Pro Sports Franchise Follies

Most cities are blessed with professional sports franchises who do great things for their cities. They connect with the people, the fans pack the stadium or arena night in and night out, and people say they are top-flight organizations, class all the way.

And then there are the ones that don't know what they're doing. Worse yet, they won't admit that they don't know what they're doing and they burn every bridge to the community that one can think of. Here in Syracuse, we happen to be blessed, or shall I say cursed, with one such team.

The Syracuse SkyChiefs have been a part of this community for 45 years now, and for many years, they were a great organization with winning teams and intelligent leadership. Unfortunately, the leadership has lost its way, intelligence has given way to stubbornness and frugality, and the true losers are the fans. Some would trace this back to the late 1970s, when the then-Chiefs were the top farm club of the New York Yankees. The Yanks were building a championship team, and Syracuse was the place to see these parts on display. Thurman Munson, Ron Guidry, and others had toiled here, and in 1976, the Chiefs won the championship. Two years later, the Yankees were gone. Depending on who you ask, it was either pigheadedness by George Steinbrenner or pigheadedness by Tex Simone, the Chiefs' general manager. For years, Chiefs fans figured it was The Boss' doing, that we were screwed over like so many fired Yankees managers.

When you look at what has passed through this town since, you may be tempted to think otherwise. When the Yankees left, we became the top farm club for the Toronto Blue Jays. Many a future star came through here as Toronto built its championship teams of the 1980s and early 1990s... but they didn't do much winning here. And the future Jays of recent years haven't won much here either. In 29 years with the Jays, Syracuse has enjoyed just 8 winning seasons. So when they had a chance to dump the Blue Jays this year at the end of their player development contract... they stuck with them.

In June, the SkyChiefs Board of Directors voted to keep Toronto as its parent club. Three months later, the Mets and Yankees were available, as they broke ties with their respective Triple-A homes in Norfolk and Columbus. Instead, the Yankees went to Scranton, and the Mets turned out to be the odd team out in a large-scale affiliate swap, stuck with 2 years of having their top prospects playing half a continent away in New Orleans.

So the Blue Jays' prospects will continue to play here, and it relative obscurity at that. The SkyChiefs spend close to zero money on PR... you wouldn't even know there was a team here unless you drove past the stadium on I-81 on a game night. Incidentally, you would go that way because in 1996, they built their new stadium right next to the old one on the North Side, rather than putting one downtown like most other teams have done. At the time, I thought the stadium should be on the North Side; it was tradition, the old stadium had a nice neighborhood ballpark feel to it, and we thought there would be a big revival on the North Side. Instead, the new stadium looks out of place, IS out of place, and the only thing that's gone up on the North Side in the last 10 years has been weeds.

What seems to have gone down has been the amount the team spends on, well, EVERYTHING, and the amount of respect the team has has for the community. Tex Simone has retired as GM but still is very much a presence at Alliance Bank Stadium, and his son is now the GM. Tex driving around to recycle balls hit out during batting practice is the stuff of legend, son John temporarily banned playing such ballpark favorites as "YMCA" because (sit down for this one) he was sick of hearing them, and they and the aging Board have thumbed their nose at any suggestion to fix things. They fought the county on a plan to bring pro soccer to the stadium (despite the massive popularity of a previous franchise here), they are a year behind on installing new turf. Attendance is way down... except on the stat sheet, where the SkyChiefs count the "paid attendance" which includes all the tickets they give away to local establishments (because nobody will buy them). The one night I went to a game this year, the "paid attendance" was over 8,000... and there were barely 4,000 in the seats. Early in the season, the paid attendance each night was in the 3,000-4,000 range, but you would have to subtract a zero to get the count of the actual number of people there.

The Post-Standard's Matt Michael, a great writer who I have had the pleasure of meeting in the past, has spent the last couple years blowing the lid off all of this. However, he can only do so much. He reported today that barely half of the 25 members of the SkyChiefs' Board of Directors attended the vote to re-up with the Blue Jays. When one of the board members mentioned that they have to have 3/4 of the board there to have a quorum, Michael asked to see the by-laws to see if the vote was valid. The SkyChiefs rejected his request. And of course, neither of the Simones is talking, despite the claims of "inside information" that Tex had which caused the Board members who did attend to vote to keep Toronto. Tex having "inside information" is like saying I know all the details of Iran's nuclear program.

