Published: March 27, 2009 12:22 am      

What if Yaz had done that in the 1990s?

Joe Garagiola once said, “Baseball is a funny game.” In fact, that was the title of one of his books.

Well, I’m reading a pretty interesting book these days, “Baseball and the Baby Boomer: A History, Commentary and Memoir,” by Talmage Boston, and while I’m just barely into it (pretty good so far, though) something I just read in it got me to thinking.

From 1962 to 1966, Carl Yastrzemski, future Hall of Famer for the Boston Red Sox, in the author’s words, “proved to be a solid but unspectacular player on some truly dismal Red Sox teams, leading the American League in doubles three times, making three All-Star teams, winning his first AL batting title (.321) in 1963, but never hitting more than 20 homers.”

Then, in 1967, the year of the Red Sox “Impossible Dream” season, Yaz hit .326 with 44 home runs and 121 RBIs. The Red Sox would lose a seven-game World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals that season, but that was OK. As Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan described it, “Everything the Red Sox are today, all the sellouts, stems from 1967. That team cannot be honored enough. Nineteen sixty-seven is the great dividing line in Red Sox history.”

Not to mention for Yastrzemski in terms of power production. For even though Yaz would go on to hit 40 homers in both 1969 and 1970 and become the first American League player to post 400 home runs and 3,000 base hits in a career, the most home runs he would ever hit in a season after 1970 was 28.

This is not to question Carl Yastrzemski, because for me, questioning Yaz would be akin to questioning Brooks Robinson. You just don’t do it; and if you do, you’re going to be in a fight. I’m just glad Yaz played in the era that he did, when baseball players were more the guys next door than the year-round mega-corporation entities and athletes they have become today, because given his season-by-season home-run numbers through his career, if he had played in the last 15 years, we all know his three 40-homer (out of 23) seasons would be a major blip on the radar and viewed with the suspicion that has become part of our current witchhunting society.

In an unrelated development, in the matter known as “The United States of America vs. Miguel O. Tejada,” All-Star shortstop Miguel Tejada on Thursday received a sentence of one year of probation for misleading Congress about the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Yes, baseball is a funny game. Just not as funny as it used to be.

No, not Calhoun

Speaking of suspicion ... OK, and witchhunting, to express the astonishment of one Captain Louis Renault, I’m shocked, shocked to find Connecticut men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun said he and the university are looking into a Yahoo! Sports report claiming the school broke NCAA rules during the recruitment of former basketball player Nate Miles.

Shocked, I tell you. Calhoun’s program being accused of bending the rules?

Shocked I tell you, that Miles, a 6-foot-7 guard from Toledo, Ohio, was reportedly given lodging, transportation, meals and representation by sports agent Josh Nochimson. Shocked that a UConn assistant coach knew about the relationship between the player and the agent.

Shocked to discover Nochimson is a former student manager for UConn, which means he is considered a representative of UConn’s athletic interests by the NCAA and was prohibited from having contact with Miles or giving him anything of value.

Then imagine my shock to find records also show that five UConn coaches called Nochimson and text-messaged him at least 1,565 times during a nearly two-year period before and after Miles’ recruitment in 2006 and early 2007. Just downright floored, floored, I tell you to learn Calhoun had 16 of those communications, according to the Yahoo report.

Sorry, just not buying it. Jim Calhoun? Come on, what’s next? It will be reported that some major college basketball program scheduled an exhibition game in its home building and paid $22,000 to an AAU team that had heavy ties to a prized recruit and his high school coach? And then said prized recruit just happens to sign with said major college basketball program?

Oh, that’s right. That already happened. And the NCAA passed legislation banning college teams from scheduling exhibition opponents linked to independent traveling teams.

Right after Jim Calhoun’s UConn program did it, then signed Archbishop Spalding’s Rudy Gay.

What do you know? College basketball is a funny game, too.

Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Contact Mike Burke at mburke@times-news.com.