From a show that prides itself on being raw and edgy, First Take went surprisingly silent when the controversy involved one of their own.

Monday, Stephen A. Smith offered his apology for his incredibly stupid views on domestic violence during Friday’s show.

Then after Cari Champion weighed in, the show kicked off as if it was a normal Monday in Bristol: Talk about LeBron choosing No. 23 for his new jersey in Cleveland.

Really? Shouldn’t there have been a further examination of what Stephen A. experienced on Friday? Perhaps more talk on why this is such a hot button issue. I have a feeling Skip Bayless was aching to weigh in. I imagine that pre-show meeting was fairly intense.

Nope. ESPN just wants this all to go away. The network issued a statement shortly after Smith’s apology.

“We will continue to have constructive dialogue on this important topic. Stephen’s comments last Friday do not reflect our company’s point of view. As his apology demonstrates, he recognizes his mistakes and has a deeper appreciation of our company values.”

Oh, I’m sure when your career flashes before your eyes, you get a deeper appreciation of company values.

In case you missed it, check out this open narrated by Tom Brokaw.

The Washington Post’s DC Sports Blog has a post on how D.C.-area native James Brown thinks it is time to get rid of Washington’s nickname.

It is interesting to note that CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus is giving his NFL announcers the choice of whether they want to refer to the nickname this year. Sounds like JB will be talking about the team from Washington.

From the post:

“I firmly believe that this is a people issue. If, in fact — to me, this is my opinion only, not representing CBS Sports, or News — if the name is offensive to a group of people, then do the right thing and change the name. It’s as simple as that.

“I know people will engage in an argument and say, well it hasn’t been an issue all this time. Yeah, well, the civil rights issue was one where ‘that’s just the way it was’ for a long period of time, right? So that holds no basis and substance to me. Do the right thing. You know, a number of years ago, when I was a kid, there was a restaurant chain called Sambo’s, which, as I understand was the last name of two guys who owned the restaurant chain. But it was offensive to black people, so they changed the name, except for the one franchise in California I believe it was. Well, so, if in fact it’s offensive to Native Americans — and there doesn’t have to be unanimity on this, and don’t just have a intractable attitude saying, I’m not going to change — that’s wrong as far as I’m concerned. I’ll get in trouble with that, but I stand on principle.”

As primer for Sunday’s Hall of Fame ceremonies, everyone should listen to Buck O’Neil’s induction speech in 2006. Truly inspiring.

Wanted to pass along information about a unique golf show.

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For a very good reason, Edward “EQ” Sylvester may be the most passionate golfer who has ever taken a golf lesson. And as RFD-TV viewers will discover on the fourth episode of the hit show “The Rural Golfer”, Steve Elkington learned a lot more from Sylvester than the 1995 PGA Championship winner bestowed to his golf pupil.

The Rural Golfer airs on RFD-TV at 9:30 p.m. (ET) Friday, with encore shows airing at 12:30 p.m. Sunday (ET) and the following Friday at 6 a.m. (ET).

This week’s episode is one that will stay with all but the most hard-hearted person. It takes Elkington on the road to one of the most renowned public courses in the country – Cog Hill Golf & Country Club outside of Chicago. Known as the longtime former home of the PGA Tour’s Western Open and a past site of the FedExCup’s BMW Championship, Cog Hill now plays host to the Freedom Golf Assn. (FGA).

Which is where Elkington discovered Sylvester and his fellow FGA members – all of whom are physically challenged, but emotionally charged when it comes to golf.

“Today, we have found some of the most passionate people we may ever come across, Elkington said.

No doubt. Sylvester is a triple-amputee who in 2011, lost both feet, his left arm at the elbow and all but three fingers on his right hand to sepsis. When he awoke after a two-week coma and one of the 12 surgeries he would undergo, his passion for hitting golf balls awoke with him.

Once he discovered that courses around the country weren’t equipped or weren’t willing to work with golfers with special needs, so did his passion for helping other physically challenged golfers.

“One in five Americans are disabled – 50 million people. Of those, 18 million have physical disabilities and 6.7 million of those can’t make it without physical help,” Sylvester said. “Many of those want to play golf and we discovered that many of the courses around the country either didn’t know or didn’t want to help them.

“Here’s my mission. Let’s see what I can do to help them around the country. And the Freedom Golf Association was born.”

The Freedom Golf Assn. has one mission: “To bring freedom and joy to those with special needs through the game of golf,” Sylvester said.

