Coach's Corner

From the dark depths of my calloused heart, I hope the Chicago Cubs finish the season 0-162. The Cubs were my first exposure to sports. I was carted in and out of 50 Cub games before I could walk. Poor Ernie, the Coach's College, the Collapse of '69, the Great Choke of '84; anyone who follows sports at all has heard the pathetic litany of Cub woes. These catastrophic, landmark events are as familiar to the Cub fan as the story of the Titanic and the Battle for Wake Island. Don't dare call me a fair-weather fan. A middle-aged Cub fan has seen more calamitous woe than could be heaped on Job in two eternitys.

Really, I can't understand who a real Cub fan is anymore. The ballpark itself has become an albatross. Everyone who comes to Chicago wants to see the magnificent funeral shrine that is Wrigley Field. It's always filled -- no matter the Cubs have had only five winning seasons, never two in a row, in 25 years -- with Toyota executives up on a sales convention, or tourists from central Iowa. All the Cubs have to do is keep the ivy green. Real fans who actually care if the team wins or loses? Well, if you do care, you need to consider some kind of crisis, codependent intervention. In any case, you deserve what you get. Never has a sports team done less and received more sorry-ass adulation than the Chicago Cubs. Chicago, a big market team owned by a huge, money- laden corporation, is run today as it's been run for most of the 20th century, with brazen indifference to the paying customer. The obvious result? A total indifference to winning. The precious "Cubbies"? Doesn't exactly strike fear into opponents' hearts. The "lovable losers?" It's institutionalized losing, made cute by the media. Screw that and screw them. 0-162 and an empty ballpark in July, that would be nice.

Even if you think, as do I, that everything's come a little too easy for Tiger Woods... even if you're turned off, as am I, by Tiger advertising shoved down our throats... though you may be weary -- me too -- of Tiger/media overkill, you must admit there's a sweet irony in his obscenely easy-looking destruction of the venerable Augusta National Golf Club. On the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier in professional sports, to have an only slightly past-adolescence black golfer win golf's stuffiest tournament, at golf's stuffiest club, where once he'd only have been admitted through the service entrance, is a nice touch. Some of those rich old crackers must be having a hard time keeping their grits down.

With the NBA playoffs close at hand, the Western Conference, suffering through an off year, seems geared up for an interesting playoff season. Shaq's back after mid-season knee surgery, looking like he never left. The Rockets are healthy for the first time since November, though there's no reason to believe they'll stay that way. Malone and Stockton, written off by me and everyone else as finished, are having the best years of their outstanding careers as Utah became, again to the surprise of everyone, the dominant team in the West. The Suns, who started the season 0-13, are jelling. The Minnesota Timberwolves, a Mavericks-like doormat, have come alive with unexpectedly veteran-like play from teenagers Stephon Mabury and Kevin Garnett. Finally, the season's about to begin!

My vote for coach of the year is Pat Riley. Danny Ainge is the designer pick, but Riley has done more, winning the Atlantic Division going away, though the Heat were picked for nowheresville in the pre-season. He did this while playing for long stretches of time with only eight active players on the roster. The Heat just kept winning, including a league-best 31-9 road record. Riley is one of the few NBA coaches whom players will listen to and sacrifice for. I don't care for Riley or his mug-em-in-the-alley style, but I'll give the man his due. Look out Chicago, this is a dangerous team.

It's only mid-April, months before the barbarians invade Austin, but the masters of scum bag hypocrisy, the Dallas Cowboys, are at it again. Jerry Jones has done a complete 360, trying to turn Sodom into the City on the Hill: a municipality of great righteousness. The same Jones, only a few months ago, lied to us all, claiming he knew nothing of the drug trouble his besieged tackle Leon Lett was drowning in, all the while fighting a slimy, desperate, rear guard battle to have Lett's imminent drug suspension overturned on an obscure technicality. He now wants us all to pretend he's always been right there with Billy Graham, Moses, and George Washington. Dallas Morning News columnist Blackie Sherrod cynically suggests Jerry's recent conversion to The Good, The Beautiful, and The True might have less to do with some sort of Biblical conversion than with an imminent loss of revenue from sponsors sick of the ugly spectacle in Dallas. Blackie, Blackie you old cynic. Shame on you.