page 16, The Behrend Beacon, April 28, 2000
Cuban-Ameri
out to show solidarity
by Scott Wilson and April Witt
The Washington Post
April 25, 2000
MIAMI - He only had a few hours to
decide whether to leave a family he
loved for a country he did not know
and was taught to fear. The airplane
that would take his Cuban national
baseball team to a series of practice
games in Connecticut sat waiting at a
Miami airport.
At 17 years old, Michael Tejera, a
promising young pitcher, chose the
United States during the fateful
layover, seeking political asylum at
his uncle’s urging without having
considered the step before leaving
Cuba less than an hour before. He
called his mother, Lizette, from a
Miami radio station with the news.
“I’ve defected,” he told her. “Then we
all started crying. She couldn’t say
anything back.”
Tejera wouldn't see his parents
again for two years, when Miguel and
Lizette Tejera jammed into a 25-foot
boat with dozens of others and fled
Cuba. Michael, then playing in the
Florida Marlins’ minor league system,
left for Miami for a reunion that, in
some ways, is still unfolding.
• Tejera, now 23, was one of several
Latin American Florida Marlins, most
of whom are of Cuban descent, who
did not suit up Tuesday night against
the San Francisco Giants in support
of the citywide work strike called by
community leaders in Miami to
protest the Saturday seizure of 6-year
old Elian Gonzalez.
In New York, Mets shortstop Rey
Ordonez and third base coach Cookie
Rojas sat out Tuesday night’s game
against the Cincinnati Reds. Ordonez
and Rojas both were bom in Cuba and
live in Florida during the offseason.
Cuban native lose Canseco elected to
not play in Tampa Bay’s game against
the Kansas City Royals.
The decision by the players, who
include Marlins starting third
baseman Mike Lowell, whose wife is
Cuban and whose parents are Cuban
exiles, was a joining of hands with a
It’s finally over
by Sam Smith
Chicago Tribune
April 20, 2000
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - So many
other seasons have ended like this for
the Bulls, with a loss in the Palace, to
the Detroit Pistons. But not quite like
this.
Not with thousands of empty seats
and Matt Maloney trying to get by
John Crotty.
And so this Bulls team, losing to
the Pistons 112-91 Wednesday night,
slips into infamy with a 17-65 record,
the poorest season in franchise
history.
“We were a team that was picked
29th with Toni [Kukoc], and without
Toni it was a struggle,” coach Tim
Floyd acknowledged. “By and large,
from the All-Star break on we did give
ourselves opportunities to win
basketball games, but we didn’t have
enough to get over the top in a lot of
those games.
“It was a high-character group, a
group I’ll look back on and have good
memories about because of how they
approached the difficulties we had to
CNBC reaches agreement to televise senior
events from 2001-2004
by Steve Zipay
Newsday
April 25, 2000
In a deal that pairs blue chips and
chip shots, CNBC, the cable network
specializing in financial news, will
televise up to 33 Senior PGA Tour
events a year from 2001 through
2004.
Although CNBC also will
broadcast Olympic events from
Sydney, Australia in September and
will contiue to carry some NBA Finals
post-game shows, the new partnership
doesn’t signal a change in
programming direction.
community outraged over the
treatment of a child who lived among
them for less than five months.
But supporting the one-day strike
is more than a political statement. It
has become a story partly about the
sacrifices and separation of fathers
and sons. As with key elements of
Elian’s story, the boycott turns on
deep memories and personal
hardships endured to make the
passage from Cuba to the Florida
shores.
“I’ve been in this country 34 years,
my parents came in 1966 with three
small children, and I owe it to them
and my community to show my
support,” said Fredi Gonzalez, the
Marlins’ third base coach who
boycotted the game. “It’s a fine line.
You don’t want to get involved in
political arena. My parents took my
brother and sister out of this situation
and I owe it to them.”
The general strike called by more
than 30 community groups kept parts
of this city shuttered throughout the
day, but it failed to bring the city to a
stop. The decision by some Marlins
to boycott a home game, however,
captured the city’s attention.
The team’s endorsement of the
strike was viewed as a smart public
relations move in a community with
a large Hispanic population. After
winning the World Series three years
ago, the team's former owner traded
some of its most popular players,
including Cuban-born pitcher Livan
Hernandez, who was one of three
Giants who honored the strike
Tuesday night.