Undoubtedly, we will soon hear from many a grizzled old Syracusan throwing himself in front of the Simones and reminding people of how the team has managed to stay here for so long under their guidance so why mess with it. Typical Syracuse. However, it NEEDS to be messed with, because it IS a mess. How long can a team be viable in this state? And furthermore, why would the SkyChiefs stonewall on matters such as the validity of their vote if they didn't have something to hide? It could come to pass that the vote was NOT valid, and that means Toronto could move their affiliate elsewhere and we'd be stuck with NOTHING. For two years. Sadly, it usually takes an Armageddon like this for anyone in this town to do something. When that happens, we ALL lose.

A Bummer of a Homecoming

I finally made it to my first West Genesee home football game of the season tonight. I missed the first one because I was in Florida and I was fighting a nasty bug last Friday. I missed one helluva game that night, as the Wildcats took on mighty CBA, ranked #2 on the state, a team so good that they're playing on national television tonight... but on ESPNU, which you cannot get here unless you have satellite. Anyway, after falling behind 27-7, West Genny pulled off a dramatic comeback, tying the game at 27 late in the 3rd quarter. The biggest upset in school history was within reach...

And then the lights went out.

Not all of them, just some, but still, the lights went out. In the middle of the game. And this is not the first time this has happened in recent years at West Genny. Both coaches wanted to play on, but the refs pulled a CYA move (liability and all) and insisted the lights be restored before continuing. Over an hour later, the situation was fixed, but CBA had reasserted themselves and they pulled away in the 4th quarter for a 41-27 win. This kind of thing happens at West Genesee. As a WG grad (Class of '96), I've seen it time and time again over the years. Games where you just throw up your hands and wonder if the fates have a sick sense of humor. This is how we went 12 years between winning seasons, a streak that finally ended last season. This is how we have gone 18 years since winning a postseason game, and we've only made the playoffs twice in those 18 years, once by default when two other teams had to forfeit a bunch of wins.

So going into tonight's game against Liverpool, it was apparent that we have a good team at West Genesee this year, but something like last week can definitely rattle a squad. I figured after that CBA game, they were either going to A) be buoyed by the fact that they could hang with a superpower like the Brothers and play like they know they can from here on out... or B) realize that playing for West Genesee means you are snakebitten and pack it in for the season. The early returns are... they've chosen (B). Liverpool won tonight, 49-21. Ouch.

It turns out tonight was Homecoming, so the stands were packed, the closest place to park was Lowe's, and we were going to be treated to the classic traditions like the marching band's performance at halftime, the Homecoming Court, and of course the Homecoming Parade. Wait, scratch that last one. They can't have a Homecoming Parade anymore. When I heard about this, I was expecting some story about students last year doing something that caused them to decide this can never be done again... you know, the usual standard practice in schools these days. Well no, the reason is because the school district just underwent a major upgrade of its' sports facilities, and this included a new track. Which is rubberized. Which means you can't DRIVE on it.

Excuse me while I smack my forehead...

I have to give the school district credit for doing a fantastic job of upgrading their buildings and such in recent years. They've completely renovated the high school, and it looks fantastic. They put in a second gymnasium (mostly for volleyball), where the League Championship banners hang, including the 1996 baseball team that I was a part of. Here's the problems, as I noted as I walked around tonight:

They built a brand-spanking-new stadium, with Field Turf, separate locker rooms (as in not inside the actual school), state-of-the-art press box, and nice lights (that actually WORK all the time)... and they can't use it for football games because they didn't build enough seating capacity. So we're stuck having to play in an old stadium where the lights go out every few years (but we DO have a new scoreboard), and they replaced the track in a way that caused them to have to throw decades of tradition out the window and ban the Homecoming Parade, which is most of the fun of Homecoming. Oh, and they redid the concession stand to include bathrooms so you don't have to go in the school or use a port-a-potty... and the men's room has ONE urinal. ONE. Foresight, thy name is NOT West Genesee.

Despite all this... I still had a pretty good time tonight. When I returned to Syracuse two years ago, and moved back out here to Camillus shortly thereafter, I wanted to find a way to get involved in the community once again. Unfortunately, being as busy as I am, I haven't really had the opportunity to do that, so the best I can do is come back to my alma mater and cheer on my team occasionally, so I make the most of it. I just wish I could have been in on those design meetings for these new facilities... and while I'm at it, I wish I could call the plays for the football team, too...

