Sinkhole Superstars: Jason "I'm the one who went to Duke" Williams

The crown jewel of the 1999 SLAM All-American team was Jason "I'm the one who went to Duke" Williams. It appears that he is out of the NBA for good (read: retired). Here is an excerpt:

"Jason Williams: Jason Williams had it all. He was a was a model student/athlete and his success continued in college. He helped Duke to the 2001 National Championship. While kids across America were rationalizing staying in college seven years, “Jay” Williams finished at Duke in three and was taken second in the NBA draft in 2002. He had a decent rookie season and seemed to be building a solid career for himself. In the summer of 2203, Williams was in a motorcycle accident that, essentially ending his playing career. He attempted a comeback with the Nets in 2006, but was cut after making a few preseason appearances to the delight of the crowd in his native New Jersey. After a quick minute in the D-League, Williams has begun a new phase in his life in the sports marketing world."

Note: Another SLAM 1999 All American, Kenny Satterfield, is currently out of the league. He was one of the best NYC streetball players of all time. Since leaving Cincinnati early, he's bounced all around, mostly overseas. (Although, it could be worse: A former Satterfield teammate who currently works as a packer at a Keebler plant in Ohio was just arrested for having crack cocaine on the floorboard of his 1996 Mazda.)

Note: Someday soon Kevin Pittsnogle might become a Sinkhole Superstar. To prepare for this eventuality, I have begun to conduct research on him. Did you know that Pittsnogle, using one ball and one rebounder, once made 78 3 pointers in 5 minutes. That's a 3 pointer in every 3.8 seconds. That's Kobayashi-esque. After playing for the CBA's X-Plosion last year, I thought he might stick with an NBA this year. No such luck. He'll start the season with Cholet Basket.

Pittsnogle update: This NYTimes article is a good read.

Sinkhole Superstars: Sam Crawford

Curtis Granderson hit his league-leading eighth triple last night. I don’t know what triple statistics measure, exactly—line drive power to right, speed, and a willingness to try for the extra base, I guess. Triples are more exciting than (outside-the-park) home runs. The all-time leader in triples is Sam Crawford, with 309. He played right field for the Tigers from 1903 to 1917. Like Cy Young’s 749 complete games, that isn’t a record anyone is going to break without some radical changes to the game. (These records are unknown today because no one could ever break them, not because they’re less important than, say, a hitting streak.)

Sam Crawford was my favorite historical baseball figure growing up, and not only because of his aptitude for triples. His chapter in The Glory of Their Times is wonderful, in part because of his clear-eyed observations of Ty Cobb, who played next to him in center field. Crawford was the polite, honest, and slightly less-skilled second fiddle to the nutty, racist, tormented Cobb.

This line of thought got me started on my current writing project, a novel narrated by Sam Crawford but structured around the rise and fall of Cobb, a kind of dead-ball-era On the Road. I figure they’ve been dead long enough that I can add some sexual tension, maybe a near-kiss or something.

Other projects currently in the works:

- An operetta about the 1987-1991 Pistons, tentatively entitled Ragazzi Difettosi. Ambition, frustration, triumph, downfall. I’m still ironing the kinks out of a tricky section where Magic and Bird sing in counterpoint and (if I can get the funding) Rodman descends from the ceiling. For the finale, a soprano duet by Jordan and Isiah: “We have swept you! We have swept you!” “But I will not shake your hand! I will never shake your hand!”

- An installation piece about Cyclo-Cross Racing, tentatively entitled “Mud, Mud, Everywhere.” I’ve worked up several sketches, but i’m still searching for sponsorship and the right venue. MME will require a fifty-two-by-twenty-eight-foot indoor space, nineteen hundred pounds of mud, and the skeletons of two dozen rusty old bicycles.

- A one-man play about the 1984 Tigers, tentatively entitled Tigers, Tigers, Burning Bright. Sparky Anderson (played by Brian Dennehy or, if he’s available, Peter Fonda) looks back on the season, the Series, and the ensuing riots. It requires only a single spotlight, a stool, and a cuspidor. I’ve written a short musical piece for timpani and cymbals to be played during the riot scene, as Sparky weeps into his cap.

