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March 31, 2006
The judges have spoken
What readers think of us matters the most, but in a profession known for hard work, weird hours and low pay, peer recognition makes a difference. Journalism awards matter, too.
It probably seems shamelessly self-serving to some readers when we report the results of newspaper contests in the Monitor. If you’re one of those readers, you might want to stop reading this blog entry right now. My purpose is to elaborate on a few recent awards won by Monitor news staffers.
Last November, for the second year in a row, a Monitor staffer was chosen as the Community Reporter of the Year by the New England Society of Newspaper Editors. This is the top local reporting award in the region, and only one is given each year. The winner is chosen on the basis of a portfolio of work.
The winner for 2005 was Eric Moskowitz; he succeeded 2004 winner Annmarie Timmins. We have yet to decide which reporter we will enter when the 2006 contest deadline arrives this summer, but we’ll definitely be going for the three-peat.
Possibly you saw the report in today’s paper that a story by Monitor Sports Editor Sandy Smith was judged the best sports feature in the nation in 2005 for a newspaper under 40,000 circulation. This was Smith’s poignant account of how a dying fan, Bill Goldsmith, inspired the Concord High girls’ softball team to win the 2005 state championship.
Two weeks ago, several Monitor staffers went to Boston for the annual luncheon of the New England Newspaper Association. The organization’s most coveted individual prizes are known as Public Occurances Awards, named after the first multi-sheet newspaper in America (published in 1690, when both "public" and "occurrences" were apparently spelled differently).
In both reporting and photography, the judges, a panel of Nieman Fellows from Harvard University, award up to a dozen prizes for the best journalism in New England during the previous year. Newspapers of all sizes compete with one another, from metros to weeklies.
This year, the Monitor won a Public Occurances Award in each category. Reporter Joelle Farrell won a reporting award for chronicling the death of Beverly Leo, Concord's former longtime SPCA director. Lori Duff, who worked with Farrell on that project, also represented the photo staff at the luncheon and picked up the Public Occurances Award for our Monday photo feature, “Teen life.”
“Teen life” also won an award of excellence for our photo staff in a national content known as Pictures of the Year International.
There was even better news out of this contest, which is sponsored by the University of Missouri. Dan Habib, our photo editor, was judged best in the nation at photo editing for newspapers under 100,000 circulation. The Monitor’s use of photographs finished second best nationally.
The National Society of News Design also gave its prizes this month, and the Monitor won four awards of excellence. Those named as honorees were Habib, Duff and Preston Gannaway from the photo staff, artist Charlotte Thibault and page designer Vanessa Valdes.
I’m proud of these award winners. It is especially gratifying to see the Monitor recognized in all phases of journalism: reporting, photography, editing and design. The Monitor is small – just over 20,000 circulation daily, 21,000 on Sunday – but we think big. And we never rest on our laurels. Just as readers judge us on a daily basis, contest judges next year won’t care - or even know - what we won this year.
Posted by Mike Pride at 04:02 PM | Comments (3)
March 27, 2006
GOG8RS
Crush Cinderella.
On Saturday, I’ll be rooting for the Florida Gators to beat George Mason University’s men’s basketball team. And comfortably, please, lest I blow a gasket watching.
Why? I have been a Gator fan since 1952. Who knows how something like that gets into your blood at age 6. It just does. I’m not even a Florida alum. I went there – twice, in fact. To use the common euphemism, I wasn’t ready for college. But sing a verse of “We are the boys of old Florida” and watch me weep.
I got the chance to cover the Florida basketball team for the Tampa Tribune in the mid-’60s, near the end of the all-white era. As a sports writer, I witnessed the way integration improved the game. I also got to see Pat Riley and Rick Barry play and to interview Adolph Rupp in his 36th year of coaching at Kentucky, the national runner-up that year.
I was pleased beyond belief a few years ago when Concord’s own Matt Bonner chose Florida. I even went to see him play at the O’Connell Center, the arena across from Florida Field, a/k/a The Swamp.
