Cheers & Jeers - Tuesday, May 6, 2008

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Tuesday, May 6, 2008

POSTED May 6, 12:42 PM

Set the alarm, big guy

During halftime of a Redskins game several years back, a man stood in line ordering a hot dog. Nothing unusual. The only difference was that this person, Byron Chamberlain, was actually on the Redskins’ roster.
He happened to be inactive for that particular game. But a point was made: it was not something a player should be doing. Not so surprisingly, Chamberlain was out of shape with Washington and, despite supposed talent, never did anything here.
Which brings us to rookie tight end Fred Davis, who “overslept” Sunday morning and missed the last day of minicamp. Davis was reportedly at the nightclub H2O in the District Saturday night. So draw your own conclusions.
It’s not the first time Davis has been late for something or missed it all together. He did not travel with USC to the 2005 National Championship Game because he reportedly was constantly tardy (sometimes in returning from his native Ohio).
This is why several talent evaluators and former scouts said to stay away from this guy before the draft. One said Davis would never put in the necessary work to succeed in the NFL. Another questioned his choice of friends.
The Redskins clearly had no problems with him.
“We checked him out thoroughly and we were fine with everything,” said Vinny Cerrato, Redskins executive vice president of football operations, who used to work with USC coach Pete Carroll and spoke to him about Davis.
The Redskins can’t do much but cross their fingers with Davis. After missing the bowl game with USC, he blossomed into one of the country’s best tight ends.
“It’s just a maturation process and a learning process,” Cerrato said. “He has to learn from his mistakes.”
Davis was impressive in his first two minicamp workouts, showing more of a burst than the normal tight end. Then he displayed his confounding side.
He’ll be someone to watch — on and off the field.

A king’s feast

Maybe now Cleveland Cavalier fans have a reason to like Brendan Haywood. Turns out he indirectly gave them LeBron

a chance to have a 23-cent pizza.
Here’s how the story unfolded — and it might not have gone anywhere if not for local blogger Jon Eick of sogoodblog.com — in the last few days.
First came Haywood’s comment that Cavs forward LeBron James needed to stop being a crybaby about the hard fouls. Then came a local Papa John’s chain — it’s uncertain which one — printing T-shirts with the number 23 and the words, “Crybaby 23” (along with the Papa John’s logo). A very few handful of fans wore them to the game; but one of those fans was shown often on TV.
Eick, who says in his blog that he’s a Wizards fan, then blogged about it, igniting a firestorm. (A Wizards spokesman said the team had nothing to do with the T-shirts). Turns out Eick found more than a dozen Papa John’s located within 12 miles of Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena.
After receiving threats of boycotts, approximately 40 Cleveland Papa John’s stores will offer 23-cent large one-topping pizzas on Thursday. Plus the company will donate the money from those pies, plus another $10,000 to the Cavaliers Youth Fund.
Haywood will patiently await the thank you cards sure to follow.

Gooden to the bone

Gooden

Ravens third round draft pick Tavares Gooden is far removed from his infamous singing career — and that’s fine with him.
“It was something that was blown way out of proportion,” the No. 2 ranked outside linebacker in this year’s draft, said. “It was something I did when I was young and we were in our dorm room rapping.”
Gooden was a member of the University of Miami’s “7th Floor Crew,” a group of mostly football players who created a song full of offensive lyrics early in his freshman year of 2004.
But since then, he’s been hitting nearly all the high notes away from a microphone — and winning over critics and teammates in the process.
The 6-foot-2, 238-pound linebacker was such an outstanding talent on and off the field at Miami, he was able to shed the negativity associated with the rapping fiasco and became what could be considered a model for the Hurricanes’ program.
Patience and making the most of his opportunities has been the key to his success, a source close to the program said.
When he dislocated his shoulder two years ago, it gave him time to get his academics in order. He graduated from Miami with a double-major in liberal arts and criminology.
This preseason he demonstrated his unselfishness by switching from outside to middle linebacker after an injury knocked out the projected starter. All Gooden did was lead the team with 119 tackles and get named the team’s defensive Most Valuable Player.
This weekend, he had a free barbecue at a football field near his home where he first starred as a youth, handing out T-shirts that read “Education + Sports = Success.”
As for if he will make the grade in Baltimore?
“Only time will tell,” Scouts Inc. wrote, “if he’s coachable enough, tough enough and instinctive enough to take his game to the next level.”

