Delivering American University's news and views since 1925 | Thursday, November 30, 2023
So the news today is that Mark Prior will have surgery and miss the entire season. While this is unfortunate for Cubs fans, I'm wondering how Prior "not pitching ever" makes the news. You wouldn't tell me that the sun rose, the earth turned, and that Ryan Seacrest is the world's foremost tool, because these things are already assumed and understood.
Picture waking up at least six days a week at 4 AM in the morning. You arrive at your destination at 5:30 AM and for the next two hours you're required to row. Later in the day you spend another two hours at the gym working on the cardio machines and lifting weights.
It's that time of the year again. While most of the country is squarely under the minion of Mel Kiper Jr. and his multiple spreadsheets of NFL draft prognostication, a select few is awaiting the NHL second season with glee. There is nothing in sports that can in any form equal the intensity that is the NHL playoffs.
Yogi Berra once said, "In baseball, you don't know nothing." Truer words had never been uttered by the man who once said, "Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical." I mean honestly, do any of us really know anything about this game? If you were the one guy who on a drunken limb told your buddy that midseason rookie call-up Anibel Sanchez, who started the season in AA, would be the guy to break the longest no-hitter drought in Major League Baseball history, well, hell man, give me a call, we need to find some real estate! With that said, here are three predictions I am making for the 2007 season.
All you needed to know about Georgetown last Saturday night is that at one bar, things got so crowded before the game that the owner volunteered to send people in line on a bus to see the game at his "other bar" in Columbia, Md. Other than that, everything pretty much went as expected: the big men (Hibbert, Noah, and Oden) dominated, and Florida and Ohio State both won.
If you wake up early on a Saturday morning and head out to the William I. Jacobs Recreational Complex, you might notice a group of young women taking batting practice or lunging for fly balls. No, the university hasn't sprung for a new varsity sport, but the AU women's club softball team has been filling the spring athletic void quite nicely.
We've got a lot of things to cover here, so let's ride. First of all, no matter what's happening nationally, the first thing that needs to be acknowledged and celebrated is an event that took place in our own corner of the 202. For about a year now, AU has not had an athletic director, which is maybe good considering that when there was an athletic director, teams were cut from the budget.
The clock struck midnight on the Eagles' Cinderella season, changing a potential victory bus into the proverbial pumpkin on Wednesday night as AU lost to Holy Cross in the Patriot League Championship game 56-48. The loss prevents the team from reaching its first NCAA tournament.
Although it hasn't been pretty for most of the year, right now you have to give our men's basketball team all the credit in the world. Sure they have beaten four of the lower seeds in the league, but anytime a team can win four in a row, especially to end the year, the feat is impressive, and it appears the Eagles are getting hot exactly when they needed to.
Snow making you sick, depressed, or rowdy? Well, hang on Panama Blue, because spring training baseball is just around the corner, and by obvious extension, so is the spring. Unfortunately, amidst the coming return of America's pastime, one team's fan-base knows that it has no hope of doing anything.
