Keeping Score

It's been a long, long, time

since I've been to a Red Sox game ... at least two/three years. Since the World Series, getting tickets is nearly impossible (the legal way). But tonight breaks the drought - my baby sister scored some bleacher seats and it's going to be a beautiful warm night in Fenway - the official start of summer for me!

One of my students from last semester focused her blog assignment on the Sox - most students stopped posting once the semester ended (although I was happy to see a few kept them going!) - Erica stopped - in her last post she noted that "given that I have no audience", but when she took a look at her neglected blog recently she saw all these comments from people who missed her, realized she had had an audience all along and she's decided to keep the blog going. Cheers!

In the dugout ...

Tom Dahlberg of the Associated Press weighs in on Keith Hernandez's lame on-air comments about a female San Diego Padres personnel being in the dugout.

The drama that is Manny

I'm straying a bit off my topic here but sometimes I wish the sports media would play some of these sports "stars" the way these stars play the media. Here in Boston, you could have thought it was "the second coming" with all the coverage that Red Sox player Manny Ramirez received for showing up late to training camp. (He was given "special" permission to show up late because ... well ... he's "special"). What if the tangled mass of jostling reporters decided to stay away? The columnists complain about these players' attitudes, but they also feed it by the exposure and hype they produce. And then there are all those embarassing inferiority-complex questions, "Do you still like Boston? Do you still like us?" Ugh.

Women GMs in the MLB

The Kansas City Star has a piece about the future of women in major league baseball at the general manger level - highlighting Kim Ng, who was in the running for the Dodger's GM position earlier this fall. She didn't get the job - but many people say a GM job is in her future.

No for Ng

Bear with me while I catch up on stories I've been following - it was a busy semester.

Kim Ng was a close second, but the GM job for the Los Angeles Dodgers went to Ned Colletti. Here's New York Times take on the Dodgers missing out on a chance to make history.

A woman GM in MLB?

Newsday has an article on Kim Ng, who inteviewed for the general manager position for the LA Dodgers - if she got the job, she would be the first woman GM in the business. (Thanks to OffWing Opinion, where I first saw this link)

It's Friday ...

Go Sox. (the Red ones, of course)

Hope for softball?

Speaking of John Powers at the Boston Globe (see post below), he seems to be the only one reporting that the women's softball federation is fighting back the IOC's decision to cut the sport from the Olympics. In "Softball federation wants another pitch" Powers writes,

• "Now that it appears that more than a few Lords of the Rings didn't know that softball and baseball are different sports, the softball federation wants the International Olympic Committee to reconsider last month's vote that dropped both from the 2012 program for London. Though IOC president Jacques Rogge insists the vote was final, the softball people (backed by the US Olympic Committee) want the results of the secret ballot revealed. If the vote was close, the federation has a better case, since a number of IOC members later said that they thought softball was simply women's baseball and might vote otherwise now. As it was, the program vote was bizarre, with the members going through seven rounds of balloting to select two replacement sports (karate and squash), which they then turned down by 2-1 ratios." (John Powers, Boston Globe, 8/16/05)

A quick search of newspapers and wires on Lexis-Nexis is showing no mention of this story (besides Powers' piece). In a previous post I mentioned how softball suffered this fate due to the IOC's desire to get rid of baseball. Most sports media didn't seem to care about this because Major League Baseball doesn't have much to do with Olympic baseball. But where is the outrage in the sports media about what happened to women's softball? Especially American sportswriters  - we have the top players in the world here - a big venue for their sport has been taken away from them and there is a barely a peep.

Olympics drops softball, baseball

Earlier this month, the International Olympic Committee announced that it was dropping both baseball and softball as Olympic events.  There wasn't much of an outcry in the American sports media because Major League Baseball never had much to do with the Olympics in the first place - one of the reasons it was dropped. It appears that women's softball suffered for it's association with baseball and some sports writers have also noted it was the pure dominance of the U.S. women's team that irked the IOC.  For the women, this is a huge loss as there are no major league opportunities for them.

"Olympic de-listing clouds future for national team" - San Diego Union Tribune (7/9/05)

"U.S. Dominance Caused Softball's Olympic Demise" - NYTimes (7/9/05)

"OLYMPICS: IOC's move is setback to softball" - Detroit Free Press (7/9/05)

11-year-old pitcher to be honored by baseball's Hall of Fame

USAToday has a nice piece "Hall of Fame honor for young baseball star" on a young pitcher named Katie Brownell who pitched a perfect Little League game -- plus all 18 outs were strikeouts. Also here is a little piece on her on womensbaseball.com