The Baldest Truth

What will Tuesday’s one-game playoff between the Twins and Tigers look like to viewers three decades from now? Different, if history is a guide. Very, very different.

While channel-surfing over the weekend, I happened upon the MLB Network's airing of the famous (or infamous, if you’re a Bostonian) 1978 Yankees-Red Sox showdown - The Bucky Bleepin' Dent Game.

As a college freshman back then, I skipped all of my afternoon classes to watch it in my dorm room. On my trusty, 19-inch, black-and-white Zenith with the rabbit-ear antenna, of course.

I had seen bits and pieces of the game since, but this weekend marked the first time I re-experienced it in its entirety. While watching it this time on my 50-inch HD Sony, so many things struck me as interesting ...

The graphics and camera angles were from another era - sometime between the Cenozoic and Precambrian, I believe.

I mean, we couldn't even see Dent's home run. We never saw the ball off the bat, never saw the flight, never saw it settle into the net above the Green Monster. If the announcers hadn't told us it was a homer and if we hadn't seen Dent's gleeful trot around the bases, we never would have known.

To look at him, Goose Gossage didn’t seem especially intimidating.

For one thing, he didn't have the menacing mustache that became his trademark. For another, as my wife said: "Jeez, look at how little he is." And Goose wasn't the only bigger-than-life figure who actually wasn’t very big at all. Jim Rice was borderline skinny. Ron Guidry couldn't have weighed 165 pounds. Even Reggie Jackson bore little resemblance to today’s home-run hitters.

Here was the most fearsome reliever of the era, two future Hall of Fame sluggers and a dominant power pitcher ... and they practically were stick figures. Who could have known that in less than a decade, bulked-up, bench-pressing ballplayers would be using their keisters as pincushions?

Situational pitching - one-batter relief specialists and set-up men - was still a twinkle in Tony La Russa’s eye.

Leading 2-0, Boston starter Mike Torrez got into trouble in the seventh. As soon as Jim Spencer was announced as a pinch-hitter, just about any of today's managers would have gotten a lefty into the game pronto. Don Zimmer, as was the norm then, left Torrez in. Torrez got Spencer out but, within a New York minute, Dent was a legend.

Guidry, meanwhile, was working his third straight start on 3-days' rest - his only outings with fewer than 4-days’ rest the entire season - and he had pitched complete games his previous two times out. Though he clearly didn't have the kind of stuff that made him a 25-game winner that year, Bob Lemon let him pitch into the seventh inning.

Back then, an All-Star closer really earned his paycheck.

When Guidry finally did depart with one out in the seventh, he was replaced by Gossage, who got the final eight outs for the save. It was the 39th time that year Goose worked more than one inning - including five outings of at least 2 2-3 innings in the season’s final three weeks. It also was the 35th time he entered a game with runners on base.

Those were saves - unlike the wussy saves “earned” by today’s overpaid closers, who almost always enter a game to start the ninth and just about never work more than one inning. It makes one appreciate throwback Mariano Rivera all the more.

Lou Piniella was a darn good ballplayer.

These days, most people think of Piniella as an almost-retired, former hellraiser of a manager with a beachball stuffed under his uniform. But there he was 31 years ago, batting third on a great Yankees team that included Jackson, Thurman Munson, Graig Nettles and Chris Chambliss. He wasn’t a home-run guy but was a reliable clutch bat with gap power.

I remembered all that. What I had forgotten was that he was an underrated outfielder whose intelligence and instincts made up for his lack of speed. Piniella saved two sixth-inning runs with a running catch near the right-field line, and he saved the game in the ninth when he prevented the tying run from scoring by acting as if he was going to catch a ball he had lost briefly in Fenway’s wicked afternoon sun. As a result, Rick Burleson only went from first to second on Jerry Remy’s one-out single and couldn’t score when the next batter, Rice, hit a deep fly. Carl Yastrzemski then popped out, ending one of baseball’s most memorable afternoons.

Unlike today, when even little guys swing for the fences on every pitch, ballplayers back then knew their roles and realized their limitations.

At least a half-dozen hitters in that game - including Dent - choked up several inches on the bat. By doing so, they increased their chances of fouling off a tough pitch and living to see another. Before delivering his Beantown bomb, Dent fouled a nasty slider off of his left foot and limped around for several minutes. We’ll never know how the delay affected Torrez, but we already know how it affected Dent - and history.

Read Mike Nadel's musings daily at TheBaldestTruth.com.

