Yes, I agree with him, finally

As some of ya'll who know me might be aware, I do not like Bud Selig. I think he has been greatly involved with the demise of baseball. He was hired by the owners, WHILE HE WAS AN OWNER, albeit as he sold his team, the Milwaukee Brewers TO HIS SISTER!!! They had a fellow named Fay Vincent who had the job thrust on him shortly after his predecessor, Bart Giamatti banned Pete Rose, for life, then died 8 days later. The owners locked out the players during spring training only to have Vincent step in and get both sides to iron out a deal, and it worked, So, the owners fired him. They then put one of their own in, and it has been nothing but Limberger-esque smelly ever since. He sided with the owners to the point that it cost us the 1994 World Series. I think he has just as much to do with the steroid epidemic as anyone else in baseball, cause chicks dig the long ball. But, for once, I am having to agree with him. I was driving pizzas around Salem Monday night, so I didn't see the game, but from what I can see, he did everything that should be done. The press asked him several times about ending the game as the score after 5 innings, and he stated that they cannot do that in the playoffs, but what if they could? Can you imagine the real black-eye if an entire baseball season that saw a permanent celler-dweller come from nowhere to get to the series just to be eliminated in a 5 inning game? Look, he did what he could to get the game done, but it just wasn't meant to be, but he tried. We can watch the rest of the game tomorrow night, or whenever, but the fans in the seats were sitting through this, and they deserved a chance to see the game. So, I think he did the right thing. He attempted to play the game, and waited to see if Mother Nature was going to let them get the game in, but it wasn't to be.
In short, I agree with your decisions Bud, no matter what the circumstances were. Only took you 16 years to do something I agree with, but you finally did. Try not to wait another 16 years to do something that makes sense.

20 years later

Its been twenty years since Kirk Gibson hit his monster home run, and I still remember watching it, IN HORROR, as it happened. I have always been an Orioles fan, but also liked the Big Red Machine of the 70's Cincinnati Reds, so I automatically hated the Los Angeles Dodgers. I had moved to Mountain View CA (the southern tip of the San Francisco Bay, thus in that San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose traingle known as the Bay Area) in April of 1988, so I watched with excitement as the Oakland A's just plowed through the American League. I worked at a sporting goods store at the time, and recall putting a halloween decoration in the front corner window of the store, it was a ghost with a big green logo A on its front. It was the coolest thing to me being in a city while a championship caliber team was doing its thing. It would be commonplace for the two years I was there, between the A's (and the Giants in 89. Yes, we were there during the earthquake, but thats a different blog entry for another day) and the 49ers. I remember having just gotten home when game one came on. I watched with excitement as the game proceeded through 8 2/3rd innings, and thinking here comes Kirk Gibson, that fiery hot-headed jerk I remember watching just a few years before during the Detroit Tigers huge 85 season. But here he was, and his knees were shot, and he just couldn't run. It wsa Eck on the mound, which was as automatic as Mariano or Papelbon are today. Then he hit that home run, and while limping around the bases, all I could think was, this was going to be the Dodgers series, and Oakland would be lucky to win one game. Well they did, they won game 3, but that was it.
After having just watched this replayed on ESPN Classic this evening, I thought about it for quite some time, and I think this was the most amazing home-run in the clutch I ever personally watched. I remember watching some of the 1980 miracle on ice, and I watched the entire Miami-Boston College football game, hating Miami, and thinking this game is over, and then trying to decipher in my mind that Flutie actually completed that pass. I saw Les Hinson and Va Tech beat Florida State in basketball when I was in high school by hitting an 89.5 foot shot. But I am almost certain that this was the most clutch piece of hitting in baseball I ever saw as it happened. He hit it on a 3-2 pitch with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning in a World Series game.
A current day afterthought. I have been rooting somewhat for the Dodgers this year, but only, and I truely mean only, to watch Manny beat the Red Sox, if the Sox make it, but fortunately it looks as if the Tampa Bay Rays will be ehading there to play the Phillies, unless LA or the Sox can overcome a 3-1 games deficit. GO RAYS