- An endurance piece about horseracing, tentatively entitled “My Derby Year.” For one calendar year, I’ll wear blinders and a bit, have a spider monkey in purple silks ride on my back, and keep a daily log of my weight and how long it takes me to run from my apartment to the bus stop and back.

Sinkhole Superstars: Joey Renard Gathright jumps over a car

Even if Joey Gathright, the former starting center fielder for the KC Royals, never makes it back to the majors, if he gets stuck in Triple-A Omaha for the next fifteen years, he is already a superstar in my book for accomplishing this feat: jumping over a parked car.

UPDATE: Judging by the angry emails I've been receiving for this post, some of our readers disapprove my decision to "laud" Joey's "reckless act." To those people, I say simply this: watch the video. It doesn't have the feel of a bunch of kids doing stupid stuff so that they can get their own MTV show. In fact, I find the video oddly soothing. He's in a polo shirt. He's wearing reading glasses. There is no pre-jump gritting of teeth or pounding of chest. He just jogs up and jumps. Like jumping over a puddle. And after jumping over the parked car with ease, Joey seems mostly embarrassed to have agreed to show off his trick for the camera. Joey, you ARE the man.

SECOND UPDATE: An angry commenter named "Angry!" just posted the following: "Joey Gathright is a Sinkhole Superstar for jumping over a Mitsubishi Galant while dressed like Carlton Banks? The true Sinkhole Superstar is Renjis Empati!"

So, my retort to "Angry!" is...good point.

Perhaps what would be most productive at this point would be to take a step back and define what a "sinkhole superstars" is. For me, it is someone who reaches the Pinnacle Of Greatness' waiting room (and is generally considered a superstar) in a narrow field and then, through no real fault of his own, is absorbed back into the normally-skilled world (which is where the "sinkhole" part comes in). Joey was a very highly-rated prospect for the Devil Rays. Now he's a Triple-A outfielder for the Royals who isn't considered an especially good base runner or fielder despite his amazing speed (and, as the video suggests, leaping ability). Same player, same skills. The only difference is that he is two years older and now People Who Matter In Baseball are suddenly down on his ability to, well, not swing at a too-high fastball.

I have a fondness for these sorts of of players. And while I do not make dolls of these players and pet them (that would be creepy), I do recognize my own dreams of superstardom as well as my own moments of sinkholedom in them. Eileen Shea was the Main Woman at MSU, and now she is, say, a normal mom living in East Lansing. Steve Logan was an incredible college player, but now he is struggling to find a job in Europe. And Joey is a formerly-hyped OF who might never get another chance to play in the majors.

Buy hey, at least he can jump over a car. I'd put that skill just above being competitive at ping pong and just below being able to play a Bach piano concierto passably well.

As for Renjis Empati, that's an entirely different story. I am ready, in all seriousness, to dedicate this blog to him and his efforts. He, after all, saw his kitchen going into a sinkhole while going to the bathroom in an outhouse at 2am and had the wherewithal to go Paul Revere on his neighbors and save their lives.

Renjis Empati, I emphatically salute you!

THIRD UPDATE: The Cubs signed Gathright to a one-year contract on December 16th, 2008. He'll be fighting for playing time with Kosuke Fukudome, Reed Johnson and maybe So Taguchi. Also: here is the video of Joey jumping over that Dodgers pitcher in spring training last year.

Sinkhole Superstars: Eileen Shea

When I was growing up in Michigan State faculty housing, my father used to take me to see basketball games at Jenison Fieldhouse. We could get in to watch the men for free after the start of the fourth quarter. I saw Scott Skiles and Steve Smith like this. But we could get into the women’s games for free anytime. My favorite player was Eileen Shea. When I was nine, she had big bangs and crimped hair, and she was the best player MSU women’s basketball player ever.