I enjoyed that game so much that while we were visiting my dad a few weeks ago, my wife and I drove to Gainesville to see the Gators’ last home game of the regular season. The atmosphere was electric - the bright lights, the constant motion, the youthful energy, all that orange and blue. The O Center is definitely not Alligator Alley, the dingy gym of my college days.
This turned out to be a special night. Joakim Noah, whom the rest of the country is just getting to know, was playing for the first time before his grandfather, Zacharie. A one-time professional soccer player from Cameroon, Zacharie Noah arrived late for the game with his son, Yannick, the retired tennis pro.
Joakim Noah responded by scoring 37 points. This included 19 of 22 free throws. (I scratched my head yesterday during the Villanova game when the announcer Billy Packer complained that Noah’s free throws spun sideways. Noah was 7-for-7 from the line at the time and finished 13-for-15.)
I saw more good signs that night in Gainesville. Taurean Green, Florida’s indispensable point guard, tossed an Alley Oop pass that Corey Brewer slammed home. Brewer looks like a wisp on the court, but he is strong, and on this play - you'll have to trust me - he flew. The Gators’ power and size inside were also apparent.
But sloppy Florida play allowed a mediocre Georgia team (10 losses at the time) to come within three points late in the second half. This colored my assessment of the Florida team.
To paraphrase, I wrote in my journal that night that this was a team of sophomores (every starter but Lee Humphrey, a junior), full of promise but prone to a loss of energy and concentration. In short, a team with potential that would not go far in the post-season. I also repeated the nagging question of us Gator fans of the Donovan era: Billy can recruit, but can he coach?
Recent events have upset this conventional wisdom. But still, even as the Gators were thumping top-seeded Villanova yesterday, I saw in each of their many errors the beginning of the end. I got so hyper my wife had to leave the room. It was either that or turn off the TV, and I'd simply have died if that had happened.
One of the Gator websites I frequent, GatorZone.com, ran a poll last week asking readers to choose between being satisfied that Florida had made the Sweet Sixteen and being greedy for a national championship. Do I have to tell you which side I took?
So now comes George Mason, the giant-killer. It’s only natural that most fans are rooting for the underdog, the little guy, the No. 11 seed, the tournament's Cinderella. I was rooting for the Patriots, too, and marveled at how they recovered from a last-second shot by Connecticut, regrouped and won in overtime.
That was yesterday. Now I say the slipper doesn't fit after all. George Mason is Gator bait.
Posted by Mike Pride at 05:56 PM | Comments (3)
March 24, 2006
Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!
Somehow “retirement” and “the age of 28” don’t belong in the same sentence, especially when the subject is Jerry Azumah.
Azumah retired from pro football Thursday after a successful but too brief career with the Chicago Bears. He had been slowed by injuries and surgery – to his neck in 2004 and his hip last year. He had surgery again in January.
I recall many afternoons in the slanting orange sunlight of autumn watching Azumah run the ball for UNH. My son, Yuri, was a classmate of Azumah’s and covered the Wildcats for the Monitor.
Yuri and I commiserated on the phone today about Azumah’s retirement. Unlike many athletes, Azumah won Yuri’s respect on and off the field. He worked hard, preparing for a life with or without football. One of Yuri’s regrets is that when he saw Azumah on graduation day, he didn’t think to have his picture taken with him.
Azumah, who came from Worcester and whose parents were from Ghana, played on UNH teams that would have been mediocre, or worse, without him. He was not a big man – about 5-10, 185 – and opposing teams could key on him all game long. Even so, Azumah rushed for 6,193 yards, an NCAA Division 1-AA record.
Yuri’s best single memory is a 95-yard touchdown run. Azumah lined up at about the goal line. He took the handoff, burst through the line, dodged a defender, cut toward the sideline and streaked to the opposing goal. Yuri looked up at the clock. Twelve seconds had elapsed. That’s a man running more than 100 yards in pads and a helmet, on chewed-up turf, in 12 seconds.
As a Bear, Azumah played defensive back.