Sylvester and fellow FGA ambassadors such as Bruce “Boomer” Miller, who lost his leg due to an aneurysm, do this by working with PGA of America professionals to help them become adaptive golf instructors and with courses around the country to help them become more accessible to physically challenged golfers.

The FGA has built relationships with The First Tee, the Wounded Warriors Foundation and the Special Olympics, forming alliances that can only grow the game.

One of Sylvester’s early champions was Frank Jemsek, whose father Joe, bought Cog Hill in 1951. After watching Sylvester struggle to hit golf balls with “my 4 mile-per-hour swing speed,” as he phrased it, Jemsek wasted little time in making Cog Hill one of the most accessible courses in the country and has rolled out the green carpet for Sylvester and other challenged golfers.

“We didn’t see any reason to take a portion of society and not let them be your customers, Jemsek said. “We’re in the people business in trying to accommodate golfers. I’m proud of the customers who are challenged and able to keep going.”

They do more than that. Before giving Sylvester a few tips, Elkington watched in awe as Sylvester strapped on a prosthetic left arm at his elbow, then attached a pivot that resembles a chair caster and plastic column that allows him to hinge and hold a golf club. He watched as Miller balanced on a prosthetic right leg and stroked arching, straight irons any golfer would be proud to hit.

“I just lost a leg. Big deal. I can still do the things I want to do. It just takes me longer. Golf lets you be yourself without the inhibitions. Here, I’m learning how to help people,” Miller said.

Sylvester talked at length how grateful he was for Elkington to spend time with him and his fellow physically challenged golfers. But Elkington – and the viewers of “The Rural Golfer” will be the ones grateful for the privilege.

“These are hopeful guys. They have plans,” Elkington said. “EQ has plans. When you listen to him, you realize that EQ will not be stopped.

“I think the most important thing anyone can have is hope and these guys are full of it.”

Rory McIlroy earned a Sports Illustrated cover for his victory in the British Open.

I imagine this headline on the cover caught the attention of the PGA of America: “Masters Preview 2015: Why wait?”

Michael Bamberger’s story already is pumping up the anticipation of McIlroy trying to complete the career Grand Slam at Augusta National next April. Still, I’m sure next month’s PGA Championship in Louisville will feel a bit overlooked. At last check, it still is considered a major.

Roger Angell gets his big day Saturday in Cooperstown when he receives the J.G. Taylor Spink Award. The honor is long overdue for the Hemingway of baseball writers.

Tom Verducci wrote about Angell in this week’s Sports Illustrated. Stop what you’re doing and read it now.

It is a beautiful piece. If you didn’t know it, you’d think Angell was the author of the story. When Verducci receives his Spink Award one day, I’m sure they will point to this profile as an example of his work.

It gets to the essence of what makes Angell a true treasure.

Verducci writes:

Writing well is hard. It requires constant thinking. The gears, flywheels and levers of the mind click and clatter nonstop. Writing is flying an airplane without instruments, almost always through the dark storms of doubt. It is new every time.

There’s an added difficulty with writing about baseball: The writer ages but the players do not. They are perpetually young, replaced almost imperceptibly by younger versions of themselves. Every season is like a summer-stock version of Bye Bye Birdie. Then one day a ballplayer with $100 million banked calls you “sir,” and you realize the chasm has grown Olduvai Gorge–wide.

Over the last half-century nobody has written baseball better than Roger Angell of The New Yorker. What he does with words, even today at 93, is what Mays did in centerfield and what Koufax did on the mound. His superior elegance and skill are obvious even to the untrained eye.

More..

A bit of quintessential Angell and a last line that belongs with Red’s: It is the summer of 1969, and Angell tries to decide which baseball he likes best, having sampled the Miracle Mets at Shea Stadium, the fledging Montreal Expos in the country-fair setting of Jarry Park and the bat-banging percussive might of the Red Sox and the Orioles at the Fens. “Then I remembered that I didn’t have to choose, for all these are parts of the feast that the old game can still bring us,” he wrote. “I felt what I almost always feel when I am watching a ball game: Just for those two or three hours, there is really no place I would rather be.”

