Bits & Pieces

By Kim J. Harmon

 

Over the last two summers, Newtown Babe Ruth Baseball teams have won six state championships, four New England Regional championships, and made two trips to the Cal Ripken 10-Year-Old World Series.

Yowza.

And, gosh, now Newtown is sending a team to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

Ha, ha – Newtown, Pennsylvania, that is.

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Man, with all the travel some families have had to do this summer, there are a lot of people who can’t wait for school to start … and I’m one of ‘em.

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Remember, fall tryouts at Newtown High School will start next Monday (for football) and the following weekend (for all other sports). Don’t forget – you need a physical, a parent permission form, and the pay-to-participate fee ($150 for football, field hockey soccer, girls’ swimming and volleyball and $50 for cheerleading and cross country) before you tryout.

Find further details elsewhere in this section.

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This past week was fun – I ran into Lisa Masella (basketball star at Western New England University), Erica Masella (former track and swim star at Newtown High School and now physical education instructor at New Milford High School) and Trina Ramsdell (softball star at Manhattanville College, where she hit .295 with five doubles and a triple).

And then I pop open my email on Tuesday and find out Allison Frobey, a 2003 graduate of Newtown High School, has been named co-captain of the Plymouth State University women’s soccer team. Man, she was a great player – with the best, most dangerous, throw in I have ever seen.

 

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I swear, what is this world coming to?

Jose Canseco pulls off the lid on steroids in major league baseball not because he was concerned about steroids in major league baseball, but because he needed the money he would get from his book deal, and everyone – from the most casual fans all the way up to the empty suits in Congress – gobbled it all up like potato salad at a Labor Day picnic.

And now Canseco’s former wife, Jessica, is posing in Playboy and millions are going to buy the stupid magazine to get a look.

How can two people like this command so much attention in this society?

Please, will someone stop the planet so I can get off.

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Another sign that society is on the fast track to oblivion is this growing popularity of competitive eating.

Takeru Kobayaski of Japan won $2,500 this past weekend when he ate 100 pork buns in 12 minutes. This is the same guy who annual wins the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog eating contest at Coney Island in New York (the record: 53-1/2  frankfurters in 12 minutes).

The guy weighs only 144 pounds. His metabolism must be ungodly and he probably has to eat 100 pork buns in 12 minutes or otherwise he’ll waste away to nothing.

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This doesn’t add up for me –

Members of the USOC supposedly took massive bribes to bring the Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City, Utah, back in 2002 and yet seems compelled to protect it’s good name by asking all kinds of groups and charitable organizations to stop using the word OLYMPICS in whatever they are doing.

The latest group to be threatened with a lawsuit as the Ferret Olympics in Eugene, Oregon, which began in 1996 as a way to raise funds for a local ferret shelter.

“No one is being singled out,” said US Olympic committee spokesman Darryl Siebel. “But the accumulated effect of letting that (stuff) go unchecked would hinder the ability we have to do what we do.”

And what would that be, exactly?

 

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Former women’s world chess champion Susan Polgar apparently broke four international chess records earlier this month when she played more than 1,100 games in over 17 hours.

The record that bugs me the most is playing 326 simultaneous games on the afternoon of Monday, August 1, and winning 309 of those (drawing 14 and losing three). I have played chess on and off since I was a kid, I understand the game, and yet I have never won a match.

Not ever.

And here this woman goes and wins 309 matches in a afternoon while walking up and down this long row of tables in a Florida mall.