The Equipment Manager

Cubs swept a double-header in Atlanta by a combined score or 18-2.

Oh, yeah!

The Chinese screwing up the tape of “The Star-Spangled Banner”?
The Chinese version (when the tape works) of “The Star-Spangled Banner”? It’s an anthem, not a funeral dirge!
W’s elbow scrape?
The French? (Ha ha ha…suckers!)
Those tricked-out BB guns they use for the shooting competition?
Jim Lampley’s jaw?
The Chinese swimmers wearing duct tape on their swimming suits to cover the Speedo label?
That incredibly stupid commercial where they feed the dragon so it can warm their swimming pool?

Little girl with a beautiful voice is too ugly to represent China.
You can’t make stuff like this up, people.

Spain’s Olympic basketball team shows that you don’t have to live in Pekin to support the “Chinks.”

Way better than the mens gymnastics was the Muhammad Ali biopic on PBS tonight.

He IS the greatest.

USA sweeps all three medals in womens Fencing.

Lopez Lomong will carry Old Glory at the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic games tonight. I absolutely love this development. A few hours before Lomong was voted to be given this honor,China has denied entry to an American Olympic Gold Medal Winner from the 2006 Winter Games. The reason: China said they are “not required to give a reason.” The truth is Joey Cheek is a member of Team Darfur, a group of concerned about the genocide in the western section of Sudan.

Lomong was orphaned by the Second Sudanese Civil War…and is also a member of Team Darfur.

My nine-year-old boy was practicing his pitching in the yard, tonight. Lying in the yard was an old wooden bat my dad had given the kids when he was cleaning out the garage. I picked it up and swung it a few times. It was pretty heavy - both because it was made that way and because I am sure it had absorbed a lot of moisture from sitting out in the rain.

The little guy pitched and I started bunting the ones that were close enough to reach. Then I started swinging. I had completely forgotten the feel of the wooden bat hitting a ball. Wow. Nowhere near the feel of an aluminum bat - no vibration, no sting. The sound is pretty incredible, too.

As you can imagine, a nine-year-old can be a little wild. The best I did was a pop-up through the trees and onto the deck (probably 90 feet away in the direction of the second baseman). Still, it was a good feeling.

It was a GORGEOUS day to be at Wrigley Field. An 11-4 victory was just the icing on the cake. The weather was perfect and - somehow - Jason F. Marquis got the win. (guess what the middle initial is for)

My oldest son has been to three Cubs games (two @ Wrigley & one in Milwaukee).
So far, in games he has attended, the Cubs are 3-0 and have hit two Grand Slams (Fred McGriff & Mark DeRosa). If I get tickets to a playoff game, this kid is coming with me.

Both boys went with me. My youngest son just loved riding the Metra and the “L”. I swear, for $2 he’d ride the Red line up and down Chicago all day if he could.

I am heading to Bloomington this afternoon to play street hockey with a bunch of extremely out of shape old men from the Bloomington Prairie Thunder booster Club.

Bloomington has a nice, but aging, outdoor rink. It is suitable for street hockey (no skates) or roller hockey. It is just shy of legal size (200′x85′) but these guys are so out of shape, we play “half-court”.

I think we will have nets this time. Last time, we had one net and used a park bench as the other.

I play goal. This’ll be my last athletic (and I use that term loosely) activity for a while, as I am slated to go on the D/L for a few months after some ankle surgery.

The real shame is that the Peoria area doesn’t have an outdoor rink like this.