Senior sidelined: 73-year-old declared ineligible

by FOXSports.com

The feel-good story of the 73-year-old man who put a spin move on Father Time by playing basketball for a Tennessee junior college has taken another unusual turn. Apparently, Spanish isn't Ken Mink's favorite subject.

Mink, who made national headlines by making the men's basketball team at Roane State College in Harriman, Tennessee, has been ruled academically ineligible by the National Junior College Athletic Association, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel. His team will be required to forfeit one game, the paper reported.

The NCJAA reportedly ruled that Mink had not maintained the minimum required number of credits an athlete must pass in a semester in order to remain eligible to participate in sports.

"I told coach (Randy Nesbit) early on that I was having trouble in Spanish," Mink told the News Sentinel.

Fearing he might fail the Spanish class, Mink said he enrolled in a Sociology class on another campus, hoping that a passing grade there would give him the credits he needed to retain his eligibility. But that class was apparently completed too late to apply to the semester in question.

Ken Mink's dream of playing college hoops took a rough turn this week. (Saul Young/Knoxville News Sentinel / Special to FOXSports.com)

"This is not an academic issue, it's an administrative issue," Mink wrote in an email to the News Sentinel on Friday. "... the NJCAA is ruling me ineligible because the NJCAA contends Roane State did not follow administrative procedures in restoring my eligibility after the NJCAA had questioned whether or not one of my courses was completed within the fall semester.

"Coach Nesbit supplied the NJCAA all the documentation proving my academic eligibility. Coach Nesbit knew I had met the requirements and restored me for play, but the NJCAA has contended the coach (or school) had not checked with the NJCAA a second time before restoring me to play."

Nesbit and Mink are appealing the ruling, but Mink said the appeal process may not be complete by the time Roane State concludes its season. Mink played in a Feb. 7 game against Hiwassee, scoring two points. That's the game the NJCAA ruled Roane State must forfeit.

Mink said his college career at Lees Junior College in Kentucky was cut short in 1956 when he was wrongly accused of spraying his coach's office with shaving cream and kicked off the team. He said he realized he could still hoop it up when he was shooting baskets in his driveway last fall.

He wrote to some coaches seeking the chance to play, and Nesbit gave him a shot. Mink spent the summer getting into shape and playing with a senior team from the area in three state tournaments.

Original here

The Man Who Warned Baseball About Steroids

By Joe Torre and Tom Verducci

Texas Rangers pitcher Rick Helling in 1998

The 1998 baseball season was a party of epic proportions, the equivalent of an all-nighter with the music cranked and every care in the world, or at least the anger and bitterness of the 1994-95 players' strike, easily forgotten. The 1998 Yankees, the winningest team of all time, were just part of the fun for Bud Selig, whose caretaking role as interim commissioner finally ended in midsummer. Bud Selig, who had owned the Milwaukee Brewers, was the ultimate insider.

It was an expansion year, with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks adding two more television markets, $260 million in expansion fees, and another 324 games to the inventory of moneymaking possibilities. Attendance jumped 12%, with almost seven and a half million more people paying their way into ballparks. The per-game major league average improved by 4% to 29,054, the best it had been since before the strike hit. The ratings for games televised by Fox improved by 11%t.

It was the year David Wells threw his perfect game, a rookie Cubs pitcher named Kerry Wood struck out a record-tying 20 batters and the age-defying Roger Clemens, while in the employ of the Toronto Blue Jays at that stage of his pitcher-for-hire phase, became the first pitcher to strike out 18 or more batters in a game for the third time.

Most of all, it was the year that belonged to hitters, who just happened to be growing cartoonishly large and hitting baseballs into parts of ballparks where no baseballs had gone before. It was a freak show and baseball loved it. It was the first season in history in which four players hit 50 home runs. Greg Vaughn and Ken Griffey Jr., half of the 50-plus bombers that year, were dwarfed in size, production and attention by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Both McGwire, with 70 home runs, and Sosa, with 66, blew away the record 61 home runs of Roger Maris that had stood as the standard for 37 years. America was captivated by the two huge men and the great home-run race. Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, praised McGwire and Sosa as the "home-run kings for working families in America." McGwire, with forearms the size of a grown man's neck, 17 inches around, was a gate attraction unto himself, a modern wonder of the world. Ballparks opened their gates early and called in concession staffs to clock in early just to accommodate the thousands of fans who wanted to see him take batting practice. On September 9, Fox scrapped the season premieres of its prime-time Tuesday night shows to televise the game in which McGwire would hit his record-breaking 62nd home run. More than 43 million people watched.