All Politics is STILL Local

Well, the election season is truly underway, and with the midterm elections approaching, the Democrats and Republicans are going into their usual brand of open warfare. All pretense of running non-negative campaigns has been thrown out the window pretty much, as both parties' campaign committees are playing the role of "attack dogs" on behalf of their candidates. And then of course, there are the 527's. As a postscript to last week's 9-11 column, MoveOn.org is running TV ads accusing the Republicans of exploiting 9-11 for political purposes. As you would expect from this bunch, they don't have time or ability to give factual examples, so none are given. They are basically taking what the Democrats said after the president's speech and running with it... even though it's wrong, and even though the people who made the events of September 11, 2006 into a political issue have been DEMOCRATS.

This is a typical tactic that the Democrats have taken for years, and that is to Monday morning quarterback everything the Bush administration does. While the Democrats have made few attempts of their own to offer remedies or alternatives, they have done a good job of stopping useful legislation. Not all of the things Republicans have tried to push (I too didn't see a point to voting on a gay marriage ban or an amendment against flag-burning), the useful things, such as a minimum-wage increase. Now they have come out with an election strategy that you would expect from a party that has no concrete agenda to speak of... running against Bush.

They are attempting to nationalize the election by making all 435 House races and all the Senate races into a referendum on the president. Their message to the voters is simple: all Republican incumbents (and Joe Lieberman) march in lockstep with Bush. In any race where they think they have a chance, they're going full-tilt with their attack ads and their letter writers, going nothing but negative. To some extent, this seems to be working, as a recent Zogby poll showed that 71 percent of voters said their vote would be swayed more by national issues than local issues.

We have a perfect example right here in Central New York. Jim Walsh is our Congressman, he has been for 18 years. In that time, he's done a lot of good for the area, bringing in money and the Army Corps of Engineers to clean up Onondaga Lake, creating the Syracuse Neighborhood Initiative, working on getting green bonds for the Destiny project. He has done much on the national scale as well, but as the saying goes, "All politics is local."

Walsh's opponent, Dan Maffei, and the Democratic Party would like you to forget that saying. Maffei has done nothing but criticize Walsh for the entire campaign, making it about the fact that Walsh has "voted with the president 9 out of 10 times." I don't know how these numbers are calculated, and the fact that Bush has only vetoed one bill in his presidency may have something to do with that. When Walsh broke with the president over the issue of detainee rights under the Geneva Conventions, Maffei's campaign suggested it was a ploy to look independent. So they want it both ways... can't vote with the president, can't vote against the president. The voting record has been the theme of the campaign, with some supporters even suggesting that all the good things Walsh has done in this area with federal money amounts to nothing more than a diversion, "hush money" if you will, to take your mind off his voting record.

Walsh's initial campaign ads talked about the good things he's done for the area; Maffei's initial ads (and the opening salvos from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) were all about the voting record and fit the Dems' attempt to make it a national election. Even the slogan on Maffei's signs: "Send them a message," points to a focus on the Dems winning the House and ONLY that. Not until recently has Maffei even said ONE thing he would do for us Central New Yorkers. He's tried with his most recent ad, throwing in a line about promoting local businesses that create jobs, but he promptly went right back on message and declared that it was all about changing the Congress.

Unfortunately, to some extent, Walsh has played into their hands. His latest ad defends his commitment to local issues, which is exactly what he should be doing, but he then calls Maffei a "Washington insider". Immediately, Walsh has been tarred and feathered by Maffei supporters on the letters page for going negative. Well, Maffei IS a Washington insider for the most part, but that's not for Walsh to say himself. He needs to stay focused on what he does for us. He needs to remind people that he talks with the people and listens to the people and does things for the people. That must be his campaign; he MUST keep it local, because in the end, people need to realize that this IS a local election. The simple fact is this: there is a very real possibility that the Democrats will not win the House in November. If Maffei wins and is a minority congressman... bye-bye Syracuse Neighborhood Initiative, bye-bye Army Corps of Engineers, and bye-bye to needed federal programs impacting us here in Central New York.

Of course, I'm sure Dan Maffei doesn't care about that; he's too busy telling people the same message parroted by all Democrat challengers and their willing followers: Your congressman does nothing to stop the president from ruining this country. Elect us and we'll fix it. Well no... all you'll do is prevent anything from getting passed for the next two years. Actually, I'm wrong... what I fear you'll do is walk into session on January 4th and present Item #1 (and the only item) on your agenda: impeaching Bush. But that's another column...