9/11

To Osama bin Laden,
I thought I would write you a letter and tell you how things are going. It's been seven years since your thug henchmen brought down the World Trade Center towers, along with a section of the pentagon. I thought I would update you on your progress.
I sat and watched a show on the History Channel tonight about that morning in New York City with my son. He stayed up an hour past his bedtime to watch, and he also saw a tear or two come to his father's eyes. You ruined alot of families and took alot of lives of people who had done nothing to you. You made it perfectly clear that your god told you to do this. I want to take issue with that statement. I believe that all religions who pray to a god pray to the same God. I think it would be ludicrous to think otherwise, or else alot of people in this world would rot in hell while they did their best to raise decent families by the values that their individual religion taught them. But my God would never tell anyone to kill thousands of people. When God wants to end my country and its people, he'll do things like erupt the volcano under Yellowstone and drop a 9.0 earthquake on the New Madrid Fault, bring hurricanes in, etc. Trust me, he doesn't need you to do that kind of work.
As for me versus you. You are very rich, so rich that you stay in a cave. You may have some sort of electricity there, but you live in a cave. I, on the other hand, am not so rich, actually going through an extremely tough time with money. I only live in a house, send my son to school, and I got in my truck today and drove to Salem to get a poorboy sandwich from O'Brian Meats. Iy's a great sandwich, about 10 different cuts of meat, mayo, mustard, all the vegatable trimmings, even had jalapeno peppers on it. Cost me 1.50. Got one for my son, who I then picked up from school. To recap, you live in a cave under constant surveillance, on the run from a powerful army, while I drive around my town and live life as I should. I think I'll keep my life.
Here's what I think we should do. Once we find you, and I bet we will, we will have a raffle, sell a bunch of tickets, and the winner gets to nail your scrotum to the floor of a barn, put a claw hammer about ten inches out of your reach, pour gas on the hay in the loft, and light it with a match. Should fry you in a pot with some fatback. Actually, we'll bury you with a pig. Castrate you before killing you so your 72 virgins will have a good laugh. Get this, I don't believe in the death penalty, but in your case, I can make an exception. Do the world a favor and just die you miserable son of a bitch

RIP Jerry Reed

We lost one of the best guitar players to walk this earth Sunday, 31Aug. Jerry Reed was 71. I remember his radio hits from the 70's like Amos Moses and When You're Hot, You're Hot, but the one that always sticks out in my mind is Lord Mr Ford. A song about gas prices and polluting emissions and the problems with too many cars, and he did it in 1973, but it really rings true today. Jerry, you will certainly be missed.

Minor league baseball, still a good time

I was fortunate to sit down last night with my son, my old buddy Paul, and one of his friends and his friend's two sons to watch our hometown Salem Avalanche play the Frederick Keys. It was a good game until the 7th inning. My son was dying to go get a hot dog during the 7th inning stretch. This is why I jokingly blamed him for what happened next. Frederick batted around and scored 7 runs, along with a pitching change, made for a long half-inning that blew out what was a tie ballgame after 6 innings. The thing I took away from the game, as far as the game itself, is one of the greatest catches I have ever witnessed live at the ballpark. IN the top of the 9th, the right fielder made a catch on the warning track at full speed, and instantly ran HARD into the wall. He got up after a tumble and recieved a standing ovation form most of the large crowd (reported by The Roanoke Times as 6,299).
Paul and I talked most of the game, and even made a comment jokingly about there being some ballgame interrupting our conversation. I had alot of fun hanging out with that Steeler Dirt Freak. Tonight is the last home game of the season in Salem. It's getting close to football season I guess. My wife asked me the other night if Obama had picked his running back yet, and YES, she does know what a running mate and running back both are.
Next year we invite the Red Sox back to the valley as the parent team. My son will wear all of his Yankee garb, and I guess I will have to stock up on some Orioles gear, thus making it a family distaste for those Red Sox

What civil liberties?

I went to a beautiful music festival last weekend, same one I go to every year. My son (12 years old) and I went up Thursday to a beautiful hillside just outside Terra Alta WV. My wife had declined to go because she was afraid it would be too hot, it was 44 degrees at sunrise Saturday morning. Its the kind of festival where as long as your beer, or whatever you are drinking, isn't in a bottle, and you aren't doing hard drugs, no one will mess with you. Everything is peaceful and laidback. Bands from 4pm to 1am Friday, plus a band in the "barn", which is converted to a bar basically, until 5am. Saturday music was from about 1pm to 1am, again with a band in the barn afterward until 3am.
Well, here is where my rant begins. There is another festival each July just a few mountains over,and it draws big name bands and huge crowds. THe land is not as well groomed, and the crowds are filled with frat-boy partyers and outright crazies that word was caused some trouble, and thus the county, or the state as the case was, decided to just pull everyone for a time on Friday and hassle them. Try and make it a miserable weekend. There wasn't even any probable cause, just pulling people over as they turned into the private drive for the place. Thank you Preston County and/or the West Virginia police departments for putting the onus of other people's issues on these nice folks. Now for anyone who is asking what kind of people are at this location, yes there is some pot-smoking types there, but they are not crazy, belligerent, or generally obnoxious. I guess they think I should take my son to a football game, like say nearby in Morgantown on a single Saturday, for three hours, wade through the glass and litter of a asphalt parking lot, pay $5 at least for a hot dog that the bun is soft from one end to the other if I am darn lucky, and probably $5 for a 16 oz Pepsi, and if we get a souvenier, then I would have spent $50, at least. And I guess there are no people at a game who are drunk, beligernt, or throw crap when a referee gets a call wrong. Now don't get me wrong, I love football games, and would enjoy it. My reasoning is where is it that the football game is more of a wholesome family experience then the festival. I paid $90 at the gate to get in, although I could have early-bird for as little as $60, depending on how soon I order tickets, and my son is free. Yes, any child 15 or under is free. My son eats probably 10 grilled cheese sandwiches from the grill, and at $1.50, plus tipping the remaining 50 cents, I have spent twenty dollars all weekend. And what problem has this caused outside of the possible digestive issues of 10 grilled cheese sandwiches in 2 days? I have never been around a group of people who as a whole clean up after themselves more than this group.
TO Trip, Emily, and the Sunshine Daydream Campground family, thanks once again for a great place, and I hope that the crowd isn't pressured away becasue some group of "authorities" decided to blatently remove people's civil liberties.

