fred klein on sports

               NEWS: PGA and LIV golf tours merge

               VIEWS: The Golden Rule applies—those with the gold make the rules

               The sudden combination of the Saudi Arabian-backed LIV upstart and the PGA Tour surprised just about everyone, but it probably shouldn’t have. The new tour, started last year, drew some of the game’s biggest names (Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka) with its nine-figure bonuses and big tournament purses, and its deep-pocketed sponsor could endure almost endless losses while establishing itself. It’s said no one should argue with anyone who buys ink by the barrel. It’s equally true that competing with one who ships oil by the tankerful is a formidable business foe.

               Apparently, the deal gives PGA execs control over the golf side of the new entity, yet unnamed, while giving the Saudi’s Public Investment Fund control of the business side. It might not go through.  Some PGA loyalists, properly feeling betrayed, grumbled at its announcement, but there’s little doubt most of the swingers will be mollified by the bigger purses the combination will produce. The hitch will be the U.S. Department of Justice, which already was looking into anti-trust action against the PGA Tour and now has more reason to do so. That the PGA also runs what used to be called the European Tour makes its domination worldwide.

               It’s the latest and, by far, biggest example of “sportswashing.”  That’s the practice of individuals, companies or nations using sports to improve their public odor. Saudi Arabia is more a company than a country, one that’s operated by the Al Saud family, its residents employees more than citizens. It wages proxy war in Yemen and imprisons or murders domestic dissidents. It’s been a frequent “washer,” sponsoring international tennis and auto-racing events, luring the soccer stars Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzama to its resident league and buying the Newcastle United team in the English Premier League.  Now, in a single swoop, it has purchased in its entirety a prestigious professional sport.

               In selling itself to such an interest, the PGA contradicted its own rhetoric in initially fighting LIV. “Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?” commissioner Jay Monahan asked his legions during the hostilities. The oil sheikhs made the deal in hopes people will think pleasant thoughts of golf when they think of Saudi Arabia. Instead, people now will think of Saudi Arabia every time they think of golf.  

               NEWS: The Major League Baseball season passes the one-third mark

               VIEWS: And the standings look upside down

               Yes, the teams each have more than 90 games left to play, and the roster depth that big money buys shows up strongest in the late going, but the results so far have been startling. The game’s best team by far, with a 48-24 won-lost mark as of yesterday (June 14), has been the Tampa Bay Rays, which rank dead last on the payroll list.

 We’re used to seeing the resourceful Rays outperform their paychecks, though, so more surprising have been the showings of three other long-have-not clubs-- the Texas Rangers, Arizona Diamondback and Baltimore Orioles. At early week all were tied for second in the overall wins department, with 41. The Rangers lead the American League West division following six sub-.500 seasons, the D’backs are atop the National League West after leading the Majors in losses (with 110) just two seasons ago, and the Orioles trail only the Rays in the AL East after going sub.500 in five of the last six years and posting 100 or more losses in 2018, ’19 and ’21. Of the three, only the Rangers are in the top third of the payroll list this season (they’re 9^th). The D’backs rank 21^st and the O’s 29^th, the latter ahead of only the Rays.

Those teams trace different paths to their current success but have a common link in the players they acquired in the first round of the 2019 draft. The O’s chose first that year and picked Adley Rutschman, a catcher out of Oregon State U. He became a starter last season and finished second in AL rookie-of-the-year voting, and is having a better year this season. With the eighth pick the Rangers chose third-baseman Josh Jung from Texas Tech. As a rookie this year he’s among team leaders in batting average (.288), home runs (13) and RBIs (40).

At pick 16 the D’backs chose Corbin Carroll, an 18-year-old outfielder from Seattle. He was brought up briefly last year with good results, and has topped those in the current campaign. A tightly wound little guy at a listed 5-foot-10 and 165 pounds (he looks smaller), he’s flashed a rare combination of speed and power, leading his team in both OPS (.989) and stolen bases (19). Best, he’s just 22 years old. His team is known for making dumb trades, but even its laid-back fans would burn down Chase Field if it let this young man get away.

NEWS: The Denver Nuggets win the NBA title.

VIEWS: The runnerup Miami Heat were a good story, too.

The Nuggets rode the otherworldly skills of their placid-looking big man, Nikola Jokic, to their franchise’s first championship, posting a 16-4 record in the playoffs. They were the best team and played best, too, but their finals foe also distinguished itself by making an unexpected run after posting the league’s 13^th-best won-lost record (44-38) during the regular season.