Excuse Me If I Get Emo For a Moment

As you may know if you used to read this blog back in the days when it was simply an "Internet column", I spent a lot of my time in those days bashing the current music scene and hoping for something new to come along. In those days, it was all "boy bands" and rap-metal, so you can see why I was desperate for change. Then I got to be a radio station music director for 15 months and I got to hear the "next big thing" as it was hitting.

Emo.

You may as well call the 2000s (is that what we're calling this decade? 6 years in and I still don't know...) the "Emo Decade". I first heard about emo back in college in the late 1990s, when we were playing Jimmy Eat World's early stuff. I liked it, but it was naturally out of place in a format where everyone wanted to sound like Kid Rock or Limp Bizkit. In 1999, if you asked people what Emo was, 95% of them would say, "He's that annoying red Muppet from 'Sesame Street'..."

Actually, "emo" is short for "emotional", which reflects the lyrical content of the songs, real heart-on-your-sleeve stuff. In recent years, a harder-edged version of this style has emerged called "screamo", which is what you'd figure it to be... like emo, only the bands have lead singers who prefer screaming the lyrics at the top of their lungs rather than singing. I'm not as big a fan of stuff like that.

This music was hanging around the fringes of the popular scene for a few years, and even won some crossover appeal with Jimmy Eat World's self-titled album and Dashboard Confessional's breakthrough in 2002. The punk scene adopted emo bands and they wound up on the Warped Tour playing to growing audiences. Bands like Good Charlotte and Simple Plan who weren't really emo but more glossy pop-punk got the mainstream into the Warped Tour scene, and soon enough, the "mall punks" discovered emo, and by 2005, it exploded, mostly due to how accessible the music is, through places like MySpace. It still hasn't really gotten a lot of airplay, but Fall Out Boy is on pop stations every 2 hours, thus proving there may be some hope for the format after all. Now if they'd just stop playing Nick Lachey every 10 minutes, we'd be fine... what's that new song of his? "What's Left of My Career?"

For me, my tastes changed as a result of 3 albums. The first was Blink-182's self-titled album in late 2003. I had been a fan for the past couple of albums, and on this one, they went in a more emo direction, and I loved the change. Unfortunately, it was their last album, but Tom DeLonge has continued moving in new directions with his later projects, Box Car Racer and now Angels and Airwaves. The second album was Green Day's "American Idiot". While this really isn't an emo record, it got me back into punk and it married two of my favorite musical genres, punk and the concept album. The third album was Weezer's "Make Believe". Weezer is widely acknowledged as the key influence in many emo bands, and if this really was their last album, they went out in top form.

So now I'm running out to buy stuff like Death Cab For Cutie, listening to Something Corporate, Hawthorne Heights, and AFI, and watching Fuse on a pretty regular basis because they play a TON of emo and punk bands. I'm happy to say I have finally found a musical scene to "belong to". I'm sure many would make the same argument about emo that I used to say about "boy bands" and rap-metal, that all the bands sound the same, and to some extent, that's the case with any trend in music. Someone finds the sound that everyone loves, and everyone else tries to copy that in the attempt to be successful. I'm very discriminating in the music I listen to. If I say, "Okay, this is a decent song, but I've heard it 7 times before from 7 other bands," I won't like it.

The music has become so popular that "emo" has become an adjective, as in "Don't get emo on me now." As someone who will readily admit that I wear my heart on my sleeve sometimes, I have no problem being called "emo". In fact, I embrace it.

It's Come to This

Yes, I'm a little late for writing a post about 9-11, but I'm sure you'll understand. I marked the five-year anniversary of that tragic day in the same way that most Americans did, by remembering where I was on that day, the raw emotions of that day, and how horrible an event that was for our country. However, it didn't take long for what should have been a very solemn occasion to become the basis for yet ANOTHER sniping match between Republicans and Democrats.

