Beaver County Times, November 24, 2013

Here's the funny thing about the Ben Roethlisberger rumors that have been persistent for the past few weeks:
They're coming from Ian Rapoport, who works for the NFL Network, which is owned and operated by the NFL.
So while sports teams are fond of demonizing the media as outside enemies who want to undermine their operations, this is actually something of an inside job. (Bill Parcells used to refer to Giants beat writers as "communists.")
If the NFL Network has total editorial independence, it's enjoying freedom that isn't all that common.
Teams generally try to control the message whenever they can.
Once the Pirates were on the road when the opposing shortstop inexplicably dropped the most basic pop-up. Incredulous at the misplay of a chance so easy, Greg Brown exclaimed that a Little Leaguer could have made the play.
At the next commercial break, the man then in charge of the Pirates' marketing was on the phone to the booth, angrily complaining that Brown's candid assessment somehow downgraded the product the team was trying to sell.
When Myron Cope called attention to the "Steelers Streaker" in the 1970s, no less an authority than franchise founder Art Rooney scolded Cope for making a miscreant a folk hero.
Penguins general manager Craig Patrick was once watching a late night telecast from the west coast at home. He grew impatient with Mike Lange's words of praise for the opposing team and phoned the production truck to relay the message he'd like to hear some good things about the Penguins.
Lange's response was to call the rest of the game without his usual expressions to adorn Penguins goals. No drinks for Sam or his dog, no messages to Arnold Slick in Turtle Creek, just straight calls of the plays.
The online mlb.com, which purports to cover all 30 MLB teams with some independence, reportedly doesn't allow its writers to use the word "fail" in stories.
If NFL Network staffers are free from that kind of interference, good for them, even though it's proven to be inconvenient for the Steelers and Roethlisberger.
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--DOCTOR'S APPOINTMENT
Anna Benson, the scary ex-wife of former Pirates pitcher Kris Benson, has been interviewed by TV's Dr. Phil.
The show is scheduled to air on Wednesday.
Anna Benson refers to herself as the most famous sports wife since Marilyn Monroe, a claim Gisele Bundchen or Victoria Beckham might dispute.
Anna is a former exotic dancer who improbably married one of the quietest people on the planet, then used his fame to create her own notoriety. When Benson pitched for the Mets, she famously did some interviews on Howard Stern's radio show. She operated a personal website, where she offered racy photos and profanity-filled insults of those who didn't agree with her conservative political views.
Benson last pitched in the major leagues in 2010, and Anna has also faded away. She returned to the headlines in July when she showed up at Kris' home with a gun, hatchet, knives and a bulletproof vest.
Maybe Dr. Phil can write her a prescription.
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--SCRAMBLED MESSAGE
Spell check always flags Dan Bylsma's last name and suggests "abysmal" as a replacement.
Everyone's a critic.

