Berry Tramel NewsOK.com Blogging Community

Sometimes living right pays off. Sometimes it takes time.

I arrived in San Antonio at 9:30 a.m. Monday, got downtown to our hotel at 10:30 a.m. and got online fully about 1 p.m. Tuesday. I spent 27-plus hours wrestling with the staff at the St. Anthony Wyndham Hotel to get the Internet activated.

But I was rewarded, in a big-time way. I’m now staying in the John Wayne Suite.

The St. Anthony is an historic hotel. Photos of famous guests dot the ground floor.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and wife Maria.  Audie Murphy. Princess Grace. John Wayne.

Frankly, the hotel has seen better days. It’s more quaint than hospitable these days. My phone didn’t work. My keys didn’t work. My Internet didn’t work.

I can get by without a phone. I can get by without keys if security will let me in. But the job has changed; I need my Internet.  I need it to blog, and I need it to finish the final installment of our Centennial series, the 100 best teams in state history, which I’ll figure out tonight somewhere around 3 a.m.

I was staying in a suite anyway at the St. Anthony. When we checked in Monday, they were running out of regular rooms, so they gave me a suite, since I had booked the rooms for The Oklahoman. It was spacious and charming, I suppose, except for that danged Internet.

I couldn’t get on, and couldn’t get on, and couldn’t get on. I talked to the Internet provider six times and spent so much time at the front desk, other Big 12 writers asked if they were passing out drinks. Finally, they said they would move me to a room where the Internet worked.

I got the John Wayne Suite. It’s where Wayne stayed while filming “The Alamo” in 1960 and where he returned in 1978 during a convention.

It’s SIX rooms and more spacious than the new apartments in downtown Oklahoma City that are all the rage and going for $1,000 a month.

I’ve got a living area, a dining area; an entry way that’s big enough to serve as a dance floor, complete with bar (unstocked); a bedroom with two closets; a spacious bathroom; and a little room between the bathroom and the bedroom. It’s the dangdest thing you’ve ever seen.

I could have a cocktail party up here. I could have the Big 12 reception up here. You could put 50 people in this suite and nobody would be crowded.

I’m no operator. I’m no conniver. These kinds of things usually don’t happen to me. The next time I sit in first class on an airline will be the first. When a restaurant screws up and wants to comp my meal, I usually decline.

 But I’ve got to tell you. The John Wayne Suite is pretty cool.

Oklahoma football has been ordered to vacate its eight wins in 2005, and what’s next? Rafael Palmeiro’s home runs be stricken from the Baseball Encyclopedia? Richard Millhouse Nixon’s portrait be removed from the White House gallery? The Oklahoma
Land Run be cast out of history books?

Rewriting history to make it fit what we wish it had been is goofy ground, and frankly not all that common in a free society. This smacks of totalitarian Russia, where Saint Petersburg becomes Leningrad becomes Saint Petersburg, as the Russians keep coming to grips with their past.

History can’t be squashed, not in this century for sure, and the NCAA Infractions committee clearly doesn’t understand its industry.

Entertainment.

You can’t turn back the clock. You can’t tell people who paid good money for tickets and who spent precious hours spilling their passion that an event didn’t exist.

This is nonsense.  This was not a sanction against
Oklahoma. This was a penalty against Bob Stoops, if he cares about his personal won-loss record, and those of us who chronicle college football history. Not just media, but fans alike.

 We will not pay attention to the NCAA’s decree. The Sooners were not 0-4 in 2005. They were 8-4, and they really did play in the Holiday Bowl, and Rhett Bomar really was the game MVP, and Clint Ingram really did make the game-saving interception. You can’t change history, and the NCAA shouldn’t try.

It doesn’t seem like Don Meredith spent 15 years in the network broadcast booth. Looking back on the halcyon days of Monday Night Football, it seems like Meredith analyzed NFL games for but a few seasons.