“I couldn’t figure out why I rushed for more than 6,000 yards, and all of a sudden I’m running backward,” he joked at his retirement press conference, according to the Chicago Tribune. “When I first came in here, I didn’t even know what a backpedal was. And then all of a sudden, I was covering Randy Moss.”
Azumah had 10 interceptions and broke up 42 passes. He retires as the No. 3 punt returner in Bears history. As a kick returner, he made the Pro Bowl.
At UNH, he is known as more than an ex-football player. He is also the youngest alum to donate more than $100,000 to the school, a gift to improve weight-training equipment for UNH athletes. In his playing days, he was renowned for his work ethic in the weight room.
In Chicago, according to the Tribune, he started a foundation, the Azumah Student Assistance Program.
Some might say Azumah could afford to give back. After all, he made millions. But his career ended before he qualified for status as an unrestricted free agent, which would have meant an even bigger contract. In my book, he is an exemplary citizen.
While Yuri and I – and surely other Azumah fans – lamented his early forced retirement, Azumah himself was upbeat. He called Thursday “not a sad day (but) a good day” and impishly challenged the assembled sports writers to a 40-yard dash.
“Chapters end,” he said. “And other chapters open.”
Talk about going out in style.
Posted by Mike Pride at 06:42 PM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2006
Hagel links
Here are a few links for more on the recent visit of U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel's trip to New Hampshire:
Reporter Don Walton's account from the Lincoln Journal Star.
Monitor reporter Lauren R. Dorgan's account of the editorial board interview with Hagel.
The Monitor's editorial on Hagel's views of the Iraq war.
Laura Knoy's NHPR interview with Hagel.
Posted by Mike Pride at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2006
Plain speaker from the Plains
The moment was not exactly like Saul’s conversion on the road the Tarsus, but it determined Chuck Hagel’s direction in politics. As he told the Monitor’s editorial board yesterday, he was sitting on top of a tank in Vietnam in 1968 casting his first ballot. He marked Richard Nixon’s name and voted a straight Republican ticket.
His point in telling the anecdote was to say that the party of Nixon, the party he chose, stood for fiscal restraint and limited government – ideals that Republicans still trumpet in word but have abandoned in deed. “We have come loose from our moorings,” he said. As evidence, he cited the escalating federal debt, President Bush’s education program and the new Medicare drug benefit.
By contrast, Hagel, a U.S. senator from Nebraska, has not strayed from the ideals that drew him to the party. He voted against both No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Plan D. He thinks entitlement reform is the nation’s most pressing domestic issue. While appreciative of Bush’s push on Social Security last year, he says the president erred in casting his main message as personal accounts rather than the dire need for reform and in not putting a plan on the table.
Hagel is in New Hampshire this week for obvious reasons: to see how a presidential candidacy might suit him. We spent most of our hour or so talking with him about Iraq, another subject on which he does not conceal his differences with the White House. But in assessing his own potential as a national candidate, Hagel is realistic. He knows that events beyond his control – how the party does in the midterm elections, what happens in Iraq – will determine whether his views might catch the voters' interest during the 2008 campaign.
If he does run, Hagel is bound to get an attentive ear in New Hampshire. The state has wavered between red and blue during recent presidential elections in part because so many Republicans are with Hagel on the issues. They appreciate Bush’s political success but are skeptical of his disregard for a balanced budget, his championing of big federal programs and his war in Iraq.
New Hampshire was, and remains, Nixon Country – not the Nixon of Watergate but the Nixon of fiscal restraint and limited federal government. These are the ideals the 21-year-old Hagel signed up for while sitting on a tank. Now, he says, the party has become “skillful at saying one thing and doing another while blaming the Democrats” for whatever goes wrong.
Whether or not such plain speaking serves a candidate’s ultimate aim, our primary has a long tradition of providing a national platform for it.
Bienvenue au New Hampshire, Sen. Hagel. Live Free or Die.
Posted by Mike Pride at 10:21 AM | Comments (1)
March 21, 2006
Another escape plot
Pardon my skepticism, but when I hear a politician say precisely the opposite of what his proposal intends, I always wonder which fairy tale he’s been reading. Is it Alice in Wonderland or Pinocchio?
