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	Welcome, Cooler Hall's first class By Brian Murphy Special to Page 2

A revelation was visited upon me this weekend, Cooler dwellers.

Jason Giambi
Jason Giambi gets into the Hall for noticing the little things.
It's well past time for the Cooler Hall of Fame.

Baseball has Cooperstown. Football has Canton. Basketball has -- what the hell does basketball have, Springfield? (Side note: Basketball is too great a sport to have a third-rate Hall of Fame. But in reality, how many sports fans know where the Basketball Hall of Fame is located? I say open a wing in French Lick, Ind., and another wing in Lansing, Mich., and start over.)

We need a Cooler Hall of Fame. We can put it in Vegas, at a sports book. Or in Los Angeles, in the home of that surfer-stoner guy who proclaimed, "We play some ball on the West Coast!" Or in a San Francisco tavern. Any of the three will do.

Point is, some men need to be honored by the brutally low standards we cherish at The Cooler. Understand, there will be no plaque, like in Cooperstown. No yellow jacket, like in Canton. Instead, we'll give a miniature replica of a shoeshine stand, in honor of our patron saint, Johnny, the shoeshine guy from the old "Police Squad!" episodes.

And each inductee, naturally, gets a six-pack. Domestic. Hey, what do we look like here, the Rockefellers?

Anyway, this vision came to me while catching the NFL draft this weekend.

I figure it's well past the time to honor Mel Kiper Jr.

I mean, let's face it. He won.

He has triumphed over all.

Since the lads in Bristol, Conn., took leave of their senses long enough to grant me a weekly forum, I've been trying to take down Mel Kiper Jr. in manner both subtle and sledgehammer. I've gone after the hair. I've wondered what it would look like, pre-shower, when he takes the 7 a.m. call from the Houston Texans' player personnel secretary. I've wondered what it looks like, middle of the night, when he's up, in his NFL helmet jammies, knocking back a glass of warm milk.

Mel Kiper Jr.
Mel Kiper Jr.
I've gone after his status as a savant. I've wondered if Edison or Stephen Hawking knew as much about their respective fields as Kiper knows of college talent -- my words dripping of irony so ferociously, they nearly shorted out my laptop.

I've mocked. I've admired.

And now I've come to worship.

Mel Kiper Jr. is a Hall of Famer, baby.

For his ability to survive. For his ability to stare down the gags, to win the blink-off with half-baked wise-asses looking to take him down. For his ability to show up, year after year, on an April weekend and pepper your cynicism with line drive after line drive of college football personnel takes.

This cat is a gamer.

He is part of the first class of inductees into the Cooler Hall of Fame, men so honored not for their obvious contributions, but for reasons entirely befitting my whims on a Sunday night with deadline pressing.

And hell, if we're going to make it a class of 'Famers, why stop with Kiper?

Also inducted today:

Jason Giambi: Not for his MVP award, or for his $120 million contract. No, we honor "G" as a Cooler 'Famer for his ability to dole out MVP quotes on command, even in the darkest of circumstances. Small example: In '99, the A's lost a key game to Boston in September at the Coliseum. The painful loss was made worse by the presence of a streaker in the ninth inning. Afterward, the clubhouse was sepulchral in its silence. Only Giambi, present at his locker, could utter the truth: "The dude had a sweet tan," Giambi said of the streaker. "He's defo been dropping some tokens in the booth."

Frank Sinatra: Not for the seminal, moving album "In the Wee Small Hours." Not for his Oscar turn in "From Here to Eternity." No, dwellers, we present Sinatra with his Shoeshine Stand because of two words: Ava Gardner, otherwise known as the Elin Nordegren of her time.

And before this sinks any lower, on to the Weekend List of Five:

1. Where is Jim Mora when you need him?

You know ... Jim Mora was right.
All due respect to my NFL-writing colleagues. You've got to grade the draft. I understand. The fans call for it, our editors call for it, and it fills up space for yet another day as we mark this trail of tears we call life. But you know what?

We don't know what.

We have no idea if the Cowboys' draft will begin the 21st century dynasty, the one that will get owner Jerry Jones so excited, he'll burst at the seams -- literally. (The facelift stands the possibility of busting open if Dallas makes the playoffs this year. But we digress.)

As Jim Mora once said to sportswriters, in words so scornful, italics do not even do them justice: "You don't know. You think you know. But you just ... don't ... know."

He's right. We don't. We don't know how a draft class is until, what, three, four, five years down the road?

Here's an idea for editors: On Draft Weekend, don't rate that team's selections from that year. Instead, use Draft Weekend to rate a team's draft from three, four and five years ago!

Dammit, I should be an editor. They don't work nights, and get lots of free lunches.

Except I'd probably have to buy a sports coat.

2. On the other hand ...

Scott Siegal
You have to see the level of fan devotion at the NFL draft to believe it.
What we do know is this: The crowd that attends the NFL draft every year is the finest selection of freaks and ne'er-do-wells our country can produce, and it is thus on an annual basis.

Was I on peyote or was there a portly woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty in the crowd this past weekend?

I'll never forget a Giants fan saluting the pick of Ike Hilliard as "the happiest day of my life, right there along with the birth of my son." You can't create characters like that ... they'd be seen as too obvious. Idea for Page 2 geniuses back in Bristol: Dispatch one of your minions to the crowd at the draft, to file a column from the lair of the lunatics.

Dammit, I really should be an editor.

Do clip-on ties count as real ties?

3. The NBA playoffs: Let the four-corners offense begin!
Eight teams played Saturday. One scored more than 90 points.

Nick Van Exel
At least Nick Van Exel and the Mavs remember how to score.
Eight teams played Sunday. One scored more than 100 points. What's next, satin ball-huggers for shorts? I mean, 1955 was a great year for a lot of reasons -- Mantle and Mays in their prime, young Elvis tearing it up; but it was also a terrible year for a lot of reasons -- Jim Crow laws in the South, and NBA games in the low 60s, scoring-wise.

Wait. I just did a Google search. Teams in the '50s were posting scores over 100!

So what's the excuse of today's NBA? Can a brother get a fast break, please? Toronto scored nine points in the first quarter. Nine points! What were they saying in the huddle: "Man, coach is going to make us run lines if we don't score 10 points in the second quarter"; or "Man, my algebra teacher made me stay after school today and I'm still pissed. No wonder I can't shoot today."

Last time I was part of a team that scored nine points in a quarter, I was more worried if the other team's cheerleaders were going to notice the enormous zit on my nose when I inbounded the ball.

Come on, NBA. I expect better.

4. Small-market baseball

Lee Stevens, Vladimir Guerrero
Say it with me, commish, "First-place Expos."
The A's. The Twins. The Pirates. The Expos.

Hey, Bud: These guys can play. What are you going to do, contract 'em? We dare you. An army of baseball lovers is flooding the nearest Foot Locker and buying these four ballcaps, pronto, and wearing 'em with pride all summer. Suggested contraction: Bud Selig's office. We can make it a possible site for the Cooler Hall of Fame.

5. A final entry into the inaugural CHOF class
Can't leave Burt Reynolds out of this group. Not for "Deliverance." Not even for shagging Loni Anderson through the late '70s and early '80s, which was the exact perfect time to shag Loni Anderson.

Instead, we honor him for one reason: No one ever worked a piece of gum quite like that man. Worth the price of admission.

Kiper, Giambi, Sinatra, Reynolds -- a tip of the Dixie Cup to you all.

Brian Murphy of the San Francisco Chronicle writes the "Weekend Water Cooler" every Monday for Page 2.

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