Monday, 11-Nov-2002
Spurious
thoughts and idle musings from the sports week just past ...
Alright,
let's see what kinda hand we got here ... We got three 29-year-old former
Drexel TKE frat boys. One of them a
computer geek deep inside Autotote, the company that handles lotsa pony
bets. Another one holding a $12 Ultra
Pick Six Breeders Cup ticket worth an impossible $3,067,821.60. We got the alleged bet phoned in from
Catskill OTB, one of the few OTB's that don't record voice calls. And we got e-mails and phone records showing
the three geniuses discussing the plan for weeks leading up to the big
day. Send lawyers, guns and money ...
Dad, get me out of this.
Some
baseball hardware was passed out last week ... Eric Hinske and Jason Jennings
won the ROY's. Mike Scioscia and Tony
LaRussa won the MOY's. And Barry
"Baked" Zito and Unit won the Cy's.
And nobody except the most diehardcores cared. Ah, but there was one interesting tidbit from horsehideland ...
Bahston's beleaguered but beloved BoSox hired Bill James as Senior Advisor of
Baseball Operations. James is the
unquestioned father of modern baseball statistics and a legend among the
sabermetrics crowd. I don't know if
this means the Red Sox are gonna win any more games next year but they're sure
gonna have some wicked pissah spreadsheets.
NFL Week
10 ... Might as well pencil in the Pack for the playoffs but nothing else is
even close to certain. Ramjets and Pats
are officially back from the dead while the Jints, Nevermores and Tites are
officially frisky once again. In other
games. the Mannings waxed the McNabbs in front of a grumpy Vet mob, the
Jagwires chewed up the Dead$kins in Steve Spurrier's not-so-triumphant Jax
return and the Stillers and Falcs played one of the most amazing tie games in
league history. Yuck.
And then
there are my Panthers with yet another come-from-ahead throat grabber. Do you realize this team has a record of 8-1
at various times inside of 5:00 minutes left to play ??? Read that again if you want. Five of their 6 straight honks have been
crunch time coughs including Sunday's here-you-go with 0:31 seconds left
against the Saints. Three Panthers this
year have gone down with this season's chic new injury ... the sports hernia. Meanwhile, their faithful are going down
with their own affliction ... Sports nausea.
What's
eating Joe Paterno ??? Geez, can he get
any crankier ??? First off, he's been
dogging the zebras all year long but JoePa sank to new lows last week when he
whined long and loud about a scheduling snafu that gave my beloved Cavaliers an
extra week off before they played and lost to the Nitts in Happy Valley on
Saturday. To be honest, I never thought
I'd live to see the day when Virginia could even compete with teams like Penn
State let alone piss 'em off for resting up beforehand. Strange days.
Always
nice to see our top shelf MLB stars spreading a little baseball goodwill over
in Japan. Even Barry Bonds made the
long trip overseas this time around.
Anybody know how to say "Get that stinking microphone outta my
face." in Japanese ???
In other
college pig news ... The Sooners crashed hard as did the Hokies and Wolfpack
who lost again and saw their big bowl dreams go poof. However, still very much in the Big Picture are the Miami
Hurricanes who should return to the top of the BCS pile this week after rocky
topping the Vols on Saturday. And it's
a good thing too ... I'm no Cane lover but if this bogus system had somehow
boned the undefeated defending national champeens just cause they
"only" beat Rutgers by 25 points ... Well, you get the idea.
Hmm, Marc
Bulger or Kurt Warner. Choose wisely,
Mike Martz.
What
exactly does "make a play" mean ???
I know the term's been around the NFL forever but it's never made any
sense. "We just need someone to
step up and make a play." "We
just didn't make enough plays today."
"We need more playmakers."
"You gotta give them credit, they made the plays today and we
didn't." I mean, well, duh. What else is there to football other than
plays ??? Hell, I could care less what
they do in between plays. That's why
we're there ... To see the plays. So
make 'em already.
By the
way, Penn State took an extra week off before crushing the Cornhuskers back in
mid-September. Fair's fair, Joe.
They've
had record revenues, record ticket sales and have made the post-season eight
straight years but that's not gonna stop Phineas T from cutting back on Damn
Yankee expenses ... Nope, he's gonna do whatever he can to avoid the hated new
payroll luxury tax. Like eliminating
the dental plan for 150 front-office employees. Total savings ... $100,000.
Yep, it's all the players fault.
Some
things are just too hard to believe, Harry ... Like high school phenom LeBron
James, the lock of locks as The Association's Numero Uno draft pick next June,
who's gonna have some of his Ohio schoolboy games shown on pay-per-view this
winter. That's right, a high school
senior on PPV. Have we lost our minds
??? First off, I can't even fathom
trying to make a stinkpile off a kid this way.
But more importantly, is it actually possible to wanna pay to watch high
school hoops on the tube and have a life too ???
See ya
nexted week ...
Robert E Hunt Jr
Copyright ã 2002 by Robert E Hunt Jr. All rights reserved.