C., L., and I were at Target yesterday wasting time during M.’s kickball practice. The girls were looking through the toy aisles and came to a large, empty section that should have held all the toys related to Frozen. There were a couple Baby Anna dolls, but the rest of the area was barren. C. asked why it was so empty and I said I guessed the Frozen toys were still really popular.
This is so great in so many ways. The Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team will be hosting a Seinfeld night on July 5, the 25th anniversary of the “Seinfeld Chronicles,” the original name for “Seinfeld.” They’ve put some thought into this. Activities will include: MCU Park will known as Vandelay Industries Park for one night only. Mailmen in uniform get to throw out a ceremonial first pitch ("Hello Newman!
Three large pieces of news. Well, maybe not to everyone. But enough to justify a new post. First, C., after nearly a year of being close, decided she was ready to ride a bike without training wheels over the weekend. Twice last summer she was on the verge of staying on two wheels full-time, but each time she went back to her bike with training wheels. She’s complained for some time about her training wheel bike.
The name Zander Hollander may not mean much to the majority of my readers. But for some of us, mostly men who grew up in the late 70s and early 80s loving sports, he played a huge role in our formative years as sports fans. Mr. Hollander, who was the creative force behind the Complete Handbook series, died last week at the age of 91. One of the few splurge purchases I was allowed to make when I was young, and my parents were short on cash, was the occasional book from the Scholastic book flyers that came home from school.
Another quick one before the weekend begins. A couple sites have linked to this modern, design-based review of the Sony Walkman. It focuses on form rather than function, but is still interesting to read/look at. Like the iPod, the Walkman isn’t truly the first of its kind. There was a cassette player before it called the Stereobelt. It was big, ugly, expensive and only lived on as a patent. What the Walkman did was make the idea of a portable cassette player into a marketable, attractive consumer product.
Tuesday night I did something I haven’t done in years. I took out a baseball scorebook I had stashed away1 and kept score for a game I watched on TV. I keep score a few times a year for baseball and softball games that I’m covering for the paper. But I can’t recall the last time I decided to keep score for a game I was watching from home. It’s one thing to do it when I need all the details for a story and box score that I will submit to be published with my name attached.
A bit behind thanks to our travels and visitors last week. But I have to offer up some MLB predictions. First, though, I must link to this fine story about the 25th anniversary of Major League. It arrived during that brief glut of baseball movies in the late 1980s.1 You can argue it is the best. I’m more of a Bull Durham guy, but Major League isn’t far behind. I did not know this:
What a crappy night, at least for people who share my rooting interests. On the one hand you have Kentucky, aiming for their ninth national championship with a team full of precocious freshmen who have suddenly found an extra couple of gears in March. Great story on many levels. But John Calipari is, arguably, the most reviled coach in the college game. Will all the hype his freshman class got before the season - remember that 40-0 talk?
The Secret History - Donna Tartt I know Tartt is one of the hot American novelists of the moment, with her novel The Goldfinch getting a lot of acclaim last year. I believe this, her debut, came on the qualified recommendation of Brother in Books, Dave V. He had a mixed view of the book, but suggested I begin with it if I was going to read Tartt’s other stuff.
A whirlwind of a weekend. Leave Indy early Saturday, just ahead of a quick burst of snow, heading west through rain and dreary skies. Our traditional lunch stop at the St. Louis Bread Company in Maryland Heights. Into sun and warmth in western Missouri. Finally arriving at our home base for the weekend in Overland Park. That evening, dinner with friends from S.’s days as a resident. Minsky’s pizza and Boulevard beer.
As mentioned yesterday, we are traveling for the next few days. We’ll be making a quick trip west to visit friends and family in Kansas City over the first part of St. P’s spring break. We’re hoping to see many of you while there. Yesterday was the last day of school before break, and in the parking lot there were several vans with storage containers strapped to their roofs. C. was telling me which friends were going where.
Trying to get caught up on some links I need to share before we take a mini-vacation early next week. Malcolm Gladwell has a piece in the New Yorker about Clive Doyle, a survivor of the Waco, TX Branch Dividian compound, and the lessons that are still emerging, 20 years later, from that disaster. It’s a really interesting read. What stuck with me most was how the Federal agents, and really all the law enforcement agencies involved in the action, utterly failed to understand the people inside the compound.
It’s been 60 years since the Milan Miracle, when tiny Milan high school knocked off much bigger Muncie Central in the Indiana boys high school championship game. If you’re not from Indiana, you likely know of the game because of the fictionalized version that had Hickory High winning in the movie Hoosiers. The Indianapolis Star had a fantastic oral history of Milan’s run over the weekend. Bobby Plump doesn't spend a lot of time on "
10:50 AM, Tuesday March 25, 2014, Central Indiana. It is snowing. I shouldn’t complain. This is only flurries and not expected to amount to much. 366 days ago, we got 9” of snow. Could be much worse. And it might even warm up to above normal temps in a few days. I think we’re owed a nice, long, pleasant spring. A few items from the notebook. Today is the 84th day of 2014.
My habit during KU games is to text with my buddy Ed in Texas. We stood next to each other for three years at Allen Fieldhouse, with a few assorted games since then. This has become a cool way to, kind of, recreate that energy from the early 90s. On nights when one of us couldn’t be in front of the TV, and didn’t want to wait to watch on the DVR later, it was fun to send updates that went beyond whatever the online scoring updates offered.
I better rush in some picks before the games start here in a bit. This feels like a wide-open year. I’m of the opinion that Florida is the best team in the country. But they’re not so good that they can’t lose. In fact, it would not a shock if they weren’t the team to leave Memphis in a week with the regional title under their belts. But beyond Florida, all season it’s felt like there is a group of 8-12 teams that are all kind of equal.
I watched a few minutes of the ESPN 30 for 30 episode “Requiem For A Conference,” about the classic Big East conference, Sunday evening. Then, Tuesday, I watched the last ten minutes or so of the West Virginia - Georgetown NIT game. Georgetown played the game at their practice gym, thanks to the circus being booked into the normal home court. It was awesome. The arena was packed, including a healthy WVU contingent.
Well, here we go. The best and worst time of the year for everyone who is A) a huge college basketball fan and B) lives and dies with a particular program. Best, because you never forget those comeback wins, those times your team knocked off a higher seed, and those deep tournament runs. Worst, well, because you never forget being on the wrong side of Cinderella’s slipper or the night your best player couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn or that turnover in the last second that changed the outcome.
March gloom came early to KU fans last night, as the news broke that Joel Embiid will not be available to play until, likely, the second weekend of the NCAA tournament after being diagnosed with a stress fracture in his back. Devastating news for a team that needed him on the court and at full-speed in order to have a chance for a deep NCAA run. If KU does survive the first weekend of the tournament, which is in serious question considering their youth and defensive deficiencies, the question becomes how effective can Embiid be after nearly a month off.
I had planned on getting this post out Friday. But, as some of you may have noticed, there were some issues with the site in the morning and I spent a fair chunk of time trying to get it working again. That also allowed me to finish another long article to throw in here. So, here they are: some showbiz links. First, one of two reprints that were circulating recently.