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a few rows back who has been yelling at me tonight he asked we nodded wondering where he was going with this when maryland plays an acc game in here there are 15 000 fans just like him we laughed and then i asked do you mind nichols replied nah that s what makes it fun sometimes there are a handful sometimes there are thousands but when fans are watching a basketball game in which there are officials and a score chances are very good that there will be fans yelling at the referees in nearly nonsensical fashion i guess i first really noticed this sort of behavior in high school one of the parents of a junior varsity player was one of those loud fans who was sure that the referees hadn t made a good call in their lives what s more his son was at the age at which as my friend glenn described it everything your parents do in public tends to embarrass you that means that the son looked as if he wanted to dig a hole at the foul line whenever his dad called the ref a knucklehead by the way the varsity games which didn t include the son also included some knucklehead officials somewhere along the line after that i d like to think i learned some lessons about officials they weren t going to see everything and were bound to make the odd mistake i just wanted them to know the rules whether i was watching or playing i remember one time in softball when my team was on the field and there was a play at second base he s safe he didn t make the tag yelled the umpire i calmly said it was a force play yer out the umpire replied the standards are higher when dealing with a game like college basketball that bar league softball in part because the stakes are higher it would be nice if the refs were close to perfect every night but the officials still have dozens of calls to make every game and they seem to do the best they can this all came to mind sunday when i went to see canisius play rider i was sitting near the top of the seating which isn t very high in the koessler center just down the row were three or four middle aged men who were straight out of the textbook every call that went against the home team was a bad one at one point a rider player was trapped along the sideline by a couple of players suddenly a canisius player went flying the problem was that none of the officials actually saw the contact but they realized something had happened at the next whistle they walked over to a television monitor while my friends were yelling things like you idiot the officials saw an elbow had been thrown by the rider player assessed a technical foul and moved on with the game whenever i m around these people who in theory are relatively mature adults i wonder about them do they come from dead end jobs in which they never have a chance to talk back to authority are they ex basketball players who didn t play enough and are frustrated by that fact does sitting in some sort of crowd give them the chance to revert to the behavior of 12 year olds is there any other authority figure or public office holder who they would call an idiot during a chance meeting now i can think of a few who might deserve that title but you d show them a little respect during an actual meeting i can appreciate their passion and i know they are part of the landscape of the sport still their puzzling behavior remains a constant of my basketball watching life posted by budd bailey at 10 59 pm no comments labels basketball officials monday january 10 2011 the arizona shootings saturday s shooting of representative gabrielle giffords of arizona and several others is one of those terrible moments that is just difficult to process there is so much going on so much passing through my thought processes that it s difficult to put observations together not now and maybe not ever we start of course with the basics this by all accounts was a lone crazed man i m not blaming anyone or anything else for this action but it does tie in to the current national conversation on a number of issues so a few thoughts one point that hasn t received a great deal of coverage is that the fact that a couple of news television outlets and at least one radio network reported that rep giffords had died what s worse than that in my business i imagine the pressure to be first among the all news channels is overwhelming it s good to remember that it s better to be right speaking of confusion the descriptions of the political views of the assassin were all over the map i saw one report that had one high school classmate call him something of a liberal who was no supporter of government while others moved him way right i m found of reminding people that the political spectrum is more of a circle than a line that it s not much of a jump from the far left to the far right and vice versa but who s to say where this guy fit the fact that giffords was one of the targeted congressional districts by sarah palin targeted by a map with crosshairs is a coincidence no one but no one is associating palin with this violent action but she was wrong to use such a violent symbol then and it remains indefensible and to the person on palin s staff who tried to claim it was just a surveyor s symbol you aren t helping the discussion one bit sigh and finally rush limbaugh maintained his standing in the controversy business with this quote in continuing this template and narrative that the tea party and sarah palin that talk radio and fox news are inspiring violence they forget that in the process of so doing they are attacking what is now a majority of america um um has the majority ever been wrong in this country well ok maybe on civil rights vietnam and a few dozen other things meanwhile glenn beck happened to post a message attacking all violence just to the right of a picture of him holding a gun how do you spell mixed message jon stewart s message at his rally remains true we need to learn to talk to each other posted by budd bailey at 11 33 pm no comments labels arizona shootings friday january 07 2011 end of the season blues the national football league season isn t over in general the playoffs start saturday but it sure is in buffalo you probably could argue that it ended two weeks ago and you ve never seen a season end with more of a whimper than this one the bills finished 4 12 this season missing the playoffs once again as they have throughout this century they lost their first eight games won four of their next six and then were the subject of a pair of beatdowns it s a silly word i know but it fits against the patriots and jets yes the bills had about run out of players by then and were recruiting wide receivers from pickup games but it was still tough to watch so it s 4 12 and the third overall draft choice for the locals my usual line of thinking is that sports teams go into seasons with several questions that need to be answered and the season provides the answers what have we learned the coaching staff eventually made the right decision on quarterbacks you could argue that it took a little too long to figure trent edwards wasn t the answer but that s an easy second guess ryan fitzpatrick will never be great but he was at least ok at times the selection of c j spiller looks a bit worse in hindsight although no one should give up him clearly the bills had bigger needs than a running back even though the team probably figured correctly that marshawn lynch had worn out his welcome just as clearly spiller showed flashes of great ability even