Here is my real time review of Real Sports as it airs on HBO, August 26, 2008. Four stories as usual, three new, one update. Let’s get to tonight’s episode without further delay.
Reported by Bryant Gumbel, this story deals with the financial raping of sports fans through the concept of Personal Seat Licenses. With tough economic times, fans are being priced out of the market to see their favorite sports team. Six months after the New York Giants upset victory over the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl, Giants fans are angry. They’re angry after learning what they’ll have to pay for their season tickets for next season. What costs $100 now will cost 7 times that in the 2009 season. And worse yet, they’ll have to pay $20,000 just for the right to buy that seat.
Long time Giants season ticket holder Jay Goldberg tells Bryant that he doesn’t have any respect for the Giants ownership any more. Goldberg’s family has had season tickets to the Giants for more than 50 years. Jay’s father first bought season tickets for a low price. But as the cost has gone up, Jay kept his season tickets, he says money well spent. But for the right to get two seats in the new Giants Stadium, he has to pay $8,000. Jay says he’s no longer a Giants fan. Bryant asked if he just turned off the switch and Jay replies, “I didn’t turn it off, they (the Giants ownership) turned it off. “
New York City sports fans are being priced out of tickets as the Yankees, Mets, Giants and Jets are moving into new stadia next year. Bryant says all are carving out a new model for sports in America making it increasingly difficult for the average fan to afford a ticket.
In the Giants’ case, they’re adding on a one-time fee to the increased ticket prices known as a Personal Seat License or PSL. This means season ticket holders have to pay thousands of extra dollars just for the right to buy their tickets.
Co-owner of the Giants, John Mara, says he’s received many angry letters from season ticket holders since the team announced the PSL program. Mara says for the person who can’t afford the extreme bump in price, the team has different pricing levels. He says the Giants want to keep the season ticket holder. However, the season ticket holder still has to pay the PSL. Mara says he has to have the PSL to keep up with the Joneses and in this case, it’s Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones who’s also building a new stadium.
Jones is also charging season ticket holders a PSL for the right to sit in the new Cowboys stadium when it opens next season. Cowboys fans would have to pay up to $150,000 per seat.
John Mara says with the Eagles, Redskins and Cowboys, the other teams in the Giants’ division with new stadia, the team is at a competitive disadvantage as far as revenue streams are concerned. He says the team would have been fine for the next three or four years, but would have fallen way behind the other teams after that.
Jay Goldberg says that’s hogwash. The Giants are the defending Super Bowl champions. How more competitive do they need to be? Goldberg says the Giants have the right to make money on their new stadium, but he’s not going to be the sucker who goes along with it.
Ticket prices are skyrocketing all over the country. Bryant points out that the Baltimore Ravens are charging $345 for their top level seat. The Los Angeles Dodgers ask fans to shell out $650 for dugout seats. The Washington Nationals, the worst team in Major League Baseball, have seats at 330. But even with the high prices, attendance is rising along with the ticket prices.
Doctor of economics, Mark Rosentraub tells Bryant that the current rate of increases for tickets are the highest that have ever happened. Dr. Rosentraub tracks the inflation in ticket prices and he says the average fan can still take his family to games, but he’s not going to be able to afford the best seats at the premium levels. Rosentraub says as you go higher in the stadium, the prices go down, and you’ll find the average fan in the last rows in the 3rd deck.
Dr. Rosentraub says Mara is not hurting for season ticket holders because the Giants have a long waiting list of fans who are willing to pay the exhorbitant PSL’s. And Mara can also afford to move fans to lower priced seats so he can get other people in. Rosentraub says the PSL is a risk to the fan because he’s playing the futures market hoping that the value of his ticket doesn’t go down. The fan by paying the PSL takes on the risk and takes it off the owner. Rosentraub says the PSL is a bad risk for the fan because he doesn’t know when the ticket price bubble will burst like the real estate market did last year.
And rising ticket prices are scaring off those who can afford them, like long time Yankees fan Marshall Goldberg who has been sitting in the same box seat at Yankee Stadium for over 30 years. When Goldberg first bought his season tickets in 1976, they cost $8 a ticket and the World Series went up to $15. Goldberg says the prices have gone up over the years, but the increases were reasonable until about three years ago. He says in 2006, the ticket cost $105, then up to $135 in ’07 and to $150 this year. Goldberg says that’s when he knew trouble was coming. That trouble is the new Yankee Stadium that will open across the street from the current edifice next year.
