All (Dead) Star Team

Kobe Bryant's death has had the Schloss-Blog thinking about the basketball players you never heard of or don't remember who never had the chance to make it, never got the recognition they deserved.

Will get to Donald Trump, the administration's handling of the coronavirus (Mike Pence in charge, really?) and the Houston Astros a little later, but first...

...my favorite players who never got their due.

Like Len Bias. He was the No. 1 pick of the Boston Celtics and the No. 2 pick overall in the 1986 NBA Draft. Two days later, he died from cardiac arrhythmia induced by a cocaine overdose. The Maryland star was incredibly gifted and would've had a stellar career in the NBA, probably would've been one of the original Dream-Teamers on Team USA in the Olympics. Never got the chance.

Or like Reggie Williams. Six years after Bias passed, Williams, who was turning into a star player after a middling rookie year, collapsed on the court in a mid-summer, offseason practice session. He died from cardiac arrest, after being diagnosed, at first, with a heart condition he was told would end his career. But he sought to play, got a second, less life-threatening opinion, and kept playing. And so, the Boston Celtics lost two likely all-star players within six years who probably would've helped them maintain something close to the elite status their franchise has always enjoyed and their fans were robbed of seeing it happen.

Or like Wayne Estes. The Utah State star and Montana prep athletic legend was slated to be a first-round pick in the 1965 NBA Draft, reportedly by the Los Angeles Lakers, where he likely would've become their next Elgin Baylor. a Hall-of-Famer. But after the game in which Estes broke the 2,000-point barrier for his college career, he stopped at an accident scene, looking to help, and brushed against a fallen power line and was subsequently electrocuted. The Wayne Estes center at the school stands as the practice facility for both the men's and women's teams there. An annual prep basketball tournament in his native Montana is approaching its 40th anniversary.

Or like Drazen Petrovic. The Croatian star, regularly a thorn in Micheal Jordan's side, was an NBA All-Star and 20-point-per-game scorer for the New Jersey Nets who was contemplating returning to pro ball in Europe when he died in a car crash in Germany in June of 1993, a month before Reggie Williams collapsed and died. Not a good year for pro basketball.

Or like Ben Wilson. The 6-foot-7 star forward at Chicago powerhouse Simeon (see, Rose, Derrick) was headed to Notre Dame or DePaul or maybe Illinois after helping Simeon win a state title. But he was shot down in 1984, hit by two random bullets before he ever donned a college uniform, before he ever set foot on a college campus. This is the saddest career-shortening of them all in a type of death all too familiar to Chicagoans, even to this day. His number is worn annually now by the player Simeon considers its best player.

Or, lastly for me, Hank Gathers. At age 23, he had helped turn the Loyola Marymount Lions into a national-title threat. He had been cautioned about an irregular heartbeat but reportedly had cut down on the medication for it because he felt it curtailed his playing ability. He would subsequently pass away, on the court, in 1990, in a game against Portland. He died from what was diagnosed as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. His high school and college teammate, Bo Kimble, honored him by shooting his first free throw in subsequent games left-handed, eyes shut.

Not taking anything away from Kobe, one of the greatest ever, but none of these players and so many others who passed before achieving the stardom forecast for them got a memorial service, nationally televised from the Staples Center. But it's not like they didn't deserve it.

As to coronavirus, Mike Pence is in charge of coordinating against its spread in the United States. Prepare, maybe, to die.

As to the Houston Astros, as long as Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred considers the World Series trophy a "piece of metal," hey, Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, prepare to get beaned.

Shout-out this weekend on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show to Laura Lane, George Castle, Nicole Ebat (again), Ruth Reader (hello, Brooklyn), Susan Rapper Millstone, the woman whose heart is made of gold, and Fremd basketball coaches Bob Widlowski and Jason Hogrefe, the former, the dean of the Mid-Suburban League, the latter his assistant astute enough to be a head coach anywhere.

Good night Mrs. Calabash.

And The Winner Is...

