AL makes it count again ... and Blackhawks beam up Scotty's boy

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The Bald Truth

An Oriole drives in the winning run against a Padre in an exhibition game to decide home-field advantage in the World Series.

Nice work, Bud!

Well, He Said He'd Bring Change

Was that a changeup lefty Barack Obama threw to Albert Pujols for the ceremonial first pitch before the All-Star Game? 

Or does this president simply have a noodle arm compared to Dubya's?

The Balder Truth

Wow, Stan Musial sure has an impressive list of accomplishments! Still, it's natural to wonder if his numbers would have been the same without all those steroids.

It's A Jolly Halladay

Neither the Cubs (with their slow sale and their possible bankruptcy) nor the White Sox (with their lower-than-projected attendance) are likely to feel rich enough to add Roy Halladay's big salary ... so here's an idea:

They BOTH can trade for the Blue Jays great, with Halladay getting to stay in Chicago from here on out because he'd only pitch in home games.

Hey, these rough economic times call for creative solutions.

It only will get unfair in the World Series. With the American League winning for the 855th straight year - This Time It Counts (Again)!! - the White Sox would get Halladay when they face the Cubs in Game 7.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

For better or worse, the Blackhawks officially are Scotty Bowman's team.

Last fall, in his first act as "senior adviser," he seniorly advised them to fire Denis Savard four games into the season. Now, he has gotten them to can Dale Tallon - who brought in all their great young talent - so his son Stan Bowman could be the new GM.

Asked what Stan Bowman brings to the job that Tallon didn't, owner Rocky Wirtz told the media: "He's 26, Dale is 58. We always want younger people."

Zounds! Methinks Tallon would have one hell of an age-discrimination suit had he not accepted a pile of hush money from Wirtz to stay on as an "adviser." (An extremely junior adviser.)

Given his love of youngsters in positions of power, Wirtz sure is giving a lot of latitude to Scotty Bowman, a septuagenarian whose Hall of Fame coaching career began back when NHL players really wore sweaters.

There is no question Scotty knows a lot about winning. With nine Stanley Cups, he's the Red Auerbach of hockey. 

And there's no question the Blackhawks are desperate. It's been so long since they've won it all, their last championship actually predates the start of Bowman's coaching career by six years!

Still, this all seems so sleazy, so knife-in-the-back, so beneath the actions of any respectable organization.

All I'll say is Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville had better watch his back. With Phil Jackson having just won his 10th NBA title to break a tie for the most in North American pro sports history, Scotty might be salivating for another turn behind the bench.

Fortunately for Scotty, he has an in with the new GM.

Phil wins again, Ozzie strategizes, Lou lets buddy take a fall

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The Bald Truth

He is smug, condescending and egotistical. Often full of crap, too. Phil Jackson also is a 10-time champion.

Yes, he's had great players. Hello! What winning coach hasn't? Red Auerbach had a few great players, too. So did Scotty Bowman, Pat Riley, Casey Stengel, Chuck Noll, Vince Lombardi, Don Shula, Miller Huggins, etc.

Think about all the superstars those great winners coached/managed ... and not a one
of them won 10 titles.

Jackson's secret? He empowered his players to believe in themselves and in each other. He put his players in position to succeed, getting the most out of what they could do and rarely asking them to do something they couldn't. Mostly, he was willing to get out of his very best players' way and let them lead.

Yes, Michael and Kobe were/are great players. No, Jackson never won a title without them. But you know what? They never won without him, either, and they had plenty of chances to do so.

Next Verse

No longer can Shaquille O'Neal say Kobe needed The Big Attention Hog to win championships. Fact is, Shaq never came close to winning without being carried by a great game-closer - first Kobe, then Dwyane Wade.

Anybody who thinks it was the other way around wasn't paying close enough attention.

The Balder Truth

The few who begrudgingly give Ozzie Guillen credit for being a good manager usually cite his motivational abilities. As a strategist, well, to his critics he's no Tony La Russa, no Mike Scioscia, no Bobby Cox.

Whatever.

All I know is that not many managers would have given A.J. Pierzynski the green light in the ninth inning of a tie game with two on, two out and a 3-0 count against Trevor Hoffman, a future Hall of Famer who hadn't allowed a run all season.

Ozzie did. A.J. singled. And the White Sox beat the Brewers, with Guillen outmanaging his Milwaukee counterpart for the second straight day using NL rules.

The Quote

"One thing about Wrigley Field, I puke every time I go there." - Ozzie Guillen

Yep, this is gonna be a fun week of Chicago baseball, kids.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

In canning Lou Piniella's hand-picked hitting coach, Gerald Perry, it is clear that Jim Hendry used his authority as Cubs GM to pull rank on Sweet Lou.

That means something.

For one thing, it means Piniella has less control than most of us thought he did.

For another, it means a desperate Hendry has shifted into cover-my-ass mode: I brought in these hitters. Therefore, they can hit. If they aren't hitting, it must be somebody else's fault.

There have been hundreds of Cubbie scapegoats over the years, so Perry has to get in line. But facts are facts: Right up until the day before the move, Lou was singing Perry's praises.