“I don’t think it had anything to do
with PR,” said Eric Carrington, the
director of media relations for the
Marlins, who are avergaing 14,000
fans per game in a stadium built to
hold 42,531. "It had to do with the
emotions and sensitivity of the staff,
the people who work and play for the
Marlins."
Since the Saturday morning raid
that spirited Elian to a reunion with
his father outside Washington,
Miami’s Cuban-American
take on this season.”
Floyd finishes his second year with
the Bulls with a 30-102 career record,
but he wasn’t the fastest coach in NBA
history to 100 losses. That was Brian
Winters with expansion Vancouver.
Floyd would have to win 50 games in
each of the next four years to get to
.500 for his NBA coaching career.
The Bulls fell behind by 10 at
halftime and put in an
uncharacteristically lackluster effort
as the Pistons, playing without the
injured Grant Hill, shot 63.8 percent
and had a double-figure lead the last
18 minutes.
Elton Brand closed out his rookie
season with 32 points and 11
rebounds. Brand averaged 20.1 points
and 10 rebounds and was one of just
seven players to average a double
double for the season.
“The toughest thing I faced was the
back-to-backs, the traveling,” Brand
said. “It was tough. I think I played
pretty well. I feel I was productive at
my position, but I still have a lot to
work on.
“Now I know what I have to work
on, in the post, left hand, get
“CNBC is not a sports network,”
Bob Wright, president and CEO of
parent NBC said Tuesday. “This is
just a highly compatible
package. Sixty-five percent of
CNBC’s audience is either interested
in, watches or plays golf,” said CNBC
President Bill Bolster. “For the past
five years, during major tournaments,
we’ve put up leaderboards during the
business day,”
ESPN had carried Senior PGA Tour
events since 1982, starting with one
event and culminating with 24 this
year. But ratings slipped from a 1.4
in 1990 to a 0.5 last year, and with
the Tour proposing a later weekend
community has denounced what they
view as an unconscionable armed
assault on the house. Many
community members say Elian should
be reunited with his father, Juan
Miguel Gonzalez, but not if that
means sending the boy back to a
communist country some of them
have fled at great peril.
Although the protests have divided
the city, it has brought together
generations of Cuban families who
observed the strike together and found
parallels between Elian’s story and
their own.
Tejera, who is currently on the
disabled list, joined horn-honking
protesters along Little Havana’s
busiest streets Tuesday. His father,
Miguel, took the day off from his job
at a Nissan dealership on Calle Ocho,
a cultural main street in the
community. Michael remembers
longing for his family to join him after
his 1994 defection, only to spend two
futile years trying to secure their
passage. His father said the family
talked about supporting the strike, and
eagerly decided to observe it together.
“This is a family decision,” Miguel
Tejera said. “We are all together on
this and worried about this case. This
decision is for the Cuban community,
and all of us are very upset about what
has happened with this giant
deception.”
Dominican and Puerto Rican
players joined their Cuban colleagues
in protest, Assistant general manager
Tony Perez, a Hall of Fame inductee,
was the most senior Marlins official
to spend the day away from the
ballpark. Javier Castro, a clubhouse
assistant, also won permission from
Marlins management to take the day
off.
Cuban-American pitchers Alex
Fernandez and Vladimir Nupez,
closer Antonio Alfonseca, outfielder
Danny Bautista, infield coach Tony
Taylor and bullpen catcher Luis Perez
also sat out the game for the Marlins.
Giants catcher Bobby Estalella, a
Cuban-American, also joined in the
something going to the baseline, free
throws, and get stronger so I can help
on defense more.”
Brand joins a select group of
rookies —David Robinson, Shaquille
O’Neal, Alonzo Mourning and Tim
Duncan —to average at least 20 points
and 10 rebounds in the last decade.
He’s the first Bull since Artis Gilmore
in 1979 to average more than 20
points and 10 rebounds. So will itlead
to the Rookie of the Year award?
“I don’t have a feel [for the vote],”
Brand said. “I think it will be pretty
close. I don’t even know how they do
it, first, second, third, whatever.
"It’s definitely meaningful [to win].
It’s a great honor. I definitely would
like to win. If it doesn’t happen, I’ve
still had a good rookie campaign. I
think I proved I can play in the NBA.