By then Angell, more comfortable in the baseball cocoon, was adding expert reportage to his observational skills. He sought out the good talkers and had the manners and skill to elicit their most honest thoughts. Blass, a righthander who suddenly lost his ability to throw strikes, opened up to him as he had to no other writer. The Red Sox legend Smoky Joe Wood sat with Angell at a Yale–St. John’s game that turned out to be a classic duel between future big leaguers Ron Darling and Frank Viola. Pitcher David Cone, in his first three hours with Angell on a book collaboration, told such deep, moving stories about his childhood and his alcoholic father that Cone’s wife, Lynn, said in amazement, “I’ve never heard any of this!”

And then there was Gibson, the notoriously stern Cardinals ace who regarded reporters as he did poison sumac. “I never worked harder to set it up,” Angell says of the interview. “I was terrified. Gibby brings me to his house and he gives me a swimsuit, and we’re sitting by the side of his pool, and for three or four days I’m with him all the time. And he’s telling me every single thing I want to know. When the piece was finished, he sent me a picture of himself and wrote, ‘The world needs more people like you.’”

And his philosophy on writing:

In 1961, at a spring training B game in Orlando, catcher Norm Sherry told Koufax, who had nearly quit after the previous season because of chronic wildness, to take a little off his fastball to find the strike zone. It worked. Koufax threw seven no‑hit innings. It was the beginning of his march to pitching immortality. Koufax would later explain his apotheosis as “taking the grunt out of my fastball.” What Angell understood and mastered was taking the grunt out of writing. White showed him the way.

“Be clear,” Angell says. “You can write long, but be clear. And remember, you are speaking to the reader. It’s a letter to the reader.

“I used to have a terribly hard time starting, because when I wrote I didn’t do first drafts. I wrote the whole piece on typewriters and would x out and use Scotch tape. I think I began to realize that leads weren’t a big problem. You can start anywhere.”

The future is now for Golf World.

Golf Digest.com broke the news on its site:

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As part of the new strategic vision for Golf Digest and Golf World that began this spring with the introduction of the Golf Digest video channel, the relaunch of GolfDigest.com and the redesign of Golf Digest magazine, Golf Digest Editor-in-Chief Jerry Tarde and President Peter Hunsinger announce today a news division that combines the best of both Golf Digest and Golf World to expand our collective digital presence. With the sports news cycle demanding immediate access to quality content, we now will offer more of what our audience wants, when they want it and where they want to get it. To that end, beginning July 28, we’ll be making the following enhancements to both our golf brands.

Golf World will now be available exclusively on digital platforms. Instead of 31 times a year delivered in print, a week after tournaments are completed, Golf World will be delivered 50 times a year on Mondays at 7 a.m. EST, accessible on all digital devices.

Readers of Golf World will receive the quality content free of charge, and we will honor the value of their current Golf World print subscription with Golf Digest.

Golf World Editor-in-Chief Jaime Diaz will lead the new news-division team that will encompass contributors from both Golf Digest and GolfDigest.com. Video reports will be added to our coverage, including “The Rosaforte Report” in video with chief correspondent and columnist Tim Rosaforte. Golf World content will feature weekly bonus “Long Reads” as well as “10 Things We’re Talking About,” stats packages, and Mike Johnson’s exclusive equipment coverage from the pro tours.

Golf World will be instantly viewable from GolfDigest.com with daily updates on the latest golf news and tour coverage.

Digital designs will be enhanced to provide more ad spreads, and mobile designs will be upgraded to provide improved functionality for fans on the road. We recognize this is a big change from how we have operated and delivered the printed Golf World magazine in the past. But this evolution allows us to increase frequency, improve delivery time, and add video reporting to better meet the expectations of today’s readers.

We are also announcing today the launch of Golf Digest Mexico, a new licensee for a monthly print publication and website, and eventually for multimedia channels, as well as events. Golf Digest’s worldwide network now includes 29 editions in 17 languages and is the No. 1-distributed sports magazine in the world.

We want to acknowledge the many talented people who have brought us to this point. We also want to recognize those who are working on making this conversion as seamless and successful as possible, pushing boundaries to serve your needs.

For more than 67 years, Golf World has been the standard bearer in golf media, and with these changes, we are confident Golf World and Golf Digest will continue to be the go-to source for passionate golfers and fans around the world.

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As a long-time reader and occasional contributor, this comes as sad news. I always looked forward to getting the magazine in my mailbox.

Then again, I’m a long-time print guy. Geoff Shackelford, also a Golf World contributor, writes on his blog:

Let’s be honest, receiving the magazine days or even more after a tournament was complete just wasn’t going to work going forward. So hopefully this will be a step forward for Golf World. And to 67 great years in print…