Wow! Much Fast!
I might have to tune in to a NASCAR race this season to check out the Dogecoin car in action.
very race
so left turn
I might have to tune in to a NASCAR race this season to check out the Dogecoin car in action.
very race
so left turn
Happy almost first Saturday in May. You know what that means… It’s Derby Time!
So grab your over-sized hats and substantial fascinators because the 140th derby is tomorrow. Pour yourself a strong mint julep, find your rose garland, and sing along to My Old Kentucky Home.
Now that you’re mostly prepared, it’s time for learning about the horses, and for that I’m going to strap a feed bag of useless untrue horse info to your face:
So let’s get out there and yell at some horses for 3 minutes after drinking whiskey for 3 hours!
Hey internets, remember me? I’m the webmaster for this site and I was writing on Wednesdays for a while. Well, I have been a bit busy. In my real life I switched jobs and that was stealing most of my free time. I am now a “web development engineer” as opposed to my previous job where I was a “software engineer.” For some of you I basically just said I went from being a “computer guy” to being a “computer guy,” but the truth is I went from being a “MS SQL guy” to an “ASP.NET guy.” Don’t worry, I’m not going to switch from WordPress to a C# software package, I still have to, at least, check out version 2.5 before making rash changes.
Enough of the computer/software talk, on to the sports. Since I’ve finally settled into my new routine, I was able to take in a full weekend (Saturday) of sports.
First event of the weekend was a Rolex Sports Car series race: GAINSCO Grand Prix of Miami at Homestead Miami Speedway (say that 3-times fast). Read More
When Hank Aaron tied and subsequently broke Babe Ruth’s record of 714 Home Runs, the socio-political backdrop involved a great deal of deeply entrenched racism. Hammerin’ Hank played in the South, and his career spanned Brown and Swann— the heyday of the Civil Rights movement, as the Supreme Court dragged the American people into the present, into reality, kicking and screaming. The novel concept that people are people, nobody’s got a god-given right to be held above a fellow human- that took a while to sink in, and still hasn’t quite fully done so. Racism will, sadly, forever dog American history, and will never be fully expelled from our society. Indeed, it’s one of those troubling real-world things that baseball is designed to help us escape. Baseball’s just a game, baseball’s more than a game, baseball is tied to our national soul, baseball’s been racist, baseball’s atoned, baseball will never fully atone.
Hank Aaron’s first two home runs of 1974 were surrounded by death threats, bigotry, excitement, and downright jubilation. It seems terribly exciting- if anyone who remembers it first-hand would comment here I’d appreciate it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of an internet in 1974, and pretty much anything contemporaneous about Hank that’s worth reading involves paid archives. So here’s a link to his well-crafted Wikipedia page and the suggestion that you go out and read something about Hank at your local library. He was a quiet, likable titan of sport, from all accounts. Hank played in the Negro Leagues, the “separate but equal” place to see damn fine baseball through most of the 20th Century, at the beginning of his career, and went from there to a long career as one of the super-elite three or four most consistent offensive producers in baseball’s history (Ruth, Williams, Cobb, I’d say).
Here’s a teaser for what looks to be a pretty decent documentary on Hank’s time with the Eau Claire Bears: Youtube.
And now Barry Bonds. He’s tied Aaron. The internet has it covered. He’s no pioneer, he’s a cheater, he’s a terrific hitter, he’s a circus, he’s ultimately a letdown. I prefer to cling to 755 as the important number, wherever Barry ends up, and to celebrate Aaron, and pretty much agree with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Terrence Moore:
Actually, Aaron is still in it, but in a wonderful way. Whenever those among the public hear Bonds’ name, either positively or negatively, they usually hear Aaron’s name soon afterward. Not only that, when Aaron’s name does surface during conversations involving Bonds, Aaron’s name often is surrounded by implied hugs and kisses. In fact, Bonds once told me with a smile at his locker at San Francisco’s AT&T Park, “I’m helping to keep Hank’s name out there.”
That’s nice of Bonds, but Aaron really doesn’t need his help. For 23 Hall of Fame seasons without the hint of scandal, the eternal king of home-run kings helped himself, thank you.
Unlike George Herman Ruth last time around, Aaron’s still alive, and I think he’s been pretty classy- all things considered. We can only speculate what Ruth would have said or done in April 1974, but I personally doubt he would have taken things in stride; I mean, I get pissed when my bar trivia scores get beaten, I can’t imagine if I had the all-time home run record.
Can’t wait to see how Barry handles it. C’mon, A-Rod.
Duke DA Disbarred
DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — A judge said he would suspend District Attorney Mike Nifong on Tuesday after learning that the prosecutor disbarred for his handling of the Duke lacrosse rape case intended to stay in office for another month.
Earlier in the day, Duke University announced it had reached an undisclosed financial settlement with the three former lacrosse players falsely accused of rape last year.
Nifong, who was disbarred Saturday for breaking more than two dozen rules of professional conduct in his handling of the case, said in a letter released Monday that he would leave office July 13. His departure date wasn’t soon enough for Hudson, who decided to suspend Nifong from office.
It’s been clear to anyone who’s been following the case of the three Duke lacrosse players accused of rape – Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans – that the case has been mishandled from the beginning. Even if the case against the three students was airtight, it’s improper for a District Attorney to go on a national news program and call the defendants “a bunch of hooligans [whose] daddies could buy them expensive lawyers”.
But as more information came out, the hollowness of Nifong’s case became more obvious. The accuser told vastly different stories to hospital personnel and to police. She picked her assailants not out of a lineup but out of a stack of photos of the entire lacrosse team – a process guaranteed to nab a white defendant, but not the guilty party. There was little to no medical evidence of rape, and no DNA evidence connecting any of the three men. And on 60 Minutes, the other dancer who’d been performing with the accuser that night, Kim Roberts, said she hadn’t left the accuser alone long enough for an assault to have occurred.
(To be fair, Ed Bradley’s interview with Roberts suggests that the boys were hardly gentlemen – they were drunk, rowdy, and grew irate when they felt the women stopped dancing too early. Other witnesses claimed to hear the boys yelling racial epithets at the women after they left. But none of this lends credence to a rape charge)
Now, more than a year later, all charges have been dropped and the Attorney General of North Carolina has declared the three boys “innocent.” Mike Nifong has stepped down as D.A. and, as of Tuesday morning, has been more or less fired.
So has justice finally been done? Not quite.
Read More