The Stark Truth

Is Tim Tebow getting unjustly blackballed? That’s the gist of this story by Mike Silver of Yahoo! Sports.

Silver writes

Isn’t there a coach out there who can help Tebow get the most out of his abilities? Logic would suggest that someone with his level of commitment would be a strong candidate for improvement.

It may have already happened: After Tebow was released by the Jets, one of the franchise’s former quarterbacks, Vinny Testaverde, expressed his disappointment to ESPNNewYork.com’s Rich Cimini. Testaverde, who had just spent a week working with Tebow in Florida, said he and another ex-NFL quarterback, Chris Weinke, made a key footwork adjustment that produced noticeable results.

“Chris and I looked at Tim careful and we were both amazed,” Testaverde told Cimini. “Everybody has been focusing on his throwing motion, trying to fix that, but nobody had picked up his footwork. His footwork was all screwed up …

“We got his footwork fixed. His throwing motion is now a non-issue. He throws with what we call ‘effortless power.’ He doesn’t have that elongated motion anymore and his head isn’t moving two-and-a-half feet when he throws it.”

Referring to the Jets’ coaches, Testaverde added, “I think they would have been impressed if they had compared this year to last year.”

Instead, Tebow is metaphorically throwing into the wind, and it’s a cold, heartless squall.

Seahawks

Check out Eric Williams’ latest stuff on his Seahawks Insider blog at the Tacoma News Tribune. Eric worked at The Sun before joining the Trib in 2006.

NWAACC Softball

Here’s the latest NWAACC softball standings. You’ll notice that Olympic College is holding down third place in the North Division and qualified for the 16-team NWAACC Championships, which begin May 17 at Delta Park in Portland. The Rangers host Douglas of B.C. on Friday at Lions Park with the first game starting at 2 p.m., and plays a non-league twinbill at Highline on Sunday before heading to the tournament. Here’s OC’s stats. Shortstop Jenna Bartlett, a sophomore from Central Kitsap, is having a helluva year. She’s hitting .488 and should be in the conversation for division MVP honors. Of course, I’m a bit prejudiced since I’m helping out as a volunteer assistant at OC this spring. Bartlett stepped up and handled the pitching chores when OC’s top three pitchers were all out with injuries.

Baseball

You’re still disappointed in the Mariners? Imagine being an Angels’ fan about now, writes Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com. The underachieving Halos have a $155 million payroll and might get swept by the Houston Lastros.

Books

The Brandon Roy Story has been written by Dan Raley, former Seattle P-I sportswriter and basketball player from Roosevelt High (class of ’72). Raley was a teammate of Peter Nielson’s, a point-guard who played at Olympic College. He’ll be at the University Book Store on Friday at 7 p.m. for a book signing. Roy’s the former Garfield and UW star whose pro career was derailed by knee injuries.

“Reading Dan Raley writing about Brandon Roy is like watching Dwyane Wade throw a floor-length pass to LeBron James. This is more than a book, it is a breathtaking connection between two greats, an unforgettable assist that results in a rim-rattling finish. Raley is a great storyteller. Roy is an even better story. Read it and leap.”
– Bill Plaschke, Los Angeles Times sports columnist and panelist on ESPN’s Around the Horn

I read Cold Crossover, a mystery by Tom Kelly, earlier this spring. It’s about a former high school basketball star — Limbert “Cheese” Oliver — whose car is found abandon on the Bremerton ferry. His former high school coach, Ernie Creekmore, doesn’t believe that Cheese took his life. Kelly, a former sports writer at the Seattle Times who raised his family on Bainbridge Island, writes a compelling story. I’m looking forward to the second book in the Creekmore series.

Harshman Memorial

Just a reminder: Marv Harshman’s public memorial will be held on Saturday at 1 p.m. at Hec Edmundson Pavilion at the University of Washington. The former UW/WSU/PLU coach died April 12 at 95.

Congrats to Marco Malich, the retired Peninsula High baseball coach, for being voted into the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s Hall of Fame.

Malich is a bit of a legend in the Purdy/Gig Harbor area. He was one of those old-school coaches who could get down on the same level with his players, who respected the heck out of him.

