Not quite the big time

We had a chance to go see the Gary/South Shore Railcats on Saturday night. The Railcats play in the independent Northern League, with teams from Joliet and Schaumburg, IL, Kansas City, Fargo, and Winnipeg.

This is an interesting level of baseball. Most of these guys are minor league rejects. Some are local guys who tried out and latched on. A few are former major leaguers.

We saw Gary take on the Schaumburg Flyers, who has former Pittsburgh Pirate Jermaine Allensworth playing center field. Allensworth (who is from my wife's hometown of Anderson, IN and a fellow Boilermaker), played a few years in the bigs, kicked around the affiliated minors for a few more, and has been in the Northern League for the last five season. He played two years for the Railcats.

Guys like Allensworth stand out. He's better than everyone else. He never blows the routine play in the field. He has a polished swing. He doesn't make the silly baserunning error. You can tell he played pro ball once. He's just not good enough to anymore.

The rest of these guys might not be good enough to play on the teams I watch in the College World Series. There is a fair amount of slop (the home pitcher, warming up right before the start of the game, threw a wild pitch and the catcher overthrew second base by 30 feet on the throw down). The players play hard though, so it's fun to watch. They certainly aren't playing for the money. They get paid, but nobody makes a living.


Put me in coach!

Gary plays at the US Steel Yard, which is a nice, relatively new minor league joint. It seats about 6000, but almost none of it is in the outfield. There are a few seats near the RF line, and a hot tub section next to that, but otherwise, all the seats are in foul ground.

Like most minor league parks, there is a lot geared toward the kids. They even have a playground behind the hitting background in CF. There is also train tracks that run just past the left field wall, so we'll get a train going by every once in a while that gets every kid's attention. There are also not one, but two mascots, Rusty and Rascal. Rusty was my two-year-old daughter's favorite. They have kids competing for prizes between almost every inning. They also get to run across the outfield during one inning break.


My daughter's first crush

I missed quite a bit of this game (Gary won 6-5). I had the longest wait ever in a concession line - and I have been in a lot of concession lines. The line itself was short, but the guy right in front of me was ordering dinner for his family of six. It took the dimwitted woman trying to process this almost twenty minutes. Just waiting on this one guy, I missed the last two batters of the top of the fourth, the entire bottom of the fourth, and the first four batters of the fifth. I also spent an inning with my kids in the playground.

The game is almost besides the point though. The point is for the family to have a good night out without going broke, and we managed that.


We were all a little bleary-eyed when it was over

Indiana Palms and the Temple of Baseball

With much trepidation, I wanted to try to take the entire family to a Cubs game this year. It's a quest fraught with peril, because you have to first find tickets, then get to the game, keep the younger ones entertained so the rest can enjoy the game, and finally, you have to get the whole exhausted brood back home. Oh, and you have to finance the adventure, but fortunately, rates are reasonable right now.

The hardest part is the first one, finding the tickets. Finding five tickets together, either online or over the phone, is impossible for two reasons: the games are near sell-outs and the system for purchasing the tickets isn't really designed to be helpful.

Everything is based on the date of the game, which makes sense of course. Most people want to go on a specific day or, say, weekend. We had a lot of flexibility though. We wanted to go to just about any day game. To get tickets online, you first pick the date. Then a screen comes up to choose a pricing level (or best available) and the number you need. Then you are taken to another screen to enter one of those security codes, where they put numbers and letters in a box that has lines and stuff in it to make it hard to read. Then, you can finally get to the screen where you can buy the tickets - or in my case, find out that what you need is not available.

Not very useful. Now imagine doing that for every day game, for three or four different pricing levels, and you can see how frustrating that can be. I didn't do that of course. I eventually gave up and called the ticket folks.

That didn't work either. It appears that they have no better way to find tickets for you than you can do for yourself online.

So I turned to a friend who I had hoped might be able to put me in touch with the right person. One of the many people who regularly interview me during basketball season is David Kaplan of WGN in Chicago, which just happens to be the station that carries the Cubs. He did better than put me in touch with the right person. He found me tickets for some pretty nice seats.

When you have four kids, going anywhere, even places like the grocery store, is an adventure. Wrigley Field is tough to get to by yourself. You can drive, if you don't mind the traffic and paying $40-50 to park within walking distance of the park. The other option is to take the L (train), which is very crowded, but much cheaper and drops you a block from the park. That's the way to go, even for us. Our biggest problem is getting a double stroller on a crowded train, but we have always managed it so far. We also still have to pay to park downtown, but that is much cheaper than parking at Wrigley. And the kids, especially the younger ones, love riding the trains.

Another place the stroller can be an issue is the ballpark itself. Last year, when we went to a game, we sat upstairs and stashed the stroller in a corner by the bathroom entrance. That actually worked surprisingly well.

This year, as we walked in, the ticket taker said we could check the stroller for free at the customer relations office. That's a nice feature.

