Armadillo: Saturday's six-pack
-- Home plate ump Mike Winters took a pitch directly to his right forearm in the 2nd inning in Philly; it swelled badly within a minute, but he got it wrapped and worked the rest of game behind the plate. Tough dude.
-- Congrats to Bartolo Colon on winning his 200th career game last night.
-- Lions fired HC Jim Schwartz LY; he is now DC in Buffalo. Bills-Lions play in Detroit October 5, as well as in last preseason game in three weeks.
-- Justin Masterson's first two starts with St Louis: eight IP, ten runs allowed.
-- Bengals' coach Marvin Lewis is 90-90-1, but is taking grief because he hasn't won a playoff game; Cincy's three coaches before Lewis were 52-124.
-- Cubs' prospect Javier Baez is second player in 100 years with three HRs in his first three big league games; other was Cardinals' Joe Cunningham in 1954, who wound up hitting .293 with a .403 career OB% in a 12-year career, but wound up with only 64 career homers; somewhere upstairs I have his baseball card from the end of his career.
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Armadillo: Saturday's List of 13: Its strange the things you remember....
13) I had braces when I was a teenager; just remember how surly my orthodontist was, how he’d snap at his hygienist. She seemed so unhappy being there—the guy was a creep. But he was an Irish creep and my mother knew his mother from church- she liked all things/people Irish, so I got stuck going to this guy who used to tell me “That doesn’t hurt” when he would tighten my braces. It hurt like hell, even if I was a soft suburban kid.
12) I remember that racetracks never had telephones; when we went to Saratoga in August, you couldn’t get ball scores or talk to anyone on the outside while we were there. What percentage of people there today have cellphones with them? 85%? 90%? More than that?
11) I remember my 9th grade math teacher was Mr Terzian; good teacher, really smart guy, little spacy. Looked a lot like Pete Carril, the old Princeton basketball coach. One day he comes into class and asks if anyone found a golf club on the football field. Turns out he was whacking around golf balls and left his driver on the 50-yard line. No bueno. Driving range would’ve been cheaper than losing his driver.
10) In 1974-75, Bronx Bombers played home games at Shea Stadium, because their ballpark was being remodeled. I was 15; I went on a bus trip with some friends for a Bat Day game with the Royals. All kids 16 and under got a bat for free; well, all kids but me. Jerk at the turnstile didn’t believe I was 15 because I was very tall for my age; because I was 15, I didn’t have anything to prove my age, so I never got a bat. Like money for the bat was coming out of the jerk's pocket. Rat bastard.
9) I remember Larry Brown coaching in the ABA while wearing overalls; even found a picture of it on the Internet last month. He is the reason NBA coaches have a dress code. 38 years later and Brown is still coaching at SMU, albeit in college and in a suit jacket, not overalls.
8) Because of this website, I once watched a Chiefs-Giants preseason game in the press box at Giants Stadium; was weird sitting there by myself watching, but they have free food in the press room before/after the game and at halftime. I’m in the food line, and former Chiefs’ QB Len Dawson is right behind me.
Two things; a) He’s a lot bigger than I thought he was.......
b) Why the hell am I in front of Len Dawson in the food line?
He played in two of the first four Super Bowls; he should eat before me.
7) 30 years ago I was an official scorer for a minor league team in the Eastern League. Guy who typed in messages on the scoreboard sat next to me all summer; nice enough guy. After the season, I find out the guy turned himself into the FBI because the mob had put a hit out on him, for unknown (to me) reasons.
Geez, what if they took a shot at him and hit me instead? Being an official scorer wasn’t much fun to begin with (stats are serious business) but this was ridiculous.
6) I was lucky enough to be an assistant basketball coach at Schenectady High for eight years; the school Pat Riley went to. Early in my third year there, our head coach was talking to the kids about “…when you play for a state championship”.
This for a team that had won a combined nine games the previous two seasons. I’m thinking if we could win one sectional game it would be a great accomplishment. Turns out the coach was truly a great coach and three years later, we won a state championship, then three years after that, won another one.
One of the great experiences of my life, but I’ll always remember how he saw the future clearly when it seemed impossible for something like that to happen.
5) When I was in 8th grade, I missed a foul shot with game tied and 0:01 left; we lost in double OT and even though it was the best game I played that year, I was the goat, no doubt. Our team finished 1-13, not a lot of fun.
Years later, I wound up shooting free throws for beer after third quarter of a CBA game in Albany. Can’t remember if Phil Jackson or George Karl was coaching the Albany Patroons back then, but one of them saw me make four foul shots (out of 7) in 0:24, netting me four cases of beer, which I unsuccessfully tried to trade for soda.
Would’ve traded all four cases of beer for that foul shot in 8th grade to have gone in.
4) I remember that before ESPN, before the shot clock, before Coach K, Duke once led North Carolina 7-0 at halftime. Of a basketball game. Kids today have no idea how tedious basketball could be without a shot clock.
3) I remember the first time I saw Steve Martin on TV; still the funniest guy I’ve ever seen. He was on the Tonight Show when the Tonight Show was a huge deal, it was the early 70’s and Buddy Hackett was the guest host.
White suit and all, he did his classic comedy routine and I was hooked for life. What a brilliant guy and a good actor, too.
2) My cousin took me to a comedy club in Manhattan in 1978, the same night Pete Rose’s 44-game hitting streak ended, that I remember. Pat Benatar sang that night; she was an up-and-comer back then. The MC was Richard Belzer, who now plays Detective Munch on the SVU show on TV; I was terrified he was going to pick on me in the audience, unaware that the people he was jousting with in the crowd were plants, his friends. Catch a Rising Star was the place; I was 18, it was great fun.
1) Some days are better than others; on a Monday ten years ago, friend of mine set it up so I would meet Kurt Warner at Giants’ training camp, which was a great moment. There is a picture of the two of us in my living room; he looks happier than me in the pic but no way he was.
Anyway, while I was waiting to meet Kurt, I was talking to this writer who was in from New Orleans to do a feature on Eli Manning, who was a rookie that year- they both went to Newman HS in New Orleans.
Writer was Michael Lewis; you may have heard of him—he wrote Moneyball. So a guy who roots like hell for the Rams/A’s met Kurt Warner and the guy who wrote Moneyball in the same hour. On a Monday afternoon in Albany.
Sometimes, you just never know.