Beaver County Times, November 17, 2013

Stay calm. It's a long season.
The Penguins just had a stretch of three games, all losses, in which they failed to score an even-strength goal.
This brought back memories from the spring, when the Penguins' high-powered offense sputtered and conked out in the playoff loss to Boston.
When Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are healthy and the Penguins can't score 5-on-5, something is wrong.
It's up to the coaching staff to make the necessary strategic corrections.
But there shouldn't be any doubt that the problems are correctable. Maybe it's as simple as getting more traffic in front of the net.
The Penguins have long had a tendency to value the pretty play over the gritty one. With their skill level, they always think they're just one no-look pass from scoring.
But when goals are hard to come by, back to basics almost always works.
Crowd the net and take advantage of deflections and easy rebounds. People call them garbage goals, but there's no premium for style points. One that glances off a skate counts as much as a breakaway.
The return to the full 82-game schedule requires a perspective adjustment.
The lockout limited last season to 48 games. Points were at a premium. A long losing streak could be devastating.
The 82-game schedule is more forgiving. A team can have a bad month and still recover.
All things considered, the Penguins aren't in bad shape, even with the losing streak. There's plenty of time to get things right and maximize this team's considerable talent.
It's only November.
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--SELLING OUT
Bill Mazeroski's champagne-stained jersey from the 1960 World Series brought $632,500 at auction.
That's probably close to the amount of money Mazeroski was paid for his 17-year career with the Pirates.
The items he put up for bids sold for about $1.7 million. Good for him. At 77, he's established a nice trust fund for his sons and grandchildren, and it's more likely the items sold will now be on public display.
If you spend $632,500 on a shirt, you probably want to show it off.
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--SIGNING OFF?
There are persistent rumors that 93.7 The Fan (KDKA-FM) will be breaking up one of its most dysfunctional on-air teams soon.
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--BALLOT BLUNDERS
Some people are upset that Andrew McCutchen was listed as low as fourth on one of the MVP ballots cast from St. Louis.
The bigger injustice is that Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina was ninth on one of the ballots from Pittsburgh.
---
--IF YOU BUILD IT AGAIN...
As much as everyone likes PNC Park, it was a huge waste of money when Three Rivers Stadium was demolished after 30 years of use.
It was ugly, but it was still functional. The Steelers doomed Three Rivers when they jumped on the stadium-financing bandwagon and insisted on a new venue packed with luxury boxes.
That's how we got Heinz Field, which is ugly but functional.
Every elected official who's ever caved in to the stadium shakedown must have been chilled by the news that the Braves will seek a new ballpark, hoping to abandon Turner Field, which opened in 1997.
Three Rivers lasted half as long as Forbes Field did. Has the shelf life of publicly-financed sports palaces grown even shorter?

Beaver County Times, November 10, 2013

Richie Incognito? Are they kidding?
The villain in this bizarre story has a name right out of "The Sopranos?"
The Miami Dolphins' bullying controversy will drastically affect several careers. Incognito, accused of intimidating and harassing teammate Jonathan Martin, will probably be unemployable.
Based on the way some NFL players have closed ranks and argued, "People just don't understand..." it's hard to believe Martin will find an NFL locker room that's a comfortable fit.
Joe Philbin is unlikely to get another head coaching job once he's fired in Miami.
The intent here is not to excuse the peculiar behavior that's been described, but to point out that some players genuinely don't see a lot of this as anything terribly unusual.
They've been brought up in a locker room culture from high school. They don't understand how strange this all looks to the real world.
The rookie dinner, where the team gathers at a high-end restaurant, runs up a five-figure tab and sticks the rookies with the bill? The Penguins were doing that as of a few years ago.
In a different generation, it was hockey tradition to pin a rookie down and cut his hair, or crudely shave his body hair. The Penguins banned that a while ago, but Mario Lemieux got an involuntary haircut in his rookie season.
That isn't how the corporate world does things, but the IBM guys don't shower together at the end of the work day, either.
In football, favorable impressions aren't made by someone's wit or intelligence, but are often based on how much weight someone can lift, how much pain they can tolerate and how much beer they can drink.
A long time ago, quarterback Bobby Layne would demand Steelers rookies join him for an extended night of drinking that didn't stop until the new players were physically ill. To skip that rite of passage was to risk the scorn of teammates.
The Pirates had a tradition where veterans would sneak into the clubhouse during a game and steal the rookies' clothes. They'd substitute a weird outfit the players would have to wear on a travel day, and they'd kick the rookies off the bus before it reached the hotel. Jason Bay walked those final blocks in Chicago wearing a bright yellow chicken suit in his rookie season.
Theirs is a different world. If anything good comes out of the Dolphins story, it will be showing players just how grossly distorted that world is sometimes.
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--Mayor Mucker
Bill Peduto, who won election last week, is the Pittsburgh's first hockey-playing mayor. He has a passion for the game, and was part of a celebrity team that played charity games in the area.
Predecessor Luke Ravenstahl played on the Washington & Jefferson football team.
Ravenstahl was a kicker, which could explain some of his Jeff Reed-like behavior during his time in office.
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--The Other Kid
Nice story by KDKA-TV's Bob Pompeani last week on Taylor Crosby, who is a goaltender at prep school in Minnesota.
Sid's 17-year-old sister hopes to represent Canada in the 2018 Olympics.
The Crosby parents provided some vintage family photos. There was one of Sid -- when he really was a kid -- holding his baby sister.
It was the kind of story that even connected with viewers who aren't hardcore sports fans.