But his work indeed was lasting. And not forgotten by the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which has named Meredith the 2007 recipient of the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award.

Young NFL fans really have no concept of what Meredith and Monday Night Football were like back in the days, 1970-73 and 1977-84, the three-year break courtesy of NBC, which stole away Meredith.

There’s really no counterpart in today’s television. Everyone today is so serious. Meredith was like Charles Barkley, only less biting and more charming.

While Howard Cosell gloriously infuriated us with words we never had heard and ideas that haven’t graced a football field before or since, Meredith jabbed back with feather gloves.  He carved up Cosell not with a butcher knife, but with a scalpel.

Wearing those gaudy yellow blazers, Cosell was that incredible bluster of insufferable intellectualism and Meredith was the downhome counterpart who would talk about prairie dogs when Cosell brought up world peace.

All around the context of a football game that everyone in America seemed to be watching.

John Madden, Troy Aikman, Phil Simms, all have their strengths as NFL pitch men. None can match Dandy Don and his sidekick, the New York lawyer Cosell.

 The honor from the Hall of Fame is well-deserved. Alas, it also reminds us of what we’ve lost. 

Early left early.

Barely into July, OU basketball coach Jeff Capel dismissed his recruit from the squad, for transgressions unknown but apparently related to a trespassing charge over the weekend, and now Capel is down to 10 scholarship players.

Ten is enough. But 10 is precarious.

Capel, who in April removed from the team Bobby Maze, now is one sprained ankle or one more dismissal from his team dipping into walkons for full-scale scrimmaging. Walkons or Capel himself.

As OSU found out last season, teams that can’t go all-out in practice are hard-pressed to improve as the season progresses. The Sooners, 16-15 in Capel’s first year, face a pivotal season, not because Capel’s job status is in question, but to jump-start his administration. Another mediocre season would drop OU basketball further into the shadows.

Early was not likely to be a difference-maker. Not in games.  But practice could be another story.

There’s no quarrel with Capel’s decision to bounce Early. Capel seems to be no-nonsense, and no-nonsense early is better than no-nonsense late. Hopefully, it won’t cost Capel’s second Sooner squad. But it could.

            Gerald McCoy and DeMarcus Granger haven’t been around forever. It only seems like it.            OU’s big defensive tackles have been cursed by high expectations. Been cursed by Tommie Harris.            Harris was a big-time recruit who hit campus and immediately was ready to destroy opposing offenses. Granger arrived in 2005, McCoy in 2006, with much the same credentials as Harris.            But both redshirted as freshmen, and while Granger had his moments last year, he was no Tommie Harris.            No one else is either. Rick Bryan wasn’t. Tony Casillas wasn’t. Both played a decade in the NFL. Heck, Lee Roy Selmon, the greatest Sooner of them all, any position, was a backup defensive tackle as a freshman.            Virtually all defensive linemen take time to develop. You can’t judge a d-lineman after one or two years. McCoy and Granger still have plenty of time to live up to their promise. THEIR promise. Not Tommie Harris’s.

Federal authorities seem to be zoning in on Michael Vick’s involvement in a dogfighting ring, and I’m sure there’s ample legal grounds for staying after the Falcons quarterback.But should the feds be on this case?Dogfighting is an abominable practice that rightfully is outlawed. But should our federal agents be policing dogfighting? Isn’t this a state issue?Some state attorneys question why the feds are so determined to bring down Vick. Is it his celebrity? His attitude? His race?Seems like federal authorities could be tackling more important issues. Corporate fraud. Civil rights violations. Organized crime. Good old-fashioned lawbreaking like kidnapping, bank robbery and murder.I’m no fan of dogfighting and I’m no fan of Vick. But if he claims harassment, I’m not so sure he’s off base.Vick has imperiled his status with the Falcons and maybe his entire NFL career. By all accounts, he’s a knucklehead. But that doesn’t mean the federal authorities should be on his trail.

