Bits & Pieces

 

By Kim J. Harmon

A little potpourri for a hot summer day . . .

 

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I didn’t think I would, but I felt a little chill as I stepped onto Bassett Park in Hamden on Monday night. Here, there, everywhere a championship game with the Newtown U10, U12, and U14 travel teams trying to win a state championship at the same time. Sure, the U10s just had to win on Monday while the U12s and U14s (coming out of the loser’s brackets) had to win on Monday and Tuesday night, but it was still a thrill.

Some say it has never happened before.

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So bold, so brazen – before every pitch on Saturday morning, third baseman Elissa Robertson (U10) would take a pointed look over at the Seymour third base coach to try and catch the sign. Which she did. Usually players try to do this stuff with some subtlety (like using a telescope from the centerfield bleachers), but why waste all that energy, huh?

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Speaking of the Babe Ruth State Tournament and Bassett Park, there are four different fields there and all but one are absolutely miserable places to take pictures during early evening games. Be it the mixture of BRIGHT sunlight and PITCH BLACK shadows, the sun shining directly into your eyes, or the lack of any position in which to place oneself, there was enough there to make me wish the Babe Ruth State Tournament is never held there again.

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Stuck in traffic on (where else?)_the Merritt Parkway, I rolled down the win and turned the volume up on Megadeth (the album - Rust In Peace).

I_need heavy metal like that to boil off the rage I feel whenever I get stuck in a traffic jam.

Anyway, I look over to the next lane and see some kid, maybe 12, riding along with his mother in a Dodge Caravan.

All the time his mom was stuck in the jam, the poor kid was probably listening to Lite FM or something equally painful and I come along with the music loud enough to crack the asphalt and there he goes bopping his head a little and tapping his fingers on the door.

Gave me a little glance and a smile, he did.

Glad to be of service, kid.

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Now, I’m on the 17th tee at Pattonbrook on Sunday morning and I hammer my drive about 200 yards to the center of the fairway – only to see it skip another 30 yards on the dry (mostly brown) grass and then roll off to the left into the brook that parallels the fairway. I mean, I striped it and the ball rolls into the water. Now how is that fair?

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Does anyone really think Allen Iverson is going to do jail time? Come on – all he did, according to police, was bust down a door, point a cannon at a couple of guys, and make some wild threats. That may amount of five years for a common everyday shmuck, but Allen Iverson is the N-B-A and making $11 million a year. Guys like that don’t serve jail time – but they do throw parties.

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I find it funny, too, that the police can develop this type of case against Allen Iverson and then have to negotiate when he will turn himself in. Why can’t a couple of patrol cars run up to his mansion and slap the cuffs on him like any other lawbreaker?

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Are people still griping about the Major League Baseball All Star Game ending in a tie? For the love of Mike, get a life! It’s an exhibition game, people – an exhibition game! No one cares who wins the thing and if you do care, then I’m sure you must have other – more important – issues you should be dealing with.

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Not only are 30 billionaire owners and 750 major league baseball players fighting over billions of dollars, they are fighting over billions of dollars of OUR money. If the fans took THEIR money out of the game, then the advertisers would stop advertising and the television stations would stop televising and that would be that.

Go ahead – go on strike. The football season is starting soon.

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Yes, there is already talk of National Football League training camps. Man, how sweet is that? Too bad that taste will turn a little more sour when the New York Giants finally take the football field for real and all their fans have to face the painful reality that the team really did nothing to improve itself in the off-season.

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Speaking of football – if you haven’t caught an Arena Football League game on television yet (check TNN on the weekends), you’re missing something cool. It’s fast and furious and has lots and lots of scoring.

Connecticut has had a couple of AFL teams – the New England Steamrollers, the Connecticut Coyotes (who folded) and the New England Seawolves (who moved to Toronto to become the Phantoms). Now AFL2 (the minor league) features a pair of Connecticut teams – the New Haven Ninjas and the Mohegan Wolves.

Hey, it really looks like a lot of fun.