I think I’ve proved some people
wrong.”
It was a disappointing conclusion
for veteran Will Perdue, who didn’t
play for the second straight game after
playing a total of nine minutes in the
previous two. Perdue averaged just
2.5 points, 3.9 rebounds in 15 minutes'.
a game.
time slot, ESPN declined to renew the
arrangement.
Although financial terms weren’t
disclosed, Jim Colbert, a player and
member of the Senior Tour’s advisory
board, said purses will increase by at
least 10 percent and golfers will
appreciate the expanded corporate
marketing opportunities. “Palmer and
Nicklaus can’t represent everybody,”
Colbert said.
ESPN usually carried the Senior
Tour events in late afternoon, but
CNBC will air the events live and on
tape on Saturdays and Sundays from
6 to 8 p.m. to reduce overlap between
the Seniors and the PGA Tour events.
work stoppage.
Gonzalez, the third base coach,
arrived with his two siblings and
parents on a flight from Havana in
December 1966. Now he has a 6-year
old son of his own. “The laws should
decide,” Gonzalez said. “I want him
to be here with his father _ that’s best
case scenario. But 1 don’t know how
it will play out.”
Lowell, who leads the Marlins with
19 RBI and is batting .313, was born
in Puerto Rico to parents who fled
Cuba at a young age. He has
characterized is decisions as one of
“certain things you have to stand up
for-things you believe in.”
“I’m sure he had to struggle with
this decision,” said Carl V. Lowell,
Mike’s father who left Cuba when he
was 11 years old and closed his Coral
Gables dental practice Tuesday. “I am
proud of him beyond the baseball.
He’s always made me proud as a
person.”
In the near-empty stands Tuesday
night, reaction to the players’ and
coaches’ absence broke down along
ethnic lines, much as it has over the
course of the Elian saga. Best friends
Luis Mion, a Cuban-American
banker, and Ken Kendal, an Anglo
high school football coach, came to
the game together but with different
views on the importance of the
protest.
“I believe in what they are doing,”
Mion said. “It’s a statement of
solidarity with the community.”
Kendal joked, “By looking at these
stands, they need to get some
solidarity going so they can get some
fans.”
Will Williams, a North Miami
Beach television cameraman, came to
the game looking for some traditional
springtime escape from the drama that
has dominated news and conversation
in South Florida for nearly five
months.
“They have a right to do it, but I’m
not for the whole thing,” Williams
said. “Elian was used. It was all about
Cuba and Castro, not about the kid.”
Perdue took the biggest risk to
return to the Bulls, rejecting a three
year, $lO million offer from San
Antonio to sign for $lO million over
two years with the Bulls. Only the first
year, at $5.3 million, was guaranteed.
But Perdue says he doesn’t regret his
decision.
“I’ve thought, ‘What if I stayed in
San Antonio? What would things be
like?’ But I’ve never looked at it like
I made the wrong decision,” Perdue
said. “It didn’t work out like I’d
hoped, but as they say, there’s always
next year. Every time I’ve been faced
with a challenge, whether by
management or a coach, I’ve always
responded well. So I’m looking
forward to the offseason and the
upcoming season whether I’ll be in
Chicago or somewhere else.”
B.J. Armstrong, a Detroit native,
received a video tribute late in the
game from the Pistons.
“It’s special that I was able to end
my career walking off the floor,”
Armstrong said. “I was born and
raised in Detroit and I was able to
finish my career here. My career
exceeded my expectations.”
ESPN shows college football, NFL
and major league baseball
programming in that time frame.
CNBC is available in five million
fewer homes than ESPN, and Bolster
predicted ratings “in the area of point
six.” But consistent starting times will
help, he said, and the measure of
success will be “the quality of the
audience that really dovetails with
golf.” Not all Senior events are on
cable. Separate four-year deals with
NBC and ABC to televise the four
major Senior Tour events run through
2002, and those events will remain on
network TV afterward.
Beathard retires,
leaving Chargers in
familiar state
by T.J. Simers
Los Angeles Times
April 26, 2000
SAN DIEGO - Bobby Beathard
saved Alex Spanos, the owner of the
San Diego Chargers.
Ten years ago, he came to town and
bailed out an organization in chaos
because of Spanos’ blubbering and
blundering way of conducting
business.