She was a gunner. She averaged 12.4 ppg for her career (over 15 her last two), mostly on 38% three-point shooting. She shot 80% from the line. Despite an unimpressive vertical leap, she was named All-Big Ten three times. The MSU women had never been good, but she made them respectable. My dad liked her game, and her name and headshot ran regularly in the Lansing State Journal, which made an impression on me. The attraction, I think, was maternal. My mother was in Africa doing missionary work.

As a senior, Shea got MSU into the NCAAs for the first time. In her last game as a Spartan she scored a school-record 35 against Oklahoma State, but MSU lost 96-94 in triple overtime. By that time I was twelve and I’d stopped paying much attention. My mother had come back from Africa, and we’d moved out of faculty housing. The Spartans had left Jenison for the Breslin Center. Plus, my tastes had already been irreversibly influenced by music videos and pornography. I’d decided that if I was going to watch a women’s sport it would be volleyball.

I was home recently for a funeral and looked Eileen Shea up online. I found she was now Eileen Shea-Hilliard, that she’d worked her way up to head coach at Oakland University but had been recently let go, and that she was back in Lansing. Her husband, who had also hyphenated, was in the phone book. I decided that, in the spirit of spontaneity, I’d drive over.

It was a cold day, and she came to the door of the simple ranch house in a turtleneck with a yellow jacket over it. I expected her to look my mother’s age, but of course Eileen was only in her late thirties. The differences between us had diminished. She was medium height, and even in college she hadn’t been strikingly athletic-looking. She said she’d never had a fan come to her house before, not since she’d moved out of the dorms.

“I’m not a fan,” I said. “My father and I watched you while my mother was away. It was psychotherapeutic or something. I don’t think ‘fan’ really does it justice.”

“Give it a name,” Eileen said, which is a phrase I’ve always liked. It has Shakespearean sentiment with movie-gangster rhythm.

I told her about receiving third-grade mash notes from Kristen Rasmussen and playing pickup ball against Alison Feaster. She seemed to enjoy the stories, but I started feeling like the guy who immediately mentions to the Inuit acquaintance the other Inuit guys he knows. We stayed on the porch. Her husband seemed to be home. I told her my last name was also hyphenated, and that although I’d found it inconvenient, that probably resulted from the length and difficulty of the names. Hers, I thought, wouldn’t pose a problem. In fact, I liked it. I asked if she wanted to come to my uncle’s wake.

“That’s a first too,” Eileen said, “but I’ve got errands to run.”

I came away impressed, though, and sure that she’ll find another head-coaching job in Division I.

Sinkhole Superstars: Steve Deontay Logan

One of the perks of working for a stats-graphics company earlier this decade was getting front row seats to NCAA tourney games. Sure, I spent the entire game as a "spotter," meaning that I had a two-way headset on and was reporting game stats to an input guy so that they would appear updated "live" on CBS. Still, front-row seats at the NCAA tourney are pretty sweet.

I was at Steve Logan's region the year he was a first team All-American, his senior year. He was, hands down, the most interesting player to watch. Imagine a player with the moves of an Iverson but the body of an El-Amin. You are imagining Steve Logan. In addition, he had a very unselfconsious, slow, and smooth walking style. He was almost as much fun to watch between plays as he was when the clock was running.

He also looks like a old friend of mine. After recently bumping into my friend at the free introductory class of an otherwise expensive Jazzercise program at the local YMCA, I decided to check up on Steve Logan and see how the rest of his career panned out.

Despite being ranked as high as a mid-first rounder by many draft "experts," he fell to the second round where he was taken by Golden State. Some say his height, which is listed as 6' but is probably closer to 5'10", was the reason for people passing on him. I think it is because he only has three fingers on his left hand. He got into a tiff with Golden State over contract stuff and was eventually traded to Dallas. Without ever playing an NBA game, he moved to the ABA and then the EuroLeague. He was released in 2006 and, as far as I can tell, he is currently out of organized basketball.