Beaver County Times, November 3, 2013

If the Steelers have a rotten season (and aren't they building quite a foundation?) no one important will get fired.
We know that because it's not the Steelers way.
But is that still true?
Just because the person in charge is named Rooney doesn't mean that things are done the same way.
Current team president Art Rooney II shares his father's placid mien, but he's not necessarily the same guy.
Considerable circumstantial evidence points to Art Rooney II as the person behind the ouster of offensive coordinator Bruce Arians following the 2011 season.
You can argue that Dan Rooney once ordered Chuck Noll to fire several assistants, but that came after a 5-11 season in 1988, the Steelers' third losing season in four years. It was clear by then that the franchise had made the sad, slow slide into mediocrity.
Arians was banished after the Steelers finished 12-4 for the second consecutive year. Given that, and Art Rooney II's suggestions for changes in offensive philosophy, it's logical to conclude that he's more hands-on than his father was.
(Former GM Tom Donahoe was fired, but that was after his relationship with Bill Cowher had deteriorated to the point that one of them had to go).
If the Steelers have a losing season, veterans like Ryan Clark and Brett Keisel are likely gone. Troy Polamalu's future would be in doubt, too. Potentially they could have three more starters to replace on defense, something that a single draft wouldn't accomplish.
The Steelers could have a $102 million quarterback and not much else. It could be a full-scale rebuilding.
In that case, the question would be whether Mike Tomlin and Kevin Colbert are the people to trust with that project.
Are the Steelers inevitable victims of a salary cap system? Or have they blundered their way into this spot?
If the losing continues, those are the tough questions that ownership has to confront.
There's no guarantee the patience that characterized the organization in the past will continue.
---
--Getting acquainted
KDKA-TV had a genuinely odd feature on Penguins rookie Olli Maatta last week.
Jory Rand interviewed the 19-year-old defenseman as the two toured the city. Their walk-and-talk included coffee in Market Square, then shifted to an observation deck on Mt. Washington. You were waiting for them to ride a tandem bicycle through Schenley Park.
It looked like something that been brokered by eHarmony.com rather than a hockey team's PR department.
It wasn't bad. Just peculiar.
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--They're No. 1
These are happy days at 93.7 The Fan (KDKA-FM), which topped the local radio ratings for October.
This surge was influenced primarily by the Pirates' first postseason games since 1992.
The Fan not only has a large audience at the moment, it also hits the demographics advertisers want. Programming remains spotty. After nearly four years in the format, there still isn't a signature destination show.
But they're printing money. Clear Channel, the other big radio operator in town, should be getting itchy to grab some of that action by starting an FM sports station of its own. Clear Channel to this point has spread its sports content over WDVE, WXDX and ESPN 970 AM, which has as many listeners as the police scanner.
Clear Channel's inaction is allowing CBS-owned The Fan to feast on the whole pie.
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Beaver County Times, October 27, 2013