The ballpark staff was generally very nice, which includes the Octogenarian Ninja Ushers. If you have ever been to Wrigley, you will have undoubtedly noticed that the ushers in the seating area are all very senior citizens. I even saw one wearing one of those oxygen backpacks.

Don't let the grandmotherly (or grandfatherly) look fool you though. They are not pushovers and they'll get after you if they need to. If you go where you don't belong, they go right down there and grab you by the ear and take you away.

I wanted to get down by the wall to say hello to another media friend of mine who was on the field before the game, but the ONU wouldn't let me get there. I got out before I got the ear-pull though.

We saw the Padres when they were in town on May 15th, which is back before Spring started around here. Spring this year was from May 25-June 3. It's now Summer, but I digress.

The point is, it was cold. My wife and kids were all in their winter gear. I refuse to wear a winter coat in May, and especially to a baseball game.

The weather kept the crowd down a bit. There were a lot of no-shows around us, and a few of the people were clearly not interested in the game. Like, for example, the lady across the aisle from me who was there by herself and doing her knitting.

We also had the requisite loudmouth half a section behind us, but fortunately, he kept it clean. Even better, he ran out of hot air half way through the game.

Most people wear Cubs gear to the game, but one young lady in front of us must not have had anything, so she wore a blue Cub Scout neckerchief as a bandanna. I guess that's the best she could do.

We sat about 15 rows from the field, looking right up the first base line. We were just at the edge of the net, which was nice because with the kids, we can't spend every second watching for line drives to come back at us.

The game itself was pretty good. The Cubs won 4-0, getting all four runs in one inning off of former Cub Greg Maddux. He got a standing O as he left the field because many of his think it might be the last time he pitches at Wrigley. The game was played quickly (under 2:30), so we weren't out in the cold any longer than we needed to be.

Our younger kids were entertained by the two kids sitting in front of us that were about the same age. Although, I have to say, my two-year-old daughter liked the game itself. She still doesn't talk much, but one of the first words she ever said was "ball," and she loves playing and watching anything with a ball. She's the only two-year-old in America who would rather watch Big Ten Tonight than Teletubbies. At the game, when she would see someone swing the bat, she would swing her arm across her body to mimic that. Now, when ever she sees the Cubs logo, she yells "Ball!" and swings her arm.

After the game, we waited around for the crowds to die down so we were among the last ones out. Before we headed to the train, we walked over to check out the new Ernie Banks statue, just on the third base side of the entrance at Clark and Addison. The sculptor did a great job capturing Ernie. It's a great tribute to Mr. Cub.

Getting home was relatively easy, except for some rush hour traffic. The car was a lot quieter as some of us slept. A great time was had by all, and it was definitely worth the effort.

Former President visits

Last week, those of us in Schererville got a chance to see something we had never seen before. A former President of the United States came to visit.

Bill Clinton made an appearance to stump for votes for his wife, Hillary, in advance of Indiana's primary today.

Those of you who have read my profile know that I don't favor either party particularly. However, I always vote, and in the primary, I always vote in the Democratic. That is because Lake County, where I live, is so heavily Democratic that the primary is the only chance I have to vote for local officials. The Democratic primary is the de facto general election locally. The fact that I always vote in their primary means that the local Democrats think I'm one of them.

It also means I get to vote for Hillary or Barack Obama, the Senator from Next Door, so I thought it might be useful to hear what Bill had to say. I also thought it would be a good chance for my older boys (11 and 9) to see a former President and get a taste of the process.

But first, we had to hurry up and wait.

The doors to the little banquet hall that Clinton would be speaking at opened at 2:45. We were not told when Bill would actually speak, but we were prepared for a long wait.


The crowd waits breathlessly

We showed up right at 2:45 and had to wait in a little bit of a line to get in. Security was not as tight as I would have expected for a former President. Bags were checked, but that's about it. In fact, I went through a more thorough security check to get into the arenas for the NCAA tournament.

For the occasion, in honor of Hillary's drinking habits, I wore my most obnoxious Boilermakers shirt.

The place was standing room only, but not because it was overly crowded. There were no chairs, so all we could do was stand. The room was a little less than half full, maybe about 200 folks. It was almost all adults too. My kids were the only grade school age children there. There were a couple of babies and toddlers, and a few HS kids as well. There were also a few media types, and seemingly every Schererville cop. It would have been a good day to rob a bank.

I was about 40 feet from the podium, which meant I could see OK, but it would have been better if I'd worn heels. My kids had trouble seeing, but they could find an angle on occasion.

Clinton started around 3:30, so it was only a 45-minute wait. Bill has a reputation for being a charismatic speaker, and he did not disappoint. He was concise, by his standards, funny, and at times blunt. And his style wasn't typical of most politicians. Politicians generally speak as if they are talking to idiots. In many cases, they are. They'll pause. After. Every. Word. As if you need a few minutes to process each one. I can't stand that. Bill spoke like he had somewhere else to go (which he did), even though he went on for 40 minutes.

