Tag Archives: Sports

Saint Louis’ Playground

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Saint Louis Rugby

When we cruise through Forest Park on the weekends, there are all sorts of displays of manly prowess. There are the knights that fight with Nerf and then there are the rugby players pictured above. Both groups seem to enjoy whaling on themselves. Other manly pursuits are also well represented. There is the racquetball, handball and squash confederation, “Thump! Oh! Thump! Whoa! Thump! Yeah!”. Baseball is firing up now on all pistons on Aviation Field. The grass is always greener and more manicured there, especially on the diamond side of the fence. Tennis and golf also enjoy their sacred sanctums, and then there is the bicycle trail.

The bike trail is where I workout. This so-called bicycle trail is really a multi-use trail. It is shared among cyclists, rollerbladers, runners and walkers. There are also baby-strollers, dogs and an occasional horse. All of these varied users generally mesh well together, until they don’t. Machismo can flash itself when it comes to passing. Passing when there is oncoming traffic can lead to violations of people’s personal spaces. Sometimes bruised egos are also involved and sometimes it isn’t only egos that get bruised. I know all about how this happens. I’ve experienced it.

While rugby and the knights that fight with Nerf are exclusively boys clubs, the rest of these athletic pursuits are coed. The women help to diffuse any local over abundance of testosterone. It is a big park, one of the largest urban parks in the country. So, there is always plenty of room for everyone to play and when the bike trail gets too crowded, then there are many more miles of roads available to ride.

Lineman For The County

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Ninja Lineman

Saturday after the parade, storms just kept rolling into town. Sometime in the PM, our back property-line neighbor, Karen, lost another tree. She had lost her first tree, February of last year, when we lost our big Norwegian Spruce. That storm downed half-a-dozen trees in the neighborhood.

Yesterday afternoon, we had gone out for lunch and some shopping, so it wasn’t until dusk that Anne looked out the back window and saw the fallen tree. Fortunately, it missed both Karen’s and her crazy neighbor’s houses. It fell across Karen’s fence, but did only minimal damage to it. I guess the tree must be vaulted over the fence or cantilevered somehow. It will be tricky to take down.

Around ten last night, the power company showed up to reconnect Karen’s power. The tree had fallen across the wire. The photo of the lineman turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. He was working and moving during the exposure, but that seems to have only enhanced the ghostly nature of the image. Mysteriously, Joanie’s power was knocked out yesterday too. She is about half-a-dozen houses down the block. Except when the man was on the pole, we never lost power and all the homes around us seemed to have power too. It is a mystery to me.

Sunday morning, it threatened more rain, but that threat was never realized. Anne and I walked over to Stratton’s in Clayton, for brunch. It was about four miles round-trip. In the afternoon, Anne and Joanie went to a quilt show. I went biking in the park and got 17 miles. I got back in time to watch the second half of the MSU/SLU game. The Spartans eventually slew SLU, but it took way longer than it should have. Now on to the Sweet-Sixteen!

Green and White

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“Tis a wee bit soft out”, was Anne’s summation of the weather this morning. “It’s froggy out”, was mine. A bit of the ole country’s weather, on this fine Saint Patrick’s Day.

The fog burned off and we were left with the prospect of not one, but two St. Patty’s Day parades. Really three, but who’s counting? We chose the Hibernian, or Dogtown, parade over the downtown one. It is the more authentic of the two. It alway’s occurs on St. Pat’s Day and not just a neighboring Saturday, like the downtown one does. For you out-of-towners, Dogtown adjoins the southern side of Forest Park and is so named, because during the Fair, this is where the animals were housed. In related news, the zoo bought the old Deconess site and plans on expanding south of the highway. It already has a toehold with Turtle Park.

We biked to the parade. It was only 5 miles roundtrip, but we dodged much of the traffic and didn’t need to find a parking place. We got there early enough to get front row seats. We were bracketed on either side by little kids along the rails. They all got way more candy and beads than anyone else. Even the two loud and probably drunk guys behind us couldn’t out score them. Even though they yelled, “You! You! You!”, at every passing bead thrower. We knew that it was time to leave when the rain began. We ended up riding home in it, dodging cars, drunks and lightning.

About this time, you might be wondering about the title. The green is clear enough, but what’s with the white? Well, this is March and there is a certain madness in the air. Maybe the pall that sat upon Saint Louis this morning, wasn’t fog. It could have been a mourning shroud, it wore so well. Mizzou was upset by lowly Norfolk State (We don’t drink and we don’t smoke, Norfolk, Norfolk, Norfolk U). These come from out of nowhere upsets, is what makes the tournament exciting. It is just more exciting, if it happens to someone else. I point out that Norfolk’s team is the Spartans.

The other pertinent upset from the first round, is Michigan’s loss to Ohio. Not Ohio State, they’re doing fine, but who cares? Ohio’s Bobcats wear green and white. Those are the colors, but not the team I was thinking about, when I titled this post. I am referring to the Michigan State Spartans, Anne’s and my alma mater. They dispatched Brooklyn in the first round. Brooklyn? Who knew? Tomorrow the Spartans face SLU, Saint Louis’s last hope. Maybe the game will be on TV. Monday, will we read, “SLU slew the Spartans”? Hope not. Go Green! Go White!! Victory for MSU!!!

