More blurbs from the notebook of a roving sports correspondent. Wednesday I got my second crack at a college basketball game. It’s been two years since I’ve been to a game of the small college we cover, FC. The experience was similar to my last visit. Enjoyed seeing a Division 3 game. Marveled at the size of the gym, which was smaller than only a couple high schools gyms I’ve visited this year.
A few tidbits from the road. I don’t recall if I shared this story in a previous notebook, but late last month I had back-to-back games that were completely awful. In the first, one of our best girls teams, WCHS, won easily but in very ugly fashion. They should have won by about 70 but apparently decided to play down to the level of their competition that night. After the game, one of the assistant coaches, who used to be the boys coach at WCHS and who I’ve known for a few years, walked by me and said, “Whew!
More thoughts on the Coolest Athlete thread on Twitter. This isn’t an original observation - I even think I’ve written about it before - but something else struck me about how we view athletes while reading through the Coolest Kansas City Athletes meme on Twitter over the weekend: athletes are a lot cooler when we’re kids. The reasons are pretty obvious. We don’t see the flaws as clearly when we’re little.
There was a thread on Twitter Sunday soliciting suggestions as to who the coolest Kansas City athletes of all time were. While I was never a true Chiefs fan, I did spend 23 years in the city and have some thoughts on the subject. First, let’s go ahead and admit this covers the 30-35 years that I’ve been aware of Kansas City athletes. So there won’t be any members of the Scouts or A’s included.
I forgot to mention this amazing use of technology I first experienced at the Colts-Jets game a week ago. Trust me, when you’ve already had a few, it’s even more amazing. And when you go to a traditional beer stand later, it’s kind of a let-down. It “pours” a draft beer nine times faster than traditional methods and dramatically reduces spillage. It's so cool to see, it’s generated viral YouTube videos and dragged fans away from the actual events to stand around and watch suds get served.
ESPN columnist Jim Caple kicked off his book blog this week. Coincidentally, I just finished the first book he highlights, George Dohrmann’s Play Their Hearts Out, a terrific, numbing look inside the world of “grassroots” basketball, the name now used for what used to be called the AAU circuit. Dohrmann focuses on one coach, Joe Keller, and his prodigy, Demetrius Walker, following their relationship from their meeting when Walker was just ten until the end of Walker’s high school career.
KU begins the final Big 12 season tonight at Iowa State.1 They enter the game #3 in the country, 15-0 against a solid schedule (#31 according to collegerpi.com, which also has them ranked #1 overall). Seems like just another good season in Lawrence, right? Maybe. Fact is this team remains a mystery halfway through the season. Do they still have room for growth, are they playing about as well as they are capable, or do they have glaring weaknesses that can’t be addressed by the current roster?
Some good stories never go away. A few of you may recall that two years ago, there was a boy in C.’s preschool class that she constantly insisted had hit her. She talked about it every day. “DJ hit me.”1 The way she made it sound, DJ beat her up every Monday. We never heard a thing about it from the teachers, so we figured it was probably a benign, one-time event.
Some weekend. Friday night I was on the road, covering one of our better teams, FHS (11-3 entering the game), against the #10 team in the state, MHS. MHS had just lost their first game of the year, one they played without their best player, who is the #2 scorer in the state at nearly 30 ppg. They are also very tall, starting three girls over 5’10". It seemed like a tough matchup for my girls at FHS.
Well, this is it. The final post of 2010. Everything will be different the next time I post. Or nothing, really, other than the date stamp. It’s been a solid break here at the B. house. The girls have driven us a little crazy, but we’ve survived. An experiment to finally get all the girls sleeping normally - putting them all in one room - showed promise early, but has gone off the rails a bit the last few nights.
I imagine some of you have gift cards for the iTunes Music Store, Amazon, or other entertainment/book stores burning holes in your pockets. Since I’ve burned through a lot of music and books over the past year, here are some recommendations for some ways to spend that virtual cash one some real gifts to yourself. Albums Really you can just look at my Favorite Songs of 2010 list and pick up the albums those songs are on.
The always entertaining, much anticipated B. family Christmas review. So the girls were wound up last week. Actually, they were about ten steps beyond wound up. A long week of no school with sub-freezing temperatures meant they had been cramped up in the house. Threats about Santa skipping the home of girls who didn’t listen to their parents didn’t work anymore. They were getting too many sweets each day, there were too many guests, and there just wasn’t enough running room in the house to get all that energy out.
I don’t remember when I figured the whole Santa thing out. I’m guessing it was in the first-second grade range, which seems about right for most kids who are either only children or the oldest kid in their family. I do know that outwardly I was sure to keep believing for at least a year or two after the shades were lifted. In my family, we had both family presents and Santa presents.
Finally, it happened. And again I went to bed about 20 minutes too early and missed the immediate buzz. The Royals sent Zack Greinke (and Yuniesky Betancourt) to Milwaukee for a package of four young players. When I worked through my Twitter feed Sunday morning, I was flooded with news of the trade. First were the rumors, which began just after I went to bed Saturday night. As I caught up to real time, the news was getting locked in.
As the numbers get smaller, the hits get bigger! Here we are. The end of another year. I’ve listened to a lot of music over the past 11 1/2 months. iTunes tells me I’ve added over 700 songs over that period. I would guess that I’ve sampled well over twice that number, often giving songs a listen or two and if they didn’t meet my stringent standards, I chucked them aside.
And now for part two of my year-end list of favorite songs. 20 - “Twice If You’re Lucky” - Crowded House. Anytime Neil Finn releases an album, he gets a spot in my year-end countdown. This track claims his spot for 2010, another in his long line of perfect pop pieces. I think he can roll out of bed and write two of these without any effort. 19 - “Sleep Forever” - Crocodiles.
’Tis the season for year end lists. I’ve been blogging for seven years now, and each December I’ve posted a list of my favorite songs of the previous year. Why mess with a good thing? Here are my 20 favorite songs of 2010 . Not necessarily the best or the most played in my iTunes library,1 but the ones from which I squeezed the most enjoyment. I don’t know what it says about my selections this year, but few of these songs have official videos.
For some reason, I get crazy about baseball in the off-season. Perhaps it is because in baseball, an active off-season can transform a franchise. There is always that hope that perhaps the Royals might make an interesting, intelligent signing or trade that could put the post-season within reach. Or maybe it’s the drama of how the rich teams will divide up all the free agent talent, wondering who will find the right mix of performance for dollars and actually benefit from all their spending.
High school basketball is in full swing in Indiana now. The girls have been playing for almost a month and all the boys teams across the state now have games under their belts. Friday night I covered my first boys game of the year. It was a lot of fun and was another first in my career. The game started with the visitors, who were not my team, jumping to an 11-2 lead.
A bit of a light month, between my pseudo-novel writing and basketball season beginning. I’ll probably match my November total by Monday. Badasses: The Legend of Snake, Foo, Dr. Death, and John Madden’s Oakland Raiders - Peter Richmond. This is a terrific look back at the legendary Oakland Raiders teams of the 1970s. It explores their entire history up until 1980 or so, with a focus on the pains of three-straight AFC championship losses before the Raiders finally got over the hump and won Super Bowl XI.