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Cubs Already Done For?
Posted by pblackwell | 10/03/08
Kudos to the millions of TV viewers that sat through the VP debate, wondering how much new material Tina Fey would get to work with.
For 90 minutes, Joe Biden lit into John McCain at every turn, straying just a few times from that attack line with a "Bridge to Nowhere" quip early and, later on, a heartfelt talk about his struggles of raising two kids alone for several years after his first wife was killed in a car accident. Great? No, but good, and no harm to Barack Obama, that's for sure.
As for Sarah Palin...well, she brought energy, spirit, passion, and a tendency to wink a lot. Sadly, the GOP has scripted her to the gills...
CATEGORY: General Society
TAGS: debate, baseball, golf, football
Within the Whirlwind..
Posted by pblackwell | 10/04/08
Early October, and many different tangents from the sports world collide at once.
Locally, you have the high school scene, and what a Friday! West Genesee, Rome Free Academy, Cicero-North Syracuse, General Brown, Onondaga - all went in unbeaten, none left that way.
WG's was the biggest shock, dented by 0-4 Fayetteville-Manlius in a wild 47-37 affair. While it might ultimately prove meaningless in the Wildcats' plans (it still gets the AA-1 league title with home wins against CBA and CNS), it's still quite a stumble - and further proof that WG's defense has serious question marks.
CNS, short-handed and on soggy real grass, got shut down by CBA's bruising defense - and don't get started on cleats, okay?. RFA blew a 10-point lead at Baldwinsville...
CATEGORY: General Society
TAGS: high school, golf, college football, baseball
Down to Four
Posted by pblackwell | 10/06/08
Maybe someday we'll all look back and say that Dustin Johnson got his start as a great pro golfer by winning the Turning Stone Resort Championship.
In a tournament where, for most of four days, no one could take and keep control, Johnson seized it by using his considerable power to birdie the 71st and 72nd holes to beat Robert Allenby by a shot.
Funny how a golfer who spent all his formative years in South Carolina got his first PGA Tour win in a week where the thermometer never reached 60. Oh well, Dustin isn't complaining.
Just two unbeatens left in the NFL. Maybe you expected it from the Super Bowl champion Giants, but the Tennessee Titans at 5-0? Washington at 4-1? Atlanta 3-2? Tell us you expected those things...
CATEGORY: General Society
TAGS: golf, NFL, baseball, LCS
The Home Stretch At Last
Posted by pblackwell | 10/08/08
Musing about presidential politics while watching "Slap Shot" once more for old time's sake. Man, I miss Paul Newman, but maybe it's a fitting analogy for what we're about to go through in the next 27 days....
Debate no. 2 saw John McCain on the attack about everything except the Ayers-Wright-Rezko troika, which he went back to the next day (heck, CINDY was attacking).
Whether it worked on "that one" remains a mystery. Barack Obama, trying as best he can to ignore the mud, kept harping on the economy and reminded everyone that, sure, the "surge" in Iraq might have worked, but what on earth were we doing there in the first place?
A word of advice for anyone who wants to do a drinking game for the last debate at Hofstra University a weke from now...
CATEGORY: Government
TAGS: election, debates, Obama, McCain, stretch
Weekly Column: A Chance to Participate
Posted by pblackwell | 10/08/08
Okay, you don’t want a civics lesson in this space. Likely, you don’t want anything else than the banal commentary about the banal sports events of the world, both in your neighborhood and in larger neighborhoods than this one.
Well, there will be plenty of weeks, months and years for those tales. But the message I give to you now has none of those aspects – just a hope that by this Friday, Oct. 10, all of you in New York State are registered to vote for next month’s presidential election.
Many states don’t hold their deadlines back this long. And it’s just a simple matter of being 18 and filling out a few lines of a form and mailing it in to your county’s board of elections. It’s not a hard task to take part in our national conversation...
