Youth Baseball

The Little League World Series is on ESPN now, featuring teams from all over the world. Which means, everywhere in the world there is a Dad watching a kid bat thinking, "they cut my kid for that!"

We have spent the last ten years involved in some way in some sort of Youth sports. I have come to several conclusions.

1) Youth sports are not about the kids. It is about parents.

2) Every kid is a whiney cry baby. Except Yours. He is sensitive.

3) On the first day of practice, the head coach will mis-pronounce your name and your son's name. He will say we play baseball for fun. What he means: we play baseball to win and you should worship my child like he was the babe born in Bethlehem.

4) They (usually Dads) decide who is a good player and who is not when the player is four years old. They (the same Dads) usually have no professional baseball experience except watching a game on TV.

5) If you want your kid to possible have a career in baseball: adopt of child from the Dominican Republic.

6) If you cannot adopt a kid from the Dominican Republic, dedicate all of you waking hours, including the five minutes when you make love to your wife, thinking about how you can get your kid on a Travel Team. I'd begin researching right after conception.

7) My opinion of Travel teams: The concept itself is good. Kind of like "honors" or "advanced placement" classes in school. The execution of it stinks. It is way too political. It costs way too much to do and honestly, are there that many exceptional youth baseball players out there?

8) Fall ball is worthless unless it is introducing your kid to rec league baseball. Have them take football or soccer instead.

9) What we need to be teaching (good sportsmanship) is often ignored so we can hoist a $6.00 trophy in the air.

10) We want the kids to compete and to win. But, at the end of the day we need to realize that there are 200 million Chinese who don't care.

Modern Bob

This just in from Planet Bob: Bob Dylan, whom most Americans say with geniune awe: "Who told this guy he could sing?", has just released his four millioneth album, Modern Times.

Dylan, who has written classic American songs like "Blowin' In The Wind", "Like A Rolling Stone", and "Joan Baez Is A Cow (I Don't Know What I Ever Saw In Her)", is now 65 years old and no longer plays the guitar at concerts. He shakes his cane at the audience telling them to get off his lawn.

Bob Dylan albums come in several different catagories.

1) The Bad: Think of Self Portrait and Dylan

2) The Not As Bad As They Say It Is: Albums like Street Legal and Shot Of Love.

3) Not As Good As They Say It Is: Time Out Of Mind and Desire

4) The Great: Blonde On Blonde, Blood On The Tracks, and Love & Theft

When listening to Modern Times you have to keep it in the back of your mind that Dylan is 65 years olds. Upon that criteria, this album is probably should win the award for "Best Album By A 65 Year Old That Should Be Dead".

Once you get past that, at times, Modern Times seems like an album written, produced, and performed by Abe Simpson.

Like all,um, older people, Dylan can get "wordy" at times and several songs seem like they go on forever and they do not become forever young. Nettie Moore seems like it takes months to get through and Bob probably could have cut Spirit On The Water by a minute or two.

It is like he tells you that he is going to tell you a story and then in the middle of it he is talking about how the Kaiser took the word "twenty" and you had to say "Nineteen Dickety Two" and sandwiches were called "flat breadies".

However, all Bob Dylan albums, including all of the ones in the 80's , have at least one great performence on it. For me, Thunder On The Mountain is it. Again, it is a little verbose, but the part about crying about Alicia Keyes (which sounds like a name of someone he would have met at Maggie's Farm) is good fun as is the part about "I got the pork chop/she got the pie. She's no angel/and neither am I".

The copy Modern Times I bought has a DVD extra that has four Dylan videos. It has the Love Sick performance at the 1998 Grammies that "SOY BOMB" showed up at. That little dance has
been edited out. There is also a Larry Charles directed version of Cold Irons Bound which is just simply cool.

All in all, Modern Times is going to fit in the 3rd catagory of Dylan albums for me. Not bad for an
old timers.

Connecticut Puts The Nuts In Nutmeg

If there is one thing the primary battle between Ned Lamont and Sen Joe Lieberman in Connecticut shows is that there are many, many Democrats in that state that have the I.Q. of lettuce.

Joe Lieberman was the charismatic half of the famed Gore-Lieberman ticket. Since that time, Al Gore has: grown a beard, shaved it off, and starred in a movie called, "An Inconvient Truth" (working title: "We All Are Going To Die"). On the other hand, Lieberman has continued to serve in the Senate, where collegues from both sides of the aisle comment on how much he sounds like a Hanna-Barbara cartoon character when he talks (my vote: Snagglepuss).

One thing Lieberman has done is support the war in Iraq, which, if you know anything about the Left in this country is as popular with them as Mel Gibson at a synagoue.

And not only that,Lieberman does something that is relatively uncommon in today's politics. He respectively disagrees.

In today's politics, you just cannot disagree. You have to stand up and shout, stomp your feet, and accuse the person of the other side as being a total Nazi doofus.

Well, despite a voting record that is to the left of Michael Moore, Lieberman drew opposition from Ned Lamont, who in true Democrat party fashion, is a rich person that cares about poor people, even those that cannot join his country club.

You would think Lieberman, with all of this national experience would be able to flick Lamont away, but Lamont is leading all of the polls despite a performance in a debate which showed Lamont went to the Dan Qualye School Of Debate.

It has gotten so bad for Lieberman that he had to call in the big guns. In the Democratic party that means: The Clintons.

Way back when, when there no current wars on TV, Saddam was in Iraq and all was right in the world, Former President Bill got in trouble for having whatever he thought he was having with a young intern who turned out to be big boned as well. We did not hear alot of Jihads back then. We did hear a lot about Former President Bill's, um, habits, which mind you, are not anybody's business except his, Former First Lady Sen.Clinton, and whoever he might have been not having his defination of sex with.

Lieberman got on the floor of the Senate and said, now get this, this type of behavior is wrong.

That's water under the bridge now. Of course at the rally Former President Bill spoke at, he spent a good 15 minutes talking about himself and the new Mazda he just bought.

However, things have gotten so bad for Lieberman that Chris Matthews paused long enough from interrupting whoever he was supposed to be interviewing to urge Connecticut Democratic voters to make this vote a referendum on the war. Oddly enough, Matthews then began pining for a Presidential canidate that has a philosophy, knows history, and reads books. What's odd about that is that this describes Newt Gingrich.

But let's leave the implications of Connecticut's primary and go to a fun election, the 4th district in Georgia which featured Cynthia McKinney vs Hank Johnson, Jr.

Ms. McKinney is a serious member of House Of Representatives if serious is defined as crazy as a betsy bug. She's been in the House on and off for 12 years now and her two major contributions have been: Naming a post office and Creating great comedic moments like punching policemen because they are either: a) White and therefore racists; b) stupid for not recognizing her dispite the fact that she changes her hairstyle every 45 minutes with the intent of finding the funniest style and sticking with it. Ms. McKinney did not invent the race card, but boy she has perfected it.

Her opponent, Hank Johnson,Jr ran on the platform: I Am Not Cynthia McKinney. This was enough to defeat McKinney despite the fact Mr. Johnson is probably is slowest speaking person in the state of Georgia.

In a local Cobb County race, Rev.Dr. John Crooks won the Republican nomination for post six of the Cobb County school board despite fears that he, by himself, would tear down the wall of seperation between church and state and the endorsement of Alan's Alley.