Baseball was awash in goodwill, national attention and money like it had not seen in many years. The Los Angeles Dodgers garishly flaunted such largesse after that season by giving Kevin Brown, a pitcher soon to turn 34 years old, an age when players traditionally had neared retirement as their bodies gave out, a seven-year contract worth $105 million, sweetening the deal with private jet service back and forth from his Georgia home.

That same winter, with the party raging at full throttle, one man rose up and basically announced the whole damn thing was a fraud. Rick Helling, a 27-year-old righthanded pitcher and the players' representative for the Texas Rangers, stood up at the winter meeting of the Executive Board of the Major League Baseball Players Association and made an announcement. He told his fellow union leaders that steroid use by ballplayers had grown rampant and was corrupting the game.

"There is this problem with steroids," Helling told them. "It's happening. It's real. And it's so prevalent that guys who aren't doing it are feeling pressure to do it because they're falling behind. It's not a level playing field. We've got to figure out a way to address it.

"It's a bigger deal than people think. It's noticeable enough that it's creating an uneven playing field. What really bothers me is that it's gotten so out of hand that guys are feeling pressure to do it. It's one thing to be a cheater, to be somebody who doesn't care whether it's right or wrong. But it's another thing when other guys feel like they have to do it just to keep up. And that's what's happening. And I don't feel like this is the right way to go."

What Helling had just done was the equivalent of turning up all the lights, clicking off the music and announcing the party was over. "He was the first guy," David Cone said, "who had the guts to stand up at a union meeting and say that in front of everybody and put pressure on it."

There was only one way for baseball to react to this kind of whistleblowing: Crank the music back up and keep the party rolling.

The union was having too much fun and making too much money to pay much attention to Helling's warning. It was far easier and financially prudent to ignore the issue, to assume that Helling was an alarmist prone to exaggerating, and to make sure everyone involved knew as little as possible about players injecting hard-core steroids into their asses. Don't ask, don't tell and don't care was the unwritten code of the day.

"What really bothered me was there were plenty of good guys, good people, who were feeling the pressure to cheat because it had become so prevalent," Helling said. "I firmly believed at the time that it was an unlevel playing field. I was trying to find a way to do something about it. Make it as fair of a game as possible. Play it the right way.

"When you see guys coming into spring training camp 30 pounds heavier than they ended the previous season, or they had gained four or fives miles an hour on their fastball, I mean, those things are not normal. My whole career was played in the peak of the steroids era. I saw guys throwing 87 miles an hour one year and 95 the next. Unfortunately, a lot of people, the press, the owners, the players, they turned the other cheek. I was like, 'Are you serious? Can't you see what's going on? Are you seriously going to let these guys get away with it?'

"Unfortunately, it turned out just the way I thought it would. It blew up in our face."

The union's executive board paid little attention to Helling. The owners were of a similar mindset. In fact, within a matter of days of Helling sounding an alarm that went unheeded, baseball provided official proof that steroids were not considered an urgent problem. At those same 1998 winter baseball meetings in Nashville, baseball's two medical directors, Dr. Robert Millman, who was appointed by the owners, and Dr. Joel Solomon, the designee of the players, delivered a presentation to baseball executives and physicians about the benefits of using testosterone. Angels general manager Bill Stoneman was so surprised at the tone of the presentation — basically, the message he heard was that no evidence exists that steroids were harmful — that he wondered why Major League Baseball even had allowed it.

Also in attendance was Dr. William Wilder, the physician for the Cleveland Indians. Wilder was so disturbed by the presentation that he wrote a memorandum to Indians general manager John Hart that whether testosterone increased muscle strength and endurance "begs the question of whether it should be used in athletics." Wilder also endorsed sending information to players about the "known and unknown data about performance-enhancing substances."

Wilder also spoke directly with Gene Orza of the players association. Orza advised him to hold off on any education about supplements until more information was available. Wilder was incredulous. Of Orza's request to postone any action, the doctor wrote, "That will be never! Orza and the Players Association want to do further study ... so nothing will be done."