When the Yankees called Goldberg to see if he was going to purchase season tickets for the new stadium, he was flabbergasted to hear the sales pitch. He says with those seats, he can get all the food he can eat for free, free parking and special bathrooms built for certain seat holders. Goldberg said that sounded nice, what was the cost? He was told $2,500 per seat. He said that comes to $10,000 per game and there are 81 games. The Yankees would be sending him an invoice for $810,000 for a ticket that cost $81,000 the previous year.
Although he has shared his love of the Yankees over the years with his sons and grandchildren, Goldberg says he’ll be ending his relationship with the team after this season. Goldberg says he would be embarrassed to sit in a seat that costs $2,500. He says it’s the end of an era of an individual holding decent seats in a stadium. Bryant says after over 30 years, he must know the other ticket holders around him. He asked if they’ll be coming back and Goldberg says no. They can’t afford to. Goldberg says that area will all be corporate seats from now on.
Mark Rosentraub says internet sites like StubHub where fans can legally resell their tickets to the highest bidder are to blame for skyrocketing prices. He says when sports leagues starting having relationships with StubHub, owners found out what people were willing to pay for tickets. He said owners may have been pricing their seats to low and now they’re charging the real price that the market will bear. In a sense, Rosentraub says fans have made this market and now they’ll have to sleep in the bed they’ve made.
Jay Goldberg says he’ll have to think of something else to do with his Sundays. Bryant asked him five years from now, won’t he have buyer’s remorse, but Jay replied no. He could not have any respect for himself if he paid the money. He says having his respect is more important than watching a Giants game.
Bryant says the Jets who will be sharing the same stadium with the Giants announced they’ll have 27,000 seats with no PSL’s, but have not said how much more expensive those tickets will be.
An excellent report. Grade – A.
Reported by Bernard Go
ldberg, this is a story about developer Donald Trump’s efforts to build a golf course in the tiny Scottish village of Balmedie. It’s just outside of Aberdeen on the northeast coast of Scotland. Trump says it will be “the Greatest Luxury Golf Resort the World has ever seen.” The course would be on 1,400 acres of unspoiled land along 3.8 miles of pristine coastline next to giant sand dunes that have been around for thousands of years.
Trump says the place is beautiful now, but when he’s finished with it, the coastline will even be more beautiful. He says there no piece of land in the world like it where he could be the World’s Greatest Golf Course. It’s not just a golf course he wants to build. Bernie describes what Trump wants to do is to build a golf metropolis. That would include 500 luxury houses, 950 condos and an 8 story, 450 room hotel. The total cost of the project, an estimated $2 billion.
Of course, when there’s Trump, there’s controversy and there’s a big one right dab in the middle of Scotland. Environmentalists are against it saying the golf course would disturb the natural beauty of the coastline. The battle has become so heated that Trump himself showed up at a public hearing the Scottish government held on whether to approve the start of construction.
Trump was asked if there were any critics of the project and he said most everyone in town loved the project and were in favor of it.
And in the birthplace of golf, wouldn’t you know that there’s even a Biblical implication to the story. In a modern day David vs. Goliath, Trump playing Goliath, there’s a David who’s land sits right in the middle of where the Donald wants to build his mammoth golf course. Right on a shed on the farm which sits in the middle of where Trump wants to build is a message painted in red as clear as day, “NO GOLF COURSE“.
Michael Forbes is the David battling Goliath. He’s a 56 year old blue collar man who lives in his farm that sits on 23 acres of land. It’s filled with barns, tractors, farm equipment and spare tires. It’s not a pretty site. The proposed hotel would be located very close to his farm.
Forbes says he doesn’t want to be surrounded by Trump’s golf course. Trump offered Forbes But Forbes says he’s happy right where he is living with his wife and 84 year old mother. Forbes says his father was born close by, so was his uncle and mother so he has a lot of roots in the area and there’s no reason for him to move away. But it isn’t just about family ties.
Forbes met Trump face-to-face when the Donald made an offer he didn’t think Forbes would refuse. Forbes wasn’t the least bit impressed. Forbes says as long as he’s alive, the farm will never be sold and definitely not to Donald Trump. Forbes says he’ll make sure in his will and his son will never sell the land to Donald Trump. Forbes says he wasn’t willing to sell, but he was willing to clean up his property as a goodwill gesture.