I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque

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Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day

Copper Cowboy Coffee Pots

What’s up, Doc? I fly to Albuquerque tomorrow morning. It is a business trip. I am uncertain as to its duration. It could be as long as a week, or it could be for only a day. I am at the mercy of schedule. Up until the close of business today, I was uncertain whether or not I would be going at all, but short of a last-minute cancellation, I should be good to go.

This is the time of year to go to New Mexico. It is cool, but hopefully not too cold. This will make any encounters with rattle-snakes and scorpions less likely. I will be working long hours, so future postings could be somewhat sparse. I could miss Dave, when he comes to town. Heck, I could even miss the Super Bowl, but life is an adventure.

Last night, Michigan State lost at Illinois, in basketball. State was rated nine, nationally, but has assuredly dropped precipitously since this game. I don’t know if Illinois was even rated? This begs the question of which team Val was rooting for, but I think that I already know this answer. I’ll “only” be a few hundred miles from her this week, I could just drop in, unannounced, and ask her. 😉

It was a low scoring game, 42-41, and even though it was an upset, Illinois came under some criticism for this. One excuse that was floated, was that ball was over inflated. I think that State losing one of its better players to injury and the Illini’s “ugly” game strategy had more to do with the final score. Except, in a similar low scoring basketball game last year, it was discovered that Illinois had substituted a women’s basketball. The women’s basketball is smaller than the men’s, which in theory should have led to a higher scoring game, carnival games employ an opposite strategy, but I guess that it just threw the players of their game.

Leather Balls

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While biking in the Park last month, I came upon a rugby game in progress. I stopped to watch it and to take some pictures. I got to talking with one of the players and he explained that they were the Ramblers, one of the oldest clubs in the USA. I never got a very good understanding of how the game is played. It looked to me to be a lot like American football, except without the helmets and pads. The Rambler player said that it was more like soccer, than football, with the important exception that players can use their hands. Most plays seemed to end in a scrum, or a pile of bodies. Injuries were frequent. I overheard another pair of players bemoaning the habit of some players of punching opposing team players in the face, while lying at the bottom of these piles.

I checked on the web and found the Rambler website. In 1932 Edmond St. John Martin Hoogewerf (I love this name) arrived in Saint Louis from Great Britain. A year later, in 1933, he and Harry Langenberg had founded the Saint Louis Rambler Rugby Club. The Ramblers are Saint Louis’ oldest and the nation’s second oldest active men’s rugby club. Only the New York Rugby Club can claim to have a longer run.

Langenberg Field, located behind the Dwight Davis tennis courts, in Forest Park, was named in honor of Harry Langenberg and his Saint Louis Ramblers. The Ramblers had played on this field for years, but recent balloon festivals have forced them to move to the old golf driving range, located behind the park visitor’s center. This I was told by the Rambler player. I’m guessing that the goal posts are thought to make for too dangerous of a landing obstacle, but this year, a number of balloons landed safely on the driving range, with its goal posts. So, I don’t know what the real story is.

Occupy Cooperstown

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So, the Cards won the pennant and there is joy here in Mudville, but where is the love? MSNBC titled last night’s win, “Cards Win Ugly”. In the body of the article this was mollified with, “Cards Beat Ugly”. There by placing the onus of ugliness not on the winning Cardinals, but rather the losing Brewers, but it might as well have been buried on page thirteen.

I’m so angry that I made a sign!

It is pledge drive week on NPR, so I have taken to listening to podcasts on the way to work. This morning’s show was “Hang Up and Listen”, Slate’s sports gabfest. Dated October 12th, it wasn’t up-to-date enough to cover the series with the Brewers, so it had to contend itself with the division series between the Cardinals and the Phillies. After listening to Stefan Fatsis and his crew, I predict that they will again dwell upon this series, in one week from now.

I won’t believe corporations are people until Texas executes one.

You see folks, for these members of the media elite (OMG, I’m channeling Sarah Palin), when the Phillies lost in game five, the baseball season was over. Kaput! Philadelphia was the last best hope for these effete Easterners. Who cares which one of four, middle market teams, from Flyover-Land, beats the other three.

You know things are messed-up, when librarians start marching!

Through the course of their discussion, they alternately whined that it wasn’t fair that a lesser team, like the 3-2 series winning Cardinals, could knock-off a 100 game season winning team, like the Phillies, but it was fair for big market teams like the Yankees and the Phillies to have huge payrolls. Well, Mr. Fatsis, et al. welcome to the majors! OBTW, Isn’t the current plutocracy the underlying cause of our financial difficulties?

First they ignore, then they laugh, then they fight, then you win.

I probably come across as a Cardinal fan with ruffled feathers, and well I should, because the unkindest cut has come from closest to home. They now live on the Left Coast, but before they use to live in Flyover-Land too. They both graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington, they are both Texas Rangers fans and they are both my brothers. Not since the Civil War has brother been pitted against brother, the North versus the South. That was a battle royal that cleaved this nation’s soul. Can’t we avoid that strife again? Can’t we all just get along? Can’t we have joy in Mudville, again?