Taylor Bell: June 2009 Archives

I'll be on vacation from June 15 to July 19 but my blog won't be taking any time off.

I have posted six stories/editorials/features in the last six days, enough to test your memory, challenge your moral code and stir your competitive juices.

I look forward upon my return to view your responses.

• If you could advise the NCAA on how best to re-tool the recruiting process, what would you do?

• Who are your choices as the best five high school basketball players in Illinois that you have seen since 1990?

• What is your best memory of high school baseball in the Chicago area, the best player you ever saw?

• The passing of Phillips football and track coach Carl Bonner rekindles memories of a time when the coaching profession was filled with giants, men who devoted 30 or more years of their lives to mentoring teenagers. How and why has the profession changed?

• Jack Bastable was a three-sport star before the era of specialization, the pure definition of athleticism. Could another Jack Bastable emerge today?

In the wake of our recent blog that rated the top five high school basketball players in Illinois since 1990, an astute reader responded:

"How can Dwyane Wade not be in the top five since 1990?"

Good question.

I didn't include Wade on my list because, for one reason or another, I never saw him play in high school. And the list was based on players I had seen over that period of time.

But others admitted they had committed a turnover.

In a recent blog, Jack Bastable was included on my list of the best high school football players I have seen in the last 50 years. Some readers said: "Who?" Bastable, a Wheeling graduate of 1969, isn't widely remembered by many people outside the Mid-Suburban League. But he should be.

Bastable certainly is well remembered by legendary columnist Bob Frisk, who covered high school sports for the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights for 50 years, and Jim Millay, who was Bastable's classmate at Wheeling.

Frisk described Bastable, a three-sport star, as a "fierce competitor" and rated him ahead of Barrington's Dan Pohlman, Arlington's George Bork and 13-letterman Bill Robinson of Arlington as the best player he ever saw. By most accounts, Bastable was the best athlete ever produced in the Mid-Suburban League.

Who are the five best Illinois high school basketball players you have seen since 1990?

My five? Kevin Garnett, Derrick Rose, Corey Maggette, Sergio McClain, Kiwane Garris.

My next five? Juwan Howard, Jon Scheyer, Quentin Richardson, Tom Kleinschmidt, Ronnie Fields.

I asked recruiting analysts Roy and Harv Schmidt of Illinois Prep Bulls-Eye, who have been observing and evaluating high school basketball players since the 1980s, to select the five best players they have seen since 1990.

It seems we agree in most cases.

For more than 40 years, Carl Bonner was one of the most soft-spoken, popular and respected coaches in the Chicago Public League. But his players and rival coaches always understood a competitive fire burned inside of him.

"He along with (the late Carver basketball coach) Larry Hawkins were the two greatest inspirations for many of us who went into coaching and wanted to follow in their footsteps," said longtime Dunbar coach Glenn Johnson, who knew Bonner for 40 years.

Bonner, who retired in 1991 after teaching and coaching for 42 years at Wendell Phillips High School on the South Side, died Tuesday of natural causes at Mercy Hospital in Chicago. He was 83.

High school baseball in Illinois has thrived since the days of Lou Boudreau. Did you know that Nokomis, a tiny Montgomery County town of 2,300 located 50 miles south of Springfield, has produced three Hall of Famers--Red Ruffing, Jim Bottomley and Ray Schalk?

The list of major leaguers produced in this state is impressive. It also includes Ted Kluszewski, Kirby Puckett, Phil Cavarretta, Greg Luzinski, Dave Kingman, Denny McLain, Bill Skowron, Cliff Floyd, Tom Haller, Dan Wilson, Curtis Granderson, Bill Gullickson, Paul Splittoff, Jim Bouton, Brett Butler, Ray Fosse, Ed Farmer, Jim Clancy, Steve Trout, Jim O'Toole, Mark Grant, Wes Chamberlain, Dave Otto, Jesse Barfield and Mike Marshall.

While Illinois hasn't produced many major league draft selections in recent years--the class of 2005, which featured first-round pick Michael Bowden, was exceptional--the state has an exemplary track record and continues to send talented prospects to big-time college programs.

Blame the NCAA, its coaches and administrators for turning the recruiting process into a national scandal, for turning teenagers into chopped sirloin, for creating street agents and influence peddlers, for cheapening the game while stuffing $1 billion into its own pockets.

Does it make sense to offer college scholarships to eighth graders because they can dribble a basketball or throw a football 60 yards in the air? Does the college of electrical engineering recruit 13-year-olds who can manipulate a slide rule like Hamelin plays Chopin?

It's all about greed and ego and money, not about the kids. They are innocent pawns who get caught up in a recruiting game that the NCAA allows the coaches to play. They invented the early commitment. Now it gets earlier and earlier. And if a recruit doesn't measure up to expectations, he is dropped like a penny stock.

I have had considerable dialogue with dozens of readers who have weighed in on the Derrick Rose controversy, commenting on my Sun-Times column and my blog, positive and negative. It has all been very educational and compelling. Whether the issue will be resolved, one way or the other, remains to be seen.

But one reader was particularly eloquent, incisive and opinionated in his view of the matter. I am printing his response, not because I happen to agree with him, but because I think he provides a viewpoint from a black perspective that blacks don't want to deal with and is rarely if ever communicated, one that whites don't understand.

In our online discussions, I asked him why the perception is that the black community has done a very poor job of addressing the issues relating to preparing high school athletes for college and the recruiting process associated with it. His response was riveting.