There are a lot of responsibilities that rest on the shoulders of managers or coaches, but the chief one is deciding who ought to be playing.

In most sports you have some ups and downs of personal performance, but it is perhaps most recognizable in baseball. The numbers tell the story. Pitchers either pitch well or they don't. Hitters either hit or they don't.

Thus we have the problem of the left side of the Milwaukee Brewers where Casey McGehee and Yuniesky Betancourt have been major disappointments. If I had to pick, it would be McGehee who gets the nod as the most disappointing.

When the Brewers got Betancourt everybody kind of knew what they were getting. An average hitter, an average fielder but better than nothing.

McGehee, who had a big year last season, isn't even within spitting distance of his performance in 2010.

The question of what to do with that side of the infield is one that rests mainly with Ron Roenicke and, to a slightly lesser extent, Doug Melvin. If Roenicke loses faith in these two guys, Melvin has to find replacements.

Both players have done better as of late, which just goes to show that while sports talk radio is an easy place to make decisions like this, the manager's spot is so hard that it just about boggles the mind.

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The world of professional golf has changed since Tiger Woods decided that his left leg was going to keep him from playing. This came after his heart seemed for sale and he missed a bunch of tournaments.

But it's not the leg or the heart that seems to bedevil this one-time idol.

It's his head.

This guy shows all the symptoms of a train wreck spinning out of control. In the last year he has fired his wife, swing coach, agent and now, his famed caddie, Steve Williams. Next in line are his gardener, barber, car mechanic, babysitter (for the few times he gets his kids) and personal chef.

I know people seem fascinated by when the chosen one is going to come back and vanquish the rest of the tour players. My guess is never. That's right. I don't think Tiger Woods is long for the world of professional golf. He has been wounded too severely.

He may come back and give it a try. But nobody's afraid of Tiger Woods anymore. And without that fear, he's just going to be one of the guys. And that's not good enough for him so my guess is that he retires early and goes on to commit himself to charity work and putting his fortune to good use. I think he will try to make amends for all of the crap and will probably help to make the world a better place. I'd rather see that than watch Tiger be a faded star who people tell jokes about.

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It's just about the most dreaded word in all of sports.

Choke.

It's almost never used by athletes or managers or coaches. It is used a lot by sports talk radio people and fans.

But it's a dangerous word, fraught with the potential for overstatement and overreaching.

Shannon Boxx, Carli Lloyd and Tobin Heath, the three women soccer players who missed penalty kicks in the World Cup final, choked.

It was pressure time. Immense pressure. And they failed, badly. They performed totally unlike their normal performance.

It's tough to say. But they clearly choked.

* * *

Now that the NFL is back in business, I think there is one guy who has a lot of work to do when it comes to healing wounds.

Commissioner Roger Goodell needs to find a way to make the players not hate him. They don't have to love him, but he's got to have their respect and right now he doesn't have it.

Goodell needs to address things like his personal conduct policy, which is about the vaguest rule on the face of the earth. The unequal treatment of players under this rule has the players and their union looking for a line in the sand where they can stand.

The best thing Goodell could do is huddle with the players and jointly develop a policy that makes sense and can be applied with fairness and judicial balance.