Shirt Pocket Notes

A lot has happened in the eleven days since I last posted, a time span that now makes much of this "Old News", so I will be brief in my comments.

Florida defeats Houston for NCAA Mens Basketball Title

The Shot That Wasn't

The Men's Final Four gave us three terrific games including a stunning upset, to me anyway, of Houston over Duke in one of the semi-final games.  If those two teams played a best of five or best of seven series, Duke would win it, but that's not how it goes in this tourney.  Duke's wonderful team of one-and-dones, including the marvelous Cooper Flagg, will now scatter to the winds and the NBA, but they will probably spend  lot of time over the rest of their lives wondering "We had a great season and THAT was how it ended?"  Or maybe they won't.

The title game featured a terrific comeback by Florida that ended when a Houston player was unable to get off a potential game winning shot thanks to a terrific defensive play by the Gators' Walter Clayton Jr.

UCONN trounces South Carolina for NCAA Women's Title

Back in February, Linda and I were enjoying lunch at a sports bar in Hilton Head SC where we watched the UCONN women dismantle top ranked and defending national champ South Carolina.  The crowd of South Carolinians in the bar were stunned by the one sided nature of the Huskies' win, and I said to a gent in the bar, "I guess we should never underestimate Geno."

The thoroughness of that UCONN win made me jump on the Huskies in the final game when I saw that they were laying a mere 6.5 points to the Gamecocks.  I expected a Connecticut win, but I never expected that they would thrash South Carolina the way that they did, leading by as many as thirty points at one time before  ending with an 82-59 win.

For HC Geno Auriemma it was an incredible 12th National Championship, and such a championship was fitting end to the collegiate career of the amazing Paige Bueckers.

Betting Statistics

So how did I do betting on college basketball games this season, you ask?   In betting on Men's games I went 73-48, while going 30-24 betting on Women's games.  That produced an overall winning percentage of .589 (103-72).  Included in those 175 wagers were March Madness games for both Men and Women of 37-16.

So, if you bet with me, you would have made money.  Again, my average wager falls somewhere in the range of $2.50 to $3.00, so I'm not getting rich (or poor) doing this.  It's a hobby, not an addiction.

The Pirates Open Season and Are, Well, The Pirates

In the 15+ years that I have been writing this blog, never have I written less about the Pittsburgh Pirates than I have this season, and for good reason.

In an effort to build a winning team around the once-in-a-generation talent of pitcher Paul Skenes, the Pirates spent the off-season trading for a guy named Spencer Horwitz, a first baseman who showed up in Bradenton with an arm that needed surgery, and added free agent Tommy Pham and Adam Frazier, two over-the-hill guys.

Predictably, they have started at 5-9 and are currently in last place in the NL Central, three games out of first place.  They have earned this miserable record by continuing to play lousy fundamental baseball that would get a high school coach fired.  Derek Shelton continues the post game bromides such as "We can't let things like that happen" and "We have to get better at executing plays like that" and We're working on correcting things like that".  The same crap he has been spewing for six seasons now.

In fairness, Sheltie can only work with what Ben Cherington gives him, which is nothing.  On Wednesday afternoon against the Cardinals, the Bucs starting lineup consisted of four guys hitting below .200, another guy hitting .204, and another guy, Tsung-Che Cheng, making his ML debut, who went 0-2 so then they had five guys hitting below .200,. but hey, Cheng is the 17th best prospect in the Pirates system!  They have also used guys like Pham, Frazier, and Jack Suwinski as lead-off hitters, none of whom will ever be confused with Rickey Henderson, or even Omar Moreno.

In what other businesses would guys like Cherington and Shelton still have jobs after five plus years of performances like this?  

Then there were the public relations gaffes concerning the removal of the Clemente marker and replacing it with an ad (and did you ever read such bullshit as the statement put out by Travis Williams over that screw up?) and the mess with the commemorative bricks outside of PNC Park.

If ever an organization exemplifies the expression "They could f--k up a one car funeral", it is the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Book Review

This is an autobiography of Trafford, PA's Sonny Vaccaro, founder of the Dapper Dan Roundball Classic, and legendary athletic shoe hustler, the guy who put Nike on the map, basketball-wise, and who signed Michael Jordan to that stupendous deal with Nike way back when.  I, of course, knew who Sonny Vaccaro was, and I always felt that he was a bit on the shady side of the ethical line, and that at least some of the evils - if that's the word you want to use - that have beset college sports here in the 2020's can be traced directly to his feet.

He doesn't see it that way, of course, but it's his book and he can tell it any way he wants, and he makes no effort to hide his light under a bushel, as the saying goes.

A pivotal scene in the book is when Vaccaro testifies before the Knight Commission that investigated college sports.  Former Penn State President Bryce Jordan interrogates Sonny by piously asking "Why should a university be an advertising medium for your industry?"

Vaccaro's answer was revealing:

"They shouldn't, sir.  You sold your souls, and you are going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question, sir, but there is not one of you in this room that's going to turn down any of our money.  You're going to take it.  I can only offer it."

Vaccaro was correct in skewering the university presidents and other NCAA poo-bahs, but his answer is also like a drug pusher saying "I'm not making these school kids buy hard drugs, I'm only offering them."

"Legends and Soles" was in interesting read, and gets Two Stars from The Grandstander.