A lot of local softball players remember Malich as a member of those talented Heidelberg slowpitch teams out of Tacoma.

Here’s a link that includes short bios on all of the inductees, including Keith Gilbertson Sr., who had a 61-year teaching and coaching career in Snohomish.

The induction ceremony is noon on May 8 at the Renton Pavilion Event Center. Tickets are $20.

Charlie Pierce, of Esquire and the Boston Glove, nails it again, this time as a contributing writer for Grantland.

Oh, dear God, couldn’t SI have come up with a better cover headline than “The Gay Athlete”? There literally are thousands of gay athletes, at every level of sports, from Legion baseball all the way to the majors and back again, from high school football teams in west Texas all the way to the NFL. We just don’t know who they are yet, and it would be considerably more dangerous for a center on a Christian academy basketball team in Kansas to come out than it was for Collins, which is the truest measure of how far we really have to go. When one of those kids comes out, and when he is supported by as many people as are now congratulating themselves for supporting Collins, then you can come talk to me about our day of jubilee.

That’s a paragraph lifted from his story on Jason Collins’ decision to come out.

Did you hear what they’re going to call the college football playoff that begins in 2014?

Yeah, you heard right.

It’s gonna be the College Football Playoff.

You can vote for the College Football Playoff logo here.

Wonder how much money they paid to a marketing firm to come up with that name?

Maybe simple is better. At least it’s not the Chevy/Tostitos/CenturyLink College Football Playoff.

The best part about the College Football Playoff is that there’s going to be a college football playoff.

And we’re still going to be debating the system because howinthehell can you decide which four teams are going to qualify for the College Football Playoff.

College Football Playoff. Just rolls off your tongue. I’m starting to like it.

Here’s a crash-course on the 2013 NFL Draft, a three-day event which starts Thursday.

The schedule — Thursday, Round 1, 5 p.m. Friday, Rounds 2-3, 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Rounds 4-7, 9 a.m. TV: NFL Network and ESPN. Live Stream: NFL.com.

Claire Farnesworth, who covered the Seahawks for the Post-Intelligencer before being hired by the Seahawks, writes that other NFL teams now want to copy what the Hawks did in terms of bringing in big, physical cornerbacks  like Richard Sherman and Brandon Browner. I think it’ll be tough to duplicate what those two guys have done in Seattle the last two years. The stats tell the story: Sherman and Browner have combined for 213 tackles, 21 interceptions and 70 passes defensed during the 2011 and 2012 seasons.

Who do you think the Seahawks should take with their first pick in the NFL draft? They’ve got the 56th overall pick.

How about tight end Gavin Escobar from San Diego State? That’s the guess from Evan Silva, a Yahoo Sports correspondent.

SI.com suggests that this might be the first draft since 1963 that no running backs go in the first round.

Here’s some interesting draft trivia from NFLdraftscout.com. An example: Lawrence Okoye, a 2012 Olympian from England, has never played organized football but drew the attention of scouts at the Super Regional Combine in Dallas. At 6-6, 300, he ran a 4.84 40-yard dash. If the NFL doesn’t work out, the discus record-holder in Great Britain has deferred admission to Oxford Law to fall back on.

Seahawks don’t have a first-round pick, but they’ve made their hay in the middle rounds in the past, writes Jayson Jenks of the Seattle Times.

Russell Wilson’s story makes you wonder if there’s another sleeper QB out there that in this year’s draft.

Some bold predictions for the 2013 draft. Example: There will be at least 10 cornerbacks picked in the first two rounds.

Will the Seahawks pick another QB to battle Josh Portis and Quinn for the backup job? Here’s John Boyle’s take on that. By the way, the Hawks signed another QB, Jerrod Johnson, on Wednesday.

Seattle doesn’t have a first-round pick, but they’ve got a lot of You Tube videos of Percy Harvin, says GM John Schneider.

Here’s 15 potential steals heading into the three-day draft.

Enjoy the draft.

Bainbridge grad and University of Washington volleyball player Kelcey Dunaway will be part of Pac-12 squad that tours China in June.