The Heat did it with nine undrafted players on their 17-man roster, five of whom were in their playoffs rotation. That’s in a league in which second-round choices in its two-round draft are considered longshots to stick. There’s a lot more basketball talent around than there used to be (see my blog of April 1), but it still takes a keen eye to identify it. The likeliest Heat candidate to have it is their president Pat Riley, who has succeeded Jerry West as the league’s wiseman. As a player, coach or exec Riley’s teams have reached the NBA finals in six different decades. There oughta be an award for that.    

               There are, it’s said, three things most men think they can do better than anyone else: start a fire, run a restaurant and coach a football team. By that standard I’m not typical; while I can start a fire with the best of them I have no desire to either run a restaurant or coach any sort of team.

My sole venture into coaching was a disaster. When daughter Jessica was a fifth grader she talked me into joining a neighbor dad in guiding her school’s basketball team. In the weeks that followed he and I issued many instructions to the young hoopsters but few were followed, and on top of that we had to endure verbal pummeling from fellow parents whose kids weren’t getting the playing time they thought they deserved. At season’s end we both retreated to our dens, never again to emerge in that capacity.

Coaching is in the news as the National Basketball Association season grinds to an end, as it is at the conclusion of the seasons of any of our big-time spectator sports. Five of the league’s 30 teams jettisoned head coaches, and while the number was small by recent measures its composition was remarkable. Three of the now-ex coaches—Glenn “Doc” Rivers of the Philadelphia 76ers, Nick Nurse of the Toronto Raptors and Mike Budenholzer of the Milwaukee Bucks—have NBA titles in their resumes, and a fourth—Monty Williams of the Phoenix Suns—led the league in regular-season victories over the last three campaigns.  Success, it seems, is no guarantee of job security.

I suppose that many of you now are saying “What’s the big deal?” Any fan older than age eight can tell you that when a season doesn’t go as planned – or hoped—it’s the coach who gets the blame, for the simple reasons that it’s cheaper and easier to fire him (or her) than it is to fire the players. Further, players at the highest level have genius-level skills while many people are qualified to coach, and the gesture satisfies the universal popular desire for scapegoating. If volcanoes were handy everywhere the exes would be in bigger trouble than they are. 

In view of the above one might reasonably ask who would want to be a major-league head coach or manager in this day and age.   Besides having to command a locker room full of prima dons, a few of whom probably eat dinner with the team’s owner more often than he, a manager or coach must obey a list of unwritten rules that would frustrate a saint. The main one of those is to never “show up” a player, making taboo any public word or gesture that might imply criticism. Thus, when a relief pitcher comes into a close game in the late innings and walks the first batter he faces, the manager must stand by stoically, avoiding the eyes-rolling or s***-mouthing going on in the stands.

The time when Casey Stengel (allegedly) could say “I managed good but they played bad” is gone. Today, and if he can, a coach must revert to humor to make that point. The classic in that regard came from the football coach John McKay who, when asked after a loss what he thought of his team’s “execution,” said “I’m in favor of it.”

Yes, there’s the money, but while head-coaching remuneration might be impressive by average-person standards it pales in comparison with what players are being paid. At the top of the pro-coaches pay list are a couple of men who’ve been around seemingly forever and have won numerous championships--the football coach Bill Belichick (a reported $20 million a year) and the basketball mentor Gregg Popovich ($11.5 million)—but after those the figures drop sharply. According to online sources the average annual salary for the position in the National Football League is about $6.5 million. The comparable figure for the NBA is about $3.5 million, and in the National Hockey League it’s about $2.5 million.

Baseball managers bring up the rear at the pay window. The L.A. Dodgers’ Dave Roberts leads that list at a reported $6.5 million, but most men in the position fall into the $2 million-to-$4 million-a-year range and several are said to earn less than $1 million. That’s hardly enough to keep them in Tums and Excedrin, and it’s all chump change compared with the $30 million-to-$50 million-a-year range of the top stars of our team sports.

Of job security there is little, three to five years being the usual range for a head coach. Anyone needing to move to accept a new job is better off renting a home than buying.

On the good-news side, coaching is a fraternity and once someone establishes himself as competent fall-back jobs are readily available. This is especially true in football and basketball, where there is easy movement between the college and professional ranks. Rare is the out-of-work head coach in those sports who doesn’t have a buddy to hand him an assistant’s job, there to sit out his banishment until a new head post develops. Coaches in their 50s with a dozen or more jobs in their histories aren’t atypical. If you don’t mind moving and taking occasional salary cuts, it’s not a bad profession.

And one person’s trash is another’s treasure, so a quick move to another top job often is available. Of the above-mentioned recent NBA fires, Nurse and Williams already have found new posts—Nurse with the 76ers and Williams with the Detroit Pistons-- and Rivers is said to be in the running to fill other vacancies.  The musical-chairs analogy is apt, and the music is playing.