Professor Mike Tomlin was teaching history to the Steelers this week.
According to players, at least one of the team meetings was devoted to a crash course on the animosity that has existed between their team and today's opponent, the Oakland Raiders.
Tomlin reached back to the 1970s, when the rivalry burned hot with on-field issues (George Atkinson clubbing Lynn Swann like a baby seal), courtroom issues (Atkinson suing Chuck Noll for his "criminal element" comments), and unfounded accusations (Al Davis went to his grave believing the Steelers let part of the Three Rivers Stadium turf freeze to neutralize the Raiders' passing game).
In between all of that, they played some pretty memorable football, including three consecutive AFC Championship games.
But will any of that register? Many of the current players are so young, their concept of the "old days" is Brett Favre playing for the Packers.
Ike Taylor, a relative graybeard, pointed out that he was born in 1980, after the Steelers' run of four Super Bowls in six seasons had ended.
Even Tomlin missed most of it. He was born in 1972, which means he was honing those snappy answers in elementary school when the Raiders were allegedly greasing their jerseys with Vaseline.
It's a rich history, the kind of thing that unfolds nicely in those NFL Films productions. Is it relevant to what happens today? Not really.
But when you're 2-4 and trying to salvage a season, it's worth a shot.
---
--Not signing off
There's a perception that Tim McCarver will be leaving broadcasting after he's done covering the World Series for Fox.
Not so fast. McCarver told the Boston Globe last week, "I'm not retiring. I'm cutting back on what I'll be doing. I won't be doing the World Series and All-Star game, but I'll be doing something, stuff that will feed my passions. Plural."
This makes it appear more likely that his departure from Fox is not entirely voluntary, which wouldn't be surprising. Television is all about attracting younger viewers, and a 72-year-old lead analyst with a penchant for telling Bob Gibson stories doesn't fit.
McCarver can be spot-on at times, but more often he's pontificating. He's one of the broadcasters who got worse when he thought every comment should be profound enough to make the "best lines" part of Rudy Martzke's old USA Today column.
He developed a delivery that suggested he was reading from stone tablets rather than note cards.
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--Bonus money
Much has been made of the fact the Pirates will receive an additional $25 million in national TV revenue.
The problem is every team is getting the same windfall. When that happens, it usually means that salaries rise, which pretty much negates the increase. It happened in the early 1990s when CBS came in with bundles of fresh cash.
Suddenly top of the line players like Barry Bonds and Doug Drabek were making $5 million a year. That jump caused the Pirates ownership to freak out and get itchy to sell the team.
The Pirates will have more money to apply to payroll. So will the Yankees and Dodgers. This benefits the players, not Pirates fans.
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--New career
Remember Lacee Collins, the Root Sports in-game reporter who was abruptly dismissed during the 2012 baseball season?
She's now attending law school at the University of Arizona.

Beaver County Times, October 20, 2013

This is it for the giant inflatable duck who's been the talk of the town for the last several weeks.
The big yellow bathtub toy ends his (her?) run tonight around 11. A tugboat is scheduled to take it to be cleaned and warehoused.
The duck first appeared on Sept. 27 and became an instant hit. He (she?) was there for the Pirates' stretch run, the raucous wild card game against the Reds and the two playoff games against the Cardinals.
People love the duck. He (she?) doesn't really do anything, doesn't even quack. It's just big and conspicuous and non-threatening, kind of like Max Starks was over the last couple of seasons. Since Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has gone into hiding, the duck is the cutest symbol of Pittsburgh this side of Baby Ben Roethlisberger.
Desperate fans started an online petition to extend the duck's stay, but that wouldn't really work. If he (she?) stayed, it would become just more routine river clutter like the car fenders that float by, or the drunken boaters who turn green bobbing on the waves on Steelers Sundays.
All your Facebook friends have photos of themselves with the duck hovering placidly in the background. People will be sending duck-themed Christmas cards.
People love the duck, and not just because it's free to see him (her?). The Fort Pitt Block House reports its attendance has jumped significantly during the duck's stay, with a corresponding rise in merchandise sales. This means people have actually visited the Block House without being shanghaied on a school field trip.
The duck is staying just long enough to get some final face time during CBS's coverage of this afternoon's Ravens-Steelers game.
We'll miss the duck, but this is certain: He (she?) was a bigger hit in 23 days here than Steely McBeam has been in seven years.
---
--Adapting admirably
In his worst power year with the Cardinals, Albert Pujols had 32 home runs and 103 RBIs. He never posted a batting average lower than .299 in his 11 seasons in St. Louis.
Yet the Cardinals have continued to reach the postseason without him and are now in the World Series.
They're running a pretty good organization over there.
---
--Remembering Goose
A fond farewell to longtime KDKA radio sportscaster Marvin "Goose" Goslin, who died suddenly last weekend at 64.
Goslin was one of the few media people who had a passion for hockey before Mario Lemieux arrived in town and made the Penguins fashionable.
The eccentric Goslin would schedule mid-winter vacations to places like Chicoutimi and Cornwall so he could catch a cluster of junior hockey games. He even published and marketed an NHL draft guide for a few years.
When he failed to become the hockey version of Mel Kiper, he busied himself hosting the Penguins pre-game shows and later made IUP football his new obsession.
Goslin was an accomplished singer and frequently performed the anthems before games. He handled that task with typical enthusiasm, even learning the French words to "O Canada" for the nights when the Montreal Canadiens visited.
He was a quirky character who worked hard and delivered for the audience in his 20-plus years of reporting for KQV and KDKA.

