Beaver County Times, August 24, 2014

"Le'Veon and LaGarrette" doesn't tumble off the tongue as easily as Cheech & Chong, but Steelers fans had reason to wonder if the 2014 season had gone up in smoke before it even started.
Word came on Wednesday that running backs Le'Veon Bell and LaGarrette Blount had been cited for marijuana possession while sitting in traffic in the North Hills.
A passenger in their car, one Mercedes Dolson, was also cited. (Her name is likely to be the answer to a future question on KDKA-TV's Steelers Trivia Challenge, so it's probably smart to remember it).
The courts will handle this, and the NFL will have its say. Bell and Blount should probably be most concerned about the three-person jury of Mike Tomlin, Kevin Colbert and Art Rooney II, who will charge them with DDT -- doing dumb things.
The arrests came at around 1 o'clock in the afternoon. The only people who can justify getting high at that hour are musicians and those on lunch break from telemarketing jobs.
Say one thing about that schedule, though. When the munchies inevitably hit, you'll have far more options at 7 p.m. than at 3 a.m. Middle of the night, it's pretty much guaranteed you're going to be stumbling out of the convenience store with petrified hot dogs from the roller, a fistful of Slim Jims and the giant bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.
Bell and Blount did many things wrong, and one of them was having two players from the same position group breaking the same laws at the same time. That can cause havoc on the depth chart if suspensions ensue. The concept is the reason the President and Vice President are never on the same plane.
Why get buzzed at 1 in the afternoon? Perhaps the pressure of McKnight Road traffic was intense. Maybe the radio was stuck on 93.7. That would explain a lot. Or are they nervous flyers who wanted to take the edge off before boarding the team plane at 3? The last one seems unlikely, given the Steelers were headed to Philadelphia, a flight no longer than some Kennywood rides.
According to police, a motorcycle officer happened to pull up alongside the car and thought he smelled a Jimmy Buffet concert. He investigated, and found the
evidence.
Look, our culture's relationship with marijuana has evolved. Recreational use is now legal in some states. Not Pennsylvania, of course, where consumers still have to jump through hoops just to buy a six-pack of Miller High Life.
Maybe the Steelers clouded the message a few years ago when they honored hometown hop head Wiz Khalifa at a game. An organization too stodgy to have cheerleaders celebrated an artist whose career has been based on the glorification of cannabis.
But weed isn't just for slackers any more. Even Rick Santorum, so conservative he's suspected of showering with his clothes on, has admitted to past use. Tomlin was part of a generation that grew up with easy access and casual use. A question about his personal history would liven up a Tuesday press conference, but, alas, Jory Rand isn't around now to ask it.
Bell faces a potentially serious DUI charge that could at least cost him driving privileges for a while. Why was he driving this time? With a $1,376,800 signing bonus in the bank, he should hire someone. It's not only stylish to sit in the back seat, it might put a cousin to work.
The episode shows why coaches get weepy when training camp ends and players are no longer locked down. You can only imagine Tomlin's reaction when he got the phone call. Maybe it was like the time he got that call about Milledgeville a few years ago: "He did what?"
In some odd way, it's probably good that Bell and Blount have bonded so quickly. Total strangers nine months ago, they're apparently doobie brothers now.
The citations will show up in the mailbox right between the new Sports Illustrated and the Arby's coupons. The biggest offense here is these guys were dumber than doorknobs to put themselves in a position where they embarrassed themselves and their employer.
One good thing: The arresting officer described them as "cooperative and polite."
You kids remember that. If you're going to do something profoundly stupid, you can at least be courteous.