Lo Duca’s horse doesn’t run, but fares well

A horse co-owned by Washington Nationals catcher Paul Lo Duca didn’t race in the Kentucky Derby. But it still fared well.
That’s because horses it either beat or was close to last month had a good showing Saturday.
“It feels good to know that our horse was right there with some of these other contenders,” Lo Duca told The Examiner’s Brian McNally. “It’s sort of neat.”
Lo Duca’s horse, Golden Spikes, finished second last month in the Illinois Derby behind Recapturetheglory, which finished fifth Saturday. And the Kentucky Derby’s third-place finisher, Denis of Cork, finished behind Golden Spikes in Illinois.
“So it’s encouraging,” Lo Duca said.
Golden Spikes will not race in the Preakness. Instead, it will run Saturday in the Peter Pan Stakes. Lo Duca said a decision would then be made as to whether or not it will run in the Belmont.

Column inches
Opinions from around the nation on the hottest topics in sports:

“First of all, nobody died. No one was euthanized on the track. There was no tragedy here, just a hockey series lost to a tough team that seemed to get all the breaks. So it goes. You win some, you lose some.”
— Jack Todd on fans not overreacting to the Canadiens being eliminated by the Philadelphia Flyers (Montreal Gazette).

“No signs from Paul Pierce. No crop circles sheared into his hair. No ‘V’ for victory, no foam-finger hoisting, and no ambiguous hand signal that could be mimed by the mayor or sanctioned by the commissioner. No controversy for the captain. And, best of all, no Game 7 loss.”
— Dan Shaughnessy on forward Paul Pierce letting his Game 7 performance speak for itself (Boston Globe).

“For years, the running joke among rival scouts about the Yankees’ over-hyping of their pitching prospects was, ‘The closer they get to the big leagues, the less they like them.’ Why, just last year, the Yankees went through 14 different starting pitchers in their desperate effort to make it to a 13th straight postseason.”
— Bill Madden on the indefinite injury/demotion of top pitching prospects Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy (New York Daily News).

“The image of a blind, inebriated Cedric Benson is not a shock to the system, not if you saw him attempt to run the football last season. For the Bears, his arrest Saturday night for boating while intoxicated and resisting arrest pales in comparison to his shortcomings as a running back.”
— Rick Morrissey on the failures of running back Cederic Benson (Chicago Tribune).

On the record

“The Cubs haven’t won in [100] years, and they’re the [bleeping] best. [Bleep] it, we’re good. [Bleep] everybody. We’re horse[bleep], and we’re going to be horse[bleep] the rest of our lives, no matter how many World Series we win.”
— White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen after his team’s 4-3 loss to the Blue Jays this weekend.

“I’ve always wanted to be in Arizona. I’m happy here.”
— Arizona Cardinals receiver Anquan Boldin, disputing reports that he wants out of Arizona.

Can you believe it?

A woman in Nashua, N.H. was accused of driving her car into a group of people — and killing a man with whom she had an argument about the Red Sox-Yankees at a bar. Ivonne Hernandez, the Yankees fan, was charged with reckless second-degree murder in the death of Matthew Beaudoin. Not surprisingly, Hernandez admitted she had been drinking, though she refused a breath test.

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Cheers & Jeers
The Baltimore Examiner's Dave Carey and the Washington Examiner's John Keim review the daily buzz around the sports world with their insight and analysis. Feel free to give us your take at caj@examiner.com