The Richmond Flying Squirrels celebrated in appropriate fashion, coming back to knock of the New Britain Rock Cats, 3-2, last night to take their season-opening series.
And finally, this:
Monday, April 08, 2013
Happy Squirrel Week!
As @teegrec reminds us, today begins the third annual DC Squirrel Week. The following video offers Washington Post columnist John Kelly's explanation of the celebration. For the record, smarmy interviewer Brook Silva-Braga is on the list. Gonna be a shame when he finds his car filled with acorns.
The Richmond Flying Squirrels celebrated in appropriate fashion, coming back to knock of the New Britain Rock Cats, 3-2, last night to take their season-opening series.
And finally, this:
The Richmond Flying Squirrels celebrated in appropriate fashion, coming back to knock of the New Britain Rock Cats, 3-2, last night to take their season-opening series.
And finally, this:
men's league soccer game at 9:00 tonight. i may yet succeed in not watching any of the final four. miffed.
ReplyDeleteSo...rough weekend... I was out offering free bibles to pre-teen girls like I do every weekend, and some crazy bitch came by and called the police on me.
ReplyDeletegonna be hard to top that comment this week. way to set the bar, geoff. most of us haven't even stretched yet.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
ReplyDeleteGeoff is just pumped for the Masters. The twinkling piano and Jim Nantz whispering in his ear really get him going.
ReplyDeleteIts a tradition unlike any other...except for all the other golf tournaments.
ReplyDeleteThe Masters: ultimate couch nap television.
ReplyDeleteGheorghies--I want to call your attention to Fox's HuffPo piece today about the hypocrisy of the NCAA. I think you will like it:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/domonique-foxworth/mike-rice-fired_b_3032566.html
the ncaa as we know it will cease to exist within 10 years. i'm more certain of this than i am the rise of rugby as the nfl's successor. we'll see separate governing bodies for football, basketball, and olympic sports, and players at the division 1 level in the former two will be allowed to receive monetary compensation. hear me now, believe me later.
ReplyDeleteone of the people that works for me just used 'golly gee willikers' in context, and completely without irony. minnesotans are a nice lot.
ReplyDeleteThe question for me is what are the alternatives that are better than what exists now? There are a lot of good things about college sports at all levels: players, coaches, students, alumni, and general sports fans.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think most people would agree that college sports are generally pretty good to the coaches, students, alumni, and general sports fans (unless we want to make the funding argument for the non-sports-fan student). So really we're talking about the players.
ReplyDeleteBut even for the players, college sports are absolutely tremendous in almost all cases. For 95%+ of the players, they're getting scholarships to play sports that they love, even when there's no real market for the services that they're providing. Is playing tennis or soccer at whatever school producing $30-50K? Usually not, but they're getting compensated.
And they're doing something they love. Is it a lot of "work"? Yeah, of course it is. But there are millions of people who put in "work" to improve themselves in athletic endeavors, whether it's basketball, general fitness, triathlons, golf.
There's a reason why these guys and girls are crying when their seasons are over. Crying. In public, sometimes on national TV. They love it. It's great. Playing sports, being on a team, competing. In some cases on a massive stage. It's awesome.
How many of us would pay good money just to run out of the tunnel with the team before a football game at Florida or Alabama or Ohio State, let alone play in the games? How many college athletes - both famous and anonymous - think of their sporting memories as some of the best times of their lives?
It's not perfect. But once people start taking it apart, there's a real risk that it won't get put back together properly and that we'll be losing out on a of really good things.
college sports isn't going anywhere, just the way in which it's organized. football and basketball are massive businesses masquerading as amateur sports. some of that facade will get ripped away for those sports at the highest levels. i don't really think it'll have much meaningful impact on how we view the games or how the players feel about their efforts - they'll just receive a more equitable share of the economic value they create. realistically, we're talking about 50 football programs and 100 or so hoops programs. Everyone else reorganizes below that.
ReplyDeleteYes robert, we must make sure we aggressively intervene and redistribute the wealth. That's what America is all about.
ReplyDeletejust so i'm clear, you're arguing for artificial restraints on market activity?
ReplyDeleteas for me, i'm making a prediction, not offering an opinion. if it were up to me, syracuse and georgetown would be legal mandated to be in the same league.
ReplyDeleteI think you're massively underestimating the amount of complexity both in the existing system and in the development of any proposed "solution". It's not a static situation. If one thing is changed, other things will change in response. Will they change enough to harm the sport? I don't know, but it's possible.
