Bill Bradley, the basketball great, "Dollar Bill'' with the Knicks and then U.S. Senator, said maybe more than once the great change in sports is change. Teams and players used to be as immobile as an oak. It was reassuring. We knew who was where.
Now it's near chaos. The LPGA is dumping its commissioner. The NBA has shrunk its salary cap. Ron Artest, for about the hundredth time -- or does it just seem that way -- is joining another club in the NBA, the Lakers.
The San Francisco 49ers are intent on becoming the Santa Clara 49ers, although no way they use that name. When you live or play in California, instability is a way of life.
The Sacramento Kings want to move. The San Diego Chargers want to move. The Oakland Raiders want to move. The Oakland A's want to move. Probably tied in with the San Andreas Fault.
But we crazies on the West Coast don't have a patent on this stuff. The Nets are trying to get out of Jersey and go to Brooklyn. The Dodgers, of course, got out of Brooklyn and went to L.A., but that was when Joe Torre still was a teenager. In Brooklyn.
Even Europe is in for a massive sporting overhaul. The great soccer teams are ready to give the back of the hand to the wusses. The thinking is why should Real Madrid and the guys who spent millions on players such as Cristiano Renaldo be unable to recoup their investment, being forced to play lesser clubs in their own country?
According to Matthew Syed of the
Times of London, geography isn't going to mean much any more. What will count, as in the United States, is wealth. So Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, and their global superstars, will be facing Manchester United or Bayern Munich or AC Milan.
As Syed asks, "Would Chelsea make more cash playing regularly against Wigan Athletic and Hull City, as at present, or Barcelona and Inter Milan in a Super League?''
The LPGA isn't making enough cash with Carolyn Bivens as commissioner. The tough economic times and her rigid policies -- not including the intolerance of trying to force the ladies to speak English or take a hike --have stripped the organization of numerous tournaments. There's a rebellion under way.
People who ought to be worrying about signing their scorecards have been signing a petition.
It's all about freedom, we're told. Freedom for golfers to speak their mind. Freedom for team players to leave when they choose. Freedom for franchises to look for some over-eager, misguided community to build them a new stadium or ballpark or arena.
The old reserve clause was a form of slavery. This is a form of confusion. Is Jason Kidd coming, going or staying? Is he on the Mavericks, the Knicks, the Nets or the Cal alumni?
Carolyn Bivens, you can be certain, is going. According to
Golfweek magazine, "it's the latest blow to a tour which has lost seven tournaments since 2007,'' including three in Hawaii. That's real trouble, when people won't come to Hawaii to play golf.
The benchmark of this distress was that city on Lake Erie. Twenty years ago, the Indians and Browns played in Cleveland Municipal Stadium. To prove we know nothing, if someone asked which team might move the unanimous response would have been the Indians, who had pathetic crowds. The Browns sold out every game.
However, the Browns shifted to Baltimore, while the Indians stayed, were provided a new park and had years of sellouts. Now the Browns are back. Sort of sporting musical chairs. For hundreds of millions of dollars.
Candlestick Park opened in 1960 for the San Francisco Giants, then was expanded in 1970 and '71 to bring in the 49ers, who were playing in a dump, if a historic dump, called Kezar Stadium. Now Candlestick is a dump, or to be exact, "a pigsty,'' as designated by former team president Eddie DeBartolo.
The Niners, who won five Super Bowls, contend they deserve better. And they do. But 40 miles away in Santa Clara?
San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom doesn't want to be remembered as the politico who couldn't hang on to the city's most famous, most successful and original hometown team, the one that didn't move from New York, as the Giants, or Philadelphia, as the Warriors.
But in this era when nothing is tied down, athletes, teams or golf commissioners, he doesn't want the place once known as the "city that knows how,'' to be put in the vise, squeezed during these times of foreclosures and declining tax collections.
Newsom, on a Comcast program called "Chronicle Live," said he wanted to "avoid being used as leverage'' in the Niners' negotiations with Santa Clara for that maybe-it-will-maybe-it-won't stadium.
That's all sports has become, Mr. Mayor, leverage. Real Madrid has it. Ron Artest has it. Carolyn Bivens doesn't. The next move is not very far off.
As a reporter since 1960, Art Spander is a living treasure of sports history. A recipient of the Dick McCann Memorial Award -- given for his long and distinguished career covering professional football -- he has earned himself a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he has recently been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the PGA of America for 2009. - - - - - -
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