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In Sports

By Dave Begel

Published June 2, 2006 at 5:12 a.m.

Tags: begel, kournikova, admirals, lpga, boxing

The world of sports is full of little things that mystify me or don't make sense. At least I can't explain them.

Like sending pictures over the Internet. I know that my daughter can send me pictures of my grandson, but I really can't explain how it works.

Or, like why in the world does the PGA Tour have a rule that doesn't allow players to wear shorts? Tiger Woods looks hot in shorts.

Today we're going to look at a few of those things that I need to have explained to me.

Take the LPGA Tour. Here you have bunch of women, a lot of them good looking, playing for a pittance. Women tennis pros play for the same money as men. And LPGA players have a game more like the rest of us than the bombers on the PGA Tour. But No. 25 on the PGA Tour has won $1.26 million while No. 25 on the LPGA Tour has won $147,000. The Senior Tour even has more money in the pot than the women. Explain this to me, please.

Take boxing. I love boxing. There's nothing like watching a good fight, either on television or in person. It is just about the best sport for television, especially with replay. But I don't know the name of a single champ. In any weight class. I don't even know how many champs there are in each weight class. Explain this to me, please.

Take the WNBA. Women's professional basketball is enjoying almost as much attention as competitive chess. The only reason it still exists is that the NBA and its commissioner, David Stern, think it's a good thing. Pretty clearly, they are the only ones. Explain this to me, please.

Take the Milwaukee Admirals. The media in Milwaukee treats them like a major league team. Big front-page coverage. Coverage on the local sports broadcasts. And still, hardly anyone goes to the games. And I couldn't name an Admirals' player if you paid me. How come nobody cares about this team? Explain this to me, please.

Take pitching. Everybody says that pitching is the most important thing in baseball. And it's obvious that it's not just about pitching, but about how pitching affects the entire baseball team. Take the Brewers. They lose a couple of pitchers and everything -- hitting, defense, relief pitching -- goes to hell. Explain this to me, please.

Take the NCAA. They come up with a new policy regarding Indian nicknames that are hostile or abusive. So they rule that William & Mary can keep the nickname "Tribe" but can't use the logo because it includes two feathers. Explain this to me, please.

Take the World Cup. The rest of the world is starting the trash talking and fist waving as the World Cup gets near. For example, a recent Reuters story talked about a player's broken foot "suffered in his nation's hour of need." Get off it. When was the last time anyone except George Bush talked about our country's hour of need? As much as we say we care, we just don't care. Explain this to me, please.

Take Anna Kournikova. The best looking tennis player ever. Never won a tournament. Tried as hard as she could. Where has she gone? Explain this to me, please.

Take Mike Stock. Who's Mike Stock, you ask. He's the new special teams coach for the Green Bay Packers. And he seems markedly unworried about replacing the Packers all time leading scorer, Ryan Longwell. How come Mike Stock isn't worried? Explain this to me, please.

And finally, take the people who read my column last week. How anybody could suggest that I wrote it because of some corporate tie between OnMilwaukee.com and a radio station is beyond me. Those people don't know me or my reputation and they obviously don't know what they are talking about. Explain this to me, please.

28 comments about this article. Post a comment / write a review.

Recent Talkbacks ...

Posted by OMCreader on June 13, 2006 at 8:41 p.m. (report)

Dan said: Dave, When did you become such a misogynist? Dan

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Posted by OMCreader on June 5, 2006 at 10:53 p.m. (report)

Jeremy said: 1) LPGA Tour - Golf is still generally considered a man's sport, men golf far more then women, men spend more money on golfing then women. Men spend more money that women in general, therefore the Men's tour gets more money, and larger prizes. 2)Boxing - Well, there was just that huge fight that got cancelled due to one fighter not making weight. Why are theyre 13 different titles and 17 different weight classes? Because they don't want them to kill each other, and because championship fights draw more money, and since you can only fight one man so often, it makes more sense to have more champions. 3)WNBA - I'm not a basketball fan, men or women's, but since probably well over 80% of high schools, and 80% of division I NCAA Schools have Women's Basketball programs, maybe they should have something to work towards like their counterpart male athletes do. 4) My (because they certainly aren't your) Milwaukee Admirals - Jordin Tootoo. For the second week in a row you have proven that your research is mind-numbing as far as how wrong you are. Scottie Upshall. The Admirals have had a 12% increase in attendance this season compared to last. Darren Haydar. The Admirals sold out the Bradley Center for a great cause, marking the largest AHL crowd in 6 years. Pekka Rinne. The Admirals have been on the front page once, and that was after they won the conference finals, the Bucks were out of the playoffs, and the Packers were between minicamps. Greg Zanon. ESPN radio does the Admirals play by play and even gives them a 10 minute pregame show, while the Brewers get a 2 hour post game show on 1250, and maybe Claude Noel comes in to chat less often then Keith Tozer. Zach Stortini. Alot of people care about this team, and by you being ignorant of them, you aren't helping the situation. 5) Pitching - They say in football Special Teams is 33% of the game, even when they are only in for 10% of the plays. Pitching is the same way, if you lose your starters you put in rookies, you put in rookies and you give the opposing team basically a 3 run lead to start with. You can't always come back from 3 down after one half inning. Poor pitching means the other team hits more balls, and no matter how good your offense or defense is, nothing makes up for poor pitching, while great pitching can make up for anything. 6) NCAA - I think they are being overly sensitive about the issue, everybody but the NCAA does, i would have figured as a journalist, you could have done the research yourself. 7) World Cup - Unlike our "World" Series, the World Cup is actually participated in by the world. National Pride rides on world cup teams more than the olympics, mostly becuase world wide, soccer is the most watched, and most participated sport. Just becasue you don't watch soccer, stop being an elitist and deciding for everyone that it's not an important sport to the rest of the world. 8) She's probably left becuase she had no talent, and rode her looks to the end of the line. maybe if you watched women's sports for the sports instead of the women you would realize that. 9) Mike Stock - Didn't we all say the same thing when Chris Jacke left town? 10) You last article - Corporate tie in or not, the fact was that the actucal was horrible one sided, consisted of snide comments towards one show, and presented a very unbiased opinion of what was supposed to be a comparison of two shows, not an article that should have been titled "I listen to Homer every day, and here's why he's better then the 90 minutes i listened to Peter Brown" Way to be a objective journalist. Why do you get paid for what you do? You belong writing a gossip column, not reporting on sports. Explain to me why you have a job, please.

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Posted by OMCreader on June 5, 2006 at 10:22 a.m. (report)

Sean Dineen said: Dave, The reason many called you out on your pathetic hatchet job article last week is because it was a corporate kiss-ass article. Having read it several times, it seems more then obvious that you have probably listened to Peter's show no more then once. If you had, you would have known who the producer of the show is, and that Peter's guests are more often then not first rate. The sad thing is noone at that sorry sack sports station that you are corporately connected with had the stones to blast that trash for what it was.

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Posted by OMCreader on June 4, 2006 at 2:32 p.m. (report)

phil said: The problem is that the Admirals, when the Pettit's owned them, were a paper house. they gave thousands of tickets away. now that there are no more freebies, we are seeing that the admirals really aren't much of a draw. teams draw what they are worth. and the admirals aren't worth a heck of a lot.

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Posted by OMCreader on June 3, 2006 at 9:36 p.m. (report)

Ljer said: Take this ... the Admirals don't get coverage on JSonline really. They do on this site. But most big media don't care cause all they care about is the Packers. The sports here are getting really good actually.

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