Commentary : It’s Time to Recognize Mackey’s Contributions

John Mackey’s moment is overdue.

Mackey’s name is on a list of 15 finalists for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Mackey was a standout at Syracuse University before becoming one of the great tight ends in National Football League history. His combination of speed and size was such that he expanded the position. In his wake, a tight end was expected to be a downfield threat as well as a strong blocker and short-yardage receiver.

Certainly, Mackey didn’t win many friends among the football establishment by serving as president of the NFL Players Association and having his name attached to a suit that successfully challenged the league on antistrust grounds. But as a player who influenced the development of the game, his contribution on the field of play was significant. The new members of the Hall will be announced in Miami two days after the Super Bowl.

Ironically, it was in Miami that Mackey earned a Super Bowl ring. His 75-yard jaunt with a deflected pass thrown by Johnny Unitas provided the Baltimore Colts with their first touchdown in a 16-13 victory over Dallas 18 years ago.

Carl Yastrzemski’s selection in his first year on the ballot recalls two family stories associated with the man, whose father was a potato farmer. Carl Yastrzemski Sr. also was an outstanding baseball player, and father and son played on the same amateur team through the youngster’s high school years.

In fact, the father had a higher batting average than the son in their last season together. According to Bots Nekola, the scout who recommended Yastrzemski to the Red Sox, Boston farm director Johnny Murphy took note of the statistics on the day he secured the young man’s name on a contract. “Maybe,” Murphy said with a twinkle, “we signed the wrong Yastrzemski.”

It was a decade later when Yastrzemski made it perfectly clear they had gotten the right man by leading the Red Sox to an American League pennant and winning the Triple Crown. By then, of course, he was known to headline writers and baseball fans alike as Yaz. On the occasion of the team’s first World Series appearance in 21 years, vendors outside Fenway Park hawked a clever button that remains a prized possession to this day.

“Yaz, sir, that’s my baby,” it read. Yastrzemski’s mother didn’t understand the presence of the button on the lapels of so many strangers. Proudly displaying her own sign of identification, she said she was the only person entitled to wear it.

The controversy over the forthcoming book about Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State basketball program invites two observations even before publication and any subsequent NCAA investigation, as requested by the school.

First, State virtually begged for a critical look by recruiting the likes of Chris Washburn, whose almost minimal test scores and personal problems indicated he had no business in college beyond an obvious ability to shoot and rebound. The financial empire created by Valvano, the consummate coach-salesman with the high-powered personality, certainly merits scrutiny. But is Peter Golenbock the right man to conduct such an investigation?

Golenbock’s previous exercises have been confined almost entirely to chatty baseball books with a New York bent. Among those with whom he has collaborated are Sparky Lyle, Graig Nettles, Ron Guidry and Billy Martin. What those works have shared, in addition to Yankee themes, is a blatant disregard for accuracy.

In the space of one chapter in the Martin autobiography, “Number 1,” Golenbock (in Martin’s) voice identifies the hotel near Yankee Stadium as the Concord Plaza (instead of Concourse Plaza), calls Ralph Houk a former Marine (he was a tough World War II Army officer who still carries the nickname Major), announces that the 1953 World Series required seven games (it lasted six) and depicts Duke Snider as a right-handed hitter. Even if it was Martin’s memory that erred in each case, an unlikely occurrence, it behooved the author to check material so easily correctable.

Sloppy reporting of minor details in an area of some expertise does little for the credibility of a man attempting a serious piece of journalism while operating on unfamiliar turf.

Rick Rhoden’s departure from the Yankees was another in a series of transactions by Manager Dallas Green that repudiates previous club policy under owner George Steinbrenner. Whereas Steinbrenner was quick to jettison young talent for proven goods (look no farther than the deal that sent Brad Fisher and Doug Drabek to the Pirates for Rhoden, among others now departed), Green has taken the opposite tack. The Yankees gained three Houston prospects for Rhoden.

It is a commendable long-term approach and one that may be essential if the organization is not to grow stagnant. But it carries a very large risk. None of the acquisitions from Houston is likely to help the Yankees this season, and Steinbrenner has never displayed the ability to bite the bullet while his team is being rebuilt.

Unless Green is able to show immediate results in his first year, he may not get the opportunity of a second year in which to continue the process.