Ted Gatsas, the Senate president from Manchester, has put forth yet another constitutional amendment aimed at freeing the Legislature from Supreme Court oversight on paying for public schools.
Here’s what Gatsas told a Senate committee yesterday: “It is not my intent to remove the courts.”
Here is what he wrote on today’s Monitor Forum page: “CACR 43 (his proposed amendment) is not attempting to take away the power of judicial review.”
Gatsas is a good guy, relatively new to the school funding frontlines. He wasn’t a key player in the last umpteen efforts by legislators and governors to erase the constitution’s mandate that the state pay for an adequate education for all public school students and do so through a fair tax.
So maybe Gatsas gets a pass. Maybe he’s not Pinocchio.
But can he – or any of the senators who passed this proposed amendment out of committee yesterday – really think it has a chance of succeeding?
I mean, read it:
“The Legislature shall have the authority to make reasonable determinations of the content, extent, funding and delivery of public education.”
Help! As a legislator or a voter, I’d stop and just say no at the key weasel phrase, “reasonable determinations.”
But it gets worse after that. Gatsas not only wants the Supreme Court out of the Legislature’s hair, but he also wants the Legislature to have more power over local public schools. This “authority to make reasonable determinations” would give the Legislature the power to pay less, forcing local communities to pay more. And it could do so while expanding the state’s power over the “content, extent . . . and delivery of public education.”
“Delivery,” of course, is a euphemism for vouchers and charter schools.
So what would stop the Legislature from reasonably determining that charter and parochial school students should get local aid while also reasonably determining that the state had no obligation to reimburse the cities and towns for this?
But I digress. The real issue is that the amendment is one more shot at persuading the public to trust the governor and Legislature, without court oversight, on school funding. They have not earned this trust.
Under their various unconstitutional plans and legislative manipulations of recent years, the gap between the have school districts and the have-not districts has grown again. Even in good times, and even after promises to the contrary, local aid rises and falls unpredictably, causing chaos in school budgeting. Even after repeated reminders by the courts, legislators haven’t defined the “adequate” education they are constitutionally obliged to pay for.
Gatsas’s amendment does exactly what he says it doesn’t: It aims to take the court out of the picture and leave the governor and Legislature to do as they please in determining the funding, content and delivery of public education.
That may not sound so bad at a time when the state’s revenue picture is bright and a benign governor sits in the corner office. But how good would you feel about the prospects of public education under this amendment during a penny-pinching budget season with, say, Craig Benson as governor?
Even if the Senate passes this amendment, the House should bury it in the expanding graveyard of Claremont escape plots.
Posted by Mike Pride at 08:18 AM | Comments (1)
March 16, 2006
A hard death
On today’s Monitor Forum page, Mike Green, president and CEO of Concord Hospital, responded sharply to the Monitor’s editorial on the death of John Arsenault. In a letter accompanying Green’s “My turn,” June Williams, a cousin of Arsenault’s from Boston, wrote that Arsenault was not homeless, as reported in the Monitor. Rather, she wrote, he was living with family.
Arsenault is the man whose death we first reported on March 7 under the headline “For homeless man, a mysterious end.” Sarah Liebowitz, the reporter who wrote that story, was working on a series on Concord’s homeless population. When Arsenault came into the emergency shelter at the First Congregational Church, where many of the homeless sleep on cold winter nights, Liebowitz just happened to be there.
This was on March 3, a Friday night. Arsenault arrived at the shelter by taxi from Concord Hospital. He had been released from the hospital, apparently because he did not meet the hospital’s standard for inpatient care, medically acute. He could barely walk when he got to the shelter, and his condition rapidly deteriorated. About six hours later he had become so ill that an ambulance took him back to the hospital, where he died.
Our editorial last Sunday was headlined “Homeless man shouldn’t have died this way.” The editorial quoted a spokesperson as saying Arsenault “was cleared to leave because his condition was not considered acute.” It went on to say: “That diagnosis was obviously wrong.”
