to the NCAA Tournament. The team made seven consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament from 1981-1987 –including a trip to the Elite Eight in 1982.

A number of current coaches have also found success away from the bright spotlight of major college coaching.

Despite registering a 146-104 record and reaching the NCAA Tournament five times during eight seasons at the University of Virginia, Jeff Jones was fired after posting an 11-19 record during the 1997-98 campaign.

In 2000 he moved from the bright lights of the ACC to the shadows of the Patriot League as head coach at American University. Jones recently completed his ninth season at American by leading the Eagles to a 24-8 record and their second consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament –where they gave eventual Final Four participant Villanova all they could handle in a first round matchup.

Todd Bozeman experienced amazing highs and dramatic lows during his turbulent tenure as basketball coach at the University of California, Berkley, from 1993-1996. In 1993 he became the youngest coach ever to lead a team to the “Sweet 16” of the NCAA Tournament.

Three years later –following a number of NCAA rules violations– he was slapped with a “show-cause” order than basically prohibited him from coaching in college basketball for the next eight years.

In 2006 he became head coach at Morgan State in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and in 2008-09 led the Bears to a 23-12 and their first-ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament.

It is difficult to predict whether Thomas has the patients and temperament that will be needed to overcome the pitfalls and build Florida International into a successful winner. He inherits a team that has posted a 23-39 mark over the last two seasons and hasn’t had a winning record since the 1999-2000 season.

Given the reputation hits that Thomas has taken in recent years, the job at FIU may be exactly what the one-time NBA star needs. Being in the Miami market will provide him with some notoriety and exposure, but he shouldn’t have the constant scrutiny that he endured during his tenure in New York.

If he is able to turn FIU into a consistent winner, Thomas will not only be resuscitating the Panther basketball program, but also his own damaged reputation.

It won’t be easy, but considering the flair for the dramatic that Thomas has shown throughout his career, you can bet that his time at FIU will be interesting to watch.

What Does "Best Ever" Mean?

Over the last couple weeks, I have started following and submitting material to a web site called “Bleacher Report”. It is a sports web site full of user generated content that provides a forum for bloggers and sports fans to post material about sporting events, players and sports news that are of interest to them.

For the most part, the people who submit to this site seem to be dedicated sports fans, rather than actual members of the mainstream media. Some, like myself, are trying to break into the field of sports blogging and looking to increase exposure for themselves and their own sports blogs, while also creating a following of readers.

There are also a large number of high school and college age young men writing for the site who love sports and like the opportunity to show off their knowledge and abilities to a potentially large audience. I can tell you if this kind of opportunity had existed 25 years ago when I was in high school, I would have been all over it.

While I applaud the concept and embrace the opportunity to have some of my thoughts and opinions spread to a larger audience, I also am starting to see some of the potential traps that come with the growing trend toward sites that emphasize user generated content.

There is no question that everyone is entitled to an opinion and the opportunity to express such, but the prominence of web sites that provide anyone with an interest and something to say with a platform as well as a measure of instant credibility also has the potential to assist in the dissemination of inaccurate or flawed information.

I encountered one such example when checking Bleacher Report this morning.

As a life-long football fan and connoisseur of the NFL’s 90-year history, I am always interested to see lists that claim to give a comprehensive history of something by using the moniker “Greatest Ever” or “Best of All Time.” For that reason, I was immediately drawn to an article entitled “The NFL’s 25 Best Undrafted Players of All Time.”

The picture slideshow that followed was nicely presented, but it basically was a chronicle of the best undrafted players of the last 15-20 years, rather than a truly comprehensive list of the greatest undrafted players of all-time.

The list included only two players, Warren Moon and Dick “Night Train” Lane, who started their careers before 1990. It excluded 11 undrafted free agents who are members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, including Emlen Tunnell (79 interceptions, nine Pro Bowls), Willie Brown (54 interceptions, nine Pro Bowls), Marion Motley (4,720 rushing yards, two-time All-Pro), Joe Perry (9,723 rushing yards, three Pro Bowls), Lou “The Toe” Groza (1,608 points, nine Pro Bowls), Larry Little (five Pro Bowls) and Jim Langer (six Pro Bowls).

It also did not include four undrafted players from the 1970s who were all part of Super Bowl Championship teams and arguably belong in the Hall of Fame. Omitted from the list were Drew Pearson (489 receptions, 7,822 yards, 3 Pro Bowls) and Cliff Harris (29 interceptions, six Pro Bowls) from the Dallas Cowboys, Donnie Shell (51 interceptions, five Pro Bowls) from the Pittsburgh Steelers and Bob Kuechenberg (196 career games, six Pro Bowls) from the Miami Dolphins.

The list did include current Green Bay Packer running back Ryan Grant, who has rushed for 2,159 yards in his two-year career, as well as defensive back Nick Harper (20 interceptions, no Pro Bowls), linebacker Bart Scott (16 career sacks, one Pro Bowl), linebacker Antonio Pierce (7.5 sacks, one Pro Bowl) and wide receiver Wes Welker (319 career receptions, 3,461 yards, one Pro Bowl).

I applaud the author for picking an interesting subject and doing a nice job identifying current players for the list. However, I wish he would have either done the required research needed to recognize that NFL history is full of great players who were undrafted or that he would have narrowed the scope of his title and called it the “Top Undrafted Players of the Last 20 Years” or something else that better articulates the reality of his list.

In my opinion, this slideshow illustrates both the danger associated with the lack of checks-and-balances for sites that emphasize user generated content and the even greater issue that young sports fans of today –as well as many members of the media– seem to forget that there is a plethora of history that occurred prior to the last 20 years.

Since the slideshow was posted, it has been viewed more than 3,500 times, which is a very impressive number. The slideshow also has received more than 75 comments and only three (including one from me) expressed any significant concern that the list missed players from the pre-1990 era.

This perfectly illustrates why I created the “Sports Then and Now” blog earlier this year. Too often the media and fans of today forget that sports actually started before 1990. Most of today’s top stories and great moments can be tied to moments and stories from the past to provide context and history. That element is often missed in the rush to brand something that happens today “the best ever” or “greatest of all-time” when in reality something pretty similar has probably happened before.

While my focus in this particular column is a slideshow created by a 25-year old sports fan, veteran members of the national media –who should know better– are also guilty of throwing around superlatives as if they were free t-shirts.

The first column I posted on “Sports Then and Now” back in February focused on the declaration by several members of the mainstream media that with their sixth Super Bowl victory the Pittsburgh Steelers cemented their claim as the “Greatest Team in NFL History.”

My question then was exactly when does sports history start given the fact that while the Steelers now have more Super Bowl victories than any other team, the NFL held annual championships for nearly 50 years before the first Super Bowl was ever played and the Steelers never even played in one of those title games.

Through this column I am not at all trying to dismiss the great talent of today’s athletes. Athletes accomplish amazing feats every day and I think they deserve to be celebrated. However, rather than just recognizing them “in the moment”, it is my hope that the media and young sports fans will look at them in context with the past and therefore celebrate not just the current player or accomplishment, but also remember those who came before.

In my opinion, looking at the today’s greats in context of the past makes their accomplishments all the more impressive and special. That is what I will continue to do with “Sports Then and Now” and I invite you to continue checking in as I look at today’s sporting events, players and news with a historical perspective.