Dukes Can't Seem to Duck Controversy

A lot of scuttlebutt is being made of the Nationals disciplining outfielder Elijah Dukes for being 5 minutes late to the ballpark after making a “charity” appearance at the opening day for a Little League in Great Falls, VA.

Some of the well heeled citizens of the area - and for those not from D.C., just think of Great Falls as the hilly, densely tree covered, bucolic version of Beverly Hills. Replace actors with rich politicians, lobbyists, and the like, and you get the picture – are now crying foul because Elijah was soooooo niiicceee to their kiddies, and hey, it was “only” 5 minutes late.

Sorry.

Late is late. And this guy is out of chances.

I was watching the excellent feature on Charlie Manuel on HBO’s Real Sports the other night. He told Frank Deford he only had two rules as manager.

1. On time.
2. Hustle.

That’s it! Deford seemed amazed at the simplicity, but when you think of it in baseball terms, all good things come from those two little rules.

Besides, anybody who knows how pro sports teams operate, know that being on time is taken very, very seriously. Why? Because with 20+ millionaires or more on a team, ALL OF THEM think THEY are somehow special, and ALL of them would start pushing the lateness envelope if clubs made exceptions.

What annoyed me, was that I didn’t seem to get the sense that anybody from Great Falls Little League took it upon themselves to MAKE SURE that Mr. Dukes made it from the land of 5 acre horse estates and $2 million dollar Potomac River mansions, all the way down to Southeast D.C.

It might be the most winding, arduous, tortured Point A to Point B “commute” you could draw on the DC-VA-MD map!

Sure, the Little League said they would take up a collection to pay his fine ($500) and then also paid him $500 up front. But how about making sure you don’t get the guy in trouble?

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Thanks to you guys, the Steve Czaban Show podcast on iTunes is rockin’! Here’ the latest from the tech guys at SIM:

Attached are the stats for the Fox Sports radio podcast of Czabe’s show. You can see that they are slowly increasing every day. The drops in numbers are the weekends, and then they go right back up. The screenshot is from itunes. We went from being on page 2 under the (Sports > Professional) area for the new and notable area. It’s also currently #90 in the top 100 podcasts under the (Sports > Professional) area.

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I don’t know about anybody else, but I give the Lions a nice THUMBS UP to their logo “tweak.” Here’s the new, and the old, so you can compare.





Like the Arizona Cardinals when they went to a subtle, slightly more “angry” bird, this update is just right. While the pretty red birdfeeder bird is not AT ALL indigenous to the desert southwest, the logo is certainly indigenous and widely recognized in NFL history – albeit mostly as a laughingstock.

Same too, the Lions. I never did like that flat, silhouetted Lion cut-out logo, but also think it’s important to maintain the original feel. This tweak gives some nice dimension to the Lion, and a snazzy new font that’s not obnoxious.

Maybe the curse of Bobby Layne really is, ovah?

Well, At Least We're Getting Free Books Now!

I remember during the election run-up, that our Dear and Great Leader Barack Obama once said in a speech that a victory for him would help mark the moment "when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal."

I don't know about the planet healing, but I do suspect the oceans are holding steady now that the endless stream of hysterical Obama-bot tears at his inauguration have finally dried up.

But okay, I'll try to be open minded, I thought. Maybe the rest of the world WILL cut us some slack, now that the Texas punching bag is back on the ranch. Never mind that I was 99.9% convinced that the rest of the world hated us on the basis of their own self-loathing and weakness.

We are the Yankees. It's that simple.

So, let's see how we're doin'......

Pirates running wild off of Somalia.
Iran convicting a US journalist as a "spy."
Hugo Chavez shoving anti-American books in O's face.
Europe giving us absolutely zero help on Afghanistan.
North Korea lobbing long range rockets over Japan's head.

Oh, fun, fun times!

But I can feel the respect coming. I really can.

Can I please get a few honest liberals out there to come clean and declare this little election fantasy to be just that - a fantasy?

Really, it would do all of us good, to realize that everybody else's opinion of the U.S. is non-negotiable, and totally impervious to the "audacity of hope."

When the chips are down, we've got 3 friends. And they are, in order. 1) Britain 2) Australia 3) Canada. (I might throw a few newly freed Eastern Block countries in the mix, but I wan't them to earn it.)

Everybody else, you're on our list.

So let's dispatch with the ugly business of keeping the lid on the global boiling pot as we've done for decades now, with little or no thanks.

