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Show ^ V ™ SUMMER UTAH CHRONICLE SPORTS Page 6 www.dailyutahchronicle.com Friday, June 3, 2005 A Real big day RSL seeks redemption : versus first-place FC Dallas Brian Shaw Chronicle Writer Experience must seize the day if Real Salt Lake (2-3-2, CQ) is to regain some of the ground ; it lost last Saturday in a 3-0 blowout loss at . home to Chicago. Getting back on FieldTurf in ; July won't hurt either. They're 3-1-1 on the old • surface. ; Struggling RSL plays host to two old nemeses this weekend: real grass and FC Dallas. The grass was installed for this weekend's United • States-Costa Rica match, which will immedi; ately precede the Real-FC Dallas game on Sat• urday. ; First-place FC Dallas will be without Ameri- can forward Eddie Johnson and Guatemalan \ striker Carlos Ruiz, both playing with their • national teams. For RSL, which is missing U.S. \ defender Eddie Pope and Trinidadians Mar• Ion Rojas and Leslie "Tiger" Fitzpatrick for \ the same reason, this means a chance to steal • a crucial win at home, though its record has \ been substandard (0-3-1) on grass surfaces, in• eluding a 1-0 loss to lowly Chivas USA at L.A.'s [ Home Depot Center last month. - If RSL has a chance this week, some of the I younger players—such as Seth Trembly, who • showed well in RSL's 2-0 home win over Chi'. vas USA several weeks ago, and forward Jordan • Cila—must step up big and provide a spark to ', veterans Clint Mathis, Jason Kreis and new• comer Dante Washington, a recent pickup from • ' •' See R E A L Page 8 The newest member of the Real Salt Lake, Dante Washington, struggles to find some room against Chicago Fire defender Samuel Caballero. Real lost to Chicago 3-0 and will host FC Dallas June 4 at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Miller Motorsports Park zooms toward completion Matt Patton Chronicle Writer The Miller Motorsports Park Is slated to open in September and features the longest continuous racetrack in North America. Larry H. Miller is at it again. As if it weren't enough to be the owner of the Utah Jazz, 39 auto dealerships, movie theaters and many other projects, Miller decided it was time to follow his dream of having his own racetrack. Miller Motorsports Park, designed by architect Alan Wilson, will be the host of local auto, motorcycle and karting races, as well as national competitions, giving motorsports fans at the U a local option for entertainment. "We plan to be racing [locally] sometime in early to mid-September." Miller said of the track's progress. "We think we'll host our first national event next May." The racetrack will be located just off I-80 in Tooele, Utah and will be large enough to facilitate the needs for racers of ah1 interests and backgrounds. "It's a four-and-a-half mile track, the longest in North America," Miller said. "It can be sub-divided into an east track and a west track. One's quite fast and one's quite technical." Along with the long track, which will be used for motorcycle and auto racing, a 0.9 mile karting track will be onsite to host high-powered karts that can race at speeds above 100 mph. "With the karting track and these two tracks, we can run three events simultaneously." Miller said. Miller also explained the interest that national organizations are already showing in the track. "We've got four national organizations who have either sent us contract packages to bring events here, or are coming to see what the track is going to feature. Everybody that looks at it just comes away really excited." Miller was also surprised at the local enthusiasm that has already been generated since the park was announced. "It just shocked me how much excitement there is about this in the community." Miller expressed. "It's going to be fun, it's gonna be a much bigger thing than I had originally anticipated." mpatton@chronicle.utah.edu Who is the most overrated baseball player of them all? Moose is a froose ^ years from now, Mike Mussina will pick up career victory No. 300. He'll toss seven solid innings of work against the Detroit Tigers, giving up three earned runs and striking out five. The Yankees will win. The aging vet will be picked up [ by his teammates and carried on their shoulders into baseball im. mortality. A few years later, he'll • give a teary speech at the steps Chris '. of Cooperstown. • Funny—from all that, you'd think he was a '. great pitcher or something. ; ^Like 3,000 hits and 500 homers, 300 wins is . an automatic entrance into the Hall of Fame. I Barring injury, Mussina will reach the big 3. 0-0 in the next four orfiveyears, leading pun; dits and voters to turn off their brains and . grant him automatic entrance into the hal; lowed halls of Cooperstown, next to the likes . of Christy Mathewson and Roger Clemens. ; Mussina's Hall of Fame r6sume will be what George Tenet would call a "slam dunk." Frankly, I'm offended. Every time I see him pitch on national tele; vision, announcers gush, casually throwing • around words like "dominant" and "ace." If ; they would only hold his credentials up to the • light, they might realize that Mussina is nothI ing more than a poor man's Tom Glavine, It may seem that because I Red Sox fan, I'm more than a little biased. But believe me, when deciding who major league baseball's most overrated player was, I nearly chose Keith Foulke before deciding on Mussina. The difference was clear: While Foulke certainly gets plenty of hype, nobody's ever gonna put him in the Hall of Fame. Mussina, on the other hand, has received