Sunday, March 16, 2008
Sports
We all need protection
Who’ll protect us from these guys?
CREDIT: Scott Cunningham/NBAE via Getty Images
CREDIT: Dave Sandford/Getty Images
CREDIT: Scott Cunningham/NBAE via Getty Images
Mike Woodson, Don Waddell and Billy Knight—who’ll protect us from these guys?
Everybody has to protect themselves—even the Atlanta Rollergirls, whose season opener I caught last week with my friend Cool Breeze at the Yaarab Shrine Center. Those sisters of slam hit hard, and they can rap, too, as I witnessed firsthand a few weeks previous when a couple of the Toxic Shocks came to my rescue during a particularly bad personal karaoke rendition of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” (I always pick bad songs).
Yes, everyone needs protection—unless you coach or serve as general manager of the Hawks or Thrashers. Those men understand all the protection they need comes from their leadership-challenged ownership group, which doesn’t believe in admitting failure. I’ll do it for them here: Don Waddell, Billy Knight and Mike Woodson, try as they may, have all failed to get the job done. Pink slips have to be delivered to these guys.
It’s depressing to think Knight and Woodson might save their jobs if the Hawks slip into the playoffs in the mediocre Eastern Conference. No one thinks this team would do anything in the playoffs, and if the Hawks do luck into postseason, the Atlanta Spirit brain trust would most likely champion such a weak accomplishment in keeping the team’s G.M. and coach around another year. The good news for the Hawks is they get to play the Knicks two more times and the Heat once before season’s end. The bad news is, well, they’re the Hawks, and Woodson is their coach, so this team isn’t going anywhere.
And neither are the Thrashers, as long as Waddell is calling the shots. He’s a nice guy, and he does a decent job of posturing in order to maintain his employment. But after nearly a decade on the job and still not a single playoff win, Waddell’s job security is amazingly snug, according to Atlanta Spirit co-owner Bruce Levenson. I was in the Atlanta Spirit offices last week the day after another Thrashers defeat, and morale was not super-high. Would you want to spend your summer as a sales executive trying to get Thrashers season-ticket holders to re-up for next year? I’d rather lay asphalt in the downtown Atlanta summer heat, where there’s little protection from the sun.
What kind of quarterback would Steve Bartkowski be had he gotten any O-line protection during his early years in the league? Not many NFL passers have thrown the long bomb with touch better than Bart. I saw him recently and he looked great. Said he’s completely cancer-free and is getting back on the golf course (10 career aces!) after recovering from double knee-replacement surgery as a result of all that porous pass protection in the mid-70s.
Do you know what protection sports are? They’re sports, such as the Belgian Ring, that test a dog’s ability to protect himself and his handler. I like dogs, but maybe not as much as bunnies. I also like Belgian waffles, but not as much as the new friend peanut butter and jelly sandwich with powered sugar and fruit being served up at the Big Easy Grille’s Sunday brunch. Old Spice protection makes some feel hungry like the wolf. One time in junior varsity ball, I was warming up a relief pitcher and didn’t wear protection. Sure enough, I got hit where it counts (counts for what?), whereupon I was called into the game to pinch run and was then quickly picked off first because I was too hurt to move quick enough back to the bag.
Speaking of baseball, the Braves’ Dale Murphy needed his likeness protected at the height of his career. The critically panned film 1985 “The Slugger’s Wife,’’ shot locally starring Michael O’Keefe (better known as Bushwood Country Club caddie champ Danny Noonan) and Rebecca De Mornay (better known for her subway Tangerine Dream love scene with Joel Goodsen), was about a star Atlanta Braves player (sounds like Murphy) who wears No. 3 (like Murphy), plays centerfield (like Murphy) and is named Darryl Palmer (which isn’t totally unlike Murphy’s name). In real life, Murphy was (and still is) a happily married family man who didn’t drink or smoke. Problem is, in the film, the Murphy-like character is a night owl, chases skirt, drinks and spends his time watching De Mornay’s character sing rather badly at an old Atlanta discotheque called the Limelight. Murphy told me a couple of weeks ago that he had to have his attorney send the film’s producer a cease-and-desist letter to let them know not to go too far with the similarities.
Of course, you can’t always protect yourself, as we were reminded with the recent tragic and senseless murders of Auburn freshman Lauren Burk and North Carolina senior Eve Carson. Truly, it’s a sad commentary on the world we live in where we in this country feel so safe, but in reality maneuver daily through a world of chaos and danger. An acquaintance of mine pointed out that the suspects in these cases were “black thugs,” that “smart white’’ people don’t ignore such things and that the deaths would further heighten racial tensions. I only had to point out that the gruesome and brutal murder of University of Georgia alumna Meredith Emerson in the new year’s first week came at the hands of a white man.
Red, yellow, black or white, we all need protection in a world where some twisted folks have a total disregard for human life. In light of that, it’s not that big a deal whether Waddell, Knight or Woodson stay or go. In the world of Atlanta sports? Yes, it matters. But in a world where there’s no round-the-clock protection from mindless tragedies such as the ones in Auburn and Chapel Hill, the one thing we can really do is count each day as a blessing. Amen.
Happy times … and hasn’t this weather just been marvelous? SP