Beaver County Times, August 17, 2014

Are you stressing out over whether Russell Martin will be back with the Pirates next year?
Relax. He's gone.
They're not going to re-sign him, and they really shouldn't. There is absolutely no doubt Martin's departure will downgrade the catcher position next season.
In a perfect world, the Pirates would sign him for one more year at a hefty raise and get another season like this one from him. That isn't realistic, though.
He's going on the open market, most likely looking for a three-year deal somewhere around $35 million. There's an excellent chance he'll get it from someone. But it will involve a change of address.
Martin will be 32 at the start of next season. He's probably OK for another season, but anything after that is high risk. Most players start to decline in their 30s, and the cliff is even more steep for catchers, who have the toughest workload on the field.
Some catchers are able to last longer. Tony Pena and Jason Kendall did, but they had more flexible bodies than Martin does. Maybe Martin is an exception, but there's a significant collection of actuary tables that says he won't be.
It's a physically demanding position, and Martin doesn't take any shortcuts.
If you're operating on the Pirates' budget, you don't make multi-year commitments to players who are 32. Use that money to lock up players who are 25 or 26 and get their best years instead of the twilight ones.
The Pirates did that expertly with Andrew McCutchen, and they missed badly trying to do that with Jose Tabata.
So don't sweat it. Martin is leaving. Put that future angst aside and enjoy the rest of this season, when he's still throwing his body in front of bad pitches, mentoring pitchers and getting timely hits.
If you're worried about whether they're going to sign Neil Walker, put that aside, too. He owes the Pirates two more seasons beyond this one and can't become a free agent until after the 2016 season, when he'll be 31.
Just so you know: They're not going to sign him, either.
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--FULL CIRCLE
Back when Three Rivers Stadium was still standing and the battle for new sports venues was being waged, the Pirates chartered a bus and took local media types to Cleveland.
They went for a ball game during the Indians' sellout streak that covered seven seasons and 455 games. The idea was to show the commerce and energy a new ballpark could create. The neighborhood's bars and restaurants were hopping, a sharp contrast to Three Rivers, which was surrounded by parking lots, Kaufmann's warehouse and the occasional "who needs two?" guy.
Naturally, most of the people on the tour took everything at face value and came back gushing about Cleveland's renaissance.
This year the Indians are next to last in MLB attendance. The team recently announced plans to remodel its 20-year-old park. The changes will reduce seating capacity by about 5,000 to 38,000. Now the Pirates have the crowded sidewalks and the tickets that are hard to get.
Sports has always been a cyclical business, especially when there are 81 home dates to sell.
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--YINZ TUBE
The only good thing about the NFL preseason is the annual reappearance of the "Steelers Trivia Challenge" on KDKA-TV.
The show airs on Saturday nights at 11:30 with the impeccably-coiffed Bob Pompeani channeling Bert Convy as the genial quizmaster. All sorts of ancillary Steelers show exist on TV and radio, solely because there are sponsors anxious to buy them. Even after two years of 8-8, the Steelers are still a gold mine. "Trivia Challenge" trumps them all.
The show has three competing teams, all wearing a rack's worth of Steelers gear, vying for a trophy and more practical swag, like McDonald's certificates that are probably cashed on the ride home.
The questions range from the ridiculously easy ("Where did the Steelers play home games before Heinz Field?") to the ridiculously arcane ("What was the final score of the 1989 Wild Card game?)
There's an unseen studio audience that seems to be comprised of the relatives of the contestants. It has that oh-so-local feel that's been missing ever since "Bowling For Dollars" left the air.
Watch it while you can. Soon the season will start, and the good natured competition among Terrible Towel wavers will be replaced by angry phone calls from wanna-be offensive coordinators and Edmund Nelson complaining about Ben Roethlisberger.