That the skipper would just sit there and let his friend fall on the team's sword tells us more about Lou than we knew 24 hours earlier.

I like Lou, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't more than a little disappointed in him.

Milt has a thank-you note to write

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The Bald Truth

Luis Castillo is the best thing to happen to Milton Bradley all season long.

As I wrote for the AP on Friday, Bradley played right field like a doofus. He was all set to be the talk of baseball until ...

... Castillo dropped what should have been A-Roid's game-ending pop-up, allowing the tying and go-ahead runs to score in the Yankees' win over the Mets.

As we all know, if it happened in New York, it's bigger than any event in any city, in any state, in any country, in any continent, in any solar system.

So Castillo was Friday's Official Baseball Goat.

Bradley had to settle for Knucklehead of the Day.

The Quote

"I give 250 percent every day. If you can't see that, there's something wrong." - Milton Bradley

This from a guy who can't count to 3.

The Balder Truth

No joke, just a simple statement: Joe Mauer is the best player in baseball right now.

Lou-ism of the Day

"We just shook it up a little bit to see if it helps out. We're gonna try a few different things and see what happens. We stayed pretty constant for 60 games or so. I think it's time to change things around a little bit. Look, there's no magic formula."

Yep, big changes for the Cubbies. Mike Fontenot batted second for the first time this season. Kosuke Fukudome batted sixth for the first time. Ryan Theriot was moved from second to seventh. Bradley, banished from the No. 3 spot a month ago, was back there.

So how did it work? The Cubs managed all of four hits in six innings against appropriately named Twins starter Kevin Slowey - who kept challenging them (and beating them) with 88 mph fastballs. 

Fontenot, Fukudome and Theriot combined to go 0-for-10 with six whiffs. Fukudome, back to the spin-a-rama strikeout style that made him so special last season, looked especially lost.

Bradley, yeah, he did have a couple of hits but, as mentioned earlier, he didn't exactly cover himself with glory on this day.

If anybody has the magic formula, methinks Lou would pay a pretty penny for it.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

Congrats to the Pittsburgh Penguins for winning a thrilling Game 7 of an exciting Stanley Cup Finals against the Detroit Red Wings.

The last time I enjoyed the sport this much was when I was a sharp-elbowed floor-hockey terror in Mr. Pirelli's gym class at Jonathan Law High School.

Prior knowledge

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The Bald Truth

Congrats, Nats. You used the No. 1 pick to draft can't-miss, sure-thing, lead-pipe-cinch superstar pitcher Stephen Strasburg.

Now here's hoping Strasburg has a better go of it than the last can't-miss, sure-thing, lead-pipe-cinch superstar pitcher to come out of college. Guy named Mark Prior.

Those stupid Twins, drafting that no-talent hack of a catcher Joe Mauer back in 2001 instead of the cinch superstar Prior.

Ah, the baseball draft. The least exact science this side of blind dates.

Announcing Follies

1. It didn't take Steve Stone long to follow Homer Hawk's lead in constantly calling the White Sox "we." Then again, at least Stoney pitched for the Sox way back when. All Hawk did for the organization was screw it up royally during his 10 minutes as Sox GM.

2. In the closing moments of Stanley Cup Finals Game 6, did NBC's Mike Emrick really say the winner would be "the team that wants it more"? Yep, what a bunch of disinterested slugs those Red Wings were during their 2-1 loss to the Penguins.

3. I'm enjoying the work of ABC's Mike Breen, Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson during the NBA playoffs, but I gotta admit that I miss Marv Albert. Is Marv the best basketball announcer ever? Yesssss!

The Balder Truth

The White Sox are doing enough damage to their own chances. They don't need help from ump Jim Joyce, who on Tuesday badly blew a call at home plate that would have given the Sox a ninth-inning victory over the Tigers.

The Tigers went on to win the game in the 10th.

Obviously, they wanted it more.

The Quote

"We're all frail as humans." - Phil Jackson on Kobe Bryant, who missed five free throws and had the ball stolen from him by Dwight Howard during crunch time of the Lakers' Game 3 loss to the Magic.

Funny. I don't remember Phil ever using "frail" as an adjective to describe any other high-scoring guard he coached.

Frosh Follies

A few days after learning that Derrick Rose enjoyed letting others do his schoolwork at Memphis, we learned that Tim "Blago" Floyd was using payola schemes to get O.J. Mayo into USC.

I can't blame David Stern for refusing to let 18-year-olds into his league. But does that mean our institutions of higher learning have to prostitute themselves to let these kids play ball?

There are other options for the likes of Rose and Mayo, including Europe. Let them eat pasta, baby.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

Dozens of kids who used to shoot hoops at the backyard court of our North Side home went on to play high school ball. A few even have gone on to play in college. But here's a first:

Kerry Masterson, 23, who played alongside my daughter Katie on a dominant grade-school team and often brought her game to our court on summer evenings, has been charged with first-degree murder for allegedly shooting a West Side shopkeeper during a robbery attempt last month.

No jokes. No clever rejoinders. Just another reminder that reality occasionally intrudes angrily on our everyday lives.