Barry Bonds is killing his team

While its popular to bash the man who in the very near future will become the all-time home run king for his alleged use of performance enhancing drugs, he is a detriment to his team in much more tangible ways.

Bonds accounts for just over 17% of the Giants payroll and his $15.5+ million salary for 2007 dwarfs the next largest salary on his team by more than $5.5 million. By all accounts the team is at the top end of their player salary budget with a payroll over $90 million.

At this stage of his career, Bonds physical condition precludes him from playing as regularly as he once did. The numbers are in fact staggering. Of the Giants first 99 games this season (through Wed., July 25th), Barry has started only 80 and pinch hit in another 7. He has started only 80% and appeared in only 87% of his team's games with the potential of missing more games in the second half of the season than he did in the first half.

Compare those numbers with some other future hall of fame players who are close in age to Barry. Ken Griffey, Jr. has started 90 and appeared in 95 of his team's first 102 games (88% started and 93% appeared in while accounting for just over 12% of the Reds' payroll). Frank Thomas has started 91 and appeared in 98 of the Blue Jays' first 101 games (90% started, 97% appeared while accounting for almost 7% of payroll). Gary Sheffield has 95 starts and 97 appearances in 100 Tigers' games (95% starts, 97% appearances, 11.4%).

The truly damning evidence lies with the Giants abysmal record of 42-57 (.424 winning percentage). The team's record in the 18 games Bonds didn't start is a staggering 5-13 (.278).

If the Giants chose not to re-sign Bonds in the off-season and allocate those dollars elsewhere, they could have signed Carlos Lee to play Bonds position in LF, beefed up their bullpen with David Riske, added SP help in Jorge Sosa and STILL had $500,000 left over this year to play with.

Clearly he can put fans in seats, but his strain on the team's resources coupled with his regular absence from the field contributes more to team losing than he does to winning the games in which he plays.

Cycling rocked again

A couple days ago, I wrote about the removal of the entire Astana cycling team being removed from the Tour de France. In that blog, I mentioned the current leader Michael Rasmussen also had some questions swirling about missing some tests. Rasmussen won today's stage of the Tour and extended his lead to more than 3 minute with just five days remaining.

In a move that would be shocking and unheard of in any sport, the sponsor of his team Rabobank forced the team to remove the leader of the Tour de France from the team and the race. It appears that Mr. Rasmussen not only failed to disclose his whereabouts to his native Danish cycling commission, he lied to his team and sponsor about those whereabouts. He is said to have told the team he was in Mexico (where his wife is from) training while he was actually in Italy. Certainly there is much more than has been revealed.

The entire sport has now been rocked. He joins the prohibitive favorite going into the tour, last year's winner (Floyd Landis), a former winner (Jan Ullrich) and many many more cyclists who have been barred from the sports biggest event for suspected illegal performance enhancing behavior.

Over the last several years, nearly all of the biggest contenders in the sport have been implicated on some level with cheating. The depth and breadth of cheating in this sport would be the equivalent nearly all Major League Baseball All-stars testing positive for performance enhancing drugs. By contrast, over the last two seasons of testing, only a handful of Major Leaguers have been suspended and none of them are in the same breath as the best on their team, better yet the best in the world.

It should be noted that Lance Armstrong never tested positive for any of these behaviors and although some rumors swirled, he has adamantly denied any allegations.

When tomorrow's stage 17 begins, the leader of the Tour de France will be 24 year old Alberto Contador with Levi Leipheimer (USA) in third. Both men are from the only American team in the Tour, Lance Armstrong's Discovery Channel Team. For the sake of the sport, I hope the eventual winner will be clean. If not, its not difficult to imagine an end to the sport as sponsors run from any connection to this type of negative publicity.


***** Update: Somewhat overshadowed by the dismissal of the leader of the tour is the story of the Cofidis team. At the end of Stage 16, apparently the French police were waiting to take rider Christian Moreni into custody in connection with doping. The entire team was removed from the Tour de France, second team to be removed this year.