ReplyDeleteAnd I haven't really heard many realistic solutions to these problems. Pay everybody? The same amount? How much? How does that affect other sports programs? Which schools? How does it impact Title 9? What if you pay somebody who ends up smoking weed or stealing a car? What if it's just a guy who doesn't practice hard? Do you get your money back?
The only solution I've heard that sounds somewhat workable is for schools/boosters to be allowed to pay their players any amount for any sport. This would work, but it might be unseemly. It would minimize the amount of oversight and bureaucracy and it would leave budgetary issues up to the schools. It would also create a $$ arms race that would bother people. But it would solve the problem of getting money into the hands of the players and it would create a very high level of transparency in recruiting.
Of course eventually it would probably lead to calls for a salary cap...and then who knows...
And here rob goes with his mandates now...
ReplyDeletemandates tend to lead to gay marriage. so yeah, they're awesome.
ReplyDeleteThey should put Bud Selig in charge of this transition. He'd figure out a way to make everyone 100% equally incensed AND get pictures of Spider-Man on all NCAA basketballs.
ReplyDeletea lot going one here! i've got to stop doing stuff and spend more time reading gheorghe.
ReplyDeleteOf all the major sports commissioners right now, couldn't you make a pretty strong case that Selig has done the best job over the last 5-10 years?
ReplyDeleteAlso, Gerry and Jeff, it's Squirrel Week. Please don't badger the Squirrel during Squirrel Week. He doesn't gopher that.
ReplyDeleteClearly anybody with that kind of pun output deserves to be paid. End this injustice immediately.
ReplyDeleteI also like how you swapped the first letter of our names. What I like even more is the feeling of disappointment when you thought, "wow I could've swapping these letters for years and I just thought of it now?"
If you love intraleague play, the expansion of playoff teams, and the Dodgers in turmoil, Bud has been your guy for the last 5 years. Also, if you hate the Mets and therefore want the Wilpons owning the team, you love how Bud Selig's friendship with Fred Wilpon allowed Wilpon to stay put even though he's pretty much a known participant in the Madoff crimes.
ReplyDeleteAnd Selig's body of work from 1992 until now is considered inept and two days late at best, blatantly corrupt and self-serving at worst. He's a Pi Lam and an idiot.
Yeah, Jeff and Gerry should have happened years ago.
ReplyDeleteThey would be alter egos, of course, with Gerry being the pompous preppy guy with the Brooks Brothers handkerchief and bangable wife and Jeff being the dirty bachelor math guy that went a decade without a girlfriend and that Good Will Hunting was about.
whoa, whoa, whoa. that crosses a line, clarence. jerry/jeff's not dirty.
ReplyDeleteSo Gerry is straight?
ReplyDeleteCompared to Gerry, he is!!
ReplyDeleteAnd I just basically called him a genius with that Good Will Hunting comment. Geniuses are dirty.
Jeff and Gerry are both straight, duh.
ReplyDeleteLike Bert and Ernie.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see a Clarence/Bud Selig introduction when Clarence is in "Hi Gheorghies" mode.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I missed a lot. Was out handing out bibles again.
ReplyDeletecan't go to that well but so often, jeph.
ReplyDeleteThe well of Bibles is always replenished. You can go to it as often as you like.
ReplyDeleteOh, but you cannot eat the shellfish in the well. Or lie down with another man. Or screw a dog or a lion.
And also, the well was built in seven days. Stop saying it was slowly built and evolved over time.
Is this Dewey's plan to steal bibles from hotels and sell them on eBay?
ReplyDeleteDisclaimer, since we're talking religion: Dewey never had that plan. But it's believable.
little known fact: in addition to lebron james, i have also 'interviewed' bud selig (and herb kohl - the two of them were fraternity brothers at the university of wisconsin). my 'interview' with selig/kohl took place when i was employed as a professional frat guy and was conducted entirely via correspondence. this was before the age of email, so i typed up a bunch of questions and mailed them. it was as cool as it sounds.
ReplyDeleteCould have used the mojo machine.
ReplyDeleteMaggie Thatcher, The Iron Lady, died today. It is not currently known if this will delay the theatrical opening of "Iron Man 3." Iron Man was unavailable for comment.