Beaver County Times, August 10, 2014

When Andrew McCutchen is on all fours, writhing in pain and angry enough to slam his bat, it's not good for the Pirates.
That was the case last Sunday when McCutchen was drilled in the back by a pitch from Arizona's Randall Delgado. This was apparent retaliation for the Ernesto Frieri fastball that broke the hand of the Diamondbacks' Paul Goldschmidt.
The difference in the two pitches was it appeared Delgado identified a target and hit it. Frieri had no good reason to hit Goldschmidt, so the pitch was likely a product of Frieri's lousy control rather than malicious intent.
There's no way of knowing whether the pitch that hit McCutchen led to a rib injury sustained on a swing later in the game. Clint Hurdle dismissed the possibility while McCutchen at least left it open to speculation.
The fallout brought a lot of reaction, and most of it didn't make much sense. Tony LaRussa, now a front office honcho with the Diamondbacks, didn't see anything wrong with McCutchen getting hit. That's no surprise. During a managerial career that spanned three teams and 33 years, he promoted more fights than Don King.
(Worth noting: LaRussa was never hit by a pitch in his 203 major league plate appearances). LaRussa was always outraged when one of his players was hit, perpetually indignant if anyone questioned his right to get even.
Supposedly the Diamondbacks violated an unwritten code by failing to hit McCutchen on his first plate appearance. Then Delgado was accused of further trashing protocol by not drilling McCutchen with his first pitch.
So it's OK to bruise a guy as long as he's certain it's coming?
If the circumstances had been reversed, the Pirates would have been livid that McCutchen was dealt a season-ending injury by a nobody's careless inside pitch, regardless of intent. And there's no doubt that some obscure relief pitcher who extracted pointless revenge on a Diamondbacks star would win some points in his own clubhouse.
Baseball players have been aiming pitches at each other for more than a hundred years. Intimidation is part of the game. So is claiming the inside part of the plate so hitters can't dig in and cover more of the strike zone. Sports have always operated on an eye-for-an-eye system. Zach Duke is still vilified, not for his 45-70 record with the Pirates, but for his failure to respond and protect a teammate once.
MLB's inaction, beyond Delgado's immediate ejection, is an indication that the people in charge didn't think it was that big a deal.
People throw baseballs at each other sometimes, reality that's little consolation to someone wearing the imprint of a pitch.
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--PARTY TIME
South Florida police should be on alert every July 25. That's when the Pouncey twins, the Steelers' Maurkice and Mike of the Dolphins, celebrate their birthday.
Things tend to get a bit spirited, which is why there are reports Maurkice may be facing charges stemming from an incident at this year's party.
The Pounceys are 25 now, so perhaps it's time to tone down the celebration. Maybe stay home and get pizza delivered?
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--CALLING IT QUITS
Pohla Smith retired from the Post-Gazette the other day, ending a 40-year journalism career to battle ongoing health issues.
She worked for UPI's Pittsburgh bureau in the 1970s and was one of the nation's first full-time female sportswriters. She had to stand outside locker rooms and wait for team officials to bring players out to be interviewed. That consistently put her at a big disadvantage in filing stories on tight wire service deadlines.
Eventually women were allowed in locker rooms, but that didn't instantly make things better. Juvenile behavior by players made it impossible for Smith to be just another reporter. A Pirates coach made a vile comment suggesting any females in a locker room had to be seeking more than just a story.
Things have changed. Women regularly cover every team in town and no one gives it a thought. Nobody apparently realized it in 1979, but towels and basic respect solve a lot of the issues.
Meanwhile, any female journalist who covers a locker room without incident should be grateful to the pioneers like Smith, who endured a lot as they changed the culture.

Beaver County Times, August 3, 2014

Baseball's non-waiver trading deadline passed, and the Pirates' roster remained the same.
Ernesto Frieri, Brent Morel and Michael Martinez were all in place after the frenzy had passed. It was business as usual for a team that talked about a lot of deals but didn't make any.
Reaction was swift, angry and predictable. They had betrayed their fans. They were delusional about the potential of their prospects. They passed on a chance to pursue success.
The Pirates needed pitching help, especially for the starting rotation. The two big tickets moved, Boston's Jon Lester to Oakland and Tampa Bay's David Price to Detroit. The Pirates' rotation, which currently lacks a clear cut No. 1 starter, stayed intact.
At this point, it's relevant to invoke the words of the British philosopher Mick Jagger, who once pointed out that you can't always get what you want.
The Pirates evidently pursued both pitchers. In the end, the Red Sox parted with Lester for the chance to acquire Yoenis Cespedes, a right-handed power hitter who should put some dents in Fenway Park's Green Monster. If that's what the Red Sox wanted, the Pirates probably never had a chance.
Cespedes is a wild swinger who has too many strikeouts and not enough walks, but he has a pedigree as a home run hitter. He had 23 and 26 in his first two major league seasons, and is on pace for more than 30 this year. In other words, he's not quite as well-rounded as Andrew McCutchen, but has accomplished more than Starling Marte at this point.
If that was the price for Lester, the Pirates were not a match.
After the smoke had cleared on the three-way deal that sent Price to the Tigers, Peter Gammons wrote this: "Most people thought the Pirates' offer, which was all about prospects and minor leaguers, might have been greater in terms of talent and that the Pirates were much closer to getting Price than we realize."
The Rays opted for a package of two major league players (lefthander Drew Smyly and infielder Nick Franklin) as well as 18-year-old infield prospect Willy Adames. Tampa Bay was apparently interested in immediate help rather than a bundle of prospects who might be two years away from the major leagues. It's their yard sale, so it's their prerogative.
That's the thing about trades -- you make your pitch and hope for the best. As any plaid-jacketed car salesman knows, sometimes the customer goes down the street and makes a deal with someone else.
You tweak and haggle and hope but sometimes (here's Jagger again), you can't get no satisfaction.
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--FALSE ALARMS
The deadline spotlighted the kind of dubious reporting that seems to be rampant these days.
ESPN ran with a false report that Tampa Bay utility player Ben Zobrist had been traded to the Pirates. They bought into the bogus scoop to the point that the network's experts were discussing how Zobrist would fit into the Pirates' lineup.
Former major league general manager Jim Bowden, a notorious loose cannon, falsely reported the Phillies had traded Marlon Byrd to the Yankees. His uncredited source was apparently a fake Twitter account a prankster had set up using the name of a New York newspaper columnist.
A million or so years ago, new employees of The Associated Press were always instructed with one of those corny sayings that sounds like it came from somebody's fussy old grandmother: "Get it first, but first get it."
Might be time to dust that one off again. It's even more relevant in a Twitter-driven environment.
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--RARE HONOR
The Steelers have never been much on sentiment, but there's always been a special place for Joe Greene, the first player drafted in the organization's turnaround.
So it's no surprise that he would become the second player in franchise history to have his number retired. Dan Rooney chose Greene as his presenter for the Hall of Fame, an earlier nod to what Greene's talent and presence meant to the teams of the 1970s.