Today is Lucky 7 day. July 7, 2007. 7-7-07. Good a day as any to debate who is the greatest No. 7 ever. Mickey Mantle or John Elway?

These are the kinds of debates I love. It gets old comparing Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan. A-Rod and Derek Jeter.

I prefer cross-sports debates. Tiger Woods or Babe Ruth? Bjorn Borg or LeBron James? Wayne Gretzky or Jordan?

And the Elway-Mantle debate is a classic. They are the greatest No. 7’s in history.

Mantle was the greatest baseball player of the 1950s. A powerful, swift icon. The regal star of the Pinstripe Power, with a name that rolled off the tongue and a smile that disarmed all comers.

Elway was the greatest quarterback in football history. He could throw a football 90 yards and scramble away from defenders for 90 minutes. His comebacks are legendary.

So who is greater? I’m going with Elway. Mantle was one of the 10-15 greatest baseball players ever, and if he had stayed healthier late in his career and played as long as Mays and Aaron, he would be one of the 3-5 best ever. But Mantle didn’t. His health declined, his career numbers leveled off short of epic status.

Elway kept going strong. He won Super Bowls his final two seasons, when he still was a fine quarterback but not the wunderkin he was in the 1980s.

John Elway is the greatest No. 7 ever.

Barry Bonds? Out of the Home Run Derby.

Junior Griffey? Out of the Home Run Derby.

Alex Rodriguez? Almost certainly out of the Home Run Derby.

Is it time we put the Derby out to pasture? Sports have a long history of auxiliary events that seem like a good idea at the onset, then lose momentum. The old HORSE and one-on-one competitions at NBA halftimes. The Superstars competition on ABC in the 1970s.

High times for a short while, then poof. The fun seemed to disappear.

So it is with the Home Run Derby. The slugfest the night before the All-Star Game was charming and entertaining for a few years. The big-timers would win.

Andre Dawson. Cal Ripken. Mark McGwire. Juan Gonzalez. Griffey. Frank Thomas. Bonds. Sammy Sosa.

Occasionally, we would see awesome moon shots. Occasionally, we would have a memorable moment.

But now, the Derby often as not is won by a Miguel Tejada or a Bobby Abreu. Now, the game’s greatest sluggers skip it.

The Home Run Derby should join with the NBA All-Star Game’s dunk contest and silently slide away.

Cynthia Rodriguez went to Yankee Stadium on Sunday to cheer on her husband and pull another brick from the wall of civilization. The New York Post reported that the wife of Yankee star Alex Rodriguez attended the New York-Oakland game, sitting in the players’ family section, wearing a white tank top with language so foul it would shame a sailor.

Classy. Really classy. A-Rod is a lightning rod, for his salary and his status, and sometimes I feel sorry for him, living in such a glass house. But there’s no excuse for a wife embarrassing her husband, his employer, New York City baseball fans and decent people everywhere.

Yankee policy prohibits fans from using foul language or making obscene gestures, but security guards did not make Ms. Rodriguez leave her seat. Big mistake. Civility counts even in the Bronx Zoo.

Counts even at rank Yankee Stadium. Alex Rodriguez suffered another blow to his image Sunday, courtesy of his coarse wife.

Baseball fans have voted Barry Bonds into the National League starting lineup for the All-Star Game, and I say, here-here.

I’m no Bonds fan, not anymore, not after what he’s done and how he’s behaved. But he belongs in the All-Star Game. Frankly, he belongs in the All-Star Game more than he belongs in a regular-season game.

The All-Star Game is exhibition. Mere window dressing. A beauty pageant. A chance for fans to see a spectacle, all the big names of the sport, dressed in their own squad uniforms, sharing a field.

Bonds will spice this All-Star Game, especially since it’s in his home city, San Francisco, the last place on Earth he’s not despised.

Even Bonds’ haters will be glad to see him. The All-Star Game has lost its zip in the last decade. Bonds will add much-needed spice to the midsummer classic. I’m glad he’s there.