The Schloss-Blog is watching the election debates and is thinking, which candidate will punish the Houston Astros players, the ones who actually did the cheating, instead of just the brain trust that endorsed it?

These are the two biggest problems in society today: can one of the Democratic candidates beat Trump and will someone finally step in and punish the Astros before the players do it themselves by beaning them all season long?

Oh, and where will Tom Brady sign?

Can Bernie Sanders, who just might punish the Astros, beat Trump, but, right now, which Democratic candidate won't? The polls say they will, but they're just polls, snapshots in time. Do you support Medicare for all? Do you want your private insurance eliminated and do you trust in the government to take care of you?

Sorry, Bernie, you're a fellow Brooklyn boy, but I don't. Most of your own Democratic colleagues say a private option is a must, at the very least. But you want to finance this with a wealth tax. Define wealth, please, Bernie. Billionaires? Millionaires? Mark Zuckerberg rich or Bill Gates and Paul Allen rich?

A wealth tax to finance this would actually punish some of the Houston Astros cheaters, what with all the overpaid money that ballplayers get these days. It would tax all those overplayed players from every team. Although, I do believe the players should get whatever they can. Still, the owners gripe about how much money salaries are costing them and then shell out record amounts for the most-coveted free agents.

But the Astros have gotten off easier than the president. That cheating, lying son of a bitch was acquitted by a vote of his cheating, lying son-of-a-bitch supporters.

Last week, I caught a little flak for saying the players should be punished, their titles stripped, in both Houston (2017) and Boston (2018). [Oh, for those of you wondering, I didn't spell it wrong: flak is criticism; a flack is a publicist person who delivers it.]

Look, cheating ballplayers have always been punished, for gambling (see Rose, Pete), and steroid use (see, for example, Rodriguez, Alex).

But for cheating that won two titles in two different cities, players have not been punished. This is an outright disgrace, exemplified by the commissioner himself calling the World Series championship trophy a piece of metal.

So nice to see cheating endorsed by Major League Baseball. Even Tom Brady, the Golden Boy of pro football, got suspended over an ounce of air.

But the Astros won't be suspended over a hunk of metal. You know, the one they were banging on to convey illicitly stolen signals over what pitch was coming to their hitters. The Red Sox of 2018 should be too.

Boston likes to think of itself as the city of champions, what with all the Super Bowls and World Series the Patriots and Red Sox have won of late.

Who cares how or how often they had to cheat to do it? City of Cheaters is more like it nowadays.

Anyway, my Radio Free Phoenix show will give shout-outs to former Columbia College students and professional colleagues alike this weekend. But not to the Red Sox nor Astros. They should just be taken out. On stretchers.

Good night Mrs. Calabash.

Be Best! Ha!

While the First Lady runs around preaching "Be best" about youth bullying, her husband, whatshizname, has been noticed by the Schloss-Blog being imitated by grade-schoolers, middle-schoolers and even high-schoolers intimidating people of color and minorities in general. A handful have even tried to intimidate Trumpies.

They even use or are inspired by his words, investigations by the schools and media have shown.

Fun, huh? Be the first one on your block to have your kid sent home in a box built by white-nationalist, teenage bullies.

If you voted for Trump or dare vote for him again, or if you vote for a congressman or senator up for re-election who backs Trump, you are supporting racism. I'm not saying you are racist, but you are supporting it. And now there's proof. The Post found 300 cases reported across the country. Can you imagine how many weren't reported?

Meanwhile, anyone see the golfing display the Manning brothers put on in the AT&T (nee Bing Crosby) Desert Classic last weekend? Peyton is a '1' handicap, Eli a '10.' They both nailed extremely long putts on the same hole in impressive manner. Maybe when they get their respective inductions  into the Hall of Fame, there should be a golf outing those weekends.

And speaking of cheating, who else thinks the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox should not have their 2017 and 2018 respective World Series crowns vacated? I'll bet the Dodgers do. They lost to both of those cheating teams in those Series.