superstar status for more than a decade without ever doing anything to warrant such a distinction. DOn't get me wrong—Mussina is an excellent pitcher. He has impeccable control, and when he's on top of his game, he can be one of the best. But he's also a guy who, much like Chicago's Kerry Wood, has never lived up to Bellamy his early hype. Mussina was brilliant in 1992—his first full season in the majors—and yet he still hasn't matched that performance in the 12 subsequent years. Think about this: 1992 remains the only full season of his entire career in which his ERA has been under 3.00. The aforementioned Glavine, on the other hand, has been under the 3.00 mark six times. Despite spending the majority of his career on winning teams, Mussina has never won 20 games in a season, and since signing that $19 million-per-year contract with the Yankees five years ago, Mussina's total ERA has been 4.16. Mussina has had two, maybe three great seasons over his entire career—does that sound like a Hall of Famer to you? Hey, if that's the criteria, then Dante Bichette deserves to have his bust immortalized in bronze, too, right? If Mussina's going down in history, we might as well induct Bret Saberhagen. (After all, during his abbreviated peak, Sabes was way better than Mussina has ever been.) Baseball's modern era has ushered out the Dominant Big-Game Pitcher, and we've settled for solid guys who can go six innings and give way to the bullpen without allowing too much damage. In that regard, yes, Mussina is one of the best pitchers of this generation. But I don't think anyone should be rewarded for simply overcoming mediocrity. Mussina is often called an ace by the Joe Bucks and Tim McCarvers of the world, and because of them, he will be remembered that way. But Mussina never struck fear into other teams the way Clemens, or Randy Johnson, or Greg Maddux, or Pedro Martinez did in his prime. Those guys define what it means to be an ace. Mussina is just a second-rate copy. cbellamy@ chronicle.utah.edu Derek Jeter is apparently the new Jesus "(Derek) Jeter has a nice face, baseball's best players. a rugged face, a handsome face, Many hail the exalted shortequal parts black and white, the stop's leadership abilities, deemson of a black father and white ing them "intangible" and claimmother who had simple rules ing that No. 2 has a unique talent for him in high school, includfor inspiring teammates. ing being home by 10 p.m. every How realistic can that be? Do night and eating his lunch every you ever find yourself inspired day. That's why he is the face of by your coworkers? It's not the baseball." NFL, where Ray Lewis gets his teammates emotionally prepared That's why Tim Kurkjian is the to run through a brick wall. The face of stupidity. ESPN's senior Matthew Piper biggest influence Jeter could writer gushed this incoherent praise about the svelte Yankee legend with the have on a teammate is to let them borrow some inexplicable ability to make grown men swoon pine tar. in his Thursday ESPN.com column. Every time Jeter makes a diving catch, broadMichael Jordan's baseball poster boy has al- casters act as though Christ himself were risways impressed all the right people and said all ing from the infield stands. They should put a the right things to be a superstar. Kurkjian says moat between second and third in Yankee StaJeter even humbly refers to his infamous man- dium—it'd give the Yankees a huge home adager as "Mr. Torre," and that San Diego Padres vantage, what with Jeter being able to walk on pitcher Chris Hammond really looked up to water and all. Jeter in his single season with the Yankees. His classification as a "great fielder" comes How amazing, he's nice to his boss. Whoopie. almost exclusively from the bizarre overreacSome young pitcher looked up to him. Incred- tions to his best plays. Remember the shovel pass that he made to home plate against the ible. Why did Kurkjian use a quote from a current A's in 2001, when the commentators shed tears Padre about a Yankee? Probably because the of joy? Was I the only person alive thinking quotes he got from the current bunch of Yan- "I could have made that play, what's the big kees weren't quite waxing poetic enough for deal?" his tastes. His career fielding percentage of .974 is good,, Oh, I'm sure they all said he's a great team- but Royce Clayton is equally proficient. Teammate. mate Alex Rodriguez has an even better numThe solid shortstop doesn't even overreact ber at short (.977). when his own owner criticizes him. For a morAt the plate, he's only topped 80 RBI twice alistic media that can't seem to come to grips in his lo-year career. He doesn't walk often with the commercial state of things today, Jeter (just 46 times in 643 at-bats last season) and represents a bygone era of chivalrous restraint his career OPS of .846 is meager considering and integrity. his average. But so what? So he tries as hard as he can and I'm not denying the Derek Jeter is an outthinks before he opens his mouth—the same standing player and probably even a Hall of could be said for Richie Cunningham, and he's Famer, but he's the third-best shortstop in his no Fonzie. town (A-Rod and the Mets' Jose Reyes are betGranted, he is one of the best clutch hitters ter) and definitely not the best player in the in history, a career .315 hitter, he steals bases at world. So why is he worshipped like he is? a high percentage, and guys don't publicly demand to be traded away from him. That's just mpiper@ not enough to merit consideration as one of chronicle.utah.edu |