Daily Archives: June 26, 2006

Handling defeat

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Mickelson.jpgMonty.jpgAlthough this NY Times article reports that Phil Mickelson is still having trouble getting over his 18th hole meltdown at last week’s U.S. Open, this earlier Alan Snipnuck article gives us a taste of why Mickelson is currently one of the most popular U.S. sporting figures:

On Saturday, . . . evening [after a grueling 3rd round of the US Open], cordoned off behind the Winged Foot clubhouse, a jolly group of fans had gathered to get a glimpse of their heroes. Player after grumpy player stomped past, looking like they were trying to find a puppy to kick. None stopped to sign autographs.

At 7:30 p.m. Mickelson emerged behind the clubhouse, having endured 45 minutes of media obligations. It had already been a long, draining day. His caddie, Jim MacKay, was nursing sore feet, and had peeled off his shoes and socks to reveal shocking tan lines on his ankles. Mickelson’s wife Amy was slumped against a clubhouse railing, occasionally checking her watch. The Mickelson escape car, a gray SUV, was idling nearby. But drawn by the chanting of his name, Phil jogged over to his adoring public. Not content to just scribble autographs, he began working the crowd with a giddy shtick.
A French cameraman got in Mickelson’s face to record the scene, and hearing his accent, Phil said,”I love Paris. Tour d’Argent is my favorite restaurant in the world.” When a fan asked Phil if he would be playing a tournament in France anytime soon, he stopped signing long enough to jiggle his ample midsection for effect. “I don’t go to Paris to play golf,” Mickelson said. “I go to eat. Obviously.” The crowd spooned it up.
By this time, a pretty blonde had wiggled her way to the front row and was trying to engage Phil with some flirty banter. Mickelson finally asked her for her phone number . . . and then passed on the digits to a sportswriter hovering nearby, giving him a showy introduction. The scribe and the toothsome fan wound up making dinner plans on the spot, a hookup that brought smiles from the burly state troopers doing crowd control. . . . Phil signed three more, and then with a wave he jumped into his car and sped off. On the drive home he made a call to the writer on his cell phone, referring to himself as “pimp daddy” and asking for an update on the date.

On the other side of the popularity coin, this John Huggan/Scotsman article reports on why Colin Montgomerie remains one of the least popular professional golfers in the US:

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Houston’s gift to Botswana

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bradshaw_lrg.jpgMajor W. Bradshaw has long been one of the talented physician-teachers that makes Houston Texas Medical Center such a fascinating place. Dr. Bradshaw came to Houston and the Baylor College of Medicine as an Assistant Professor of Medicine in 1972 to ramrod Baylor’s development of expertise in microbiology and immunology. An outstanding teacher, Dr. Bradshaw was promoted to Dean of Education in 1996 and to Senior Vice-President and Dean of Medical Education in 2004. Now, while most contemporaries are planning their retirement, the Chronicle’s Leigh Hopper reports that Dr. Bradshaw has other things in mind:

[After 30 years at Baylor], Bradshaw is making an unusual career move.
He’s heading to Botswana, a country in sub-Saharan Africa that is roughly the size of Texas.
Baylor is expected to announce this week that Bradshaw has accepted a job as interim founding dean at University of Botswana’s medical school, the first such school in a country with one of the world’s worst HIV rates. Next month, he and his wife move to Gaborone, Botswana’s capital, leaving their home, their children and grandchildren for at least a year.
“It’s pretty remarkable for (the University of Botswana) to have the sitting dean of education for the No. 10 medical school in the United States to all the sudden be their new founding dean,” said Baylor College of Medicine President Peter Traber. “That’s quite a recruitment.”

Dr. Bradshaw’s appointment is part of Baylor’s affiliation agreement with the University of Botswana, which is starting the country’s first medical school to address Botswana’s critical health needs, including a high percentage of the population that is infected with the HIV virus. Under the leadership of Baylor pediatric professor Mark Kline, Baylor has already opened a treatment center for HIV-infected children in Botswana in 2003 as a part of Baylor’s International Pediatric AIDS Initiative. What better legacy for a teacher such as Bradshaw — who has had a major influence on one of America’s finest medical schools — than to contribute his talents to the creation of a medical teaching institution in a part of the world that needs it the most. Just another example of the magnificent influence that the professionals of Houston’s remarkable Texas Medical Center are having throughout the world.

New York’s regulation premium

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Grasso.jpgThis Landon Thomas/NY Sunday Times article is the definitive report to date on the status of New York aspiring governor Eliot Spitzer’s lawsuit against former New York Stock Exchange chairman and CEO Richard Grasso (prior posts here) over Grasso’s $140 million pension from the NYSE. In short, the NYSE board was quite involved in Grasso’s compensation arrangements, although there is some question over how well the details of those arrangements were disclosed to the entire board. However, at the end of the day, the board members knew what they were doing, debated the merits of the package extensively and approved it. If this case were to be determined in accordance with the corporate case of the decade, then it would not even appear to be a close call — Grasso and the NYSE board wins.
So, you ask, what’s driving the lawsuit? Well, apart from the propaganda for Spitzer’s political campaign, Thomas reports that the NYSE has already incurred in excess of $40 million in legal fees and costs in defending Grasso and the other board members in the lawsuit. Inasmuch as the cost of defending the lawsuit will likely increase substantially by the time the case is resolved through either trial or settlement, the defense cost will likely be at least half again as large as Grasso’s pension itself. That cost is really just the regulation premium that firms should expect to pay if its board decisions on big ticket items do not pass muster with the Lord of Regulation. Can you imagine how high those regulation premiums will go when the Lord of Regulation is elevated to governor?