The Bald Truth

Rip Charlie Weis for being a braggart whose real-world results fall short of his lofty view of himself. Rip him for winning only 10 games in two years. Rip him because Notre Dame gets annihilated just about every time it plays a top-tier opponent. Rip him for his sizable role in making Fighting Irish football increasingly irrelevant.

Just don’t rip him for trying to win a game, OK?

With 2 1/2 minutes left and the Irish leading Michigan by 3, Weis had Jimmy Clausen attempt passes on second-and-10 and third-and-10. The throws fell incomplete, stopping the clock, letting the Wolverines conserve their two time-outs and bringing the fury down on Weis after Michigan rallied to win.

Alums, students, media and other assorted experts wanted to know: How could Tuna Jr. be so stupid?

Of course, had Clausen completed either pass - especially the second, to wide-open Shaquelle Evans - Weis would have been applauded for having the guts to believe in a passing attack that had burned Michigan for 336 yards.

Hey, I know how it works, and so does Weis. It’s the whole coaches-get-too-much-blame/too-much-credit deal. Goes with the gig.

And when you go through an extended period of stinkage, as Mr. Decided Schematic Advantage has in South Bend, you punt away all benefit-of-the-doubt rights.

Look, Notre Dame obviously could find several coaches who’d do better than Charlie Weis has done. And the school probably wouldn’t have to give any of them the kind of 200-year contract Weis wrangled for accomplishing next to nothing.

Still, can’t we try to be at least a little objective here?

Let's say Weis sent his backup tailback (because the starter was hurt) into the line twice, Michigan used time-outs and Notre Dame punted. The Wolverines still would have had well over two minutes to put themselves in position for the tying field goal or winning TD.

In the NFL, that’s lots of time. In college football, with the clock stopping after every first down, it’s an eternity.

Oh, and ND's defense, lousy for most of Weis’ tenure, hadn't exactly been stout to that point.

So Weis didn’t want to see Michigan’s offense take the field again. He trusted Clausen, a third-year starter. He went for the victory.

If you’re a football fan, think about how often you whine about your coach getting too conservative on offense or playing that damn prevent defense while trying to protect a late lead. Why doesn't he just stay aggressive and go with what put him ahead? Why does he play not to lose instead of to win?

Well, Charlie Weis played to win. And the whiners are out in fully force, anyway.

Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to wait for just cause before ripping him a new one?

Odds are, given Tuna Jr.’s track record, the wait won’t be long.

The Balder Truth

"Consistent" isn't a synonym for "good."

Athletes and coaches seem to think it is, saying things such as, “We need to be more consistent,” when what they mean is, “We need to play well for a change.”

I mean, weren’t the 2008 Lions amazingly consistent?

Over the long haul, it's hard to beat the consistency of the Pirates, who haven't sniffed a winning record for 17 years running.

And over the really, really long haul, the Cubs have no equal.

Now wrapping up Year No. 101 of its multi-phase rebuilding plan, Chicago National League Ball Club Inc. is the very definition of consistent.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

In Bear Country, comparing Jay Cutler to Rex Grossman is all the rage. And it’s so unfair.

To Grossman!

In three career starts at Green Bay, he was 39-of-67 (58 percent) for 660 yards, with 3 TDs and 3 INTs - a passer rating of 87.9. Of the three, his worst single-game rating was 68.4. And in 2006, a Super Bowl season for Rex & the Bears, Grossman had a 98.6 rating in the opener at Lambeau Field.

Now let’s review how Bears Savior J.C. fared in the national spotlight Sunday night: 17-of-36 (47 percent), 277 yards, 1 TD, 4 INTs. That’s a rating of 43.2.

Oh, and don’t forgot the most important statistic of all:

Grossman was a perfect 3-0 at Green Bay, Cutler a slightly less-than-perfect 0-1.

Jeesh. You know things are bad when your savior quarterback - the dude who choked down the stretch as the Broncos blew an almost certain division title last year - doesn’t perform even a fraction as well as the guy you couldn’t wait to run out of town.

Read Mike Nadel’s musings daily at TheBaldestTruth.com.

The Bald Truth

Someday, Milton Bradley will laugh and laugh when he looks back at his first season in Cubbieland.

"Man, 2009 was cuh-ray-zee!" he'll say. "I'm glad I survived it. I mean, I bet nobody thought we'd win even one World Series, let alone five straight!"

Or something like that.

The Balder Truth

What a piece of work this guy is. He blames others for his problems, makes vague references about racism at Wrigley Field but refuses to cite any examples and spars with everybody from his manager to the umps to the media to the fans.

