We are the mundane
This is going to break Gary’s heart, but I set foot in Yankee Stadium (in full Red Sox gear) on Sunday to see the Red Sox beat the Yankees. It was a great game, Manny hit a homer as soon as we were walking to our seats. The bus picked us up in Portsmouth, NH at 6am and dropped us back off around midnight. Thank God I took the next day off of work!
I’m on my MSNBC portal when I notice a sports story titled
“Refs should be whistled for traveling”
so I click on it and discover an article about how many college basketball refs are overworked. The thought immediately goes through my mind “Boy – would my map be perfect for his guy’s column?”
Sure enough – 3/4 of the way down is this paragraph.
Welmer, who generally only takes Friday off, and Shaw have called in excess of 85 games already this season. Ted Valentine has worked more than 70 and there’s even a web site called Valentine’s Day that tracks his every move.
and it includes a link to my map. 🙂
An UncleLar niece will be making her overseas debut with the US National Soccer team in a few hours (3AM Friday to be exact). Joanna Lohman, who was a two time Hermann Award finalist (Soccer’s equivalent to the Heisman Trophy) while she was at Penn State, plays midfield for the US. J-Lo, as she is not so surprisingly known, has played in seven matches for the US team here in the states but this is her first trip overseas with the team.
The Four Nations Tournament is being held in Guangzhou China and is considered a warm-up for the World Cup later this year. The #2 ranked in the world US women open the tournament against the #1 world ranked German squad. They will follow this match up with one against England on Sunday, then face the host Chinese on Tuesday.
Here’s a photo of J-Lo with the we’re-in-China obligatory ping pong pose (she’s the one on the right)
You may remember my ill fated campaign to name the local State College baseball team a couple of years ago. I nominated Sliders and my idea made the cutoff from 5000 suggestions that the team received. I was pumped and started encouraging my friends to vote for Sliders in the contest. I thought I had a pretty good chance of advancing to the final round when the list was to be shortened and a re-vote held.
Not everyone saw it that way however. A writer for the local paper (not a sports reporter by the way) published the following column where he ridiculed ALL the names on the ballot. He choose my nominee for the headline of his colunn “Race for local baseball team name slow going — a turtle!” (note: Sliders is a breed of turtles – the ones that you find in pet stores are typically Slider turtles).
When the time came for the finalists to be announced, I was devastated. Not only didn’t I make the finals but NONE of the semifinalists did. The ball club threw out all seven names and came up with five new ones. What the?
Eventually, the name Spikes won out. While I thought the name was ok, I was still a firm believer that Sliders was equally good.
Now comes my redemption. Slippery Rock PA has just announced the name of their new minor league baseball team. You guessed it – the Slippery Rock Sliders. Sliders was the winning selection picked from 92 unique entries.
Here’s their logo:
I have ordered a Slider hat from their official supplier and will be wearing it proudly around town.
who are also Penn State field hockey players.
PSU sophomores Jen Beaumont (Chalfont, Pa. – Central Bucks West) and Jen Long (Doylestown, Pa. – Central Bucks East) were both named second team All-Americans this afternoon.
There is a new champion. Ron, Steve B, Nick (Ex champion), and I played Tuesday. We had three pretty nice days of weather here. Anyway, we played a points game. Six points for low man, 4 for 2nd, 2 for 3rd and zero for 4th per hole net.
Nick started slowly taking only 2 points in the first 4 holes, but made a charge on the last 4 holes of the front nine. I believe he picked up around 17 point for those holes. He was still trailing Ron and I, but was defending valiantly. Unfortunatly, he started the back nine about the same way. With five holes to play Steve B. and Nick were pretty much out of it. I was trailing by about 5 points and could have jumped to the top of the leaderboard if I was just able to knock down a couple of putts on the next 2 holes. Too bad for me, I wasn’t up to the task. On 16 I pretty much handed the championship to Ron by knocking 2 tee shots OB, but Ron let me back in the game by moving a 20 ft chip about 1 foot. He took 3rd on the hole for 2 points. I got zero.
Two holes to play and I was down 5 points. (By the way this is all by memeory so I may be a little off.) Ron bogeys the hole to lock up 2 points. I have a 6 foot parr putt to tie Nick to give me a much needed 5 points. MISS AGAIN, DAMN. I tie Ron and we both get 3 points. I need a miracle on 18. It doesn’t happen. Ron wins and is now the proud owner of 2 shirts and a hat. We still need the 2nd shirt embroidered Ron. Congratulations to Ron.
Get ready for your chance next year boys and girls. You know you can pretty much depend on an opportunity to win this coveted title at The Battle of Battle Creek. For those not aware I beleive The Battle will become a mandatory 4 day event next year.
Sorry this has taken a while to get to all of you. As you are all aware Ron is not the Fall Family Champ and neither am I.
Nick and I played about 4 weeks ago. Since Nick had not played all year, and if you’ve ever seen his game, I figured match play a stroke a hole would be pretty easy for me to retain my title. Well, unfortunatly, I was wrong. I beleive the final was something like 6 and 5. He shot 103. I shot 94. His 103 wasn’t a real indication of how well he shot during the match play. Once he had it won he wasn’t quite as focused as he was on the first 12 holes. He should have broken 100 easy.
Anyway, he has both the shirts and the hat. I have tried unsuccesfully to get another match this year, but Nick is going to school full time and putting in about 25-30 hours a week at IKEA. By the way, his emploeyee discount is 15% if anyone was to take advantage.
Since the weather is changing rapidly I beleive Nick will have this title into 2007. Get your plans together now to challenge him before Battle Creek or we may not have our tournament in a tournament event next year.