He was giving us some of the main points of Hillary's platform (jobs, energy, health care, education, balance the budget, get out of Iraq, etc), the details of which I'll leave out here. You can get that in other places.


Bill doing his thing

His speech didn't end until ten minutes after the doors opened at his next stop in Crown Point. Those folks undoubtedly had a longer wait than we did.

Even though he was campaigning for his wife ("I'm just here as a volunteer campaign worker."), I expected to see more presidential stuff. Perhaps this is against protocol - I certainly wouldn't know - but I thought the presidential seal would be on the podium, but it wasn't. He does have security, though. I saw four Secret Service guys total. There was one on each side of the stage when he spoke, and two others joined the party when Clinton shook hands afterwards.

My sons and I got close enough to shake his hand, so we did. He and I actually chatted a few seconds about No Child Left Behind, which I think is useless and which he said Hillary wants to do away with.

And then he was gone, off to Crown Point.

One strange thing about this event was that there was no handouts, which is a sign, I suppose, of how cash-strapped Hillary's campaign is. There were no buttons, stickers, pins or signs given away. They did have a place to sign up to help, but as you can see, they weren't getting much interest.


Little help? Please?

They did give us a black-and-white flier on the way out, but I wasn't sure what we were supposed to do with it. It wasn't any different than the one I received in the mail earlier that week.

Bill and Hillary hit this region hard. We hardly saw Obama in NW Indiana, but the Clintons were here at least once a week. We'll see today if that pays off.

Kalama-Air Zoo

Last weekend, I took my two older boys to a Cub Scout overnighter at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo museum.

The itinerary for the event called for a night of building rockets, touring the old museum building, where we were sleeping that night, and watching a movie. The next day, we would shoot off the rockets and tour the new Air Zoo building.

The only problem with this schedule is that it didn't start until 7 PM, and once the rocket construction ended around midnight, that is when they would show the movie. That's fine if you have a bunch of HS kids, but these are all elementary schoolers. Most of these kids are usually in bed by 9, and now we're keeping many of them up until 1:30 or 2 AM to watch a movie.

For me, this kind of event means a night of next to no sleep. I do not sleep well away from home generally, and do particularly poorly when I sleep in a crowded room on an air mattress on the floor.

Still, I thought I'd try to take advantage of the relatively quiet time in our sleeping area during the movie and try to sleep then. That plan was foiled because the father and son camped out closest to me (about 10-15 feet away) happened to be the Fabulous Fartersons, and they chose that moment to launch and all-out Fart Fight.

The next 30 minutes - or perhaps it was a week, I don't know - went like this:

Father: RIPPPPPPPPPP!
Both: "heeheehee!"
Father: "SHHHHHHHHHH!"
Son: RIPPPPPPPPPP!
Both: "heeheehee!"
Father: "SHHHHHHHHHH!"

And so on. If that's not a special father-son bonding moment, I don't know what is. Just think of the stories the son will be able to proudly tell his children and grandchildren. With any luck, that particular skill will be hereditary so they can show it off at family reunions. Imagine, a four-generation fart-fight. A veritable choir of flatulence. This assumes, of course, any of them can overcome that overwhelming talent and successfully breed anyway.

After that, we learned that the father is also a world-class snorer, but he wasn't the only one in the room. So, I didn't so much sleep as pass out and come to a couple of hours later.

I did learn something in those wee hours of the morning though. I didn't realize Kalamazoo's airport, which the museum borders, has commercial flights, but two Northwest flights left there by 7:30 Sunday morning.

Before we launched the rockets on Sunday, we got to visit the hangar where the museum does its restorations. Among the equipment we saw was a Sopwith Camel, which is best known as the kind of plane Snoopy flied in his fantasy battles with the Red Baron. The real Red Baron was supposed shot down by a fighter in a Camel, but it was later learned that he was down by Australian ground fire.

The rocket launch was fun for the kids. It was a very windy day, so they traveled a long way. The new museum was also fun. It had more newer planes than the old one, including a Navy Tomcat and a Blackbird spy plane. They also have a flight simulator where you can control the flight and do things like barrel rolls. It got the better of my kids though. They got upside down and couldn't get out of it.

Still, it was a fun time for the kids. I hope someday to forget it.

Wake me when the big one hits

After a pretty restless night of not much sleep, I was pretty surprised this morning to see that we had one of the bigger earthquakes on record here in the Midwest overnight.

The Chicago Tribune reported that this was a near-record event, but it must have happened during the little bit of time that I was sleeping because I didn't notice it. Folks closer to the epicenter experienced some damage, and even people around here got rattled around a bit. My mother-in-law, who lives near Indy, was shaken awake.

It also awakened my wife, who is a very light sleeper. At that time of the morning though, she's pretty groggy. She wasn't sure at first if it was a quake, a strong wind, or if I was shaking the bed. She finally concluded that since everything was rattling, it must be a quake. But she didn't try to wake me.

Nothing and no one else in my house was disturbed, although with four kids, the house is such a mess that shaking it up might actually make it cleaner.

Merry Christmas!

