“I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.”

- H.L. Mencken

B.P.

Bits & Pieces

By Kim J. Harmon

 

There used to be a time – not so long ago – when summer was a lazy couple of months here in the sports department of The Newtown Bee. But not any longer.

Gosh no.

Last summer seemed to be the busiest what with all the softball teams and baseball teams playing in the New England Regionals (and one, the U10 baseball team, going all the way to the Cal Ripken World Series) and this summer appears to be much of the same.

Oh well, I got to rest a little on vacation (if you don’t count the hundreds of miles I walked around Washington, D.C., last week), but it’s time to get cracking again.

“The Lord taught me to love everybody, but the last ones I learned to love were the sportswriters.”

 - Alvin Dark

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When it comes to the Washington Nationals (the transplanted Montreal Expos of Major League Baseball), The Washington Post goes all out in its coverage as each day the front page of the sports section has a game story, a side bar and a column from Thomas Boswell about last night’s game.

Oh yeah, the city is crazy about the Nats, that’s for sure, but – oddly enough – the only Nationals t-shirts or jerseys I saw all week were those sported by tourists. Even my son bought a t-shirt … and he’s a Yankees fan!

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I have been to Madison Square Garden on a number of occasions and there is a reason why it is known as the greatest arena in the world – it sits right in the heart of New York City, it’s flashy and it’s visible.

My daughter and I were walking from the National Science Museum to the International Spy Museum and as we passed through one block I noticed this one building had a couple of hanging banners – one with the picture of a basketball player and another with the picture of a hockey player and I then I stepped back and looked up.

Lo and behold – it was the MCI Center.

It didn’t look like an arena at all. It looked like a warehouse.

People get excited when they visit the Garden for a game; I can’t imagine anyone getting excited to go to the MCI Center.

“If the rest of Washington ran as efficiently as (the Redskins), there wouldn’t be any deficit.”

- Jeff Bostic

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Riding the Metro and visiting the museums and monuments in Washington, D.C., gave me a better – and more somber – view of the world we are living in today.

Eight years ago, we were able to walk in and out of the museums and just walk up to the Washington Monument and stand in line. Now, all of the museums have metal detectors and baggage checks while some also have x-ray machines (at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, there was a bit of a tense moment when my wife was asked to remove two ‘canisters’ from her bag; they were water bottles and she was asked to drink from each one).

On Thursday and Friday, after the horrible tragedy in London, the Metro stations and some of the trains featured soldiers brandishing machine guns.

I couldn’t help feeling a little unsettled.

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Walked by the JFK Hockey Field on Friday. Can’t say for sure if it is for field hockey or for ice hockey (once it gets flooded in the winter). It lies virtually in the shadow of the Washington Monument and clearly hasn’t been maintained for some time.

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On the long ride home from Washington, D.C., last weekend we decided to bypass traffic on I-295 and take I-95 all the way up (fools!) and passed through Philadelphia. The highway took us right past Lincoln Financial Field where the Philadelphia Eagles play – wow, what a beautiful place.

“Philadelphia is the only city in the world where you can experience the thrill of victory and the agony of reading about it the next day.”

- Mike Schmidt

 

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There used to be a time when I enjoyed the Home Run Derby during the All Star game.

Not anymore.

And this year’s competition seemed the most inane. I can understand Major League Baseball trying to jazz things up a little with this ‘international’ thing but I’ve never looked at it as, oh, ‘that’s the guy from Venezuela’ or ‘that’s the guy from Korea’ or ‘that’s the guy from the Netherlands.’

Jason Bay? Hee Sop Choi? Ivan Rodriguez? Those guys  have 35 home runs between them. Where is Alex Rodriguez, Derek Lee, Adam Dunn, Morgan Ensberg, Albert Pujols and Manny Ramirez?

The Golden Home Run Ball was an interesting addition, but not interesting enough.

“(Frankie) Frisch’s home run was the longest in history. He kept talking about it all the way from St. Louis to Boston.”

- Red Smith