CATEGORY: Government
TAGS: Election, voting, importance, history
Cats Scratch Back
Posted by pblackwell | 10/10/08
You could ultimately look at West Genesee's shocking football defeat at Fayetteville-Manlius a week ago in two different ways.
On one front, it was a red-faced embarassment, an undefeated defending state champion falling to an 0-4 opponent, something that just cannot happen.
Yet on another front, it ultimately served as the proverbial splash of cold water that jolted the Wildcats back to focus on the things that matter - tackling, execution, etc.
So it was that, on this Friday night in Camillus, WG reclaimed its place as the Class AA favorite by defeating CBA 28-22 in a game that was odd, to put it lightly.
The first oddity came in that, with these potent teams, neither scored until the second quarter...
CATEGORY: Football (American)
TAGS: West Genesee, CBA, football
Weekly Column: A story about Ernie
Posted by pblackwell | 10/12/08
So Hollywood churns out another inspirational sports movie in which a central character overcomes great odds to achieve great success.
At least that’s how most of the nation is likely to view “The Express”, the film about Ernie Davis. Here in Central New York, though, it carries a bit more weight.
And what’s more, it’s what this film does and does not emphasize that counts, just as much as the script or director or stars or any other element.
Any view of “The Express” from this angle inevitably comes through orange-tinted glasses. Just as Bear Bryant is sacred in Alabama, just as Nile Kinnick is held in such deep regard in Iowa, Ernie Davis occupies a unique and lofty place in Syracuse’s sports lore...
CATEGORY: Movies
TAGS: The Express, Ernie Davis
Momentum Shifts
Posted by pblackwell | 10/14/08
As I write this, it's T-minus 21 days and counting to the election. Three weeks, that's all. And it will be a very long three weeks indeed...
So in the meantime, football! Lots of talk about football! Anything to relax.
Start with the high-school crowd. West Genesee used a flood of turnovers to reclaim the Class AA edge against CBA, who suddenly looked young and vulnerable. To try and figure out a favorite, right now, in the AA ranks is close to impossible since everyone has slipped up at least once. Every team that gets into the AA playoffs (WG, CBA, Henninger, Rome Free Academy, Baldwinsville and Corcoran are already there) have a chance to go places...
CATEGORY: Football (American)
TAGS: football, update, high school, college, NFL
From Here, Where To?
Posted by pblackwell | 10/17/08
Robert Frost wrote a famous poem about two paths diverged in a wood, and wondering which one to take. Far too many people have compared baseball to poetry. Ergo, the Tampa Bay Rays before Saturday night's Game 6 of the American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox.
Just on pure, cold numbers, the Rays are in great shape. They came to Fenway Park tied at 1-1 in the ALCS and won two out of three, a scenario Joe Maddon and his players would have taken without reservation at the start of the Fenway sequence.
Yet that Game 5 turnaround - Red Sox down 7-0, down to its last four outs at one point, coming all the way back to win it 8-7 - has all the marks of a turning point...
CATEGORY: Baseball
TAGS: Rays, Red Sox, ALCS, comeback
Ray of Light
Posted by pblackwell | 10/19/08
Sure, there's a Red Sox Nation, and my guess is they'll stay pretty strong.
But everyone else, admit it - you were rooting for Tampa Bay in the American League Championship Series. And it had to be absolute agony to see the Rays blow that 7-0 lead in Game 5, then lose Game 6 at home in St. Petersburg.
Of course Boston would come back. They had done it to the Yankees in 2004, to Cleveland in 2007. And hadn't the Rays shattered enough barriers already?
Apparently not. Miracle Mets of '69, meet the Remarkable Rays of '08.
Game 7 of the ALCS was as tense as any game I've watched this year. The moment Rocco Baldelli's single brought home the go-ahead run in the fifth inning, it got even tenser, if that seemed possible.
Especially that eighth inning...