Normally, I write one of those Christmas letters and send them in the mail. This year, like a lot of things in my life, I didn't have time to do it. Honestly, there wasn't much to write about, and I'd just as soon forget the whole thing.

It wasn't all bad though. Here are some of the highlights.

* Mathew (10) is still being homeschooled and working about two years ahead in most things. He played soccer in the spring, and that's his only sport now. He is pretty involved in church activities, including children's chimes and choir. He's also an acolyte. His highlight of the year though was his first communion this fall. He had been looking forward to that for at least two years. He had a great deal of enthusiasm for his church activities. He is also in the last year of Cub Scouts. We'll see if he goes on to Boy Scouts.

* Erik (8) is the family athlete, by Palm standards, anyway. He plays soccer, football and basketball. After being one of the smallest kids on his football team last year, he got taller (if not wider) and played left offensive tackle this year. I think soccer is his best sport, but he has also played that the most. He is one of the best defensive players in his age group. I think he likes basketball the best, but that is also the current sport. He is also taking an interest in watching college and pro sports. Sometimes, he'll get up in the morning and instead of turning on cartoons, he'll turn on the Big Ten Network.

He is also working ahead of grade level at homes going reasonably well. He is at the Bear level of Cub Scouts and joins Mathew in the children's chimes group at church.

* #3 son, Karsten (4) is starting to do some pre-school work at home. He's reached the age where he wants to do everything his big brothers are doing, which includes schoolwork. He knows all the letters and can write most of them. He is now constantly asking us how to spell things. He also started Sunday School this year, which he just loves.

* The last but not least Palm child, Annika, will be 2 in March. She's adorable, of course, though I may not be the most objective observer. She's also wants to do everything the older kids do, but we haven't armed her with a pencil yet. Right now, she's into learning parts of the face, so whenever we hold her, she's poking our eyes, sticking her fingers in our ears, etc, wanting us to tell her what part that is while we also try to stop the bleeding.

She is also trying to talk and has a few words, mostly names for all of us. Mommy and Daddy she has down pretty well, although sometimes it's "mommies" and "daddies." I know I'm big, but I didn't think I was big enough to be plural. Mathew is "Momo," Erik is "Ay-yah" and Karsten, who was the first one to get a name from her, is "da-DEE", where the last syllable is kind of like a squeal.

This is such a cute age.

* The newest thing in my work is that I have been covering games instead of just writing about ratings. That actually started last fall, with Notre Dame football. I didn't cover them as much this year. :)

I also covered a lot of basketball games, including the Missouri Valley, Big East and NCAA Tournaments. All this game coverage is for CSTV.com, which is where I do most of my freelance writing.

* Cheri has been trying to keep the household from falling apart, and despite all our best efforts to thwart that, she succeeds. None of us function without her.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas! I started writing this before 5 AM, so naturally, Mathew and Erik are already up. We never see them this early the rest of the year.

Have I missed anything?

I was really hoping to be able to update this space more often this spring and summer, but things have conspired against me. The biggest of which was a major family medical emergency, which I'll write a lot more about if I have more time. Things are getting better there.

The good thing about all this is that I have missed the Keystone Kubs annual slide into oblivion. I've only watched maybe 5 innings of baseball since the last time I posted anything here. On April 25th, the day of my last post, the Cubs were 5 games back of Milwaukee after beating them. Today, they're 7 1/2 back after losing their 10th in 12 games. The Cubs have gone two weeks without beating anyone but themselves and they're only 7 1/2 back of the Brewers and one game out of second place. Man, does this division stink. Five of the six worst teams in the NL (based on current record) are in the Central. There are only five teams in the other divisions in baseball with a worse record than the second-place Pirates. It does give me some pleasure to see that the Yankees are on that list. Has Steinbrenner's head exploded yet?

But, I digress. So, the good news for the Cubs is that they aren't so far gone that they can't still win the division. The bad news is their ace pitcher is a better hitter, and especially a better boxer, than he is a pitcher, and the bullpen is only a relief to the opposition. Also, the outfielders catch fly balls like their gloves are made of flubber, and love the cutoff man too much to hit him. And finally, the Cubs must still be giving away free beer in the dugout because baserunners will do anything, no matter how stupid, to get back there as fast as they can. Alfonso Soriano has been picked off of first base three times that I know of - and I missed almost the entire month of May. The latest dumb play came yesterday, when a the would-be tying run got caught stealing at third in the eighth inning with no outs. The baserunning has been so bad that good baserunning would be news.

Has Lou Pinella's head exploded yet?

Maybe she was saying "foooooood"

I'm in the Indy area this week helping out my mother-in-law as she recovers from surgery. As you might imagine, this part of the country is overwhelmed with Colts fever as they get ready to watch them get beat by the Bears 31-28 in the Super Bowl. In the spirit of the event, I've been wearing my Bears jersey around here this week.