The editorial also criticized the hospital for not being more forthright about the details of the Arsenault case. “The hospital may be blameless, but no health-care provider should be allowed to bury its mistakes behind a wall of privacy,” the editorial said. “The public policy issues at stake are too great.”
It was these issues to which Green responded in today’s paper.
He also wrote: “The Monitor seems to believe Concord Hospital should become a housing facility for the unfortunate frail. This is not realistic.
“At the inception of the predecessor organizations to Concord Hospital, the role of the hospital was to provide housing and compassion along with clinical care to the sick, oftentimes at the end of their lives. Today the role is oriented much more toward the healing of the sick and injured.”
I’m glad Green clarified the hospital’s role. But if the hospital’s policy is no longer to provide care and compassion to people at the end of their lives, surely the hospital must have a strong policy in place to make certain that those who are very ill do not end up going straight from the hospital to an emergency homeless shelter.
At this point, I cannot answer some of the questions the Monitor’s critics raise about the Arsenault case.
Sarah Liebowitz is working on a follow-up story that I hope will give readers more details about his situation at the time of his death. She will also attempt to learn why, if Arsenault was a repeat patient at the hospital, as Green’s piece implied, he was put in a taxi and sent to First Church.
Please stay tuned.
Posted by Mike Pride at 05:02 PM | Comments (4)
March 14, 2006
On the Wildcat beat
We’re about to enter a terrific stretch of the sports year. March Madness starts Thursday. The Monitor has Ray Duckler down in Florida pounding out columns about the Red Sox while Preston Gannaway shoots pictures to go with them. If you want a sense of Boston baseball tradition, check out Gannaway’s poignant picture of Johnny Pesky signing autographs on today’s sports page. Can Opening Day be far behind? And then, early next month, the Masters.
But I want to focus today on Dave D’Onofrio, one of our sports writers, and on another classic sports event that we hope will unfold during the next couple of weeks. That would be the UNH hockey team’s post-season run. Dave covers the Wildcats.
Dave grew up in Wakefield, Mass., with the normal loyalties: Celtics, Bruins, Patriots, Sox. During college, he interned at both the Lynn Item and the Boston Globe.
He came to the Monitor in 2003 after graduating from BU, where he had been the editor of the college paper and covered the hockey team. Since UNH will be playing BU Friday night, Dave will enter the Fleet Center with divided loyalties. But I defy anyone to detect bias in his game coverage. He’s not afraid to interpret and make judgments, which any sports writer must do, but his story will be arrow-straight.
Dave is one of the Monitor’s six full-time sports people. This is a talented, hardworking bunch. There are ever more sports in our culture, and when we survey readers about what they want us to cover more, the answer is always: “Everything!” Everyone on our sports staff wears several hats.
When Dave arrived, he was not an auto racing fan. Naturally, we made him our auto racing writer. On Thursday, the day before the UNH-BU game, he will pull together his informative, often opinionated auto-racing column for the Sunday Monitor. And this summer he’ll enter his fourth year as our lead writer at the New Hampshire International Speedway, where he’ll churn out stories, sidebars, profiles and columns without missing a beat – or a deadline.
He was a novice in 2003, but now he knows auto racing and respects Nextel Cup drivers. To those who contend that the cars do all the work and the drivers aren’t really athletes, Dave has this to say: “The more I learn, the more I appreciate how difficult it is to do what they do.” Their work – total concentration from start to finish, sometimes in 110-degree heat – may be harder than that of any other athlete. Teamwork is important, but in Dave’s view, it is the driver that makes the difference between winning and losing.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here . . .
How about Hockey East this weekend, Dave? Who’s going to win? And what are UNH’s chances of making it to the NCAAs?
Dave says that after a sluggish early season, the Wildcats have come alive. The key moment occurred when seven players turned themselves in for a rules violation and Coach Dick Umile benched them for a big game in Maine. What was left of the Wildcat roster didn’t win that night, but the team gave the Black Bears a fight. The Wildcats have played with toughness and resolve ever since.