But that changed when Trump went on Scottish TV and basically called out Forbes for living in a dump. He said, “Go down and take a look at how badly maintained that piece of property is. It’s disgusting.”For Forbes, the gloves were off. He says he might have cleaned up, but not now. Forbes says he’ll put out some more rubbish. And he’s not threatening, he promising he’ll do it.
For his part, Trump says Forbes’ property is a slum and he wouldn’t think Scotland would allow it to be located next to a place where the world’s tourists would gather to play golf. Trump says Forbes’ property is a disgusting place and it’s terrible.
Trump says Forbes made a mistake, thinking he could hold out until Trump caved. Trump says he was actually willing to sell his land and then he wanted more money. When Bernie told him that Forbes’ version of the story is different, Trump says he wasn’t shocked at all. He says, “Michael Forbes was ready, willing and able to sell his land, then changed this mind.”
Forbes says that’s not true. He says he doesn’t have a price no matter what Trump says. When asked if he would take $5 million from Trump, Forbes says he telll him to shove it and he means it.
Michael’s 84 year old mother says Trump speaks crap. She says she never swears or calls anyone names, but Donald makes her.
In Aberdeen, eight miles away, Bernie took an unscientific poll of residents in a pub and he found a majority love the golf course and want the money that tourists would bring to the area.
Trump is hopeful that the golf resort would be approved, but he’s not sure.
Mickey Foote who lives on a small piece of land overlooking the proposed resort says “This is a piece of country you couldn’t replace. That’s why he came here because it’s a beautiful piece of country. So why does he want to shit all over it?” Foote loves the view without the houses and hotel. As for the residents in favor of the course, Foote says they’re intoxicated with the idea of having celebrities in town. He says the residents won’t even see anyone as they drive back and forth from work.
Foote says the only thing they’ll see is “a fucking great tower with a ‘T’ on top of it.”
There’s also the issue of the 4,000 year old sand dunes which are considered a national treasure in Scotland. Trump would have to turn some of them into fairways and greens to stop the sand from blowing onto the golf course. He says by doing that, he’s actually preserving the dunes. Foote says the dunes have been around for 4,000 years. They don’t need saving.
And there’s another issue with those against the course. Trump himself. They say Trump may go over well with the social elite, but for them, his bigger-than-life persona is too much. Trump himself feels that may have a lot do with the delays in construction. He says if he was anonymous person with a lot of money wanting to build the course, it might have been approved quicker.
Trump has battled people who have not wanted to sell their property to him. In Atlantic City, NJ in the 1990’s, a woman refused to sell her property to Trump as he wanted to build a parking lot for his Trump Plaza. Trump built the lot around her house and the woman still lives there today.
So knowing that, Trump says let’s see how it plays out. He says it’s a long term deal and he’ll see how it plays out. Bernie tried to press him on what that meant, but Trump would not budge. He even suggested that he and Michael Forbes might be friends one day. But Forbes doesn’t appear to be heading in that direction. As he and Bernie were looking at his horse eating grass in what would be near the Trump hotel, Forbes says he hopes he craps on the doorstep.
In their transition, Bernie says if Trump builds a second golf course on the land, Forbes’ farm would be right smack next to it. And if the hotel is built there, a guest will be staring right into the farm. Bernie says the good thing about being Donald Trump is that people will want to come if he builds the golf course. The bad thing is that people don’t like his bigger-than-life persona and it doesn’t play in Northeastern Scotland.
Bernie says the decision to build will come in about a month by the highest levels of Scottish government, from the Finance Minister. And the Finance Minister who wants to promote development might say yes.
It’s a good story. Grade, A minus.
In this story reported by Frank Deford, we look at the increasing problem of gambling on professional tennis.
While the image of tennis has been the classy look and the prim and proper fans, over the last few years, the image has changed as serious gamblers have now come into the game. Eddy Murray, a professional gambler living in London says internet gambling has become widespread in the tennis game as people can place bets
from their homes and watch the matches at the same time. You may not know it, but tennis has grown into the third most wagered-on sport, only behind horse racing and soccer. Most of the action occurs on Betfair, the world’s largest betting exchange based in the UK.
