The Dog Ate My Homework

The dog ate my homework.  As hackneyed as that excuse is as a way to explain why one has failed to do something that was required, you must admire the excuse for what it is.  It is not something easily disproven – – so long as you have a dog.  The first kid to use that excuse probably got away with it – once.  Did someone in the back of the room say, “Why is that interesting?”  Here’s why…

In Ireland, there is an amateur soccer league where there was a scheduled game between Ballybrack and Arklow Town.  To say that the game would be inconsequential would be to heap praise upon it.  Now, it attracted international attention because of the reason given by Ballybrack for the need to cancel the game.  Ballybrack said that one of its players had died in a motorcycle accident.

The good news here is that Fernando Lafuente is alive and well.  Now the folks who run this amateur soccer league have to figure out what to do with the Ballybrack side.  While they are figuring that out, please consider the downstream consequences of that excuse for canceling an upcoming game.

It is difficult to prove that the putative dog did not eat the homework.  At some point down the line, it was going to be very easy to prove that Fernando Lafuente was still vertical, taking nourishment and exchanging oxygen in the biosphere.  When that happened somewhere in the future, what would be the explanation of the Ballybrack braintrust?

Switching gears …  Croatia won the Davis Cup; this is the second time Croatia has won the Cup; the last time was in 2005.  Croatia is a small country in the Balkans; my long-suffering wife and I visited Croatia last June; the population of Croatia is about 4.2M folks.  When we were there, the Croatian team was making a run in the FIFA World Cup tournament and we saw firsthand the level of excitement and pride generated in everyone as the team progressed from game to game; Croatia was the runner-up in the World Cup tournament losing to France in the final game.  In the Davis Cup finals, Croatia and France were the competing sides.

When I saw pictures of the celebrations in Croatia after the team returned home after winning the final match in France, the scenes were reminiscent of what we saw last summer with regard to Croatian progress to the World Cup finals.  It is a small country, but the people there take their international sports competitions very seriously.

The Alliance of American Football (AAF) held its QB draft earlier this week.  There were 4 rounds in the draft; the league consists of 8 teams.  In the first round, 4 of the teams decided to protect one of the QBs that had been assigned to the team and 4 other teams went shopping in the QB market.  Here are the QBs that were “protected” in Round 1:

1. Atlanta Legends protected Aaron Murray who played at Georgia
2. Memphis Express protected Troy Cook who played at Tennessee-Martin
3. San Antonio Commanders protected Dustin Vaughn who played at West Texas A&M.
4. San Diego Fleet protected Josh Johnson who played at the University of San Diego.

There were 4 other QBs involved in this draft whose names may ring a bell with you:

1. Birmingham Iron took Blake Sims with the second pick in the second round; Sims played at Alabama.  [The Iron took Luis Perez in the first round of this draft.  Perez is from Texas A&M-Commerce.  This could be the AAF’s first quarterback controversy.]
2. Atlanta Legends took Matt Simms with the fifth pick in the second round.  He played college football at Tennessee.  Matt Simms is the son of Phil Simms and the brother of Chris Simms.
3. Memphis Express took Christian Hackenberg with the seventh pick in the second round.  Hackenberg played at Penn State and was a second-round pick by the NY Jets.  That never worked out.
4. The Salt Lake Stallions took Matt Linehan with the third pick of the fourth round.  Linehan played college football at Idaho and he is the son of Scott Linehan – the offensive coordinator of the Dallas Cowboys.

Moving on …  I understand that Curt Schilling is not the most loveable former MLB player out there and I certainly do not want to associate myself with 99% of his remarks/positions in the social/political realm.  Schilling is sort of like that relative who makes the family Thanksgiving gathering even more pleasant by notifying everyone that he will not be able to make it this year.  I get all of that…

And if that is the reason that Curt Schilling is not getting votes for the MLB Hall of Fame, then shame on the voters.  His situation is not the same as the shunning of players who were proven steroid users or players who were never caught using PEDs but … you know.  One can make the argument – and I have made it in the past – that using PEDs enhance the statistics that form the nominally objective basis for Hall of Fame enshrinement.  The whole concept of PEDs is Performance Enhancement after all.

Curt Schilling has more than a few wing-nut quality stances on economics, social issues and politics; moreover, he is all too willing to share them with folks even when he is not asked to do so.  He is not anyone I would want to spend a weekend with; he is someone who deserves objective consideration for the Hall of Fame.  [Aside:  Steve Carleton in rightfully in the Hall of Fame.  Go and check out the Wikipedia page for Carleton under the heading of “Media charges of bigotry and anti-Semitism”.  The views described there are also of “wing-nut quality.]

Finally, Dwight Perry had this comment in the Seattle Times:

“Fit Pregnancy Club, a New York City gym that opened a year ago, caters only to pregnant women and those with infants.

“It’s also the only gym where ‘water breaks’ takes on a whole different meaning.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………