Orza infamously revealed the players' position on steroids more blatantly in 2004, even long after the lid blew off the steroid epidemic in baseball. Speaking as part of a panel discussion in a public forum, Orza said, "Let's assume that [steroids] are a very bad thing to take. I have no doubt that they are not worse than cigarettes. But I would never say to the clubs as an individual who represents the interests of players, 'Gee, I guess by not allowing baseball to suspend and fine players for smoking cigarettes, I am not protecting their health.' "

Well, there you had it. No wonder nobody wanted to listen to Helling. The owners and players didn't even want to acknowledge that something harmful was going on. A presentation on the benefits of testosterone? Not worse than cigarettes? Helling, though, didn't give up. Each year he would make the same speech at the players association board meeting ... 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 ... and each year nothing would happen, except that more and more bodies grew unnaturally bigger and the game became twisted into a perversion, its nuances and subtleties blasted away by the naked obsession with power. Baseball was reduced to the lowest common denominator: to whack the ball farther or to heave it faster. Baseball's inability and unwillingness to act made silent partners of Selig and his traditional rivals at the union, leaders Don Fehr and Orza. Neither side had the smarts or the stomach to make steroids a front-burner public issue.

"Steve [Fehr] and Don came to me and said, 'Rick Helling is talking up steroids. Do you think there's a problem here?' " Cone said, referring to the Fehr brothers, including Steve, Cone's agent. "I said, 'Maybe we need to talk to guys, but I don't really see a problem.'"

The union, Helling said, did talk to some players about it, but the pitcher was wise enough not to expect anything to come of it.

"I understood their side of it, from a lawyer's side," Helling said. "Their thinking was, 'This isn't anything ownership has asked us for. It's never been an issue [in bargaining]. So why would we give them something without getting something in return. Why open this box?'

"I was active in the union. I know Don and Gene very well. Still to this day I talk to them. I understand. 'We don't want to go down that road if we don't have to.' Every year I brought it up. I'd say, 'This is more of a problem than you think.' Bud, Gene, Don ... they had an idea of what was going on. They didn't realize how widespread it was. As players, we kind of did know. Whether it was 50% or whatever, I can't say. It was more than people thought. It was more than Don, Gene and Bud thought. So the thinking was more, 'If ownership didn't ask for it, why volunteer it? It's probably not that big a deal.' "

Helling said he never saw a player inject steroids, but he heard all the clubhouse talk about what players were doing, as they would euphemistically put it, to "get an edge." Helling himself had a very clear understanding of what was cheating and what was not. He was born in Devils Lake, North Dakota, and became one of only 15 men born in that state to become a big leaguer. He attended Stanford University and made his major league debut with Texas only two years after the Rangers selected him with a second round pick in the 1992 draft. He pitched decently for both the Rangers and Marlins (he was once traded to Florida and back within 11 months) before committing himself to a strenuous conditioning and fitness program after the 1997 season. In 1998, his first full year as a starting pitcher, he won 20 games. He would pitch 12 seasons in the majors, compiling a record of 93-81 while earning more than $15 million.

"I can look back on my career, and whether it was good or bad, I know that everything I did, I did myself," Helling said. "I didn't do any form of cheating. It's unfortunate that there were a lot of people I knew who thought, 'I need to do something to keep up.' You hear the excuses of the guys who admitted it: 'I felt like I had to do it.' The way I looked at it, when I wasn't good enough to do it myself, it was time to move on. A lot of players didn't think like that. Guys always had an excuse of why they could do it.

"That's not what I was about. I can look back and know it was all me. That's the most important thing. I have my name and my reputation. Anybody who knows me knows there was no doubt that I played it the right way. And that's what I wanted to leave the game with. I couldn't care less if I made one million dollars or one hundred million dollars, whether I won one game or whether I won three hundred games. I was in it to be honest to myself and my teammates and to be a good father and husband. For me it was just the way I was brought up."

Rick Helling, by playing clean, was swimming against the tide.

Original here

Jordan's effort a marvel 15 years later

By Scott Merkin / MLB.com

"Every day at 7:30, Michael was there," said White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf. "Sometimes his hands were bleeding, that's how hard he worked." (Pat Sullivan/AP)

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- He's been known as 'His Airness' or 'Sir Michael' amongst many other nicknames bestowed upon quite possibly the greatest player to suit up in the NBA.

Michael Jordan's likeness also will forever live outside the United Center, the home of the Chicago Bulls, with his statue serving as a fitting honor to the incredible force who spearheaded six of the past seven major championships in Chicago. The mere mention of his name still draws an excited reaction from people all over the country who appreciate the game's greatest competitor.

But a time existed where baseball, and not basketball, stood as the driving athletic force for Jordan. It was a somewhat controversial period, with critics pointing out everything from Jordan's star power usurping a spot that belonged to a more deserving young player, to the assumption that he didn't succeed in his attempt to reach the Major Leagues.

Many of those closest to Jordan's diamond gems couldn't disagree more fervently. Jordan was not only a hard-working Minor Leaguer, who fit into any clubhouse, but also an individual who handled a potentially crazy situation with class and dignity.

