Holy cow!
For all you Chicago baseball fans, here’s Harry Carey’s play-by-play of the first game between the Bethlehem Braves and the Jerusalem Giants.
There is also a flash cartoon version of the first half of the clip here.
Fall Family Sportsnet Presents
FRIDAY NIGHT
T-BALL!
We had our first neighborhood T-Ball game Friday night. 20 kids (too many), 1 hr of chaos, 1 minor injury (Lex took a linedrive off the side of his head, finished the game, tho).
We all agree, wiffle-ball from now on.
Once UCLA writer has the Bruins in a walkover
Some excerpts from his article.
Irvine’s loss could become UCLA’s gain in finals
Penn State’s upset win means well-rested Bruins will face a team primed for a letdown
I had already written most of a column about how epic a national championship match between UCLA and top-ranked UC Irvine would be…But as I was finishing up, I saw the score…
that means it’s likely UCLA will win a national title on Saturday night
In volleyball, all of the elite teams in the country are in the West
Penn State has piled up wins on a much weaker schedule than Western teams
Penn State isn’t going to play out of its mind two matches in a row
This is locker room bulletin board stuff if I’ve ever seen some.
Guess what? It’s already posted on in our locker room. Here are some of the guys reading it before practice today.
Final Four Drama in Rec Hall
Fasten your seat belts folks, this is going to be a long one.
First, a little background. Rec Hall is short for Recreation Hall, a gymnasium on Penn State’s campus. It was built in 1929 and was the home for Penn State basketball until 1996 when Penn State opened the Bryce Jordan Center, a modern multi-purpose arena. Rec Hall is still the home for Penn State volleyball, wrestling, and gymnastics. This weekend, PSU and Rec Hall are hosting the NCAA men’s volleyball Final Four.
Rec Hall and volleyball hold a special place in my heart. My first trip ever to Penn State was in 1963 to play in the PIAA State Volleyball Championships. It was a double elimination tournament with play starting Saturday morning around 9am. Central Bucks was the District 1 Champion and we drew Peobody High, District 7 and defending State Champion in the opening round. We were in awe of Peobody and quickly went down to defeat.
We fell into the loser’s bracket but fought our way back with a couple of victories but couldn’t continue the streak. By about 2 in the afternoon we were eliminated. As we walked back to our hotel, we passed a fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta, that was just a block from Rec Hall. It turned out that Phi Gam was holding their annual big party, Fiji Island Weekend, that day. Here were all these guys and girls running around in bathing suits, grass skirts, and bikinis sipping all sorts of alcoholic concoctions. I saw this guy passing by an upstairs window with a girl thrown over his shoulder. I turned to the other guys on the team and said “I think I could learn to like it here”. Little could I have imagined.
That’s just a little Rec Hall and me background. Now some PSU and volleyball background. While women’s volleyball has a presence across the country, the elite men’s teams are almost all from the West, particularly from California. Penn State is one of the very few schools east of the Rockies who have a quality program. Actually, there’s little doubt that PSU is the premiere program outside the West.
To show you how dominant the western schools are, take note of these facts. Penn State was the first school from the east to ever win a match against a California school when we beat one (I forget which) in a regular season match in the 70s. In 1982, Penn State upset USC in five games in the NCAA semifinals to be the first non California school to ever make the finals of the NCAAs (Karch Kiraly and UCLA pounded us in the championship game). We had a little advantage in that match against USC in that the Final Four was held in Rec Hall, so it was actually a home game for us.
In 1994, Penn State won the NCAA title to be the first team from west of the Rockies to win the NCAAs. In the following year, we made it back to the finals (becoming the first non-western school to ever make the championship game two years in a row) only to lose to UCLA again.
The path to the Final Four in volleyball is a little unique. There are basically just three leagues that play men’s collegiate volleyball – the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF), the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (MIVA), and the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (EIVA). The winners of those leagues’ tournaments get automatic bids to the Final Four. The fourth spot is given to an at-large bid which has ALWAYS gone to a western school (once again showing the dominance of the western schools in men’s volleyball.
Because of that structure Penn State only has to win the EIVA tournament title to get into the Final Four. As dominant a program as we have for an Eastern school that is usually fairly easy. PSU has appeared in 21 Final Fours and we are second to only UCLA in that regard. However, getting past that semifinal game isn’t so easy. Coming into last night we had lost ten straight semifinal matches since our last win in 1995.
PSU has been pointing to this weekend for years. We brought in an outstanding recruiting class four years ago and we knew that we were going to host the 2006 Final Four. Everything knew that 2006 was going to be the year that we made another run for the championship. So the expectations for this year were high and the pressure was on the team to do well. The pressure might actually have been a little much because the team has not played well, at least by our standards, all year.