A friend of mine may soon show up in Kenny’s neck of the woods. Tyler Smith, a former Penn State basketball player, just made the Utah Jazz’s 18 man training camp roster (the Jazz camp doesn’t start until Monday and the roster won’t officially be announced until then).
Tyler is from the Chicago area. He played for Lake Forest High School graduating in 1998. He played four years at Penn State graduating in 2002. For the last few years he has been bouncing around the hinterlands of the pro basketball world pursuing his dream of playing in the NBA. Last year he played for a team in Peru.
Somewhat unbelieveably he’s close to making his dream happen. Tyler is the last guy you would ever expect to be an NBA player. Not only is Penn State not known for producing basketball stars, Tyler wasn’t even a star on PSU’s team. He didn’t become a full time starter until his junior year when he was the fourth leading scorer on the team (the team was pretty good though – making it to the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAAs).
As a senior, Tyler was the third leading scorer on the team averaging about 12 points per game but the team was really bad (we went 7-21 and the coach was fired at the end of the year). Tyler’s list of Penn State basketball awards consisted of winning the team’s Scrappiest Player and Unsung Hero Awards at their post season banquet not exactly the type awards to build you an NBA portfolio (actually he also was a three time Academic All B10 player but academic awards don’t get you to the NBA either). On top of that, he was white man’s disease, i.e. he can’t jump.
He is a smart gutty team player though. He was a 6’8″ power forward at Penn State with a soft shooting touch. He’s worked very hard on his jump shot and can not hit it pretty well from NBA range.
His saga of how he wound up with the Jazz is pretty interesting. As I said Tyler played in Peru last year but foreign basketball contracts are strictly on a year by year basis. Tyler went to a west coast open tryout camp last month where he played exceptionally well. At the camp, he was invited to hang around for a second week for a tryout camp that a bunch of Chinese teams were having. Chinese teams are allowed to have two foreign players on the roster. Tyler excelled at the camp and was named to the camp’s all star team. Then came draft day when the Chinese teams held a draft to populate their squads. As a result of his camp, Tyler fully expect to be drafted in the first round. Nope. In fact, he slipped all the way to the 2nd pick of the third round. Bad news, because only players in the first two rounds get those guaranteed Chinese contracts. Tyler was extremely disappointed.
Right after the camp was over, Tyler was called aside by Rick Barry (yup, the Rick Barry) who was running the camp. Barry told him that the Chinese teams were under orders from management back home to bring in big black guys not white one. So Tyler is a victim of racial discrimination. However, that’s when the good news happened. Barry told Tyler he thought he had NBA level skills and would make some contacts to see if he could arrange a tryout. True to his word, Barry called a couple of days later and said he had arranged a tryout with the Jazz. Tyler went to the tryout last week with three other guys and at the end of the tryout Tyler was signed to the Jazz’s practice squad.
He doesn’t have the team made yet (the Jazz are taking 18 players to camp but can only keep 15) but he’s got a chance which is more than he thought just a month ago.
So Ken, if you see a tall white guy that looks like this:
tell him you are a real relative of Uncle Larry.
Played 18 on Friday with no problems with the knee during the round. It was a little sore Friday evening but nothing too bad so I decided to play in the senior club championship afterall.
Seedings in the tournament are by handicap following the defending champ who gets the #1 seed. I was seeded seventh which meant that I had to play the #2 seed, the lowest handicapped player in the tournament.
I played as well as I have in a long time and had my opponent on the ropes for most of the match. I opened up with a par and a birdie and quickly went up 2 holes. My opponent fought his way back and managed to tie the match by the seventh hole when he executed a beautiful sand save for a par. I failed to get up and down from about three feet off the back of the green when I missed a five footer for my par.
On the eighth hole, I went one down when I was overly agressive on a downhill 12 footer to win the hole. I slid about four feet past the hole and missed the comeback putt.
My par on nine evened the match when my opponent failed to get up and down from the back fringe of the green. I wound up shooting a 41 for the nine.
Another par on the par three tenth put me one up when my opponent once again failed to get up and down from off the green. The next three holes were all halved with a bogey and two pars so going into 14 I still held onto a one hole lead.
The 14th is a long par five and I laced a drive just into the right hand rough while my opponent wound up in a fairway bunker so I felt comfortably in control. He did manage to advance the ball about 150 yards with a decent recovery shot. I good lie but a downhill stance but as I swung my right foot slipped right out from under me. I only advanced the ball about 40 yards still in the rough. I was about 250 out but the ball was sitting up in the rough so I decide to take an aggressive cut at the ball. Bad move. The ball went off of the toe of the club deep into impenetrable brush and trees to the right. I had to take an unplayable and the hole was basically lost right there as my opponent made par.
That evened the match up but my confidence was gone. I staggered over the next three holes with a bogey, double bogey, double bogey and my opponent went par, bogey, par to close me out 3-1.
All in all, I was pretty happy with my play though. For 13 holes, I was just six over, which is as well as I’ve played in a long time. Plus, the best part was that the knee held up just fine so it looks like I can get back to my normal 5 rounds or so a week.
Our men’s golf league plays on Wednesday nights and I hit the links for the first time since my surgery. After an extremely shaky start I settled down and played the last few holes ok. I had a dreaded case of the hooks for the first three tee shots and I think it came from a subconscious fear of transferring weight to my left side. Once my mind accepted the fact the knee wasn’t going to hurt everything started to turn around.
Further evidence that my recovery was going well was that I didn’t have any additional inflamation this morning when I woke up. I’m going to try a full 18 holes tomorrow and assuming that things hold up OK, I’ll play in the club championship starting Saturday.
Updates will follow.