CATEGORY: Baseball
TAGS: Rays, Phillies, World Series
Trust Titans And Texas
Posted by pblackwell | 10/21/08
As if the high school football scene wasn't exciting enough (more on that in a later entry), the college season passes the midway point and the NFL drifts toward that point.
With the release of the first BCS standings comes the first BCS complaints. Then again, it's not as loud as in years past, for it might get neatly resolved.
Look at the top three at the moment. Texas is a clear-cut no. 1 after the classic with Oklahoma and the mauling of Missouri. However, that's just half the gauntlet the Longhorns face.
Each of Texas's next two foes are unbeaten at the moment. Oklahoma State has some resemblance of a defense and enough firepower to suffice, but the Cowboys have been haunted by Texas comebacks in recent years, and the game is in Austin...
CATEGORY: Football (American)
TAGS: Texas, Penn State, NFL, confusion
Weekly Column; Look Back, Look Ahead
Posted by pblackwell | 10/22/08
One thing about covering high school sports – no matter what has happened in the past, or no matter what kind of great teams, players or coaches cross your paths, the stories always find a way to be fresh and interesting.
Football, in particular, offers an ever-evolving narrative that changes from week to week. One moment, West Genesee is undefeated and unstoppable on its way to another state title. Then it loses to Fayetteville-Manlius, who ends up 2-5 and out of the playoffs. Tell me you saw that coming.
So we reach the conclusion of the 2008 regular season without a single team unbeaten in Class AA or B, as part of a gridiron Twilight Zone where a 2-5 record gets you in the playoffs in one class, but a 6-1 mark could keep you out in another...
CATEGORY: Football (American)
TAGS: High school, season, playoffs
Colder Weather, Hotter Play
Posted by pblackwell | 10/25/08
So through two games of the World Series, it's been close, but we're still waiting for the "Classic" part of the Fall Classic to show up.
At least the Rays and Phillies are tied, assuring three games in rain-soaked Philadelphia. And the home fans will be loud and rocking - until the first player doesn't drive in a runner in scoring position, and then the boos...
Back here, some exciting stuff in the Section III playoffs. Top seeds in boys soccer in Class B (Mount Markham) and C (Mohawk) are out, and the same is true on the girls side, where the top two Class B seeds, Lowville and Clinton, got dismissed.
What's left in Class AA is, on the boys side, Baldwinsville facing CBA in one semifinal, F-M and CNS squaring off in another...
CATEGORY: General Society
TAGS: World Series, Section III, playoffs
Series On Hold
Posted by pblackwell | 10/28/08
So you may have thought the World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays was not interesting.
I don't blame you. Start one game after 10 p.m., see all kinds of runs scored on routine grounders, have a few blown calls, and watch the Phillies start to get away with a Game 4 rout...yeah, the evidence does add up that this Fall Classic, like the previous four (all ending in five games or less), would be less than classic.
Then came Monday night, and the attempt to play Game 5 in conditions more horrifying than any of the 10,000 or so slasher films that will pop up this time of year - or a Sarah Palin speech. One of the two, anyway...
CATEGORY: Baseball
TAGS: World Series, Phillies, Rays, rain
Weekly Column: Philadelphia Freedom
Posted by pblackwell | 10/30/08
Maybe the folks in Major League Baseball stumbled enough through the conclusion of the 2008 World Series that they eventually found a silver lining – no, make that a red one, with a letter P attached to it.
When Brad Lidge struck out Eric Hinske Wednesday night to end Game 5, giving the championship to the Philadelphia Phillies over the Tampa Bay Rays, it came just before 10 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time. That meant kids actually watched this happy moment without losing vast quantities of quality bedtime.
So how goes it, MLB? Would it kill you – or, more accurately, would it kill Fox – to start these games at, say, 7 p.m.? And maybe do a day game or two on the weekend? You might lose a rating point or two. But you’ll gain millions of future baseball fans...
CATEGORY: Baseball
TAGS: Phillies, World Series, champions
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