They opened the season up 1-5. They even lost at home to a non-Western school, Ball State. They had other questionable losses throught the season to schools like Ohio State, George Mason, and IPFW. Things were starting to look a little dicey for maybe even making it to the Final Four. Then they got a little help.
A week ago, PSU was expected to have a difficult EIVL title match against George Mason, who had knocked off PSU a month earlier in a league match. But the St Francis Red Flash pulled off a huge upset in the semifinals to knock George Mason out of the tournament. That gave PSU an easy opponent to claim the EIVL spot in the Final Four. The Nits responded with an quick 3 game sweep.
That set up the Final Four participants as UC-Irvine, UCLA, IPFW, and Penn State (read more about the participants here). To no one’s surprise, PSU was seeded fourth for the event. We had already faced all three other opponents during the year, losing to each (UCI and UCLA swept us, IPFW beat us 3-2). As the fourth seed, we drew the #1 seed and #1 nationally ranked UC-Irvine Anteaters, who were making their first ever appearance in the Final Four.
So while expectations for the season were high, our play during the season kind of reset everyone with much lower expectations coming into the weekend. That soon changed.
Penn State played absolutely flawlessly in the first 15 minutes of game 1 and eked their way to a 14-11 lead. That got the team’s confidence up and they fought their way to a hard earned 32-30 victory. UC Irvine fought off three game points before falling. At this point, I’m thinking “however this turns out, the kids have accredited themselves well with this win”. Things were just getting started though.
In game two, Penn State just overpowered the Anteaters and they raced to a 30-23 victory. Now I’m starting to think just like I did midway through the second half of our Kentucky hoops game in 2000. You know, the “Holy mackeral, we might actually beat these guys.
Game three was a battle. The UCI players were fighting for their volleyball lives and our kids were giving them no quarter. With a 29-28 lead, senior captain Nate Meerstein was serving for the match. Incredibly, he airmailed the ball about 20 feet over the endline, giving the Anteaters life. They responded and won 33-31.
Game four was a problem. Meerstein was clearly flustered with his service error in game three and all of a sudden he couldn’t get his serve in. To his credit, he continued to be an absolute monster on the front line recording over a dozen kills and blocks during the match. The Nits battled valiantly but went down to a 30-27 defeat.
That set up the dramatic game five. Matches that go the full five games are settled by a 15 point final game. That leaves little margin for error, so Meerstein wisely abandoned his jump serve and went to a floater for the remainder of the match. Shaking off their back to back losses, the Nits jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead. That set the tone for the match. We’d get a two point lead but UCI would come back to tie it up (the match was tied at 2-2, 6-6, and 12-12).
PSU pulled ahead 14-13 and had freshman Max Holt serving for the match when UCI called a timeout. I looked at my watch and realized that the match was now almost three hours long and my TiVo was about to quit recording even though I had padded it with a extra hour. Right at that point, the lights went out. And I don’t mean figuratively, I mean literally. Yup, a partial power failure (so they say, frankly I think someone forgot to turn off the timer that shuts the Rec Hall lights off at 11 PM) killed half the lights in the building.
Things like this only happen in Hollywood scripts but there it was. Because of the type of lighting, it takes about 10-15 minutes to restart the lights. UCI couldn’t have asked for anything better. How long does a basketball timeout last? How about a football timeout? 2-3 minutes max. Teams use timeouts to ice players at the free throw line, or kickers getting ready for game winning field goals. Here, UCI effectively got a 15 minute timeout to ice a freshman who was serving for a berth in the NCAA championship game.
NO PROBLEM.
Max aced the serve and we move on to play UCLA for the title on Saturday night.
Read more about the game here.
Photos from the game can be viewed here.
I can actually be seen, sort of, in a crowd shot from the photo gallery. I’ve cropped my out of the photo, hence the little white spot, and blown it up slightly. Admittedly, I’m not quite recognizable, but it is me.
mWow IV – RadioLovers
Are you a fan of old time radio shows? Or maybe you just enjoy some good clean (albeit sometimes politically incorrect) comedy? Or how about some real Big Band music. If so, this mWow is for you.
RadioLovers is a collection of free in the public domain radio shows from the 30-50s. Listen to legendary shows such as Abbott and Costello (including a standalone clip of the legendary “Who’s on First” bit), Amos and Andy, Benny Goodman, Flash Gordon, Batman, etc.
RadioLovers has taken these old time shows and converted them to downloadable mp3s. If you’re bored with your current playlist try downloading and listening to a show or two as a change of pace.
You even get some unintentional humor along the way. Nothing like listening to a cigarette commercial that extols the health benefits of smoking Camels.
Checkout RadioLovers here.
Make Your Daughter Work Day
Thursday was “Take Your Daughters/Sons to Work Day”. Charlotte went to work with me and I put her to work. We had to edit 3 Yankees promos. I taught Charlotte how it’s done while I cut the first two. Then it was her turn. She cut the 3rd spot. You can see it here.