On the 15th anniversary of Jordan's arrival to Spring Training with the White Sox in Florida, MLB.com takes a look back at this incredible effort from a man who hadn't played baseball in almost 15 years, exploring Jordan as a baseball player from a few different perspectives.

The Owner

For events that took place involving Jordan from 1993-94, White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf still can recall what happened with seemingly perfect chronological detail.

"Well, the story actually started on a Sunday in July," said Reinsdorf, speaking recently on the deck outside his office at Camelback Ranch. "Michael was at our game, up in a box with me and [then general manager Ron] Schueler. The two of them got me and said Michael has something he wants to talk about.

"He said he wants to go to Kannapolis and just play a couple of games. He had taken batting practice a couple of years before. What we didn't know was that at the moment we were talking, his father was dead. His father was dead -- we didn't know. Shortly thereafter, he found out his father was dead and that took care of the Kannapolis thing."

The next time Reinsdorf saw Jordan was in October, two months after James Jordan was murdered. Reinsdorf attended a charity dinner for Jordan's foundation, and invited Jordan to throw out the first pitch for the first game of the playoffs if the White Sox reached the postseason.

On that same night, David Falk, Jordan's representative, broke some news to Reinsdorf.

"David Falk got me there and said, 'I don't know how to tell you this but Michael wants to retire,'" Reinsdorf said. "We agreed to meet the following week, and we met at David Falk's house in Washington, D.C.

"Michael told me he needed to get away. The death of his father and all of the media attention and people saying it was because of his gambling, it had got to him. He was burned out. This meeting took place on the last Sunday of the baseball season, and the playoffs were going to begin that following Tuesday.

"I didn't try to talk him out of it, but I asked Michael, 'What do you want to do,' and he said, 'I want to play baseball. It was my father's dream that I become a baseball player,'" Reinsdorf said. "I said, 'OK, but, you have to talk to Phil Jackson. You can't just make this decision and walk away.'"

According to Reinsdorf, Jordan didn't want to speak with Jackson for fear that the Bulls coach would talk Jordan out of his decision. But the two men sat down on that following Monday, and the retirement announcement was to be made on that ensuing Wednesday so as not to upstage the White Sox playoffs.

"He didn't keep a secret," said a smiling Reinsdorf of Jordan, who attended the first playoff game and threw out the first pitch. "I think he told Ahmad Rashad and I don't know who else from there. It was all over the place during the game.

"People were trying to get into the box, and it did upstage the playoffs. It was terrible."

When the retirement announcement officially was made on Oct. 6, 1993, Jordan's plan to play baseball already was set in motion, although it wasn't announced. He signed a free-agent contract on Feb. 7, 1994, receiving a non-roster invite, as well, and setting the Spring Training circus in motion.

After Jordan's baseball move became public, Reinsdorf received a call from White Sox hitting coach Walt Hriniak. It's an understatement to say that Hriniak was stunned by the decision.

"Walter said, 'What the [heck] is this all about?' He said, 'We don't need this kind of publicity and what kind of gimmick is this?'" Reinsdorf said. "I said, 'Walter he's serious. Wait until you meet this guy.'

"On the first day of Spring Training, Walter goes up to Michael in the outfield and says, 'Are you serious about this or is it just a game?' He said, 'I'm dead serious.' Walter said to meet him at 7:30 tomorrow morning in the batting cages.

"Every day at 7:30, Michael was there," Reinsdorf said. "Sometimes his hands were bleeding, that's how hard he worked. You talk to Walter today and he'll tell you the hardest working athlete he ever had was Michael Jordan."

Reinsdorf recounted one night in Florida where Jordan and the White Sox chairman simply sat around his office for three hours talking about baseball.

"Michael really enjoyed the clubhouse and the guys," Reinsdorf said. "He liked to sit around, smoke a cigar and [talk]."

Judging by the reaction from a few of his teammates even 15 years later, they enjoyed having Jordan around just as much.

The Teammates

Ozzie Guillen led the 2005 White Sox to the franchise's first World Series title in 88 years. As a colorful manager, he is the face of the organization and one of the most recognizable figures around baseball.

Yet, he's still no Michael Jordan in terms of world-wide popularity. Guillen readily admits that when Jordan was part of Spring Training, he got an autograph from the legend. But one of the most endearing attributes about Jordan the baseball player became that he was just one of the guys.

"You walk into the locker room and you are like, 'Wow, it's Michael Jordan,'" said Guillen with a laugh. "But the next day, he's a normal guy. I love every minute of it, and I think this guy finally has fun in his life besides being on the golf course. He had a real life, were he was treated like just another person.