Launched in 2000, it’s set up as an exchange so people can bet against each other, this way, the bettors set the odds instead of the house. Gamblers can place bets not just before, but during an event.
Last August while betting on an obscure tennis match, Murray noticed millions of dollars were placed on a big underdog to defeat his heavily favored opponent. Murray felt someone knew something and was willing to place huge money on that knowledge. The money was placed on a second round match at the Prokom Open, a minor tour stop in Poland between 4th ranked Nikolay Davydenko of Russia and 67th ranked Martin Vassallo Arguello of Argentina. Early betting showed Davydenko to be a 5-1 favorite.
Murray says Davydenko won the first set 6-2 easily. He should have gone up to a 20-1 favorite at that point. But instead, something else happened. Betting started going the other way. Bets kept coming in on Arguello’s side. And Arguello came back from a set down to tie the match. Murray says that should not happen especially with the World’s no. 4 ranked player. There was no evidence of any injury. And in the 3rd set, suddenly, Davydenko quit saying he hurt his foot.
Betfair co-founder Mark Davies says it looked as if the betting was dictating the action, not the other way around. He was so suspicious of the match, that he suspended all bets placed on the match. The Betfair people were also stunned at the amount bet on such a minor match which turned out to be $7 million. Normally, the amount is about ten times less for such a match. Davies says it didn’t seem right so bets on the match were voided. It had never been done before in Betfair’s history and Davies says it hasn’t happened since. Davies would not say if any bets came from Russia, but the company did give information to a private investigator hired by the ATP Tour, the men’s side of professional tennis.
A confidential report from the ATP lists three Betfair users from Russia placed $1 million in bets on Arguello. For their part, Davydenko and Arguello maintain they did nothing wrong and a year later, the ATP is still investigating the affair. But because the match was so unusual, the image of tennis has taken a beating.
After the ATP commissioned a report on gambling in tennis called the Gunn-Rees report, the findings as Deford says, were stunning. In the five years before that suspicious Davydenko-Arguello match, there were 45 matches in which gamblers appeared to know the results ahead of time. In addition, the ATP found eight of its players had gambled on matches. An Italian player, Giorgio Gallamberte had made hundreds of bets including on his own matches. He admitted wrongdoing, but said he did not bet against himself to lose.
Then coaches and players came forward and admitted that gamblers would ask them to throw matches in exchange for money. A Belgian coach Marc De Hous says gamblers would approach a favored player and give him cash to throw a match. The favored player is given a small percentage of the winnings. Another Belgian, Gilles Elseneer says in 2005 at Wimbledon, a man approached him in the locker room offering him $140,000 to throw his first round match. Elseneer says he refused because Wimbledon meant too much to him and he still could look in the mirror.
Deford says Real Sports found about 15 players who admitted to reporters that they had been approached, but refused to take money to throw matches. Author Michael Mewshaw whose book Short Circuit exposed financial corruption in tennis a quarter century ago says you have to wonder of those who were approached and didn’t say anything. He says tennis is like professional boxing, it’s an individual sport that’s vulnerable to corruption. Mewshaw wrote that players would bet each other and promoters would pay top players money under the table to get them to play at their events. He feels the current gambling problem is rooted in what he calls “casual corruption”. Mewshaw says in order for the gambling to stop, the culture of tennis would have to change. It’s accepted in tennis that a player would tank to leave one tournament so he can play in another.
Mewshaw says he actually saw an ATP official give the green light to a player to tank a match so he could go to another tournament. And a player can lose a tournament, tank job or not, and not affect his ranking. A player has to play 18 tournaments a year including all four Grand Slams. Anything that happens after that does not affect the ranking. Of those 18, thirteen are mandatory events, the other five are picked by the player. The Gunn-Rees report says the tournaments that don’t affect a player’s ranking are “vulnerable to corrupt practice and presenta threat to the integrity of tennis.”
Tennis can change the problem by changing its ranking system, but there’s one thing it can’t police and that’s the internet. Five years ago, gambling on tennis exploded as people could bet from the comfort of their own homes. Mewshaw says internet wagering has led to suspicions he had never seen in the 25 years of investigating tennis.