Now don't get me started on the Patriot Act.....

Class, or the lack thereof, Part II

My buddy Paul will freak becuase I have posted twice in a 24 hour period, but this second one provides me the chance to speak out for someone, and surely ALOT of people will disagree with me.

Coach Robert Knight, I will miss you. Although I have not always agreed with everything you did, I really enjoyed watching you coach. Three events come to mind, of which two were you directly.
The first was a game your Hoosiers were playing, in South Bend, against the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. From an early age I have always been an Irish fan. Don't ask me why a boy raised Southern Baptist would root for the Irish, but I was from the days of Ara Parsegian. There are three basketball games the Irish played that I watched and remember vividly. I watched when they took down UCLA to end an 88-game winning streak. I watched them lose to Virginia Tech in the NIT finals (coached by Don DeVoe, whom was one out of the stable of coaches that was an assistant under you). But this story surrounds a game between Indiana and Notre Dame. It was early in the first half, and Bobby Knight was upset at the refs for bad calls on one end of the floor, and Digger Phelps, then the Irish coach, was upset at calls at the other end of the court. The two of them casually walked toward each other and started a conversation while the game went up and down the court, standing in front of the scorers table. This started some crazy fan reaction, and after one REALLY bad call, some trash was thrown onto the court by Irish fans. Coach Phelps got on the loudspeaker and demanded this behvior quit. I remember to this day thinking, "Wow, I wonder what those refs feel like right now."
The second was actually two events, one each of the summers of 1980 and 1981, in which I spent a week on campus of Indiana U, in Bloomington. I fell in love with the campus, and ultimately in love with the basketball team.
The third was watching a game one night in which you pulled a player off the court and chewed him out royally, on national television, and then sent him to the bench. After the game, when some reporter started harping on this player, you (in your usual press conference way) lit into this reporter saying what went on with you and the player was between you and him, and the team, and that was all that was said.

Granted, I have seen you do some things that even I questioned, the Jeremy Schaap interview actually being the worst, but they were few in my mind. I was very upset when you were let go in Indiana, and was happy to see you get hired by Texas Tech. I just wish you had gotten more of a chance to take that team to prominence, but I bet you laid some groundwork that will lead them to better times. If your son does not fare as well as you have, please remember the Schaap interview, although somewhere in my mind, I would bet that you have tried to discuss that one with Mr Schaap and put it behind the two of you.

Although most all of my friends have disagreed with me through the years, I think you were a class act, and I thank you for the great teams and games I got watch you coach. And for those friends who say "he wasn't class. Coach K, now thats class". Where do you think the Duke coach got his start?

Class, or the lack thereof

Watched the big game tonight. Finally, a Super Bowl that went the way I wanted. Haven't been too many of those lately. Kind of goofy at times, but it was a great game. So, who will quarterback the next NFL championship team, Archie Manning? All joking aside, I was stunned by something I saw at the end of the game tonight. Because of their "dynasty" status, and not being a team I loved all my life, the New England Patriots were put instantly into my "can't stand" catagory over the last few years. You know, you may have watched them when they first came up, but now they are wearing thin, having been that team for years now. Anyway, it comes down to the end of the game, and there is that debacle of one (or really should have been two) seconds on the clock, and they need to run a play, but both coaches are running out on the field to shake hands. The referee is between them and is trying to stop this, but Bill Belicheck is having no part of it. He grabs Tom Caughlin's hand, says great game and runs off. Now there has to be several people who are telling him the game is not over yet, but he just runs off the field, doesn't care. I understand its no fun losing, but you have been there three times before as the winner. How would you have felt if Mike Martz, John Fox, or Andy Reid had done that to you? Mr. Belicheck, that was about as classless as you can get. You have shown signs of being a jerk before, but this is beyond comparison. There are arguments for your ways before, but I cannot find one for this. Please, in the future, unless you decide to step down, try being above all that picture you portrayed tonight.