Most UNH players think the team has to beat BU Friday night to make the NCAA tournament. Dave isn’t sure. He thinks the Wildcats might get in anyway. But winning would erase any doubt, and Dave says the ’Cats have a good shot.
Win or lose, you can count on Dave D’Onofrio to see that the game gets its due in the Saturday Monitor.
Posted by Mike Pride at 07:19 PM | Comments (1)
March 08, 2006
No can publish
We try especially hard to run letters opposing our editorial positions, but here’s an excerpt from one you won’t see published:
“The March 4 article on the child support bill to treat fathers more fairly is one of the best things I have read in the paper all year. I have personally witnessed the court system and how unfair it is to fathers – not only with the money but also with the visitation.
“My fiancé and I went through a custody battle that lasted a year. We had to pay $158 a week for his 4-year-old daughter. Not one cent of that went to his daughter. It all went into her mother’s arm. She is a heroin addict.
“It killed us to pay that much money and see how it was being used. The judge never cared.”
The letter was written by a local woman who gave her name and hometown, as required. But as often happens in letters on divorce and child support in particular, the writer made assertions that characterized people on the other side of a particular case. Although she did not name the person she accused of being a heroin addict, people who know the writer and her fiancé will know whom she is talking about. That makes the letter potentially libelous, meaning the Monitor can’t publish it.
But, you ask, isn’t a letter to the editor an opinion, and isn’t publication of opinion protected by the First Amendment?
I’m not a lawyer, but here’s my answer: Opinion is indeed protected speech, but just because something appears on the Opinion page or is labeled “opinion” does not make it opinion.
Take a look at the excerpt above. When the writer praises the article as the best thing she has read all year, that’s an opinion. When she says the court system is unfair to fathers and the judge never cared, those are opinions.
The letter is not all opinion, however. It includes several statements of fact. Whether they are actually facts, we don’t know. The $158 a week, the daughter’s age – statements of fact. In editing the letters, we don’t have the time or staff to double-check such statements. Unless we see a statement of fact that we know is wrong or that seems outlandish, we give letter writers wide berth.
Readers are smart enough to understand that our accuracy standard is lower for letters than for news stories. The lower standard has the benefit of allowing for a freer public discussion of issues in the letters columns. Letter writers may – and frequently do – correct or question the assertions of other letter writers.
But to say, as this writer did, that not one cent of the child support went to the daughter and that the woman was a heroin addict are also statements of fact, not opinion. And if they are false, they would defame someone who, though unnamed, could be identified.
That is why we can’t publish letter. If the defaming statements were false, both the letter writer and the newspaper could be subject to a libel suit.
Lately, because the Legislature is considering legislation that would change child support rules, we’ve been receiving – and publishing – many letters on this issue. Some agree with our editorial position opposing this legislation, and some disagree.
But we’ve also had to spike several of these letters because the writers made their points by vilifying their adversaries in court cases. The best tactic for those who want to write for publication about divorce and custody issues is to stick to the overriding issues and save your claims about ex-spouses for the courtroom.
Posted by Mike Pride at 06:47 PM | Comments (1)
March 07, 2006
Another Bush?
At the risk of seeming grandiose, I sometimes fancy myself a political junkie in the mold of Alden Whitman. Whitman was the New York Times obituary writer famously profiled by Gay Talese years ago. Talese described how Whitman carefully scanned an audience at Carnegie Hall looking for people “about whom he might be particularly curious someday soon.” These, of course, were famous people on whom age and infirmity were gaining.
I, on the other hand, am constantly on the lookout for future presidential candidates. This is not a wholly conscious obsession. It is simply the result of having been an editor in New Hampshire for a long time. Even in the stretch between primaries (too short for you, too long for me), I scout.
Thus I spent part of my Florida vacation last week reading more than I wanted to about Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s little brother. Jeb has said he doesn’t want to be president. Nevertheless, his name is Bush. He is about to leave the Florida governor’s office after two terms that, by his standards, have been phenomenally successful. He just turned 53 last month, and it is hard to imagine he is ready for the boardroom life, much less a rocker on the porch.