Once again my over active imagination got me thinking....which school had the most first round draft picks combined among the three major sports (football, basketball and baseball) following the 2006-2007 school/athletic year? So here is the breakdown of schools with more than one combined:

Florida 6 (2 NFL 3 NBA 1 MLB)
Ohio State 5 (2 NFL 3 NBA)
Ga Tech 4 (1 NFL 2 NBA 1 MLB)
LSU 4 (all NFL)
Miami 3 (all NFL)
Texas 3 (2 NFL 1 NBA)
Tennessee 3 (2 NFL 1 MLB)
Wisconsin 2 (1 NFL 1 NBA)
Clemson 2 (1 NFL 1 MLB)
FSU 2 (1 NFL 1 NBA)
USC 2 (1 NFL 1 NBA)
Boston College 2 (both NBA)
Vanderbilt 2 (both MLB)

Not surprisingly, the top two on the list are also the two schools who finished first and second in the BCS and NCAA Basketball Tournament. Interestingly, only 2 schools Florida and Georgia Tech had at least one pick in each of the 3 drafts.

So, the next question is can a pattern be established? In the 2005/2006 school year the breakdown is:

Texas 5 (2 MLB 1 NBA 2 NFL)

Ohio State 5 (all NFL)

FSU 4 (all NFL)

UConn 4 (all NBA)

NC State 4 (1 NBA 3 NFL)

Memphis 3 (2 NBA 1 NFL)

USC 3 (1 MLB 2 NFL)

Washington 2 (1 MLB 1 NBA)
UNC 2 (both MLB)
Clemson 2 (1 MLB 1 NFL)
LSU 2 (1 NBA 1 NFL)
Duke 2 (all NBA)
Nova 2 (all NBA)
S. Carolina 2 (1 NBA 1 NFL)
Mich State 2 (all NBA)
UCLA 2 (1 NBA 1 NFL)

Interestingly only Ohio State, Texas, FSU, LSU and USC appear on both lists. In 2005, Utah produced the #1 overall pick in both the NBA and NFL drafts. What does all of this mean? You tell me.

Baseball isn't the only sport with a problem

In case you missed it - like most Americans - the Tour de France is in its third and final week. Today was a rest day, but that didn't stop news from coming out of France. Alexander Vinokourov, one of the sports biggest stars tested positive for an illegal blood transfusion prior to his stage win in the individual time trial over the weekend. Vinokourov missed last year's tour when his team had so many riders implicated in a doping scandal that they could not field enough riders. Prior to that tour and this one, Vino was the hands down favorite to win.

This year, the organizers of the great bicycle race had every rider and team sign a vow to remain clean. Even with the signed vows in place, Vino was not the first to be implicated this year. Patrick Sinkewitz crashed last week and the next day it was revealed by the German Cycling Federation that he failed a test several weeks ago. Over the weekend it was revealed that current Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen has been banned from competing for his native Denmark after no-showing for multiple tests without informing the cycling federation of his whereabouts.

Vinokourov had been struggling in the tour prior to his victory in the individual time trial which brought him back into contention. The day after the time trial, he lost nearly 30 minutes on the leaders in a mountain stage effectively ending his pursuit for the Yellow Jersey. Again, the next day Vino shocked the Tour by running away with a stage victory in the mountains and winning by more than 5 minutes.

The travesty is that his team mate Andreas Kloden of Germany was in 5th place in the Overall standings and very much a factor to be dealt with over the last week of the tour. The entire Astana team, Kloden included have been asked to drop out of the Tour de France.

The Tour de France once again has a dark pall cast over it. The spectre of dopping hangs over even the "cleanest" teams. At the end of the year Team Discovery Channel, one time home of Lance Armstrong will be without a sponsor. The only American team competing on the grandest stages has never had a rider test positive for doping or performance enhacing drugs, yet sponsors are unwilling to support them due to guilt by association.

Many will say that cycling is an non-entity, but that would be short sighted as 750,000 spectators turn out daily over 3 weeks to watch the Tour de France. That is a total of 15,000,000 total. An astounding number of people. Yet it is all in jeopardy now. A sad state of affairs indeed. Since most of the management of cycling and its teams are run from within, its time for the UCI (cyclings international governing body) to reach out of its own ranks for new leadership. It is the only way the sport can overcome.