Late last night, I went to the local Meijer (the Official Superstore of the Colts) to pick up some stuff. While I was looking at something on the end of one of the aisles, I heard this loud howling sound. I wasn't paying too much attention to it, but when it didn't stop, I glanced up to see that it was coming from some lady about 50 feet from me who was booing me and waving her arms with the thumbs down sign.

I suppose I should be grateful she didn't use any of her other fingers.

Fortunately, I'm not a sensitive guy. I'm used to getting booed. I umpired baseball for 16 years and reffed basketball for 8, so that's part of the job. I get "booed" for my bracket predictions, the RPI and BCS pretty routinely. I even get booed at home sometimes (you call that washing dishes??! BOO!). But getting booed in the grocery store is a new one.

My Thanksgiving tradition

Like many families, mine has traditions that are followed every Thanksgiving, and our traditions are probably very similar to yours. We start out with the ceremonial preparation and consumption of mass quantities of specific foods. After that, we waddle into the family room and watch large, padded men - men who were probably bigger than us before we ate dinner - play football. And we can do that even longer now because there are three NFL games on Thanksgiving instead of two. While we're watching football, we usually have a dessert or six, and then, mercifully, the games end. After that, we stumble upstairs in an effort to go to bed, but usually fall short and pass out on the stairs. The kitchen is covered in a layer of food shrapnel which will require power tools and about a week to clean up. My kids' hair is now orange because they tried to absorb the nutrients from sweet potatoes through the top of their heads instead of through their mouths.

I'm sure your family goes through the same things, but mine has started a new tradition that began a year ago, and that is that we have a piece of the plumbing system fail. Last year, it was a clogged pipe downline from the garbage disposal. That took about three hours to find and fix. This year, it was our brand new dishwasher deciding it was no longer going to drain water out of the tub. I thought we could just leave that to Friday, but my wife informed me that if I didn't fix it, I would get to do all the dishes by hand. Since I didn't want to pass out face-first into a sink full of dish water, I decided to try to fix the dishwasher. That too was successful (the drain hose was kinked because it was too long), so I was able to join the rest of the family in passing out on the stairs.

I can hardly wait for the surprise my plumbing has in store for me next year, but in the meantime, does anyone have a sander I can borrow? I have to clean the kitchen.

Stuck in Hell

Or at least Bloomington, which for a Purdue guy, isn't much different.

I was on my way here to cover the Michigan-Indiana game on Saturday when my car quit running about 10 miles outside of town. Fortunately, my wife has some family in the area and they were able to rescue me, get me to the game, and give me a place to stay for a couple of days until I could get my car fixed (fuel pump - not cheap).

I probably should have known better. My last two trips to the Indiana campus did not go well either. The last time I was here was 20 years ago and my car (not the same one) was vandalized. The time before that, I was a senior at Purdue and we brought a pep band down for the Bucket game. We were sitting in temporary bleachers in front of a 20-foot wall, above which was the stands. Someone dropped a chunk of concrete, or perhaps limestone, about the size of my laptop down toward us. It just missed hitting us (which was probably the intent).

I think the next time I get a chance to come back here, I'll just pass.

Catch up/World Cup preview

It's amazing how little time I have now that we have another baby in the house. It's not so much the baby (she's doing great, BTW) that makes it difficult, but the fact that whoever isn't dealing with the baby (usually me) has to take care of the other three. That means writing for the blog has fallen down on the list of priorities.

Instead, I've been doing things like planting a garden, which is doomed to fail because I have a brown thumb. The only plants I can't kill are weeds. I'm the leading producer of dandelions in Lake County, despite attacking them with every form of chemical and home remedies known to man. Maybe if I let the big boys do most of the work, the garden has a chance.

I've also been trying to fix up a room so that we have a place for the baby to sleep when she outgrows the bassinet in our room. Whenever I attempt handyman-type stuff around the house, it always looks like vandals broke in and did it, so I have a friend who is a home builder helping me out and that's going much better than if I attempted it myself.

I'm also managing my two older sons' baseball team. It's a 7- and 8-year-old league, although my older son is nine. We held him back because he hasn't played much baseball and he isn't ready for the next league up. My team has four 7-year-olds and six 8-year-olds, plus my 9-year-old, which is roughly the age makeup of all the teams, but all my kids are about the same size, which is smaller than the average 8-year-old. Every team we play has at least one kid that looks like he's ready to start shaving, and all my guys are about the size of the bat. We're the only team in the league where the best player is a 7-year-old. That's not to say my 8-year-olds are bad players, but they aren't all-star caliber players. I'm really fortunate though that my kids do a good job playing hard and following instructions, and they're all getting better, which is the only goal anyway. It's a non-competitive league, so there's no score kept or standings. They are really good kids, so it's a fun team to coach, but it's a pretty time-consuming job.

So, today is the start of the World Cup and I'm excited to get to watch it this year without having to stay up until ridiculous hours of the night like I did four years ago when the tournament was in South Korea and Japan. I'm a fan of the game, although not as rabid as I am about more traditional American sports, but I watch some MLS games or some of the European league games on Fox Soccer Channel. I went to a World Cup game in Chicago in 1994 and saw Germany and Spain play to a 1-1 tie. I had my German jersey on and it turns out my ticket was in the top row of the Spanish cheering section. That was the only time I used all that Spanish I took in high school and college.