She truly did most of the work. Well, most of the work that needed to be done. If you watch the spot you’ll see it’s what we call a donut, you basically just need to fill the hole in the middle. And she did that. She took direction from the producer (Joe Pepitone, btw… nephew), and chose the best part of each shot (with a small bit of reassurance from me).
We both had a great day, and not just because she was at work with me…. much more, really. Just walking to work together was special, quality-time. Making mundane chit-chat, talking about people that are homeless, eating lunch, laughing with adult co-workers, shopping leisurely for a b-day present for Lex, listening to music on the train home. It was great.
mWow III – Google Labs
Google truly is an internet phenomena. Here’s a company that started with absolutely no business plan for making a profit but grew into a company with billions of dollars of cash on hand (As of March 30th, Google had $8 billion in the bank).
With so much cash at it’s disposal Google is free to play around with dozens of new ideas – some of which might turn out to be quite brilliant, others which will turn out to be real losers. The crazy thing about Google is that while many companies are extremely secretive about what they are working on, Google is quite open about many of their projects (don’t get me wrong, they are also quite secretive about bunches of them too).
You might think of Google Labs as Google’s sandbox. Google Labs, reachable at http://labs.google.com/ is where Google posts links beta versions of products that their scientist and engineers are working on – some of which are neat as hell, others of which will never see the light of day.
Many of Google’s current offerings started out at the Google Labs site. I first started using Google Desktop when it was a beta product at the Google Labs site and it’s changed the way I store and find things on my computer. I know longer have to worry creating folders or files with recognizable names to store things on my computer. I can just dump everything into My Documents then use Google desktop to search for them when I have to access the file.
Google Earth is another neat product. Google Earth is a collection of satellite and aircraft photos from all over the world that you can access on your computer. Most of the earth is covered and you can see enough detail to usually be able to pick out your own home. If you live in a major metropolitan area, you can get some pretty detailed views of your home for example (Marilyn, I can easily pick out the octagonal deck addition to your patio – the hottub is partially in the shade so it isn’t as easy to pick out). Google Earth is wild because you can take panoramic tours of various locations (the Grand Canyon and Chicago River tours are particularly interesting). Google Earth also has a community of users who use Google Earth’s forums to tag interesting items on the photos (talk about mundane – there’s a ton of people committed to finding flying airplanes and their shadows in the photos).
Google Earth turned out to be such raging success, that the Labs now have a Google Mars where you can zoom in on the Red Planet using photos taken from various Mars Missions.
Some others interesting offerings curently in beta include Google Video, where you can search for videos by keywords using the familiar Google interface.
One that I want to try out but haven’t gotten around to it yet is Google Page Creator which proposes to be an easy way to create your own website (Marilyn – you might want to look into this a bit as a possible way to build a site for Dawn).
That’s a quick glance at Google Labs. Try it out. Also check back every couple of months. New and interesting stuff shows up all the time.
mWow II – The Numbers Stations
Pandora, UncleLar’s mWow I, turned out to be a way practical contribution so this week I decided to go the complete opposite. I think I can comfortable say that no one will find this week’s honoree the least bit practical.
First a little background.
What exactly is a “Numbers Station”? The answer to that supposedly lies in the intriguing world of spies. I’m not talking about the Tom Clancy, John le Carré fantasy world of spying. I’m talking, at least supposedly, real world international spies.
Numbers Stations are shortwave radio frequencies that intermittently suddenly start broadcasting people reciting seemingly random streams of numbers, words, or letters. In theory, they are coded messages that governments use to communicate with their spies in the field.
England’s Irdial-Discs record label recorded a collection of these broadcasts and released them in a four CD set called the Conet Project. The set is available for purchase at Amazon.com.
Now before you think I’ve gone completely wacko and entered the world of conspiracy theorists, there is substantial evidence to support the theory that these stations are in fact spy based. Here’s some reputable journalists’ remarks re Numbers Stations.
The Washington Post: “The Shortwave And the Calling”
Salon: “Counting Spies”
Chris Brand: “Numbers Stations”
and, lastly, a real life spy, Thomas Wagner, mentions Numbers Stations in his tome about escaping from East Berlin.
Interesting you say (or maybe not – afterall the mundane has to come in some time) and you are even asking “Is there any way I can listen to these stations without paying the £39.99 for the CDs.
Yes, I answer, with UncleLar’s mWow II, The Conet Project – Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. Check out a couple – I’m sure you’ll find them quite mundane. 🙂
One interesting followup. Evidently, the band Wilco, is a fan of Numbers Stations. They sampled one of the stations for the album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. Wilco looped a female voice, supposedly a Mossad agent, repeating the phrase “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” for a minute and a half during “Poor Places” a track on the “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” album. That led to an interesting lawsuit. Irdial Records sued Wilco for copyright violations. Now I’m not exactly sure Irdial can claim ownership of an anonymous female reciting a phonetic alphabet over the public airways but the suit was settled before it ever went to court with Wilco was forking over some royalty payments to the record company.