I'm not saying the Dodgers should be declared champions, not in the least. Besides, they wouldn't want to win that way. But to have been cheated against like that, there is no question those titles should be vacated. These were team-wide efforts, known to management and coaches, yet MLB slapped them with pocket-change fines considering how much money these organizations make and have on hand. And the players on those teams, no matter how many times they get traded or waived, will always be known as the cheaters they are.

This weekend, with the NBA All-Star Game in Chicago, Chicago has no all-stars on either roster. Sad for a once-great basketball town, with a legacy molded by Micheal Jordan.

You will see and hear memorial tributes to Kobe Bryant, and deservedly so, but I hope the NBA doesn't short-change David Stern, its late, great commissioner, a lawyer with a vision who put the right people in place to make the NBA the elite league that it is. Without him, there is no Kobe Bryant tribute. I had the pleasure of helping organize a Sports Marketing Conference a long time ago at which he agreed to be the keynote speaker. He could not have been more gracious, nor more informative and entertaining in his delivery. He is missed.

A special shout-out to Columbia College grad Nicole Ebat, here in this space and on my Radio Free Phoenix show Sunday night. Nicole, you are one of a kind.

And welcome back to Phoenix, Allison Rodriguez. You are back (ABC 15-CW61) where you belong.

To Vote or Not to Vote, That is Not the Question

The Schloss-Blog is carefully monitoring the fall of the traditional political system in the United States, and it's not pretty.

And it's everybody's fault, or should I say problem?

The American voter, in this Millenium, has expressed a preference for the non-traditional candidate. Who was Barack Obama before his dynamic keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention? He was an Illinois State Senator and constitutional scholar at the time. He knocked it out of the park. And when Republican Jack Ryan dropped out of the Illinois Senate race when his seedy divorce file from sexy actress Jeri Ryan was opened via media lawsuit, it left Illinois Republican voters with unheard-of Alan Keyes, and, well, that was that. Ryan, a wealthy banker, might have beaten Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton almost certainly would have been John McCain's 2008 opponent.

I didn't always support what Obama did, but he was certainly an American citizen. Thank goodness Donald Trump proved that, right? Obama, at least, had a conscience. Trump no longer has a charity from which to embezzle funds for personal use. Now he takes them from his campaign funds, another illegality.

Despite that, his womanizing, his cheating, his tax secrecy, his ties to Russia, his immorality, his groping of women and his affairs with a porn star and a Playboy model, as alleged by those women, the American electoral college made him president. Again, outside the political mainstream.

Now, here we go again. The Joe Bidens and Elizabeth Warrens of the world are being beaten back, so far, by the nontraditional Pete Buttigiegs and Bernie Sanders of the world. We'll see if that holds. Of course, that was in Iowa, where farmers have taken a beating that it will take decades from which to recover thanks to nontraditional Trump's trade war. And now the coronovirus war will knock down the world economy again.

But here's what none of the candidates are talking about: the deficit. Trump has blown a record hole in what was already a disaster after promising to wipe it out in his 2016 campaign.

I can assert that if anyone reading this ran their household budgets the way politicians have run the U.S. budget this Millenium, they'd be homeless, living on the streets after their houses had been foreclosed upon. But in Washington, D.C., meh, who cares? It's not our money - we can spend all we want.

Our kids - our grandkids, our nieces and nephews, will pay the price for this when Social Security and Medicare get wiped out to pay for the debt. We haven't addressed national infrastructure, even after a deadly interstate highway collapse in Minnesota that killed 13, injured many more. I mean, are we waiting for the next one? Are we waiting for the train tubes between New York and New Jersey to collapse before we do something? Hundreds of thousands travel these every day.

Do you think Trump cares? Do you think Moscow Mitch cares?

Shout outs on my Radio Free Phoenix show this weekend to Ofelia and Donna, who I met while we were all waiting for our cars to be serviced. And to buddies Dwayne and Margaret Heidtbrink. And I thought I had health crap to deal with. Dwayne is a true soldier.

Arizona, I'm coming home.

Good night Mrs. Calabash. I am Spartacus.