Golf

I never bought into all this anonymity stuff on the internet which leads me to the tiff between Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold and The Plain Dealer.

Apologists for the internet claim you can't have honest discourse without anonymity. Bull roar. Anonymity is a veil for cowards. You find honest discourse face to face in bars. On the internet it is often gossip, slander, scandal and malice.

I read letters to the editor in the paper because they're signed by actual people using their real names with serious thoughts. I don't read e-mails which are signed by nicknames, the way long distance truckers once were known by CB "handles."

First, the sad news that retired Plain Dealer sportswriter friend Paul Baumgartner died in his sleep Sunday in Lorain. That report from his son, Paul Baumgartner Jr. via e-mail Wednesday. No other details available. I'll update as soon as they are available. Please send this bulletin to any old PD people you know.

Statues at Notre Dame Are Moving

Tiger Woods did what he had to do -- and one thing he did not have to do -- in his carefully staged and manipulated mea culpa on ESPN Friday afternoon.

He apologized all over himself about a dozen times for his sexual binge during which time he deposited his seed over all four time zones in North America and possibly all 24 time zones around the world. He turned planet Earth into his personal brothel. It must have been hard for Tiger, standing in front of a national TV camera and saying, for the first time in his life that he was wrong, shameful, selfish and an embarrassment to himself, his family, his friends, his sponsors and the game of golf. It was the most humbling 13 1/2 minutes of his life. In an emotional sense he had to crawl on his belly like a snake. He must have felt like a piece of dung. For a guy like Tiger, it must have been agonizingly difficult. I wonder what was his most compelling motivation to do that, his sponsors or his family. He was a businessman before he was a family man.