Hot weather? Try Arizona in July

July 10, 2019

I had to chuckle to myself a couple of days ago when I heard two people talking about the recent spate of hot weather in our area. Now, temperatures in the upper 80s and low 90s are nothing to take lightly. There are some pretty severe consequences if you ignore the heat. Like a really bad sunburn. But whenever I think about heat, I go back to my year in Arizona as a guest of the U.S. Army. Prior to arriving in Fort Huachuca in late May of 1969, I knew little about the Grand Canyon State. I had read about hot it got down in the desert, but you really don’t appreciate it until ...

Free agent frenzy

July 9, 2019

As we have reached Monday, July 8, the NHL free agency period has reached the start of its second week. Some teams have jumped all over multiple players, other teams have lost a lot of what made them successful last season. It is always fun for me to look at which teams what teams panic, and which others stay the course as they sort out how to be more successful during the upcoming season. Take the Tampa Bay Lightning for instance. After matching Detroit’s record of 62 wins during the regular season, the Lightning celebrated by getting swept by the Columbus Blue Jackets in the ...

Greed is the owners main goal

July 3, 2019

Should this country ever land on Mars, Neptune or wherever, it’s almost a certainty that some professional sports franchise will immediately set up a game there. After years and years of staging make-believe games overseas, the greedy owners may have established a low when when they had the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox play a recent two-game series in London Stadium. The stadium is normally reserved for soccer, a sport that Englishmen fervently hold above everything else. And American baseball hadn’t been played since 1993 Now, pro teams from the U.S. have been playing ...

Time flies even if you don’t

June 26, 2019

The passage of time is something a person has no control over. A couple of recent things clearly reminded me of that. First, there was the news that Hancock’s Shane Burcar had been hired for the men’s head basketball coaching job at Northern Arizona University. One, I had just a fleeting recall that Shane had gotten into coaching at the high school level. But to land a Division I coaching job is a significant achievement for anyone — much less someone from the Copper Country. I recalled the time I had to take Shane to the Portage Hospital emergency room after he ...

Is there room for one more miracle?

June 19, 2019

The St. Louis Blues and Toronto Raptors have already shown that miracles can occur in the world of professional sports. In this most improbable of years, the Blues stunned all in the hockey world by defeating the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. And their first-ever cup came it in Boston …. of all places. The Raptors defeated the unbeatable Golden State Warriors for their first NBA title, even though a series of Golden State injuries contributed to that feat. So now it is being tossed around in some circles that perhaps the Cleveland Browns or Detroit Lions can ...

Bruins and Warriors show grit

June 12, 2019

If the ongoing National Hockey League and National Basketball Association finals are showing anything, it’s which teams have more sand. The Boston Bruins showed a lot of grit in forcing a Game 7 with a big win over St. Louis on enemy ice. The city of St. Louis had all but conceded that their team was going to win its first Stanley Cup ever. There were day-long festivities on Sunday and all that remained was for the victory celebration plans, presumably concluding under the Golden Arch. But the Bruins, bouncing back from some very questionable officiating in Game 5, showed they’re ...