Anyway, Brazil is the big favorite in this year's tournament, and you'd have to be a blithering idiot to pick against them, so naturally, I will. I'm picking the host Germans. If you have a good enough team, and the Germans appear to have one, home field advantage is big and they'll use it to knock off Brazil in the final. Germany will be breaking in a new goalkeeper after the retirement of Oliver Kahn. They'll need a big tournament from his replacement Jens Lehmann.

I also like the US team to come out of a very difficult group E with the Czech Republic. They key for the US will be to get at least a draw with the Czechs in the first game. To be successful, the US have to be tight on defense, which occasionally lapses, and do a better job finishing its scoring chances. Italy is also in our group, but they've had some turmoil and look ready to be sent home. Ghana is probably not good enough to come out of this group, but is certainly good enough to be a spoiler for one of the other three.

Group A has Germany, Poland, Ecuador and Costa Rica, and it would be a huge upset if Germany didn't win the group and Poland didn't finish second.

England leads Group B and is the favorite despite the injury to Wayne Rooney. It looks like he will play in this tournament at some point, but Rooney's health will be a key to the Brits advancing much beyond the group stage. Sweden is a slight favorite to advance over Trinidad & Tobago and Paraguay, but both have puncher's chances to take out the Swedes.

Group C has a heavy favorite in Argentina, and I the rebuilding Dutch squad to come out of there as well. If the Netherlands struggle, then Serbia-Montenegro, which isn't a country anymore, will advance. The Ivory Coast is the other member of the group, and they'll leave with lovely parting gifts.

Mexico and Portugal will advance from Group D, but the order isn't as clear. I'll take Mexico, although they've not been sharp in recent friendlies. Expect an inspired performance from their keeper, Oswaldo Sanchez, whose father just died. The funeral may cause Sanchez to miss the opener with Iran. The others teams in this group are Iran and Angola, neither of which have much of a chance.

The Brazilians will win Group F and Croatia will finish second. The other two teams, Austrailia and Japan, could not compete with either even if they combined forces.

Group G is where we find France, which won the tournament as host in 1998. Zinedine Zidane was the star of that team, and he's still kicking around, but the new star is Thierry Henry. France should advance easily. South Korea, which did well in 2002 as host and has many of those starters back for 2006, will battle Switzerland for second. I'll take the Swiss, which were undefeated in qualifying. Togo will be satisfied to be a spoiler.

Spain and Ukraine figure to emerge from Group H, though neither look good enough to do much damage after the group stage. Tunisia has a chance to surprise, but Saudi Arabia looks overmatched.

Knockout stage picks:
A1 Germany over B2 Sweden
C1 Argentina over D2 Portugal
E1 US over F2 Croatia
G1 France over H2 Ukraine
A2 Poland over B1 England
D1 Mexico over C2 Netherlands
F1 Brazil over E2 Czech Rep
G2 Switzerland over H1 Spain

A1 Germany over C1 Argentina
E1 US over G1 France
A2 Poland over D1 Mexico
F1 Brazil over G2 Switzerland

A1 Germany over E1 US
F1 Brazil over A2 Poland

A1 Germany over F1 Brazil
E1 US over A2 Poland (3rd place)

First swim lesson

We baptized our baby girl on Sunday, and things did not go swimmingly. We needed to do an emergency diaper change about five minutes before the baptism, and most of that time was spent trying to find a suitable place to do that. I'll spare you the details, but I will say I could have really used a hose. As a result, she was slightly late for her own baptism (takes after her mother). This apparently did not make her happy, because she wailed during the whole ceremony, stopping only to catch her breath. The cops showed up because the neighbors called to complain about the noise.

OK, I made that last bit up.

I guess she was trying to make up for her brothers, who were no trouble at all during their baptisms.

Company Expansion

Palm Sports Resources announced today the hiring of Annika Eliese Palm as a Special Assistant to the President. When asked what role Annika would have in the organization, President Jerry Palm said, “We plan to start her off slowly so she can learn the ropes. Since she’s only 20 1/4” long and 7 lbs, 13.5 oz, we’ll probably limit her activities to eating, sleeping and pooping initially. We will also put her in charge of ensuring that we have the proper amount of sleep deprivation in the Executive Suite.”

Palm added, “If she is able to do those things successfully, we will be expanding her responsibilities into other areas to be decided upon at a later date.”

The EEOC began an investigation into the company’s hiring practices last summer when rumors surfaced that the company had only hired males so far, but Palm was quick to point out that the investigation had nothing to do with Annika Palm’s appointment.

“Obviously, it’s no fun when the government shows up at your door and starts rifling through your drawers, muttering things like ‘Title IX’, ‘gender bias’ and ‘federal lawsuit’, but Annika isn’t the token female around here. She has impressive credentials and we’re committed to her for the long term. We expect big things from her. It probably won’t be too long before she’s running the place. Of course, if hiring her gets the feds off my back, so much the better.”

