To the Honorable Sen Arlen Specter:

However ridiculous it may appear, given all the critical issues facing our government, you are, of course, entitled to pursue your solo crusade against the National Football League and its handling of the New England Patriots "Spygate" drama. And, of course, to bluster all you want, to threaten the league's treasured anti-trust exemption for its television contract, even though there is no indication that you have any support in this matter.

But what struck me recently, as you faced down your critics in this matter, was your sanctimonious insistence to the New York Times that "I've been at this line of work for a long time and no one has ever questioned my integrity." Frankly, Sen. Specter that is hogwash. I know for a fact because I personally questioned your integrity in this matter the last time I addressed it.

I recall those days when you were a member of the now extinct "moderate" tribe of the Republican Party. The GOP's new ruling class, steamed that you had joined the Democrats in sinking the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, threatened your political future if you didn't get behind the Clarence Thomas nomination. And get behind it you did--with a vengeance, going after Anita Hill just like one of the Republican pit bulls you had previously appeared to disdain. "Attaboy Arlen" they surely called you in certain discreet chambers of the White House and the Capital.

Then there's the matter of Comcast's support of your campaign. You dismissed that issue by lumping the company with 50,000 other contributors. But in 2004, 2006, 2008, Comcast donated more than $300,000 to your coffers, exceeded only by the $600,000-plus contributed by Blank Rome LLP, which happens to be the law firm that lobbies for Comcast. You know how it is--a million here, a million there, pretty soon you're talking about real money. And given that Comcast is feuding with the NFL over its desired fee structure for the NFL Network, what you have is, if not a clear conflict of interest, at the very least an appearance of one.

Beyond busting the NFL's chops, which must give Comcast pleasure, there simply doesn't appear to be a compelling public interest--certainly not one that mandates a governmental role--like the health issues that were an undercurrent at the baseball steroids hearings. In Matt Walsh, you may hope you've found your Brian McNamee. But McNamee was an admitted intimate of Roger Clemens, an employee that Clemens said he treated like family. And his testimony was, in critical parts, corroborated by Andy Pettitte, who despite straying on use of HGH, is respected as an honest, even righteous athlete. Walsh was a fringe employee who was fired years ago and appeared to violate law in both taping conversations with other Patriots employees and by stealing films. He sat on these films for years, was even quiet when Spygate first erupted, then hinted against the backdrop of the upcoming Super Bowl that he had dynamite in his hands. What he showed the NFL, only after receiving immunity, apparently wasn't dynamite, but just more of the same. So now he's letting drop these random tidbits of conversation for which he apparently has no evidence at all except his honorable word.

If the Comcast connection is not sufficient motivation for your interest, you have let it be known that you're still distressed by the loss of your hometown Eagles to the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX. It was as if in the second half they knew Philly's plays, you have been heard to gripe. Which doesn't exactly explain how Philly scored twice as many points in the second half as it did in the first and how Greg Lewis caught a 30-yard TD pass with less than two minutes to go when, it seemed, all the Patriots needed to do to win was to keep the Eagles from a quick scoring strike. Pretty shoddy defense from a team that apparently knew what was coming.  If you really want to understand what went wrong in the end game, you might go back to the tape and how spent Donovan McNabb was from eluding Patriots rushers and how inefficient Andy Reid was in getting plays from the sideline with any dispatch.

Meanwhile, if the integrity of our games is of such paramount interest to you, I have a bigger Spygate scandal you might care to investigate. For many years Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard Round the World", the home run that rallied the New York Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1951 National League playoff was regarded as baseball's greatest moment. There is now compelling evidence that Thomson's achievement was tainted, that the Giants were spying from a perch in center field and signaling their hitters what pitch was coming. Time is running out on this miscarriage, but both principals are still alive--Bobby Thomson is 84 while Ralph Branca, the pitcher he victimized is 82. Don't worry about Guantanamo, government eavesdropping or any of the other critical issues of justice in our times. You make your stand on the fields of justice. I'm sure we will all sleep better knowing you are on the case.