We can start by remembering how to tie dead pirates to the yardarm.

I read with amusement and horror the account of how NATO forces chased a group pirates for SEVEN HOURS in the dark, only to catch them - and THEN LET THEM GO!

Nice work.

But hey, don't worry. Hillary Clinton is a fast learner!

Speaking after meeting Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen, Clinton said the two agreed "it sends the wrong signal" to the pirates operating off the coast of Somalia.

She said the United States and others would work to hold "these pirate-criminals" accountable for the actions, adding that the "Contact Group on Piracy Off the Coast of Somalia" would meet in New York in early May to discuss the issue.

Yeahhhhhhh... you do that.

In the meantime, maybe we can arm shipping vessels with advanced NERF rocket systems. It can't be less effective than the current policy, and those toys are a helluva a lot of fun!



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Speaking of fun toys, I couldn't help but ask myself: "What about those cool disc-launcher guns I played with as a kid!!! What were those called??"

Ha! Found 'em!



These guns were the source of hours and hours and hours of fun growing up. I remember me and Mike Nelson playing shootout in his house with plastic discs ricocheting harmlessly off walls, windows, and ceramic vases.

The guns were perfect. The discs came out at sufficient speed to be exciting. Were too light to hurt you or anything inside the house. And were big enough and brightly colored enough to findable.

I should buy the rights to the toy, and re-launch it.

I recall the prolonged shootouts, which resembled the scene in the Angelina Jolie - Brad Pitt spy movie "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

Ah, childhood.

And Now, Time To Go Count My Money!

I’m not saying John Madden was mailing it in at the end, but when you outsource the computer generated “color analysis” on your best selling video game to Cris Collinsworth, then you pretty much know the end is near.

Kudos to the big fella for knowing it himself, and pulling the plug before somebody was forced to do something ugly.

John Madden retires as the most well known, well paid, and well liked NFL analyst ever.

The rest is up for debate.

Was he the best? Not hardly, not by my eyes and ears.

Was he the hardest working? I doubt it. I think most others matched his preparation or exceeded it, once Madden showed how much coin you could make in the profession.

Will he be missed? Not really, but I’m sorry if your Sunday Nights just won’t be the same.

When Madden’s announcement came down last week, several colleagues said: “Well, Czabe, you won’t have him to kick around anymore.” Which got me to thinking. Did I really kick him that hard? Was he so famous, so rich, so popular that he wasn’t allowed to be kicked every now and then to keep him honest?

When he fell asleep briefly on the air with Al Michaels in mid-sentence at the Hall of Fame Game? When he failed to recognize Al’s wry gambling references as they flew harmlessly over his head at 30,000 feet? When he would talk in such circles, that it resembled what a dog would sound like, if a dog could do play-by-play on itself chasing it’s own tail?

No, I think I was fair with Madden.

My biggest push back was never against him per se, or his work, it was just the incessant media fawning over the guy. The same kind of genuflecting that went on all day on Friday in the wake of his retirement.

Enough, people.

He did not “help popularize the sport” as my co-host Andy Pollin tried to insist. The NFL was already on a rocket ship to the moon, Madden just rode it.

As for the video game, let’s also be real.

EA Sports, located conveniently in Silicon Valley, hitched it’s wagon to the local boy gone big time, and helped push HIS star even further! People rave about Madden and his idiotic (read: great!) video game, and they think he actually had more than 1% of input on how the thing worked!

It’s not like he wrote the early code for Madden ’94 for the Sega Genesis.

So much of Madden’s early announcing success, came because of his perfect pairing with minimalist Pat Summerall. Pat’s words left un-spoken, left a big stage for Madden to play on. And Pat never failed to set up John to look good.

This may shock some of you who have listened to my shows for years, because I once CRUSHED Summerall too for his blunders. But that was in the dying years of his broadcasting abilities. Summerall in his prime, was not only sublime on NFL Football, but also very soothing and solid while doing the Masters. I’m glad Summerall is still with us, and in still good enough health to be heard by me on various shows last week.

And the same I will feel about Madden. God bless him. He had a great career. And he deserved every bit of it. But I’m not going to start commissioning any statues for the guy, or anoint him the “greatest TV sportscaster ever!”

I am however, worried about my buddy Frank Caliendo’s mood at this point. Never before has one spot on impersonation, launched such a Hollywood/Stand Up career.

First, Billy Packer. Now, John Madden. Dick Vitale, you are “on the clock!”