Don’t let the fact that three number one seeds ended up making the Final Four fool you. This has been an exciting tournament (did you see Kentucky vs. Notre Dame?) and will continue to be so in its final three games.
And as the NBA and NHL regular seasons wind down we can taste baseball, sweet baseball, on our lips. But for now… commence Spring Break!
Me? Yeah, four for four last night. But who cares.
We interrupt this tournament update to bring even more euphoria-inducing news.
Craig T. Nelson. Hayden Fox. Revival. NBC.
More… reasons… to… keep… on… living.
The question most asked of me as baseball season begins remains: How do you feel about the return of Alex Rodriguez?
Answer: Is it possible to feel differently and indifferently at the same time?
It’s true, I do feel differently about Alex Rodriguez this year than I have in previous years. For the past few seasons I’ve felt, as I think the Yankees did or do as well, that he would just somehow go away. Wouldn’t it be convenient if he just went away? (Known in some parts as “Clemensing.”) I didn’t really care if he ever appeared again in pinstripes or not.
This year, somehow, I feel different. Do I want A-Rod to succeed? Well, sort of. And not just because he’s a decent player on my favorite team. Perhaps I always want to see an underdog succeed, and somehow, incredibly, A-Rod’s now become the underdog.
The other half of my brain feels indifferently about Rodriguez’s return. A quiet “eh” is about the best I can muster. Truth is, I’ve cared less about baseball every season since 2009 (the Yankees’s last championship), and living outside New York now I spend more time watching my National League girlfriend (the Washington Nationals) than I do the Yankees anyway. My heart still resides in the Bronx though.
And unlike the Yankees, who didn’t even feel the need to tweet the news of A-Rod’s first spring training home run, I’ll be cheering for the guy in real life and cyberspace when the moment arrives.
I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed by the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament. From an objective standpoint, it somehow always lives up to the hype, and this year was no different. The performance of our local teams, however, left a bit to be desired, as both Maryland and Georgetown fell as favorites in their Round of 32 match-ups. Local-ish squad Virginia, though, took an even more surprising loss and proved once again to expect the unexpected in this particular tournament.
Kudos to the tournament folks to arrange it so that some close games this year were won by David and some close games were won by Goliath… gotta love how they keep us guessing. And my old friends from North Carolina State, now the tournament darlings, knocking off one-time David (that would be #1 seed Villanova)… good one, Wolfpack!
See ya next weekend, basketball.
Gee, that first day of the NCAA Tournament got a lot of hype, but it just wasn’t that exciting.
Said no one ever.
Now if you’ll excuse me I have more work to avoid and basketball to watch.
The resignation of Aaron Schock (“R”-Ill.) from Congress should hardly come as shocking (sorry) to anyone following the troubled legislator’s exploits over the past few months and perhaps his entire congressional career. There are several disappointing angles to this story, representing pretty much everything wrong with American politics in 2015. Where to begin…
First, a little background. Aaron Schock, 33, was born in Minnesota but moved with his family to Illinois when he was in fourth grade. Schock graduated from high school in 2000 and ran for a seat on his local school board shortly thereafter. His victory made him the youngest person serving on a school board in Illinois. At 23 he became the youngest school board president in Illinois history. A few months later he resigned from the school board to focus on his new gig: youngest member of the Illinois General Assembly in state history. Four years later he was our youngest-serving congressman.
Schock was a rising star in the GOP. (Know that such a phrase should never be said in earnest.) He was a fresh face to supplant those, you know, old curmudgeons associated with conservatism the past 250 years. As an added bonus he was young and good-looking and made government, you know, cool. Uh oh.
Exactly why it took us six years to figure out Aaron Schock is nothing more than your average high school student body president suddenly given Charlie Sheen’s brain and the keys to Dad’s Bentley I will never know. Somehow it was only recently that we began tallying up the “private flights, new cars, Super Bowl tickets, cufflinks, massages, gold equipment?, and cigars charged to his government expense account. Oh, and the $100,000 makeover to his congressional office… wait for it… to make it look like the set of Downton Abbey. I swear I am not making this up.
Schock has been more and more flagrant about his baller lifestyle the past few months, described by others as everything from plain old narcissism to outright meglomania. Yup, that’s the Facebook generation for ya. And sadly, the attitude of every politician I’ve ever met. This is how every politician acts. It’s just that Schock is young enough and good-looking enough to make it look cool rather than pathetic.
The problem is that every politician thinks the world owes them a lifestyle. I’m awesome, so the world should pay me. It’s the only profession I know in which there really aren’t any services to render, only what you as the legislator choose to dispense. In Schock’s case, the lead up to this was particularly egregious. This is a man who barely worked his entirely life; his existence has been a paid seat on one government body to the next. Sadly, this is how I used to view the business of government as well. If you’re awesome, someone will just pay you to be awesome, and the awesomer you are, the more you’ll move up the ranks. This is a pathetic worldview I eventually dismissed but remains clung to, disturbingly, by most of those swelling government ranks.