Respectfully yours,

Mark Starr

Newsweek Magazine

Nobody, least of all the Boston Celtics, could explain why it took the team with the NBA's best regular season record a full seven games to dispatch Atlanta in the first round of the NBA playoffs--how the Celtics kicked the Hawks, the only sub. 500 team to reach the postseason, by an average margin of 25 in its four wins at the Boston Garden, but lost all three games in Atlanta. The Celtics, who had the best road record (31-10) in the NBA this past season, are at it again: they smothered LeBron James and his Cleveland Cavaliers two straight at home, but last night suffered a second double-digit defeat in a row in Cleveland to square the series.

The home court is supposed to be an advantage--worth three points in most bookmaking operations, just like in football--but the Celtics are hardly alone in making it seemed even more conspicuous this 2008 playoff season. New Orleans ran defending champ San Antonio off the court in the opening pair at home, then were routed two straight by the Spurs when they crossed west into Texas. The Los Angeles Lakers are even up with the the Utah Jazz after losing both games in Salt Lake City, where the Jazz were a league-leading 37-4 this season. Home teams in this second round are 15-1, with only Detroit winning on the road, a one-point squeaker in Orlando.

Granted, home teams won more than 60 percent of the home games during the regular season and only 8 of 30 NBA teams had losing records at home. Still, the discrepancy in the numbers--home and away--in this playoff round has been mind-boggling. Look what happened when the the two teams that met in the 2007 Finals, the Spurs and the Cavaliers, arrived home trailing 0-2: San Antonio, having shot 41.6% from the field on the road, shot 49.7% at home. The Cavs jumped from 33.1 percent shooting in Boston to 49.3 percent. Even the superstars weren't immune to road woes: LeBron James shot 8 for 42 in Boston; Tim Duncan went 1 for 9 and scored just five points in the opener in New Orleans: and Kobe Bryant was 13 for 33 in the Laker loss Sunday.

So what exactly is the homecourt advantage? The comforts of home--familiar food, your own bed-- as well as knowing the court and the rim (and in the old Boston Garden, Red Auerbach used to play nasty tricks with the temperatures and conditions in the cramped visitors locker room) must play some part. And as the game has become increasingly emotive--more fist-pumping and chest-thumping--the crowd frenzy may have more effect, up and down, on today's players. Of course, there is also the critical question of whether the home crowd has an impact on the officiating. A likely case in point would be the key three-pointer scored by Detroit at the end of the third period of Game 2 against Orlando, where a clock snafu forced officials to guess whether the Pistons got the shot off within 5.1 seconds. Watching the game and guessing along with the officials it seemed unlikely to me and one inevitably wonders if the path of least resistance was dealing with an angry coach rather than Detroit's famously angry crowd.

Still, I confess I look hard for what I perceive to be official bias and--besides the consideration given superstars like James and Bryant, a time-honored NBA tradition--didn't see much clear evidence of it. The Cavs, for example, were awarded 53 free throws to Boston's 56 in the two games at the Garden, 51 to Boston's 50 at home. New Orleans shot 39 free throws to the Spurs 40 in New Orleans, 33 to the the Spurs 41 in San Antonio. Or to put it in human terms, I've seen LeBron lower his shoulder into a defender and actually get called for charging at both home and way in this series.

Whatever accounts for the discrepancy is a pretty good advertisement for David Stern's rejuvenated NBA. The oft-repeated complaint is that the season is too long, the players can't get up for 82 games and, thus, too many games are meaningless. Obviously, there is some truth in that. But this year's playoffs are demonstrating that playoff positioning counts a great deal and some good teams that had to open on the road may have been doomed from the start. The Celtics, by virtue of the best record in the league this year, are in position to pull of an unprecedented, if very unlikely, trick--winning the NBA championship without a single victory on the road.