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This is an archive collection of entries from my main personal blog, My Mundane Mid-Life.
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This collection of entries is from April 06, 2003.
Sunday, April 06, 2003
Wolves 4 - Rampage 6
Holy crap, are we tired...
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Carol and I get to our seats right after the doors opened and just about fell asleep, waiting for our buddies to arrive and the game to begin. The last game of the season, and not a great crowd - 6,244. And then we find out who's ref-ing the game: Dan O'Rourke, the same guy that we had problems with last month. This can't be good. Well, actually, it's not too bad. He's doing a pretty good job and he's letting the teams play. Good. We're losing 3-2 after 2 periods, and there's been a few nasty fights. You can tell that things are really getting to these teams, especially when there's fights after the horn sounds for the end of the period. The 3rd period rolls around and something happens. Somewhere along the way, O'Rourke starts calling bad penalties and totally ignoring others. The fans are in an uproar. But it's not only us - the broadcasters don't understand what he's doing and are at a loss for what's going on. Coach Anderson is livid and is an interesting shade of red. Dallas Eakins does a no-no: he starts waving a white towel like an Iraqi trying to surrender, and that gets him thrown out with a gross Misconduct penalty. Things got bad. The conspiracy theories fly - why does the AHL have against us? Anarchy ensues.
But - there is one thing that holds everything together. The game means nothing to the Wolves, but it means something to Steve Maltais. In the course of the game, he manages to get a Hat Trick (all power play goals), which ties him for the all-around scoring champion of the AHL. When the Rampage had the game in hand, Coach Anderson let Maltais stay on the ice to try to get the one point he needed to the scoring title. Coach even pulls Maracle for an extra attacker to help out (though it cost another goal in the empty net). Then, with 5.6 seconds left in the game, J.P. Vigier got a goal with an assist by Rob Brown and Steve Maltais, giving him the one point he needed to get the John B. Sollenberger Trophy as the leading scorer in the American Hockey League for the 2002-03 season.
San Antonio outshot us 37-25 (we only had 4 shots in the 2nd period). But, the seeding gets shook-up and we won't see them in the first round. Our first Quarter Finals playoff game is next sunday against the Hershey Bears.
And then it's time to leave the arena, drive home and collapse. I hate this time of year when hockey ends when baseball begins. Was a good time, though...
(Boxscore) « hide the extended part of this entry
posted at 09:23 PM | Link | Wolves § |
White Sox 10 - Tigers 2
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Oh, this feels like it's getting old... straight to the Stadium Club again, as we wait to rescue more people from the cold. Janie and Jeff showed up and we rescued them and brought them upstairs for a little buffet, sandwiches, desserts and drinks in the warmth of the club to watch the game. Unfortunately, the end section of the upstairs area is dead - meaning no PA, no TV's. Hopefully, that will get fixed soon. Anyway, what a great start for Josh Stewart. It was his first Major League appearance, and he went 6 2/3 innings. He gave up 7 hits and 2 earned runs, and had only one strikeout, but it was a good start. Now, when he got pulled, it was 1-1, with one man on that scored to give the Tigers the lead. Well, when the bottom of the 8th came around, the Sox scored 9 runs in the inning and won the game 10-2.
(Boxscore) « hide the extended part of this entry
posted at 04:20 PM | Link | White Sox § |
David BloomSo, he complains about leg pains and cramps. Not a big deal - we all seem to get them every once in a while. Hell, riding around in a specially modified M-88 tank recovery vehicle for as long as he has must make you uncomfortable. But, I'll bet you, there's no way in hell either he, his family, the folks at NBC, hell even the 3rd I.D. that he was with could have seen this coming when David Bloom died of an apparent pulmonary embolism. This news is just an absolute shock. You see a guy, younger than you (he's 39, I'm 46) and you see someone that seemed to really enjoy his work (something that I truthfully cannot say). He was always on top of his form, no matter what he covered - OJ Simpson, the Washington Sniper, the war in Iraq... riding a mechanical bull for the Weekend Today Show or getting dunked in a dunking tank on the plaza. I really enjoyed this work and was fascinated with his little gyro-stabilized camera and reports from the desert. It's sad, just damned sad to lose a guy like this. He had this wonderful way of making the story "fit", and making it understandable to us doofuses out here. You hear of other correspondents dying, you hear of coalition forces dieing, but hearing about his death has a different "feel" to it. Just one of sadness and loss, perhaps because he was good and perhaps it was because it wasn't as a casualty of war (though, in the grand scheme of things, it probably was). I know NBC will miss him, and I guess I will too.
posted at 09:48 AM | Link | Current Events | 1 comment § |
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That's it for the entries in this particular Archive of my blog. If you want, you can look through other entries by selecting the links in the right-hand column of this page under either Archives by Month or Archives by Category, or you can search the site for specific keywords by using the Search page.
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