Talk about a double dose of sad news.

On the same day Marv Harshman died, the legendary football coach of the Pacific Lutheran Lutes, Frosty Westering, passed away. Harshman was 95 (see earlier post); Westering 85.

They were two of the most successful and well-liked men to ever coach young men in our state.

Westering’s famous saying and title of a book he wrote was: Make the Big Time Where You Are. Westering coached PLU to four NAIA national titles and later traveled the country as a motivational speaker.

Todd Milles of the Tacoma News Tribune has the story on the charismatic Westering, a man who didn’t care about wins or losses yet became the 10th winning football coach in the country. Westering wasn’t your typical football coach. He did it his way, and that meant stressing his Christian faith and emphasizing team work.

Bremerton’s Glenn Carden advanced to the finals in open singles at the United States Handball Associations’s Hall of Fame and Rocky Mountain Regional tournament in Tucson, Ariz., on Saturday.

The 61-year-old Carden, a 15-time national age-group champion, takes on David Fink, a touring pro who is about 35 years younger, in Sunday’s singles finals. Update: Fink beat Carden 21-3, 21-3.

Carden was also awarded the Marty Decatur Sportsmanship Award during the tournament. Here’s a picture of Glenn and his wife Jackie with the award.

Carden’s been in the Phoenix area for the past month or so.  He was going to enter the 60s, but there weren’t enough entries and they made him the No. 2 seed in open singles.

Carden heads to San Diego for the U.S. Masters singles tournament the first week of April.

Wonder how much of a difference Mark McLaughlin, the well-traveled, sometimes troubled basketball player from Bothell, would have made to the Washington Huskies if he’d decided to stay in Seattle and play for coach Lorenzo Romar and the Dawgs this season.

The 6-foot-6 McLaughlin was recently named MVP of the Great Northwest Conference. This story by Roger Underwood, the former Sun staffer now working for the Yakima Herald, is a month old, but it sounds like McLaughlin’s found a home at Central Washington.

If you’re my age you might.

The memory’s a bit fuzzy. I think it must have been the summer of 1967 because I didn’t move to Bremerton until the middle of my eighth grade year and that the late fall of ’66. But I remember trooping down to Roosevelt Field, the grand old baseball stadium that was knocked down and turned into the parking lot next to the Warren Avenue Bridge, with my buddies. The Chymes of Freedom were headlining a rock show at the old ball yard. At least, I think they were the headliners.

They reminded me of the Byrds, or perhaps the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan must have been an inspiration. His album, Chimes of Freedom, was originally recorded in 1964. Bremerton’s Chymes of Freedom were a really good band, and only around for a couple of years. They were comprised of CK grads Bill Carter and John Carter, West High’s Rick Belyea, George Goins, Scott McDonald and the late Earl Weida.

Why am I reminded of this band 45 years later?

Well, I was riding to a softball scrimmage at Western Washington over the weekend — I’m a volunteer coach at Olympic College these days and enjoying every minute of it — when our head coach, Danny Haas, informed me that Bill Carter had been on the Late Show with David Letterman last week (Feb. 21), and Johnny Depp was playing slide guitar. Bill Carter & The Blame’s the name of the band. Turns out Carter moved to Austin, Texas, in 1976 — the same year I was going to school at the University of Texas — and he’s become a Texas legend as a singer/song writer.

Carter and his wife, Ruth Ellsworth, are prolific writers and have written songs for several major artists. Among Carter’s songs: Steve Ray Vaughn’s “Crossfire.” He also wrote “Why Get Up?” for the Fabulous Thunderbirds and “The Richest Man,” which has been recorded by 40 artists. Carter and Ellsworth played with Depp’s band P in the 1990s. Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, actor Sal Jenco were also in the band. Others, like Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, played from time to time.

The Blame played  ”Anything Made of Paper,” on the Letterman Show. It’s featured in the 2012 documentary film “West of Memphis,” which is about three teenagers who were unjustly charged with murder and spent 18 years in jail in Arkansas.

Sounds like Carter’s lived an interesting life. Check out his website.