"Jordan had fun with the other players. To me, it was a privilege to be around one of the best."

Guillen recounted a story of how he regularly kidded Jordan about being the best athlete in the world, but not nearly as good as Guillen on the baseball field. Guillen also told a tale of a young woman who ran on the field during an exhibition game in Miami, trying to get a kiss from Jordan.

"Until that lady was chasing him, I'd never seen a woman on the field in my life," sad Guillen with a laugh.

"I came to realize just how big of a personality he was during that spring," said White Sox radio announcer Darrin Jackson, who also was involved in the 1994 Spring Training as a White Sox outfielder. "When you get off team buses, and the girls start to cry because Michael Jordan is in the vicinity, it was pretty special to see."

Playing with Jordan naturally involved a bit of a media frenzy. As Guillen said, Jordan just wanted to be one of the guys, playing cards and smoking cigars with teammates on the bus.

"When he was there, he never tried to be Michael Jordan with us," Guillen said.

"It was different than any other Spring Training I've ever been a part of as a coach or player," said White Sox bench coach Joey Cora, who was the team's second baseman in 1994. "He was Michael, and Michael is Michael, whether he's playing baseball, ping pong or basketball."

The Coverage

On the day that Jordan held his first press conference at Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota, Fla., Scott Reifert can remember lining 38 television cameras up and down the first-base line as a White Sox media relations staff member. Jordan and Schueler sat on top of the dugout to have the press conference.

"I didn't try to talk him out of it, but I asked Michael, 'What do you want to do,' and he said, 'I want to play baseball."

-- White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf

"The media just filled in the seats," said Reifert, now the White Sox vice president of communications. "I also remember the range and volume of media in attendance, and this is before the media explosion. It wasn't just sports guys.

"It was entertainment, everything you can imagine. And it was global. Japan, France, Europe, any place where the Bulls, Michael or the NBA were world-wide brands at that time."

Reifert remembers the bright red car driven at the time by Jordan, and how the kids "would stream down the street" after Jordan when he left the facility and how Jordan would stop to sign autographs. Of course, Reifert also remembers Jordan's famous competitive streak.

Not just from baseball or basketball, mind you, but even with ping pong.

"Someone bought a ping-pong table, and they had a big, clubhouse tournament, where they had pairings," Reifert said. "I think it ended up being Michael and Kirk McCaskill as the finalists, and I think Kirk beat him.

"I'll never forget watching Michael Jordan play ping pong. If you think about his wing span from left to right, it was stunning to watch this guy cover a table. The other thing was competitiveness. Baseball players are competitive, every single one of them, but Michael took it to another level over a ping-pong game."

The Player, The End

Jordan was sent to Double-A Birmingham out of Spring Training on March 31, 1994, and hit .202 with 51 RBIs, 30 stolen bases and 114 strikeouts in 127 games. He also took part in the 1994 Arizona Fall League, where he posted a .252 average for the Scottsdale Scorpions.

Reinsdorf believes that if not for the ongoing Major League Baseball strike in 1995, which sort of "soured him on the whole thing," Jordan might have made it to the big leagues as a fourth or fifth outfielder. One thing was certain: when Jordan retired from basketball, Reinsdorf never envisioned him coming back to the hardwoods on March 19, 1995, first wearing jersey No. 45 as he did on the baseball fields, and then switching back to the familiar No. 23 and leading the Bulls to their second NBA title three-peat.

Numerous pundits consider Jordan's run at baseball a mistake, nothing more than a side show involving one of the world's most recognizable figures, who couldn't consistently hit the curve like many other struggling Minor Leaguers. Those who witnessed Jordan's intense work on a daily basis, along with his amazing talent, know this period was anything but a joke for Jordan. They also realize what might have been if he continued the pursuit of this dream.

After all, even the top prospects out of the First-Year Player Draft don't get sent to the talent-rich Southern League, as Reinsdorf mentioned. And Jordan more-than-survived in Birmingham, playing to sold-out crowds every night.

"I thought he needed another two full seasons of at-bats to be fair to him," said Boston manager Terry Francona, who managed Jordan at Birmingham and praised Jordan for how he handled a situation where the Barons 'were covered like a Major League team with all the media.' "But the first time you tell him no, the answer is going to be yes."

"If he would have started earlier, maybe he had a shot," Cora said. "He was a great athlete, but you don't pick up baseball at 30. It was tough, but he accomplished a lot in a little period of time, which shows how great of an athlete he was."

"This is a guy who with more time, he had a chance," Jackson said. "Because of his determination, he would have probably made it. I've never seen anyone work harder than him."

Original here