Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
Ryan Callahan scored for the fifth time in four days and defenseman Ryan McDonagh snapped a second-period tie to lift the New York Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Sunday.
Kobe Bryant hit a baseline jump shot with 4.2 seconds left and the Los Angeles Lakers wrapped up a six-game road trip by holding on to beat the Raptors 94-92 on Sunday, their eighth victory in nine meetings with Toronto
Arc's five up, five down: After No. 11 Michigan State's 58-48 upset of No. 3 Ohio State, you'd be a fool to discount the Spartans' national title chances now.
Miami coach Al Golden says the worst is behind him, but his headaches figure to continue now that former booster Nevin Shapiro, now in jail, says his involvement with the Hurricanes program will result in stiff penalties.
Golf's dream pairing - Woods and Mickelson - is on the course in the final round at Pebble Beach. Jason Sobel has hole-by-hole reports.
The United States completed a 5-0 rout of Switzerland in the Davis Cup on Sunday, with 19-year-old Ryan Harrison and John Isner winning closing singles matches.
Euro Roundup: First-place Manchester City won 1-0 at Aston Villa on Sunday on Joleon Lescott's goal in the 63rd minute, maintaining its two-point lead over Manchester United in the Premier League.
Tessa Worley of France fought off gusting winds to win a second consecutive World Cup giant slalom Sunday in the Andorran Pyrenees. Overall leader Lindsey Vonn was more than a second behind and finished eighth.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
AP
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. - Bowie Kuhn was baseball’s bespectacled Ivy League lawyer and looked the part every day of the tumultuous 15 years he ruled as commissioner.
Prim and proper with wire-rim glasses, he stood ramrod straight — all 6-foot-5 of him. Detractors called him a “stuffed shirt” and “pompous,” labels that amused him.
Despite his regal bearing, he was as ornery as the owners and players he feuded with over a span that became the second-longest tenure among nine commissioners.
Kuhn, who oversaw the sport’s transformation to a business of free agents with multimillion-dollar contracts, died Thursday at St. Luke’s Hospital in Jacksonville, Fla., following a short bout with pneumonia that led to respiratory failure, spokesman Bob Wirz said. Kuhn, who was 80, had been hospitalized for several weeks.
“He led our game through a great deal of change and controversy,” commissioner Bud Selig said. “Yet, Bowie laid the groundwork for the success we enjoy today.”
Kuhn loved baseball long before he moved into its main office on Park Avenue, having worked as a manual scoreboard operator at Washington’s Griffith Stadium.
When Kuhn took over from William Eckert on Feb. 4, 1969, baseball just had completed its final season as a tradition-bound 20-team sport, one with no playoffs, a reserve clause and an average salary of about $19,000.
Kuhn battled the rise of the NFL and a combative players’ union that besieged him with lawsuits, grievances and work stoppages. Yet it was also a time of record attendance and revenue and a huge expansion of the sport’s television presence.
“He wore the mantle really well. He liked being commissioner,” Yankees manager Joe Torre said. “He never seemed to compromise on what he felt he needed to do.”
Along with Kuhn’s bumpy reign came a string of controversial decisions.
When Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run to break Babe Ruth’s career record in 1974, Kuhn was not in the stands. And he banned Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle — Hall of Famers both — from associating with their former teams because of liaisons with gambling casinos.
By the time Peter Ueberroth succeeded Kuhn on Oct. 1, 1984, the major leagues had 26 teams in four divisions, a designated hitter in the American League, the first night World Series games, color-splashed uniforms, free agency and an average salary of nearly $330,000.
“I want it to be remembered that I was commissioner during a time of tremendous growth in the popularity of the game,” Kuhn said, “and that it was a time in which no one could question the integrity of the game.”
It was also a time of memorable confrontations. Kuhn did battle with the likes of Charlie O. Finley, George Steinbrenner, Ted Turner and Ray Kroc. Finley once called Kuhn “the village idiot.”
He also tangled with former star players like Mays, Mantle and Curt Flood, and union head Marvin Miller.
His downfall came after he presided over a 50-day strike that split the 1981 season in half.
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“Bowie was a good guy, and I admired him. Even though we had our disagreements, I never lost my respect for his integrity,” Steinbrenner said through spokesman Howard Rubenstein.
“You’ve got to develop a sense of humor,” Kuhn once said during an interview. “You have to be able to stand back and laugh. That’s invaluable, or you’re apt to go slightly balmy.”
Born in Takoma Park, Md., on Oct. 28, 1926, Kuhn grew up in Washington, D.C., as a fan of the original Washington Senators — yet he allowed the expansion Senators to leave after the 1971 season and become the Texas Rangers. He graduated from Princeton in 1947 and received his law degree in 1950 from Virginia.
After school, he joined the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher, which represented the National League. In 1966, he represented the Milwaukee Braves in their legal battle with the city over a move to Atlanta and gained the respect of the league’s owners.
He eventually lost that respect through repeated confrontations with many of those owners, who kept him from getting involved in negotiations during the 1981 strike.
“I think it’s easy to be critical, but I know what it’s like,” said Fay Vincent, who was commissioner from 1989-92. “It’s a very difficult group to work for. It’s important to remember he was making decisions in a very different time, in a difficult environment.”
Kuhn suspended Steinbrenner in 1974 for two years — later shortened to 15 months — for his guilty plea regarding illegal campaign contributions to President Nixon’s re-election campaign. He then suspended Turner, the Braves owner, in 1976 for tampering with the contract of Gary Matthews.
In 1976, he voided the attempt by Finley’s Oakland Athletics to sell Vida Blue, Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers for a combined price of $3.5 million, saying the deals weren’t in the best interests of baseball.
He fined Kroc, the San Diego Padres owner, $100,000 in 1979 for saying he wanted to sign Joe Morgan of the Reds and Graig Nettles of the Yankees.
During Kuhn’s years as commissioner, attendance in the major leagues grew from 23 million in 1968 to 44.6 million in 1982. In 1983, baseball signed a $1.2 billion television contract that would earn each team $7 million a year for six seasons, then an astonishing sum.
It was clear by now that baseball was transforming itself from a sport to a business, with revenue rising from $163 million in 1975 to $624 million in 1984.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
DeMarco: Plug in a well-heeled ownership group and negotiate one of those mega-bucks TV deals that are going around, and the Dodgers could become the west coast version of the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox.
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Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
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Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