While there’s little doubt that this mWow is mundane, I hope I’ve made it a little bit interesting. Now go “enjoy” the recordings.
UncleLar’s Mundane Website of the Week…
from here on out known as mWow.
Since things have been a little slow here, I thought I’d start something new to keep folk entertained. With the free time that I have on my hands I regularly stumble across interesting websites on the net, so I thought I’d start sharing them with you. Some of them you may have heard of, many of them I will guarantee that you never have, and I’ve no doubt that some of them you will wish you never had, but I hope at least a few of them you find enjoyable.
The only criteria that I’m am going to put on the selections is that they will all be something that I found quite intriguing. One week I might turn you onto something that is immensely practical, the next week you could get something totally absurd, it’s all going to depend on the mood I’m in.
The honor of the first UncleLar’s mWow goes to Pandora. Pandora is the result of the Music Genome Project, which is an effort to break music down into it’s “genes” or essential elements. The creators have analyzed over 300,000 songs and 10,000 artists and broken them down into over 400 different attributes such as tempo, rhythm, harmonies, lyrics, etc.
Now, I can already hear you saying “so what?” Here’s where the fun begins.
You simply give Pandora the name of a favorite artist or a favorite song of yours. Pandora creates a personal “radio station” based on that artist or song and begins playing music based on your choice. That’s it (well almost, after about 5 songs it asks that you register with the site).
What blew my mind was how right on Pandora’s selections seemed. Not from the perspective that the songs sounded like my pick but how much I enjoyed them.
In addition to playing songs that I’ve always liked and enjoyed, Pandora regularly picks out an artist or song that I’ve never heard of, or never would have considered listening to, and plugs it into my mix – and I pretty much like all of them. It’s infinitely better than listening to your same old collection of songs (Gary – not all of us have a music collection as extensive as yours).
Here’s a little example of what Pandora can do. I picked one of Gary’s favorites (and one he turned me onto) and created a Marcia Ball radio station. Here’s what Pandora played for me.
“How I wish” by Keith Richards
“Quicksand” by Tracy Nelson
“So Many Rivers to Cross” by Marcia Ball
“Wonder” by Natalie Merchant (from Tiger Lily an album I own)
“Living Proof” by Cat Power (who? never heard of them but liked the song)
“Quicksand” by Tracy Nelson
“That’s Enough of That Stuff” by Marcia Ball
When I put in what I considered one of the greatest Rock and Roll songs ever “Gloria” by Van Morrison I got:
“I Want Your Love” by the Pretty Things (who?)
“Boom Boom” by The Animals (kind of freaky since one version of Gloria that Van Morrison does has John Lee Hooker singing “Boom Boom” in accompanyment with Van)
“My Way of Giving” by Rod Stewart
“Too Many Fish in the Sea” by the Young Rascals (always liked the Rascals)
“Mickey’s Monkey/Love Things” by the Rascals again
“I’m Down” by Aerosmith
“Honey Are You Straight or Are You Blind” by Elvis Costello
“Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” by AC/DC
“Wrap It Up” by the Fabulous Thunderbirds (an much underrated group in my mind)
You get the idea, now try it out yourself.
UncleLar’s mWow #1: Pandora
Mr Cinderella
A friend of mine just made the Final Four. James Johnson was an assistant coach at Penn State for the last two years but took a job with George Mason this year. There were a bunch of people who questioned why he would leave a B10 school to go to the Colonial Athletic Conference but his decision is looking like a stroke of genius now (for more on his decision, read this story from the Harrisburg Patriot.
Here’s a shot of him leaving the court on Friday after their win over Wichita State that got them to the Elite Eight.
This afternoon they knocked off UConn in overtime to advance to the Final Four. In addition to the Wichita win, GM also knocked off traditional major conference power houses Michigan State, North Carolina, and UConn. What’s even more amazing is that George Mason was a controversial at large pick for the NCAA tournament to begin with. They lost in their conference tournament to Hofstra and thus didn’t earn an automatic bid. Several people felt that because Hofstra defeated George Mason twice in the last two weeks of the season, Hofstra deserved a bid instead. Now just two weeks after learning they were in the tournament, the Patriots will be headed to the Final Four.
Since everyone’s bracket is probable all messed up with the upsets, this will give you someone to root for when the Final Four starts next weekend.
BTW – As you might be able to tell from the photo, JJ dresses well. So well, in fact, that while he was at PSU, he was named as one of the NCAA best dressed assistant coaches.