To my good fortune, the St. Petersburg Times devoted plenty of ink Sunday to speculating about both Bush’s political legacy for Florida and a possible political future for him. The writer of both pieces was Tim Nickens, the paper’s deputy editor of editorials.
The commentary “Jeb Bush’s long shadow” showed how far Bush had moved the Florida Republican Party to the right. Its point was that many of his accomplishments would handcuff his successor(s).
The nature of those accomplishments will come as no surprise to those who have watched Big Brother on the national stage: tax cuts, standardized testing and school grading, school vouchers, privatized prisons and tougher sentencing laws, abortion restrictions, a scaling back of affirmative action in hiring.
Nickens’s column inside the paper was headlined “Run, Jeb, run!” No, not for another term as governor (he's term-limited) and (alas) not for the White House. Nickens suggested that Bush run for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Bill Nelson.
The current GOP frontrunner is Katherine Harris of 2000 vote-count renown – or notoriety, depending on your point of view. Among other problems, Harris is in trouble over illegal campaign contributions. Nickens pronounced her “not a credible challenger to Nelson” and asserted that Republicans deserved one. His choice: Jeb Bush.
Bush has shown no more interest in the U.S. Senate than he has in a run to succeed his brother.
But I’m staying tuned. The name “Bush” might not be a golden asset at the moment, but things can change fast in politics. One thing can lead to another, as in two-term big-state governor pulls upset, wins Senate seat, eyes White House.
Posted by Mike Pride at 05:56 PM | Comments (1)
March 06, 2006
Moon shot
Thank you to the several readers who answered my last entry’s call for comments on the state of Americans’ historical knowledge and the teaching of World War II. I’m sorry it took so long to post the responses, but I was in Florida, purposely out of computer reach. Please take a look at those thoughtful responses to “Don’t know much about history?” and add your own commentary if you’d like. If I get time later this week, I may take up a point or two in a new entry.
But I brought back fresh material from Florida, and I want to get some of it down before my job swallows me up again. Here are a few headlines:
– Bait-and-switch hits Grapefruit League
– Whither Jeb Bush?
– Gulf beaches’ sellout accelerates
– Joakim Noah leads Gators’ super sophs
I could go on. About once a year, I visit family and friends in the area where I grew up, and I always come away with many snapshots. I’ll try to put the stories to the other headlines during the days ahead, but let’s begin with baseball.
Six or eight weeks ago, I arranged to see two Grapefruit League games. I had visions of needling my Red Sox fan friends (no shortage of them around here) about early glimpses of Johnny Damon in pinstripes. On Friday and Saturday, I saw the Yankees in Clearwater and Tampa. No Damon. No A-Rod. No Jeter. No Williams. All were gone to the World Baseball Classic, as were players from the opposing Phillies and Reds.
Although you’ll never catch me complaining about sitting in sunny high-70s weather in early March watching baseball, spring training has become a huge enterprise, creating high expectations for sell-out crowds. Fans know that winning matters little and that the No. 71s and 93s will take over in the fifth inning, but they buy their tickets to see the stars. When minor leaguers start at third base, in center field and in left and utilitymen get the call at short and in right, it’s hard not to feel cheated.
The World Baseball Classic is a good idea, but it comes at the wrong time.
Now that that’s off my chest, here’s a non-secret to people who pay close attention to baseball (including, I imagine, all the fantasy leaguers). The Phillies’ first baseman Ryan Howard is a more agile, somewhat lankier David Ortiz with the tools to be a superstar. During a 4-for-4 day against the Yankees Friday, he hit two homers to right center. There is a grassy hill out there where fans can picnic and take in the game. Howard’s first homer, a high drive, cleared the fence easily. His second was a moon shot. As it rose to pea-size against the azure sky, the fans on the grassy incline skittered toward the back fence of the stadium. My seat was along the third-base line, so as Howard trotted around the bases, the backdrop for me was the backs of all those fans peering into the distance wondering if the ball would ever come to earth.
And Howard was just recovering from the flu.
Posted by Mike Pride at 10:12 AM | Comments (1)