Tuesday, Alex Spanos began the
first day of his life without General
Manager Bobby Beathard, 63, who
announced his retirement, and
Spanos immediately reverted to
blubbering and blundering form.
The Chargers replaced one of the
most instinctive, gutsy and proven
judges of football talent in NFL
history with an accountant.
The team announced that Ed
McGuire, a former account
representative for Met Life and a
senior manager of labor operations
for the NFL’s Management Council,
will now be the Chargers’ vice
president of football operations. He
will be in charge of everyone but the
owner of the team.
In a disappointing sign of the
times, McGuire, the guy with the
calculator, will be in charge of Billy
Devaney, who will pick the football
talent so long as it doesn’t disrupt the
bottom line, and Mike Riley, the guy
who will coach the affordable
players.
Would Bill Parcells or Jimmy
Johnson let a bean counter determine
their destiny?
Before Beathard came to San
Diego, providing both credibility and
stability and removing Spanos from
the media spotlight,
the Chargers were
Itsarray.
When Spanos
purchased the
Chargers in 1984,
he began meeting
with A 1 Saunders,
an assistant coach,
instead of Don
Coryell, the head
coach, thereby
undermining
Coryell. After
promoting Saunders
to assistant head
coach eight games
into the next season,
Spanos fired the
popular Coryell and
elevated Saunders.
Spanos also
sidestepped
Chargers’ General
Manager John
Sanders, and began
taking advice from
Ron Nay, who
headed up the
team’s scouting
department. When
SAM DIE
Nay fell out of favor, Spanos took
Raider owner A 1 Davis' advice and
hired Steve Ortmayer as general
manager. Later, he wondered out
loud why his good friend A 1 Davis
would steer him so wrong.
The Chargers, meanwhile, were
losing on the field, and Spanos
routinely used the media to blame
everyone in the organization except
himself. Team officials cringed every
time he opened his mouth.
When Beathard arrived, he did so
with the understanding that Spanos
would be muzzled. Spanos’ son,
Dean, became acting owner and the
buffer between the elder Spanos and
Beathard.
After four years, however,
Beathard could no longer take it. He
submitted his resignation to Dean
Spanos because Alex Spanos
wouldn’t come up with the money to
sign better players and would not
discuss it without losing his temper.
Eventually, Beathard withdrew his
resignation after Dean Spanos had a
chat with his father. The Chargers
then went on to play in the Super
Bowl.
It has not always been the best of
times with Beathard in control, but
Spanos has remained in the
background, knowing that his
interference would probably prompt
Beathard to walk away. Beathard has
talked about retirement the past
several years, a not-so-subtle
reminder to Alex Spanos to keep his
distance.
But now Beathard has decided to
leave, and has done so just a few
weeks after Alex Spanos infuriated
the people of San Diego by
demanding a new' stadium in the next
few years, with the implied threat that
if he doesn’t get it, he will move his
team.
The people of San Diego have
become increasingly irritated with
the Chargers because of a deal that
calls for the city to guarantee a sellout
each week or purchase the remaining
tickets as a credit against rent paid
by the team. That would cost the city
millions, because the Chargers
haven't been much of a draw while
going 17-31 the past three years.
At the same time Spanos has been
claiming that other NFL owners are
making more money because they
have better stadium deals.
Now the Chargers have lost
Beathard, who had the credentials to
tell Spanos to take a hike, because
he was there in Miami when the
Dolphins were winning Super Bowls
and in Washington when the
Redskins were winning Super Bowls.
“There’s only one Bobby
Former San Diego Chargers general manager
Bobby Beathard.
Beathard,” McGuire said. “It’s a
tough perception right now to
overcome, and even if we do well,
I’m not sure everyone in the league
is going to start turning everything
over to the cap guy or the salary guy.
But I think it can work here.”
The Chargers had a general
manager candidate ready to replace
Beathard in Devaney, a 17-year
faithful companion to Beathard. But
they passed, in favor of an
accountant.
“What can I say about Bobby and his
37 years (in the game),” said Alex
Spanos, before moving on to talk
about his 17 years with the Chargers
and his delight in making it to the
Super Bowl. “This is the first time
that I have appeared like this in a long
time (before the microphones).
Without Bobby ... ”
The blubbering has begun. It will
be followed shortly by the
blundering.