ReplyDeleteThatcher was predeceased by Lou Gehrig and is survived by Cal Ripken, Jr; Bruce Dickinson; Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri; Samuel Beam; Arthur Digby Sellers; Evonne Goolagong; and, of course, Tony Stark.
Music at the memorial service will feature "In the Garden of Eden" by I. Ron Butterfly and songs from Neil Young's "Live Rust" album.
And Clarence is apparently back huffing paint again.
ReplyDeleteYou forgot about GFK. C'mon, act like you give a shit.
ReplyDeleteAlso dead: Annette Funicello.
ReplyDeleteBig day at Gheorghe.
ReplyDeleteHere's my contribution:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1207193/7/index.htm
Hardly an obscure magazine so I'm sure some of you have read it. I just got around to it this weekend.
And I apologize to Jerry, Clarence and Marls if they don't already know the story.
I didn't know the story, but thanks, Mark. Sort of.
ReplyDeleteThoroughly enjoying today's discourse from my beachfront condo on Sanibel Island. Vacation > work.
ReplyDeleteMy 5 y/o had to drop a duece badly when we were in the ocean at 6 PM, 10 minutes from a john. I told home to drop shorts and let it go. He then proceeded to drop a Three Musketeers bar. It was enormous. I was impressed. And a little bit embarrassed. But mostly impressed. A log dropper is emerging in the family.
9:23 start time is brutal.
ReplyDeleteRumor from somebody allegedly in the know is that Pitino has hair plugs.
Ollie lighting it up for Mich.
ReplyDeleteSanibel Island, eh? I love that place. Haven't been in about 10 years but I remember being ridiculously relaxing and laid back.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah...Spike!!!
You are right, Mark. White sand, calm seas, shells, pool, lots of grouper and cocktails. And kid camp.
ReplyDeletesomething's wrong with my scorecenter app. it says spike albrecht has 17 first half points.
ReplyDeleteIt's 10:36 and the second half didn't start yet. I'm too old for this.
ReplyDeleteIf Michigan wins, he will make the sex a lot with women in Ann Arbor. Quite a start.
ReplyDeletei'm watching basketball!
ReplyDeleteand that story, mark. damn.
Zman - maybe one day you will have a shorter commute and a late game won't matter so much.
ReplyDeleteMaybe.
ReplyDeleteDraper did all these Benz ads from Hawaii. True story.
ReplyDeleteso the officials got the 'let them play' memo, then?
ReplyDeleteAmazing that Chuck Liddell can still monetize his dented legacy. Dude's career collapsed at the moment he became a minor celebrity.
ReplyDeleteserch just tweeted that 3rd bass is reuniting for the 25th anniversary of the cactus album.
ReplyDeleteFor whom are the Gheorghies pulling in this game?
ReplyDeletebeilein
ReplyDeletemy wife, though, has fallen for the kevin ware story and is pulling for the wrong side. but at least she's into hoops.
ReplyDeleteLouisville. Michigan fans are insufferable.
ReplyDeleteWu-Tang is reuniting for the 20th anniversary of Enter the Wu-Tang.
Trey Burke really has the waves goin' tonight.
ReplyDeleteThis game kinda makes up for all of the boring blow-outs the last few weeks.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't have a preference on who wins--I can find reasons to like either team. I'm just getting REALLY nervous for both of them--the loser of this game will be HEART-BROKEN.
Looked at the schedule to see who's coming to the Portsmouth amphitheater, the bet venue in the area.
ReplyDeleteSat June 15:
LL Cool J
Public Enemy
Ice Cube
De La Soul
Had no idea any of these cats were still on the road.
LL just released a song with brad Paisley titled "accidental racist." Apparently it's bad.
ReplyDeleteI might have to make a road trip mould be my last shot to see PE live.
Mould = could
ReplyDeletebob mould is worth a road trip
ReplyDeleteI thank god for sending me the F train.
ReplyDeleteZ, same show hits NYC on 6/20.
ReplyDeletey'all, I feel bad for those Michigan kids and Coach B. Such a great game, too bad someone had to lose. They should have played best of 7 or best of 5.
ReplyDeleteDamn good game, even on my pitiful lil tv.
ReplyDeleteAnd TR, were Pitino's plugs supposed to be a shocking revelation?
so the MVP of the Final Four is the guy from Mason. Can we count that as a CAA win?
ReplyDeleteHope Siva and his Dad are ready for a call from Lennay Kekua.
ReplyDelete