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Doing just fine

Posted by pblackwell | 06/01/07

Now we’re two months into the baseball season, and a lot of great things are going on.
The Red Sox and Mets seem intent on a sequel to 1986, without the New York arrogance or New England angst – all of which is refreshing. Milwaukee has cooled off (bummer), but Cleveland is rolling like LeBron James at the end of Game 5 against the Pistons.
Out on the other coast, the Angels have taken charge in the AL West, while the Dodgers, Padres and Diamondbacks seem intent on creating a three-way duel in the NL West where, at best, only two can get in.
Yes, Major League Baseball is doing just fine. And if that sounds like propaganda, well, too bad. Someone has to tell a new tale, anyway...

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Mighty Oakmont

Posted by pblackwell | 06/06/07

Round about the turn of the century – the 20th century, that is – Henry C. Fownes got the notion of building a golf course in western Pennsylvania. He chose ideal land near the Allegheny River, then went to work.
What Fownes created was a masochist’s delight. Tight fairways, massive greens with a striking resemblance to waxed marble, and bunkers - about 300 of them at first – all of them furrowed in a way so that anything that landed in the sand was as good as buried.
More than 100 years later, Fownes’ creation – Oakmont Country Club - is a defiant masterpiece. Sure, they moved the 8th green a bit, watched the Pennsylvania Turnpike divide the property, and planted, then removed, more than 3,000 trees – but the punishment remains...

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Angel of the Open

Posted by pblackwell | 06/20/07

Usually, the two golfers that finish on top at the United States Open leave the scene with vastly different points of view. One feels a total sense of accomplishment. The other laments what might have been.
Not so with Angel Cabrera and Tiger Woods, central characters in the final act at that Western Pennsylvania beast called Oakmont.
Cabrera went home to Argentina a hero, nearly on the level with soccer and Manu Ginobli, after somehow breaking 70 twice at Oakmont and posting 285, the same number Geoff Ogilvy used to survive at Winged Foot in 2006.
To be sure, Tiger left the Open downcast about seeing a 13th professional major slip away, just as it did at Augusta. But the birth of his first child, a girl named Sam Alexis, the next day more than makes up for it...

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Mid-term baseball report

Posted by pblackwell | 06/27/07

Baseball has a nice symmetry to it. Even the calendar cooperates, as most teams hit the 81-game mark right around July 1. Three months down, three to go.
Which is a perfect time to assess the scene, grade the performers, praise some, rip on others, and offer a glimpse (accurate or otherwise) at the remaining parts of the story. So here goes.
AL East – From day one, it’s been all Boston. The Red Sox had a double-digit lead by May and have more or less kept it, with impressive pitching and a lineup that doesn’t lean on Manny or Papi the way they used to...

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