Palm wasn’t kidding when he talked about a long term commitment. While terms of the deal were not disclosed, a well placed source says Ms. Palm signed an 18-year, no-cut contract.

Mr. Palm also got a little defensive when pressed about the fact that this looks like a patronage hire. “Hey, this is Lake County, Indiana,” Palm said, adding, “Every job in this county is a patronage job. This isn’t like Chicago, where patronage hiring is illegal.”

Baby update

As many of you know, my wife is due to deliver child number four on or about March 1st. Obviously, I'm very good with numbers, but I seem to have trouble with a calendar, since that is the busiest time of the year for me with my work. I was very worried that this baby would be fashionably late and arrive on March 12th, which is selection Sunday.

For us, that kind of thing is very predictable. All of our major pregnancy events happen on or very close to special occasions.

Child #1 was due on Mother's Day, but my wife's water broke on April Fools' Day (which also happened to be the day after the national championship game that year) and he was born the next day.

My wife started going into labor two months before #2 was due, but she spent a day in the hospital and they were able to stop the labor before it really got going. That day was my birthday. #2 son ended up being born about four hours short of Groundhog Day.

Pregnancy #3 ended in a miscarriage on Halloween.

When they told us child #3 was due in late October, a Halloween baby never occurred to us. We were thinking more along the lines of Labor Day, or optimistically, Columbus Day. It turns out that this one was late. He was born on Election Day.

So, with a due date of March 1st (Ash Wednesday), we started planning for a new addition on New Year's Day, MLK Day, our anniversary (Jan 17), Groundhog Day, Presidents Day, Valentine's Day, selection Sunday, the Ides of March (which also happens to be my wife's birthday) and St. Patrick's Day.

My wife's doctor says we can cross the last few off the list though. He's leaving for vacation on March 3rd, so he wants to make sure that baby is out and my wife is well on her way to recovery before he takes off. That means that March 1st isn't just a due date, it's a maximum due date.

Maybe it'll be Fat Tuesday (Feb 28), which considering how skinny my first three kids are, would be quite ironic.

Pinewood Derby

We had our first experience with the Cub Scouts' Pinewood Derby last weekend and things went amazingly well. #1 Son is a Bear (3rd graders) and his car won three of his four heats and finished second in all four finals races for second place in the Bear group. The only car that beat his is the one that finished first. More on that in a minute.

#2 Son is a Tiger (1st graders) and his car did even better. He won all four of his heats to finish first in the preliminaries. The second place car was creatively designed. It was called "Fast Food" because it was a thin block of wood with a plastic cheeseburger, french fry box and shake cup glued on it. That was one of my favorites, along with the one that was an aquarium (no water, of course) done by one of the Webeloes (4th-5th grades). But, I digress.

In the heats, #2 son's car beat Fast Food twice by about a car length each time. His car also won the first race of the finals, but by a nose. Fast Food won the other three races in dead heats (too close to call without a computer, which it's a good thing they had), so Fast Food ended up being the winner of the Tiger class.

Fast Food then went on to be Grand Champion, winning the four finals races convincingly. That means #2 son probably had the second fastest car there, but only got second in class. That's racing, though!

Pinewood Derby is kind of funny to watch off the track. It's different from family to family, but it's really more about the dads than the kids. This is the kind of project that adults have to be involved in at some level because we’re not going to let the kids use power tools at age 8, but some cars clearly looked like the kids had nothing to do with them. There was one dad that was so anal that he brought the car to the race in a one-foot cube steel box which had been lined with foam that had a car-shaped cut-out in it.

When I kind of off-handedly suggested to our (Bear) den leader that it would be cool of one of our kids won, he said it wouldn’t happen. He told me who would win and said the same dad wins every year because he starts working on the car the day after the previous race ends. It shows too, because he has the most professional looking car there. I wonder if the kid even sees the car before race day.

The cars the kids in our den made looked like amateur hack-jobs by comparison, which they were, since they were mostly done by amateurs. The only thing the adults did for the kids in our den was cut the car and make sure the wheels were on straight. Our goal was for the cars to get all the way down the track without catching fire, blowing an engine or having a tire fall off.

As it turns out, our den leader was right and worked-on-it-for-a-year car won, but some of our den’s hack-jobs finished second, third and fourth. I’m sure the dad that spent a year making his car was shocked not only not to be Grand Champion, but to lose to a car that could have mostly been made by a six-year-old.

So, while there is a TON of information out there about how to make a winning Pinewood Derby car, what we learned is what #1 son already knew before we raced. In the car on the way to the race, he blurted out, “winning the race is mostly luck.” We more or less proved that.

Merry Christmas!