so it would have been nice to get a clear starter and impact player with that first round pick and some were taken after spiller was picked two coaching staffs have decided that aaron maybin just can t play in the nfl i hope he s not cut anytime soon though as he s a convenient target for five spot lines at work i guess john mccargo is in the same class the conventional wisdom about the bills entering the season was that they didn t have much talent i didn t see anything to change anyone s mind is there anyone on the roster who might rank in the top 100 of nfl players lee evans hasn t played at that level for a while although he sure doesn t have much help is it too much to ask to see a second third or fourth round pick come through in a big way once in other words torell troup alex carrington and marcus easley still look like projects a year into their careers to be fair buffalo did do better with second rounders last season and just who is in charge of scouting tight ends anyway the rebuilding process is not going to be a short one and considering the possibility of a lockout in 2011 and the bills stadium lease expiring after the 2012 season time doesn t seem to be on anyone s side posted by budd bailey at 7 17 pm no comments labels buffalo bills wednesday january 05 2011 hall of a day it s always a great day when the hall of fame inductees are announced in any sport this was such a day as the voting in baseball was announced bert blyleven and roberto alomar made it over the 75 percent voting threshold and will see their names placed in cooperstown in the summer baseball seems to take these things a bit more seriously than the other sports at least in terms of the fan base with essentially 24 positions to consider 11 offense 11 defense two kickers football probably could select 10 guys a year without anyone noticing a lack of quality in the picks basketball s shrine in springfield doesn t differentiate by level so a great college player can get in even if he or she wasn t a star pro bill bradley strikes me as a good example of that but there are others hockey standards traditionally have been lower and odder than the other sports meaning i m still trying to figure how dick duff got in but at least the bar has been raised in the last decade the baseball picks are always scrutinized thoroughly though it s a great way to spend time after new year s while killing time until pitchers and catchers report i always thought the best formula for picking a hall of famer is the simplest did you look at that player during and right after his career and say he s a hall of famer without question if the answer is yes he gets a vote albert pujols has been a hall of famer since since his third month in the majors he only needs to stay healthy as bill parcells used to say it s not the hall of pretty good but we don t get many years where the decisions are so clear cut like in 1999 when we had george brett nolan ryan and robin yount the invisible line for inclusion is different for every voter and does a little moving as the years go by for example blyleven received less than 20 percent of the vote in his first year of eligibility no one looked at him during his career and was ready to put him with tom seasver however he won close to 300 games struck out a ton of batters and played with a couple of champions longevity is a virtue for most and blyleven had that argument on his side eventually and finally it proved decisive some people believe that if someone is the best player in baseball at some point in his career that should be good for strong hall consideration at least that s the argument some give for don mattingly who held that title briefly but who saw his career unravel due to a bad back but if mattingly goes in then dale murphy has a pretty good argument too there s also the least common denominator theory of voting it s the well if this guy is in that guy should be in because that guy was about as good as this guy jim hunter was 224 166 luis tiant was 229 172 hunter is in tiant is out go figure but if there s one bad pick that lets in a few dozen other possibilities at the least and then there are the steroid boys who no one seems too sure how to handle it s easy to vote against mark mcgwire and rafael palmeiro now but what to do with barry bonds and roger clemens who were clearly headed toward cooperstown before they allegedly started cheating if i had a vote in this discussion i probably would have gone with alomar blyleven barry larkin jeff bagwell and tim raines lee smith jack morris and edgar martinez would have made me think for a while but i m like everyone else except for a few hundred writers i get to argue about it for the next 364 days posted by budd bailey at 11 46 pm no comments labels baseball hall of fame saturday january 01 2011 pick a side one of the highlights of the holiday season for me is that i get to see some old friends in the suburbs being a city dweller for some time the trips come less frequently these days if you don t count shopping excursions and during holiday gatherings either close or far from home i was almost afraid to bring up anything politically oriented because i knew the discussions could get heated i m not sure i could ever say that before talk to city people and i hear one side of a story one person did a video slide project in which she took pictures of a collection of homes that house school children in buffalo take my word for it you d think you were looking at well not quite haiti but maybe mexico city would you like to spend a buffalo winter in a house with gaps in the outside walls talk to suburban people and i hear another side of the story i hear complaints about taxes whether it be corporate or personal and how wrong it is to keep adding to the burdens of the relatively wealthy the problem of course is that both sides have some truth to their argument some of the suburbanites here point to president obama and claim he s taking us to socialism while also pointing to county executive collins and claim that he s working hard to keep government spending in check the city dwellers say obama is more in tune with realities while collins only is concerned with not raising taxes at all while pushing his own vision by such moves as laying off the only people who can keep an eye on him auditors in the comptroller s office and costing taxpayers money in the process as he unsuccessfully defends his illegal actions in court that leaves with with us vs them republicans vs democrats fox vs msnbc red sox vs yankees the problem is that if we don t listen to how the other half lives we ll never understand their position it will always be us vs them and not just plain we guess what we re all in this together it s an off off year for elections which means there will be some significant local races can t wait to see how the political conversation turns out as we go through 2011 i smell some rage getting ready to boil over in the meantime happy new year posted by budd bailey at 7 18 pm no comments labels local politics newer posts older posts home subscribe to posts atom total pageviews twitter tweet search this blog links sports book review center road trips buffalo braves history buffalo bandits history the tall thin guy mary kunz goldman street observations clarence grad 72 blog archive 2023 2 may 1 february 1 2022 2 may 2 2020 7 november 1 october 1 august 1 july 2 june 1 may 1 2019 6 november 1 august 1 july 1 june 2 may 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