Really, it started a few days prior to September 11th, when ABC found itself in hot water over its two-part miniseries, "The Path to 9/11." The series was based on the 9/11 Commission's report and had the Commission's co-chair, former Governor Thomas Kean, as a consultant. Members of former President Clinton's administration were irate that some facts had been played with for dramatic effect, so ABC recut the movie, which was the correct thing to do. However, Clinton continued to demand that ABC pull the plug on the series entirely, and Democrats even now are still insisting that the piece was a hatchet job on the Clinton administration. Some even suggest that this was a ploy backed by Disney (ABC's corporate owner) to help the Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.

First of all, I should note here that the aforementioned consultant on the series, former Gov. Kean, is a DEMOCRAT. Second, while I'll admit my belief that Disney is one of the most evil corporate entities on this planet, I've never seen them immerse themselves in anything political. Third, all this looks like to me is a refusal by Clinton and his former aides to admit they were at all at fault for what happened on 9-11-2001. There were many parties at fault, the Clinton administration among them, and also the Bush administration, the FBI, the CIA, and Al-Qaida themselves. The 9-11 Commission report said as much, which makes this an accurate reflection. The fact that the Clinton administration takes up so much of the movie is simply due to the fact that the timespan between the 1993 WTC bombing and 9-11 included 8 years of Clinton's presidency and just 8 months of Bush's.

Unfortunately, this is just one example of the bigger problem: the fact that Democrats cannot see anything as not being political. More unfortunate is the fact that Democrats wouldn't even allow this day of rememberance to end before they were once again criticizing Republicans for making something political. In this case, it was President Bush's 9-11 speech, where he referenced the current war in Iraq as being part of the ongoing War on Terror. No sooner did the speech end than New York Senator Charles Schumer went running to a TV camera (as he is often so fond of doing) to proclaim that the president had "politicized" 9-11. At no point in the president's speech did he mention his party, the upcoming elections, or anything of a political nature.

If we are to use Sen. Schumer's logic, then the first person to "politicize" 9-11 on that day was House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who used her speech for the day to once again repeat the mantra "we are not as safe as we should be." The same mantra that Democrats have been using to counter Republican claims that the country is safer since 9-11. It should be noted that no Republican went complaining to the media after Pelosi's speech to accuse her of playing politics.

I find the whole episode sad to see, really, and the worst part is it overshadowed what should have been a solemn occasion. In response to the question that gets asked this time of year, "Have we changed?", I offer that we haven't... if anything, we've gotten worse. 9-11 and its aftermath caused the fringes of our country to pull even closer to their polar opposites, and sadly, they continue to drag the two main political parties with them. I am a moderate, and I know I'm not alone when I look at all the verbal lobbing back and forth and just wonder who's looking out for me. I look at it and I just want to tell both sides to shut up.

The worst part is that the election is still over 6 weeks away, so it will only get worse.

Why I Blog

Welcome to the second coming of "THIS JUST IN!!!" Well, actually second coming and second home... I "restarted" this on LiveJournal last month and now it has two homes for the moment...

Some four years ago, I was writing what I called an "Internet column" by the same name. The term "blog" hadn't been invented yet. I wrote weekly about whatever was on my mind, which was usually pop culture, politics, and sports. I had a decent number of readers and occasionally I even received a response or two to what I had written. I wrote 116 columns over two-plus years. However, I gave it up around the end of 2002.

I had a bunch of reasons at the time: I felt that the column had become something I "needed" to do, rather than something I wanted to do. I had to come up with something to write about and then actually write it by every Friday, and it got to the point where if nothing big came up in the news, I was back to the same things I'd talked about time and time again. To put it bluntly, I'd run out of steam to vent.

I've thought about resurrecting the column in recent years, but my job at the time made me a little uneasy about having the opinions I used to give connected to my name. Well, that job (and that career, really) are both in the past. I recently thought about things I had wanted to do in life and put aside, and the column was one of them. I came to a realization that I certainly have a gift for writing... and frankly, I think the world needs to hear from my sorry ass again. Oh, and writing letters to the editor is not an effective form of release... especially when they don't get published. Ever.

So it's time to come back, but with a couple changes to preserve my interest in doing this and, for that matter, my sanity. This won't be a weekly thing. I've got a lot to say now so I may just be posting daily for a while, but soon enough it will slow down and I may go a couple weeks between posts.

I'm looking at this as a continuation of what I started in August 2000 with the original "column". I won't number these like I used to, but really this could be #117 and it would fit just as well with anything else I've written.

Bear with me as it may take me a couple posts to get back to where I used to be in terms of style points (and also I've been sick lately). That being said, away we go...