Canzano's hate is ugly

John Canzano has a great job: he gets paid to spout off about sports. He has an excuse to watch all the games he wants, he gets in to local events for free, he has access to almost any local sports figure he wants. His opportunity to add a constructive voice to an important aspect of our national culture — and that's what sports is, however much that upsets many people — is one I envy hugely.

And what does he do with it? He wages a relentless attack on Ernie Kent. I'm not sure what Kent ever did to him, but I know it would be very very wrong of me to suggest it had to do with a lost bet and a Ducks basketball game. But there's something strange going on because now he is demanding that the UO be "courageous" and fire Kent, whom he terms an underachiever (to put it nicely), and replace him with Mike Montgomery, an underachiever (to put it very nicely).

Ernie Kent came to Eugene in the wake of the resignation of Jerry Green, who left because the university refused to replace Mac Court. Kent loves Mac Court, having played there in college in the 70s as a member of the famous Kamikaze Kids. He took the program, which was spinning its wheels in the Pac 10, and made it one of the top teams in the conference. The highlight, of course, was 2002 when the Luke & Luke Show, along with Freddie Jones, made it to within a win of the Final Four (all three of those players were first-round draft choices, as well). Since then, the team has floundered, but so have most schools. Very few schools have consistent success every year; Duke can field a championship-caliber team every year, but they win very few. UCLA has become a power again, as has North Carolina. Both had to sink low first, and both will sink again. That's the nature of college sports. However, a team with a championship heritage, and many national televised games, will always have a huge advantage over Oregon.

So firing Kent is Canzano's solution? It's easy to look at the quality of the players Kent has recruited and expect them to have done better. Then you look at some of the player-related problems — Ian Crosswhite quitting the team, Aaron Brooks' meltdown — and wonder about the coach's culpability. An easy answer is to blame the coach, and he does bear responsibility for much of what goes on. But he cannot control Brooks' attitudes or actions; he can only influence. If a young man playing a highly volatile sport under tremendous pressure and public exposure turns out to be fragile, the coach learns this with everyone else when the kid snaps. But the easiest target is the coach.

What is particularly ridiculous this morning, however, is Canzano's solution: Mike Montgomery. Montgomery's specialty at Stanford was to put togethr a quality team that would lose in the first round of the NCAA playoffs. Going deep into the tournament was not something they could manage very well; "one and out" was apparently the team motto. At Golden State, who made Montgomery available by firing him yesterday, he took a team with quality players and made of them — nothing. While the Clippers, of all teams, were becoming a playoff team to be reckoned with, the Warriors were going backwards.

This is Canzano's bright solution.

I've read the accusations against Kent at the "Fire Coach Kent" website. I have no idea how much of that is rumor and how much is substantive. I don't really care. I don't think Bill Moos will hold on to Kent if he performs badly. This season will be the make-or-break. If Brooks becomes the leader we've always hoped, if Malik Hairston becomes the primetime player he was recruited to be, if Taylor and the others come through and fulfill their potential, the pressure from the idiot brigade will be lost in the cheers. If the team drops another season and fails to make the NCAA's, then Kent will be gone. And it will have nothing to do with Canzano or the self-important "fans".

Ernie Kent may need to go, but replacing him with a proven failure like Mike Montgomery is not the right solution. More than anything else, this is smelling more like Notre Dame's firing of Ty Winningham — a winning coach being jettisoned under the pretense of failing to fulfill potential but possibly because he just looks wrong on the sidelines.

i hate the Padres

when i was a kid, i hated the Cincinnati Reds. for an obvious reason: they were always beating my Dodgers. i hadn't learned about Bobby Thompson yet, and Joe Morgan hadn't hit that home run. but Joe was helping the Reds beat the Dodgers far too often. after the A's beat the Dodgers in the Series in 1974, the Reds then won twice. it would not be until 1981 that the Dodgers would overcome the Reds and the Yankees to win a Series.

later i loathed the St Louis Cardinals, but not very passionately. Jack Clark; grrr. but it was Tom Niedenfuer's crappy pitching (and Lasorda's rotten decision) that was the real culprit. but a West Coast boy has no reason to care much for anything that far inland; it's just not right to leave so far from the sea. you almost pity them.

but now it's the frikkin' Padres i hate. yes, it's for the same damn reason: they beat the Dodgers. a lot. they can play like crap against the entire league, but let the Dodgers show up and suddenly the Pads act like real baseball players. i suppose it's good the Dodgers bring that out in teams, especially their little cousin to the south. but what i can't stand (besides the losing) is the arrogance of San Diego. it's not a New York arrogance: we're better than you so fuck you. it's a negative arrogance: we're not L.A. so fuck you. that's just pathetic.

so tonight their rookie beats our rookie, and we're still in first place, and i hope to god we kick the shit out of them the next two days. they can then go back to their slide to oblivion — no one said they had to have cheap ass owners — and we'll keep moving to a championship.

and maybe whup on the Reds, Cardinals and Yankees along the way.

Firing Hargrove won't be enough

The Seattle Mariners have had three seasons in their history that might be considered successful, and even those fell short. They've had three of the greatest players in baseball history and driven them away. They take young pitchers with huge potential and transform them quickly into has-beens — or in the case of Freddie Garcia, trade him away in time for him to have enough left to win a World Series. Maybe Joel Pinero will be as lucky; his terrific future has almost disappeared.

And the next step, of course, is to fire Mike Hargrove who has done absolutely nothing to fix the Mariners. He shows absolutely no indication of having the ability to do so, either. The sooner he goes, the better. But that won't suffice. There is something seriously wrong with the Mariners organization, almost as if they are as dedicated to failure as the Yankees and Dodgers are to success.

It's not about money, either. They can spend more than enough money to build a championship team. They can afford a winning team. They've made those purchases, and they've made good trades, and the farm system seems to produce quality players as well. But put the Mariners uniform on these players and watch the slow decline begin. Excellence degrades, steadily, until a Bret Boone is out of baseball, or management can't believe Randy Johnson has even half-a-season left him in — after which he wins several Cy Youngs, a World Series and pitches a perfect game.

What is it about this team that transforms possibility into failure? Is it as simple as being unable to hire the right manager? Lou Pinella was the right manager, and he left at the right time. With him and his staff, the team did great, and players excelled; but even his excellence faded into a lassitude that felt like Tennyson's "Lotos Eaters." Bob Melvin was not a bad choice, except that Dusty Miller, a great choice, was also available. Mike Hargrove was a terrible choice; nothing in his resume indicated he could guide a team in transition. The Dodgers picked the man this year the Mariners probably should have taken last year: Grady Little, who is mixing vets with rookies into a championship contender.

Playing major league baseball may be the hardest job in sports. It's a team sport that depends on individual achievement; every play is full of pressure. Each pitch, each at-bat, every single defensive play. As the saying goes, fail 70% of the time in baseball, and you'll be a star. Managing players has little to do with helping them with their release point or how much weight to put on the back foot; managing is about putting players in a position to succeed enough times that they play to their potential instead of being crushed under the weight of that potential.

If the Mariners, like the Dodgers or Yankees, can find that right manager, they have the players to win championships. Hargrove isn't that manager. I hope they find the right manager; I can't stand watching great players like Pinero turn into yet another Dave Fleming.