He's on his seventh team this decade, but it's always the other dude's fault.

During Thursday's loss to the laughingstock Nationals, he was booed after each of his five futile at-bats. More "idiots" spewing "hatred" - his words - after being misinformed by the evil media.

His take afterward: "A bunch of people come in here for a couple hours a day wanna ask you controversial questions knowing that you're gonna give them a legit answer and twist everything around and make it a story."

OK, he was asked, what got twisted?

"Well, you know, it's not really a need to get into it because you can't win. I'm just trying to give an honest answer. I don't see why people can't respect how you feel. You can't say that a person's feelings are wrong. And unless you've been paid 30 million to play right field for the Chicago Cubs, then you can't speak on how I might feel because you don't know.

"It's not about me, it's about the team. Again, let's try to make all the focus about Milton Bradley. Ryan Theriot can answer all your questions. Derrek Lee can answer all your questions. Geovany Soto can answer all your questions. Those are the guys you need to talk to. Those are the guys that have been here and got the politically correct answers for you. I've just got to give it to you straight."

Lovely non-answer, Mr. Straight-Shooter.

Yep, while his teammates bow to mighty media mopes like me, he's too damn honest to do so. Ipso fatso, nobody appreciates the magnificence that is Milton. Oy.

Bradley presents quite a conundrum for the Cubs. He has two more years left on his contract ... yet it's clear the experiment ain't working.

Clearly, Lou Piniella isn't an admirer. While his teammates don't appear to dislike him, they seem perfectly content to let him reside alone on Milton Island. And the fans? Most have moved him well ahead of Alfonso Soriano on the list of Cubbies We'd Like Gone Yesterday.

But how do you get rid of an overpaid, underproductive malcontent?

Well, Jim Hendry did manage to trade Sammy Sosa back in '04, so there's hope in Cubbieland. Then again, Hendry might not make it to another offseason, partly because he took a chance on Bradley.

Quite a conundrum, indeed.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

The shame of it is that Bradley might actually have something important to say about an important issue.

This is my 15th season covering the Cubs, and I'm not sure it's a stretch to say white guys are cut more slack at Wrigley Field than blacks and Latinos are.

Mickey Morandini? Beloved. Shawon Dunston? Less so.

This is a generalization, I know, and I try to steer clear of those. And plenty of white ballplayers have worn out their welcome quickly in Cubbieland. Just not as quickly, in this observer's opinion, as black ballplayers doing the exact same things would have.

Is it a coincidence that LaTroy Hawkins, Jacque Jones and now Milton Bradley each has spoken about racism at Clark & Addison? Along with Lee and Corey Patterson, they've been the highest-profile black Cubs over the last decade. And aside from Lee - who overcame a rocky start to become very popular - they've been among the most reviled.

Here, I wouldn't blame Cubs fans for saying: "We're not racists, we're failists. When Corey can't lay down a bunt, we hate him. When LaTroy blows a division title, we hate him. When Jacque throws the ball straight into the ground, we hate him. It's almost September, and Milton has 35 freakin' RBIs! That's two fewer than Mike Fontenot and one more than Jake Fox, for crissakes. We're not anti-black, we're anti-failure. And Milton has been an unmitigated, $30 million failure."

Then again, Lee, the closest the Cubs have to a captain and public spokesman, veered far from P.C. in saying this Thursday about racism at the home of bricks and ivy:

"I've heard it a little bit, not directed at myself. No one should have to go through that. Fans are allowed to boo, but when you start getting racist, it's not OK. Unfortunately, there are ignorant people out there. Like I've told Milton: 'The best thing to do is let it go because it's not indicative of his character, it's indicative of their character. Let them be foolish and ignorant; it shouldn't bother us.'"

It's not that Bleacher Bums are shouting the n-word - although I suppose it's possible some are. It's more of a covert thing. And please, I'm not saying fans at Wrigley are any worse (or better) than fans anywhere else because I don't know for sure. Again, just my observations.

Appropriately, issues involving black and white involve many shades of gray. It's a fascinating subject - and an important one even in this post-2008-election world of ours.

It doesn't help the discussion when Bradley says sarcastic stuff like: "Some people seem to think if I didn't play baseball that I'd be collecting cans or something."

That's neither politically correct nor straight-shooting.

It's just silliness - which is what most of the Milton Bradley Experience has been in a Cubs season that's been chock full of silly.

(Read Mike Nadel's musings daily at TheBaldestTruth.com.)