NBA Problems

Today the Commissioner of the NBA, David Stern held a news conference to address the Tim Donaghy situation (if you are not familiar with Tim Donaghy, read this previous blog). Mr. Stern has long been considered a brilliant marketer and among the best commissioners of all time regardless of sport. His track record makes the outcome of the press conference all the more disappointing.

At no time did the Commissioner accept blame either personally or on behalf of the league he represents. He characterized the situation as the actions of "a rogue, isolated criminal." By placing all blame on Mr. Donaghy, Commissioner Stern in speaking for his league is damning it to repeated failures. As with all sports governing bodies, the NBA rates, judges and grades all officials on a regular basis. Mr. Donaghy's performance has been reviewed since the allegations against him were made public and it is clear that there have been warning signs over the last two seasons. Yet, the NBA still scheduled him to work playoff games.

It is understandable that the NBA feels the need to distance itself from the spectre of gambling and its capability (and seemingly in this case actuality) of corrupting the integrity of the game. The NBA would have been best served to take a little of the heat and outline a plan to prevent recurrances in the future. Instead, the NBA pointed their collective finger at difficulty in collecting background information, the criminal spirit of the individual and comparing Mr. Donaghy to a rogue CIA or FBI agent turning on their country.

Sadly, one of the greats in the sports management business has failed his league, its fans and himself.

Beckham

Soccer has taken a place in the sports consciousness in the United States with the arrival of David Beckham. Beckham is widely considered the most popular athlete in the most popular sport in the world. He garners world-wide attention and his face is known on all continents.

His contract with the MLS LA Galaxy including incentives based on team and league revenues totals a staggering $250 million over 5 years. Consider this, Alex Rodriguez' massive contract that hamstrung the Texas Rangers into trading him to the Yankees was signed for $252 million over 10 years. Is Beckham worth DOUBLE A-Rod? Is Beckham even half as recognizable in this country as A-Rod?

Of course there are reasons outside of on-field (pitch) production that factor into why the MLS and LA Galaxy have put all of their chips into the Beckham basket. The world's most popular game is the 6th or 7th most popular sport in America behind Football, Baseball, Basketball, NASCAR, hockey and possibly Mixed Martial Arts. Granted, the initial impact has been incredible. People are talking about soccer, there is a buzz. Mrs. Beckham has a reality TV show about their move to Los Angeles. Ticket sales all over the league are up and A-list celebrities turned out to watch his debut game - a game that didn't even count.

The real question is how he will impact the game in the long-term. If this all sounds familiar its because its been done in this country before.

History tells us that he will simply be a blip on the radar of American sports. As big a name as Beckham is world-wide, there is none bigger than Pele. The single most recognizable name in the history of soccer came to the United States to launch professional soccer into the public consciousness in the 1970s. In 1975, a 35 year old (Beckham is 32) Pele signed with the New York Cosmos and played out the final 3 years of his majestic and unparalleled career. The league drew as many as 73,000+ fans for the 1978 Championship game and during Pele's run, the Cosmos drew more than 40,000 fans per game. By 1984 the league was defunct, largely due to many of the other teams drawing less than 5,000 fans per game.

Granted, there are some differences between the two men, not the least of which is Pele came out of retirement to join the Cosmos and Beckham is coming off a season in which he led Real Madrid to the Italian League Championship. That said, David Beckham is a mid-fielder. His game is not to score goals. He could play a spectacular game and not score or even set-up a goal if his teammates can't finish. In a society that worships dunks, home runs and touchdowns, is there room for a megastar whose greatest asset is his passing ability?

Roy Hobbs Place

It only took a couple days for me to realize that I needed a second blog to seperate the Sports content from the rest of the content. So, here it is....Roy Hobbs Place named in honor of The Natural.

Since NFL training camps are starting at the end of the week, here is a topical trivia question:

How many NFL teams train at their home facility?

Check the comments for the answer