I apologize for yet another long layoff between posts. Once football's regular season ended, I had a LOT of work to do around my house to get ready not only for the holidays, but also a baby coming in March. Hopefully, I'll have more time to write once Christmas is past.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Long time, no write

Gosh, it's been so long since I've written, I've forgotten just about anything I might have wanted to say. With both football and basketball seasons going on, it's hard to find time to write. Here's a few things rambling around in my head.

* The Sox made a pretty risky deal yesterday, sending CF Aaron Rowand to the Phillies for 1B Jim Thome. I love Thome, but he's on the downside of his career and coming off an injury-marred season. I hate to see the Sox give up their best defensive player and team leader - and a relatively young guy - for Thome at this point in his career. It makes me wonder if the Sox think they can't sign Konerko.

* Kyle Orton is doing a nice job at starting QB for the Bears, who are now 7-3. Like most rookies, he's had some ups and downs, but they are not relying on him to win the games. The Bears have a great defense and a good running game, which takes some pressure off of Orton.

Orton's QB rating of 62.5 won't get him a lot of all-star votes. He's 30th in the NFL in that category. If you throw out that one 5 INT game against the Bengals, his rating is 73.2, which isn't too far off of average. Hard to believe one game could make that much difference.

The one thing that has puzzled me about Orton so far as a Bear is that he seems to be missing guys deep. When he was at Purdue, he was the most accurate deep-ball thrower I had seen in college. It seemed like he was more accurate the farther he threw the ball, but in the pros so far, he's had trouble hooking up on the long ball. Maybe it's just a matter of still learning his receivers. When he starts clicking on the deep ball again, he's really going to take off.

Rex Grossman, whose injury gave Orton the chance to start, is going to be back in uniform this week as the third QB when the Bears play Tampa. Some fans are thinking he should go back in whenever he's ready, but they forget that Grossman has six games experience - total. Orton already has seven WINS. Grossman's career QB rating is 71.1, so it's not like he's the second coming of John Elway.

* Further evidence that there are too many channels: the Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship was on ESPNU yesterday.

* We went to see the Harry Potter movie last night. It was pretty good, although they obviously had to cut a LOT out to make a two-and-a-half hour movie. No house-elves, no Dursleys, and don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it coverage of the Quidditch World Cup. Even Snape is an afterthought. Still, it's a good movie and the special effects are great.

* My two older boys have just joined Cub Scouts. They're both pretty excited about it and they'll probably do OK, but I remember my efforts at scouting and I wasn't particularly good at it. Hopefully, I can stay out of their way. :)

Busy, busy.

It's been a busy week, which is partly why it's been a little quiet here. We've been taking the kids out and doing a few fun things, like the Porter County Fair. Then, I spent the last two days at the Big Ten football media days, which I'll write about some on the site.

I've also been writing about the Harry Potter book, which I hope to post later this week.

It's a niece!

Finally, a girl is born to the family. Between my and my wife's parents, it's been all sons (4) and grandsons (6), except, of course, for my wife. But Tuesday, my brother and his wife had a baby girl. Mom and baby are fine, and my mother is very excited because she can finally buy girl stuff.

Back home

We came back from my mother-in-law's yesterday and I'm finally able to do a bit of writing. It seems like forever since the last time I wrote.

-> Last week, my kids attended Camp Invention in Anderson. Camp Invention is put on by the National Inventors Hall of Fame at schools around the country and is designed to help kids problem solve and think creatively. For part of the camp, they actually go through the invention process. They figure out what problem they want to solve, come up with a way to solve it, and build a model of their invention. My oldest was in the camp last year and had a great time. This time, #2 son joined him. It's open to kids entering first grade through sixth grade. It's probably too late for this year, but if you have kids who might like this kind of thing, keep it in mind for next year.

-> The All-Star game was Tuesday night and I missed it completely. Didn't see one pitch. I kind of forgot about it. Part of the problem was that I was at my mother-in-law's, and I'm a bit out of my environment there, but also, that was during the camp, so evenings were spent doing other things. Still, I don't feel like I missed anything. Not that long ago, the all-star game was blocked out on my calendar and I scheduled around it, but since the tie, I just haven't cared that much. I'm sure I would have watched if it had occurred to me, but it didn't, and to me, that says something.

The hometown guys did OK. Mark Bueherle got the win and Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez had hits. I didn't see if Jon Garland pitched.

-> The NHL finally ended its lockout. It remains to be seen if anyone is left to care.

-> The Tour de Lance rolls into its final week. Barring a crash or some other misfortune, it looks like Lance Armstrong will win for the seventh straight time, which is an incredible accomplishment. After that, he retires, and America can go back to not caring about cycling.

-> Tiger Woods won another major, making it ten before he turned 30. It's funny to see how the other golfers can't seem to catch him. Guys chasing him tend to play worse rather than better. Colin Montgomerie in particular seems to have trouble with Woods. They've been in the same tournament now 66 times, and the only time Montgomerie finished ahead of Woods was in a tournament shortened to 36 holes by rain.

-> I got and read the Harry Potter book. More on that later. Also, there has been some college football news, which I address on CollegeBCS.com.