Career:
Cleveland, OH (Lakewood (OH) St. Edward)
1998-1999: Cincinnati (NCAA): 8.9ppg, 1.5rpg, 2.2apg
1999-2000: Cincinnati (NCAA): 10ppg, 3.7rpg
2000-2001: Cincinnati (NCAA): PointsCUSA-1(20.9), 2.4rpg, 2.4apg
2001-2002: Cincinnati (NCAA): 33 games: 22.0 ppg, 3.0 rpg, 5.1 apg
2002: Drafted by Golden State Warriors (NBA,2rd(30))
2002: July: Southern California Summer Pro League in Long Beach (Golden State Warriors team)
2002-2003: in Jan.'03 signed at Mobile Revelers (NBDL), but left the team the same month for personal reason
2003: San Francisco Pro-Am League (SF City team)
2004 July: Southern California Summer Pro League in Long Beach, CA (VR Sports team)
2004: In Sep.'04 his right were traded by Golden St. Warriors (NBA) to Dallas Mavericks (NBA)
2004-2005: Texas Tycoons (ABA)
2005-2006: Mersin Buyuksehir Belediyesi (TUR-D1,1T), Turkish League: 12 games: 21.7ppg, 2.4rpg, 5.3apg, 1.5spg, 2FGP: 56.0%, 3PT: 40.0%, FT: 82.0%; left in Jan.'06, then joined AO Kolossos Rodou (GRE-A1): 3 games: 10.7ppg, 1.0rpg, 2.7apg, left in Feb.'06 due to personal family reasons, next month joined Benfica Lisbona (POR-TMN): 4 games: 16.3ppg, 1.8rpg, 8.5apg

Source: http://forums.interbasket.net/archive/index.php?t-966.html
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Logan

Sinkhole Superstars: Drew Henson

Until A-Rod joined the Yanks, their 3B of the future was Drew Henson, the former Michigan QB. In NYC, there was contradictory pressure on the poor kid to be as good as A-Rod someday, and to do it now. Even A-Rod gets busted on non-stop for not being A-Rod enough. He won an MVP. He had a solid year last year. Of all players in baseball history at age 30, he is 1st all-time in both home runs and runs, 2nd in total bases and extra base hits, 3rd in RBIs, and 4th in hits. Leave him alone! Tangent. Sorry. So after some medium-hitting minor league years, Drew left the Yanks to join Big Tuna football, which may be the most pressure-filled football in the universe. His first NFL start was on Thanksgiving day. He threw for 34 yards in the first half and was pulled with the score tied 7-7. Last year he played in NFL Europe, but the Cowboys retained his rights. He was cut by the Cowboys on August 24th, 2006.

He briefly regained consciousness when he was picked up by the Vikes, but on Oct. 10th, 2006, Drew Henson left the professional sports world when he was cut by the Vikes. The time of cut was 4:37pm. He was 26 years old. He is survived by his pet fish Jake.

If I were a baseball team, I'd stash him in my minor leagues and pray for the pinocchio-muppet to become a real boy. The least-used parts of my soul, the wizened dusty parts, believe he will return to glory.

12/22/06 update:

source: http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/16296513.htm

Quarterback Drew Henson is in his second tour on the Vikings' practice squad. He was with the team for two weeks early in the season, got cut and returned when Brooks Bollinger injured his shoulder. A former member of the Dallas Cowboys, Henson spent three seasons in the New York Yankees organization and played college football at Michigan. Here is Henson …

On how he views his role with the Vikings: "First off, it's better to be working than not. You end up practicing and keep working and throwing. Whether it's just four weeks, that's four weeks I might not have had. I'll see what this offseason brings. I like the atmosphere here. Everyone has been great to me. Right now, I'll do everything I can to help and try to get caught up on the fly on the philosophy here."

On whether he's done playing baseball: "Most definitely."

On whether he regrets giving baseball a try and not concentrating on football: "Honestly, I feel like I've been playing catch-up since the day I left school, no matter what sport it was. It's the path I chose. I had the fortunate problem of having multiple opportunities. It would have been simpler if I hadn't grown up playing baseball as much as I did. But I had some great experiences. I'm still young. Before it's all said and done, I think it will be a pretty good story to tell."