Monday, 29-Apr-2002
Spurious
thoughts and idle musings from the sports week just past ...
Man, I
just love living in Charlotte. There's
nothing quite like a young city on the rise desperately trying to act all grown
up but still jumps up and down like an eager puppy when something superduper happens. Yes, we have our Airport and our Symphony
and our Opera and our Theatre and our Plane_arium and our own French Restaurant
imported all the way from France too.
But when Jose "462 And Counting" Canseco shows up to play ball
for our very own AAA Minor League Baseball Team ... Well, it's time to seal off
the I-77 high speed lanes and let Josemania rule. Yeah, buddy.
Good
afternoon and welcome to the Philadelphia Flyers Annual Spring Celebrity Pro-Am
Golf Tournament. Let's take you now to
the first tee where Keith Primeau has selected a 3-wood for this easy par
4. Oh, he missed his tee shot
completely. Let's go now to the 2nd
hole where Jeremy Roenick has a gimme putt for birdie. Oh, he whiffed that one altogether. Now over to the 3rd hole where John LeClair
is in the bunker with his wedge. Oh my,
LeClair got nothing but sand on that one.
And there's Mark Recchi sailing that drive clear over the 4th green and
well into the woods beyond the hole.
Stay tuned, we'll be back next fall after these messages.
A Mets
fan, a Yankees fan and Halle Berry are riding on a train when it enters a
tunnel and the car goes completely dark. There's a kissing noise followed by
the sound of a really loud slap. When
the train comes out of the tunnel, the Mets fan is holding his slapped face and
thinking ... "That Yankees fan must have kissed Halle and she swung at him
but missed and slapped me instead."
Halle's thinking ... "That Mets fan must have tried to kiss me but accidentally
kissed the Yankees fan and got slapped for it." And the Yankees fan is thinking ... "This is great. Next time we go through a tunnel, I'll make
another kissing noise and slap that stupid Mets fan again." Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.
Uh-oh, I
feel a rant coming on. Yep, the White
Sox recently fired their stadium DJ for hurting Injun P Chuck Finley's feelings
by playing Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again" as he warmed up. Of course, Finley has gotten a lot more ink
lately for his problems with his wife Tawny Kitaen, the actress who just about
melted the paintjob off a Jaguar in Whitesnake's famous 1987 video of the
song. Sigh, I dunno about you but I've
about had it with the constant wimpification going on around here. Geez, can't we even razz the other team
anymore ??? At this rate, sandlot kids
who yell out "We want a pitcher not a belly itcher" will soon hafta
take sensitivity training.
Another
week, another last place manager fired ... Buh-bye, Buddy Bell. Thanks for playing and we've got some lovely
parting gifts for you. Still in the
cellar and unscathed for now are Tejas Strangers skip Jerry Narron, Blow Jays
boss Buck Martinez and ... gulp ... my beloved Phillies pepper pot Larry
Bowa. Good heavens, I don't even wanna
think about the meltdown-in-waiting that is the 8-17 Philadelphia clubhouse
right about now. Compared to Larry Bowa
in last place, Chernobyl was a campfire.
Sometime
on Friday night while channel surfing, I stopped dead on ESPNEWS with its
"Coming Up Next" screen saying "Big Loss For Birds" and
then a fade to commercial. Oh, God, no
... But hey, wait, "Birds" could be somebody else, right ??? Yeah, maybe but nobody calls the Seahawks
"Birds". And nothing the
Orioles could lose now would be "Big". And the St Louis Cardinals are the "Redbirds" and
nobody cares about the other Cardinals or the Falcons for that matter. Blue Jays ??? Hawks ??? Penguins
??? Ravens ??? No way, gotta be the Iggles, dammit. And sure enough, it was weedback Correll
Buckhalter who shredded his ackle in minicamp which hurts but thank God at
least it wasn't McNabb. Um, good thing
I don't take this stuff too seriously, right ???
As if
having a Bonafide Bash Brother in town wasn't enough, Charlotte also played
host here to some top shelf chick tennis with the US Fed Cup team matched up
against huge underdog Austria. And we
got Controversy Galore as legendary coach Billie Jean "Is Not My
Lover" King booted Jennifer Capriati off the team the night before the
match cause JCap asked for extra practice time on her own in clear violation of
BJK's team-first rules. Which led to a
1-0 forfeit for the Austrians which in turn kickstarted a 3-zip skunkjob over
the stunned Americans. Shoulda known
better, Jen. You disrespected the King
and got whacked.
More NHL
Stanley Cup pucklets ... Wings, Sens, Blues, Sharks and Canes each advanced
with the other three first-round series still in play. But the big story is the hockey itself. Way beyond chippy and into downright vicious
as Toronto wiped out a coupla Islanders including captain Michael Peca while
Broon goon Kyle McLaren krispy kremed Montreal's Richard Zednik. You know, I enjoy a good hockey fight as
much as the next fan. As long as it was
those big dancing bears like Dave Schultz, Terry O'Reilly or Clark Gillies who
circled off to see who could pull the other guy's sweater over his head
first. But these guys today are going
for kill shots which ... compared to the sublime play we saw in the Pics two
months ago ... just might someday kill the golden goose.
NBA offs
notes ... Hell Ay had its usual way with the Fail Blazers. And the Dallas Cubans sent the T-Pups home
without supper too. Meanwhile, the
Celts had their feet on Philly's throats but AI lit them up for 42 on Sunday to
keep the Sixers barely alive. Kings,
Spurs, Pistons, Nets and Dem Bugs all hold 2-1 series leads with Game 4's all
coming up sometime in the next month or so.
Seriously, why does the NBA drag out these first round best-of-five's
over two full weeks ??? I know The
Sterminator wants to load up on weekend games ... cha-ching ... but Rasheed
Wallace could cut my lawn twice by the time some of these series wind down.
Nope, I'm
not gonna click on that link. I don't
care what it says, I'm not opening up that Web page. Oh okay, but I'm only gonna read the headline. That's it, no more. Well, maybe the first paragraph but then I'm
hitting my browser's Back button for sure.
Alright, I'll keep reading but only because I'm genuinely concerned
about her. Okay there, I finished
it. And now I am not going to buy the June
issue of Penthouse Magazine when it hits the stands. I don't care how many color photos of Anna Kournikova at a
topless Florida beach they claim are in there.
Well, maybe I'll just read the articles. But just this one time.
See ya
nexted week ...
Robert E Hunt Jr
Copyright ã 2002 by Robert E Hunt Jr. All rights reserved.