Beaver County Times, July 27, 2014

NFL Network is a product of our multi-splintered, 200-channel television universe in which narrowcasting has replaced broadcasting.
There's not only a channel for every interest, there's probably a sub-channel as well. We have channels that feature nothing but cooking shows; how long before we have one devoted to slow cooker recipes? You click back seven hours later to see the finished dish.
NFL Network, launched in 2003, fills a bigger niche than a lot of speciality channels. It reaches about 63 percent of television households in the United States, and it has some programming that appeals to more than the truly obsessed.
NFL Network has a Thursday game of the week. The first half of the schedule this season will also be on CBS, but the last eight Thursday games are exclusive to NFL Network.
As a 24/7 operation, there are a lot of hours to fill. So you not only have wall-to-wall coverage of the NFL draft, you get endless hours of deposed general managers and personnel directors talking about what may happen in the draft. After that, it's the same suspects back to offer opinions of what did happen.
NFL Network provides annual coverage of the NFL Scouting Combine, where players are measured like livestock and tested like chorus line dancers. But with all that time to fill, some of the offerings appear to be as marginal as the "Hangin' With Mr. Cooper" reruns on Nick at Nite.
"Inside Minicamp" and "Live From The Pro Bowl" are two of NFL Network's regular seasonal offerings.
A natural for NFL Network would be a courtroom show. Barely a week passes that an NFL player doesn't show up on a police blotter somewhere. Someone is always getting popped for drug possession on a routine traffic stop, and weapons violations have become commonplace, too. A lot of players are packing something.
Sometimes the brushes with the law are major, as was the case with Ravens running back Ray Rice. A security video showed Rice dragging the limp body of his fiance (now his wife) from an elevator. She was in that state because Rice had allegedly punched her in the face.
It wasn't he said/she said. It was he did. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell looked at this elevator video and gave Rice a two-game suspension.
In the NFL, domestic violence equals a slap on the wrist. In the NFL, a player can get a one-game suspension for deliberately violent hit on the field. Do something violent off the field against someone who is defenseless, and it's only an extra game.
Rice had a couple of things in his favor: He hasn't been in trouble before, and he's been suitably repentant. The fact he's now married to the woman he dragged from the elevator would suggest they've addressed whatever issues existed in their relationship.
But is Goodell so tone-deaf that he doesn't understand how offensive Rice's behavior was to a large segment of the NFL's audience? The league aims a portion of its marketing specifically at women. The Ravens website sells a women's pink, bejeweled Ray Rice jersey for $59.95. If the league isn't interested in taking the moral high ground, it should at least be savvy enough to protect its business interests.
What if some groups were outraged enough to share their wrath with the NFL's long roster of corporate partners and official sponsors? What if organizations dedicated to fighting domestic violence made it known they would avoid buying products made by Ford, Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch, all of whom are official NFL sponsors?
The NFL blew this one on a stunning scale. Eight games would have been a more appropriate penalty for Rice than eight quarters.