Betfair’s Mark Davies says if tennis wants to clean up its sport, it has to get rid of those who could be bought. He says naturally, Betfair is not to blame for the corruption in tennis. Since 2003, Betfair has provided information to the ATP of suspisious gambling and even provided information about a 2005 match that involved, Nikolay Davydenko. Mewshaw says a match in Gestaad, Switzerland involving Davydenko and an Armenian player who was low ranked and there was a suspicious betting pattern on that as well. After a two week investigation, no impropriety was found.
The ATP refused repeated requests by Real Sports for an on camera interview, but did say it has a zero tolerance policy on betting on matches. Mewshaw says he’ll believe it when he sees a decision on the Davydenko match in Poland.
Frank tells Bryant that the ATP is hoping that this story goes away. He says the ATP has put up a smokescreen saying it’s conducted a great investigation, but Frank points out it’s not. He says the Davydenko match is one of the most egregious matches that he’s heard of in any sport and nothing has been done. Frank says the ATP is treating the gambling problem as a nuisance it hopes will go away. Frank says the investigation was a sham, the review was no more than a college term paper and he learned more about the problem through newspapers than the ATP. He said the number one recommendation from the review that if any player was caught gambling should be punished. Frank sarcastically says the ATP is now getting tough.
Frank says the culture of tanking has to change and fixing is just an easy step over.
Kind of a confusing story. A good one, but I think this story belonged to Bernard Goldberg who probably would have gotten some more information out of this. Grade, B.
Reported by Jon Frankel, this is an update from a story done two years ago. Last month in the All Star Home Run Derby, Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers his 28 home runs at Yankee Stadium in the first round. It served as a reminder of how good Hamilton is. In only his second Major League season, it also gave fans a chance to know how far he has come and how far he had fallen. Just three years ago, Hamilton was washed up and a drug addict. Baseball was the last thing on his mind.
Hamilton said drugs consumed him. He thought about every day, before he went to
bed, when he woke up. Josh says he couldn’t control himself and he was amazed at how a smell of a drug can remind him of how much drugs took over his body.
His fall from grace came after major league scouts had projected him to be one of the great players. Dan Jennings, a former director of scouting for the Tampa Bay Rays and current Vice President of Personnel for the Florida Marlins says other than Alex Rodriguez, Hamilton was the mos talent amateur player he had ever scouted. He was one of the more than 50 scouts who would attend Hamilton’s games at high school during his senior year. And Jennings says he was impressed his Hamilton’s makeup off the field, how he carried himself, his character and his personality.
The Tampa Bay Rays signed Hamilton in 1999, taking him ahead of Josh Beckett who was drafted by the Marlins. He received close to a $4 million signing bonus. Hamilton used it to pay off his parents’ debts. And when Hamilton played his first year in the minors, his parents would come with him. Josh bought them a truck so they could follow him around the circuit and he would stay with his parents rather than stay with the team. He says it was as if he was still home. Mom would cook dinner, wash his clothes and Josh says he didn’t feel like he was missing out on anything.
In 2001, there were reports that Hamilton had a good shot at making the Rays, but that’s when his troubles began. During spring training, the truck that he bought his parents got blindsided when a car ran a red light. His parents went back to their native North Carolina to recover, Josh stayed in Florida to rehab broken vertebrae that he had suffered in the crash. It would be the first time he would be without his parents and baseball, two of the things he loved.
That’s when with a lot of time on his hands, Hamilton who had gotten tattoos on his legs started to hang out at a local parlor. He would get two or three tattoos a day and then partying with the tattoo parlor owners at night. That’s when he started drinking and doing cocaine.
The Rays found out and then sent Hamilton to the Betty Ford Clinic, but he left after 8 days against doctor’s advice.
When his arm was injured in the 2002 season, Josh went to his native Raleigh to get surgery and started hanging out with high school friends. It was there that his drinking led to abusing cocaine. Hamilton said he would go on binges staying awake for three or four days, sleeping for a day and a half. He says the worst thing he did was pawn off his Single A Championship ring to buy drugs. To this day, Josh does not have that ring.
And playing baseball could get Josh to stop abusing drugs. In 2003, he reported to spring training still using, but then took a leave of absence missing the entire season citing personal reasons.
In September 2003, he showed up at the doorstep of a former girlfriend, strung out on drugs at 2 a.m. But Josh did not want to see the girl, he wanted to see her father. Michael Chadwick. Chadwick says he knew who it was and he saw someone who was physically drained, lost, scared, didn’t know where to go. Hamilton worked construction jobs for Chadwick and knew he was someone he could turn to. But he did not know how well equipped Chadwick could help him. Because Michael himself had battled drugs and counsels teens and athletes on how to avoid the same problems.