Schock’s a crook, and I’m glad to see him go. He gave millennials and conservatives a bad name, and gave John Q. Public the bill in so doing. As I often find myself saying, with Republicans like these…
It’s painful to see those so enamored of government and the lifestyle it provides running for public office. It’s even more painful to realize that these are the only people doing so. Who’s running for office to become poor? And from the president on down (when Schock steps down officially Obama will be back to miscreant number one on this front), the phenomenon is a disease upon the nation at large.
Unfortunately, those with the power to cure it are its greatest promoters.
This is the only day of the year I buy a newspaper. And I’ve been doing it for more than 25 years. Thus begins the greatest week in sports, now that those Tuesday and Wednesday games have grown on me. Add in St. Patrick’s Day and the first breath of spring and we’re looking pretty good right now.
It’s about damn time.
There was a time when the weekend culminating with Selection Sunday was one of my favorite weekends of the year. I suppose it still is, more though for the anticipation of what’s to come than of the days themselves. With so many conference realignments over the past few college basketball seasons I’ve barely been able to keep track of who’s in exactly what conference. I had barely gotten used to the idea of Louisville being in the Big East and now they’re in the ACC? And what the hell happened to the conference they played in last year?
Last night I did enjoy seeing my hometown Hoyas play in the Big East Tournament. They were 60-55 winners over perennial Big East power Creighton.
Creighton?
Regardless, this March should be a good one, never mind what wrong teams are playing each other this weekend. I guess it’s just a preview of what the real tournament will be. Nice.
Much has been made about Walmart’s recent decision to raise its part-time workers’ hourly wage to $10 an hour, beginning April 1st and continuing into 2016. To some it’s as though Ebenezer Scrooge paused halfway through A Christmas Carol and said, “Okay, Cratchit, whatever you want.”
Has Walmart gone soft? Is it caving to public pressure? Is it secretly in league with the feds to put one over on the public at large? (This one’s as likely as any other.)
I’m not sure the exact reason for Walmart’s rationale, but I’m guessing it has more to do with business than with good will, good feelings, or good public relations. Ten-dollar-an-hour employees are better than seven-dollar-an-hour employees, and perhaps this will make for lesser turnover. (And I’m not discounting better PR.)
Point is, this is strictly business.
And what do our friends on the left say? Do they say, “Thanks, Walmart”?
Nope.
It’s not enough.
Have you noticed that it’s never enough with these people? Make the minimum wage $20 an hour and they want $25. Make it 100 and they’d want it to be 110. They have an ingrained sense that business is somehow out to get them, and that only by wise and benevolent government can we combat this evil.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have bad news. I have seen the enemy, and he’s the wise and benevolent.
To say Tiger Woods is past his prime is like referring to a puddle as a snowman past his prime. It’s been nearly seven years since Tiger Woods won a major and a year and a half since he finished higher than 40th in one. His off-the-course problems have made the once likable Woods into a pariah, and the thing people think of rather than his golfing achievements. His golfing achievements, as they are, are many. But if he walked away from the game today we’d forever think what might have been rather than what was.
It was more than five years ago that Tiger Woods took his first sabbatical from golf, and for five years I assumed he’d be able to climb his way to the top again. Sure, he’s won some tournaments, and for a time regained his position as the world’s #1, but he’s never been Tiger Woods again. Never been the transformative figure who introduced me and a generation to the game of golf. Or what golf became, because it was never your dad’s golf again.
Well, now it might be.
Recently, U.S. PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem has started fielding questions along the lines of what if Tiger Woods steps away permanently? Finchem claims the tour can handle it. “It’s good news, bad news,” he says. Right. Good news that all those fans drawn in by Woods will find new ways to spend their money. Tiger was good for business, remember, not just a pretty face. Now a group of no-names will compete for his crown? A new generation of golf fans will have to watch that one. When Tiger steps away–and maybe he has already–the game won’t be the same for me. This is surely the end of an era, my childhood dealt another blow. Yup, I grew up with Tiger Woods. Funny thing is, he’s only a few years older than I am. The cool older brother I never met.
There was a time when Tiger Woods was a lock to break Jack Nicklaus’s career record of 18 major championship victories. Woods won his 14th at age 32, and he’s been stuck there ever since. Many doubt he’ll win one more let alone five. Ah, but the drama and excitement that would follow even one more Woods victory. Like Derek Jeter’s final Yankee Stadium at bat, it would be magical.
And the kid who broke all the rules and all the records was now the old man, recapturing youth for a weekend for himself and his fans. Ah, that will be sweet.