Beaver County Times, October 13, 2013

The Pirates had a dream season, crashing through a lot of long-standing barriers en route to winning 94 games and playing in the postseason for the first time in 21 years.
Now all they have to do is improve.
Once they lost in St. Louis the other night, the focus for the front office shifted to 2014. It will be a different team, and GM Neal Huntington has to figure out how to make it better.
The Pirates still have to fill first base, right field and shortstop, and the starting rotation is always an issue.
Huntington is facing some interesting decisions with several players over 30.
Late-season acquisition Justin Morneau disappointed. The Pirates sunk $2.3 million into his salary hoping he'd provide some power and give the team its first legitimate cleanup hitter. Morneau was on a home run tear in his last month with the Twins, but didn't hit one in 92 at bats with the Pirates. His power output was three doubles.
Morneau turns 33 in May. Given his age and concussion history, the Pirates should pass on him and keep looking.
On the other hand, Marlon Byrd delivered in his month with the Pirates. But he's 36 and would probably want a two-year contract. That makes no sense with prospect Gregory Polanco on the way. Let Byrd fly.
Clint Barmes is at the end of his contract. Since there are serious doubts about Jordy Mercer's ability to handle shortstop on an everyday basis, Barmes might fit as a backup infielder at a substantially reduced salary.
Garrett Jones is 32 and had his worst season. The Pirates squeezed decent production out of this minor league signing for several years, but his salary has climbed to $4.5 million. It's time to let him go and see if Andrew Lambo can fill that role.
The most interesting case is A.J. Burnett, who said he was 50-50 on playing next season.
Have his plans been influenced by Clint Hurdle's decision to start Gerrit Cole in the deciding game at St. Louis? Was Burnett's reaction sufficiently insubordinate to make the Pirates lose interest in him?
Burnett can be a handful. Hurdle's carefully-crafted John Wayne swagger seems to diminish when Burnett is involved. Burnett turns 37 on Jan. 3.
But he can still pitch. He led the staff with 191 innings. His only health issue was an ankle injury sustained when he stepped in a hole while running. He struck out 209 batters. His ERA was his best since 2005, his WHIP was his best since 2007.
If Burnett hasn't burned his bridges, and if he's willing to take a one-year deal, he's worth bringing back.
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--Calling audibles
The Steelers have signed another player (Stevenson Sylvester) they cut in training camp.
Maybe even more disturbing than the 0-4 record is the feeling they're just making it up as they go along.
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--Oct. 13
It was on this date in 1960 that Bill Mazeroski hit the most famous home run in World Series history.
No matter how many times you see the clip, nobody ever hits him with a shaving cream pie.
The most amazing stat from that day? A 10-9 game that included four mid-inning pitching changes and a delay for Tony Kubek's injury was played in 2:36.