Chadwick helped Hamilton to confront his addictions, but didn’t save him from it. The next year, Hamilton had an up and down year, going on binges, cleaning himself up, relapses, and numerous failed drug tests. Due to the tests, Major League Baseball suspended Hamilton for the entire 2004 and 2005 seasons.
Hamilton then followed Chadwick, speaking at schools about drugs. He dated Chadwick’s daughter, Katie, got married and had a daughter. But after another relapse, Katie kicked him out of the house. She says there was a point that she didn’t know if he was going to survive.
Hamilton says rock bottom for him was being out in the country with six people he didn’t know, in a trailer letting a dope man use his truck to get him some more drugs. In the fall of 2005, after losing 40 pounds, Hamilton showed up on his grandmother’s steps. She took him in. He went to see a therapist. He tried to reconcile with Katie. During his visit home, he held his daughter Sierra only for the second time since she was born and broke down crying. He says he knew then that he couldn’t go down the wrong path anymore.
He started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Moved back in with Katie, Sierra and his step-daughter, Julia. All that was missing was baseball. He started training at a youth academy. Major League Baseball took notice and allowed him to train at the Rays’ minor league facility in 2006.
Within a month, he was back in the minors, playing in Wappinger Falls, NY. But he had Katie and the kids with him. His family followed the team’s bus sometimes driving 10 hours each way. And Katie makes sure he came back home by picking him up at the ballpark and driving him back, taking one car. Katie said she wasn’t afraid he would get drugs, but she was eliminating the chance for him to go to a bar and get sidetracked. And she wouldn’t give him a large amount of money.
His comeback only lasted 15 games when he suffered a season ending knee injury. But he stayed clean and surprisingly, the Cincinnati Reds added him to the team in 2007 and he made his Major League debut last April as a 25 year old rookie. He hit 19 homers coming off the bench.
But this season, Josh was playing full-time after being traded to the Texas Rangers in the offseason. Hamilton has been hitting over .300 this season, was voted to the American League All-Star team and has been mentioned as an MVP candidate. But after going through what he was seen over the last six years, Hamilton takes nothing for granted.
Hamilton says he’ll never be fully cured and he wakes up telling himself to be responsible and do the right things every day.
Bryant says Josh leads the majors with 116 RBI hitting .301 with 29 home runs. And Josh and Katie are proud parents to a new baby girl.
Inspirational story. One that will need to be updated again down the line to see how he does.
Grade – A.
Final Comment – Ricky Williams
Now I’ll transcribe Bryant’s final comemnt.
“Finally tonight, a few words about Ricky Williams, that miscast, misunderstood complex running back with a fondness for marajuana. A former number one pick who has to yet to fulfill his potential, Williams has missed most of the past two NFL seasons due to violations of the league’s substance abuse policy. Now he’s back. He opens the season with the Miami Dolphins a week from this Sunday, I for one will be rooting for him.
“I like Ricky for all the reasons most NFL hardliners don’t. He’s complicated, publicity shy, free thinking and he doesn’t buy the idea that football is all that important. If you’re tired of typical jocks, you gotta like someone like Williams who doesn’t drink the league’s Kool Aid and who is capable of saying as Ricky did, that he loves to play football, but he hates being a football player.
“While that statement drew odd responses who don’t do nuance, it actually fits Williams perfectly. His unwillingness never be seen as only a character in the ongoing soap opera of sports is admirable. That he and his drug appetite never quite fit in in a league that punishes players for lesser transgressions was predictable.
“Ricky’s comeback this season is no sure thing, far from it. But truth is, Williams can’t afford to be an idealistic kid who digs getting high anymore. He’s a 31 year old man with a family to support and football is not only his best way to do that, it may be his only way, which makes the story more ironic. Ricky Williams, a talented guy with a capacity for cannibis finally comes back to football because he found
the grass wasn’t greener. Now there’s a morality tale even a hardliner can root for.
“And that’s our show for this evening.”
What? I’m not a hardliner, but that is preposterous. Ricky has done this to himself and while I’m for second chances, he’s not only had his second chance, but third and fourth chances as well. Grade – F.
Overall grade – B. Bryant’s comments brings the grade down.
